Missed edit window- the statement that the summary dismissals for standing, etc were dismissed without considering the evidence is not quite true.
Most of these dismissals, IANAL and I’m blanking on the legal term, but the court assumes all the evidence presented is true when deciding to dismiss the case, and they still dismiss it for other reasons. I don’t think that’s quite the same as ‘didn’t even consider the evidence”.
That’s why I asked about the bar association, not the judge. I think allowing the laywers to lie in public discredits the profession. That’s just my humble opinion, though.
Thanks, this is inspiring. I’ve wanted to do that but it’s just so daunting.
Yes, one of the most frustrating things about this is that all the allegations can be shared in single sentences, but it takes paragraphs to debunk them. It’s like fighting off a pack of spiders.
Assuming that the goal is no longer to flip the election, but rather just to make money and maybe hobble the incoming administration, I’d say it’s…maybe “diabolical” is a more appropriate word than “clever.”
It seems the ABA has some rules for profession conduct. A lot of the seem to have to do with presenting yourself in court, however, one that seemed close to what we’re talking about is 3.6 Trial Publicity, which states:
“(a) A lawyer who is participating or has participated in the investigation or litigation of a matter shall not make an extrajudicial statement that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter.”
However, it also goes on to say
“(b) Notwithstanding paragraph (a), a lawyer may state:
(1) the claim, offense or defense involved and, except when prohibited by law, the identity of the persons involved;”
So, take that for what it’s worth. My reading is that they can’t just make things up however they can tell the public the details of the case.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying these lawyers are following this, but it seems to me that, to go back to my damaged car that’s not really damaged, my lawyer can’t make public statements about how you damaged my car, however, if the lawsuit has already been filed, they can tell the public what you’re being accused of (damaging my car).
If I’m understanding that correctly and if that’s how it works, then maybe filing the BS lawsuits was a loophole to lie in public.
As another who engages in this same practice, I laud you for your dedication and persistence in getting at the truth. It’s hard, very hard – but it’s the only way one can reliably determine what is actually going on.
I did not do that in these cases, having satisfied myself early on that they were political theater, but your compilation is invaluable. Also hard won. I really appreciate the work you put into it.
To the OP:
I am sure @Ann_Hedonia would back me up when I tell you that the Trump “administration” has engaged in exactly this sort of misdirection from the very beginning. It’s not a tactic they pulled out of, well… somewhere… just for the election fraud caper. When one reads all the source materials, one realizes quite quickly that projection is one of the Trump Cabal’s first tactics: Accuse your opponent of doing exactly what you yourself are doing. ‘Diabolical’ is one word for it.
I think many people have a hard time accepting that the people in government meant to lead them can actively be this dishonest about what is going on, so they tend to give credence to things said by Trump and his cohorts. I mean, could one’s president and his supporters lie with such abandon? Oh, yes. Yes, they could. And they do.
As for your original question, IANAL, but I worked for them and for judges in courtrooms for many years. One picks up a few things. You have probably heard the words, “threshold issues,” bandied about in legal circles when talking about how cases are heard in court. There are many threshold issues that come before evidence is considered in a trial/hearing. Think of it like a subway, where there are many stops along the way before you reach your destination.
One example of a threshold issue would be procedural: Did the plaintiff(s) give proper notice to the defendant(s) of their claims? If they didn’t, there is no need for the court to consider evidence, because the people who need to know they’re being sued haven’t been told about it.
‘Standing’ is another example of a threshold issue: Does the Plaintiff have a direct interest in the case such that s/he may be harmed if s/he doesn’t bring suit? Standing is a complex issue. It is also one that must be considered and decided before the court ever gets to the evidentiary portion of the proceedings.
Threshold issues always come up before evidence is taken, reviewed or heard. Sometimes they come up mid-trial, but it’s rare. Either way, if a judge can help it, you won’t get to the last stop on the metro line – reviewing evidence – until you’ve stopped at all the others before it.
Hope this clarifies a bit how judges have discretion about how much evidence they review in rendering a decision.
IANAL and I did not follow every case, but one thing to keep in mind is that the redress that the Trump campaign was asking for, in most cases, was far too broad given the claimed harm.
For instance, take the PA SCOTUS ruling. The Trump campaign was asking the state to throw out all 2.5 million mail-in ballots. When asking a judge to disenfranchise 27% of voters, the bar is rather high.
This same pattern was repeated in the suits in MI, WI, and GA – the Trump campaign asked for (I think) injunctions against election boards and legislatures to stop various results from being certified, or to be overturned. This a big deal, and judges rightfully require big evidence. Big evidence wasn’t presented.
So I don’t think it’s that the judges didn’t even look at the evidence. Rather, they looked at it through the lens of, “Even if 100% of these affidavits are true – if X votes were thrown out, or Y votes were miscounted, or Z poll watchers weren’t allowed close enough to the ballots – the proposed cure is much, much more harmful to voters than is warranted.” In other words, if you see someone throw away 10 ballots, a proper redress might be to have a recount done and see if you’re within 10 votes. Then maybe you can ask for a new election or something. I don’t know, I’m spitballing here. But seeing 10 votes thrown out isn’t enough justification for full-on cancelling the results of the election, even if you claim it’s “Just the tip of the iceberg” or something. The judge needs to see more of the iceberg, in that case.
I’m not a lawyer. This is entirely a layman’s understanding.
