Donald Trump's
presidential campaign said Monday it plans to challenge Louisiana's electoral
delegate selection, a day after the GOP candidate threatened to sue over the
possibility that the state's uncommitted delegates could back his rival, Ted
Cruz.
Trump adviser Barry
Bennett said that the campaign intends to file a complaint with the Republican
National Committee protesting how the state's delegates were chosen.
"The problem
we're having here is there was a secret meeting in Louisiana of the convention
delegation, and apparently all the invitations for our delegates must have
gotten lost in the mail," Bennett said in an interview on MSNBC. After
meeting with the campaign's legal team most of the morning, he said they
planned to move forward with "a complaint to decertify these
delegates."
While he did not
provide a timeline on when the complaint would be filed, he said: "We're
going to protect our rights to the fullest extent possible."
A day earlier, Trump
shared his frustration with the process via Twitter, warning: "Lawsuit
coming." His threat serves as a taste of the kind of backroom procedural
wheeling-and-dealing that could come to define the Republican convention if
Trump, facing deep resistance from many in his party, fails to lock down the
1,237 delegates necessary to win the nomination outright.
Trump had not offered
any details on the grounds of his proposed lawsuit, but Bennett later said
Trump has been referring to the planned complaint.
"It's not
something you file with the court, it's something you file inside the
party," he said. "That is the lawsuit that he talked about."
Under RNC rules,
Trump's campaign can contest the seating of the state's delegates by filing a
complaint directly to the committee. If the campaign is unsatisfied with the
outcome, it can file a complaint with the credentials committee, which meets at
the national convention.
Trump won 41 percent
of the vote in Louisiana's March 5 primary, versus 38 percent for Cruz. But the
process of allocating the state's 46 delegates isn't a matter of simple
proportion.
After the primary
election, Trump and Cruz each had 18 committed delegates, while Florida Sen.
Marco Rubio, who has since dropped out of the race, had five. Under state party
rules, those delegates became free agents after Rubio suspended his campaign.
Another five delegates also begin uncommitted.
Jason Dore, executive
director of the Republican Party of Louisiana and one of the state's
uncommitted delegates, said he hadn't yet decided whom to support. But he said
that Cruz's campaign has been working more aggressively than Trump's to attract
delegates since the beginning of the race.
As for Trump's
threat, Dore said: "I don't know who he'd be suing because these 10
delegates are free to support whoever they want under the rules. The party or I
can't force them to vote any way."
Dore added that
Bennett appeared to be referring to a mandatory delegation meeting, held
immediately following the state convention, which he said that Trump staffers
in the state had attended.
Trump slammed the
idea that a candidate who won fewer votes could end up with more delegates in
an interview with ABC on Sunday, panning the process as a "crooked"
and "rotten political system."
Meanwhile, Cruz
downplayed Trump's threats before a campaign stop in Altoona, Wisconsin,
telling reporters: "You know what? Who cares?"
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