Good afternoon, followers of frivolous performative litigation.

New filing in Orly Tatiz's bonkers attempt to halt the 2nd Impeachment trial. It's a gloriously burning train wreck of mangled formatting and hideous typography.

Let's dig

For those who may have forgotten, this is the case we saw last week - the one where Orly took the 12(b)(6) game to the next level by LITERALLY forgetting to include actual claims in her complaint.

So technically it's still unclear what she's suing over.
And, frankly, it's not like I can talk about the merits of this one because there aren't any. But the sheer stunning insanity of the formatting alone makes this worth a thread.

Even though, honestly, it's not the worst Orly has produced.
For context, the text below comes from the State of Hawaii's 2012 response to a motion for reconsideration in one of the birther cases.

"an inartfully collated, defectively stapled, and misordered collection of pages" is still one of my favorite descriptions of a filing ever.
Just to start with, apparently we're putting the caption on both sides of the (incomplete) line now. Single spaced on one side, double spaced on the other, no less. With everything but the judge's name in caps.
Also, this appears to be a motion seeking to have the trial stayed until she wins her case.

No, really, that's how it's styled.
Next, we have whatever this is - it's a block of text that is so crammed together that it looks like it's somehow less than single-spaced - which tells the judge there will be an attempt at a meet and confer with the parties real soon now because that's totally how it works.
Now we have three different headers, all identical in size, one of which is a differently-phrased version of the title of the motion, all of which are in a different font from the prior block of text.
This, in turn, is followed by a paragraph of center-justified text (not fully justified; centered) that explains that apparently the desire to vote for someone who has not declared their candidacy in an election that takes place several years from now is an immediate injury.
Next, we have a difficult to determine number of paragraphs that are fully-justified in the typographic sense only. This is followed by a paragraph that returns to center-justification.

All of this takes place without legal argument of any recognizable variety.
The delay between the last post and the one before was because I was trying to figure out how many paragraphs were on that last page. I gave up.
The center-justified paragraph includes a citation that consists only of a three-line url without additional information and argues that disenfranchisement is a deprivation of the right to political speech.
confused rabbit dot gif
We now go to still-centered-but-1.5-line-spaced (probably) text that cites a 1969 case to explain why preliminary injunctions exist.
Still center-justified, we have a couple of rule statements, both of which are supported by cases which make me wonder what tools (if any) she's using to conduct legal research these days.
Also, she thinks she is likely to succeed on the merits of the claims which she has literally failed to state in ways that aren't actually contemplated by Fed R Civ P 12(b)(6), which carries an unspoken presumption that you actually bothered to say what the claim is.
We now shift to double-spaced and fully (typographically) justified text that somehow manages to overwrite the right hand margin line of the pleading paper.
We then, in identically malformatted text, declare that the Congress is taking actions "bordering on the criminal under Title 18, Section 242 of the US Constitution." Also apparently we're trying to assert claims on Trump's behalf because what are clients anyway?
Growing bored with the prior formatting, we seem to have cut the line spacing and put the margin line on top of the text instead of the other way around.

Also, we're talking about things that will happen on the 25th in a document that wasn't filed until the 26th.
We have a quotation here from a 1976 case that Taitz added emphasis to except she forgot the emphasis.
Somehow she's managed to get the margin line to run over the text and the text to wipe out parts of the line within a single paragraph and my mind is just totally blown.
And we've got a conclusion - in a totally different font - that appears on Page 8 of 12, which makes me dread continuing to scroll.
And she STILL hasn't figured out that you sign ON the signature line not under it.

Over a decade of legal malcraptice and she still hasn't managed to master that one simple trick.
And how do you manage to do this for your proof of service page?

Also, yeah, that's not going to be proper service on the United States. Again.
Page 10 is Art.
And I think she might be trying to invent negative line spacing.
And, putting the icing on the cake, she seems to be signing on the judge's behalf in her proposed order (which is center-justified). That always goes over well.
So, overall, it's a pretty average Orly Taitz filing.

I'll set a docket alert and keep an eye out for future shenanigans.

More from Mike Dunford

This is an excellent question, and it's something that I've thought about some over the last couple of months.

Honestly, I think the answer is that the rationales for these rulings are not likely to unreasonably harm meritorious progressive OR conservative challenges.


The first thing to keep in mind is that, by design, challenges to the outcomes of elections are supposed to be heard by state courts, through the process set out in state law.

That happened this year, and the majority of those challenges were heard on the merits.

The couple of cases where laches determined the outcome of state election challenges were ones where it was pretty clear that the challenges were brought in bad faith - where ballots cast in good faith in reliance on laws that had been in force for some time were challenged.

The PA challenge to Act 77 is one example. The challengers, some of whom had voted for passage of the bill, didn't make use of the initial, direct-to-PA-SCt challenge built into the law or sue pre-election; they waited until post-election.

The WI case is another. That one had a challenge to ballots cast using a form that had been in use for a literal decade.

Those are cases where laches is clear - particularly the prejudice element.
I went over the dismissal on my stream, but a few thoughts on where things are at:

1: The Notice of Appeal doesn't shock me; I figured Louie would be this dumb.
2: As was the case with the case at the District Court, it doesn't really matter how vigorously Pence defends this.


3: The lack of standing is so spectacularly, glaringly obvious that it doesn't really matter whether Pence raised certain arguments; they will get noticed by the court.
4: That's because federal courts have an independent duty to ensure they have jurisdiction.

5: Standing is a jurisdictional requirement; no standing means no case.
6: The rules for standing are clear and nothing in the opinion dismissing the case was the least bit controversial in any universe except the alternate one inhabited by Louie and the Arizonan cosplayers.

7: "But it's the 5th Circuit" will be raised both by Trumpistians and those who are exceptionally nervous. There is exactly as much reason to be concerned about the 5th as there was the trial court: ie none at all.

So - my expectations:
Given the timeline, I suspect that Louie will be granted an expedited appeal and will lose on an expedited basis. I also expect that he will appeal to SCOTUS and the appeal there will not be expedited.
THREAD:
Good afternoon, followers of frivolous election litigation. There's a last-minute entry in the competition for dumbest pre-inauguration lawsuit - a totally loony effort to apparently leave the entire USA without a government.

We'll start with the complaint in a minute.

But first, I want to give you a quick explanation for why I'm going to keep talking about these cases even after the inauguration.

They're part of an ongoing effort - one that's not well-coordinated but is widespread - to discredit our fundamental system of government.

It's a direct descendent, in more ways than one, of birtherism. And here's the thing about birtherism. It might have been a joke to a lot of people, but it was extremely pernicious. It obviously validated the racist "not good enough to be President" crowd. But that wasn't all.

Don't get me wrong, that was bad enough. Validating racism helped put the kind of shitbird who would tweet this from an official government account into power. But it didn't stop


(Also, if you agree with Pompeo about multiculturalism - the legendary melting pot - not being what this country is all about, you need to stop following me now. And maybe go somewhere and think about your life choices and what made you such a tool.)

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