Thread by @apark2453

I *do* want to pick it apart!

And... Wow. This is art.

154 pages.

One entry on the table of contents: "Motion for leave... page 1".

1/

https://twitter.com/txnewsprincess/status/1336320870722097155

Typically one can sue a group of defendants together whey they acted in concert. It'd be a weird kind of joinder rule to be allowed to file one lawsuit against three different defendants under three different theories of wrongdoing solely because "it's all election stuff".

2/

Each of these is alleged at a different state. None are *true* of course, but even if true I'm not sure why Paxton thinks he can file one suit against all three on three different theories.

And the third is just silly.

3/

"the 2020 election suffered from significant and unconstitutional irregularities... [including] [t]he appearance of voting irregularities".

I'm not familiar with the case which set the precedent that "I think it looks irregular" is significant and unconstitutional.

4/

I do like the "even the violations of *state* election law" as if he'd raised any other claims.

As @questauthority, @AkivaMCohen and the U.S district courts who have heard this arguments have noted: this gambit doesn't make a state law argument into a federal issue.

5/

Though, again, it's really funny to bear in mind one of his claimed "violations" is "things that look to Ken Paxton like voting irregularities", so here he's claiming that "appearing to Ken Paxton to be irregular is a violation of the U.S constitution".

6/

One shudders to think how he will wield the power to make something a constitutional violation by thinking it looks like it could be one.

7/

But, okay, to be fair on page 7 he finally gives a table of contents for real.

It's kind of weird, though, since if we're meant to read these as two separate documents (filed together but functionally separate), the motion for leave's table is still incomplete.

8/

Just... don't do this.

It's pretentious pandering and ultimately meaningless. No one is disagreeing about *whether* there should be an impartial and exact execution of the law, the argument is over what that execution *is*.

9/

Don't do this either.

"Either you agree with me or the constitution is meaningless and the "American Experiment" [why is it capitalized] is dead" is appropriate for a campaign speech or a screed at a college Republicans event, not for the Supreme Court.

10/

1. "Here is what we know" should be followed by a colon.

2. Given the number of courts which have pointed out an utter dearth of evidence for this "know" is a ways off.

"Believe" is more accurate. "Fantasize about to justify our extremism" is probably most apt.

11/

Stylistic thing, but "presently" isn't doing shit here.

Also this whole "so much evidence is coming in, piling up, every day" raises the question: then why haven't any of you assholes shown us any?

12/

The answer, incidentally, is that Paxton is playing it fast and loose with the difference between admissible evidence and "bare accusations" or "well I just don't believe Biden would have won without cheating".

13/

Because if there's one thing that will restore confidence in the election it's for the Supreme Court to say "we don't have confidence in the election so we're going to delay the statutory deadline so Trump boosters can go on a fishing expedition".

14/

I'm going to mention this because "the constitution says it's up to the legislature so the courts can't intervene" is going to come up later:

"The Congress may determine the Time of chusing [sic] the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes".

15/

If "such manner as the legislature thereof may direct" precludes judicial review or alteration, "may determine the Time... and the Day" would have the same effect making the 12/14/2020 deadline *also* "mandated under the constitution".

16/

This relief being requested is also very weird. It's asking the Supreme Court to change a Congressionally-imposed deadline based on an explicit constitutional power, based on the alleged misconduct of a state.

17/

This is where we should be getting into the meat and potatoes stuff. So, of course, it's a mess.

To start with: how do you get from "another state maybe violated state law" to *anything* Texas has standing to sue for? The closest I can get is acting in parens patriae.

18/

But that's a pretty narrow doctrine and would not apply to being parens patriae to the Republican voters in another state.

So... That's just a weird claim to lead off with.

19/

I'll keep an eye out, but I'm unaware of any case which supports the vindication of a legislature's power under the electors clause through a lawsuit brought by another state against the state whose powers are allegedly being violated.

20/

At the point a lawyer is so far into the weeds of "I can't find a single thing to support the notion that the Supreme Court should let me sue on behalf of another state to vindicate its rights against itself" that he's citing goddamned Marbury v. Madison, we're in for a show

21/

Don't do this, round 3:

Aside from this being repetitive, if you can't point to a single case to support your "long-settled principles" (hence needing to invoke the "spirit" of Marbury v. Madison), it's not "long-settled" anything.

22/

That's... not a common pattern.

Those are, explicitly, two different patterns. The only commonality is "Ken Paxton doesn't like it".

23/

Ken is at least upfront that his goal is "disenfranchise voters who acted in good faith"

Not sure where he's getting this idea that the states not doing a thing they didn't have to, and him being unable to prove any individual ballots were invalid, makes them all invalid.

24/

Much less where this concept of "constitutionally suspect" comes from, since the constitution doesn't contain any provisions about what makes a vote "legitimate" beyond "what the state decides"

The states which he's suing

Which violated... their own constitutional rights?

