A law firm that was representing President Donald Trump’s legal challenges to President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the state of Pennsylvania last week has withdrawn from working on the case.
Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, the law firm that had filed a motion on behalf of Trump earlier in the week claiming that “irregularities” in ballot counting had existed, announced on Friday that it had reached “a mutual agreement” with the campaign that it “will be best served if Porter Wright withdraws.”
The move comes after reports of tensions within the company had surfaced, with a number of workers in the firm allegedly expressing strong misgivings about representing the president and his bid to undermine the election process without legitimate evidence of malfeasance or fraud. One employee had already resigned from Porter Wright due to the company’s initial decision to represent Trump.
Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for the Trump campaign, denounced the move as part of a pressure campaign against the president.
“Cancel Culture has finally reached the courtroom. Leftist mobs descended upon some of the lawyers representing the president’s campaign and they buckled,” Murtaugh claimed, vowing to continue on with litigation challenging the results of the presidential election.
Porter Wright is the second law firm to remove itself from representing the Trump campaign in the past week. The law firm of Snell & Wilmer also withdrew from representing Trump in a case in Maricopa County, Arizona.
As law firms begin to step away from representing Trump, other cases on his behalf are being dropped entirely. On Friday, lawyers for Trump withdrew a legal challenge in Arizona, noting that their lawsuit requesting a review of all ballots cast on Election Day wouldn’t result in changing the margin of victory for Biden in that state.
Trump has made numerous claims alleging election fraud, none of which have been deemed credible, according to elections officials in every state of the country and fact checks by a number of media organizations. A joint statement from the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, two government agencies that oversee U.S. elections, also vouched for the security of the presidential election.
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history,” the agencies said in their statement.
Responding directly to a claim that votes for Trump were deleted (which the president himself wrongly asserted in a tweet earlier in the week), the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council said no such thing ever happened.
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” they said.
The spate of law firms dropping Trump as a client, as well as the lawsuits being lost or dropped by Trump lawyers elsewhere, come as the president is reportedly acknowledging to those close to him that the race has been won by Biden.
Trump may be nearing the end of his attempts to contest the outcome of the election. According to a report from The New York Times, the president has asked whether he can persuade state legislatures run by Republicans to pick electors for the Electoral College to overturn the outcome of the race.
While deeply disturbing, those with knowledge of those conversations told the Times that Trump isn’t entirely serious about the idea. Rather, because he doesn’t want to concede he lost, he’s tossing out improbable ways to stay in office as he determines what his next step will be once he leaves the White House.
“He knows it’s over,” a White House adviser said to the Times.
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