Say what you will about their current state of mind, but as competent lawyers (at least at one time) surely they knew they’d lose most of these and be legally ridiculed. I simply can’t believe either actually thought they’d change the election result… and Rudy’s purported “strategy” of getting in front of the supreme court by losing in lower courts seems retarded.
BUT, they’ve spent real time and money in court (and possibly not even getting fairly compensated for it), flushed what was left of their reputations down the toilet, and taken on very real professional and legal risks themselves through the defamation suits and risk of disbarment.
I just don’t see the pay out for them: no money, no obvious success, no pardons, and in the end not even a nod from their hero Trump. Couldn’t they have gotten the same publicity and exposure by just doing the press conferences and staying out of court? Was the 2-3months of elevated fame really worth the price they’re paying now? I feel like I’m missing something…
It makes the whole government, including the courts, look like the “Deep State” conspiring against the God Emperor Trump. This further delegitimizes the courts in the eyes of Trump’s hardcore supporters and gives them more motivation to feel as if they were somehow cheated by the electoral process. Beyond that, it’s just churn and the hopeful pleading that some court somewhere might have some ruling favoring them. But, no such luck:
I think that they genuinely believed that they are the victims of great injustice, and really thought that they could get a judge to overturn the results.
Many of the suits were arguing legal technicalities. They claimed that mail-in votes are unconstitutional, and should be disallowed. They made these claims because they thought they were legally valid, and a judge would accept it.
I think they’re true believers and believed the lies they heard and told. They thought they had the courts in the bag because of all the judges installed by the Republican congress.
Giuliani and Powell aren’t good lawyers. Maybe they were at some point, but since joining the cult, they’ve lost their lawyering ability. There are no good lawyers who were willing to bring these cases forward.
Hey let’s not forget Lin Wood. He takes the back seat to no one when it comes to CTing the election. He just doesn’t get as much press. Maybe he needs to use runny hair dye or something.
They tried a low success strategy. It was not guaranteed to fail. They did win (sort of) one of their cases, after all! Their plan was to go to the Supreme Court, which had twice as many Republicans as Democrats, and a third had been appointed by Trump. The Court could have decided for Trump, and created a legal smokescreen over why they had to overturn the election. The Court has made some really bizarre decisions recently, and since. Still, when putting another accused rapist on the Court, the Republicans should have asked them their views on stealing an election for Trump. They forgot to do that, and it cost them.
They weren’t going to win on fraud. That wasn’t really the plan. They just wanted to make the election look fraudulent, causing further distrust of the results. That way, if the Supreme Court sided with them, they would have a small amount of credibility. They were going to use the Supreme Court like a fig leaf. Same thing with the state certifications; IIRC Michigan very nearly failed to certify the election due to a board of four, half Republicans, getting stuck for a while. Congresspeople and Senators fighting the certifications could have made the Republican fraud claims look sort of legit.
Many of those lawyers are old. Giuliani is in his seventies, and really should have retired. Doing this lets him feel relevant. His legal reputation doesn’t really mean anything if he’s no longer a working lawyer. He might lose his law license, but that is irrelevant if he retires. As for not getting compensated, for some odd reason many people trust Trump. His history of not paying the bills doesn’t factor in their decision making. This isn’t just a problem with these lawyers. People have been trusting Trump to pay the bill for decades.
Again, they trusted Trump when they should not have. I think they expected pay and pardons. They might have even gotten pardons, only after the January 6 insurrection Trump slowed down or stopped issuing pardons, and didn’t try to pardon himself or his family. If Trump won’t pardon himself, the person he cares about the most, of course he won’t pardon Giuliani.
The real goal was to get their story out their supporters that the whole thing was a sham and they were doing what they could to fight it. Back in early December I recall hearing a commentator on NPR saying that they weren’t so much law suits as press releases with a filing fee.
I think they may have hoped that some of the Trump appointed judges would be as partisan as they were, and that those who weren’t Trump appointees could be tarred as being biased against them for political reasons.
Their real hope was in getting enough partisans in the Republican state houses to hand them the election in spite of the will of the voters, but in order to do that they needed some form of fig leaf so that they could at least claim that the US was still a Democracy.
I think the simplest explanation is the most likely- they’re both stark raving nuts. They’re both long past their “best by” date. No competent lawyer would file all these lawsuits without having a shred of evidence, so Dumb Donald found two incompetent lawyers.
