OK, I put this here because it’s related to the election fraud BS. It’s probably been covered in one of the mega-threads, but I can’t find it.
The common refrain among the “stop the steal” types is that, because no court took up a fraud case, the evidence of fraud was never presented. And that one doesn’t show one’s evidence until one actually goes to trial.
Is there someone here who knows about court filings and evidentiary rules who can help me understand how this works? If I had hard evidence that the election was tampered with in a meaningful way, would that evidence be… evident- in the filing, or only once the trial got underway?
My understanding is that lawyers submitting these court filings must describe the evidence they’re prepared to present, under penalty of perjury and under the oversight of their respective BAR association.
The issue here is that Giuliani et al were saying one thing in public and a completely different thing in their filings, where they couldn’t just make stuff up. It’s not that they weren’t allowed to present their evidence of massive fraud, it’s that when it actually mattered, they weren’t even claiming to have that evidence.
Just to be clear, I’m well aware of the strategy of telling the courts one thing and the media another. But it’s all over some of the Trump-friendly sites that the reason no evidence has been presented is that none of the fraud cases were taken up. The argument goes “you don’t present the evidence until you get to discovery” OR “You don’t present the evidence until you get to trial.”
So they’re creating this narrative that the evidence was buried by not taking the case, and that it would be imprudent to present the evidence publicly before getting to a trial.
I know it’s bullshit, but I’m looking to understand the normal process of these things in a quixotic effort to disarm the argument.
I’m pretty sure many of the cases went to trial and lost on the merits.
These trials moved very quickly but, in the end, the plaintiffs simply did not prove their case.
They brought “evidence” to court and the courts found the evidence unpersuasive (read, seriously deficient).
Some other courts may have tossed cases based on standing or maybe even summary judgement. The Supreme Court told Texas they basically had no legal complaint to make.
I am sure, if the evidence existed, Trumpers would be producing it and showing how they were ripped off but they aren’t. They are just telling you they had no chance to present evidence, which they TOTALLY would do, if the courts only let them. But they did have that chance and they failed miserably because the accusations were simply not true.
What a farce. How many cases did they lose? 50+? And many of those were heard by Trump appointed judges and even they couldn’t get around how bad their cases were.
Also, it seems to me that if you had evidence but maybe weren’t in a position to present it in court (like, you were from an un-aggrieved state suing another state), surely you would partner up with a person who had standing and share the evidence you had collected?
You don’t get a trial without evidence. In court, Trump’s attorneys said they had no evidence. That’s when they were under oath. It is sensible to assume if they say otherwise when not under oath, that they are lying. There was no evidence or they would have presented it in court.
You don’t present the evidence until the trial process begins. But in order to start the trial process, you have to tell the court what evidence you will present. And if you tell the court you have evidence in order to get the trial process going and then fail to actually produce the evidence you claimed you had, you face legal penalties for making false claims.
What the Trump legal team was conducting was a publicity campaign not a legal campaign. The goal was to win support from gullible followers not to win trials. The Trump legal team would go through the motions of filing a lawsuit but would admit in the filings that they had no evidence to support their claims. So the court would properly reject their lawsuit. Then they would turn around, go out on the courthouse steps, and tell lies to the gullible followers. They would claim they had all kinds of evidence but the court wouldn’t let them have a trial where they could present it. And the gullible followers would believe them.
Thanks- this is a big part of what I was trying to understand. Whether one says “I will present evidence of Fraud” or one says “I will present evidence that a tiny Chavez lives inside each Dominion voting machine, changing the votes from Trump to Biden.”
It’s complicated. While most courts have what is called “notice pleading,” (meaning you only have to allege your claims generally in your initial Complaint) the federal courts have tightened up on that some in recent years. Here, however, the plaintiffs were asking for injunctions and other extraordinary relief, so they had to establish they were entitled to that, and that there would be a likelihood of success when the case was fully heard. Most of the cases I followed were dismissed on a variety of grounds, such as standing, laches, etc., and the courts would assume that the facts alleged were true but decided that even if they were true the plaintiffs should lose.
In short, the courts dismissed most of these cases not because they didn’t consider the evidence, but because the plaintiffs didn’t have a right to bring these lawsuits even if there was evidence of what they alleged. Pennsylvania, for example, was famously not about “fraud,” but about the fact that the “election officials and the courts” changed the deadlines without legislative action. The facts were not in dispute, and the court could decide as a matter of law if plaintiffs were entitled to the relief they sought. Wisconsin, I believe, was about remote ballot boxes or something. Georgia was about not checking signatures on mail in ballots. (I’m simplifying of course) The courts basically said, “We’re not going to throw millions of votes because of something that may or may not have allowed someone to vote improperly. If you didn’t like the system, you should have objected before you lost. And you don’t have standing to complain about this.”
You can read Dominion’s lawsuit against Giuliani here (PDF). They list a couple hundred quotes, pictures, references, and so on of what he said and why they are suing. It looks like they’ve laid all their evidence out on paper before the trial starts.
