In what is being seen as the biggest setback to Trump’s futile quest to cling on to power. the lawsuit argued by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell (described by one of Trump’s legal advisors as “an elite strike force team”) before a federal judge in Pennsylvania has been thrown out. The suit alleged such widespread fraud in the election that they were asking the judge to invalidate the results and declare Trump the winner in the state. In what has been described as a blistering opinion, the judge was brutal in his assessment of the case presented by this allegedly elite strike force team, describing it as a “Frankenstein’s Monster, [that] has been haphazardly stitched together from two distinct theories in an attempt to avoid controlling precedent.”
In his opinion, Brann writes:
Neither of these orders would redress the injury the Individual Plaintiffs allege they have suffered. Prohibiting certification of the election results would not reinstate the Individual Plaintiffs’ right to vote. It would simply deny more than 6.8 million people their right to vote.
…Moreover, even if they could state a valid claim, the Court could not grant Plaintiffs the relief they seek. Crucially, Plaintiffs fail to understand the relationship between right and remedy. Though every injury must have its proper redress, a court may not prescribe a remedy unhinged from the underlying right being asserted. By seeking injunctive relief preventing certification of Pennsylvania election results, Plaintiffs ask this Court to do exactly that. Even assuming that they can establish that their right to vote has been denied, which they cannot, Plaintiffs seek to remedy the denial of their votes by invalidating the votes of millions of others. Rather than requesting that their votes be counted, they seek to discredit scores of other votes, but only for one race. This is simply not how the Constitution works.
…One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens.
That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more.
The judge even wrote his ruling in such a way as to prevent the Trump ‘elite strike force team’ from presenting the case again in a different form.
The judge said any further consideration of this issue “would unduly delay resolution of the issues” regarding certification, and he closed the case. His order on Saturday notes that the Trump campaign cannot try to resurface their claims in a rejiggered version of the lawsuit.
The Trump campaign on Saturday night said they would appeal Brann’s ruling, and quickly, with the intention of taking the case to the US Supreme Court.
Counties must certify their results to the Pennsylvania secretary of state by Monday for her to make her own certification. Then Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf will notify the winning candidate’s electors they should appear to vote in the Capitol on Dec. 14.
Even Pennsylvania’s Republican senator Pat Toomey has said that it is over and called upon Trump accept the result. Ha! Good luck with that. Trump will take it to the Appeals Court, which will also throw it out, and then to the US Supreme Court which is where he is pinning his hopes. But it is doubtful that they will choose to accept the case.
One by one, the doors clang shut on Trump’s pathetic efforts to escape the consequences of the election.
Jean says
And while this is happening and the pandemic is getting worse and the G20 is happening, Trump is golfing… And 70+ million americans think he deserves at least one more term…
Intransitive says
Did the judge describe it as breathtaking inanity? It’s Pennsylvania, after all.
joelgrant says
Do show how far removed from objective reality some of the MAGA cultists are, and how thoroughly propagandized they have become, just yesterday I saw one of the cultists on Twitter claim that some other user had been ‘brainwashed by the MSM’ because they had pointed out how many suits Trump had lost. In fact, said the cultist, only 1 suit had been filed!
We are dealing with a level of ignorance so deep I do not see how we dig out of it.
Marcus Ranum says
Apparently the Trumpies are now trying to say that their lawyer who ranted 2hr of conspiracy theories was not really their lawyer and they want a stunt lawyer.
One cannot miss noticing that the real lawyers, like Sekulow (still an asshole) are somewhere else in all this.
John Morales says
joelgrant, that’s not ignorance; it’s denial. Different things.
Pierce R. Butler says
Rudy Giuliani announces Sidney Powell is no longer ‘a member of the Trump legal team’
Other articles on the same site speculate as to which of Powell’s absurdities got her bounced, but I think the initial announcement holds the clue: no True Republican would want their President represented by any “elite” anybody!
Who Cares says
One of my guilty pleasures has been trawling an aggregator site of conspiracy loons.
They haven’t lost, they haven’t even started. And egg, so much egg on faces they pretend there isn’t (for example [a href=”http://www.madnesshub.com/2020/11/alan-dershowitz-president-trump-will.html”>a link to Alan Dershowitz: President Trump Will Win His Pennsylvania Case in Court (VIDEO) ).
65% of the links on that site are currently going to pages with claims like: 3 Million dead voted, 7 Million votes stolen from DJT, Sidney Powell. 30% Of the links are going to pages related to the COVID-19 ‘hoax’ and the little people standing up to protect themselves and others, the remaining 5% generalized conspiracy crap that is trending right now like ‘The Great Reset’,
The echo chamber is getting scarier (it has been scary from day one I started trawling that site) and steadily more unhinged the more that reality ignores their demands. And the amount of stuff flung to the wall in the hopes of something sticking.
That said for a bit of lighter reading try this link, a former British ambassador to the US (2016-2019): “Guys, you’re a rich country; can’t you just employ a few more ballot counters?” and more of that kind of quips from the rest of the world in there.