A Democracy Drive Thread
After losing the 2020 election, Trump and his allies filed roughly 62 lawsuits to overturn it. They won essentially one — a narrow Pennsylvania technicality that changed nothing. No court, in any state, found the fraud he claimed.
After the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his allies mounted the most sweeping post-election legal campaign in modern American history — roughly 62 lawsuits across nine states and Washington, D.C., seeking to throw out ballots, block certification, or overturn the result. This page is the register: every case, in the order it was filed, with the claim it made and the reason it failed.
The pattern is visible only when they are laid end to end. Thirty-one were dismissed. Sixteen were dropped or withdrawn by the very people who filed them, without a court ever ruling. Three were denied outright. Where judges did reach the merits, they found no fraud — not a reduced amount of fraud, none. Several of the bluntest rejections came from Republican appointees and from judges Trump had appointed himself.
The lone win was a narrow Pennsylvania ruling that the secretary of state had overstepped in extending a deadline for first-time voters to prove their identity. It concerned an administrative deadline, not a single fraudulent vote, and touched far too few ballots to affect the outcome. That is the one win.
November 3, 2020
On the ground
The first suit of the post-election period, filed the night of November 3 in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas. The campaign argued its observers were being kept too far from the canvassing tables to see anything. The court denied the oral petition after the campaign’s own witness conceded he could “observe the opening and sorting of ballots.” The access fight continued up through the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ultimately held that the Election Code sets no minimum distance for observers — losing the campaign the theory it had built its earliest cases on.
“observe the opening and sorting of ballots”
On the ground
Filed November 3 in Commonwealth Court, Hamm v. Boockvar challenged Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar’s guidance permitting voters whose mail ballots were defective to cast a provisional replacement. The court ordered the affected ballots segregated pending further proceedings — a holding pattern, not a win. No ruling ever invalidated them, and the number at issue was in any case far below Biden’s roughly 81,000-vote Pennsylvania margin.
On the ground
One of several same-day emergency motions filed as counting proceeded on November 3. The Northampton County Republican Committee sought injunctive relief against the county’s handling of the canvass. The Court of Common Pleas denied the oral motion without granting a hearing. Like most of the election-night filings, it was brought before any evidence of a problem existed, and abandoned once the count finished.
November 4, 2020
On the ground
Laurie Aguilera’s November 4 suit was the origin point of the viral “Sharpiegate” theory — that Maricopa County handed out Sharpies to spoil Republican ballots. County Recorder Adrian Fontes called it “hoo-hah.” Arizona’s Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich opened an investigation and closed it the next day, saying he was “confident that the use of Sharpie markers did not result in disenfranchisement.” Aguilera voluntarily dismissed on November 7. The conspiracy theory long outlived the lawsuit.
“We are now confident that the use of Sharpie markers did not result in disenfranchisement.”
On the ground
The campaign’s first Georgia filing rested on a single observer who said she saw unprocessed absentee ballots slipped into a pile already cleared for tabulation. At a hearing of roughly an hour, county officials testified that all 53 ballots at issue had been received before the 7:00 p.m. deadline. Superior Court Judge James Bass dismissed from the bench on November 5. Fifty-three ballots, in a state Biden carried by 11,779.
On the ground
Filed November 4 against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the suit claimed Republican challengers were being denied access and demanded counting halt. Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens denied it from the bench: the campaign’s entire evidentiary showing was one secondhand affidavit from an unnamed poll worker. “What I have at best is a hearsay affidavit.” She also noted the campaign had sued the wrong official — Benson’s office does not run local counts — and that with tabulation nearly finished, “the relief is completely unavailable.” The Court of Appeals affirmed.
“What I have at best is a hearsay affidavit, I believe, that addresses a harm that would be significant, but that’s what we got.”
On the ground
Stoddard v. City Election Commission, filed November 4 in Michigan’s Third Judicial Circuit, sought to halt Detroit’s absentee tabulation over alleged irregularities at the TCF Center. Wayne County Circuit Chief Judge Timothy Kenny denied preliminary injunctive relief, writing that “plaintiffs have made only a claim but have offered no evidence to support their assertions.” It was the first of three separate Detroit-focused suits Kenny would reject.
