My attempt to log the ongoing saga of Republican batshittery and eptitude over a purportedly ‘stolen’ election. Saved so I can get drunk and have a laugh scrolling through these stories later.
If it ever ends, that is.
forty-nine things tagged “shitkraken”
Fearless Leader of Former (Un-Reinstated) President’s “Elite Strike-Force” Legal Team resorts to side-hustle on Cameo after raising a staggering 0.2% of the $5 million towards the legal defense fund he will need to fight the voting company he baselessly accused of ballot-tampering
Yes, weeks after his buddy Bernie Kerik asked people to spare whatever they could for Giuliani‘s legal bills, the “Rudy Giuliani Legal Defense Fund” has raised a mere $9,590, or less than 0.2% of the $5 million goal. (It’s not clear if the RGLDF is a separate entity the “Rudy Giuilani Freedom Fund” that Kerik helped create.) Kerik, the former NYC police commissioner, knows a little something about legal woes, having pleaded guilty in 2010 to tax fraud and other charges, before being pardoned, of course, by Donald Trump. You may also recall Kerik from other hits like reportedly conducting an affair at an apartment near Ground Zero that had been reserved for 9/11 rescue workers. On the fundraising page, the organizers encourage whatever kind of person identifies as a Giuliani groupie to pony up as much cash as they can to defend the former president’s former attorney, explaining “The swamp is revolting by placing a bull’s eye on the backs of every Trump loyalist. That puts Rudy at the top of their list. Rudy’s fate will determine if America still is a Republic governed by We The People!” Sadly for Rudy, that pitch has apparently mostly fallen on deaf ears.
Another example of the Best People attracting other Best People 🤩 And I’m sure his illustrious client will swoop in and help him out with the $250 Million he wheedled out of his supporters?
[…] according to three people familiar with the matter, Trump, as well as several of his legal advisers and longtime confidants, have been hesitant about swooping in to help the embattled Giuliani, who for years worked as Trump’s personal lawyer, a political adviser, and attack dog.
[…] Over the decades and during his presidency, however, Trump has cemented a reputation for regularly turning his back on close allies and one-time loyalists, including when legal or political pressures became too hot for him.
You don’t say. Could be the Elite Strike-Force Team’s enviable success rate because, ordinarily, The Best People who are most loyal to their Orange Daddy get paid well and on-time:
- Elite Strike-Force Leader’s Supporters Beseech the Angry Yam to Pay for Services Rendered
- Stable Genius Client Halts Payments to Fearless Leader of his “Elite Strike-Force” Legal Team
Shitkraken is a gift that keeps on giving 💩
Fearless Leader of former President’s Elite Strike-Force Legal Team Gets Wasted and Advises his Client to “Just Declare Victory” Regardless of Outcome
“Just say we won,” Giuliani reportedly instructed Trump’s team, explaining that they should simply declare victory in each battleground state. Giuliani is then said to have told Trump directly: “Just go declare victory right now… You’ve got to go declare victory now.”
Some solid strategery here. The Best People, folks. I want this to end but I don’t want it to end.
Expert Mathematician Who Estimated Biden’s Chance of Victory in Fulton County, Georgia to be “1 over 10 to an exponent so large there’s not enough stars in the Universe, there aren’t enough atoms in the Universe, to explain the number” is a Drug Dealer and Convicted Felon with No College Degree Who Installs Swing Sets for a Living
Of course. The Best People, folks. He did mention the use of “the binomial probability formula”, so there’s that at least. He’s being sued by Dominion Systems, along key members of his Daddy’s Elite Strike-Force Legal team.
Shitkraken keeps on giving ♥️
The “No Reasonable Person Could Possibly Believe My Bullshit” Defense Fails for Former Member of Elite Strike-Force Team as Judge Denies Motion to Dismiss Dominion’s Defamation Suit Against Her.
The Fearless Leader’s motion was denied as well. Pillow Bro as well. The best people.
“As an initial matter, there is no blanket immunity for statements that are “political” in nature: as the Court of Appeals has put it, the fact that statements were made in a “political ‘context’ does not indiscriminately immunize every statement contained therein.” It is true that courts recognize the value in some level of “imaginative expression” or “rhetorical hyperbole” in our public debate. But it is simply not the law that provably false statements cannot be actionable if made in the context of an election.
Wow. If I were a Patriot, I would also get tired of Liberal judges meting out this kind of treatment to my Orange Daddy’s defense team.
On June 7, 2018, President Trump announced his intent to nominate Nichols to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. On June 18, 2018, his nomination was sent to the Senate. President Trump nominated Nichols to the seat vacated by Richard W. Roberts, who took senior status on March 16, 2016.
Shitkraken keeps on giving ♥️
On the Big Lie and the Dangerous Normalization of Fascism by kor_hookmaster
Former Member of Elite Strike-Force Team Will Most Likely be Reprimanded by a Judge for Legal Ineptitude Over “Fluid” and Unpredictable Election
I’d really hoped that this embarrassment would’ve been forgotten a few weeks after January 6th. But here we are.
“Should an attorney be sanctioned for his or her failure to withdraw allegations the attorney came to know were untrue?,” [U.S. Judge Linda Parker] said during a court hearing held by video conference. “Is that sanctionable behavior?”
She said she thought affidavits in the case had been submitted in “bad faith.”
[…] Parker dismissed the Michigan lawsuit last December, saying in a written decision that Powell’s voter fraud claims were “nothing but speculation and conjecture” and that, in any event, Powell waited too long to file her lawsuit.
[…] “What they filed was an embarrassment to the legal profession,” David Fink, a lawyer for the city of Detroit said during Monday’s hearing. “This was a sloppy and careless effort.”
During the hearing, Parker asked Powell and her co-counsel why they did not voluntarily dismiss their Michigan case on Dec. 14 when the Electoral College formally confirmed Biden’s election victory.
“Why did the plaintiffs not recognize this lawsuit as moot and dismiss it on that date?,” Parker asked.
Donald Campbell, the attorney representing Sidney Powell and the other lawyers, replied that the election was “fluid” and unpredictable and that the pro-Trump legal team believed its lawsuit was still viable after Dec. 14.
The Best People 👌
Fearless Leader of Elite Strike-Force Team Suspended from Practicing Law in Home State where he was Once Top Federal Prosecutor
This led him to miss a court hearing where his own lawyer sought to dismiss a billion-dollar defamation case against him. This is because the Strike-Force Honcho made “false and misleading” claims about the equipment used in the 2020 election on behalf of his Stable Genius client.
I wonder how much alcoholism this saga of shit has induced in folks who write political satire for a living. It just never ends.
