Trump campaign lawsuits are 'unbelievable long shot,' expert says

OAKLAND, Calif. - President Trump's attorney Rudolph Guiliani said Sunday that he would file up to 10 election fraud lawsuits as early as today to invalidate the Biden victory announced over the weekend. Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr authorized federal prosecutors to look into "substantial allegations" of voting irregularities, although there's little evidence that fraud marred the vote count.

To win any of its lawsuits, the Trump campaign will have to have solid evidence that its claims are true and would flip the election.

"I'm perfectly willing to sit back and see if the Trump campaign is able to marshal evidence that the results are incorrect, but  again, it seems like an unbelievable long shot," said Professor Rebecca Green, who teaches law at the William and Mary College Law School and is co-founder of its Election Law Program.

Green says the Trump campaign's mounting lawsuits fall into three categories. First, transparency; the Trump campaign alleged that observers were too far away to monitor the count. "By and large those suits have failed because courts have established that there has, in fact, been adequate access," said Green.

Second, Trump alleges that some ballots should be disqualified for being fraudulent or fake. "We haven't seen any evidence so far. So, it remains to be seen if they're going to gather enough evidence; first of all to prove there was fraud and second of all, to prove that that fraud was widespread enough that it could affect the outcome," said Green.

Third, that some ballots were counted too late or failed to fully meet such ancillary requirements such as signatures or addresses; all of which the law permits to be cured or corrected by the voter.  "And those, again, involve a very small, insignificant number of ballots, so it doesn't look like those cases will yield any change in the result either," said Green.

A research group, Fair Vote studied hundreds of recounts over the last two decades and concluded this. "The amount by which the vote total is changed is unbelievably small; a couple of hundred to a thousand votes which tells me our counting system is quite reliable," said Green.

Nonetheless, Green says the lawsuits should be reviewed by the courts. If they're judicially sound, they should proceed. If not, toss them out, Green said.

"The courts will be, you know, our gateway to insure public confidence in the outcome which is obviously really important in the context," said Green. But if frivolous suit after frivolous suit is clogging up the courts and wasting time, warning, "Then I do think the courts will not look kindly on claimants who bring those kinds of frivolous claims that lack evidence."

So far, many legal experts, including some Republican lawyers, say they're waiting for real proof; not bare allegations.

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