Election 2020: Party's Over, Send In The Lawyers, Guns, And Money
So today saw two significant legal actions - one is hilariously dumb, the other is fairly frightening.
The first was the Trump campaign finally filing suit against the State of Pennsylvania to disqualify every single mail-in ballot (which would flip the state to the Trump column) on the grounds that, and I quote, "In a rush to count mail ballots and ensure Democrat Joe Biden is elected, Pennsylvania has created an illegal two-tiered voting system for the 2020 General Election, devaluing in-person votes." The reason given, in so may words, is that voter ID cannot be checked when mailing a ballot as ID is checked when voting in person. This would, of course, disqualify every mail-in ballot cast nationwide if it held up in court.
The filing itself (which I'll link below in a comment) is in general less of a legal document and more of a campaign manifesto, and would be laughed out of any reasonably run court in the country. Unfortunately, Trump and McConnell have been busy stacking the courts with partisans, so we can't say with 100% conclusiveness that this will be dismissed, but given prior rulings it looks REALLY likely.
Just in case you thought this was the only dumb move by the Trump legal team, they failed to file a suit in Michigan today as well. Note: they did actually file a suit. It just failed and was rejected immediately, because it had about 7 errors that prevented it being filed. Trump's definitely got the A team working on this one.
So if you were laughing and thinking everything is still that party scene at the end of Return of the Jedi where teddy bears go yub yub, Leia debuts a new hairdo, and Darth Vader's force ghost changes appearance depending on the phase of the moon, the Empire is most definitely striking back - after a week of silence, Bill Barr confirmed that yes, under his watch the Department of Justice is in fact the political police, and will begin to prosecute all the non-existent voter fraud allegations the extreme right is busy cavailing about. (Note: these allegations are so unproven and false that even Fox News cut away from Kayleigh McEnany today when she tried to peddle them on-air.) This comes after consulting with Mitch McConnell earlier in the day to confirm everyone on the GOP is on the same delusional page.
In case you think I'm being overwrought about this: after this was announced, the DoJ attorney in charge of investigating voter fraud immediately resigned.
It ain't over.