There is definitely no way they thought mail-in voting was illegal. That would be something they’d challenge before the election as the Courts pointed out. Plus Trump himself supported mail-in voting in Florida (where he would vote).
It basically was a strategy of “do not be seen as giving up.” Trump finds it stupid not to try everything to win. And his stubbornness is part of his brand. It’s part of why his supporters support him. He also may have been incredulous that he lost, but not too incredulous since he had people trying to stop the vote when he was losing–so he knew it was a possibility. But mostly he didn’t think he had anything to lose by trying everything to win.
Of course, that’s Trump, not Giuliani and Powell. But they were just doing what Trump wanted them to do. Giuliani had already attached his truck to Trump, so he had no reason to do otherwise. (And I think he actually was fooled into thinking he’d be paid.) On the other hand, I think Powell, given her seeming mental state, was a true believer in Trump and that there was fraud, but I don’t think she even believed the claims themselves. They were just a means to stop the fraud she was sure happened.
Other lawyers could have been deliberately bilking Trump–particularly the ones who were on for a bit but then quit before having to make the awful case.
And this. They expected the third branch of government to become as partisan in giving up its power vis-a-vis checks and balances as the first branch had been.
Yep. This too.
They wanted power, fame, relevance. Giuliani had a promise of huge compensation. They have overinflated ideas of their own brilliance.
They supported the coup attempt by following a strategy of flinging crap at the wall, trying to project the idea that the election was all a shitshow. I think there were issues of competence in terms of lawyering and also in terms of mental competence. I strongly hope their respective bar associations are investigating, not just because their behavior deserves sanction, but also to protect future clients.
Agreed, but they had arguments that the response date was changed illegally (PA gave mail in ballots three days more than the statute allowed, or something), or that the signature requirement wasn’t being enforced. The constitution says state legislatures must set the standards, but in this election we have officials, and judges, making changes that were not legislated. That’s got to be a problem, right?
I think they believed they would get some traction. Certification would be in doubt, and republicans would find a way to challenge enough states to get the election to the House of Representatives. I think they were wrong on all counts, but the arguments had just enough heft to give them hope.
I think it’s about money. They know that the republican party is an idiot’s paradise and a WASP cult, and they knew there would be high-rolling donors who’d fund their jackassery.
I think that the court filings were mainly as PR stunts. I am pretty sure that somebody else made that comment on the Dope.
The lawsuits were not intended to be real challenges to ‘election fraud’. In fact there were some cases were they told the judge that they were not saying the results of the election were fraudulent. The lawyers knew they’d catch some serious flack for that.
However, as a PR press release the lawsuits worked wonders. When your followers will just believe anything you tell them the rubes aren’t going to question where all the lawsuits that didn’t go anywhere come from. Instead they are happy to think that some of the judges that Trump appointed were actually part of the deep state.
It is a Ponzi Scam. trump is a con man. See, he told everyone to donate to “stop the steal” , and tens of millions poured in. As long as lawsuits were filed, they could say they were trying to stop the steal, even tho iirc only 10% of the donations were going to legal fees.
It was a con. Period.
The funds will go to attack trumps enemy list of GOP “traitors” and of course his huge personal legal fees.
I guess I can see it all as a big show for the Trump loyalists to keep them close and get them to open up their wallets.
It just seemed a bit over the top to me in terms of buffoonery and volume, but I guess that’s what that crowd wants. Just seems the lawyers got the short end of the stick in terms of reward for their efforts… but again that seems par for the course when you do business with Trump. Not only does he con the clients, but also his partners doing the actual work as well.
Amazing there is still such a steady line of people willing to work with him despite his near-perfect record of throwing those same people under the bus at the end of the deal. I guess they are all hoping to be the 1% that do get paid or pardoned sort of like everyone who enters a casino hopes they’ll be the lucky ones that day.
They’re selling the story that Trump was cheating out of a second term. This will outrage the suckers and get them to keep sending money.
I’m sure Trump wants to keep all the money coming in for himself. But he’s not smart enough to keep track of what’s going on. The little people around him will skim off most of the money as it passes through their hands.
This. In fact, someone started a thread asking why the courts didn’t investigate the evidence. There wasn’t any evidence to investigate. And Giuliano, at least, never claimed there was. As for Powell, I think she is seriously nuts.
I doubt it. You are crediting him with a level of ingenuity and deviousness that he just does not possess. It wasn’t a scheme to get other people’s money. He genuinely believes that he won the election, and it was stolen from him. The point of the lawsuits was an attempt to win the election.