“lol Dad and I were one of the first ones inside”
I wonder if our hero has any vacation plans he’d care to share with a judge who might acquit him and his lol-dad. (Cached)
Leader of the Elite Strike-Force Team Peddles Pillows for CEO who wanted the Former President of these United States to Impose Martial Law over Losing the Most Secure Election this Democracy has Enjoyed So Far
I still remember Giuliani’s stature and gravitas 20 years ago, when I arrived in this country. How the mighty have fallen. It’s almost as if The Orange Sphere of Shit corrupts all those who enter it. And comically so in the case of America’s Mayor.
Rick Wilson, the GOP political consultant who credits Giuliani with making his career, says he will defend to his dying breath the Giuliani of 9/11, but he adds, “It’s a cliché that if you live long enough, you’ll see your heroes become villains.”
As Giuliani’s friends have slipped away over the years, some have been replaced by people who the Rudy of 35 years ago would have put in prison.
[…] What emerges is a portrait of a man who was given a hero’s mantle, but it rested on flawed shoulders. Even the aftermath of September 11th, the defining point of Giuliani’s life, held the seeds of his undoing, as he has spent two decades alternatively exploiting and trying to get back to that transcendent moment when all of America embraced him. And yet, time and again, he has been undone by his all-too-human failings.
The Great Republican Bamboo Fiber Hunt
You know, the one where Evil Liberals partnered with Soros and Hillary and flew in 40,000 ballots (and not more) from China (or thereabouts) to Maricopa County in Arizona (and nowhere else.) So the only way to make sure the ballots are authentic is to stick them under a microscope and look for bamboo fibers because… you know… Kung-Fu Panda? Asians? Bamboo?
From an article in The Guardian:
[…] “I do think it’s somewhat of a waste of time, but it will help unhinge people,” Brakey said on Wednesday. “They’re not gonna find bamboo … If they do, I think we need to know, don’t you?”
I don’t think anyone’s getting unhinged in that party anymore, Mr. Brakey.
One of the people who spread the lie about China dumping ballots, according to Slate, was Javon Pulitzer, a treasure hunter and inventor, who is reportedly assisting with the Maricopa county audit. Though it’s not clear in what capacity Pulitzer is assisting, Brakey told reporters on Tuesday that the machines capturing the microscopic images of the ballots were linked to Pulitzer. “This guy is nuts,” he said. “He’s a fraudster … It’s ridiculous that we’re doing some of this.”
Then why do you keep doing it?
The county has hired a firm called “Cyber Ninjas” to perform the audit. Because it’s the late 90’s and we just allow teenagers to give ‘cool’ names to companies. Like most entities in the World of Orange, they’re exceedingly good at their job, just like all the top-notch attorneys on the Elite Strike-Force Team 💯
[Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug] Logan’s “Stop the Steal” antics extend beyond social media. He is listed as an expert witness in a lawsuit alleging voter fraud in Michigan. Logan was also the author of a document called “Election Fraud Facts & Details” that Sidney Powell, the conservative attorney who is now embroiled in a defamation lawsuit concerning her election conspiracy theories, shared on her website. In the document, he props up the Venezuela narrative and a similarly absurd and debunked theory regarding Chinese investment in the voting machine manufacturer Dominion.
[…] Election experts noted that the company has already made rookie mistakes. For instance, Arizona Republic reporter Jen Fifield spotted auditors using blue pens, which is not best practice since there is a risk of altering the vote on a ballot. The state’s own election process manual prohibits anything but red pens from being used. When Fifield brought the issue up with Logan, she says he was unaware that the blue ink could be a problem and seemed unsure overall about the correct procedure. A judge later ordered the removal of all black and blue pens from the facility where the recount is taking place. The Brennan Center for Justice, a legal think tank associated with New York University, also sent a letter to the Department of Justice last week alleging that Cyber Ninjas has not been following basic security practices like locking doors to the facility holding the ballots and preventing unauthorized individuals from entering.
For more ineptitude, here’s an account from Jennifer Morrell at The Washington Post (cached)
I was stunned to see spinning conveyor wheels, whizzing hundreds of ballots past “counters,” who struggled to mark, on a tally sheet, each voter’s selection for the presidential and Senate races. They had only a few seconds to record what they saw. Occasionally, I saw a counter look up, realize they missed a ballot and then grab the wheel to stop it. This process sets them up to make so many mistakes, I kept thinking. Humans are terrible at tedious, repetitive tasks; we’re especially bad at counting. That’s why, in all the other audits I’ve seen, bipartisan teams follow a tallying method that allows for careful review and inspection of each ballot, followed by a verification process. I’d never seen an audit use contraptions to speed up the process.
Speed doesn’t necessarily pose a problem if the audit has a process for catching and correcting mistakes. But it didn’t. Each table had three volunteers tallying the ballots, and their tally sheets were considered “done” as long as two of the three tallies matched, and the third was off by no more than two ballots. The volunteers only recounted if their tally sheets had three or more errors — a threshold they stuck to, no matter how many ballots a stack contained, whether it was 50 or 100. This allowed for a shocking amount of error. Some table managers told the counters to go back and recount when there were too many errors; other table managers just instructed the counters to fix their “math mistakes.” At no point did anyone track how many ballots they were processing at their station, to ensure that none got added or lost during handling.
I also observed other auditors working on a “forensic paper audit,” flagging ballots as “suspicious” for a variety of reasons. One was presidential selection: If someone thought the voter’s choice looked as though it was marked by a machine, they flagged it as “anomalous.” Another was “missing security markers.” (It’s virtually impossible for a ballot to be missing its security markers, since voting equipment is designed to reject ballots without them.) The third was paper weight — the forensics tables had scales for weighing ballots, though I never saw anyone use them — and texture. Volunteers scrutinized ballots for, of all things, bamboo fibers. Only later, after the shift, did I learn that this was connected to a conspiracy theory that fake ballots had been flown in from South Korea.
The fourth reason was folding. The auditors reasoned that only absentee voters would fold their ballots; an in-person, Election Day voter would take a flat ballot, mark it in the booth and submit it, perfectly pristine. I almost had to laugh: In my experience, voters will fold ballots every which way, no matter where they vote or what the ballot instructs them to do. Chalk it up to privacy concerns or individual quirks — but no experienced elections official would call that suspicious.
[…] Their equipment worried me more than their wild theorizing. At the forensics tables, auditors took a photo of each ballot using a camera suspended by a frame, then passed the ballot to someone operating a lightbox with four microscope cameras attached. This was a huge deviation from the norm. Usually, all equipment that election officials use to handle a ballot — from creating to scanning to tallying it — has been federally tested and certified; often, states will conduct further tests before their jurisdictions accept the machines. It jarred me to see volunteers using this untested, uncertified equipment on ballots, claiming that the images would be used at some point in the future for an electronic re-tally.
