Government

Superlawyer Rudy Leaks Nonsense All Over Federal Docket

It'll take more than a hanky to mop up this mess.

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(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

At yesterday’s batshit presser, Sidney Powell croaked out fantastical accusations of global conspiracies as brown trails of mascara (???) streamed down from Rudy Giuliani’s sideburns. If these two got on your bus, you’d hop out at the next stop. And yet here they are representing the leader of the free world in a court of law.

Team Trump dropped several pleadings yesterday on U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann’s docket explaining why the court should enjoin the certification of Pennsylvania’s vote count scheduled for Monday. Astonishingly, none of them mentioned a globalist conspiracy launched by Hugo Chavez and bankrolled by George Soros to “flip” votes for Joe Biden. In fact, there were exactly zero allegations of fraud associated with this election.

Instead, the Trump lawyers argued that thousands of ballots reflecting the will of qualified, registered voters were illegally counted and must now be thrown out according to a handy formula supplied by Guiliani et al.

Instantly, if discovery is granted, prior to the hearing, Plaintiffs will examine these envelopes to determine the percentage of mail ballots that were illegally counted – of which Democratic Candidate Joseph Biden won approximately 75% and President 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 – i.e., that sufficient illegal ballots were counted that changed the election result. If so, the Court should set aside these votes and declare Trump the winner.

Easy peasy!

Now, a stickler might argue that tossing out some Rudy-defined percentage of absentee ballots will necessarily have an impact down ballot, since an illegally cast vote is illegal for all races, not just the top of the ticket. But don’t worry, because “Plaintiffs do not seek to enjoin the certification of any other Pennsylvania election.” If the court will just allow them to use Trump Math to disenfranchise the voters and award Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes to Donald Trump, the plaintiffs will be on their way and won’t cause any more trouble.

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The motions for injunction and for leave to file another amended complaint are long on conclusions and short on evidence. Decrying the “partisan” Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which held on Tuesday that elections officials had discretion to set their own procedures for poll watchers, they insist that “Defendants violated the Due Process Clause to favor Biden over Trump in a system which was so porous so as to violate Due Process on its face,” and demand to recanvass all the votes counted when Republican poll watchers were “excluded.” (They were not excluded.)

The plaintiffs make liberal use of unsubstantiated allegations, writing that “Secretary Boockvar has long advocated state officials should count more mail ballots than the law allows” and accusing her of giving different advice to Democratic and Republican county officials. As proof they cite to guidance issued on October 21 for allowing voters whose mail-in ballots were facially defective to vote provisionally in person, and a November 2 email explicitly permitting officials to release results of the pre-canvass to party officials so they could round up their voters to cure defective ballots. Both of which went to every single county election board.

Rudy and the Super Friends have requested to file another amendment putting back all the allegations that got nixed after the Third Circuit ruled there was no standing for a candidate to sue to enforce state election law. But that request hasn’t yet been granted and, as Secretary Boockvar noted in her reply motion, Trump’s lawyers are basing their claim for relief on allegations which are found nowhere in the current suit. “The First Amended Complaint is operative and cannot be ‘amended’ through an opposition brief that alternatively and unfairly cites to both the original complaint and the amended complaint.”

The tone of the Secretary’s filing can be described as strangled exasperation. And after a week of reading these gobbledygook pleadings and listening to that gonzo hearing, trust me, I feel ya.

Perhaps choosing an attorney who hasn’t entered a federal appearance since 1992 and instead spends all his time screaming nonsense on YouTube was a bit of a strategic error?

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Ah, well. We stand corrected.

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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