With the expected confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Monday, Fox News added its voice to the right-wing media misinformation about mail-in voting in Pennsylvania — along with a key case in which Barrett could potentially intervene on the side of President Donald Trump in the election.
Pennsylvania Republicans on Friday renewed an appeal to the Supreme Court after the state’s high court granted an extension for absentee ballots to arrive up to three days after Election Day — a decision motivated by widespread delays in postal delivery — unless there is a “preponderance of evidence” that a ballot was mailed after Election Day. The decision was previously allowed to stand by a deadlocked 4-4 Supreme Court ruling. State election officials have now been urging voters to not take this mail extension for granted and to get their ballots in as early as possible — because Barrett’s potential confirmation could very well tip things back.
Trump has said that he wants nine justices on the Supreme Court in order to avoid a deadlocked decision on any potential election disputes — while at the same time as he denounced mail-in voting by saying, “I think this scam that the Democrats are pulling, it’s a scam, this scam will be before the United States Supreme Court and I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation.” Discussing the Supreme Court and the election during the first presidential debate in September, he openly declared, “I’m counting on them to look at the ballots, definitely.”
This pattern of statements by Trump has led ethics experts to conclude that Barrett’s nomination presented a potential conflict of interest, on the grounds that it would “reasonably appear to the public that Trump offered her the job with the implicit understanding that just weeks later she would help him keep his.”
On the Monday morning edition of Fox & Friends, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich painted a lurid picture of rampant voter fraud in Philadelphia and castigated the state Supreme Court for helping to set up a situation for Democrats “to steal the state.”
“And I think Pennsylvania's going to come down to a straight-up contest: Can the Democrats steal more votes in Philadelphia than the rest of the state casts for Trump?” Gingrich insisted. “And I think it's literally, you watch on election night, it's going to — and now that the state Supreme Court has said you can bring ballots in six days after the election, and you don't have to have a signature — I mean, they have done everything they could to set this up to steal the state and the test will be be if Trump beats him bad enough, they won’t be able to do it. Now, if Trump doesn’t beat him bad enough, they might be able to find enough illegal votes and fake votes in Philadelphia, which historically has had a long reputation as a machine city that votes a lot of folks who may not exist.”
These statements did not receive any pushback from the Fox & Friends co-hosts, but instead received a friendly reception as the conversation went on.