Election Lawsuits Meltdown… With Prejudice!

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I love that this isnt the first time LegalEagle talked about "with prejudice" even this year. His explanation of it in Lindsey Ellis's video about the Omegaverse lawsuit gave me life

👍︎︎ 117 👤︎︎ u/Doc891 📅︎︎ Nov 29 2020 🗫︎ replies

Solid summarization and much appreciated.

👍︎︎ 69 👤︎︎ u/phactual 📅︎︎ Nov 29 2020 🗫︎ replies

The skillshare “writing believable fiction” plug at the end of the video was HILARIOUS. I laughed so loudly my neighbor asked me what was so funny.

👍︎︎ 60 👤︎︎ u/must-love-bogs 📅︎︎ Nov 29 2020 🗫︎ replies

I think the whole point of these lawsuits is to undermine Biden and be vindictive towards the Democrats. I think Trump knows his base largely won't fact check and will believe anything that he throws at them. A part of me wants to believe he is this stupid. Another part of me thinks this is completely coordinated.

👍︎︎ 92 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Nov 29 2020 🗫︎ replies

"They have been walking into rakes, and they will continue to be walking into rakes."

This is maybe the best summation I've ever heard of this entire mishegoss.

If not for this sub, I never would know about Legal Eagle. Thank you all, individually and as a group.

👍︎︎ 40 👤︎︎ u/karendonner 📅︎︎ Nov 29 2020 🗫︎ replies

I do wish they would have covered what the Supreme Court appeals would look like and the circumstances around those, but the video may have been made immediately before those became relevant.

Nonetheless, LegalEagle is a pretty entertaining content creator and I think he does help people who are less knowledgeable or experienced with law (like myself) understand it a bit more. Nobody should be your only source of law information, but LegalEagle seems to have a pretty positive reputation.

👍︎︎ 12 👤︎︎ u/Wwlink55 📅︎︎ Nov 29 2020 🗫︎ replies

This guy clearly knows nothing about law.

-some commenter on r/conservative, probably.

👍︎︎ 38 👤︎︎ u/gr33nm4n 📅︎︎ Nov 29 2020 🗫︎ replies

Trump “dream” team (because they’re always dreaming).

👍︎︎ 8 👤︎︎ u/qtpss 📅︎︎ Nov 29 2020 🗫︎ replies

Can't wait to see the crazy arguments Viva Frei and Barnes law try to make and try claiming that there is fraud. No seriously don't try watching their videos the legal gymnastics they go through to support Trump is nuts.

