Trump lawyer contesting election result said ‘litigation will not work’

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A lawyer fighting for Donald Trump in the US president’s attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden said shortly after election day that “no bombshells” would derail the Democrat’s victory, and “the litigation will not work”.

Trump law firm withdraws from Pennsylvania case challenging election

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Trump has not conceded to Biden, despite losing the electoral college 306-232 and trailing by 5.5m ballots in the popular vote. While the president seeks redress in the courts in multiple states, the lack of a concession is delaying transition work, with detrimental effects for national security and the fight against Covid-19.

Marc Scaringi, 51 and from Harrisburg, was retained by the Trump campaign on Monday, to replace attorneys who dropped out of the attempt to overturn the result in Pennsylvania, where Biden won by about 70,000 votes.

Scaringi has previously run for a Republican Senate nomination and volunteered for the Trump campaign. On election day, he posted to Twitter a picture of people watching results in Washington DC, with the comment: “Biden’s people ready for a coup if he loses.”

He also has his own conservative talkshow on iHeartRadio. Broadcasting on 7 November, four days after election day and shortly after Pennsylvania put Biden over the top, he said: “In my opinion, there really are no bombshells that are about to drop that will derail a Biden presidency, including these lawsuits.

“I’ve been saying since Wednesday morning that Biden would win.”

He also said that though some Trump legal challenges “had merit … at the end of the day, in my view, the litigation will not work. It will not reverse this election.”

On Saturday 14 November, Scaringi said it was “up to the Trump lawyers to get some good results in these lawsuits to try to flip the vote count”.

On Monday, he was retained in that effort. Jenna Ellis, a legal adviser to Trump, said the move to retain local counsel was “consistent with routine managing of complex litigation”.

The judge in the Pennsylvania case, however, denied Scaringi’s request for a delay to a hearing set for Tuesday afternoon, at which the state will attempt to have the lawsuit dismissed.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, said a blogpost on Scaringi’s law firm website entitled “How President-Elect Joe Biden’s Plan Could Affect Your Taxes” appeared to have been taken down.