Thread by @AkivaMCohen

OK. I promised you a thread on this batshit insane "Keep Trump as President for Life" lawsuit so here it is. The short summary is: "We think there may have been election law violations, so obviously there is no government" courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

To the surprise of none of you

Let's deal with some background. First, you may remember the "Purcell principle" from earlier election law threads. It's the one that says "look, even if there's some law that an election procedure is in violation of, courts won't step in if it's too close to the election"

That's the directive from the Supreme Court, for a very simple reason: As a policy matter, it's better to conduct an election that violates some election procedure law than to shake public confidence - and maybe impact the votes - by changing the rules too close to election day

So it takes a special sort of basic ignorance of the law - you know, the type that might lead someone to commit a federal crime with a 10yr prison sentence & publicly admit it in a court filing - to argue "hey, a technical violation of election law means we have no government"

Luckily for all you election litigation disaster tourists, this lawsuit was filed by not 1 but TWO such interplanetary ignoramuses.

Ignoramuses? Ignorami? What's the correct plural here?

So here goes. We're going to start at the end, because this stuff is just too special to make you wait for.

Here's the signature block of the treasonweasels submitting this embarassment to the legal profession and great State of Texas

I mean seriously, what's up with that? Are you really so shaken free from the bonds of mere sanity that you think your signature block in a federal complaint is a good place to whine about being fired for the minor offense of participating in a coup attempt?

I mean, I get that your signature block says you were "peacefully protesting" but why did you say in your Instagram video that you were "trying to get into the Capitol"? Cause, you know, those are two minorly different things

hold on, checking something

Yeah, so it was a given that the former AGC at an insurance company wouldn't have much of a civil rights litigation background. I kind of wondered if he had any civil litigation background at all.

Turns out he does.

This is his bio as of 2016 - he was an employment litigator at a very big law firm, Andrews Kurth, that has since merged into an even bigger firm to become Hunton Andrews Kurth. That's a no-fooling real litigation background in a place that trains well web.archive.org/web/2016042804…

Which only makes my level of what-the-fuckery at how disastrous this particular complaint is even higher. I'm legitimately worried that this guy had a psychotic break at some point

For example, let's take a look at what he's asking for

So ... um ... that's a lot

Let's take this slowly.

He'd like the Court, ever so kindly, to say that a coordinate branch of government (Congress) doesn't exist and can't act

That includes not letting the Senate proceed with the impeachment trial of Donald John Trump (the middle name is important, you wouldn't want to confuse him with some other Donald Trump the Senate might want to impeach, which these galactic morons would apparently be ok with)

He would also like the Court to tell the *other* coordinate branch of government - the Executive - that its constitutional duty to enforce the laws notwithstanding, and its unreviewable prosecutorial discretion aside, he and his co-counsel can't be arrested for criming

Because *obviously*, arresting Paul and Kellye for criming would be an attempt to intimidate the Plaintiffs (who are organizations that can't be arrested and semi-anonymous individuals who, what the hell, might be), since, you know, they couldn't just go find a non-crimey lawyer

Although, TO BE FAIR, the odds that the plaintiffs could find a non-crimey lawyer to take them on if these modern day Daniel Websters are taken out of the picture - let alone provide services at a similar level - is probably microscopic.

To be fair.

And I do appreciate their proposed carve-out: "OK, fine, they can arrest us if they can show that our crime of violence caused 'substantial injury' to someone else."

This is important; if all they did was commit a violent federal crime that didn't substantially injure someone...

that's clearly not important enough to warrant arrest, not when they are busy on the PEOPLE's business of <checks notes> removing the government by ex-parte TRO

They would also like it very much if the Court would order the current President to just sort of stick around after the Constitutionally mandated end of his term; after all, if Congress couldn't lawfully count the electoral votes confirming he lost, it's only fair.