[…] What I saw in Arizona shook me. If the process wraps up and Cyber Ninjas puts together some kind of report, that report will almost certainly claim that there were issues with Maricopa County’s ballots. After all, Cyber Ninjas chief executive Doug Logan has publicly voiced his wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. But the real problem is the so-called audit itself.
The Best People, folks ♥️
Elite Strike-Force Leader’s Supporters Beseech the Angry Yam to Pay for Services Rendered
I have accepted that Shitkraken won’t end for a while.
Giuliani’s attorney, son, and allies like convicted former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik have urged Trump aides to dip into his massive war chest to help cover the former New York City mayor’s mounting lawyer bills after Giuliani’s home was raided by the FBI last week […]
The pleas from Giuliani’s supporters come after Trump refused to pay his former lawyer for his work on his election legal challenges. Trump “balked” at paying Giuliani after his associate sent a bill for $20,000 for a day of his work and told aides he did not want Giuliani to receive “any payment,” according to the report. Trump ultimately agreed to reimburse Giuliani $200,000 for expenses but has “stridently refused to pay” Giuliani’s fees.
The notoriously stingy former president bombarded supporters with fundraising appeals after his election loss, raising some $250 million to ostensibly fund his legal battle. But Trump spent a tiny fraction on actual legal costs as his many court challenges were quickly rejected by dozens of federal judges, including ones he appointed. Now, Giuliani’s allies are asking Trump to use the quarter-billion he raised with the Republican National Committee to help pay Giuliani’s costs in the federal probe and defamation lawsuits.
In the Yam’s defense, I wouldn’t want to pay for a 1.5% success rate either. In the Strike-Force Leader’s defense, I don’t think he could’ve seen this coming.
Shitkraken: A Quarterly Report
I didn’t want to post anything more about this seemingly interminable saga of ineptitude and batshittery. But I am a collector of various things. And collectors value completeness. So here we go.
An Ex-Member of the “Elite Strike-Force Team” says “reasonable people” wouldn’t really believe her bullshit so please don’t sue her for a billion and change:
Pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell asked a federal court to dismiss a roughly $1.3 billion defamation suit filed against her by Dominion Voting Systems, arguing that her claims the company’s voting machines rigged the election for Joe Biden represented her opinion, not statements of fact.
[…] In its Monday motion, Ms. Powell’s legal team argued that “reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process."
The Fearless Leader of the verysame “Elite Strike-Force Team” is in some trouble:
Federal agents executed search warrants Wednesday at the Manhattan apartment and office of Rudy Giuliani, his attorney said, advancing a criminal investigation by federal prosecutors that has been underway for more than two years.
Giuliani […] has been the focus of an investigation concerning his activities in Ukraine, including whether he conducted illegal lobbying for Ukrainian officials while he pursued an investigation linked to Trump’s primary political rival, President Joe Biden, CNN has reported.
[…] Giuliani is also facing other legal exposure for his role in the 2020 election. The election technology company Dominon sued Giuliani in January for defamation after he spread baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud on his podcast and during TV appearances.
[…] Guiliani is also likely to face scrutiny from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is investigating Trump’s efforts to influence Georgia’s election results. […] One area Willis is exploring: whether Giuliani may have violated the law by making false statements about voting in Georgia in front of the state legislature, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
As this article notes: The man hadn’t practised law since 1992, “basically he’s a novice” at state election law, and is considered a “gift to legal ethics professors that just keeps on giving” because “Charging astronomical rates for work–especially work for which the attorney does not have deep expertise or ability—is an ethics violation.” Probably a good thing, then, that he most likely hasn’t been paid for his expertise.
The Best People ♥️
Update
Rudy Giuliani’s press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, between a dildo store and a crematorium, is still appropriate because Rudy is somewhere between fucked and dead.
Operation Shitkraken is Over
The Supreme Court disposed of the last of former President Donald Trump’s challenges to state election procedures Monday, rejecting his appeal of lower court rulings that upheld Wisconsin’s handling of mail-in ballots.
The court announced the rejection without comment in a one-line order, which is its normal practice.
Trump and his allies had a uniformly unsuccessful record before the Supreme Court in their effort to overturn the presidential election results in states won by Joe Biden.
This was a wild ride. I really hope the “Elite Strike Force” team got paid to be the winners they are 🥇 You know, from $8 million of the $250 million that was raised for the purpose.
“A Capitol rioter texted his ex during the insurrection to call her a ‘moron,’ feds say. She turned him in.”
Standing on the Capitol steps on Jan. 6, Richard Michetti allegedly took a break from the rioting to argue with his ex-girlfriend over text message. After sending photos and videos of the mob and boasting how he had avoided tear gas, Michetti parroted Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
“If you can’t see the election was stolen you’re a moron,” Michetti wrote in a text to the woman, according to court documents.
The next day, the woman he had insulted promptly told the FBI that her ex was at the Capitol, handing over to law enforcement the string of texts, photos and videos he had sent to her.
[…] The Trump supporter told his former partner that while his eyes were burning, he and the thousands there were doing the right thing to “stop the vote it’s fraud this is our country.”
[…] “This is tyranny,” he texted her later that evening. “They … told us ‘we rigged the election and there’s nuthin you can do about it’ what do you think should be done?”
And who bears any responsibility for this man’s delusion? It certainly isn’t the person who incited the riots. Or any of the Media czars who made gobs of money fomenting discord for those almighty engagement metrics.
Letters won’t do anything. Regulation is necessary (thanks again, St. Reagan.)
Leader of “Elite Strike-Force” Team sued for $1.3B by Dominion Voting Systems.
The 107-page lawsuit […] accuses Mr. Giuliani of carrying out “a viral disinformation campaign about Dominion” made up of “demonstrably false” allegations, in part to enrich himself through legal fees and his podcast.
You don’t say.
The suit […] is based on more than 50 statements Mr. Giuliani made at legislative hearings, on Twitter, on his podcast and in the conservative news media, where he spun a fictitious narrative of a plot by one of the biggest voting machine manufacturers in the country to flip votes to President Biden.
[…] “Dominion was not founded in Venezuela to fix elections for Hugo Chávez,” the suit says. “It was founded in 2002 in John Poulos’s basement in Toronto to help blind people vote on paper ballots.” The suit later adds that the headquarters for the company’s United States subsidiary is in Denver.
[…] Laying out a timeline of Mr. Giuliani’s comments about Dominion on Twitter, his podcast and Fox News, the company notes that Mr. Giuliani avoided mentioning Dominion in court, where he could have faced legal ramifications for falsehoods. “Notably, not a single one of the three complaints signed and filed by Giuliani and other attorneys for the Trump Campaign in the Pennsylvania action contained any allegations about Dominion,” the lawsuit says.
Shocked.jpg. See also.
Texan Lawsuit, filed by disgraced attorney who posted videos of himself at the Capitol Attack, cites “The Lord of the Rings” as justification for the removal of the new President and stewardship by the old President’s cabinet.