Lawyers only need to produce “evidence” when there are facts in dispute. In the majority of the Trump lawsuits the facts are clear and undisputed. They are arguing Law, not facts.
As an example, it is their claim that mail-in ballots are inherently illegal. The states should not have allowed mail-in ballots at all. Every mail-in ballot is inherently illegal, simply because it was mailed in.
Such a claim, if valid, does not require “evidence” to support it, just legal argument. Of course, it has been knocked down as legally invalid in every court.
So, no, the courts have not reviewed evidence, there has been none presented.
Right. The term “summary judgment” is what you are looking for. One said says, “Judge, let’s just cut to the chase here. I move for judgment in my favor, and for the purposes of this motion, we will assume that everything the other side has provided is true. We don’t think it is, and if you deny this motion, we still get to challenge it. But assume it is all true. We still win.”
And so a judge says that maybe there were a few ballots improperly counted here or there, but there is zero evidence of anything larger than that, and I’m not throwing out hundreds of thousands of ballots, even if you prove these 24 were improper. Judgment for the defendant.
This is where the Trump campaign faced a conundrum. Because the core of their claim is that the rules were changed for the 2020 election in a manner which facilitated fraud and which inhibited detection of that fraud. So the paucity of evidence is itself the result of the very rules-rigging that they’re railing about.
All this would manifested in all sorts of anecdotal evidence but not nearly enough to overturn an election, and also in supposedly strange voting patterns (in particular, the lower rate of mail-in ballot rejections as compared to prior elections) which don’t count for much if anything in court.
As I understand it, this is not correct. In most of the lawsuits they don’t claim any fraud. They argue legal technicalities. The claim is, for instance, that permitting absentee ballots is illegal under the state constitution.They don’t need to be fake, or cast by immigrants, or double voting. They were absentee, and an absentee ballot is illegal in and of itself. All absentee ballots are invalid and should be excluded, they say.
That is a legal argument. Evidence of fraud, or lack of it, isn’t a factor in the claim.
There were a lot of different claims made in a lot of different lawsuits.
This thread is about “evidence” which is something which applies to fraud cases and which doesn’t relate to cases which were purely about legal technicalities. Similarly, the post I was responding to was also about fraud (or improper ballots).
But the majority were about legal technicalities, without claims of fraud.
Remind me, in which lawsuits was there an actual claim of fraud made?
Right, part of the problem is the scattershot “try everything and see what sticks” messaging approach. So you had cases where the actual legal challenge before the court was the legal one about whether the procedures for approving the mail-in or drop-in vote and for processing it afterwards were done right. However, then the spokesmen and counsel insisted in commingling and confusing it with claims and accusations of detecting actual voting irregularities or the claim that “well, but now we can’t tell IF there were all the illegal votes we think there could be, so we should not accept the result”.
This resulted of course in that a court had to directly ask the putative representatives of the President more than once: “ARE you bringing a fraud case” and the counsel had to answer “no”.
The President’s side has however insisted in wanting to sell it to their public as being about “fraud”, to sow confusion about why courts are ruling the way they are.
In which cases did they allege fraud?
TIME did a nice take-down of them:
What court cases did allege fraud?
I agree there’s some element of “selling it to the public”, but I don’t think that’s necessarily all that’s involved. Rather, that the legal standards for making arguments in court are higher than “we think based on common sense and some statistical analysis that such-and-such happened”.
So the argument (in such cases) is more-or-less as follows:
We think the state courts and/or state election officials overstepped their bounds in changing the voting procedures and/or that the local election officials failed to enforce the rules that were actually in place. And the significance of this is that the correct voting procedures were intended to prevent election fraud, and that absent these procedures it’s likely that there was more fraud than there would otherwise have been. However for this very reason we can’t cite to legally viable evidence of this fraud, so from a legal standpoint our argument before the court is about whether the changed process was valid, and if not, what to do about it now.
So the legal issues and the fraud issues are interrelated, but the legal ones are the ones which get argued in court because of the nature of the legal system. But it’s not like the fraud part is all about PR, since the issue underlying the legal issues is the potential for fraud.
No, the legal issues are the ones that get argued in court, because the plaintiffs have NO EVIDENCE for “the fraud part”. Judges have asked the lawyers explicitly if they are alleging fraud, and they have explicitly answered “no” Judges are not amused by accusations with no evidence.
“The fraud part” is entirely fabricated bullshit, and is spewed outside the courtrooms because if they spew it inside, they are in for a world of hurt.
Which cases were these? I am not aware of any where this was argued. There may be some, but I don’t know them.
No, the issue is that millions of people voted for Biden instead of Trump. They are desperately trying to disqualify the votes on legal technicalities.
Exactly, in a court, they need to have evidence.
As they have no evidence of fraud, they just lie to the public, as there is no penalty for that.
And there will be no end of those who will believe their lies, justify their lies, and even claim that they are not lies.
And “it’s likely that” is not a valid legal argument. Especially given that it has been pretty thoroughly debunked by people who actually understand both math and elections.
Keep in mind that there have been cases of fraud that have been found, almost entirely by republicans. How could these cases of fraud have been found if the safeguards to prevent fraud being detected have been removed?
You are essentially saying that absence of evidence is evidence itself, and should disenfranchise tens of millions of voters based on that lack of evidence.
Of course that is going to be laughed out of court, just as, and this is a good thing, the lack of dead bodies in your basement is not enough evidence to convict you of murder.
Lawsuits about signature verification, drop boxes, and the like were of this nature.