Pennsylvania AG on Trump’s mail-in voting attacks: ‘He’s just trying to create chaos’

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) says he is prepared to stop any voter suppression attempts made by allies of President Trump.

“It’s hard to predict what this president will do. He and his enablers and his legal team have been incredibly erratic,” Shapiro said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“What we know is that they’ve attacked our voting laws here in Pennsylvania, they’ve actually made it harder for people to vote. They’ve tried to make it easier to intimidate voters, particularly in our Black and brown communities,” he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that Pennsylvania election officials will be required to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day as long as they arrive three days after the election. Pennsylvania GOP leaders had asked the justices to review the ruling made by the state’s Supreme Court.

Speaking with MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, Shapiro said, “They’ve gone 0 for 3 in our courts here in Pennsylvania and all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. We beat them at every turn. And I can assure the people of Pennsylvania as I have many times and certainly the American people that we’re prepared for whatever comes next.”

Trump won the Keystone State in 2016, however Democratic rival Joe Biden is currently leading Trump in Pennsylvania by just under 5 points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

Both presidential candidates are running neck and neck in key swing states, with Biden maintaining a slight lead in several states that voted for Trump in 2016.

When asked by MSNBC’s Willie Geist about the realities of voter fraud, Shapiro pointed out that Trump’s own FBI director has stated that voter fraud in the U.S. is minimal.

”I think he’s just trying to create chaos because what he’s trying to do, Willie, is to make the voters here feel powerless, to make them feel like maybe they won’t control the outcome of this election,” said Shapiro.

Former President Obama campaigned for Biden in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, making his first in-person appearance on behalf of his former vice president.

In other battleground states, concerns have been raised by election officials over private security contractors recruiting former military members to send them out to polling places, seeing this as a possible form of voter suppression.

Shapiro’s counterpart in Minnesota, Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), announced on Tuesday he had launched an investigation into a private security firm over listings describing jobs as “security positions in Minnesota during the November Election and beyond to protect election polls.”