Federal judge cancels hearing for Trump’s Pennsylvania election case

A federal judge on Wednesday canceled a planned evidentiary hearing on President Trump’s challenge to Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania.

Judge Matthew Brann instead gave the Trump campaign until 5 p.m. Thursday to respond to a defense motion to dismiss the case, according to an order posted online.

Brann also set the same deadline for the campaign to file new motions seeking a preliminary injunction to block certification of the election results and permission to amend its suit for a second time.

The order came a day after Brann heard about four hours of oral arguments on Tuesday from lawyers including former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who took over Trump’s case after a series of other lawyers bailed out.

Giuliani, a former Manhattan US attorney, appeared rusty during his first appearance in federal court in about three decades, at one point mistaking Brann for another judge who earlier rejected a different suit filed by the campaign, according to The Associated Press.

Brann also noted that Trump’s suit was “alleging that the two individual plaintiffs were denied the right to vote” while “asking this court to invalidate more than 6.8 million votes, thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth,” CNN reported.

In addition to canceling the hearing that had been set for Thursday, Brann’s order denied a request from Trump campaign lawyer Linda Kerns to withdraw from the case.

Kerns didn’t offer a reason when she filed the motion on Monday but it came hours after she claimed to have received an “abusive voicemail” from a lawyer at an opposing firm.

Kerns also said she’d been subjected to “continuous harassment in the form of abusive emails, phone calls, physical and economic threats, and even accusations of treason — all for representing the President of the United States’ campaign in this litigation.”

Kerns appeared in court with Giuliani on Tuesday and took over answering the judge’s questions at several points, according to reports.

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