Tuesday, December 08, 2020

Ken Paxton Is Jealous of Sidney Powell

Powell is winning "Craziest Texas Lawyer" and Paxton is NOT HAVING IT! Here is the crux of the complaint (actually, a request for leave to file a complaint, but anyway....):

As set forth in the accompanying brief and complaint, the 2020 election suffered from significant and unconstitutional irregularities in the Defendant States:

• Non-legislative actors’ purported amendments to States’ duly enacted election laws, in violation of the Electors Clause’s vesting State legislatures with plenary authority regarding the appointment of presidential electors.
   
• Intrastate differences in the treatment of voters, with more favorable allotted to voters – whether lawful or unlawful – in areas administered by local government under Democrat control and with populations with higher ratios of Democrat voters than other areas of Defendant States.

• The appearance of voting irregularities in the Defendant States that would be consistent with the unconstitutional relaxation of ballot-integrity protections in those States’ election laws.

As we've had occassion to say here, the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over how states interpret their laws or state constitutional obligations except when those interpretations conflict with applicable federal law* or the U.S. Constitution.  That third one is all about State interpretation of state laws.  The Court has no jurisdiction, and Paxton would scream like a stuck pig if the Court tried to assert such jurisdiction over Texas in similar circumstances.

The second one is a blatant attempt to invoke Bush v. Gore, and do it on the baldly partisan basis of "Democrat control" and the presence of "Democrat voters" who happen to live in higher concentration in parts of those states.  Not unlike the "Democrat voters" who dominate the urban areas of Texas.  Hmmmmm.....

"Non-legislative actors" are courts.  This is a pretty lame claim which all right-thinking (as in extreme right-wing-thinking) persons know is very serious and constitutes "legislating from the bench" which is only permitted when the ruling coincides with extreme right-wing wishes.

Ken Paxton is not so much a lawyer as he plays one on TeeVee.  Mostly, though, he seems to be jealous of all the attention Sidney Powell is getting:

"The allegations in the lawsuit are false and irresponsible," Georgia's deputy secretary of state, Jordan Fuchs, said in a statement Tuesday. "Texas alleges that there are 80,000 forged signatures on absentee ballots in Georgia, but they don’t bring forward a single person who this happened to. That’s because it didn’t happen."

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel dismissed Paxton's suit as "a publicity stunt, not a serious legal pleading."

"Mr. Paxton’s actions are beneath the dignity of the office of Attorney General and the people of the great state of Texas," she said.

And even more intersting than the fact the Texas Solicitor General (whose job it is to argue cases before the Supreme Court) isn't on this motion, nor anyone from that agency, is this:

The agency instead appears to have hired an outside attorney, Lawrence Joseph, to contribute to the case.

I used to know a few people in the Texas AG's office, though that was over 30 years ago now.  I'd like to think the people I knew then would quit rather than be associated with this crap.  Then again, they wouldn't work for Paxton in the first place.

What a clown.  Maybe we can shame the State Bar of Texas into looking into these people and their ability to file such frivolous actions.

*and even then the federal law has to be grounded in the U.S. Constitution.  If Congress overreaches its authority, the state law is upheld over the federal one.
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