The post-election struggle in the United States, which had slightly calmed down, flared up with renewed vigor in the outgoing week.
The state of Texas, represented by its Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed a Supreme Court lawsuit against the authorities of four wavering states - Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania - for violating the constitutional rights of United States citizens during the presidential election.
The plaintiff demands to annul the official voting results in these states.
The suit was filed by a US Armed Forces clerk, so at least a preliminary hearing will take place.
On it, the highest judicial authority can decide to reject the claim or consider it on the merits.
If the lawsuit is dismissed, Trump will have little chance of continuing the struggle to retain the presidency.
If the claim is accepted for consideration, it will be a big intermediate victory for the current head of state and his supporters.
A lawsuit by one state against another (or a group of other states) to challenge the results of a national election is unprecedented in American history.
However, from a legal point of view, it is verified and sniper accurate.
The state of Texas claims that the defendants changed their electoral legislation in such a way that it placed the four states in a special position in which their voters had different rights and responsibilities from voters in other states.
This, the plaintiff claims, is a violation of the constitutional provision for equal protection of US citizens by law, so the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania should be annulled.
Changes in electoral legislation in the four jurisdictional states affected many aspects of voting, but the lawsuit highlights two - a different procedure for verifying the identity of the voter, as well as an extended mail vote, held in violation of the constitutions of these states and putting their citizens in an unequal position in relation to the rest of the US voters ...
Numerous other lawsuits related to irregularities and fraud in the 2020 elections were filed, as required by law, first in the federal courts of lower jurisdiction.
After they were dismissed there, the case was sent to the so-called regional courts of appeal.
These courts hear cases of federal significance and extend their jurisdiction to several states.
There are eleven such regions in the United States.
The court that heard the Pennsylvania Republican Party's appeal also has jurisdiction over New Jersey, Delaware and the unorganized territory of the US Virgin Islands.
This is the seventh regional judicial district.
And the one who worked on the Arizona election case extends his judicial power to Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, California, Alaska, Hawaii and Nevada, as well as to the unorganized territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
This is the infamous 9th arrondissement, where anti-Trump decisions were consistently made on immigration, health care, education and so on.
Only after passing these two instances can the case be sent to the Supreme Court.
Moreover, in this case, the US Armed Forces will act as the highest court of appeal, that is, it will not consider the case on the merits, but will only evaluate the decisions and other actions of the lower courts.
The Supreme Court cannot consider any evidence of election fraud.
Two electoral cases have reached the Supreme Court so far - on the elections in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
They were promptly rejected with reference to the absence of signs of illegal actions on the part of lower levels.
But even if both lawsuits were accepted and considered by the SC, the most favorable solution for Trump would be to return cases to federal courts on the ground.
State-to-state claims are governed differently.
In the United States, there are rather strict restrictions on such claims.
Strictly speaking, they are considered illegal.
However, there are exceptions, one of which is the very violation of the constitutional provision on equal protection of all US citizens under the law.
The team of lawyers led by the Attorney General of Texas took advantage of it.
In this case, the case immediately goes to the Supreme Court, and this body becomes the first instance, that is, it can consider the case on its merits - hear witnesses, study evidence, and so on.
Which is what Trump wants.
The main issue that will be decided at preliminary hearings in the Supreme Court (apparently, next week) is the legitimacy of the claim.
That is, is it possible to consider changing the electoral law of one or more states as an action falling under the equal protection clause.
If the answer is yes - and there is little chance of this even with a conservative majority in the Armed Forces - it will be a matter of deciding whether to deal with the four states separately or together.
In order to achieve what they want, plaintiffs need to recapture at least three of the four jurisdictional states.
Otherwise, Biden will still gain at least 270 electoral votes and become president-elect.
But if the lawsuit is successful, the Democratic candidate will lose his victory.
The Texas lawsuit made a big splash in the conservative states.
A day later, he was supported by Louisiana, whose Attorney General Jeff Landry sent a submission to the Supreme Court to participate in the process as a co-plaintiff.
The same statement was sent from the White House on behalf of Donald Trump.
What happened next was like breaking through a dam.
Sixteen more states - Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia - wanted to be co-plaintiffs.
Ready to jump on the bandwagon are the other three states - Kentucky, Georgia and Arizona.
The prospects of participating in the court action of the latter two are complicated by the fact that the election commissions of these states confirmed the victory of Joe Biden.
In addition, 106 Republican congressmen issued a formal memorandum in support of the lawsuit.
The final number of plaintiffs in the process will be determined only after the case is accepted for consideration.
What happens if the Supreme Court accepts the claim and decides the case in favor of the defendants?
This will depend on whether it is possible in the states under jurisdiction to separate the wheat from the chaff.
For example, separately check all the envelopes in which mail ballots were received, and on the basis of this check, reject part of the votes counted to Biden.