👍︎︎ 10 👤︎︎ u/drtywater 📅︎︎ Nov 29 2020 🗫︎ replies
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- This episode of LegalEagle was made possible by Skillshare. Believe it or not, I actually was not going to do another election lawsuit video, but just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in. - Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. - And here, (laughs) there's actually so much hilarious stuff that's going on that you'd never know it if you've never litigated in federal court before. I was going to say, "You wouldn't know it if you hadn't practiced at a high level in federal court before," but honestly, even if you've practiced at a low level in federal court, you'd know how crazy these shenanigans are. Because, frankly, when democracy is at stake, the only thing that you can do is laugh, but I feel like it's incumbent upon me to share the humor, to explain why some of the things that are happening in these Trump campaign lawsuits are so particularly funny. Why the Trump lawyers are so, so bad at this and why they keep failing in spectacular fashion. Because so far, they've been walking into rakes, and they will continue to walk into rakes. (stately music) And at base, these lawsuits are just going down in flames. They're either being dismissed by the Trump campaign itself and not wanting to prosecute or litigate these cases, or they're getting dismissed by the judges. And recently we have some momentous decisions in Pennsylvania that seem to be a bellwether for the rest of these cases, and other states are just simply certifying the election results regardless of the lawsuits and it doesn't seem like these lawsuits are going to change the results. And just because the lawsuits themselves don't have any merit doesn't mean that they can't also screw it up by litigating them poorly. Now, today we're going to update some of the lawsuits that we previously talked about, talk about some of the new lawsuits that have been filed and a lot of the oral argument that has taken place, and various filings that have been filed with the federal courts. But first, I'm afraid we have to start with the insane press conference that happened at the RNC that was led by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, two of President Trump's remaining lawyers. Now, this was one of the wildest press conferences ever given on behalf of the president of the United States, and that includes the one given at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Now, you might have seen clips from this press conference, not only because President Trump tweeted out that this was going to reveal a path to victory, but also because Rudy Giuliani had a meltdown on camera, and I'm not saying that metaphorically. He appeared to literally melt down. We're not exactly sure what happened to Rudy Giuliani, but it appears that profuse sweating mixed with some hair dye led to rivulets of black liquid pouring down both sides of his face. Now, people are wondering why Rudy Giuliani would even bother to put hair dye on his remaining hair, but I think this sort of makes sense in a weird way. There's a theory of neurolinguistics that says that if you adopt the vocal mannerisms of a person that you're talking to and their physical characteristics, then they're more likely to agree with you. So if you are the lawyer for the man who has the most famous bad hair job in history, then it sorta makes sense that you would do crazy things to your own hair. It's really just good client management. And here is Rudy talking about and reenacting "My Cousin Vinny." - Did you all watch "My Cousin Vinny"? Do you know the movie? It's one of my favorite law movies 'cause he comes from Brooklyn, and when the nice lady who said she saw, and then he says to her, "How many fingers do I got up?" And she says, "Three." Well, she was too far away to see it was only two. These people were further away than "My Cousin Vinny" was from the witness. - Which, good for Rudy. He does more or less accurately recount that scene in "My Cousin Vinny," but it's hard not to think of Andy Dwyer recounting his favorite movies when you hear Rudy Giuliani off on this weird tangent about this particular movie. Yes, that's a long way of saying that things that are further away are harder to see, and there are reports that Giuliani was enticed to come back as the president's lawyer by being paid $20,000 per day, so I would just like to say that if anyone wants to pay me $20,000 per day, I also know "My Cousin Vinny" very, very well and I can recite scenes from "My Cousin Vinny" with at least the kind of fidelity that Rudy Giuliani has. - Eggs and grits. I like grits too. - Now, I think it's interesting to point out that at this point in the litigation, President Trump is not represented by the lawyers that represented him in the impeachment hearings. People like Jay Sekulow, John Dowd and Ty Cobb. Now, say what you will about those particular lawyers, they have an active practice with a whole fleet of lawyers that work for them and they have certainly gotten results in different contexts, but Rudy Giuliani, it appears, hasn't appeared in federal court since 1992. But it's not just Rudy Giuliani. Trump campaign lawyer, Sidney Powell, blamed Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China for Trump's losses. - Massive influence of communist money. - Powell used to be a reasonably respected lawyer, but recently she's gone full deep state conspiracy tinfoil hat, and not for nothing, she is also the lawyer for Mike Flynn. Take that as you will. But Sidney Powell's theory is that the Dominion voting machines used throughout America were originally engineered by Hugo Chavez to ensure that he never lost an election, despite the fact that Chavez has been dead since 2013, and hand recounts have confirmed that Biden beat Trump in various states, and it would be easy to check the electronic records against the physical