25/

Pretty sure most of them aren't "currently pending" at this point, but time makes fools of us all.

Or at least of Ken.

But let's check out this evidence. Well, at least his characterization of it.

26/

Dozens of witnesses testified under oath in these court cases? That's weird, since none of them made it to an evidentiary hearing. A whole lot of which was hearsay.

But unless it was submitted in any case in a format the courts accept🤷‍♂️

27/

The word "authentication" will spring into the mind of every lawyer when the topic of "a video shot by... someone and posted on social media" comes up.

28/

This one comes with a footnote, helpful!

Except it's the explanation that he didn't include this purported evidence in *this* 154 page crime against jurisprudence.

Then cites to one of the Michigan cases which doesn't appear to include the claim it's meant to footnote.

29/

It's a common theme of all of the #squidigation "evidence" that they tend to mistake "people involved in the count have animosity for the people claiming they're corrupt and stealing the election" for "did not accurately count"

Cheering is apparently a 14th amendment issue.

24/

Things that should not need to be explained to any lawyer:

"I can't explain this and don't accept the explanation offered" is not evidence of... anything, really. To say nothing of being evidence of "rampant lawlessness".

25

Accusing a state of playing "fast and loose" and engaging in a "classic bait and switch" *against* the U.S Supreme Court is.. well that's a spicy allegation.

I'm sure somewhere in the... 140 pages left this allegation will be substantiated!

26/

Uh... huh.

I guess we need to defer "what the fuck does this mean" until later.

27/

Spoiler: this declaration isn't contained anywhere in this clown car of a document. Which is unfortunate because trying to figure out how this dude arrived at this number (which I'm guessing is based on some flawed assumptions).

28/

Probably either "assume mail-in ballots should be the same as the in-person voting" or just "assume a 50/50 chance for each ballot." Either way, Bayesian he ain't.

29/

Two separate funny things:

1. "the statistical improbability is 1 in [big number]" is not how you write that.

2. there doesn't seem to be a reason to represent this number like this. They could just as easily do exponents of 10, except that doesn't *look* huge.

30/

Since there's no declaration I'm just going to ignore any reference to this Cicchetti dude; he's a real person but without being able to see methodology it's a black box.

31/

Because the standard for obtaining an injunction from the Supreme Court to disenfranchise millions of voters is "there is reason to doubt".

Good lord.

32/

This is repetitive. That's all I've got, it's literally just a repeat of the same "they allegedly violated state law which is therefore a violation of federal law" daisy chain they made earlier.

33/

Really think about what Ron is arguing here.

Texas and the citizens of Texas are entitled to the proper functioning of the laws of another state

An entitlement which can apparently supersede the states' own Supreme Courts' determinations of whether their laws were violated

34/

Oh get fucked.

They're trying to escape mootness by invoking the standard applied in Roe v. Wade because a pregnancy by its very nature would never remain long enough to be heard by the court.

But this *doesn't* evade review.

It has been reviewed. They lost.

35/

In case anyone was worried we wouldn't get to see more "cite a case not dealing with this issue and don't even attempt to explain why it's analogous".

Celebrezze involved restrictions on who can be *on* the ballot, not how ballots are *counted*.

36/

We're finally to Parens Patriae Small problem with that theory: it doesn't work here.

See Missouri v. Illinois, 180 U.S. 208 (1901) (second screenshot); North Dakota v. Minnesota, 263 U.S. 365 (1923) (third screenshot).

37/

I'm just a simple country hyperchicken, but this sure looks like mere "maladministration of the laws of another state" and not at all like an injury to Texas in its capacity as "quasi-sovereign".

38/

There's a certain brazenness to arguing what amounts to "you have to let me sue three unrelated defendants whose actions all allegedly harmed me in the same vague way because otherwise I can't get enough money out of any of them to pay my bills".

39/

Remember the good old days of like 10 pages ago when Ron was arguing that the only constitutionally mandated timeframe is the inauguration?

40/

Ron is definitely taking the concept of "background" literally. Probably didn't need to go all the way back to the federalist papers, though.

With apologies, I'm going to skim ahead to sometime after "dude explains the history of voting to the Supreme Court".

41/

Considering the dearth of actual cases of voter fraud, the "largest source of potential" is like saying "the largest source of potential human decency from Trump". It doesn't mean there will be much of it, just more than from anywhere else.

42/

"See, it's totally a thing that happens, here's some totally random state attorney general (who is also incredibly handsome and smart) who indicted people!"

43/

And if the police opened an investigation (based on James O'Keefe bullshit) that's clearly proof it's a concern.

NB: "I am concerned" and "it is a concern" are not the same statement.

44/

Trying to skip over some repetitive stuff, repetition of the "opportunity for fraud" argument, repetition of the as-yet-unsupported claim what these states did was unconstitutional, can't separate them, violating state law violates the constitution somehow.

