Election Litigation Status

[Gunnar]

It is both amazing and disheartening how many people there are in this country who are both ignorant and gullible enough to not be able to see what a corrupt and dishonest pile of filth Trump is.

[Res Ipsa]

Sub, as usual, posts crap without knowing what he is talking about. That's because he's aping Trumpers who don't know what they are talking about.

Most of the cases that go to the Supreme Court start with the filing of a Petition for Certiorari. The Petition basically says "Please, Supremes, agree to consider my appeal." The Court is not required to accept petitions. In fact, in a given year, it only accepts around 1% of the petitions that are filed. So, the court has to decide whether to grant or deny the petition. It takes four votes to grant a petition.

When a petition is filed, a clerk places it on the docket. Placing a petition on the docket means only that it is on the list of petitions that the court has to decide whether to accept or reject. It is not any kind of determination that the petition has merit. It's a clerical action.

The opposing party or parties have an opportunity to file a brief in opposition to the petition. The rules specify the deadline. The docket entry for Lin Wood's petition states that the opposition briefs are due January 11. The Rules state that a response brief is due 30 days from the date the petition is docketed, and that's where the January 11 date comes from.

Once the opposition briefs are filed, the petition can file a reply brief within 14 days. Unless the Petitioner waives the 14 days (giving up the right to file a reply), the clerk will deliver the petitions, opposing briefs and reply brief no sooner than 14 days after the due date for the opposition briefs.

This means that, under the normal procedure, the Justices wouldn't even see the Petition until at least January 25 -- five days after the inauguration. Lin Wood also filed a motion for expedited consideration, asking that the Court resolve the merits of the appeal before Monday, when the electors meet. Or at least before the start of the Senate runoff election. Or, maybe please, before the inauguration. Today was the last conference day of the year, and conference days are when the court discusses pending petitions and motions and announces decisions on those. No decision on the motion so far.

Also, under normal practice, if the Court grants the petition, it sets a full briefing schedule to consider the merits of the appeal. That's another month and a half or two months. Then it sets an argument date. There is a zero percent chance that the Supreme Court is going to do anything as extreme as overrule the choice of the voters without a full record (meaning, a trial in the District Court) and a full set of briefs.

The Court does have a non-argument session Monday, but then is not scheduled to be in session again until January 8, which is a conference session. So if there is no decision Monday, the motion is likely to sit in limbo until January.

Keep in mind that this case is still pending in the trial court. It has not been dismissed. The trial court denied an emergency motion for a Temporary Restraining Order. Lin Wood filed what's called an interlocutory appeal (appeal before the case is fully resolved), which was denied by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals because it found it had no jurisdiction to hear the appeal. This is fully consistent with established case authority. So all that Lin Wood is asking the Court to review is whether his emergency motion for a temporary restraining order should have been granted. There has been zero discovery in the case. No trial. And yet he is essentially asking the Court to overturn the election results on that record. Not gonna happen. This is political grandstanding for the Trumpers in Georgia.

So, the docketing of the petition means squat. It's an entry by a clerk. The fact that the court hasn't granted an accelerated review of the petition indicates that it is in no hurry to overrule a decision of the GA voters.

[canpakes]

That’s pretty much the truth of it. It has been for 4 years.

[Res Ipsa]

And the Supreme Court has denied Texas's motion to file suit under its original jurisdiction 7-2. The two were Alito and Thomas, which was completely expected. They have stated in the past their view that the Court must always approve this kind of motion involving suits between states. They also stated that they would have granted the motion, but denied any relief.

https://Twitter.com/ZoeTillman/status/1 ... 03936?s=20

I'm impressed. I just realized they are also dealing with another emergency request for stay of an execution scheduled for tonight. Because firing squads are apparently now part of our annual Christmas celebrations.

Hi Res Ipsa,

Could you explain what it means to "grant a motion to file suit"? If 3 more saw the world the way Alito and Thomas do, what would it mean for the court to "grant the motion but deny relief?"

The Supreme Court has original and exclusive jurisdiction over suits between or among states. That means it acts as a trial court -- taking testimony, considering evidence, and finding facts. And it is the only court with jurisdiction to hear state v. state claims. But, because the Supreme Court also has original jurisdiction in other areas, the rules require the process to start with a motion that demonstrates to the Court that the claim does, indeed, fall within its original jurisdiction. The actual title of the motion is "Motion for Leave to File a Bill of Complaint."

Justices Thomas and Alito make what I think is a good point: it's obvious from the pleading when one state sues another. Just look at the caption. The jurisdiction should be automatically established. But that's not at this time the view of anyone but those two. If a majority of the Court accepted the minority view, it would have granted the petition. The effect of that granting would be only the recognition that the case fell within the Court's original and exclusive jurisdiction. To do anything else would be to grant further relief.

