- 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.
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
Solid summarization and much appreciated.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
This guy clearly knows nothing about law.
-some commenter on r/conservative, probably.
Trump “dream” team (because they’re always dreaming).
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.