This is Rudy’s lawsuit. Can someone summarize it for me?
I’ll do it.
BY FAR our best chance lies in the state legislatures.
And Rudy gave a commanding performance that turned the tide towards them acting. Will they? I don’t know. Will enough of them? I don’t know.
I do know there’s a bunch of lawsuits out there and some faint every time one is rejected.
ciao
You can find many legal opinions on the other thread
Mostly bashing Rudy’s incompetence, etc.
Clears thee way for the trip to SCOTUS
By reading the judges opinions, it sounds like it’s limited to repub poll watchers not being allowed to watch. Judge said the same thing as last court that it’s not enough to overturn the election so it’s not worth the time. Only amounts to 10,000 but the people who testified at the hearing the other day estimated a lot more than that. It can only be estimated, that’s the problem I guess. Seems like the machines would time stamp things, dunno.
From what I read this lawsuit was screwed up by the lawyers from the get go. It did not make the right points at the right times. It failed to either include or exclude what was necessary at the time it was filed.
Oh, wait . . . no one knows exactly which ballot was switched. Doggone.
The panel of judges take a dim view of no one of the election officers admitting tamperings as a general principle ordered by them.
Bascially, the lawsuit was brought by the Trump campaign and two individual Pennsylvania voters. The lawsuit focuses on two things: First, that some counties, but not others, notified mail-in voters of problems with their ballots and allowed them to “cure” those problems so their votes would could. Second, that poll-watchers were excluded from observing counts.
Then, after the original lawyers withdrew, the plaintiffs amended their complaint to remove all of the claims relating to poll watchers, leaving only two claims, both relating to the “ballot curing” issue. One claim alleged that this violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, because it discriminated between voters in different counties (the individual voter plaintiffs had their ballots invalidated and were not in counties that provided notice and an opportunity to cure). The other claim alleged that counties or the Secretary of State allowing voters to cure ballots violated the Electors and Elections Clauses of Articles I and II of the Constitution because the PA state legislature did not authorize such a procedure.
The district court judge dismissed the ballot curing claims under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim, finding that neither the voters nor the campaign had standing. A recent 3rd Circuit case held that only a state legislature has standing to assert a violation of the Electors and Elections Clauses, and the plaintiffs conceded that its claims under these clauses were precluded under that 3rd Circuit case (but want to preserve the right to argue to SCOTUS that the 3rd Circuit is wrong). The judge also held that neither the voters nor the campaign alleged facts showing they had suffered a legal injury granting them standing to bring the Equal Protection claim.
The campaign had also moved for leave to amend their complaints again to add some of the poll watcher claims back in. The judge denied that motion when he dismissed the ballot curing claims.
In this appeal, the Campaign did NOT appeal the dismissal of the ballot curing claims for lack of standing. It only appealed the denial of leave to amend its complaint. The 3rd Circuit just affirmed Judge Brann’s rulings. It held that Judge Brann did not abuse his discretion in denying leave to amend its complaint to add the poll watcher claims because the campaign unduly delayed in doing so and because adding them in would be futile because the proposed second amended complaint failed to plead facts showing a plausible claim.
I don’t think it’s fair to single out Giuliani, because he was never lead counsel in this case, but it certainly does look like there was incompetence involved. Basically, they sued based on Claim A and Claim B, then voluntarily dropped Claim A, then tried to add Claim A in when it was clear Claim B was going to be dismissed. Then they didn’t appeal the dismissal of Claim B, just the denial of leave to add Claim A in—which is reviewed on appeal by a much more deferential standard. I think the legal term for the conduct of the Campaign’s lawyers in this case is “a shit show.”