“Plaintiffs have made only a claim but have offered no evidence to support their assertions.”
On the ground
Filed November 4 in Commonwealth Court, this was the sole successful case. Secretary Kathy Boockvar had extended, from November 9 to November 12, the deadline for first-time mail voters to “cure” missing proof of identification. The court held she lacked statutory authority to move a deadline set by the legislature, and ordered the affected segregated ballots not counted. It is a ruling about an administrative deadline, not about fraud — no court found a single fraudulent vote. The number of ballots involved was a tiny fraction of Biden’s roughly 81,000-vote margin, and the outcome in Pennsylvania was unaffected. This is the “one win” in the ledger.
On the ground
Barnette v. Lawrence, filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against the chair of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, argued the county violated the Equal Protection Clause by pre-canvassing mail ballots before 7:00 a.m. on Election Day — inspecting envelopes for missing information and letting voters correct the defects. The plaintiffs asked the court not just to stop the practice but to throw out the ballots already cured. On November 6 Judge Timothy J. Savage, a George W. Bush appointee, denied the temporary restraining order. The plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed on November 11. Barnette went on to run for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022, losing the Republican primary.
November 5, 2020
On the ground
Stokke v. Cegavske, filed November 5 in federal court, was brought by voter Jill Stokke together with the Marchant and Rodimer congressional campaigns against Nevada’s secretary of state and Clark County Registrar Joseph Gloria. It attacked the county’s Agilis signature-verification software — used by no other Nevada county — arguing signatures were scanned below the 200 DPI the system required, and separately claimed the public had been denied access to watch the count. The court denied a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction on November 6. The plaintiffs filed a voluntary dismissal on November 24. The same Agilis theory was recycled in four more Nevada suits, all of which failed.
On the ground
Filed November 5 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Rather than litigate, the parties settled on 60 observers apiece for the Democratic and Republican sides. With the campaign having gotten what it asked for, the court dismissed the suit and denied the emergency injunction as moot. A rare instance of an actual, addressable complaint — resolved in a day, and yielding nothing that changed a single vote.
On the ground
The campaign argued that 592 ballots should be discarded because voters had not handwritten their address or date on the declaration envelope, even though the ballots were otherwise valid and timely. On November 13 the Court of Common Pleas denied the petition and ordered the 592 counted. The campaign appealed on November 16 and withdrew the appeal later that same day. The margin in Pennsylvania was roughly 81,000 votes.
November 7, 2020
On the ground
Donald J. Trump for President v. Hobbs, filed November 7, repackaged “Sharpiegate” as a claim that poll workers had induced voters to override tabulator alerts, causing flagged votes to go uncounted. At a hearing the campaign’s own lawyers acknowledged the number of ballots at issue was too small to affect Arizona’s outcome. The suit was voluntarily dismissed.
November 9, 2020
On the ground
Costantino v. Detroit, filed November 9, asked the court to stop Wayne County’s results from being certified based on affidavits alleging backdated ballots and manipulated tabulators at the TCF Center. Judge Kenny found the “plaintiffs’ interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible” and that city officials had “offered a more accurate and persuasive explanation.” Of the star affidavit he noted no corroboration from Republican or Democratic challengers alike: “The allegations simply are not credible.” The Court of Appeals denied leave; the Michigan Supreme Court declined to disturb it. Giuliani recycled the same affidavits publicly for months afterward.
“The allegations simply are not credible.”
On the ground
Filed November 9 in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, this was the campaign’s central effort — an attempt to stop certification statewide. Making his first federal court appearance in decades, Giuliani opened by alleging “widespread, nationwide voter fraud”; pressed by Judge Matthew Brann on what the complaint actually pleaded, he admitted: “This is not a fraud case.” Brann — a Republican and Federalist Society member — dismissed with prejudice on November 21, writing that the theory “like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together,” rested on “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations,” and that disenfranchising nearly seven million voters was “unhinged.” On November 27 a unanimous Third Circuit panel affirmed in an opinion by Judge Stephanos Bibas, whom Trump had appointed: “Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
“Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
On the ground
Filed November 9 in Commonwealth Court, the suit sought to disqualify mail ballots that Bucks County had counted notwithstanding technical defects on the declaration envelopes. It was dismissed. The same envelope-technicality theory was pressed in county after county across Pennsylvania and failed everywhere except the narrow ID-deadline ruling of November 4.
