Government

Rudy Giuliani Gonna 'My Cousin Vinny' Trump Into A Second Term

We're running out of ways to say this is BATSHIT!

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(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

As of this typing, the president’s lawyers are holding a press conference to accuse President-elect Joe Biden of waging a nationwide campaign to steal the election.

Rudy Giuliani did a reenactment of his favorite scene from the movie “My Cousin Vinny,” before leaking hair dye all over the lectern. Sidney Powell insisted that George Soros and Hugo Chavez are behind the plot, seemingly oblivious of the fact that the Venezuelan leader died in 2013. Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis referred to the assembled crew as “an elite strike force team,” despite the GOP allies going exactly 1-29 thus far in court.

As lawyers, how do we even talk about this? What comes after BATSHIT CRAZY on the Richter scale?

And that’s before we even get to the past 24-hours worth of nutbag filings in Pennsylvania as Rudy ‘n’ the Gang try to convince U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann to overturn the results of the election and award the commonwealth’s twenty electoral votes to Donald Trump.

Having finally grokked that the court would have to grant him permission to file another amended complaint, Giuliani and local counsel Marc Scaringi petitioned for leave to put back all the due process claims relating to Republicans being excluded from the canvass. Over the weekend, previous counsel slashed twenty pages and a demand that votes in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia not be certified after the Third Circuit ruled that candidates lack standing to sue to enforce state law; and that was before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that there was nothing illegal about the access accorded to canvass observers.

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Having admitted in open court on Tuesday that they’re not alleging fraud, the motion now promises that, “Plaintiffs will also show that Defendants’ conduct was part of an improper scheme to favor Biden over Trump by counting improper votes in violation of the Equal Protection, Due Process, and Electors and Elections clauses under the Constitution and Civil Rights Act. Ultimately, Plaintiffs will seek the remedy of Trump being declared the winner of the legal votes cast in Pennsylvania in the 2020 General Election, and, thus, the recipient of Pennsylvania’s electors.”

And how will they prove it? Just check out this Rudy Math™:

In accord with Marks v. Stinson, Plaintiffs will examine these envelopes to determine the percentage of mail ballots which were illegally counted – of which Biden won approximately 75% and Trump 25%, a 50% margin for Biden. Plaintiffs, through statistical expert analysis will then extrapolate this percent to the 1.5 million mail ballots. This simple exercise will determine whether Plaintiffs can prove their case – that sufficient illegal ballots were counted that changed the result of the election. If so, the Court should set aside these votes and declare Trump the winner.

[…]

For example, if 10% of the 1.5 million mail ballots were improperly counted because they lacked signatures, dates, or inside security envelopes, 75% x 150,000 votes should be deducted from Biden, and 25% x 150,000 votes should be deducted from Trump, a margin of 75,000 votes for Biden which would be sufficient to overturn reported results.

So, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will turn over all the envelopes for absentee ballots, Rudy et al will examine them and say which ones are kosher, and then they’ll disenfranchise some portion of the voters in the state’s two largest counties based on “statistical analysis.” It’s a bold move when the other half of the Trump campaign’s claims rest on a violation of equal protection because voters in red counties were at a disadvantage because they weren’t allowed to cure defective ballots.

And speaking of bold moves, the Trump campaign’s reliance on Marks v. Stinson, a 1994 case which overturned the results of a State Senate election due to widespread, provable fraud, seems somewhat misplaced. First, because the fact pattern was entirely different in that case, where Democrats submitted enough fraudulently obtained ballots that it might have swung the race — here the issue is Guliani’s evidence-free assertion that Democrats counted legally cast ballots which should have been discarded because they lacked signatures or for other technical reasons. And second because in Stinson, while the trial judge did toss out the absentee ballots and declare the Republican candidate the victor, the Third Circuit reversed and ordered a new election. There was no “statistical” disenfranchisement; it was an arithmetic certainty that there were enough fraudulently cast votes that the winner of the election could not be determined.

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Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. The Trump campaign has asked for a delay so that Rudy and the Pussycats can get up to speed, but Pennsylvania’s deadline to certify the results of the election is Monday, November 23. And while the plaintiffs have assured the court that the request is not dilatory — Heaven forfend! — the Washington Post reports that Giuliani’s plan is to delay certification long enough that legislatures will step in and nominate their own slates of electors in contravention of the will of the voters.

It’s a hot mess, made even hotter by the apparent misunderstanding of federal procedure by the Super Friends Strike Force .

Because who among us hasn’t signed a judge’s name on an electronically filed proposed order. You know, as a courtesy.

This is fine.

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Boockvar [Docket at Court Listener]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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