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Election lawyer speaks about ongoing Trump campaign lawsuit in Nevada

Posted at 7:00 PM, Dec 03, 2020
and last updated 2020-12-04 00:04:09-05

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — As a judge decides whether to overturn Nevada’s election, a local attorney who worked on GOP presidential campaigns says the chances of that happening are slim.

While lawyers for the Trump campaign argued in court pushing to overturn the election’s results, attorney Daniel Stewart watched the proceedings focusing on Judge James Russell’s thought process.

“From what I can tell, he says you need to show to me in court with evidence that Donald Trump won the election," Stewart said.

He specializes in election law and served as an attorney for the Romney campaign in 2012. Stewart says the Trump campaign has a tall order to prove election fraud like proving their claim that thousands of dead voters cast a ballot in the election.

RELATED STORY: Trump, GOP drop Nevada court appeal of ballot count case

“But those 1,500 dead ballots could have gone 750 for Trump, 750 for Biden, so you just don’t know,” he said.

Jessie Binnall, the attorney for the Trump campaign, claimed there are people voting twice as well as non-residents voting. He spoke of witness statements saying where people claimed they saw things like Clark County Registrar Joe Gloria filling something out with a Biden pen.

“In this case, it’s about the failure of the electoral system in our election,” he said.

He says the arguments are similar to previous cases using written witness testimony and questioning the signature verification machine used in Clark County.

“You have to show that President Trump would have won, not just bad ballots. We don’t know that as that evidence is under seal.”

The attorney for the Democrats claimed the evidence of bad ballots the Trump campaign presented was “hearsay” and very thin.

RELATED STORY: Fmr. AG Adam Laxalt says GOP lawsuit has 15K people who voted in multiple states

“Simply put, breathtaking relief demands breathtaking evidence. The contestants stand before you with nothing of the sort,” Kevin Hamilton said.

Stewart says if that’s true, a judge is likely to reject it.

“They did not name any voters. They just put out numbers. If that’s the case, then the evidence is even weaker than I initially thought,” he said.

Stewart says he believes both lawyers conducted themselves well, but the burden of proof remains on the Trump campaign. With the success of Republicans down-ballot in Nevada, he says in general it would be difficult for a judge to see how fraud could have flipped every race in the election.

“The election was fraudulent, but they only committed fraud in one race. That’s very difficult,” he said.

The judge says he’ll look at the evidence himself and asked attorneys to prepare orders by Friday morning.

Thursday evening, the Nevada GOP posted on its social media page that it was releasing its data expert report for transparency.

The shared document is available to be viewed here.