November 10, 2020
On the ground
In re: Canvass of Absentee and Mail-In Ballots, filed November 10, gathered the campaign’s objections to ballots Philadelphia had counted despite missing handwritten dates, addresses or signatures on the outer envelope. Transferred to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the case ended with the court holding that such minor irregularities do not invalidate an otherwise valid, timely ballot cast by a qualified voter.
On the ground
Pirkle v. Wolf, filed November 10 in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, sought to exclude the entire vote of the four counties from the state total, on the theory that their handling of mail ballots differed from other counties’. It was consolidated with the campaign’s Philadelphia case and dismissed. The remedy requested — disenfranchising roughly two million voters to overcome an 81,000-vote deficit — was typical of the December filings to come.
November 11, 2020
On the ground
Brooks v. Mahoney, filed November 11 in the Southern District of Georgia, alleged that a software error in the state’s voting system had produced a miscount. The plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed on November 16. Georgia went on to conduct a full hand recount of all five million ballots — the only such audit in the country — which confirmed Biden’s victory, as did a subsequent machine recount requested by the Trump campaign.
On the ground
Filed November 11 in the Western District of Michigan, the suit sought to halt certification of Wayne County and of Michigan as a whole. The campaign voluntarily dismissed it on November 19, announcing it had achieved its goal because two Republican Wayne County canvassers had moved to rescind their certification votes. The rescission had no legal effect; Michigan certified Biden’s win on November 23.
On the ground
Bally v. Whitmer, filed November 11 in the Western District of Michigan, asked the court to exclude the results of three heavily Democratic counties from Michigan’s certification. The plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed. As with Pirkle in Pennsylvania and Langenhorst in Wisconsin, the requested remedy was not a recount or a correction but the wholesale erasure of the votes of the state’s largest Black and student populations.
November 12, 2020
On the ground
Aguilera returned to Maricopa County Superior Court on November 12 with a narrower claim: that her own vote had not been counted and she should be permitted to vote again. The court dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning she could not refile. County records showed her ballot had in fact been tabulated.
On the ground
Filed November 12, the suit argued Maricopa County’s hand-count audit should have sampled ballots by precinct instead of by vote center, and sought to redo it. The court dismissed with prejudice, finding the party’s reading of the election manual wrong and the request untimely. A judge subsequently ordered the Arizona GOP to pay the county’s legal fees, finding the suit had been brought to cast doubt on the result rather than to correct a real defect.
On the ground
Ziccarelli v. Allegheny County Board of Elections, filed November 12, turned on 2,349 ballots where voters had not handwritten a date on the declaration envelope. The Court of Common Pleas ordered them counted; on appeal the Commonwealth Court reversed and ordered them excluded; on November 23 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed again and held the ballots valid, since the date served no verification purpose the postmark did not already serve. Briefly the campaign’s second apparent win, erased on final appeal.
On the ground
Langenhorst v. Pecore, filed November 12 in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, advanced the vote-dilution theory that ran through the whole campaign: that counting allegedly invalid ballots elsewhere injures lawful voters, entitling them to have the other jurisdiction’s votes thrown out entirely. The targets were Wisconsin’s two most Democratic counties plus Menominee, home to the Menominee Indian Reservation. Plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed. Courts that did reach the theory rejected it uniformly — it would let any voter anywhere veto any other jurisdiction’s election.
November 13, 2020
On the ground
Filed November 13 in the Northern District of Georgia, Wood v. Raffensperger challenged the state’s absentee-ballot process wholesale and sought a temporary restraining order stopping certification. On November 19 the court denied the TRO, holding that Wood lacked standing and that his constitutional arguments failed. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed on December 5, noting he was asking to throw out votes already lawfully cast. Wood was later sanctioned in Michigan for his role in the “Kraken” litigation and suspended from practice in Delaware.
November 16, 2020
On the ground
Johnson v. Benson, filed November 16 in the Western District of Michigan, sought to block Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson from certifying Michigan’s presidential result. The plaintiffs withdrew it. They refiled a parallel action directly in the Michigan Supreme Court two weeks later, which also failed.
