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Trump camp asks Nevada Supreme Court to nullify Biden win

Ken Ritter | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 3 years, 11 months AGO
by Ken Ritter
| December 7, 2020 3:03 PM

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Attorneys for the Donald Trump campaign are appealing to the state Supreme Court to overrule a lower court judge and nullify Democratic President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral win in Nevada.

Documents filed Monday ask the high court to reverse Judge James Todd Russell’s finding on Friday that the legal team for six Republican electors failed to prove the Nov. 3 election was swayed by fraudulent or illegal votes.

A hearing was not immediately scheduled, but the appeal is expected to get fast-track handling. The Electoral College is scheduled Dec. 14 to finalize nationwide presidential election results.

Biden is due six votes from Nevada. The state high court certified on Nov. 24 that he won the state by 33,596 votes, or nearly 2.4%.

The former vice president won by a wider 9.35% margin in the Las Vegas area — a Democratic stronghold and the most populous and racially diverse part of an otherwise predominantly Republican state. Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County accounted for more than 977,000 votes in the presidential election and the bulk of the more than 1.4 million votes cast statewide.

Jesse Binnall, the campaign attorney heading the contest-of-election filing in Nevada, failed to convince Russell that so many tainted votes were cast, primarily in Clark County, that Trump should be awarded the election instead of Biden.

Binnall asked the judge to declare Trump the winner of the election or to prohibit Democratic electors from delivering votes to Biden.

“Contestants’ claims fail on the merits ... or under any other standard,” the judge said in his 35-page ruling.

Russell was appointed to the bench in January 2007 by moderate Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn. He is the son of Charles Russell, a Republican who served two terms as governor in the 1950s. The judge’s grandfather, longtime state court Judge Clark J. Guild, founded the Nevada State Museum in Carson City in 1939.

The state’s seven Supreme Court justices are elected in nonpartisan elections.

Last month, they received an appeal of a separate Trump campaign bid to stop the counting of mail ballots in the Las Vegas area. The tally continued and the case was dismissed at the request of the campaign without a hearing.

The new case, called a contest of election, is one of about 50 legal actions brought by Trump’s campaign and his allies nationwide. More than 30 have been rejected or dropped, according to an Associated Press tally, including several in state and federal courts in Nevada.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr told AP last week the Justice Department did not find widespread voter fraud that could have changed the outcome of the U.S. election.

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