ballots, but don't let that get in the way of a great conspiracy theory. Of course, Rudy also dismissed the hand recount out of hand by reenacting how the votes could have been cast for Mickey Mouse or a dead person or one person voting 30 times. - That could have been Mickey Mouse. - All these examples really happened, he says, bereft of any evidence whatsoever. And Jenna Ellis, the third lawyer for the Trump campaign in this conference, explained that people asking for evidence of these claims just don't understand how the legal process works. - Your question is fundamentally flawed when you're asking, "Where's the evidence?" What we have asked for in the court is to not have the certification of false results. - And, yeah, fair enough. If you call a press conference, you are not obligated to provide the evidence, but this press conference is not for the court's benefit but for the public's benefit and if you have the evidence you might actually want to present that evidence, both in the court of public opinion and in the actual court, but we've seen time and time again that the Trump campaign is just simply not reiterating these grand conspiracy theories in court where they have the potential to be sanctioned. And Sidney Powell went on to claim without evidence that in the middle of the night, someone from Dominion came in and injected the votes into Detroit. - Well, I'm talking about some massive straight lines up in the vote tallies in the middle of the night after they've supposedly stopped counting, and that's when the Dominion operators went in and injected votes and changed the whole system. - We've already seen effectively zero discrepancies where there's a hand count of the Dominion machines. And interestingly, Sidney Powell, after this conference, went on to claim that Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, conspired with Democrats to win Georgia for the presidency but not the Senate seats, and perhaps as a result of these claims, Sidney Powell was effectively dismissed shortly thereafter by Jenna Ellis via tweet, which can only be described as a public knifing. It was pretty brutal to just publicly disavow her after weeks of saying that Sidney Powell is the tip of the spear of this Trump campaign effort and just being completely sidelined, though Rudy Giuliani has not been sidelined, which is interesting. This was a legal meltdown for all of the Trump campaign lawyers, not just Sidney Powell, and especially Rudy Giuliani, so it's interesting that he's staying on. And because everything is now a metaphor, to add insult to injury, or I suppose snot to hair dye, there's a point in this conference where Rudy sneezes into a handkerchief, flips the handkerchief over, and then smears it all over his face in an attempt to get the hair dye off. That pretty much sums up this conference in a nutshell. Although the Trump campaign legal team has referred to themselves as an elite strike force. - This is an elite strike force team. - As David Fahrenthold said, they're more like the Fyre Festival of the legal world. Which is a great segue into the actual cases themselves, and one of the cases in particular in Pennsylvania gave rise to one of the most epic oral arguments I've ever heard in my life, as well as one of the most interesting decisions by the court, which we'll get to both in a second, but first I want to say a debt of gratitude to Marc Elias and his team at democracydocket.com. Not only is Marc and his team keeping tabs on all the different election suits, but they're often in the front lines litigating this stuff in court. Democracy Docket has been a godsend in trying to keep track of all of these different cases, and there are a lot of them, so if you were to go to democracydocket.com and donate, I would definitely not blame you, and I think I'll go there myself. But as Marc and his team are want to point out, at this point, the Trump campaign and the Trump administration in court are about 2 for 35, and the two that they've won are barely wins. They're more like participation trophies. So it's not to say that these lawsuits should not have been brought and that they're good for democracy or anything, but that is to say that they are losing pretty spectacularly and that ratio is unlikely to change and they're unlikely to have any effect on the results of the election whatsoever. (screen chimes) Hey, it is a future Devin, and things have been moving so fast that in the time it has taken to put this video together, things have actually changed dramatically. So first of all, the Trump campaign is more like 1 and 39 at this point. They actually lost one of their victories, so you can take one away from the win column and now it is in the loss column, and there has been a very, very interesting appeal that has come out which I will talk about towards the end of the video. So, back to prior Devin. Wa! (screen chimes) But with that caveat, let's get into the Pennsylvania case. It's one of the more consequential cases, and we've talked about it before, which is Donald J. Trump for President versus Kelly Boockvar. This started out as the case that referred to pole watchers, spelled P-O-L-E, which you would expect for maybe a case in New Jersey, but not Pennsylvania. But this whole case is a lesson in basic civil procedure. I could probably teach an entire class on civil procedure just using the court's decision in this case that came out just a couple of days ago over the weekend. So quick summary of this case for context. Here the Trump campaign, on behalf of several voters, sued the Pennsylvania Secretary of State, Kathy Boockvar. They made two main claims, one related to curing ballots and the other related to poll watchers, and on that basis, effectively the Trump campaign sought to de-certify the results in Pennsylvania or prevent the certification from happening. Now, related to the curing of ballots, they claim that these two individual voters had