On the ground
Marchant lost Nevada’s 4th District to Democratic incumbent Steven Horsford by about 16,100 votes, roughly five points. On November 16 he sued Clark County Registrar Joseph Gloria demanding a new election, arguing the county’s Agilis software verified mail-ballot signatures automatically when state law requires human review. On November 23, District Court Judge Gloria Sturman dismissed on jurisdictional grounds: the district spans seven counties, and her court could not order a re-vote for six of them. “We are leaving out six other counties in regards to an election of a congressional representative and I just don’t see how I can do that.” Marchant became a leading figure in the national election-denial movement, co-founding the “America First” secretary of state slate, and lost his own 2022 bid to run Nevada’s elections.
“We are leaving out six other counties in regards to an election of a congressional representative and I just don’t see how I can do that.”
On the ground
The Election Integrity Project of Nevada had already lost once: in September 2020 it sued to stop the state mailing ballots to all registered voters, and both the district court and the Nevada Supreme Court rejected it for failing to offer any “concrete evidence” that expanded mail voting would produce fraud. On November 16 it returned, now claiming to have found extensive evidence of that fraud, and sought an emergency order blocking certification. Judge Gloria Sturman denied the injunction on December 11. The plaintiffs agreed to dismiss the entire suit on January 12, 2021 — the promised evidence never having been produced in court.
On the ground
Becker lost Nevada’s Senate District 6 to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro by 631 votes. Her November 16 suit against Registrar Joseph Gloria challenged both the mailing of ballots to all registered voters and the Agilis signature software, and asked for a fresh election. On December 2, District Court Judge Joe Hardy Jr., a Republican appointee, dismissed without prejudice: the case was procedurally defective — it did not even name Cannizzaro as a party, and an election contest of this kind must by law be filed with the state Senate. On the substance, the court found Becker “put forth no evidence that any discrepancies in Senate District 6 would affect the outcome of the election given that the margin was 631 votes.” Gloria had identified 139 discrepancies in a district where more than 153,000 votes were cast, and 936 countywide out of nearly a million.
“Put forth no evidence that any discrepancies in Senate District 6 would affect the outcome of the election given that the margin was 631 votes.”
November 17, 2020
On the ground
Law v. Whitmer, filed November 17, was Nevada’s central election contest. The would-be electors alleged voting-device malfunctions, illegal votes, and misconduct by election boards, and asked the court either to declare Trump the winner or to nullify Nevada’s result entirely. After a hearing, Carson City District Judge James T. Russell dismissed the contest with prejudice: “the contestants failed to meet their burden to provide credible and relevant evidence to substantiate any of the grounds set forth in Nevada’s election contest statute.” The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed unanimously on December 8.
“The contestants failed to meet their burden to provide credible and relevant evidence to substantiate any of the grounds set forth in Nevada’s election contest statute.”
November 19, 2020
On the ground
Rodimer lost Nevada’s 3rd District to Democratic Rep. Susie Lee by roughly 13,000 votes. His November 19 suit against Registrar Joseph Gloria pressed the same Agilis claim as the others: that mail-ballot signatures were verified by computer where state law requires human review. At the first hearing his attorney asked Judge Gloria Sturman to recuse herself, alleging her Democratic Party affiliations made her too biased to preside; the matter went to the chief judge, who ordered the case randomly reassigned over an administrative oversight. On November 25, Judge Trevor Atkin dismissed it, holding the court lacked jurisdiction and that the claim belonged in an election-contest proceeding, not this format.
On the ground
Becker v. Cannizzaro, filed November 19 in Clark County District Court, was the refiled companion to Becker’s earlier suit, correcting its most obvious defect by naming the winning candidate as a party. It sought to void Cannizzaro’s victory in Senate District 6 and order a new election on the same Agilis signature-verification theory. It was dropped without a ruling. Cannizzaro was seated and remains Nevada’s Senate Majority Leader; Becker later ran for Congress in 2022 and lost.
