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Mike Lindell's Election Lawsuit Is Neither Real Nor Spectacular

Not a single state attorney general would sign it. Conspiracy!

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Photographer: Ari Lindquist/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Yesterday, America’s favorite lunatic pillow fluffer admitted that he hadn’t found a single state attorney general to sign on to his promised election lawsuit allowing him to avail himself of the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction and hop right into Chief Justice Roberts’s lap. Naturally, Mike Lindell blames RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel for reasons known only to the mercury in his fillings.

Hoping to promote a groundswell of support for his claim, Mike Lindell published the putative complaint on his own website, along with this video which is supposed to encourage us all to call our elected officials and order them to get in on this hot Supreme Court action. Or barring that, we can just ruin Thanksgiving dinner.

And if you think those production values on that video are low, check out the complaint itself.

“Plaintiff is the State of [insert Your State], which is a sovereign State of the United States,” it begins.

It also insists that “This action is timely,” citing a patent infringement case filed by a manufacturer of adult diapers. Sure the election was more than a year ago, but “Plaintiff State has brought this action promptly after the development of new evidence that was previously unavailable. For these reasons, this action is timely.”

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It follows that unimpeachable logic with a 50-page recitation of every half-baked conspiracy about election fraud and rejected argument we’ve seen in dozens of doomed suits for the past year. Mail-in ballots are illegal, electronic voting is illegal, Dominion switched the votes, China hacked the ballots, blahblahblah.

The case bears a striking resemblance to the suit filed in December by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who alleged that his state’s citizens had been harmed because their legitimate electoral votes were devalued by miscegenation with illegitimate ones from Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And indeed that similarity makes sense, as metadata flagged by Reuters legal reporter Brad Heath shows that conservative lawyer Lawrence Joseph drafted this one, too. Because these guys can’t clean up their own digital trail, but you can totally trust them when they say they found “cyberforensic evidence” that China hacked the routers.

Paxton got unceremoniously tossed for lack of standing, but the crack minds at Pillow Legal have gotten around that one by adding the United States of America, President of the United States, Vice-President of the United States, Attorney General of the United States; Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, [and] President Pro Tempore of the United States Senate” as co-defendants.

Then they get standing to sue Joe and Kamala because Merrick Garland didn’t arrest Pennsylvania for the crime of allowing ballot drop boxes.

Although this Court dismissed Texas v. Pennsylvania, No. 22O155 (U.S.), citing a lack of standing, Texas v. Pennsylvania, 141 S.Ct. 1230 (2020) (“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”), the United States has parens patriae standing to challenge the manner in which states conduct their elections: “Nor does a State have standing as the parent of its citizens to invoke these constitutional provisions against the Federal Government, the ultimate parens patriae of every American citizen.” South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 324 (1966). The failure to pursue the United States’ meritorious claim violates the Guarantee Clause. The United States and the Officer Defendants have been aware of the constitutional violations and facts at issue in this action and have not acted either to avoid or to remedy these violations. The foregoing actions violate the Guarantee Clause.

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If we have understood this gobbledygook correctly, [Insert Your State] has standing to sue the Justice Department for failing to prosecute non-existent election crimes, and thus [IYS] can leapfrog itself into standing to sue the swing state defendants on behalf of the federal government.

It all just makes too much sense!

Funny enough, the Justice Department is making just this kind of parens patriae argument as it tries to overturn Texas’s abortion ban, and the Supreme Court seems highly unimpressed. Perhaps this accounts for AG Paxton’s reluctance to get on the Pillow Bus, since he’s busy rubbishing the DOJ’s claim. There’s also the pesky fact that his own state used mail-in ballots and drive-through voting, so Texas’s electoral votes would also have to be tossed.

Or maybe they got to him.

Anyway, all Lindell wants is for the Supreme Court to declare that the swing state elections violated the Electors Clause, Fourteenth Amendment, Guarantee Clause, and Take Care Claus and “vacate those certifications.” Then they should declare that Congress’ count and certification on January 6 was also a nullity. And after that, the Justices can either let the House of Representatives vote by delegation, or order a new election — Mike Lindell’s not picky.

All he needs is some state to sign on. My Pillow Kingdom for an AG!

During his regular scream therapy session with putrefying podcaster Steve Bannon, Lindell appeared to suggest that nefarious forces were deliberately distracting state AGs with vaccine mandate litigation to prevent them being able to get involved in his amazing lawsuit.

“We have a lot of things that are happening out there very suspiciously, almost trying to slow these guys down,” he said, promising to have a link up soon to “email your own AG.”

Hop to it, patriots. Another year and this case might not even be “timely.”

[Insert Your State] v. Da Gubmint

Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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