It would appear that my collection of batshittery is far from complete.
“Gondor has no king,” the lawsuit states, a footnote providing an explanation of the woeful fate of Tolkien’s entirely imaginary land populated by dragons, wizards, hobbits and elves, all threatened by a baleful Dark Lord backed up by an army of orcs and with famously little time for due democratic process.
The suit explains how Gondor’s throne was empty and its rightful kings in exile, presumably positing the idea that Trump is the true king of America – a land happily monarch-free since 1776.
“This analogy is applicable since there is now in Washington DC a group of individuals calling themselves the president, vice-president and Congress who have no rightful claim to govern the American people,” the case states.
It adds: “Since only the rightful king could sit on the throne of Gondor, a steward was appointed to manage Gondor until the return of the King, known as ‘Aragorn’, occurred at the end of the story.”
The lawsuit then suggests that America’s version of the stewards of Gondor should be selected from among – surprise, surprise – Trump’s cabinet members, who should run the country.
Nope. Not delusional at all.
It’s Not Over
- Until all votes are counted.
- Until all votes are recounted.
- Until all votes are recounted by hand.
- Until the lawsuits are filed.
- Until the lawsuits are appealed at the State Supreme Courts.
- Until the lawsuits are appealed at the Supreme Court.
- Until the states certify the results.
- Until the electors vote.
- Until the electors maybe vote faithlessly.
- Until the Electoral College confirms the winner
- Until the Vice President maybe halts the certification process.
- Until the Vice President certifies the winner in a pro forma ceremony.
- Until we maybe get our way via a terrorist insurrection.
- Until the winner of the election is sworn in on the 20th.
And it won’t matter after that because, proof be damned, it was a massive fraud perpetrated upon us.
“Elite Strike-Force Team” deemed “clownish” by Client’s Attorney General.
“These things aren’t panning out,” Barr told the president, standing beside his chief of staff Will Levi. “The stuff that these people are filling your ear with just isn’t true.” Barr explained that if Trump wanted to contest the election results, the president’s internal campaign lawyers would have to do it.
The Justice Department, he continued, had looked at the major fraud allegations that Trump’s lawyers had leveled. “It’s just bullshit,” Barr told the president. Cipollone backed up Barr by saying the DOJ was investigating these claims.
Trump pointed at the TV and asked if Barr had been watching the hearing. Barr said he hadn’t. “Maybe you should,” the president said. Barr reiterated that the Justice Department was not ignoring the allegations, but that Trump’s outside lawyers were doing a terrible job.
“I’m a pretty informed legal observer and I can’t fucking figure out what the theory is here,” he added. “It’s just scattershot. It’s all over the hill and gone.”
“Maybe,” Trump said. “Maybe.”
“Elite Strike-Force Team” Client Leaves Office with his Lowest Ever Approval Rating at 29%
Nicely played, team. I’d say Mission Accomplished 🍾 That being said, I really hope I don’t have to collect Shitkraken stories anymore (for “completeness.”)
Stable Genius Client Halts Payments to Fearless Leader of his “Elite Strike-Force” Legal Team.
Not sure if this has to do with The Client’s legendary ethics and history of non-payment (one, two, three, four, five, and many, many more) or the Strike Force’s whopping 1.5% success rate. Or maybe The Genius finally realized:
“Your typical role as legal counselor is to tell your client the hard truth and walk them away from risk,” Matthew Sanderson, a Republican political lawyer based in Washington, said in an interview. “Rudy instead seems to tell his client exactly what he wants to hear and walk him toward risk like they’re both moths to a flame.”
“Elite Strike Force Team” Vanishes from State Television.
Surely can’t the bad-for-ratings hair dye, the insane and casually racist witnesses, or the amazing 1.5% success rate?
The Elite Strike-Force Team is at 1-64 a week before inauguration.
This is a success rate of ~1.5% 🥇 The Best People folks, lemmetellya.
Twitter permanently suspends account of Sidney Powell, ex-member of the “Elite Strike-Force Team”.
I’m really tired of this saga of ineptitude and batshittery but will continue to scrapbook these stories for ‘completeness’.
“He was delighted.”
“And I’m sure you’ve also had conversations with other senior White House officials, as I have,” Sasse continued. “As this was unfolding on television, Donald Trump was walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as you had rioters pushing against Capitol Police trying to get into the building.”
Sasse added: “He was delighted.”
“Dominion sues pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, seeking more than $1.3 billion”
In a 124-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Dominion said its reputation and resale value have been deeply damaged by a “viral disinformation campaign” that Powell mounted “to financially enrich herself, to raise her public profile, and to ingratiate herself to Donald Trump.”
You don’t say.
As Powell’s accusations about Dominion spread after the election, the company’s employees were stalked, harassed and received death threats via email, text and phone: “we are already watching you,” read a text message to one Dominion employee, according to the complaint. “Come clean and you will live.”
[…] She has claimed that Dominion’s voting system was created in Venezuela to rig elections for former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez and has said that secret algorithms in Dominion machines were used to manipulate votes in favor of Biden in 2020. She has accused the company of bribing Georgia officials to win a no-bid contract with the state. She has promised to tweet a video of Dominion’s founder — Poulos — saying he could “change a million votes, no problem at all.”
No such video ever materialized.
Shocked.jpg. Reddit user @Cycad:
Turns out the real Kraken was the enemies we made along the way…
Saving America is No Menial Task, Sir
I hope Dominion’s lawyers don’t underestimate the Elite Strike-Force Team’s Star Witness’ What-Do-You-Mean-I-Have-To-Make-An-Appointment-Online Energy 😬
“You gained international infamy earlier this month as Rudy Giuliani’s so-called ‘star witness’ who could supposedly corroborate outlandish accusations that Dominion has somehow rigged or otherwise improperly influenced the outcome of the Nov. 2020 U.S. presidential election,” attorneys Thomas Clare and Megan Meier wrote. “Without a shred of corroborating evidence, you have claimed that you witnessed several different versions of voter fraud—ranging from one story involving a van, to other accusations that votes were counted multiple times. You published these statements even though you knew all along that your attacks on Dominion have no basis in reality.”
[…] “We write to you now because you have positioned yourself as a prominent leader of the ongoing misinformation campaign by pretending to have some sort of ‘insider’s knowledge’ regarding Dominion’s business activities, when in reality you were hired through a staffing agency for one day to clean glass on machines and complete other menial tasks,” the letter stated.
Pig Rectums, not Calamari
From a while ago: “Rump Faker: Is imitation calamari made from pig rectum? A charming urban legend gets its start.”
Patriots supplement Elite Strike Force Team’s efforts by posing as Fake Electors.