their votes disregarded and that different voters in the state, based on what county you are, were able to cure their ballots if they were defective. Some counties adopted a process where you could cure the ballots and some counties is not, and these individuals lived in a county where you couldn't cure those particular ballots because they were manifestly defective. And then the second was related to poll watchers not being close enough. Now at this point we're gonna have to get into some civil procedure, but trust me, it will be worth it because it's really incredibly interesting. Because originally in this case, the Trump campaign issued a complaint, which is the document that starts the lawsuit. It contains all of your factual allegations. The story of what you say happens. The original complaint contained all kinds of allegations of fraud, but you're allowed, within certain timeframes, to amend your complaint, and new lawyers came on, and effectively they were adults in the room, removed all the allegations of fraud, for reasons we'll talk about in a second, and then the Trump campaign wanted to reverse that and add the fraud allegations back. Now, the timeline goes something like this. This lawsuit was filed on November 9th by lawyers at Porter Wright which is a fairly well-regarded firm, which is probably why they left, which we'll get to, and another law office of Linda Kerns. Now, these lawyers filed the original complaint but moved to withdraw just four days later on November 13th. The judge allowed the Porter Wright lawyers to leave. And then on November 15th, Trump's new lawyers amended the complaint and some Texas lawyers joined the case. Linda Kerns is still representing Trump at this point, and the amended complaint dropped counts three through seven of the original complaint, the ones that had all the fraud in them. The judge scheduled a hearing on November 17th, and on November 16th, just one day after the lawyers filed the amended complaint, the lawyers filed a motion to withdraw from the case, and a third set of lawyers filed a motion to continue the hearing because they had just joined, which under normal circumstances would probably happen, but when you're kind of playing shenanigans, the judge is unlikely to allow that kind of stuff. And here the judge denied this motion because there were lawyers still on the case and you can't just muck up the schedule because you're hiring and firing lawyers. And on November 17th, the day of the hearing, Rudy Giuliani files a petition to appear on behalf of the Trump campaign. This was the fourth change in representation in seven days. Rudy then attends the hearing, which we'll get to because it's hilarious, and he also files the second amended complaint. But the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure don't allow plaintiffs to amend their complaints an unlimited number of times. You can't just create a moving target to avoid dismissal. Plaintiffs generally get one amended complaint as a matter of right within a certain number of days, and then subsequent amendments require the leave of court, require discretion of the court to allow you to do it. Nevertheless, at the same time, the defendants were filing a motion to dismiss, to get rid of this case entirely, and Rudy and his team filed responses to that motion to dismiss that made new claims that were outside the four corners of the first amended complaint, that there were a grand scheme to elect Joe Biden and the voters were treated unequally. I mean, it's a whole mess, which leads to the oral argument arguing this motion to dismiss. Rudy Giuliani was there to try to prevent the court from dismissing this case out of hand, and this oral argument was one for the ages. Here Rudy Giuliani had a hard time grasping what was in the first amended complaint, what was deleted, and what he was trying to add by amending again to add a second amended complaint. So here's Rudy arguing that there was stuff in the complaint that simply wasn't there. - [Rudy] The only clarification is that we are gonna seek leave, and we've already prepared it, to amend this complaint to restore our due process claim which we think was mistakenly removed. But we are withdrawing, we're preserving for appeal the elector and the Elections Clause, but we will not be proceeding on that. - And some of this was in the deleted second amended complaint, but Rudy basically told the court, "My bad. It couldn't be helped. Changing of a lot of lawyers. Shrug emoji." And there's a crucial part of this oral argument where Rudy has a hard time distinguishing whether he is alleging fraud in the amended complaint or if he isn't arguing fraud in the amended complaint. - [Judge Brann] So it's correct to say then that you're not alleging fraud in the amended complaint? - [Rudy] No, Your Honor, it is not, because we incorporate by reference, in 150, all of the allegations that precede it which include a long explanation of a fraudulent process, a planned, fraudulent process- - [Judge Brann] So you are alleging a fraud? - Yes, Your Honor. - And, of course, at other times he's arguing the complete opposite. - [Judge Brann] Does the amended complaint plead fraud with particularity? - [Rudy] No, Your Honor, and it doesn't plead fraud. - And the reason that this is so important is because that one of the Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 9b, requires that if you allege fraud, you have to plead that with what's called particularity. Normally when you file a lawsuit, you can just file allegations on information and belief that you think this happened, and this is called notice pleading. But here, if you allege fraud or a mistake, you have to allege the actual particularized facts and you can't get away with just pleading these weird, nebulous claims. So if he is actually arguing fraud, then the standard by which he has to plead his case is much, much higher, and he obviously doesn't