Government

Kraken Cracks Up At SCOTUS

Justices Will Pass On The Rancid Calamari.

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(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

It all started so well. Back in November Sidney Powell vowed to “release the Kraken” and send Trump back to the White House in triumph.

“Georgia’s probably going to be the first state I’m going to blow up and Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it,” she said, promising a “biblical” campaign of litigation culminating in victory at the Supreme Court.

But now it’s March, the Supreme Court has delivered a final blow to Powell’s election litigation.

That would be the Arizona and Wisconsin tentacles being unceremoniously tossed overboard, without even the token consolation of a grouchy dissent from Justice Thomas et al. on the importance of deciding these issues before the next election.

As attorney Mike Dunford points out, there may be some severed tentacle of the Arizona suit still wriggling lifelessly around the Ninth Circuit, but Powell’s white whale dream of consolidating her Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin litigation into a fearsome sea beast is deader than lutefisk.

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Remember when Powell botched the pleadings and filed that snarky motion crapping all over the Supreme Court clerk?

The Arizona and Wisconsin Petitions were electronically filed and hand delivered to the Court on December 12. Nonetheless, on December 17, the Clerk’s office marked both “Rejected” on the Court’s ECF database. When inquiry was made about this notation, undersigned counsel was informed that a Clerk’s Office analyst had disallowed them, for reasons unspecified, without participation by any Justice of the Court. Counsel was informed that an explanation would be provided via U.S. Mail.

We find this (presumably innocent) lapse atypical of the proud traditions in the Office of the Supreme Court Clerk. More important, we are confident that deficiencies in the Arizona and Wisconsin Petitions, if there be any, are curable. We respectfully request that the Court deem those submissions filed nunc pro tunc and consolidate them, once filed, with the Michigan and Georgia Petitions.

Who’d have thought that passive aggressive posture wouldn’t play with the Justices, right? Powell demanded that the court grade her homework as if it had been turned in on time and allow her to merge four cases with radically different fact patterns and procedural postures, NBD.

Surprising no one but perhaps Powell herself, the Court booted the Georgia Kraken suit on February 11 and the Michigan tentacle on February 22 — both without comment.

And with today’s order list, the hulking creature is finally slain, leaving only a mild intestinal hangover for Powell and her compatriots. Just a $1.3 billion defamation suit from Dominion. Plus a $2.7 billion claim from Smartmatic. Oh, and a motion for sanctions and attorneys fees in Michigan seeking to go after Powell’s license to practice law. Nothing that a little Pepto Bismol won’t clear up! And if all else fails, blame the court clerk — it works every time!

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

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