US President Donald Trump has admitted he faces an uphill struggle to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in the recent election.
In his first full interview since the November 3 vote, Mr Trump said it was “very hard” to get to the Supreme Court, even though “that’s what everyone is fighting for”.
“I’ve got the best Supreme Court advocate that wants to argue the case if it gets there,” he told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo in an hour-long interview littered with unsubstantiated claims about the election.
Nearly every case brought by the Trump campaign in a blizzard of legal action has been thrown out by federal and state judges – many appointed by Republican presidents – who have given his allegations of irregularities short shrift.
The US president still hopes to reverse the result by persuading the Supreme Court to consider cases brought by his legal team, which has challenged the results in several battleground states.
But despite the Supreme Court now having a 6-3 conservative majority, legal experts believe that it will be reluctant to become embroiled in the election.
With several important states due to certify their results shortly, the president refused to say when he would give up fighting his legal battles. “I’m not going to set a date,” he said.
Mr Trump could scarcely contain his anger at the judiciary in the wake of more than 30 defeats in the courts.
“We are trying to put the evidence in, but the judges won’t allow us to do it.”
For the sake of simplicity, Mr Trump added, he would like his campaign to file what he described as “one big beautiful lawsuit.”
Despite having just over seven weeks left in office, the president added that he would consider appointing a special prosecutor to investigate what he repeatedly described as a “rigged election.”
Even the FBI and the Department of Justice could have been involved in the attempts to “rig” the election, Mr Trump claimed.
“This is total fraud and how – the FBI and Department of Justice, I don’t know, maybe they’re involved – but how people are allowed to get away from this with this stuff is unbelievable,” he continued.
The latest legal blow to the Trump campaign was in Pennsylvania on Friday, when the state’s Supreme Court overturned a ruling which put the certification of the election results on hold.
Republicans had argued that the use of mail-in ballots was unconstitutional and should therefore be discounted, which would have flipped Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes from Mr Biden to Mr Trump.
The court said the case was filed months after the deadline for challenging the rules, adding that the Republicans had failed to provide evidence of a single vote being cast illegally.
It was not only the courts which attracted Mr Trump’s ire, but also Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia who along with the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had approved the rules for the election which Mr Biden won.
“The governor’s done nothing. He’s done absolutely nothing. I’m ashamed that I endorsed him. But I look what’s going on. It’s so terrible.”
Mr Trump was similarly dismissive of the media and big tech companies for failing to give his allegations of electoral fraud the attention he felt they deserved.
“The media doesn’t even want to cover it,” he added. “We don’t have freedom of the press in this country, it is suppression by the press.
“You can’t have a scandal if nobody reports about it.”
Republican senator Roy Blunt, who leads the committee for the presidential inauguration, yesterday said he did not believe the election was rigged in an interview on CNN.
Most of the Republican leadership has yet to acknowledge Mr Biden’s victory.
According to the Washington Post one White House insider HAS likened Mr Trump’s behaviour in the aftermath of his defeat to “mad King George”, repeatedly muttering: ‘I won. I won. I won.’”
