Trump's Legal Clown Car Runs Out Of Road

Womp womp.

Trump is not tired of winning court cases!

That's because Trump hasn't been winning court cases. In fact, he and his allies have an unbroken record of getting their asses kicked all over this country. Okay, yes, they did have that one "massive" win where a Pennsylvania trial judge ordered the Philadelphia County Board of Elections to let the canvass observers stand a little closer while the votes were being counted. But that order was reversed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, so that and $1.45 will get you a cup of coffee at Wawa. (Or Sheetz, if you're desperate.)

On Friday night, the Supreme Court tossed Texas's idiotic case trying to undo the election in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan. But Team Trump wasn't finished with its weekend of winning yet. Yesterday, the Georgia Supreme Court ordered the Trump campaign to get off its lawn, and maybe learn to law better.

"Petitioners have not shown that this is one of those extremely rare cases that would invoke our original jurisdiction," Chief Justice Harold Melton wrote for a unanimous court that declined to grant emergency relief in the Trump campaign's suit against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Noting that emergency relief is reserved for appealing an actual final order, the Chief Justice noted that no such order had been entered at the appellate level, and thus there was nothing to appeal. The Trump campaign can't just jump the line because they really, really want to. That dog won't hunt. 

Want to watch Stacey Abrams certify Georgia's 16 electoral votes for Joe Biden? Of course you do!

NEW: @StaceyAbrams, presiding officer of Georgia's electoral vote, announces that all 16 of the state's electors ca… https://t.co/xUTg3npj4i

— Andrew Solender (@Andrew Solender) 1607966903.0 

Then this morning the Wisconsin Supreme Court drove the final nail into the Trump legal challenge coffin, ruling that there was nothing wrong with the recount procedures in Dane and Milwaukee counties, and they weren't going to toss out 250,000 votes based on the president's argument that there was something defective in the registrar's paperwork that rendered them invalid. In fact, this court already ruled on the same set of allegations when a Republican group sued the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC), and US District Court Judge Brett Ludwig, a Trump appointee, tossed out an almost identical federal filing last Thursday.

This morning's ruling is based on the doctrine of laches, which in legal terms means you can't sit around with your thumb in your rear for weeks on end and then rush into the court and demand to be bailed out.

The Campaign's delay in raising these issues was unreasonable in the extreme, and the resulting prejudice to the election officials, other candidates, voters of the affected counties, and to voters statewide, is obvious and immense. Laches is more than appropriate here; the Campaign is not entitled to the relief it seeks.

This opinion, like the other WEC case, was written by Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative who has consistently sided with the court's three liberals in these election suits. Chief Justice Patience Roggensack, whose name will never not be funny, authored a bitter dissent, as did the other two conservative justices. Each of them concurred with the others, so you're know they're GRRR SO MAD that evil Justice Hagedorn failed to throw the entire system into chaos by holding off the state's Electoral College certification to give the court time to hear one more spurious election challenge.

Blahblahblah. But also, if Justice Jill Karofsky hadn't flipped that seat in April, we'd be looking at a very different result here. So PAY ATTENTION TO LOCAL RACES! We got into this mess because the GOP spent a generation investing in local government, and now they have a stranglehold on the state legislatures. We're in a deep hole, and we need to start digging outtomorrow.

But, for today, let's just savor that victory.

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers closes out 2020 Electors Meeting. "The Will Of The People Is The Law Of The Land" https: //t.co/FUB8mOknSW

— Masked Face in a Crowd (@Masked Face in a Crowd) 1607973727.0 

Breathe in, breathe out. In just 38 days, Joe Biden will be sworn in. It's done.

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