I don’t see why you can’t show your evidence prior to a trial, but there are probably some circumstances under which you’d not want to. But I can’t see the advantage in keeping such “obvious” evidence of massive voter fraud secret in this case… unless (as we all know) it simply doesn’t exist.
Yes, people are confused and think that evidence is only allowed to be made public in court, just because that’s where most of the public hears evidence for the first time. But that’s for those reasons that you imply – plaintiffs might keep a close hold on evidence because it’s sensitive, or it might prejudice a potential jury, etc.
But once the case is thrown out any reason for the Trump legal team to continue to sit on their bombshell evidence goes out the window. What I suspect is happening is that the True Believers know that the Trump legal team had no evidence, because those dastardly Democrats are hiding it. They expect the evidence to come out in court because the courts will force the Democrats to turn it over.
This is mostly a nitpick. Except in very rare circumstances, lawyers responding to a judge’s questions are not under oath. But, lawyers are always obligated to not mislead a tribunal, and to be truthful in professional dealings (and to a great degree in private dealings as well). Bald-faced lies to a judge can make al kinds of bad things happen to you and your case. Giuliani and his compatriots who blatantly lied to the media ought to be disciplined by their respective bar associations, particularly now that we can clearly see how destructive those lines were.
Jumping off from this, and also responding to the OP. Sorry for the wall of text; it’s actually a much simplified and generalized explanation.
You don’t have to show your evidence, and you may not have it yet in an admissible form. Quotes in a complaint are allegations, not evidence. But there certainly can be very specific allegations, which suggest that there is evidence in hand.
Different jurisdictions have slightly different rules of civil procedure, but there are different stages to a case, and generally 2 main ways to get a case dismissed before trial.
The first stage is pleading. The plaintiff, who has the burdens of production and proof, files a complaint that makes allegations of legal wrongs. They don’t need to detail the evidence, but they do need to “state a claim.” Also, there are special pleading rules for allegations of fraud. You do have to be more specific.
So, you don’t have to lay out how you will prove it all, but you do have to be specific enough to show that, if what you are saying is true, the defendant legally wronged you, and you suffered damages as a result. So, saying “we think they committed election fraud” would not be enough. But a candidate saying, for example, county x had poll workers turn away Aftican Americans who didn’t have ID, but let white people with no ID vote, and I (candidate) lost as a result" would be on the right track. Or, in keeping with Trump’s claims, "poll workers were seen erasing Trump votes and filling in Biden instead, and I lost as a result. (But a lawyer who signs that pleading needs to have a factual basis for it, or risk being personally sanctioned, as well as having the case thrown out. See above)
My understanding is that many of Trump’s claims were dismissed at this stage, either because they did not allege a cognizable legal claim, or because the party suing was not damaged – i.e., they lacked standing.
The first stage where a plaintiff has to lay out their actual evidence (but witness testimony can be summarized in affidavits) is summary judgment. At this stage, among other things, the defendant can make a motion saying, I think the plaintiff won’t be able to produce sufficient evidence of these (or any of the) required elements of their case. In response, the plaintiff has to show that they do have evidence that will be admissible in court. Only after getting past the motion to dismiss stage and the summary judgment stage do you get to a trial.
No, I don’t think that is correct. The submission sets out their complaint in detail. They list various statements made by Rudy that they are claiming as false and actionable. For example, paragraph 18:
A few days later, Giuliani gave a televised interview on Lou Dobbs Tonight, falsely telling a global audience that Dominion is owned by Smartmatic and that Smartmatic was formed “in order to fix elections” by “three Venezuelans who were very close to…the dictator Chávez of Venezuela.”
That is a complaint, not evidence. The evidence will consist of first showing that the statement was made, then proving it to be a false statement, then showing how they were affected by the statement. The actual evidence, when submitted, will be a 200 page stack of documents supporting that one point, and similar for all the other points.
One of the things that amazes me about right-wing news sources is how everyone that reads, follows, listens, etc. becomes an absolute expert on whatever topic the Trump surrogates talk about. So a mailman that has never set foot in a courtroom becomes an expert on evidence and summary judgment because he heard Don. Jr. say no evidence was presented in any of the cases. I’m not surprised by know-it-alls of course, but I am always astonished at how quickly they all become so expert at repeating the same lines, even across different platforms.
And keep in mind a lot of these self-identified legal experts believe in the validity of gold-fringed flags, admiralty courts, capital letters, the uniform commercial code, and making sure you say you comprehend something and never say you understand it.
And in at least one case the judge at the outset asked counsel representing Trump or his interests a question along the lines of whether there was evidence for the allegations made. When the judge got a non-answer, the judge specifically said they were asking counsel, as an officer of the court and a member of the bar with obligations of honesty etc whether there was or was not such evidence. In other words the judge was basically saying “answer my question, and answer it honestly or you will be facing serious professional repercussions”. And Trump’s counsel had to admit there was no such evidence.
In my jurisdiction, that means Trumps counsel had at that point already breached their professional obligations, because you aren’t even supposed to file unless you have at least some reasonable basis for making the allegations in an action.