want to do that. But Rudy was often confused about what he actually wanted throughout this particular oral argument, which takes me to my favorite part of this particular hearing, where Rudy Giuliani is trying to explain the standard of law that applies. Now remember, for context, that this is on a motion to dismiss. So the defendants have filed a motion for the court to just throw this case out, and when you file such a motion, generally speaking, you have to assume that every factual allegation that the the plaintiffs have pled is true, so you're only looking at whether it states a legal claim. You're not testing the sufficiency of the factual allegations. Now, there's some nuance to that, but that's generally what's going on. But at the same time, if you, as a plaintiff, are arguing that a governmental law is unconstitutional, as they were here, then there's also a level of scrutiny that the court must apply in terms of determining whether this law is unconstitutional or not. So there's the standard for the motion to dismiss and then there's the standard for examining whether the law itself is constitutional or not, so that's the setup for what's happening right here. The judge asks Rudy what standard should be applied. - [Judge Brann] Are you arguing then that strict scrutiny should apply? - [Rudy] No, the normal scrutiny should apply. If we had alleged fraud, yes, but this is not a fraud cause. - And what you can hear is that there's confusion. The judge is talking about the scrutiny that will be applied to determining whether the Pennsylvania law is constitutional. Rudy misunderstands and he thinks that they're talking about the standard that will apply to the motion to dismiss, which is why he says normal scrutiny. Now, that's not really a thing, but what he's saying is that we should give the plaintiff the benefit of the doubt, assume the factual allegations are true, and that's the standard on the motion to dismiss. And it's not crazy that you would talk about these two different standards. It's ships passing in the night. That's understandable, but what we're about to hear is totally inexcusable. The judge continues to talk about the scrutiny, the level of scrutiny towards the Pennsylvania law, and Rudy just misses the mark entirely. - [Judge Brann] Why don't Secretary Boockvar's and the county's satisfy the standard review that you're talking about? If it's not strict scrutiny and it's the standard review you're implying, why don't their actions satisfy this? - [Rudy] I'm sorry, I don't really understand the question, Your Honor. - [Judge Brann] Well, this is how I would look at it. I would think that it's a standard review of strict scrutiny, essentially. You're not sure that that's the case. I'm not imposing my- - [Rudy] Maybe I don't understand what you mean by scrutiny. - So here the judge is clearly talking about how he should analyze the Pennsylvania law itself, not the standard on the motion to dismiss. Generally there's three types of scrutiny when a court is analyzing a law for constitutionality. One is rational basis review, which is how courts generally look at laws. It's assumed that as long as the legislature has any rational basis, that law will be upheld. Then there are certain times when you use intermediate scrutiny, and then there's what's called strict scrutiny, where if you interfere with a fundamental right, the court will almost always strike it down. That's why it's called strict scrutiny. You're really scrutinizing that particular law. And what's crazy about this is that, as the plaintiff, the Trump campaign is saying that these laws interfere with the voting rights of people in Pennsylvania, so they want strict scrutiny to apply. That makes it easier to get this law disregarded and disregard these particular votes, but Rudy totally misses the mark and doesn't argue in favor of using strict scrutiny. He has no idea what he's talking about. And the difference between strict scrutiny and rational basis review is literally something that you learn on the first day of law school. And in preparation for this, I actually looked at my law school notes and that is a bit of hyperbole. In my class, we didn't do rational basis review versus strict scrutiny until the second day of law school, so it's a bit of hyperbole but not much. Now, after this hearing, the Trump campaign said that Rudy did a fantastic job and that he clearly built up a rapport with Judge Brann, who was the judge here in this particular case, because they were talking about what restaurants to go to and making small talk, but they changed their tune when the judge issued his ruling on Saturday, which I generally refrain from going through actual court decisions on this channel, but this decision is very accessible and is a masterclass in basic civil procedure, probably because this case was so terrible in the first place. But let's start with a couple of different excerpts from this particular case, starting with the introduction because it does a great job of laying out what the stakes are in this particular litigation. "In this action, the Trump Campaign and the Individual Plaintiffs seek to discard millions of votes legally cast by Pennsylvanians from all corners, from Greene County to Pike County and everywhere in between. In other words, Plaintiffs asked this Court to disenfranchise almost 7 million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact that it would have on such a large group of citizens. This has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all of the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more. At bottom, Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Therefore, I grant Defendants' motion and dismiss Plaintiffs' action with prejudice." And then the court goes into a great summary of what actually happened in this case. Here in 2019, Pennsylvania allowed mail voting for all of the people in Pennsylvania. They allowed for various