Michael10

Shoe's on the other foot now, the law works for the honest and trump ain't honest

Crystal Hill·Reporter
Wed, November 25, 2020, 4:00 AM CST

The Trump campaign has repeatedly attempted to use the judicial system to overturn the president’s defeat to President-elect Joe Biden, filing more than two dozen unsuccessful lawsuits since E******n Day.

But the president’s campaign now finds itself on the other side of a legal case in a newly filed federal lawsuit alleging that it violated the V****g Rights Act of 1965 when it sought to “disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of v**ers,” particularly African Americans in metropolitan areas of Michigan.

“It’s not even about the success of President Trump and the Trump campaign’s attempts to overturn the e******n,” Monique Lin-Luse, assistant counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, which filed the lawsuit, told Yahoo News. “The very attempt ... to overturn it by disenfranchising and de-legitimizing Black v**ers is what we believe is unlawful, and it's also dangerous and corrosive to our democracy.”

Donald Trump and Mike Pence
President Trump at the White House on Tuesday. (Susan Walsh/AP)
The lawsuit, filed Friday in a Washington, D.C., federal court, was brought on behalf of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and three Detroit residents over Trump’s apparent efforts to sway local officials in Wayne County, Mich., and state legislators to hold off on certifying v**es or interfere in the e*******l process.

President Trump met with Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey at the White House on Friday in what was viewed as an attempt by Trump to convince the GOP legislators to cooperate with a plan to override the will of v**ers in Michigan.

The lawmakers said after the meeting that they intend to “follow the law” regarding the se******n of Michigan’s e*****rs. Shirkey told the Associated Press that Trump talked about Michigan e******n results with them, but added that the meeting was harmless, the AP reported Tuesday.


In Wayne County, Trump reportedly tried to pressure the two Republican members — Monica Palmer and William Hartmann — of the county’s four-person Board of Canvassers not to certify the results of the e******n there.

Palmer and Hartmann initially v**ed against certification, sparking outrage on social media, then backtracked and v**ed to certify the results. The AP reported that the president then personally called the two officials, after which they filed affidavits seeking to rescind their certification, which can’t be done, court records show.

“During the meeting, one of the Republican Canvassers said she would be open to certifying the rest of Wayne County (which is predominately white) but not Detroit (which is predominately Black),” the complaint said.

The lawsuit also cites a press conference last Thursday in Washington, during which Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s lawyers, claimed without evidence that the campaign had identified 300,000 illegitimate b****ts.

“These b****ts were all cast in Detroit,” Giuliani said, according to the complaint. “It changes the result of the e******n in Michigan, if you take out Wayne County.”

The case points to several tweets from Trump alleging fraud in Detroit. “V***r F***d in Detroit is rampant, and has been for many years,” Trump tweeted on Nov. 19.


Yahoo News sent an email to the Trump campaign seeking comment, and court records don’t yet list an attorney in this particular case. NPR reported Tuesday that the campaign denied going after Black v**ers. Senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis told the station that their only goal is “to ensure safe, secure and f**r e******ns.”

The Michigan Board of State Canvassers v**ed Monday to certify the state’s e******n results, after days of speculation over whether outside influence from Trump’s campaign or false allegations of v***r f***d would complicate a fairly routine process. Black people account for roughly 39 percent of the population in Wayne County, the largest county in the state, which includes Detroit, according to the most recent census data. Biden won there by more than a 2-1 margin, and won the state by more than 150,000 v**es.

The civil case goes beyond Michigan, alleging a strategy from the Trump campaign to disenfranchise v**ers in cities with large swaths of Black v**ers.

A drive-by rally
A drive-by rally to certify the p**********l e******n results in Lansing, Mich., on Nov. 14. (Paul Sancya/AP)
“President Trump and his campaign have repeatedly — and falsely — raised the specter of widespread fraud in Detroit and other cities with large Black populations, including Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Atlanta, in an effort to suggest v**es from those cities should not be counted,” the complaint says.

