Only The Best

I know everyone is piling on, but this is like . . . it's like saying Brown v. Board of Education only desegregates schools for people named Brown. It's stunningly dumb.https://t.co/L1MXvniz8c

— OutOfContextQuoteHat (@Popehat) January 19, 2022

I accept the analogy and that this pleading is intensely stupid. But I’m rusty enough to not grasp the problem immediately.

This one I do understand at first sight.

Trump’s lawyers have asked #SCOTUS to block *four* tranches of documents. The problem is that the D.C. Circuit ruling they’re asking the Court to reverse covered only the first three. There’s no basis for emergency relief pending appeal for documents *not covered* by that appeal. https://t.co/xUip0cO8qu

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) January 19, 2022

As God is my witness I read about this a few minutes earlier than I saw this tweet, and I’d already thought about how Trump would have to file a separate suit to block release of these documents. A separate suit in the trial court. Or try to get the trial court to add these four pages, AND issue a restraining order by 6:00 p.m. That much about procedure I still understand (the issue on the motion to dismiss is procedural, not substantive, law. And those are just terms of art (i.e., classifications), not judgments on merit).

The ex-President’s lawyers, however, do not.

They have until 6 p.m. DC time to correct their error; or they’ll need to contact their malpractice insurers. This really isn’t a mistake a first-year lawyer would make. Then again, their grasp of procedural law proves to be almost nonexistent.