Or to separate from the general mass of mailing ballots those that are invalid or questionable - those that arrived by mail earlier than the official date of their mailing, submitted on behalf of unregistered voters or long-dead citizens.
If such a complex and time-consuming procedure is deemed impracticable, the court will simply have to annul elections in some individual states or in all four at once.
As a result of this culling of states, Biden could receive fewer than 270 electoral votes.
And then the question of who will rule the overseas superpower for the next four years will be decided by the Congress.
Before we move on to describing the procedure for electing a president by legislators, it is necessary to make one important remark.
On December 7-8, 2020, there were reports in the American mainstream press that Biden had reached the so-called safe harbor, so that Trump "lost completely."
Following the US media, relevant statements were made in almost all world media, including, alas, in Russian.
This is not true.
The expression "safe harbor" appeared in the press in 1887 when the electoral vote counting act was passed to streamline the procedure for approving election results.
One of the provisions of this law (which the media called the Safe Harbor Regulation) establishes that if, eight days before the date of the electoral meeting, the authorities of a state officially confirm the elections in this state, then the delegation of electors formed in accordance with such results is final and its composition cannot be challenged by the US Congress.
The legislators formulated this provision in order to exclude the appearance in Washington of two or more delegations of electors from the same state and to block the intervention of Capitol Hill in the very meeting of the college.
The 1887 Act was passed on the bitter experience of the 1876 election, in which Democrats and Republicans challenged the vote on several occasions, and rival delegations of electors from disputed states arrived at the college venue.
The confusion ended only in March 1877, when an elite deal was concluded and the post-election struggle ended in peace.
It took another ten years for the congressmen to develop a law preventing the development of events according to the 1876 scenario.
However, the act on the counting of electoral votes does not protect Biden at all, but those states where, if the corresponding law had not been passed in 1887, competing delegations of electors could appear.
In addition, Safe Harbor ends in January, when the new congressional composition is to approve the electoral vote.
Votes cast in each state may be subject to a protest for legislators to consider.
Finally, the described provision of the act is valid only if the confirmation by the states of the voting results occurred after the resolution of all legal and other disputes regarding the election results.
And this did not happen in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania due to a lawsuit from the state of Texas.
So no safe harbor has been reached.
The Supreme Court can still annul elections in four states.
And then the right to decide who will be president and vice president in the next four years is transferred to Congress.
The Senate elects a vice president by a simple majority, while the House of Representatives elects the head of state.
However, not by a majority vote (one congressman - one vote), but by a majority of state delegations (one state - one vote).
And if a simple majority in the new composition of the lower house, which, perhaps, will have to decide the fate of the presidency, belongs to the Democrats, then the situation is reversed with delegations.
Of the 50 delegations, Republicans will control at least 26, and perhaps 27-28 (the results of the congressional elections have not yet been summed up in a number of states).
So if members of the House of Representatives vote according to party affiliation, Donald Trump will remain the President of the United States.
Again, this is an extremely unlikely scenario.
For history to follow this path, at least five justices of the Supreme Court (there are nine of them in the Supreme Court) will have to make, as mentioned above, an unprecedented decision and take responsibility for the future fate of the United States.
The very examination of the Texas lawsuit on the merits would be extremely daring on the part of the judges.
The US Armed Forces meetings are not Trump's video messages or YouTube accounts of conservative publicists.
It will not work to censor them.
So America and the rest of the world will watch as the dirty linen of the City of Hills electoral system is brought into the world.
To prevent this, the five senior life-long lawyers only need to declare that the equal protection clause does not apply in this particular case.
And become heroes in the eyes of the press.
And sleep well, and not listen to the threatening cries of the crowd under the windows of their private homes.
Simply deciding that it’s none of their business to clean up the rubble they didn’t create.
Say: "Not applicable" - and everything will end ...
America would not be America, so that street activists on both sides would not start pushing the judges towards this and the opposite decision.
So if the US Supreme Court does not make a quick decision to dismiss the Texas lawsuit on Friday evening (Saturday morning Moscow time), a physical confrontation between Trump supporters and their opponents is likely to unfold in Washington and throughout the country.
The decision on the fate of the United States will again be left to the street.
But even if everything ends quickly and quietly, if the Supreme Court decides to dismiss the lawsuit, if the electoral college elects Biden on December 14, and Trump leaves the White House as promised on January 20, the crack in the US foundation will become irreparable.
Twenty-one states out of fifty at the level of official authorities declared the illegitimacy of the elections held.
They were supported by almost a quarter of legislators in the lower house of Congress.
It's almost a secession.
In five minutes the country collapsed.
So nothing on the other side of the Atlantic is over yet.
We are not seeing an endgame, but only the culmination of the opening.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.