November 20, 2020
On the ground
Filed November 20 in federal court in Washington, D.C., the suit sought a preliminary injunction barring Pence and Congress from certifying the electors of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona — asking a single district judge to void the results of five states at once. It failed, and the appeal was dropped. The theory that Pence could refuse to count electoral votes was rejected in court in November and December 2020, more than a month before it was pressed on him publicly ahead of January 6.
November 22, 2020
On the ground
Filed November 22, Bognet v. Boockvar challenged the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s three-day extension for receipt of mail ballots postmarked by Election Day. The Third Circuit held that neither a candidate nor individual voters had standing to sue over how a state administers its own election law, rejecting the vote-dilution theory outright. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the case without comment on February 22, 2021 — one of a batch of election challenges it disposed of that day without a single noted dissent on the merits.
November 23, 2020
On the ground
Filed November 23 directly with the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the petition alleged that election officials in Milwaukee, Dane and other counties had accepted thousands of unlawful ballots and asked the court to stop certification of the presidential result. The court denied the petition. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court repeatedly declined to take these cases as original actions, holding that factual claims must be developed in a circuit court first.
November 24, 2020
On the ground
Kistner v. Simon, filed November 24, sought a temporary restraining order postponing certification, alleging assorted problems with Minnesota’s election administration. On December 4 the Minnesota Supreme Court held the doctrine of laches barred the claims: the petitioners had ample opportunity to challenge the rules before Election Day and chose not to. That reasoning — you cannot accept the rules, lose, and then attack the rules — recurs across the whole litigation campaign.
November 25, 2020
On the ground
King v. Whitmer, filed November 25 in the Eastern District of Michigan, was the fullest expression of the voting-machine conspiracy: a claimed international scheme, traced to the late Hugo Chávez, to flip votes through Dominion equipment. U.S. District Judge Linda Parker denied relief on December 7, finding the complaint amounted to “nothing but speculation and conjecture,” built on affidavits its own authors had never verified. The Sixth Circuit affirmed and the Supreme Court denied certiorari. In August 2021 Parker sanctioned Powell, Lin Wood and four co-counsel in a 110-page opinion, ordering them to pay Detroit’s and Michigan’s legal fees — more than $175,000 — and referring each for disbarment.
“Nothing but speculation and conjecture.”
On the ground
Filed November 25, the suit argued the legislature had no authority under the state constitution to enact Act 77, the 2019 no-excuse mail voting law — which had passed with overwhelming Republican support, and which Kelly had not challenged in the year before the election. A Commonwealth Court judge briefly halted certification before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed the case on laches grounds, noting the plaintiffs waited until after they lost. On December 8 the U.S. Supreme Court denied emergency relief in a single unsigned sentence, with no noted dissents.
November 27, 2020
On the ground
Pearson v. Kemp, filed November 27 in the Northern District of Georgia, was the companion to the Michigan Kraken. It asked a federal judge to decertify Georgia’s presidential result and order the legislature to appoint a different slate of electors. Dismissed on December 7 on four independent grounds at once. The appeal to the Eleventh Circuit was voluntarily dropped on January 20, 2021 — the day Biden was inaugurated.
On the ground
Mueller v. Jacobs, filed November 27, claimed that ballots collected from drop boxes were unlawful and should be excluded, and sought to stop certification. The Wisconsin Supreme Court denied the petition 4–3, with conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn joining the liberal justices — the same alignment that would decide Trump v. Biden two weeks later. Drop boxes were used by voters of both parties across the state.
November 30, 2020
On the ground
Filed November 30 in Maricopa County Superior Court. The trial court threw out Ward’s observation claims as untimely, took evidence on the signature and duplication claims, and rejected them in a nine-page order. Arizona’s Supreme Court — six Republican-appointed justices and one independent — affirmed unanimously, writing that the challenge “fails to present any evidence of ‘misconduct,’ ‘illegal votes’ or that the Biden Electors ‘did not in fact receive the highest number of votes for office,’ let alone establish any degree of fraud or a sufficient error rate that would undermine the certainty of the election results.” The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari on February 22, 2021.
“The challenge fails to present any evidence of “misconduct,” “illegal votes”… let alone establish any degree of fraud.”