In another sign of the lingering unrest over President Donald Trump’s election loss, an Arizona group sent the National Archives in Washington, D.C., notarized documents last week intended to deliver, wrongly, the state’s 11 electoral votes for him.
Mesa resident Lori Osiecki, 62, helped created a facsimile of the “certificate of ascertainment” that is submitted to formally cast each state’s electoral votes as part of an effort to prevent what she views as the fraudulent theft of the election.
“We seated before the legislators here. We already turned it in. We beat them to the game,” she said.
Timing and absolutely nothing else (like, say, legality) is everything, so check and mate. Emphasis mine:
“One thing I will say about conservatives, is if something is wrong, and we have lost — a true loss — then we accept,” she said. “We’re not going to drag people through the mud and fight it. But this clearly has got issues. I saw it with my own eyes and my own research. After that hearing, I was shocked we didn’t have any other marching orders.”
Pack it up, liberals. Lori did her “research”:
But in Trumpland, a vast conspiracy involving Democrats, the Chinese government, an international globalist cabal, rigged voting machines, corrupt state governments, and bought-off poll workers came together to steal the election from Trump. Many have rejected the results of the election entirely.
The Elite Strike-Force Team loses 59 cases since November 3.
This includes a one paragraph “Dude… really?” from the Supreme Court over the “bid to invalidate more than 20 million votes.” So. Much. Winning.
“Detroit Is Trying to Get Sidney Powell Fined, Banned from Court, and Referred to the Bar for Filing the ‘Kraken’”
“It’s time for this nonsense to end,” Detroit’s lawyer David Fink told Law&Crime in a phone interview. “The lawyers filing these frivolous cases that undermine democracy must pay a price,” Fink added.
but
Asked about the sanctions motion, Powell replied cryptically: “We are clearly over the target.”
On the other hand, every court that has heard her conspiracy theories about a supposed plot involving Dominion voting machines, dead Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, bipartisan government officials and election workers in counties across the United States found that narrative untethered to reality.
Mister Babcock is Just Fine
When conservative activist Meshawn Maddock obtained a list of allegedly dead Michigan voters, she didn’t report it to law enforcement.
[…]
The list of 150 or so names was part of a larger file of more than 2,000 people who “voted in Wayne County by absentee ballot that are CONFIRMED deceased,” claimed Maddock, a prominent Republican who is seeking to become the party’s state vice chair.
It would appear that the only way to make it in the party is by embracing batshit crazy. But there are pesky little ‘facts’ to contend with:
“I am certainly not dead!” wrote one woman […], including holiday photos of her family she had recently posted.
“Two people in my neighborhood are on this list,” wrote another man. “They’re very much alive. Hell, their boys play baseball with my sons.”
Mr. Babcock speaks for Sane America that’s bewildered by the post-election tantrums like these. Emphases mine:
Among the alleged dead was Bill Babcock, a Grosse Pointe Woods voter who said Tuesday he is “doing fine,” aside from the grueling year-end inventory he was performing in his job as a swimming pool salesman.
“I think it sucks,” he told Bridge Michigan on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after Maddock posted his name and home address in an attempt to prove voter fraud that state officials have not found.
“Can’t we just move on? There are bigger problems out there, like getting this vaccine thing situated,” Babcock said.
Shitkraken Part Deux - The Leghumper
The SC swatted it away like the “Garbage, but dangerous garbage” it was, but even this “conservative evangelical American blogger and radio host” just had it with the sycophantic tantrum:
I personally think my company should pay me workers compensation for brain damage for having to read that lawsuit and related filings. It really is one of the stupidest bits of performative leg humping we have seen in the last five years. These attorneys general are willing to beclown themselves and their states all to get in good with the losing presidential candidate.
The suit is absurd on its face. These states seek to interfere in the internal affairs of other states when those states are not actually electing the President, but allowing their voters to chose members of the Electoral College.
The lawsuit appears to be a pile of shit (one wouldn’t expect any less from the Elite Strike Forces that surround the God Emperor) but:
If Texas were to win this, it would dissolve the horizontal federalism of our union and only expand the powers of the federal government. It would also lead to a Civil War as a handful of states overturn the rules and laws of other states and dictate those states’ internal affairs. Wait for Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo to give this precedent a whirl. Wait for progressive states to start suing conservative states over religious liberty, transgender rights, police brutality, tax policies that “steal” residents of progressive states, etc.
One can dream! He ends with a plea (emphasis mine):
I’m really tired of the Republican Party beclowning itself for a losing candidate out of fear for that candidate’s voters. That is all this is and delusions of fools notwithstanding, despite all sorts of stupid arguments being wrapped in pomp and “equal protection” phraseology, the election is over and Joe Biden will be President-Elect officially next week.
Guys, come on — you’re just going to spark crazy to violence [sic] at this point. The election wasn’t stolen and most of you know it and those of you who don’t know it need to, at some point, realize you’ve been lied to. And frankly, Ken Paxton needs to work on repentance for a whole lot of stuff.
Things are so crazy, that’s reasonable stuff from this guy:
“Pennsylvania AG calls Texas’ Ted Cruz a ‘sad sack’ after Trump asks the senator to argue election case”
“[Cruz] has proven himself neither to be a genius in terms of the law nor a genius, frankly, in terms of [emotional intelligence]. He is a sad sack,” Shapiro, a Democrat, told CNN. “I would say to him — and, frankly, I’d say to my 17 colleagues who have gone along with this circus — I don’t know whether I need to send you a surgeon to examine your spine or a psychiatrist to examine your head. But something’s wrong with you if you continue to follow this president.”
Whatever. I think the Senator would be a lovely and strategic addition to the already Elite-as-fuck Strike Force Team.
The Joke
Trump has been saying the pandemic has been totally under control since January, and said it would just “go away” in February.
He reiterated this in March as the virus surged, and insisted we had “perfect” tests that anyone could get after reports of faulty tests. He said he wanted pandemic-related shutdowns to end by Easter so churches could be “packed” while claiming Hydroxychloroquine would be a miracle cure for COVID-19.
In April he continued to promote Hydroxychloroquine without evidence and suggested we could inject disinfectants or use UVC light inside the body to kill the virus, and right up through May Trump was discouraging the use of masks and refused to require them anywhere, with him and Pence famously flouting requirements at hospitals and factories. Trump also claimed he was taking Hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic against the disease. At this point they were even planning to dismantle their own COVID-19 task force.
In June they were still insisting it was under control while fighting the FDA’s revocation of authorizations for Hydroxychloroquine, and denying that there was a second surge happening. They instead blamed the high infection statistics on there being more testing, and Trump suggested slowing down testing to improve the stats, noting he does not joke.
Rolling into July he still insisted he had things under control, claiming they had done an incredible job, as the White House nuked a trove of data previously available through the CDC while Trump was still hyping Hydroxychloroquine and his son was temporarily suspended from Twitter for continuing to spread disinformation about it.
