[Washington Examiner] The Electoral College may have made Joe Biden president-elect on Monday, but President Trump plans to dispute that outcome well into January.
"Yesterday was one step in the constitutional process," White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters on Tuesday. And, citing a series of election lawsuits in which the president is still involved, McEnany added that Trump's legal team is doing well to pursue "legitimate litigation" as long as those avenues are open.
For many of Trump's allies, the expiration date for success falls several weeks before Inauguration Day. Instead, they look to Jan. 6 as the day of "ultimate significance." Congress on that day will count and certify the Electoral College votes. After that point, a Trump-driven election reversal is all but impossible.
Trump lawyers have bandied about the term "ultimate significance" with greater regularity since the lawsuit led by Texas to overturn the results in four states failed, arguing that it provides state legislatures several weeks to undo the results sent on Monday to the Electoral College. Rudy Giuliani, Trump's top legal adviser, referenced it almost immediately after the Supreme Court tossed the Texas case. And this week, in a statement to the Washington Examiner, Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis cited it as guiding precedent laid down by the Supreme Court in its 2000 Bush v. Gore decision. The term originated from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent in that case.
To leverage the date to Trump's advantage, his campaign has to convince state lawmakers that the votes they sent to the Electoral College represented false outcomes. And to make that case, the president's legal team has continued to file lawsuits in states where it alleges that fraud occurred. Many of those cases, including challenges filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, have been tossed after judges found various inadequacies with the filings. The campaign on Monday brought up a new case in New Mexico, alleging that state officials used the pandemic to orchestrate voter fraud with mail-in ballots — a charge common to nearly every election challenge.
At the same time, the Trump team has been assembling a group of "alternate electors" ready to send amended votes to Congress if the campaign succeeds in state courts. Stephen Miller, a senior White House adviser, on Monday told Fox News that these state electors, many of whom on Monday cast unrecorded votes for Trump in conventions separate from their corresponding state's Electoral College delegations, were a way to "ensure that all of our legal remedies remain open." 
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