Court records show that the case was assigned Tuesday to Judge Emmet Sullivan, the same judge who presided over the criminal case against former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and who in early November ordered the U.S. Postal Service to sweep facilities in states including Georgia and Michigan to ensure that mail-in b****ts were delivered.

The new lawsuit asks the court to declare that Trump’s campaign engaged in conduct that violated the V****g Rights Act and seeks to prohibit the campaign, and anyone acting in concert or on its behalf, from “continuing to exert pressure on state or local officials to disenfranchise Plaintiffs or other Black v**ers by not certifying the results of the November 2020 e******n, or by appointing an unlawful slate of e*****rs that disenfranchises Plaintiffs or other Black v**ers.”


Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told Yahoo News that v**er suppression is “alive and well” in the country. “What’s different about this,” she said, “is that this may mark the first time in recent history when we've seen a v**er suppression effort orchestrated by a sitting president, that aimed to cancel out the v**es of black v**ers on a massive and unprecedented scale.”

The lawsuit also raises the question of what, if any, consequences the Trump campaign and its allies could face in court for the state and federal civil cases they’ve filed that have yet to produce credible claims or evidence of widespread v***r f***d.

“I think that a court could discourage frivolous litigation,” Justin Levitt, an e******ns expert and professor at Loyola Marymount University, told Yahoo News via email. “But it’s extremely unlikely that a court not presently hearing the litigation will be the court to engage.”

In other words, any sanctions against the Trump campaign in court would most likely come from a judge in one of the campaign’s e******n cases. Generally, sanctions are pursued by one of the parties, who files a motion detailing as much and a judge eventually rules on whether to grant it. Sanctions can include requiring the plaintiff to pay legal fees for the defendant.

Rudy Giuliani
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani speaking at the Republican National Committee headquarters last week. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Last week, lawyers for the city of Detroit sought sanctions against the Trump campaign’s counsel in federal court in the form of striking from the record the two affidavits submitted by Hartmann and Palmer in Wayne County in a federal lawsuit and a voluntary motion to dismiss from the campaign that falsely said the county declined to certify the results of the e******n, court records show.

“The affidavits and the text in the notice were submitted for an improper purpose: to make a gratuitous, public statement about their purported reason for voluntary dismissal, before the court could reject their baseless claims of e******n f***d,” the Nov. 19 legal filing said.

Clarke said that in one of the now-dismissed cases involving Maricopa County, Ariz., the judge essentially invited the county to seek to rec**p legal fees from the campaign. An example, she said, of a court finding the campaign’s conduct to be “irresponsible and inappropriate.”

“Some [courts] have been making quite clear that they find the claims meritless, and if the meritless litigation continues, defendants may well seek sanctions in the cases where they are sued,” Levitt said.

Legal and e******ns experts have for weeks stressed to Yahoo News and other news outlets that the Trump campaign’s unsubstantiated allegations of fraud and v**er irregularities will only serve to undermine v**ers’ confidence in the e*******l process.

“They’re frivolous in the sense that the legal claims are baseless,” Clarke said. “They’re not frivolous to the extent that we have a sitting president who's placed a target on the backs of Black v**ers. It’s hard to ignore the grim racial reality driving this effort.”

Grugore

Hey. Look! They're playing the race card again. Never expected that one. Lolol

Michael10

Oh. look Trump's playing the poor pitiful me, I've been c***ted card. I'd be more surprised if he did the honorable thing and acted like an adult.

ImLogicallyRight

Another Democrat fail

Michael10

Can't fail any worst than Trump's clown car parade through the courts.

Grugore

I pity you.

Rose42

The law doesn’t work for the honest - it works for whoever has the best lawyer and/or most money.

What a ridiculous suit. Very Trumpish. Lol

Michael10

Don't pity me, i've had a good life, pity yourself for falling for the garbage peddled by Trump and his minions