White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany predicted Wednesday that President Trump will defeat Joe Biden by roughly 40,000 votes in Pennsylvania as the campaign launched a legal battle challenging the handling of ballots in the hotly contested state.
McEnany echoed Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who descended on Philadelphia alongside Trump's legal team earlier Wednesday citing claims of "massive cheating."
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"Philadelphia, in particular, has a history of very peculiar results," McEnany, who also serves as a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, told Fox News' Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.
"You had 59 different precincts where Mitt Romney got precisely zero votes [in 2012], which is very unlikely and curious indeed ... You had a Democrat individual who was charged for -- in 2014, 2015, and in 2016, -- stuffing the ballot box with fraudulent ballots," she claimed, "So we want to be on alert. "
McEnany claimed election officials had forced poll watchers to stand several feet away, limiting their ability to observe the counting process and ensure accuracy.
"That's what this lawsuit is all about, free, transparent, observation of what's going on in Philadelphia," she said. "Right now, we are not being given that."
Pennsylvania and North Carolina were allowed to extend the deadline for when officials received ballots. That could mean that official tallies for those states won't be known until Friday for Pennsylvania and Nov. 12 for North Carolina. The Trump campaign is seeking to overturn the 4-4 decision allowing Pennsylvania to maintain its ballot extension.
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Despite this, McEnany said the Trump team is confident the president will win Pennsylvania by at least 40,000 votes, even with a “conservative estimate" of the numbers.
McEnany said the campaign also believes they will prevail in Arizona, contradicting the Tuesday night call by the Fox News Decision Desk. Trump needs roughly 57.7% of the 600,000 outstanding votes, she said, adding that she believes he will win "by about 30,000 votes."
When asked whether the campaign believes Trump could reach the 270 required electoral votes without Arizona, McEnany said flatly, "Anything can happen.
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Earlier Wednesday, the Trump campaign announced it had filed a lawsuit in Michigan to gain "meaningful access" to ballot counts and promised to demand a recount in Wisconsin. Fox News has called both states for Biden. The campaign also filed suit in Georgia Wednesday night to temporarily halt the ballot counting.
"That's why we are doing the recounts in Wisconsin, why we're looking at Michigan as well having the poll observers," McEnany said. "We’re looking, but we believe the path runs through Arizona, Pennsylvania, keeping Georgia, which we're already in the lead there."
Fox News' Sam Dorman contributed to this report.
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