Even in August, Trump claimed COVID-19 was totally under control, and the ~150k dead with a simple “it is what it is,”, and reiterated that the virus would go away all on its own. He finally encouraged the wearing of masks, but ignored all guidelines during his nomination acceptance speech at the Republican Convention.
In September Trump was saying that COVID-19 hurt “virtually nobody”, and openly disputed the CDC’s own claims about the effectiveness of masks.
In October Trump got COVID-19, and while still undergoing treatment, went on a quick spin around the hospital to wave to his supporters outside. He was discharged to the White House after only three days, posing for photo-ops without a mask. At this point White House officials finally concede that “we’re not going to control the pandemic.”. This would be the last time the COVID-19 task force would formally meet.
Since then Trump has pretty much avoided any and all public appearances except to complain about the election. November marked the point where a quarter of a million Americans had died of COVID-19. There are now more people dying each day of COVID-19 than died in the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001 or in the Invasion of Normandy.
That’s the joke.
“Someone is going to get killed’ if Republicans don’t tone down their incitement”
“It has to stop,” Sterling said. Directing his remarks to Trump, he added, “Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed. And it’s not right.”
Lest any members of the public fail to understand: Certifying the winner of a presidential election, as Sterling (a Republican) did, is not an act of treason. It is the fulfillment of America’s centuries-old tradition of upholding the nation’s most fundamental democratic values.
It’s no longer clear whether Trump’s base is lashing out on its own, or whether the statements by Trump, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Estes and a vast army of other GOP officials are what’s inciting Trump supporters to take vigilante action. What is certain is that the rhetoric is out of control. These are, of course, representatives of the party that claims to support a “pro-life” agenda — even while their words are moving ever closer to driving families from their homes and getting someone killed.
(cached)
More than 1,000 lawyers call for Giuliani’s ‘strike force’ to be disbarred for election fraud conspiracies.
“It is indefensible for lawyers to falsely proclaim widespread voting fraud, submit a pattern of frivolous court claims and actively seek to undermine citizens’ faith in our election’s integrity. We condemn this conduct without reservation.” said the letter.
The Kraken Is Dead.
Well, shit. Emphasis mine:
… a judge in Wisconsin dismissed the fourth and final lawsuit, noting that it is voters, not judges, who decide who goes to the White House.
“Federal judges do not appoint the president in this country,” U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper wrote in a 45-page ruling.
“One wonders why the plaintiffs came to federal court and asked a federal judge to do so. After a week of sometimes odd and often harried litigation, the court is no closer to answering the ‘why.’ But this federal court has no authority or jurisdiction to grant the relief the remaining plaintiff seeks.”
The article notes that Judge Pepper also had to point out the following errors:
- “that Powell had sought 48 hours’ worth of surveillance footage from the TCF Center — which is in Michigan, not Wisconsin.”
- “that Powell misspelled the name of her lead plaintiff, referring to William Feehan, a would-be Trump elector, as ‘Meehan.’”
- “that the plaintiff appeared to have made up a quote purporting to come from a decision made by Pepper’s own colleague Judge J. P. Stadtmueller. The quote simply doesn’t exist.”
Elite Strike Force Team Sidekick tests positive for COVID.
She then proceeded to attend a WH Party, of course.
President Trump’s lawyer Jenna Ellis has informed associates she tested positive for the coronavirus, multiple sources tell Axios, stirring West Wing fears after she attended a senior staff Christmas party on Friday.
“She had the nerve to show up at the senior staff Christmas party knowing everyone was furious with her for constantly stirring Trump up with nonsense,” said a senior administration official.
Because she sat right next to the Fearless Team Leader, and because I am a child:
We can’t rule out that Rudy’s fart gave Jenna Ellis Covid
“The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.”
In other words, of which there are many, since the Supreme Court needed only 18 to hurl this nonsense into the Tidal Basin, Rep. Mike Kelly handed the Supreme Court of the United States a reeking dead fish and the Court refused delivery. And the Kelly suit looked like it was drafted by Clarence Darrow compared to that idiocy that emerged from Texas Tuesday morning, and Kelly’s suit was something at which even Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito turned up their noses. The administration* is done like dinner. SCOTUS has precious engagements.
The Strike-Force Leader’s Emissions, Remixed.
A channel name is LEAD SYNTH FART 💯 I am a child and am fine with this.
Fearless Leader of the Elite Strike Force Team tests positive for COVID.
Mr. Giuliani appeared on Fox News earlier on Sunday. Speaking with the host Maria Bartiromo via satellite, Mr. Giuliani repeated baseless claims about fraud in Georgia and Wisconsin on “Sunday Morning Futures.” When asked if he believed Mr. Trump still had a path to victory, he said, “We do.”
On Monday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan said that a four-hour hearing last Wednesday with a roomful of unmasked witnesses had all the ingredients of a super-spreader event.
“That hearing last week was reckless, it was unnecessary and didn’t change a thing,” she said. “It’s action like this that threatens our ability to open up some of these businesses.”
“A Small Man with a Small Mind and Bad Mustache”
A member of The Elite Strike-Force Team bemoaned being “canceled” and asked to resign from an elite club after calling for violence against the country’s former CyberSecurity chief who said that the elections were “the most secure in American history” (which was the opinion that got him fired.) Mercifully, Operation #shitkraken continues to deliver despite this minor upset.
Here’s some lovely, old-school, traditional, conservative barbarism:
“Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs … he should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot,” diGenova said on the radio show.
Which drew this impassioned response from a Georgia election official:
It was all “hyperbole” and “in jest”, of course! They tend to pick the best subjects for humor. And only the most Elite can handle the spotlight:
“It’s egregious, I’m at a loss for words at how absurd those and offensive those comments were, I think that’s got to violate some type of code of professional conduct for the DC Bar, and I hope they look into it,” Travis, the former deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said at the Aspen Institute’s virtual Cyber Summit on Tuesday.
“He’s a small man with a small mind and bad mustache,” Travis said of diGenova, adding that he hoped diGenova would “take back those words, apologize and recognize that maybe the hot lights of the studio got to him.”
Behold the Elite Strike-Force Team’s Star Witness.
Operation #shitkraken appears to limping along quite well.
A living caricature who could’ve been drunk, who was likened to an SNL character, who put out so much Can-I-See-Your-Manager Conspiracy Karen Energy she had to be shushed by the flatulent Leader of the Elite Strike-Force Team, who described herself as a “Duchess of CyberSecurity1”, and who was definitely arrested for harassing her boyfriend’s ex with videos of them having sex.
Imagine my surprise when she was found to be “not credible.” I’d genuinely hoped she was an elite troll and that it was performance art of highest calibre2, but there’s a higher likelihood of Mediacom deciding to treat its customers with respect.
