Legal Experts Say Trump’s Legal Filings Are “Trash,” Read “Like An Elementary Student” Wrote Them

What a mess.


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591 points

As the election in this country marches on, with Joe Biden still holding on to several clear paths to victory, we knew that Donald Trump would be peddling ridiculous, false voter fraud narratives and filing bogus lawsuits in a last-ditch attempt to cling to power. But I’m not sure we expected them to be quite this bad.

MSNBC hosts Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow spoke with a handful of legal experts this morning to analyze the legal filing made by the Trump campaign in various states across the nation. And according to the folks that know a thing or two about this sort of thing, these filings are “trash” that read as though they were written by a child.

Wallace begins, “I’ll add this about the recounts, I just hung up with a Trump adviser who says that these legal efforts do not really have the imprimatur of the late Warren Christopher and the James Baker sort of statesmen arriving on the ground in Florida the morning after the election there. That these do not seem like the kinds of legal fights that are attracting talent beyond people with the last name Trump and one Rudy Giuliani, who showed up in the state of Pennsylvania. So, just a little bit of evidence about the view even from inside Trump’s side about the caliber of legal talent and legal arguments being made in lawsuits that were described to me as very much driven by the client himself without a lot of basis in any sort of consistent legal philosophy or argument at this point.”

Maddow pointed out that legal advice to a president or president’s team is typically prestigious, but that it’s simply not panning out that way this time.

“I asked a lawyer associated with us here at MSNBC today, not an on-air person but some who works off-air, to have a look at the complaint the Trump campaign filed in Michigan to try to stop the vote in Michigan. And that lawyer described it as something that looked like it was written by an elementary school student and something that did not actually have any of the predicates of a basic legal document, including the who, what, where, why, when of what they were alleging was the reason the court should step in and do something,” she explained.

Maddow referred to what Trump lawyers are bringing to the table as “interesting.” While the Biden team has thousands of competent attorneys ready and willing to fight whatever nonsense Donald Trump throws their way, it seems that the President is heavily relying on little more than Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr.

“It also makes me wonder if Republicans are so confident now — that there are so many conservative judges now that they have done such a good job in the federal courts stacking it with ideological, very right-wing, in some cases very young partisan-minded federal judges, that they’ve got a path even if what they’re filing is just trash,” Maddow mused.

Wallace agreed with her co-host that the question is an interesting one and pointed out that it’s a conversation that should be had after the election. She went on to question the degree to which “the courts are so contaminated by what Trump has said out loud he wants them to do,” wondering whether they’re even capable of making a legal sound ruling at this point.

“Trump said last night he’s waiting to get this to the United States Supreme Court,” Wallace said. “No matter what they do, I think they are forever tainted by the notion that Donald Trump, who picked three of them, believes that they are sitting there waiting until one of these ludicrous, as you said, juvenile lawsuits makes its way to them. Whether they act on that or not doesn’t matter. That is how Donald Trump described them, not just to his supporters but to the world. That is how he sees the United States Supreme Court.”

Wallace said what we’ve all been thinking when she noted that Trump’s legal team can’t seem to come up with any legitimate reason to bring a stop to vote counting in states like Arizona, much less produce what Trump wants in Wisconsin and Michigan. At the end of the day, Donald Trump just wants the counts to stop, so he’ll stop losing.

“So, there isn’t a legal argument,” Wallace closed. “There isn’t a legal through-line. So, even if you were sort of at the ready for Trump, a willing appointee waiting to do his political bidding, which I think is a reach even for the kinds of folks that he’s put on the court, it’s not clear what the philosophical, legal case is that’s being made in the courts.”

You can watch the clip here:

Featured image via Flickr/Michael Vadon, under Creative Commons license 2.0

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