Thread by @bradheath

Trump's lawyers said the other day that the press refuses to look at all the evidence the president and his allies have put forward of a massive scheme to rig the election.

I did.

Georgia edition, from the case filed by Trump ally L. Lin Wood ->

Exhibit A: A witness declares she was "not close enough to see much of anything" during Georgia's recount.

Exhibit B: A witness declares that people conducting the recount were not great at math. Also, sometimes ballots were left unattended on a table and drinks also were left on those tables.

Exhibit C: A witness says she observed a batch of "pristine" ballots during the recount, with markings that were "uniform." Most, but not all, were votes for Biden.

Exhibit D: A witness says people weren't verifying signatures on ballots (which aren't signed). Some ballots were neatly-bubbled, and only had Biden votes. Some numbers didn't add up. Therefore he believes "there was widespread fraud favoring Joseph Biden."

Exhibit E: A witness says "hundreds" of ballots "seemed impeccable, with no folds or creases," and were neatly filled out for Biden. Also, counters didn't verify signatures on the ballots (which aren't signed). "Based on my observations I believe there was fraud committed."

Exhibit F: Sometimes ballots were recounted without being checked by two workers. (Also, some workers were rude and he had to get someone to tweet about them.)

Exhibit G: Ballots were improperly placed in tray marked for Joe Biden (but she couldn't see for whom they were marked). Operations were "sloppy, unorganized and suspicious."

Exhibit H: A witness says he observed ballots with "a perfect black bubble" (and he was able to "observe the perfect bubble for a few minutes"). He saw a counter go through 500 Biden ballots in a row. A poll worker told him he was under pressure, and "there is widespread fraud."

Exhibit I: A witness says she ballots being sorted without confirmation from a second worker, but "if the auditors were not recording correctly, we would have no way of knowing," because she was too far away to see how the ballots were marked.

Exhibit J: Military ballots were "very clean." Many of the ballots "were for Biden. Many batches went 100% for Biden." Also, the watermark on three of the ballots didn't look right. "I believe the military ballots are highly suspicious of fraud."

[We're more than halfway there!]

Exhibit K: A witness says some workers did "fast counting" of ballots - instead of having each one verified by two people. Ballot boxes were left unattended. Some damaged ballots were "duplicated," but she wasn't allowed to ask what that meant. (It's a normal thing.)

Exhibit L: A witness says counters added an extra 0 to Biden's tally in one batch, but then noticed the mistake and fixed it. Ballots marked for Trump were placed in the Biden pile. He therefore believes "there was widespread fraud favoring Joseph Biden."

Exhibit M: A witness, whose identity is unknown, alleges that Dominion voting software was used to cheat on elections in Venezuela and this is what is happening in the U.S. There's only one paragraph on the U.S. election and it contains obvious factual errors and no specifics.

Exhibit N: A witness says big increases in Democratic turnout are suspicious. Many more people voted for Democrats this year than in previous elections in Georgia that Democrats did not win. Also, Benford's Law and this chart.

Exhibit O: A witness says things were pretty disorganized during the recount, "many of the absentee ballots were perfectly filled out," and Twyla was a very rude.

For those of you who want to play along at home.

https://twitter.com/jacobgershman/status/1329919784541163520

Also, the whole docket is on @courtlistener at courtlistener.com/docket/1863278….

Exhibit P: A witness says many ballots didn't have creases and "appeared to be pre-printed." (Georgia uses touchscreen voting that produces printed paper ballots.) "Hundreds of ballots at a time were counted for Biden only." Also, there was a suspicious table that said "Welcome."

Exhibit Q: A witness says some boxes of ballots were cast "100% for Biden." The ballots "appeared to be perfectly filled out as if they were pre-printed." There's a spreadsheet. (Again, Georgia voting machines produce machine-printed, marked paper ballots.)

Exhibit R: Ballots to be recounted "looked as though they had just come from a fresh stack" and didn't appear to have been folded. The black circles were neat. The majority contained "suspicious black perfectly bubbled markings for Biden."

Finally, Exhibit S: A security expert finds it suspicious that so many people voted, after mistaking Minnesota for Michigan. (A dead giveaway is that the Detroit-area places where he found suspiciously high voter turnout are nowhere near Detroit.)

There it is. That's the evidence of fraud that was submitted to a federal court in Georgia. When you pile it all up, it falls far short of what the president and his lawyers and his supporters and his supporters' lawyers have been claiming on television.

A federal judge has now denied Trump ally L. Lin Wood's request for a temporary restraining order prohibiting Georgia from certifying its election results (which already happened anyway).

(The judge was appointed by President Trump.)

The judge says Wood doesn't have standing to contest Georgia's election results in the first place. Being a voter and a donor doesn't mean you can sue people when your candidate loses.

The court goes out of its way to note just how bad Wood's standing argument was.

The court goes on to say that even if Wood could have brought this lawsuit, which he can't, he brought it too late and also loses for that reason. He "waited to bring these claims until the eleventh hour," when he could have done it months ago, before people voted.

And the court says that even if Wood could bring this lawsuit (which he can't) and if he hadn't waited too long (which he did), he'd also lose on the merits.

The judge (a Trump appointee), goes out of his way to shoot down Wood's theory of an Equal Protection violation, which is very similar to the arguments Trump's campaign has made in its own lawsuit in Pennsylvania.

The judge said claims that lots of invalid ballots were counted in Georgia is "not supported by the evidence at this stage." The rejection rate for absentee ballots in Georgia in 2020 was the same as it was two years ago.

The court also rejects Wood's theory that a settlement agreement that altered voting procedures violated the Elections Clause, because only the legislature can make those rules. The court says the legislature clearly delegated authority to the secretary of state.

The court says that while some witnesses "speculate as to wide-spread impropriety," the case is really a "garden variety election dispute." And it rejects his claims that partisan observers had a right to monitor vote counting and recounting more closely.

A federal judge took a wrecking ball to the legal effort to upset Trump's loss in Georgia, basically rejecting the challenge in every way possible. And he did it in a way that impugns some of the arguments the president himself is making elsewhere.
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

[That's it. You've now scrolled all of the doom. Congratulations.]