Happy New Year, y'all -
And let's start with an election litigation update for the Gohmertian Goofiness.

As of 3 minutes ago no reply brief from Gohmert but some other updates have appeared.

(No, the judge won't ignore his filing if it's a little late.)

AND IT GETS BETTER -
I just looked for an update. Found one. They're asking for another hour because the dog ate their homework.
Seriously, they've been using Google Docs for their serious work and are having problems making that work with Word to produce the final version of this filing.
That filing, by the way, can be up to 50 pages long but, given the strong hint in the motion granting permission for the overlength filing, should address everything not just in Pence's brief but also in the House Amicus and the proposed intervenor's motion to dismiss.
Meanwhile, the treasonweasel cosplayers from Michigan want to intervene as plaintiffs.

Not only do they want to intervene, they want to do so in their "official capacities as Presidential Electors for the State of Michigan."

Note: They are not Presidential Electors. Anywhere.
Seriously. They're trying to intervene in an official capacity they don't have because what are false statements to the court, amirite?
And they're claiming to have the "permission and endorsement of the Michigan Legislature" even though these are the buffoons who weren't even allowed into the actual building and had to stage their pathetic land of make-believe electorishing thingy in the parking lot.
(In fairness, I should note that they couldn't even get all of the craniorectally inverted wannabe seditionists that participated in the initial cosplay event to sign onto this. In fact, they got only 5 of the 16.
Anyway, I've skimmed the proposed complaint. It was submitted by people who are in exactly the same position as the Arizona fools who filed the case in the first instance, have exactly the same claim to standing (ie none), attempts to add no new claim, and makes no new argument.
It was also submitted after the deadline for responses from the defendants.

It's a non-entity. It's a filing from some people who felt left out of the last-gasp treasonweaseling and want to play too, is all. Not worth going through in depth.

More from Mike Dunford

I went over the dismissal on my stream, but a few thoughts on where things are at:

1: The Notice of Appeal doesn't shock me; I figured Louie would be this dumb.
2: As was the case with the case at the District Court, it doesn't really matter how vigorously Pence defends this.


3: The lack of standing is so spectacularly, glaringly obvious that it doesn't really matter whether Pence raised certain arguments; they will get noticed by the court.
4: That's because federal courts have an independent duty to ensure they have jurisdiction.

5: Standing is a jurisdictional requirement; no standing means no case.
6: The rules for standing are clear and nothing in the opinion dismissing the case was the least bit controversial in any universe except the alternate one inhabited by Louie and the Arizonan cosplayers.

7: "But it's the 5th Circuit" will be raised both by Trumpistians and those who are exceptionally nervous. There is exactly as much reason to be concerned about the 5th as there was the trial court: ie none at all.

So - my expectations:
Given the timeline, I suspect that Louie will be granted an expedited appeal and will lose on an expedited basis. I also expect that he will appeal to SCOTUS and the appeal there will not be expedited.
Election Litigation Update: DC - the "let's sue the Electoral College" case.

This is a bit surprising, given that as of last time I checked nobody had been served and no appearance had been entered. I suspect it's an effort to make sure the case isn't "pending" on the 6th.


And, sure enough, still no proof of service on ANY defendant, still no appearance from defense counsel. And this is denying the motion for preliminary injunction but does NOT dismiss the case - which is potentially ominous for plaintiff's counsel.


This isn't a "happy judge" kind of first paragraph. Not even a little bit. Nope.


Y'all, this isn't even directed within a few hundred miles of my direction and I sill just instinctively checked to make sure that there's room for me to hide under my desk if I have to - this is a very not happy, very federal, very judge tone.


Also - the judge just outright said there's a bunch of reasons for dismissal. And not in "might be" terms. In definite fact ones. But the case isn't dismissed yet.

If I was plaintiffs counsel, I'd definitely be clearing under my desk right now, and possibly also my underwear.
This is an excellent question, and it's something that I've thought about some over the last couple of months.

Honestly, I think the answer is that the rationales for these rulings are not likely to unreasonably harm meritorious progressive OR conservative challenges.


The first thing to keep in mind is that, by design, challenges to the outcomes of elections are supposed to be heard by state courts, through the process set out in state law.

That happened this year, and the majority of those challenges were heard on the merits.

The couple of cases where laches determined the outcome of state election challenges were ones where it was pretty clear that the challenges were brought in bad faith - where ballots cast in good faith in reliance on laws that had been in force for some time were challenged.

The PA challenge to Act 77 is one example. The challengers, some of whom had voted for passage of the bill, didn't make use of the initial, direct-to-PA-SCt challenge built into the law or sue pre-election; they waited until post-election.

The WI case is another. That one had a challenge to ballots cast using a form that had been in use for a literal decade.

Those are cases where laches is clear - particularly the prejudice element.

More from Politics

Trump is gonna let the Mueller investigation end all on it's own. It's obvious. All the hysteria of the past 2 weeks about his supposed impending firing of Mueller was a distraction. He was never going to fire Mueller and he's not going to


Mueller's officially end his investigation all on his own and he's gonna say he found no evidence of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election.

Democrats & DNC Media are going to LITERALLY have nothing coherent to say in response to that.

Mueller's team was 100% partisan.

That's why it's brilliant. NOBODY will be able to claim this team of partisan Democrats didn't go the EXTRA 20 MILES looking for ANY evidence they could find of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election

They looked high.

They looked low.

They looked underneath every rock, behind every tree, into every bush.

And they found...NOTHING.

Those saying Mueller will file obstruction charges against Trump: laughable.

What documents did Trump tell the Mueller team it couldn't have? What witnesses were withheld and never interviewed?

THERE WEREN'T ANY.

Mueller got full 100% cooperation as the record will show.

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