On the ground
Boland v. Raffensperger, filed November 30 in Fulton County Superior Court, alleged that state election officials had failed to follow Georgia’s election code in handling absentee ballots, and asked for either an audit or an injunction against certification. It was dismissed on December 8. Georgia had by then already completed a full hand recount of all five million ballots, which confirmed Biden’s win.
On the ground
Johnson v. Benson, refiled November 30 as an original action in the Michigan Supreme Court, renewed the claim that irregularities in Detroit required blocking or undoing certification of Michigan’s presidential result. The court dismissed it. Michigan had certified Biden’s 154,000-vote win on November 23.
December 1, 2020
On the ground
Feehan v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, filed December 1 in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, was Sidney Powell’s Wisconsin entry, alleging a coordinated electronic ballot-stuffing operation and asking the court to decertify the result. It was dismissed on December 9: the plaintiff had no standing, and a federal court had no jurisdiction to award the relief demanded. The judge noted the complaint at points referred to Michigan, apparently copied from the Kraken filing in that state.
On the ground
Trump v. Evers, filed December 1, asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take the case as an original action and reverse the election outcome. The court declined 4–3, holding that a case turning on contested facts must first be filed and heard in circuit court. Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative, again provided the deciding vote, writing that the campaign was asking the court to overturn an election without any factual record at all.
December 2, 2020
On the ground
Bowyer v. Ducey, filed December 2 by Arizona Republican National Committeeman Tyler Bowyer and a slate of would-be Trump electors, asked a federal court to decertify Arizona and award its electoral votes to Trump. U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa dismissed it outright: the plaintiffs lacked standing, and their allegations were “sorely wanting of relevant or reliable evidence,” resting on “anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and irrelevant analysis of unrelated elections.” The Ninth Circuit appeal was dismissed and the Supreme Court declined to hear it.
“Sorely wanting of relevant or reliable evidence… largely based on anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and irrelevant analysis of unrelated elections.”
On the ground
Trump v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, filed December 2, argued that state guidance on “indefinitely confined” voters and the use of drop boxes violated the Constitution’s Electors Clause, and asked the court to let the Republican legislature appoint Wisconsin’s electors instead. U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig — appointed by Trump weeks before the election — dismissed with prejudice, holding the claims “failed as a matter of law and fact” and that the campaign could have challenged these practices before the vote but chose not to. Any “disappointed loser… able to hire a team of clever lawyers,” he wrote, could otherwise do the same. The Seventh Circuit affirmed.
“This would risk turning every Presidential election into a federal court lawsuit over the Electors Clause.”
December 4, 2020
On the ground
Stevenson v. Ducey, filed December 4 in Maricopa County Superior Court, was one of the last Arizona challenges — a statutory election contest seeking to undo the certified result. The plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed it. Arizona had certified Biden’s 10,457-vote win on November 30.
On the ground
Trump v. Raffensperger, filed December 4 in Fulton County Superior Court, asked the court to nullify Georgia’s presidential election outright and order it rerun, alleging thousands of illegitimate votes. An emergency petition to the Supreme Court of Georgia was denied unanimously on December 12. The trial court denied a preliminary injunction after a January 5 hearing. On January 7 — the day after his supporters stormed the Capitol, with Congress having certified Biden’s win overnight — Trump voluntarily dismissed. The allegations were never tested at trial; many resurfaced years later as evidence against him in Fulton County’s racketeering prosecution.
December 7, 2020
On the ground
Trump v. Biden, filed December 7 in Milwaukee County Circuit Court after the campaign paid $3 million for a recount in Dane and Milwaukee Counties, sought to throw out over 220,000 ballots there on claims about absentee application forms and indefinitely-confined status. The circuit court affirmed the certification, finding no violation of Wisconsin’s early voting laws. On December 14 the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed 4–3, with Justice Brian Hagedorn joining the liberal justices and writing that the challenge was “unreasonable in the extreme” and brought far too late. The recount the campaign paid for had increased Biden’s margin.
“unreasonable in the extreme”
On the ground
The most audacious filing of the campaign: on December 7, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton invoked the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction to sue Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, seeking to invalidate their results and throw the presidency to the House. Eighteen other Republican attorneys general and 126 Republican members of Congress signed on in support. On December 11 the Court dismissed it in an unsigned order: “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.” No justice dissented from that holding. Paxton later faced a State Bar of Texas disciplinary complaint over the filing.
