Government

Kris Kobach And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Trial

Every person with an 'impostor syndrome' worries that one day they'll be made to look like Kris Kobach.

By  
on

Live shot of Kris Kobach contemplating the can of whup-ass that has been opened upon him. (Photo by Christopher Smith/ For the Washington Post)

It’s bad when people call a trial where you are representing yourself a “a merciless rebuke” or your “professional life’s work.” It’s comically bad when, during that trial, proceedings have to be stopped to hold a contempt hearing, prompting the lead attorney against you to apologize to the judge for having to waste time holding you in contempt. It is “the call is coming from inside the house” bad when the judge, appointed by your own party, has to remind you of your ethical responsibilities to tell the truth, during said contempt hearing. And when a local reporter tweets this about you, you should really just prostrate yourself and beg for mercy:

Ladies and gentlemen, Kris Kobach is having a bad couple of weeks.

Kobach, in his capacity as Secretary of State of Kansas, is involved in a trial over a law that requires Kansas residents to show proof of citizenship in order to vote. According to the ACLU, 14% of new Kansas voters were blocked from registering under the new law between 2013 and 2016. These people were citizens, of course, but didn’t have the right documents… or right color… to comply with Kobach’s relatively arbitrary rules.

The Tenth Circuit blocked the law, pending the instant trial, which was an action brought by the ACLU against the law.

Kobach decided to represent the state himself. No lawyers from the State of Kansas, just him. So you know things were going to be bad from the start. But I’m not sure anybody could have predicted that the trial would go this poorly. From Slate:

Sponsored

That trial, which began earlier this month and is ongoing, has been an unmitigated disaster for Kobach—a merciless rebuke of his professional life’s work. The trouble actually began well before the trial started, when a federal judge fined Kobach $1,000 in June for making “patently misleading representations to the court” about a document he’d taken to his initial meeting with Trump, one that proposed eviscerating a federal voting rights law. A different judge then almost held Kobach in contempt for refusing to comply with a court order and accused him of having “sandbagged” the court by trying to introduce new evidence at the last minute.

Remarkably, things only got worse for Kobach. In an unusual move, he decided to try the case himself with the assistance of lawyers from the secretary of state’s office. It quickly became apparent that he does not understand civil procedure in the slightest. Early on, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson, a George W. Bush appointee, reprimanded Kobach and his team for failing to follow the rules. “Evidence 101,” she told him. “Not going to do it.” Later, she instructed Kobach to “please” read the rules of evidence, noting that he had made the same mistakes “ad nauseam.” Eventually, Robinson delivered a trenchant lecture to Kobach from the bench, scolding him for attempting “trial by ambush.”

That was last week. This week, somehow, things have gotten even worse. From ThinkProgress:

In May 2016, Judge Julie Robinson issued a preliminary injunction ordering Kobach “to register for federal elections all otherwise eligible motor voter registration applicants,” whether or not they have shown a documentary proof of citizenship…

After seven days of trial, the court held a hearing on contempt Tuesday in which Judge Robinson repeatedly chastised Kobach when he argued that he did not violate the order.

“You have a duty to tell them that and to assure me that they complied,” the judge told Kobach about his obligation to tell counties to register all eligible voters. “It’s your duty to make sure they do what they are supposed to do and abide by the law.”

Kobach suggested that he didn’t understand the judge’s order, prompting Judge Robinson to say: “You are under ethical obligation to tell me the truth… that’s why lawyers are licensed.”

Robinson, a George W. Bush appointee, said she’d release her contempt decision in written form later this week.

Sponsored

It is hard to screw things up this badly. It is hard to be this thoroughly humiliated at the federal bar. There is no good analogy for what’s happening to Kobach: state officials simply don’t get embarrassed like this in open court.

But I don’t want to lose sight of the actual law here. Kobach is only a national figure because he has been out front suggesting that these kinds of laws are necessary to protect us from voter fraud. This trial has shown that it’s not non-white voters, but Kris Kobach who is the giant, bloviating fraud. VOTER FRAUD IS NOT A THING. One of the chiefest proponents of voter ID laws can’t get through an adversarial process governed by the rules of evidence without making an absolute fool of himself.

That’s the important thing here. This trial thoroughly discredits the voter fraud argument. What it does to Kris Kobach is less important.

And that’s lucky, because, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but Kris Kobach is running for governor. He’s in a tight primary battle, or at least it was tight before the trial started. But if he somehow pulls it out — and let’s remember that in recent primaries the GOP base has elected an alleged pedophile and a Nazi — he’ll be running as a Republican in Kansas.

Unless Kobach starts playing basketball for Duke, it’ll be very hard to stop him if he wins the primary. So let’s try to remember what has happened here in this trial the next time somebody wants to talk to you about the need for Voter ID.

Federal judge doesn’t hold back on Kris Kobach’s deceit of Kansas voters [ThinkProgress]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

Topics

, , , , ,