Many boxes
Powell attempted the Sheer Volume defense.
Powell insisted the volume of the suit they filed last November was testament to the extent of research and investigation the attorneys did.
“We filed a massive and detailed complaint in federal court that doesn’t even require us to append affidavits to it,” Powell said. “The very fact we filed 960 pages of affidavits with the complaint shows due diligence on our part. … The only way to test that is in the crucible of a trial or an evidentiary hearing,” she added, noting that the judge had thus far denied such a hearing.
Listen, it’s millions of words of bullshit, surely that counts for something.
“Volume, certainly for this court, doesn’t equate with legitimacy or veracity,” Parker shot back.
There oughta be an apothegm about that – A billion lies are as nothing compared to a single truth, or something like that. Attributed to Calvin Coolidge or Lucille Ball or whatever.
In a motion last December urging punishment of Powell, Wood and others, the city’s legal team wrote: “If sanctions are not deserved in this case, it is hard to imagine a case where they would be.”
“In a case involving the election of the President of the United States, the parties and their attorneys should be held to the highest standards of factual and legal due diligence; instead, they have raised false allegations and pursued unsupportable legal theories,” the city argued. “It is time for this Court to send a message back: lies and frivolous claims will not be tolerated. This abuse of our legal system deserves the strongest possible sanctions.”
It’s so awful it’s funny, but really it’s not funny at all.
[City attorney Herschel Fink said the misstatements in the court filings, like a claim that 139 percent of registered voters in Detroit cast ballots, had grave consequences. The correct turnout number reported by the city is just under 51 percent.
“These lies were put out into the world, and when they were put out into the world they were adopted and received by” influential people such as Trump, Fink said. He said that when Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to pressure him to flip the election to favor Trump, the president brought up the Detroit numbers.
“President Trump explicitly referenced the 139 percent voting statistic in Detroit as though it were fact,” Fink said. “These are the consequences. It’s the consequence of how they abused this system.”
And by the way what is Detroit famous for besides cars? For being a destination city during the Great Migration, and for remaining a majority Black city. It’s not a coincidence that these sleazes chose Detroit for their big lie.
“Sure, we told the court lies. But we told A LOT of them!”
It’s sort of the reverse of that bit about “the food at that restaurant is so bad. And the portions are so small!”
More seriously — this argument is counterproductive on multiple levels. One thing that became clear in the accounts of the hearing I read was how little (if any) vetting was done on the affidavits that were submitted. In some instances, they simply filed copies of affidavits that were filed in lawsuits in other jurisdictions. In others, they filed affidavits alleging various “improprieties” that were not improprieties at all under Michigan election law, e.g. “I saw people dropping off ballots for more people than were in the car,” when it is perfectly legal in Michigan to drop off another voter’s ballot for them. In still others, they filed affidavits that were implausible on their face, without making any effort to satisfy themselves that they were true or even plausible.
Pointing out that you filed a lot of paper that you didn’t need to file illustrates that you actually had plenty of time and resources to devote to this case, you just didn’t care about accuracy. It undermines the “but they were acting in good faith” argument that the lawyers’ lawyer was using at times.
Of course, the “good faith” defense was shaky to begin with. If all they had done was file some dodgy evidence and then backed off it and corrected/withdrawn/apologized for it when the dodginess was pointed out, they probably would have been ok. But they stood by it after the falsehoods were pointed out. They stood by it after the sanctions motion was served. Some of them continued to stand by it in the hearing today!
When all this litigation was going on, I was skeptical that any of the Trump-aligned lawyers would face any real consequences. But I guess I was assuming that they would have an ounce of self-preservation — that once the cases were out of the news, they would quietly back off, apologize for any inaccuracies and blame it on the time crunch, etc.
Really curious what’s going on with these people. Lin Wood seems to have serious psychological issues, so he’s not a surprise. Powell I had pegged as more of a cynical opportunist, which I suppose might still be true; perhaps she’s calculated that there’s a gig on Fox News or wherever that is worth more to her than her bar license. Newman seems to be the one in today’s group who had enough sense to try to avoid antagonizing the judge.
Story of my life these days. I seem to be always staring at people in slack-jawed disbelief. WIGOWTP all the time.