It's not clear to me whether Justices Alito and Thomas were simply saying "Don't interpret our votes to grant the petition as an indication that the complaint has any merit" or "We would have accepted the petition and then dismissed it on the merits." I'd be perfectly happy with the former.

[Jersey Girl]

It is both amazing and disheartening how many people there are in this country who are both ignorant and gullible enough to not be able to see what a corrupt and dishonest pile of filth Trump is.

He's doing it right before our very eyes in real time. He doesn't care about the job he appears to be trying to save. He's showing his lack of anything remotely resembling work ethic...he didn't like the election results so he's acting like a ticked off toddler on a sit down strike instead of doing the job that's still his until Inauguration, he doesn't give 2 hoots in hell about Americans re:Covid, hasn't attended a Task Force meeting for 5 months but he wants credit for the vaccinse like he developed them himself.

He's showing us who he really is. He's a self serving narcissistic who cares only about his own self interest, adulation, and relevance.

[Jersey Girl]

That’s pretty much the truth of it. It has been for 4 years.

Truth. Nothing but the truth. So help me God.

[Res Ipsa]

Ruh Roh. The Washington Post found Sidney Powell's super secret military intelligence expert that court papers identify only as "Spyder." Here is his actual military record:

Records show that Merritt is an Army veteran and that he enrolled in a training program at the 305th Military Intelligence Battalion, the unit he cites in his declaration. But he never completed the entry-level training course, according to Meredith Mingledorff, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, which includes the battalion.

“He kept washing out of courses,” said Mingledorff, citing his education records. “He’s not an intelligence analyst.”
In an interview, Merritt maintained that he graduated from the intelligence training program. But even by his own account, he was only a trainee with the 305th, at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and for just seven months more than 15 years ago.

***

Army records provided by Merritt show that he enlisted in 2003. He first aimed to be a medic, but did not graduate from a training program at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, according to records in the Army Training Requirements and Resource System, Mingledorff said. He was “recycled,” or allowed to repeat the training course — but again did not graduate, she said, citing the records.

In 2004, Merritt transferred to the 305th Military Intelligence Battalion, the records show. He had a spot reserved in an electronic intercept analyst course with the 305th, but records show he did not meet the prerequisites and was dropped from the program, Mingledorff said.
Merritt’s military separation papers show that he completed three education courses — two involving work on wheeled vehicles and one on leadership.

Merritt told The Post he completed the medic and intelligence trainings as well. He said that for both programs, the particular career path he was studying for changed by the time his training ended. He maintained that this pattern left him in a sort of military bureaucratic limbo, in the service but without a specific job until he became a wheeled vehicle mechanic in 2005.

He provided a document labeled “unofficial transcript” that he said showed that he completed the intelligence and medic courses. Mingledorff declined to comment on that document but said the records she examined were clear.

Army education records also show several distance-learning and in-person trainings over the course of his service, many of which were not completed, Mingledorff said.

He said he was unable to complete some online courses while serving overseas because of the demands of his job.

So, what kind of expertise does he have that allows him to conclude that "publicly available data about server traffic shows that voting systems in the United States were “certainly compromised by rogue actors, such as Iran and China.”

He used his GI Bill funds to study network security administration at ITT Tech in Arlington, Texas. He said he earned an associate degree from the school, part of a nationwide chain of for-profit colleges that shut down in 2016.

He went on to intern and work in several positions related to cybersecurity, he said. In 2017, he joined a small Dallas-area firm called Allied Special Operations Group, where Ramsland says he is part of the management team.

Merritt said it was there that he began to work on election security and came to believe the system was rife with vulnerabilities. Soon, he said, he was a frequent guest in right-wing videos, appearing under the pseudonym “Jekyll,” in shadow and with his voice disguised as he warned that the U.S. election system was vulnerable to being corrupted on a massive scale.

***

Merritt formed his own firm, Cyberoptyx, in 2019. He said the company — which consists of himself and a handful of contractors — specializes in building “cyberinfrastructure” such as making websites and setting up servers. It also does 3-D printing.

So, not a military intelligence analyst. He got an associates degree five years ago and has worked as an IT guy in areas "related to cybersecurity." But his hobby is election security.

That's it. This guy and Hugo Chavez.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investig ... story.html

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Tell me again how these pieces of crap aren't seditious?



- Doc

[Moksha]

Rush Limbaugh said the US is 'trending towards secession' and there can't 'peaceful coexistence' between conservatives and liberals. Together with Subgenius and Ajax, he wants to form the country of Trumpistan where they can worship Trump in harmony and not be forced to partake in heathen democracy.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/rush- ... -BB1bQlJh?

[subgenius]

The Supreme Court rejected on Friday Texas’s longshot bid to void 20 million votes in four other states, clearing the path for Joe Biden’s victory when presidential electors meet Monday in state capitals across the nation.

Finally.

Congress doesn't confirm electors vote until December 18th.