As Donald Trump wages an unprecedented campaign against his own country’s democracy, desperately trying to nullify election results he doesn’t like, the president has assembled a shrinking legal team of underwhelming attorneys.
There’s no shortage of problems associated with their efforts — the lawyers have a ridiculous client, for example, who expects them to find a way to invalidate a national election — but there are a couple of areas that seem especially glaring.
First, there are the rookie mistakes that suggest these folks literally don’t know what they’re doing. For example, Rudy Giuliani has flubbed questions that first-year law students should know the answers to; Team Trump has confused Michigan and Minnesota; and their lawsuits have made outlandish demands with no credible chance of success.
Reflecting on the “elementary errors” from the president’s lawyers, the Associated Press noted late last week, “When President Donald Trump sends lawyers to court, it seems he’s not sending his best.”
Second, one might be more forgiving of Team Trump’s sloppy and careless work if the president’s lawyers were winning their cases, but they’re not. Over the weekend, as NBC News reported, the team suffered one of its most embarrassing defeats to date.
A federal judge on Saturday dismissed a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s campaign in Pennsylvania, saying it contained “strained legal argument without merit.” U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann turned down the request for an injunction, dealing another blow to Trump’s hopes of invalidating the election’s results.
The judge in the case issued a rather brutal takedown of the Trump campaign’s case, lamenting the fact that the president’s lawyers asked the court to “disenfranchise almost 7 million voters,” with litigation based on “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations.”
“Rather than requesting that their votes be counted, they seek to discredit scores of other votes, but only for one race,” Brann wrote in his 37-page ruling. “This is simply not how the Constitution works.” He went on to marvel at the fact that Team Trump didn’t bother to produce “factual proof of rampant corruption.”
Four days before the ruling was issued, Jenna Ellis, a member of the president’s legal team, wrote on Twitter, in reference to the Pennsylvania case, “You media morons are all laughing at [Rudy Giuliani], but he appears to have already established a great rapport with the judge.”
Of course, us media morons can’t help but notice this “great rapport” didn’t stop Brann from tearing Giuliani’s case to shreds. Many on the right immediately pointed to the fact that the judge in the case was nominated by President Barack Obama, arguing that Team Trump only lost because the jurist is progressive. That’s wrong: Obama did nominate Brann, but he was part of a bipartisan compromise with Pennsylvania’s two U.S. senators — Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Pat Toomey — the latter of whom chose Brann, a member of the conservative Federalist Society. In fact, after the ruling, the GOP senator noted in a written statement that the judge in the case is “a longtime conservative Republican.” That apparently didn’t help Team Trump at all. The president’s lawyers are filing an appeal with the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. It’s not expected to go well.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