counties to provide for curing of the ballots if there was a defect, but in a prior case, no counties were required to adopt a cure process so different counties have different rules. And here, the two plaintiffs were in counties where they didn't have an opportunity to cure their ballots and they didn't cure their ballots. And then the court goes on to actually analyze the legal merit of the plaintiffs' claims stating that, "Plaintiffs' only remaining claim alleges a violation of equal protection. This claim, like Frankenstein's Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together from two distinct legal theories in an attempt to avoid controlling precedent. The general thrust of this claim is that it is unconstitutional for Pennsylvania to give states discretion to adopt a notice-and-cure policy." In other words, different counties have different rules. And it goes on to state that the "Plaintiffs are trying to mix and match claims and bypass contrary precedent is not lost on the Court." And then the court goes on to analyze the standing issue, and this is something that often gets lost in litigation, but a plaintiff actually has to have suffered an injury. You can't just go to court to get an advisory opinion if you haven't been personally wronged in a legally cognizable way. And here, the court goes on to say that effectively their votes were rejected as were the rules of those particular counties and different counties can have different rules, and that the Trump campaign is not a voter with a rejected vote at all so the Trump campaign doesn't have a standing at all. And then the court gets to the heart of the equal protection argument, and because there's so much misunderstanding about that, I think it's worth going over here because the court summary is really fantastic. The court says, "Contrary to Plaintiffs' assertions, not all unequal treatment requires Court intervention. The Equal Protection Clause does not forbid classifications. It simply keeps governmental decision-makers from treating similarly situated persons differently. The government could not function if complete equality were required in all situations. Consequently, a classification resulting in some inequality will be upheld unless it is based on an inherently suspect characterization or jeopardizes the exercise of a fundamental right." So for example, if you're a store and you want to reject people who don't have a shirt or shoes on, you can do that. That's a classification of people. You're allowed to prevent those people from shopping at your store, but you cannot prevent people from shopping at your store on the basis that their skin color is different. That is a fundamental right and it's a difference between people that is recognized as a inherently suspect classification. So let's connect that concept with what the plaintiffs alleged here regarding their votes and being treated differently. And the court goes on to say, "Here, because Defendants' conduct imposes no burden on individual Plaintiffs' right to vote, their equal-protection claim is subject to rational basis review." Going back to the scrutiny level. "Defendant Counties, by implementing a notice-and-cure procedure, have in fact lifted a burden on the right to vote, even if only for those who live in those counties." In other words, these plaintiffs are arguing that it's not fair that people in the other counties, especially around Philadelphia, were allowed to cure their defective votes when they lived in counties that did not allow for a cure procedure, but that's not how that works. Number one, the people in those other counties had a restriction lifted, and it's okay either way. A county can say, "You're allowed to cure," and a county can also say, "You're not allowed to cure," but you can't argue that you were injured because you didn't live in a county that allowed you to cure your ballot. That's just craziness. And often the level of scrutiny that the court applies is the whole game. If it's rational basis review, the law is probably gonna be upheld, and if it's strict scrutiny, the law will probably be struck. And the court goes on to say, "Individual Plaintiffs' claims fail because it's perfectly rational for a state to provide counties discretion to notify voters that they may cure procedurally defective mail-in ballots." And the court goes on, "Even assuming that they can establish that their right to vote had been denied, which they cannot, Plaintiffs seek to remedy the denial of their votes by invalidating the votes of millions of others. Rather than requesting that their votes be counted, they seek to discredit scores of other votes, but only for one race. This is simply not how the Constitution works." And the race that they're referring to is the presidential race. They want to disregard the votes with respect to the president but not the other down-ballot votes. This is what the court refers to as leveling down as opposed to leveling up. If you leveled up, you'd allow everyone's vote to be counted or at least to be cured, but they are asking the court to level down everyone and disregard all of these other votes that were made that were allowed to be cured. And then the court goes on to say that the allegations with respect to poll watchers, they didn't actually allege that the Republican poll watchers were treated differently than the Democratic poll watchers, so there's no possible equal protection or voting impropriety there. And then in the conclusion the court says, "Defendants' motion to dismiss the First Amended Complaint are granted with prejudice. Leave to amend is denied." Now, I want to point that out because there were a lot of people on the internet who pointed to the with prejudice language as being particularly significant. Even really seasoned lawyers got this one screwed up. What I will say is that the with prejudice language is really not unusual at all. All that means is that the