45/

Now *this* is interesting. First because that's not really what an "injury" is in the context of standing (nor is this particularized). If "the wrong president was elected" is a cognizable injury, we're going to have a lot of lawsuits from here on out.

46/

This is a theme which is likely to come up again, but:

If the PA Supreme Court ordered it, on what basis would the U.S Supreme Court step in to say "the highest court of the state misunderstood its own statutory law"?

That flies in the face of a bunch of precedent.

47/

A lot of this is now just repetition of the Trump arguments from the other cases they lost.

@questauthority and @AkivaMCohen have had great threads specific to the claims made against each state so I'll try not to reinvent the wheel.

48/

And mostly focus on ridiculousness.

"It was blatantly illegal by allowing an illegal thing to happen".

I mean... Yeah, that's usually what an illegal thing is.

49/

And in case this wasn't clear, here Paxton is citing Donald Trump's allegations in the lawsuit he filed in Pennsylvania as evidence of the intent of the Pennsylvania Secretary of State and counties involved.

I guess it's at least better than citing his *own* press release?

50/

"Perhaps" and "can't be proven" are words you really don't want to use when asking for the most abjectly extraordinary relief imaginable.

"I have no way to prove what was and was not a valid ballot" engenders a response of "well you do have the burden of proof."

51/

Because, by god, if Republican state house members wrote some shit down and called it a report that makes it beyond reproach.

52/

Oh, no, this makes it way more reliable: the numbers in it are nonsensical!

53/

We've run into this idea of "constitutional taint" a dozen times or so, and nowhere has Paxton provided a shred of basis for the claim that "hey, I can't actually prove any of these ballots are invalid so all of them must be".

54/

Onto Georgia, most of this is just repetition. Here's a weird claim, though:

Nowhere does it actually require that the notification be done in writing, much less it be done *only* in writing. They write on the envelope and then notify the voter.

55/

What's odd is that Paxton is supposedly writing on behalf of the state of Texas to remedy a harm Texas has suffered.

"This helped Biden" doesn't seem to ring that bell.

56/

This conclusion doesn't follow the premise.

"More people have to verify a signature doesn't match" would almost certainly lead to fewer ballots being rejected. It does not follow that this leads to more *errors*.

57/

Even if this *does* represent a choice of errors anyone who believes in democracy would have to prefer "fewer legitimate ballots thrown away at the cost of more illegitimate ones accepted" than "fewer illegitimate ones accepted at a cost of more legitimate ones thrown away".

58/

For the Michigan stuff I'll just let Judge Parker (no relation) of the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan explain why it's a whole lot of bullshit.

democracydocket.com/wp-content/upl…

59/

I'm beginning to question how there are a hundred more pages of this. Michigan is the last state.

Also this Cicchetti dude shows up all over the place considering his declaration doesn't show up anywhere.

60/

Also, also, "the body authorized to approve the results approved them" would seem to fit within Paxton's theory of plenary powers mean they're unreviewable.

61/

It's kind of funny he cites 6.84(2) because it proves most of his claims wrong. There are only nine provisions which exclude ballots from being counted. These do not include:

6.855(1), (3).

7.15(anything)

6.87(9)

62/

Sorry, missed this one:

Dude is citing Donald Trump's Dismissed complaint in Michigan as "well it's alleged that a bunch of shit went down".

I don't even have words.

63/

As has been pointed out, while the *video* is new, the substance of the training goes back years.

This is why laches applies, y'all.

64/

"Testified" is a weird way to say "claimed for James O'Keefe and then recanted as quick as he could when the FBI had some questions about it.

Then recanted his recantation, making him a *super* reliable witness.

65/

Oh this is so goddamned good. Paxton is arguing that not excluding absentee votes is unfair.

Want to know what the case he's citing said was actually unfair?

The exclusion of absentee votes and resulting loss of the candidate those absentee voters supported.

😂😂

66/

Specifically because voters were "relying upon official inducements and using ballots printed and furnished by the state" and cast their votes only to have them nullified by a court.

It's too perfect. It's literally the case saying "fuck you Paxton".

And he cites it.

67/

I'm at the prayer for relief. It's dumb, just a repeat of "say the results were invalid, don't let them count those votes, if they already did make them elect new electors for the electoral college".

Here's the thing:

What the fuck is the remaining 100 pages?

68/

No.

No, no no.

They filed a motion for leave to file, a motion for expedited consideration of their motion for leave to file, a motion for a preliminary injunction, a brief in support of their motion for leave to file, and the bill of complaint?

I can't do it y'all.

69/

Just one more thing, though, that jumped out at me as I was trying to figure out how many versions of the same arguments they filed (six, goddamn it).

"Exclusive" and "mandatory" aren't the same words.

[End at least until I've recovered some]