Government

Trump Campaign Rubs Soothing Balm Of Pointless Lawsuits On President's Bruised Ego

Therapy would be cheaper.

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(NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

It was inevitable.

It was always going to come down to Rudy Giuliani shouting lunacies in front of a landscaper’s garage door next to a porno shop north of the Tacony-Palmyra bridge. Yes, the main witness is a perennial candidate in New Jersey and a registered sex offender formerly incarcerated for exposing himself to young children. Of course he is.

The president’s supporters have gone from urging a recount in Wisconsin — a plan they abandoned when it became clear they’d be flushing $3 million down the drain for nothing — to demanding STOP THE COUNT!, then reversing course to demand that every legal vote be counted.

Now we’re back at the beginning, with the Trump team gearing up for a recount in Georgia as they call to STOP THE COUNT in Nevada.

“For democrats calling for unity you may want to actually stop counting illegal votes in NV first,” tweeted Trump ally and OG Brooks Brothers rioter Matt Schlapp. “We are not suckers anymore. We caught you red handed.”

This is an apparent reference to a “whistleblower” who happened to be walking by the election center on his lunch break and observed a Biden-Harris van unloading boxes of ballots. No, the whistleblower hasn’t come forward to Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State. Nor has the “other whistleblower,” purportedly an election worker who was told to override signature mismatches by her supervisor. None of which looks anything like it might overturn Biden’s lead in the state, which is at 34,000 and counting.

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In Pennsylvania, where the Vice President is ahead by 44,000 votes, the Trump legal team petitioned the Supreme Court this morning to go beyond ordering Pennsylvania to segregate the ballots which arrived with a November 3 postmark during the judicially-mandated three-day grace period and order the state not to count those votes at all. There aren’t enough late ballots to swing the state to Trump, and certainly no indication that all of them would be from Biden voters anyway. Nevertheless, Trump’s lawyers insist they will suffer irreparable harm if the public finds out how a few thousand Pennsylvanians voted.

Axios reports that Trump is beefing up his legal team from Rudy Giuliani and former Trump campaign flack David Bossie, who’s not even a lawyer (and now has COVID). But with Biden on track to get 306 electoral votes, it would take the equivalent of ten royal flushes to pull off a victory at this point.

And they’re off to a rip-roaring start.

These cases are all small ball, unlikely to shift the vote tally in any meaningful way. Privately the campaign acknowledges that the cases serve more as a therapeutic balm to the president’s fragile ego and a means of casting doubt on the outcome of the election.

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AP reports:

The strategy to wage a legal fight against the votes tallied for Biden in Pennsylvania and other places is more to provide Trump with an off-ramp for a loss he can’t quite grasp and less about changing the election’s outcome, the officials said. They spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy.

Trump aides and allies also acknowledged privately the legal fights would — at best — forestall the inevitable, and some had deep reservations about the president’s attempts to undermine faith in the vote. But they said Trump and a core group of loyalists were aiming to keep his base of supporters on his side even in defeat.

And according to NBC, it has a pecuniary motive as well. Buried in the fine print of the frantic emails and texts raising money for Trump’s legal fight is a disclaimer.

Contributions to TMAGAC made by an Individual/Federal Multicandidate Political Committee will be allocated according to the following formula:

60% to DJTP for deposit in DJTP’s 2020 General Election Account for the retirement of general election debt (up to a maximum of $2,800/$5,000) or, if such debt has been retired or any portion of the contribution would exceed the limit to the 2020 General Election Account, for deposit in DJTP’s Recount Account (up to a maximum of $2,800/$5,000); 40% to the RNC’s Operating account (up to a maximum of $35,500/$15,000); and any additional funds to the RNC for deposit in the RNC’s Legal Proceedings account or Headquarters account (up to a maximum of $213,000/$90,000).

Yep, they’re going to use that money to retire campaign debt. Grifting up to the wire.

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

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