Trump campaign presses legal attack on election, as postal worker recants ballot fraud claims

[November 11, 2020]  By Jan Wolfe and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's campaign said on Tuesday it would file a lawsuit to stop the battleground state of Michigan from certifying its election results, as congressional Democrats said a witness who had raised accusations of ballot tampering in Pennsylvania recanted his allegations.

The Michigan lawsuit will request that election results in the state not be certified until it can be verified that votes were cast lawfully, Trump campaign attorney Matt Morgan told reporters on a conference call.

It was the latest in a string of lawsuits the Trump campaign has filed since Democrat Joe Biden captured the presidency. Biden's victory in the Nov. 3 election was propelled by wins in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that there was widespread voting fraud.

Judges have already tossed lawsuits in Michigan and Georgia brought by the campaign, and legal experts say Trump's litigation has little chance of changing the outcome of the election.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, said on Saturday that the Senate Judiciary Committee would investigate claims of voting irregularities in Pennsylvania after receiving an affidavit from a United States Postal Service worker, who alleged that illegal backdated postmarks may have been added to some late mail-in ballots.

Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania urged an audit of the election results. "We've just gotten a lot of allegations," state Representative Dawn Keefer told reporters on Tuesday.

A person carries empty ballot boxes as votes continue to be counted at the TCF Center the day after the 2020 U.S. presidential election, in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., November 4, 2020. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Later in the day, Democrats on the House of Representatives Oversight Committee said postal worker Richard Hopkins had recanted his allegations, according to the Postal Service’s internal watchdog. That office declined to comment.

The committee said on Twitter that Hopkins did not explain why he made up the allegations.

The Trump campaign provided Hopkins' affidavit to Graham, who then sent a letter to the Justice Department and the FBI requesting they launch an investigation.

The campaign filed suit on Monday in federal court in Pennsylvania to halt certification of that state's results, alleging lax oversight of mail-in voting.

Bob Bauer, a senior Biden adviser, on Tuesday dismissed the Trump campaign's litigation as "theatrics, not really lawsuits."

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Jeff Mason; Additional reporting by Julia Harte and Andy Sullivan; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney)

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