 |
| Only 22 of 81 election cases were decided on the merits. |
One of the worst (and patently false) arguments for denying election fraud occurred in the 2020 election is that Trump and his associates lost all but one of their court cases.
Columns like this one from USAToday allege that Trump and his associates lost 61 of 62 lawsuits.
The source of USAToday's data was Marc Elias, who was involved in some of the cases as counsel for the defendant. Elias is employed by the Perkins Coie legal firm that was involved in paying for the Steele Dossier that underpinned the Russia-Collusion hoax. Obviously, USAToday relied on a biased source and is reporting a dishonest assessment of court proceedings.
The actual numbers are quite different according to a listing compiled by an election integrity group.
Trump and associates were actually involved in 81 legal cases (including appeals of same case) regarding the election and 25 of the cases are still active. Thus there were 56 decisions, not 62.
Next, of those 56 decisions, only 22 were decided on the merits -- and Trump and associates prevailed in 15, or over half, of those cases.
In those cases, judges actually listened to the legal arguments and made a decision -- instead of side stepping by dismissing the case due to legal technicalities. The courts decided not to take up the case 60% of the time.
Therefore, Elias and others, like Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, are spouting disinformation to the public when they allege that Trump has lost all but one of his cases -- but worse than that -- they aren't telling the media that the merits of the vast majority of cases were never argued.
Shapiro is especially contemptible given his record.
When presented with the opportunity to actually argue the merits of the case, Shapiro did an end run to his friends on the PA Supreme Court in order to avoid an evidentiary hearing (in Kelly, Parnell, Kirk, et al v. Commonwealth, Wolf, and Boockvar).
The PA Supreme Court caused much of the legal actions in Pennsylvania due to its decision to ignore the voting laws passed by the legislature and allow Boockvar to write her own rules for the 2020 election.
Is it any wonder the court sided with Shapiro and dismissed the case?
The court contended that Kelly brought the case too late and should have done it right after the Legislature passed the law to permit no excuse, absentee voting.
Of course, had Kelly brought the case to the court at that time the legislation passed he would have been denied a hearing because he couldn't show harm (i.e., have standing) because the election hadn't occurred. That is the basis for lack of standing decisions.
In summary, you can't bring a case to the court before the election because you haven't been harmed and you can't bring a case to the court after the election because it's too late.
The Kelly case is among the many examples of how the courts, and partisan judges, enabled the widespread election fraud to occur in the 2020 election.
The courts also enabled fraud to occur by letting cases languish.
On October 5, 2020, Judicial Watch filed a legal action to compel the Colorado Secretary of State to make reasonable efforts to clean up the voter rolls to eliminate ineligible voters. No ruling was made in the case, thus ineligible voters were able to vote in Colorado's election.
Another lawsuit in Michigan similarly asked the Secretary of State to purge the voting rolls of ineligible voters. The lawsuit included statistics showing that there were more registered voters and eligible voters in one county and several other counties that had over 90 percent of its eligible voters registered to vote. No decision was made in this case, thus ineligible voters were on the rolls during the 2020 election.
Those who state that the court rulings prove that there was no fraud or impropriety in the 2020 election are simply repeating a lie told over and over again by the media.
-- Ray Blehar, January 24, 2021, 6:20 PM EST, Updated February 5, 2021, 12:28 PM EST
No comments:
Post a Comment