court thinks that allowing the plaintiff to add additional factual allegations would be futile. There's nothing that they can plausibly do to be able to state an actual valid legal claim and so that's why the court is denying leave to amend, because there's nothing that they can do. The claims are gonna fail no matter what. And with prejudice simply means that the decision is being made on the merits of the case and that there's no leave to amend. So with prejudice is something that you see in basically every civil case in the entire world. It doesn't actually carry any more significance other than this case is now over at the trial court level. They can now appeal the decision, but it's over at the trial court. But it does appear that the Trump campaign is going to appeal this particular decision. (screen chimes) Ooh, it's Devin from the future again, and I will tell you, I have seen some stuff. But, interestingly, since I am from the future, I can tell you that the Trump campaign did in fact file an appeal, and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals heard the appeal in basically record time and rejected it. They issued their appeal even before I could get this video out, so I had to re-shoot this pickup, but the Court of Appeals basically said that the trial court, Judge Brann, got this decision exactly right and rejected the Trump campaign's appeal stating, "Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here." And the Court of Appeals actually calls out Rudy Giuliani by name stating, "But as lawyer Rudolph Giuliani stressed, the Campaign 'doesn't plead fraud. This is not a fraud case.' Instead, it objects that Pennsylvania's Secretary of State and some counties restricted poll watchers and let voters fix technical defects in their mail-in ballots. It offers nothing more. This case is not about whether those claims are true. Rather, the Campaign appeals on a very narrow ground: whether the District Court abused its discretion in not letting the Campaign amend its complaint a second time. It did not." This is a case that the Trump campaign was never going to win, but it's interesting because this might be one of the rare instances where a particular lawyer's bad lawyering actually made things worse, and it appears that that's what happened with some of Rudy's admissions, or at least his lawyering. And the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, in an opinion authored by a Trump appointee, points out that the only issue that the Trump campaign appealed on is this very narrow issue of whether the trial court abused its discretion in not allowing them to amend the complaint yet again, and for reasons that we already covered, that was really not going to win anyway. But in many ways the Trump campaign has given up a whole bunch of different issues that they could have raised and just barreled forward with this one narrow issue that's not going to change the day. And the Third Circuit Court of Appeals basically comes as close as they ever will to saying that this was all based on the Chewbacca defense in the first place, where this court actually compares the Trump effort to alchemy stating, "Seeking to turn those state-law claims into federal ones, the Campaign claims discrimination. But its alchemy cannot transmute lead into gold. The Campaign never alleges that any ballot was fraudulent or cast by any illegal voter. It never alleges that any defendant treated the Trump campaign or its votes worse than it treated the Biden campaign or its votes. Calling something discrimination does not make it so. The Second Amended Complaint still suffers from these core defects, so granting leave to amend would have been futile." - That does not make sense. - And now the case is out, but obviously they can try to appeal to the Supreme Court. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has to hear the appeal no matter what, but the Supreme Court is based on what's called certiorari, so it's completely up to the Supreme Court whether they will want to hear any part of this particular case, and 99% chance that the Supreme Court rejects this out of hand, or if they do take it up, it will probably be a quick dismissal. So the Trump campaign is probably out of luck here and there's not a whole lot that the Supreme Court could do even if they picked up this case. Now, at the same time, I saw a lot of people being worried about the decision in Kelly versus Pennsylvania. In that lawsuit, several Republican candidates and voters filed a lawsuit against Pennsylvania, the general assembly and the governor and the Secretary of State. The lawsuit was to block the state from certifying the election results and asked the courts to exclude mail-in ballots from the certified results, or alternatively to direct the general assembly to choose its own electors. And the media reported that the Commonwealth Court stopped certification of the votes, which actually is not true. The court's order merely said, quote, "to the extent that there remains any further action to perfect certification of the results of the 2020 General Election for presidents and vice president, certification was enjoined," but there was no further action needed to perfect certification. It already was certified. And on top of that, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has already vacated the order. This Kelly versus Pennsylvania suit is pretty much much ado about nothing. And the beclowning continued in another case, in Wood versus Reffensperger. This is a case where the provided evidence was asserting all kinds of voter fraud in different counties in Michigan that were actually in Minnesota, and the court issued a complete smackdown denying the TRO, the temporary restraining order, and went so far as to say that the plaintiff in that case was using authority that was no longer good law, that the Eleventh Circuit had expressly abrogated that holding, and yet the plaintiff was