Ted Lieu is being discussed as a possible California Attorney General. He knows his stuff; he knows this stuff. "The Texas Attorney General, who is under FBI investigation for bribery and other crimes," he told me last night, "filed a ludicrous lawsuit asserting he knows more about what happened in elections in other states than those states own elected officials, who certified the vote results already. This was not a real filing, it was a publicity stunt, perhaps to get Trump to pardon him. Trump and his enablers have lost over 54 times in court. Not a single court has found any credible evidence of widespread voter fraud. This lawsuit, like all the other ones, will fail. There is nothing Trump can do to change the fact that on January 20, he will be escorted out of the White House."
As of yesterday, election results had been certified in all 50 states. Working for Trump, the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, himself a notorious crook and felon, has asked the Supreme Court to invalidate the votes cast in 4 states that Trump lost: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin. While 60% of American votes do not want Trump to run again-- just 32% would like him to-- 17 states + Trump are backing Paxton's attempt to overturn the election results.
Former Orlando Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) noted that "Texas AG Ken Paxton is in a tense, close race with Barr, Giuliani and Sidney Powell to see which Trump butt-kisser gets disbarred first." New Jersey's most worthwhile member of Congress, Bonnie Watson Coleman, noted that "The Texas-plus effort is another trip around the realm of the unreal. If it didn’t incite crazy and dangerous provocateurs, it’d be an episode in a comedy series."
With his whole legal team either fired or sick with COVID, Trump found another misanthrope with a law degree to represent him-- John Eastman, best known as a conspiracy theorist and racist slime who tried getting Kamala Harris disqualified because her parents were immigrants (even though she was born in Oakland, California. This is the clownish complaint he filed.
Tom Suozzi (D-NY) kicked Mick Mulvaney's ass in a TV debate around this time yesterday. So he was feeling feisty. Glad I reached him when he was: "Our nation," he said, "can ill-afford these self-serving, partisan attacks that are being made by fawning supplicants in an effort to serve a vindictive syndicate boss whose only desire is to build a database to wring merchandise sales, digital subscriptions and rally/concert ticket purchasers for the next 4 years. They are selling out our precious democracy because they are afraid of a carnival huckster trying pry loose every last shekel he can from an adoring, but deluded base."
Jim Himes (D-CT) finished the thought for him: "I expect the Supreme Court will throw this absurd case out like the other 50 absurd cases that have been laughed out of lower courts. What’s harder to accept is the Republicans who continue to support this manchild’s tantrums and the erosion of our democracy."
All the states signing on to this latest anti-democracy stunt have Republican attorneys-general: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota (the world's COVID capital), Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.
Paxton, a Republican who remains under indictment for state felony securities fraud charges, is asking the high court for permission to sue the four states to block their certification of Biden’s wins in them.
Paxton argues that a block is warranted because of supposedly improper changes to voting procedures there in the past year, purportedly different treatment of voters in Democratic-heavy areas, and voting “irregularities.”
The four swing-state defendants are set to file their replies in opposition to Paxton’s requests of the court by 3 p.m. on Thursday.
The effort comes as all states have certified their individual presidential election results, which show that Biden easily won the national popular vote.
Biden is projected to win the Electoral College when it meets Monday with 36 more votes than the 270-vote minimum needed to clinch the White House.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on Tuesday said Paxton’s filing “is a publicity stunt, not a serious legal pleading.”
“The erosion of confidence in our democratic system isn’t attributable to the good people of Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia or Pennsylvania but rather to partisan officials, like Mr. Paxton, who place loyalty to a person over loyalty to their country,” Nessel said in a statement.
“The Michigan issues raised in this complaint have already been thoroughly litigated and roundly rejected in both state and federal courts-- by judges appointed from both political parties. Mr. Paxton’s actions are beneath the dignity of the office of Attorney General and the people of the great state of Texas.”
Trump has refused to concede the election to Biden, claiming without evidence that he was the victim of widespread ballot fraud.
Trump and his campaign, as well as their political allies, have repeatedly failed in their legal attempts to invalidate votes for Biden.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a separate bid from Trump-allied Republicans challenging Biden’s win in Pennsylvania.
Election law experts saw that apparently unanimous rejection as a signal that the remaining efforts to overturn Biden’s win were all but doomed at the Supreme Court.
Congress' most knowledgeable constitutional expert, Jamie Raskin (D-MD) ask this morning, "When will this nightmare end? There are no factual or legal grounds for challenging Joe Biden’s 7-million vote romp over Trump or Biden’s 'landslide' victory sweep in the Electoral College. More than 40 courts have rejected the laughable and frivolous kitchen-sink complaints concocted by Rudy Giuliani, the worst lawyer in America who now rivals Donald Trump for sincere derangement from the basic facts of reality. It’s time to rent out the Deprogramming Suite at the local Hilton Gardens for their whole legal team and every state Attorney General who signed on to this sanctionable nonsense."