Update
Even though both the Fearless Leader and his Elite Sidekick have COVID, she won’t quarantine unless her God Emperor tells her to:
“I would take it seriously if it came from Trump, because Trump cares about American lives,” she said, adding that if fringe networks that regularly traffic in coronavirus misinformation such as One America News or Newsmax “told me to go get tested, I would do it.”
-
With a certificate of completion from the prestigious ITT Tech. ↩︎
-
I’m glad others are as worried as I am about how Kate McKinnon could possibly do Mr. Guiliani and Ms. Carone. ↩︎
An Attorney Of Scant Accomplishment - The Elite Sidekick
‘Reporters’ at the Failing NYTimes explore: “How Is Trump’s Lawyer Jenna Ellis ‘Elite Strike Force’ Material?” (cached) I should just copypasta the whole thing but here we go:
Since she graduated law school in 2011, nothing in her record in the courtroom […] shows any time spent litigating election law cases.
She holds herself out as an expert on the Constitution based on her self-published book and her teaching of pre-law classes to undergraduates. She has never appeared in federal district or circuit court, where most constitutional matters are considered, according to national databases of federal cases, and does not appear to have played a major role in any cases beyond her criminal and civil work in Colorado.
The Trump campaign and its supporters have so far filed about 50 election-related lawsuits. She has not signed her name or appeared in court to argue a single one.
“I find it astonishing that she’s gotten to this point,” said Stephanie Stout, a lawyer in private practice in Greeley, Colo., who worked with Ms. Ellis a few years ago defending a man who was accused of attempted murder. The partnership was short-lived, Ms. Stout said, because their client fired Ms. Ellis, deeming her not up to the job.
“She just didn’t have the legal chops,” added Ms. Stout, who ultimately won the case on her own. “After that, Jenna decided that I had stolen the case from her.”
Craig Silverman, a lawyer in Denver who used to host a radio show on legal matters and current events that Ms. Ellis occasionally appeared on, described her as “an attorney of scant accomplishment.” The cases she discussed with him, he recalled, were bread-and-butter criminal defense work. And he said he had always expected her to pursue a career in teaching and media — not the law.
[…] Though Mr. Silverman once considered himself friendly with Ms. Ellis, he said her insistence of widespread voter fraud had so unnerved him that he believed she might have violated Colorado’s rules of professional conduct for lawyers, which prohibit making false statements.
In 2015 she joined Colorado Christian University […] [which] does not have a law school or a program in constitutional law. Ms. Ellis taught pre-law and political science to undergraduates and was part of the team that developed and advised a moot court program, according to a university spokesman. Eventually she was made an assistant professor of legal studies — but never a “professor of constitutional law,” which is how she identified herself in pieces for The Washington Examiner that she started writing in 2017.
Here’s how you get noticed and get a spot on the ultra-selective Elite Strike-Force team: become “star player in the president’s theater of grievance and denial”:
But she did have an attribute that can carry just as much weight in his eyes: the ability to go on television and deliver scathing attacks on his critics.
Ms. Ellis beat the drum for the president on cable and wherever else she had a platform.
But those who know Ms. Ellis said they imagined that her willingness to say almost anything in the president’s defense was what he found appealing about her.
Her response is to simply call the entire thing a “false ‘report’” and dream publicly about becoming the next Amy Coney Barrett.
The failing NY Times plans to run a hit piece today. They’re trying to undermine the public’s confidence in the President’s election integrity battle by pushing a false “report” on my credentials & experience.
Well… Libs said ACB wasn’t qualified. And she’s Justice ACB now. 😉
Bassakwardkraken
Despite being cut loose from President Donald Trump’s legal team, Powell is forging ahead with her election-conspiracy crusade to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential win.
But the conservative attorney’s self-described Kraken keeps getting its tentacles tied in a knot of typos and errors — including the recent backward claim, later amended, that a pernicious voting algorithm took votes from Biden and flipped them to Trump.
So when she tried to argue that “pernicious” algorithms in Dominion’s voting machines1 flipped the election in Georgia for her guy? Well it was really late at night and she had other shit to do and she really meant the opposite (emphasis mine):
“If I had a Nicole for every mistake I’ve made in life, I could retire,” Powell’s email to a reporter said. “Wish I had you as a proofreader at 1 a.m.”
“In addition, counsel had internet and computer problems that delayed our communications, in addition to what can only be called ‘operator errors’ by lead counsel late night that caused the omission of the list of authorities and a substantive misstatement thoughtfully identified by CNBC this morning, which the contemporaneously filed brief corrects,” Powell wrote.
-
The really sophisticated ones that count things. ↩︎
“I think Chinese all look alike. How can you tell? If some Chow shows up, you can be anybody and you can vote.”
That would be a real, casually racist quote from one of Mr. Giuliani’s witnesses testifying in Michigan as part of Operation Shitkraken. I had to save this one.
And: Naturalized Indian people supporting politicians who vilify new immigrants and want to keep them out is kinda on-brand 👏👏👏
A Kraken of Shit
To the surprise of no one (well, normal people), “The Kraken”, authored by an ex-member of the “Elite Strike-Force Team”, turned out to be a “truly awful” and unmistakably QAnon-laced lawsuit full of basic formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors that would “drive a proofreader to drink.”
From a must-read via PLG:
This is all batshit crazy. It is as stupid an elections lawsuit as I’ve ever seen. And there’s no guarantee that it’s the worst case we’re going to see, because even though their legal arguments are being dismissed with extreme prejudice, when it comes to the political/propaganda aims of the litigants—this stuff works. Once the true believers are on board, it’s hard to get them off.
[…] The Kraken is the stupidest election fraud lawsuit in history today. But who knows what next week will bring.
Amazing. It’s almost as if The Best People don’t really care about the substance of the lawsuits1 but want to seen as filing them in the courts of “activist” judges who swat them away, quite unfairly of course, for the sophomoric and baseless crocks of shit they are. Conservative, Republican, Trump-appointed activist judges, that is.
-
And as if they ‘wrote’ it using a 1999 version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. ↩︎
Highly Informed Outrage
A lovely Techbro aside from the ongoing #shitkraken.
Greg Stenstrom, another poll watcher, said that in Delaware County, 47 USB cards were missing.
“As a computer scientist, an American and a patriot, it doesn’t matter who those votes were for. It was shocking to me that that could even happen,” he said.
“There is no cure for this, no remedy for this. I don’t believe as a citizen and an observer to this, anyone can certify this with a good conscience.”
(Emphasis mine.) Indeed, Gregory. When USB cards go missing, one needs formal training in Algorithms, Data Structures, the Theories of Computation and Complexity, Formal Logic (of course), and more, to express appropriate outrage at an election that’s fraudulent only in your head and only because your guy didn’t win.
