Six states attorneys general, led by Missouri AG Eric Schmitt, have moved to intervene in Texas v. Pennsylvania, the lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that seeks to prevent the selection of presidential electors based upon the November election results in four states (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan). Yesterday, 17 states, also led by Missouri AG Schmitt, filed an amicus brief in support of the Texas suit. I wrote about that filing here.
There are a few notable things about today’s filing. First and foremost, it is notable than only six of the states that joined yesterday’s amicus brief (Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah) were willing to join today’s motion to intervene and join the Texas Bill of Complaint. This suggests that some of the state AGs who were willing to say that the claims raised by Texas are sufficiently serious to warrant the Court’s attention were not willing to actually endorse the substance of those claims. Perhaps this indicates there is only so far they are willing to go to virtue-signal their support for the Trump tribe. (Yesterday’s filing from Arizona can be viewed in a similar light.) In the alternative it could simply represent discomfort with some of the claims this new briefing supports, which leads to my next point.
In seeking to intervene, the states did not submit their own proposed Bill of Complaint. Rather, they seek to join the Bill of Complaint submitted by Texas, as modified by the Bill of Complaint submitted on behalf of Donald Trump. As their Bill of Complaint in Intervention states:
The Intervening State Plaintiffs adopt by reference and join in the Bill of
Complaint submitted by Plaintiff State of Texas as modified by President Trump’s Bill of Complaint in Intervention in all aspects, including the statements of Jurisdiction, the Parties, Additional Facts, Count I (alleging a violation of the Elector’s Clause) and the
Prayer for Relief.
In other words, these six states are endorsing everything in the Texas and Trump Bills of Complaint, including the absurdly stupid statistical claims, the misrepresentation of what occurred in other Supreme Court litigation concerning absentee ballots in Pennsylvania, and the Trump’s briefs uncited claims about Georgia absentee ballot rejection rates that are directly refuted by the data released by the (Republican) Georgia Secretary of State, in addition to the underlying legal theory that states can sue to challenge the lawfulness of election rules and their administration in other states.
All in all, it is a sad showing from the attorneys general of these six states.
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