The experts who led former President George W. Bush’s legal efforts in 2000 following that year’s presidential election say that President Trump has no chance of success in his own attempts to challenge the 2020 election results.
In interviews with Bloomberg, several people involved with the Bush campaign’s efforts to halt a recount in Florida — a move that cemented Bush as the winner of the 2000 election over his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Al Gore — said that Trump had no path to reelection in 2020.
“You can’t just say, ‘This election’s tainted, throw it out,’” Benjamin Ginsberg, the 2000 Bush campaign’s national counsel, told Bloomberg. “You have to have some specificity, and so far, they’re sorely lacking in specificity. Their airplane crashed on takeoff because they forgot to add fuel.”
“If the court were to overturn this election on that basis, they’d be disenfranchising many thousands of voters just because somebody said there was some irregularity in a particular place,” added Barry Richard, who led the Bush campaign’s legal efforts in Florida during the 2000 recount.
Other allies of the Bush campaign who worked during the 2000 recount efforts had similar judgements of Trump’s chances. “I do believe the election is over,” Ted Olson, who led Bush’s efforts at the Supreme Court, said at an event last week, according to the news outlet. “We do have a new president.”
The Trump campaign is mounting legal efforts in Pennsylvania in hopes of delaying the certification of that state’s election results, attempts that have seen no success in the state so far and appear unlikely to lead to the state’s election results being overturned.
Attorneys for the president previously dropped similar efforts in Arizona, while a hand recount is ongoing in Georgia as part of that state’s law.