The Continuing Saga of an A+ Elite Strike-Force Team Saving Our Imperiled Democracy
Will tag updates as I read them with amusement and disbelief. Armando Ianucci must be weeping right now. All emphases are mine.
In a court filing signed by Rudy Giuliani and Marc Scaringi1 — the two remaining attorneys on the case after everyone else quit — the campaign asked for the judge to hand over Pennsylvania’s electors.
[…] “You’re asking this court to invalidate more than 6.8 million votes, thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth,” Brann said at the hearing. “Can you tell me how this result can possibly be justified?”
And:
Before Tuesday, Rudy Giuliani last registered an appearance in the U.S. federal judiciary in 1992, and in the view of many legal observers, it showed. The former mayor of New York flubbed basic concepts of law and, in at least one instance, displayed a poor command of the English language.
Giuliani confessed that he did not know the word “opacity,” applying the Bizarro World definition that it “probably means you can see.”
“It means you can’t,” U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann corrected2.
[…] When pressed by the judge on what standard of scrutiny should be applied to Pennsylvania government’s action, Giuliani replied: “The normal one.”
And because IANAL, some helpful context:
At one point, he even appeared ignorant of the concept of strict scrutiny, a basic and fundamental concept for a practicing lawyer to know when arguing a case on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. Imagine if you were lying in an operating room, about to go under general anesthesia, and heard your surgeon ask, “Hey, what are all these knives for?” Now you are in general orbit around whatever planet on which the former New York mayor happens to be residing.
Onward:
At one point he referred to president-elect Joe Biden as a “crook” and chastised the press for reporting that he has no evidence of fraud. Mr Giuliani has offered no evidence in court of fraud.
[…] He compared election observers being corralled away from the votes counts to a moment in the movie in which the eponymous character asks a witness in court how many fingers he is holding up, claiming that they could not see a thing.
[…] As what appeared to be hair dye dripped down both sides of his face…
[…] Ellis described the assembled lawyers as “an elite strike-force team” working on behalf of the president.
And finally:
President Donald Trump’s campaign says it’s dropping its Michigan election lawsuit because it succeeded in halting certification of election results in Detroit and surrounding Wayne County, despite the outcome already having been certified in favor of President-elect Joe Biden.
An “Absolutely Brilliant” Elite Mercurial Powerhouse Leader of the Best Legal Team3 one could assemble given the seriousness of the charges against our democratic systems, folks. So unbelievably competent, Snopes had to publish an entry about his performance in court 💯
Update 20 Nov 2020.
But his attorneys have repeatedly made elementary errors in those high-profile cases: misspelling “poll watcher” as “pole watcher,” forgetting the name of the presiding judge during a hearing, inadvertently filing a Michigan lawsuit before an obscure court in Washington and having to refile complaints after erasing entire arguments they’re using to challenge results.
“The sloppiness just serves to underscore the lack of seriousness with which these claims are being brought,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.
[…] “I know crimes. I can smell them,” Giuliani said as streaks of sweat and what appeared to be hair dye ran down the sides of his face. “You don’t have to smell this one. I can prove it to you 18 different ways.”
[…] “Part of the reason he doesn’t have good lawyers is he doesn’t have good claims to bring.”
Huh.
Update 21 Nov 2020
The painful monologue screeched to a halt whenever Rudy hit the guardrails of judicial questioning. Asked the most important question in nearly any election lawsuit, what standard of review should apply, he was caught completely off guard. For non-lawyers, it’s hard to explain just how appalling this is. Standard of review is the sort of thing that every first-year law student learns. But rather than agreeing with the judge that the case demanded “strict scrutiny,” or arguing that it called for rational basis review, he simply advocated for “the normal one.” If legal Twitter had a voice in that moment, the scream would have been heard around the world.
[…] But what Rudy did next crossed a line: he lied. He didn’t spin, argue, or put his best take on the evidence, he flat-out lied to a judge in open court.
[…] Actually, Rudy’s first lie came before he ever set foot in the Pennsylvania courthouse. On Tuesday morning, Rudy petitioned to represent the Trump campaign, which is a routine step for lawyers appearing out of state. If you aren’t licensed to practice in a court, you have to request permission to argue. Sadly, Rudy couldn’t complete this two-page form without committing perjury. Rudy claimed to be licensed in the District of Columbia, where in fact he’s currently suspended for not paying his dues.
Update 25 Nov 2020
The only place maybe worse is Michigan, and particularly the city of Detroit. The city of Detroit probably had more voters than it had citizens. I’m exaggerating a bit, but all you have to do is look at statistical data and you can see that the fraud was rampant and out of control.
Update 26 Nov 2020
It keeps getting more divorced from reality.
“I think we may actually have won Virginia, but that’s another battle,” Mr Giuliani said.
The comments were made during a meeting of Republican state lawmakers in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on Wednesday.
Mr Biden defeated Mr Trump in Virginia by 451,138 votes.
As for Pennsylvania, where the plaintiff literally phoned it in at Gettysburg:
Despite having told a federal judge that theirs was “not a fraud case”, the 76-year-old former mayor of New York introduced a series of Pennsylvania residents to complain about fraud, to cheers and whoops, and the occasional audible sharp intake of breath from the staunchly pro-Trump crowd.
[…] On Monday Pennsylvania certified the vote, meaning that the process is concluded. Mr Biden won the state by 80,555 votes.
[…] He claimed that 682,770 mail-in ballots entered in Allegheny County and Philadelphia were “not observed by any single Republican.”
“They could have been from the same person,” he said. “There could have been multiples, there was no name on them”.
There’s more, of course.
“The mail-in ballots that were received were not inspected at all by any Republicans. They were hidden from Republicans,” he said.
He said he “couldn’t be entirely sure,” though.
And arithmetic, compounded with the passage of time can lead to undemocratic effects:
He expressed surprise, once again, that when he went to sleep Mr Trump was in the lead but that lead evaporated.
“What are the odds that they all switched, overnight? They switched, by the next day.”
The lead evaporated because more Democrats than Republicans voted by mail, and as their votes were slowly counted, the pendulum swung in Mr Biden’s favour.
-
"The day before a major argument in Pennsylvania, three lawyers for Trump withdrew and were replaced in part by Marc Scaringi, an attorney and talk show host who wrote a blog post after the election referring to ‘President-elect Joe Biden.’ Scaringi himself had told listeners on his radio show days after the election that ‘there are really no bombshells’ about to drop ‘that will derail a Biden presidency,’ and noting that several of the lawsuits ‘don’t seem to have much evidence to substantiate their claims.’ - The Independent ↩︎
-
Screenshot is from the Facebook page of a True Believer. This person and the commenter are not trying to be funny. They cannot be, even if they tried. “Believe me.” ↩︎