The Trump campaign hosted a surrogate briefing call Thursday with updates on litigation, mostly concerning Pennsylvania. As in the previous call, the speakers reiterated that these legal proceedings take time to form and execute.
Speakers included Director of Battleground Strategy Nick Trainer, Director of Communications Tim Murtaugh, Deputy Campaign Manager Justin Clark, and Campaign Counsel Matt Morgan.
Murtaugh repeated his stance from the last call.
“Over 72 million people voted for President Trump. They deserve to know that this election is free and fair, and every legal vote is counted and every illegal vote not counted. It’s not just about this election, it’s about every election in this country.”
Additionally, Murtaugh emphasized the need for patience while they do their work.
“Caution: this is a process. It will be methodical. In this age of Twitter and 24 hour news, they want a resolution at the top of the hour,” he said. “We’re not going to eat the whole apple in one bite. There’s not going to be a silver bullet that lines it up on the media at the end of the night. Every time we make progress, we are learning more information. Every filing is a step along the path. We ask for patience through the process. Every court filing, every recount is a step along the path to re-electing President Trump and for secure voting.”
After, Clark issued a few brief statements asserting that the processes are deliberate and methodical. He hinted that there would be even more recounts and litigation beginning next week.
“We had a win: the Pennsylvania court held that the secretary of state lacked statutory authority to change the deadlines for ballots,” he said. “This is a different issue than the Supreme Court issue concerning the statutory deadline by the legislature. The case was filed Monday, [and the] case preliminary injunction motion [was] today.”
Also, Clark discussed briefly why the judges ruled Pennsylvanian officials’ behavior to be unlawful.
“Pennsylvania election official officials don’t have jurisdiction to depart from legislatures; they should apply the law equally. [They] treated mail-in voters differently depending on their region,” he said. “The city of Philadelphia constantly undermined the legislature – they can’t constitutionally apply different standards for different results for different ballots. As a result: we don’t know the full magnitude of [a] case. Even if we were to win a small amount of victories, it would trigger an automatic recount, which would allow us to further investigate the election.”
Clark remarked on the news that Georgia announced a recount by hand, which is expected to begin on Friday and be finished by November 18.
The briefing lasted just under 15 minutes.
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Corinne Murdock is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and the Star News Network. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to [email protected].