“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”
December 20, 2020
On the ground
After the Third Circuit affirmed dismissal of the campaign’s flagship Pennsylvania suit, it petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on December 20. The Court dismissed the case without comment on February 22, 2021, along with the remaining 2020 election challenges on its docket. No justice recorded a dissent on the merits of any of them.
December 23, 2020
On the ground
Favorito v. Fulton County, filed December 23, sought an order permitting petitioners to inspect the county’s absentee ballots on the theory that counterfeit ballots had been introduced. The case dragged into 2021 and was dismissed for lack of standing on October 13, 2021. A separate hand recount, a machine recount, and a signature audit of Cobb County absentee envelopes had by then all confirmed the result.
December 27, 2020
On the ground
Filed December 27 in the Eastern District of Texas, Gohmert v. Pence sought a declaration that the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional and that the vice president holds sole discretion over which electoral votes to count. Pence’s own lawyers opposed it. The district court dismissed for lack of standing on January 1, 2021, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed on January 2 — four days before the theory was pressed on Pence at the Capitol anyway.
December 31, 2020
On the ground
Trump v. Kemp, filed in the Northern District of Georgia on New Year’s Eve, alleged election fraud and requested declaratory and injunctive relief amounting to voiding Georgia’s presidential election and decertifying its slate of electors. It was voluntarily dismissed on January 7, 2021, the same day as the parallel state case — after Congress had certified Biden’s victory and the Capitol had been attacked. It was the final filing of the campaign.
January 20, 2021
On the ground
Genetski v. Benson, filed January 20, 2021, produced a ruling on March 9, 2021 that the Michigan secretary of state’s signature-verification guidance for absentee ballot applications was invalid because it had not gone through the state’s formal administrative rulemaking process. The holding concerned the manner in which a rule was adopted, not the validity of any ballot, and came after Biden had taken office. It is sometimes cited as evidence the election was stolen; it found no fraudulent votes and disturbed no results.
June 24, 2021
On the ground
The Appellate Division’s First Department suspended Giuliani on an interim basis — an unusual step taken before any final disciplinary hearing — because his conduct “immediately threat[ened] the public interest.” The court found uncontroverted evidence that he had communicated “demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large” while serving as Trump’s lawyer in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Washington, D.C. suspended him days later. In July 2024 the same New York court disbarred him outright, finding he had “flagrantly misused his prominent position.”
“Uncontroverted evidence that respondent communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large.”
August 4, 2021
On the ground
Attorneys Gary Fielder and Ernest Walker filed a sprawling December 2020 class action on behalf of 160 million American voters, alleging a conspiracy among Dominion Voting Systems, Facebook, and several state officials. U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter sanctioned both, writing that filing such claims without verifying them was “the height of recklessness” and that spreading them was “the stuff of which violent insurrections are made.” He ordered them to pay $186,922 in defendants’ legal fees; the Tenth Circuit affirmed the award in full.
“The stuff of which violent insurrections are made.”
August 25, 2021
On the ground
U.S. District Judge Linda Parker issued a 110-page opinion sanctioning Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and four Michigan attorneys over King v. Whitmer. The suit, she wrote, “represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process” — an attempt “to deceive a federal court and the American people” with affidavits the lawyers never bothered to verify. She ordered them to pay Detroit’s and the state’s legal fees, complete 12 hours of continuing legal education in election law and pleading standards, and referred each to their bar’s disciplinary body. The fee award came to more than $175,000; the Supreme Court later declined to hear their appeal.
“This lawsuit represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.”
April 18, 2023
On the ground
The fraud narrative that could not survive a courtroom as a claim proved ruinous in court as a defamation defense. Dominion sued Fox News for $1.6 billion over its airing of the rigged-machines conspiracy; pretrial discovery surfaced internal messages showing Fox hosts and executives privately disbelieved the very claims they broadcast. Fox settled on the morning opening statements were due, for $787.5 million — roughly a quarter of the network’s available cash. Dominion went on to settle with Newsmax for $67 million and with One America News, Giuliani, Powell and Mike Lindell on undisclosed terms.