Seriously, how do two people with this warped a view of how the law works make it through a law school? Any law school, let alone one as good as the University of Texas? This is the magic-spell theory of law, where appropriate incantations can grant wishes

Like ... there's literally no mechanism by which any of this could happen, even if every other word of this crazy-shorts filing were true and legally correct. None of this is a thing courts can do, and how could anyone even imagine otherwise?

"Set aside the US government?"
"Grant me immunity from prosecution even though I crimed, admitted it on video, and posted the video to Instagram, where it was then widely viewed and reported on"?

And guys ... we're not even to the craziest request for relief, which is this one, right here

They would like the Court to enjoin all 538 members of Congress, along with all 50 governors, as many state Secretaries of State as they could identify, and the governor of Puerto Rico, too, from ever holding office again

But wait, there's more.

They want them stripped of their right to vote in elections or to engage in any political activity at all, including commenting on elections or candidates or participating in any political party

Oh, right, and Mark Zuckerberg, too

Yep, that's it. Because once you've slipped the bonds of reality you can't go home anyway, so you're Constitutionally required to go big. They had no choice here

https://twitter.com/RichSeviora/status/1351747872438435840

They also want punitive and ACTUAL damages. You know, to make them whole from all the money they lost from <checks notes, jumps ahead of the thread a bit> states allegedly violating Congressional rules on how to facilitate voting

There are really only so many ways I can say that this is crazy. Insane. Reach into the toilet to rescue a turd you think is the reincarnation of your grandmother's cat lunacy. Rooting for the Patriots.

We're talking levels of madness not normally accessible to man or beast

With that in mind, I'm not going to wade into the specifics of the allegations too deeply; @questauthority had you covered on that earlier today. I'll hit the high(low)lights

https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/1351592458581372934

Let's talk about this caption. There are a couple of things to notice.

First, apparently Sessions, McConnell, Pelosi, Schumer, and AOC are so not nice they had to sue them twice. Once as an individually named defendant and then again as a defendant named by membership in congress

Which ... is not a thing, btw. You can't just put in your caption "anyone who fits in this category" unless you're attempting to sue a defendant class (which there's, like, a whole procedure for and is very tough to do). You've got to name them all.

Same problem with "et al"-ing 100 or so additional defendants (governors and secs of state) who you thought "hey, what if I just name them in an exhibit, instead of in the caption, that should work, right?"

Also, let's pause for a second to appreciate the level of batshit crazy to which AOC manages to drive these subliterate morons. Only 5 Congresscritters got special mention in the caption. 5.

Pete Sessions, who is no doubt the actual congressman of these Texas shitgibbons. The Speaker of the House. The outgoing and incoming Senate Majority Leaders.

And AOC, a just-now second term congresswoman from the Bronx.

She is living so far in the heads of these catastrophic wastes of oxygen and assorted other natural resources, and she does it rent free.

As for the plaintiffs, its a couple of "minorities for Trump" political organizations - because of course it is - one guy with at least the intestinal fortitude to put his name on it, and four other plaintiffs who apparently wanted to be part of the circus but not so much a part

that they were willing to sign their actual names as one of the clowns

Which, I suppose indicates a modicum of self-awareness and capacity for shame, so to that I say

Hahahahaha I kid, of course. They're just afraid that Antifa will notice their obvious winning lawsuit and - in desperation - lash out physically to try and prevent them from carrying on. Look at it that way, their anonymity is actually part of saving the republic.

They're doing it for us, y'all. For us.

I feel like everyone talked about the footnote but guys, we've got to talk about the footnote

You really have to think of it this way: These guys are fundamentally insane, for all the reasons we've touched on.

But even they are like "whoa whoa whoa whoa. Don't go confusing me with Rudy or Sidney. That's insulting"

One of the real benefits of the lunatic right wing not bothering to read any of the actual election law decisions in the prior cases is they make the court's job super easy by expressly pleading "dismiss this case" in the introductions

How many cases have we had that say "if all you have is an undifferentiated harm that's the same as any other citizen's, you don't have standing"? I'm pretty sure that most of you who've been following me and Mike would know not to say this even if you were suing without a lawyer

Yet two honest-to-God bar-passing lawyers (and don't even get me started on how useless the bar exam is) decided to open their complaint with "this failure deprived every single U.S. Citizen, including Plaintiffs, of ..."