using that as a reason why the court should act here. And the court also said that the case was barred by laches, which is an issue in a lot of these different election cases. The doctrine of laches is an unnecessary delay, so if you delay too long in bringing your case and the circumstances change, then you shouldn't be allowed to go forward with your particular lawsuit. And when you're talking about election law, so many of these laws regarding the way that the votes are going to be counted or the way that the election is going to go forward, those laws existed before the election. So it's not fair that you get to hang back, wait to see the results of the election, and then claim that the election itself was improper. And the court here does go so far as to say that laches should apply because you can't say that you don't like the result of the election and then claim that you should disregard the election entirely after the fact when the laws have been there the whole time. And then on top of that, the Trump campaign is voluntarily dismissing a whole bunch of cases, including Pirkle versus Wolf, Brooks versus Mahoney, Bally versus Whitmer, Langenhorst versus Peocor and Donald Trump versus Benson. And finally, that brings us to the almost mythical claims of Sidney Powell. We talked earlier about how she was basically kicked out of the Trump campaign's lawsuit strategy, but she came back in force, filing a lawsuit in Michigan called King versus Whitmer as well as one in Georgia called Pearson versus Kemp. And here, these are some of the most typo-ridden pleadings I've ever seen in my entire life, and that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the procedural and substantive defects of these particular cases. Here they're using evidence from affidavits from other cases that have already been rejected. They try to use a star witness whose name and background have been redacted without trying to file anything under seal, without going into the weeds of federal civil procedure. That's not how you would protect someone's identity. Not that this is even a place where you could protect someone's identity from a public filing in this particular case. And these lawsuits are likely to suffer the exact same fates as all of the other Trump campaign lawsuits that we've already seen. They're pleading fraud without particularized allegations of fact. They are seeking relief from the courts. That's already moot or impossible for the courts to grant. They're saying that simply choosing the Dominion software was a violation of the Constitution. They suffer from standing issues. They failed to allege a whole bunch of causes of action. It's just more nonsense based on facts that appear to be completely made up. And, of course, this is happening while the states are just simply going on with business as usual, where the crucial states are just certifying their elections and selecting the electors to go to the electoral college, including Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. All of those states have already certified their results, and while it's not impossible to undo that, it would be extremely difficult. And those actions make these lawsuits, and a lot of the other Trump campaign lawsuits to the extent that they exist anymore, moot and extremely likely to be dismissed by the courts. It seems that they're dismissing their cases because the allegations of grand conspiracies never materialized. Sadly, we never saw the Kraken that Sidney Powell promised us because the Kraken never existed. Or maybe the legal Kraken was the friends that we made along the way, because everything that Sidney Powell has been complaining about has been completely made up, from the Dominion voting machines, to the conspiracy that the Republican governor threw the election for the Democrats. Everything that she said was complete fiction, and not really even believable fiction. And since no reasonable person believes Sidney Powell, she really could have benefited from Sabaa Tahir's Skillshare class, Writing Authentic Fiction: How to Build a Believable Character. Now that Powell has been fired, she'll have lots of time to focus on that fiction novel, "The Scarlet Barrister." But Sabaa Tahir's Skillshare class walks you through her personal process for crafting authentic and believable characters. It's packed with exercises, prompts, and tried-and-true techniques. This class will teach you how to create real and nuanced characters that feel like they could walk right off the page and not into a conspiracy theory. And, of course, the best place to learn anything is on Skillshare. Skillshare, as you know, is an online learning community that has tens of thousands of classes on everything, like illustration, creative writing, business, productivity, music, you name it. And the first 1,000 Legal Eagles will get a free premium membership to Skillshare when you click on the link in the description. Plus, after the trial ends, Skillshare is still way more affordable than most online learning platforms with plans starting at less than $10 a month. Plus, clicking on the link in the description really helps out the channel.
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Channel: LegalEagle
Views: 1,371,469
Rating: 4.6810789 out of 5
Keywords: Legaleagle, legal eagle, breaking news, case, congress, court case, crime, guilty, jury, latest news, news, not guilty, political, politics, politics news, scotus, supreme court, the trial, trial, Verdict, copyright, law advice, legal analysis, lawyer, attorney, Real lawyer, Real law review, election lawsuit, donald trump, presidential election, us election 2020, trump, 2020 presidential election, 2020 election, biden, us election results, decision 2020, us presidential election
Id: v-nblE8ps2M
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 36min 53sec (2213 seconds)
Published: Sun Nov 29 2020
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