SCOTUS to Trump: No
First, the attempt:
President Donald Trump and 17 U.S. states on Wednesday threw their support behind a long-shot lawsuit by Texas seeking to overturn his election loss by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the voting results in four states.
Dear Supreme Court: please throw out the votes in four states, love Don.
Trump, defeated by President-elect Joe Biden in the Nov. 3 election, filed a motion with the court asking the nine justices to let him intervene and become a plaintiff in the suit filed on Tuesday by Republican-governed Texas against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
…
In a separate brief, lawyers for 17 states led by Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt also urged the justices to hear the case.
Then, the failure:
The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that sought to invalidate 10 million votes in four battleground states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — that President Trump lost.
…
“The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot,” the Supreme Court wrote.
That’s judicialese for “this is a crock of shit, go away and stop being such a baby.”
Yep. And don’t read anything into the “dissent” of Alito and Thomas — their dissent was a hypertechnical one. Both justices have previously taken the position that the Court must accept any case invoking its original jurisdiction, i.e. that the whole “motion for leave to file” requirement is unconstitutional. I have no opinion on the merits of that proposition, other than a knee-jerk reaction to doubt any constitutional view that only Thomas and Alito hold, but they’re just being consistent with prior positions. And their dissent made clear that that’s all they took issue with — they would not have granted any of the other requested relief, and expressed no opinion on the merits of the case.
I guess technically they didn’t even label it a dissent, just a “statement.”
That’s the thing these idiots forget: the Court is on average Lawful Evil (it’s gotten more Evil than Lawful under Trump, but it’s still a true statement)
If you’re trying nonsense you need to be *technically correct* (the best kind of correct) instead of “DO THINGS BECAUSE”…
“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections”.
Saw this coming, maybe they can make him King of Texas or something. Leave the rest of us alone.
OMG, I just came across the Most Trump Thing, Ever.
Remember that story a while ago about how Trump’s attorneys mistakenly filed a case in the Court of Federal Claims, instead of the District Court for the Western District of Michigan? The next day, they filed in Michigan, and the Federal Claims court dismissed the action there.
Well, apparently, Trump’s lawyers sent a letter to the Clerk of the Federal Claims court requesting a refund of their $400 filing fee, on the grounds that the federal courts’ electronic filing system had screwed up and caused the error.
Yes, the campaign that has raised many millions of dollars and wasted many hours of lawyer time on stupid court cases was demanding a $400 refund. So check off CHEAP on your bingo cards.
Well, the clerk referred the request to the judge, who issued an order denying the request. As the judge pointed out, the campaign’s claim of a screw-up by the court’s computers was nonsense, and this was clearly a screw-up by the attorney or his or her staff:
So that’s the DISHONEST space taken care of.
The judge goes on to note that actually, it is possible to seek a refund of filing fees paid inadvertently due to human error on the part of the filer, so the campaign might have gotten their $400 back if they’d simply come clean about it, but now that they’ve lied, forget it. So there’s INCOMPETENT.
In other words, the Trump legal team, having made a mistake (and I’m just going to give them a pass on the initial screw-up — these things happen), then lied about what happened in an attempt to get a lousy $400 back, and ended up with a federal judge calling them dishonest and giving them nothing. (In nice, federal-judge-speak.)
That is just a magnificent little illustration of the man himself. Cheap, Dishonest, and Incompetent.
Happy Biden Wins Again Day, everyone!
It’s like a Christmas pudding packed full of goodness!
[…] a comment by Screechy Monkey on SCOTUS to Trump: […]
Screechy, I think it checks off the karma box as well. Is that a bingo?
The Supreme Court has been very firm on issues of standing; I suspected that would be their response. I hoped that would be their response. Good for them. Texas asking to throw out the votes of citizens of other states because they don’t like the result is very…well, very Texas. But the rest of us don’t have to accept it; we are free to point and laugh. (And I apologize to all my Texas friends, who are lovely people, and as liberal as anyone on this site. I sympathize; they have to live with these people.)
1. Stack the Supreme Court with constitutional literalists and then bring a suit asking them to overturn black letter law
2. Set a precedent for states suing other states for how they handle matters within their own constitutional remit.
3. California sues Texas for insufficient environmental legislation or refusal to place reasonable constraints on 2A rights
4. Profit
The irony the entire Supreme Court, including all three Trump appointees, said no is so delicious.
And it’s made even better by the fact that Trump cannot figure out why. “I put you on that court, you were supposed to do my bidding!”
James,
Funny how quickly we went from “we just want judges who will follow the law, who will call balls and strikes, and how dare you suggest that Kavanaugh’s spittle-flecked rage and vows of revenge are contrary to a proper judicial temperament” to “why won’t these justices show personal loyalty to the Dear Leader”?
I mean, not funny ha-ha.