(Vanessa Abbitt/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the state of New York, alleging that the state is engaged in election interference through its prosecution of former President Donald Trump.
The suit alleges three specific violations against New York, including interference with the presidential election in other states, interference with voters’ First Amendment rights in other states, and violation of a federal case that prohibits courts from sowing voter confusion or changing election rules. Bailey is calling on the Supreme Court to step in and rule that New York’s restrictions on Trump’s ability to campaign interfered with the election.
The suit specifically alleges that “New York’s actions impose a sovereign harm to the ability of Missouri’s 10 electors to exercise their federal authority,” with Bailey telling The Daily Wire that it is “intended to protect Missourians’ sovereign interest in participating in a national presidential election on equal footing with other states.”
Bailey referenced Purcell, a federal case he described as the court deciding that “the judiciary should refrain from issuing rulings close in times of an election that could interfere with an election.”
“There’s these open questions as to whether or not President Trump can appear on a ballot” and “whether or not he’s eligible to run for public office,” Bailey stated, adding that uncertainty has “been injected by this rogue prosecutor,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, in a manner that “violates the doctrine of Purcell and has the potential to undermine the credibility of the election.”
He also addressed the gag order Judge Juan Merchan, the Acting Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, placed on Trump, arguing that the order and any sentencing “should be stayed until after the election.”
“Trump’s conviction is very likely to be overturned on appeal. But by then, the constraints New York has sought to impose on Trump to limit his ability to campaign will already have had their full effect,” Bailey explained. “Missouri has a strong, judicially enforceable interest in its citizens and electors being able to hear Trump’s campaigning free from any gag order.”
“We used to live in a world where the rules of the game mattered about the players and the outcomes,” Bailey told The Daily Wire, addressing the broader consequences of the prosecution of Trump for American politics. “The Left has rejected that approach in favor of violating the rules in order to retain power because they’re so desperate to be in control and have authority, and they’re willing to sacrifice the rest of our rights on that altar.”
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