Thread by @bradheath

So the big election-rigging case President Trump wants to tee up for the Supreme Court is actually whether his lawyers should have gotten permission to fix a filing they screwed up.

https://twitter.com/MatthewStiegler/status/1330684916179333123

Best case this strategy means Trump gets to go back to the district court and lose on standing a second time?

President Trump's appeal of a judge's brutal rejection of his efforts to overturn Pennsylvania's election -- the one his lawyers said would get them to the Supreme Court -- is *only* about whether the judge should have given them leave to fix a complaint his lawyers screwed up.

By limiting its appeal only to whether the campaign should have been able to amend its complaint, Trump's team is basically conceding Judge Brann's decision rejecting their Equal Protection case on standing and on the merits.

Trump's lawyers said they want to get this case to the Supreme Court. But what they told the Third Circuit they want is to get this back to in front of Judge Brann as soon as possible in the hopes of blocking Pennsylvania from certifying its results.

They're raising now the prospect that maybe Judge Brann could order the results de-certified, but that's not in the amended complaint they're appealing over.

And they don't seem to have asked the Third Circuit to enjoin Pennsylvania from certifying its results, which is supposed to happen tomorrow.

That's ... the normal thing you'd do if you really wanted to stop the state from certifying its results tomorrow.

Trump's lawyers do say this case "relates to the integrity of election procedures."

But the appeal isn't about that.

It's *only* about whether Trump should've been able to re-file the parts of his lawsuit his lawyers said they dropped by mistake.

Trump's lawyers want the case briefed by Tuesday and argued Wednesday. Defendants, to nobody's great surprise, aren't on board.

None of the surviving elite strike force team signed the motion.

Trump's appeal makes astonishingly little sense.

Trump's lawyers said they want to get to SCOTUS, but this will return them to the district court.

Because they didn't challenge the district court's decision that they lacked standing, if they win here they'll lose on that later.

And even if they come up with a better standing argument for the parts of the amended complaint that would survive, they're still in front of a judge who's already ruled he doesn't have the power to disenfranchise all of Pennsylvania, and they didn't challenge that part.

This whole thing is basically a Motion To Be Beaten A Second Time Because The First Time Was Insufficiently Spectacular.

Perhaps opposing counsel bills by the chortle.

Update: After midnight, Trump's lawyers amended their motion to expedite saying they are in fact appealing everything in Judge Brann's order dismissing the case. But in the next paragraph they say that other issues don't present a "case or controversy" so ... aren't justiciable?

This filing is Trump's lawyers' attempt to fix a Third Circuit filing about their appeal that seeks permission to fix another filing they screwed up in the district court.

Trump's lawyers say they didn't intend the very narrow nature of their appeal to waive any of many other issues on which they lost in the district court. The filing came several hours after lawyers pointed out to them on Twitter that they had probably done this.

In paragraph 5 of their amended motion, Trump's lawyers appear to be telling the Third Cir. that it is without jurisdiction to hear the appeal they themselves are filing.

Still no sign of the elite strike team force survivors.

Trump's argument is really unclear. Perhaps they mean: Judge Brann should have allowed us to amend the complaint. If he had, that would have mooted motions to dismiss the first amended complaint, so that opinion just doesn't count and shouldn't exist. Send us back.

If that's the argument - and if they win - it means they'd end up back in front of the same judge litigating many of the same issues on which he'd already ruled against them rather, uhh, decisively.

The Third Cir. just agreed to Trump's proposed briefing schedule: His are due today; defendants are due tomorrow. The court will advise the parties later if it wants to heal an oral argument.

This is the case - lest we forget - in which a federal judge says the President of the United States is trying to disenfranchise "all the voters of its sixth most populous state."

Further update: Allegheny County has responded to Trump's Third Circuit appeal to make clear that they really don't know what the campaign is trying to appeal, but they'd also like the court to remind Trump that issues he doesn't argue are waived.