Trump campaign scraps claims its observers weren’t allowed to watch vote count from key lawsuit

Controversial allegations were a major component of the president’s lawsuit in the battleground state

President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has reportedly removed controversial claims it made in a lawsuit filed on Sunday in Pennsylvania that previously alleged its representatives were unable to watch the processing of 682,749 ballots.

The claims were a key component of the lawsuit, and had been amplified without evidence by the president and his inner circle. State lawyers have since called for the lawsuit to be dismissed, saying it featured no “plausible claim for relief on any legal theory” in a statement provided to the court.

But the Trump campaign quickly hit back in public statements rebuking reports that noted the change in the lawsuit, with Mr Trump attacking the Washington Post for its coverage, though the lawsuit was in fact altered significantly. 

Mr Trump has yet to concede while failing to provide credible evidence of mass voter fraud after official projections indicated President-elect Joe Biden was the victor of the 2020 US elections.

He has meanwhile promoted false claims surrounding the results of the election and repeatedly lied about its outcome, while posting statements on Twitter and Facebook that had to be censored on both platforms for their inaccuracies.

The allegation that his campaign’s representatives were unable to watch the vote count quickly stoked Mr Trump’s supporters into hosting large gatherings outside of ballot processing centers after Election Day demanding access to the facilities.

With the claim removed from the president’s lawsuit, the remaining allegations focused on an argument that some voters in Democratic stronghold counties had an opportunity to “cure” their vote — a process in which mistakes can be corrected in order for the ballot to be correctly processed — ahead of Election Day, while others in red districts were not provided the same chance.

However, an attorney representing the Democratic National Committee told the Associated Press “the numbers aren’t even close to the margin between the two candidates, not even close” when assessing the number of impacted ballots.

“They really should be suing the counties that didn’t allow (voters) to make corrections,” Cliff Levine, the lawyer representing the AP, said. “The goal should be making sure every vote counts.”

A deluge of misinformation among the right has enveloped social media in the days following the election, with protestors holding “stop the steal” rallies and demanding recounts in critical battleground states where the president lost to Mr Biden. There is no evidence of stolen votes.

In fact, Mr Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security defended the election from false allegations of rigging and said it was “the most secure” in US history.