Like for fuck's sake, guys. At least make the defendants and the court work to figure out why your claim is shit.

Don't open your complaint with "your Honor, before we get to the substance of our underpants-on-the-head legal theories, here's why we lose regardless"

Seriously. Any clerk or judge reading this as part of the application for a TRO can just close up the papers and put it away now.

In the second goddamned paragraph of the complaint. That's got to be a new record, even for this nonsense, right?

BTW, HAVA?

I wish I could tell you which provision to look at, but in their 54 page, 126 paragraph complaint seeking the minor relief of deposing the US government (and not in the fun, court-reporter transcript of me blowing up your case sense) ...

They don't bother to mention which provision they think was violated, or which specific conduct they think violated it.

Because that would just be too damn much.

By ... by violating HAVA?

THIS HAVA? govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PL…

Like, I can't even mentally conceive of a way in which a 50-state conspiracy to violate HAVA could make any possible sense. You ... you think ALABAMA conspired with CALIFORNIA to rig the election? That's really the story you're going with?

This is so goddamned special, I just can't

Forget the "conceivable remedy" part. Your position is that 6 plaintiffs have the ability to challenge the election laws in 50 states? How exactly does that work?

And that the Court should just say "well, no US government until we do a few months of discovery and hold a trial?"

I mean, even on the cocktail of psilocybin and methamphetemines these folks are clearly taking, how did you think this was a possible thing? Why not just ask the Court to appoint a new Congress of your choosing? That would be likelier to be granted than this, frankly

1) Don't worry your Honor. Tossing out the government would be GOOD for democracy. You can tell by our all caps

2) There doesn't actually need to be a congressional electoral count for the new president to be elected, btw.

No, seriously. Both Article 2 and the 12th Amendment provide that the person receiving the majority of the electoral votes becomes president. They also both say that the votes are opened by the VP and then counted

Neither Article 2 nor the 12th Amendment say that Electoral votes only count if they are counted by duly elected Congressmen and Senators, and it's actually NOT Congress as a body that does any of the physical counting

I'm sure we're all much more familiar with the process now than we ever used to be or wanted to be, but it's pretty simple.

The VP opens the certificates. He passes them to tellers, who examine the certificates and report the total votes on them. He then announces the votes to the joint session of Congress. Congress, under the Electoral Count Act, has the ability to raise objections to the count

The key thing in all of this isn't "a validly elected Congress doing the counting" it's "who got the most Electoral votes"

And even in these hamster-brains' fantasy land, VP Pence, who opened the certificates and announced the vote totals? Validly elected. The Electors? Valid

So really, on their theory of the universe, the only "validly authorized Federal officials?" One President Joseph R. Biden and Vice President Kamala D. Harris

These are bad people

No, seriously, they can fuck off into the sun.

Did you catch that?

No, not just the wrapping themselves in the supposed mantle of minority rights.

The suggestion that all those other voting rights plaintiffs and martyrs before? They were sectarian racists who only cared about Black voters. Unlike these plaintiffs, who care about ALL voters.

Guys, I'm actually going to tap out here. It's getting late, but really, after reading that particular piece of epic shitbaggery I'm no longer in the mood to lightheartedly mock the craziness of this filing

They just walked over to the memory of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, of Alberta Odell Jones, of Reverend George Lee, of Lamar Smith, of too many names I didn't even know, and tried to piss on it in aid of Donald fucking Trump

These are bad fucking people. Their filing is epic hot garbage for all the reasons we've been talking about, not fit to be used as birdcage liner, and still, if you gave me a choice between either only being able to file papers of that quality or becoming a human of that quality

It would take me all of two seconds to choose destroying my professional career, which I love to death, over becoming that.

These fucking people.

G'night