The week
White House allies secretly wrote the Texas lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to overturn Biden’s victory
On November 12, former President Donald Trump’s team of electoral lawyers knew that he had lost his candidacy for re-election, which, despite Trump’s public tweets and comments, “there was no substantial evidence of electoral fraud and there was nothing close by. of ‘irregularities’ to reverse the outcome in the courts, “reports The New York Times. But his protests only made Trump turn to allies saying what he wanted to hear, so November 12 was also the day that “Trump’s long, fragile legal effort to reverse his loss turned into something entirely different – an extralegal campaign for subvert the election, rooted in a lie so convincing to some of its most devoted followers that it made the January 6 deadly attack on the Capitol almost inevitable. ” Powell, Lin Wood and other lawyers “ready to move forward with propaganda processes that skated along the lines of legal ethics and reason,” reports the Times. This eventually included “the vast majority of Republican attorney generals, whose Supreme Court case seeking to cast off 20 million votes was secretly drafted by lawyers close to the White House.” Prior to Thanksgiving, Trump’s allies – including Kris Kobach, a voting restrictions activist who previously led Trump’s “electoral integrity” commission; former North Carolina Supreme Court President Mark Martin; and Lawrence Joseph, a lawyer who worked to protect Trump’s tax returns – started working on a new lawsuit that, although “without legal or factual merit” was “rich in sensational claims” that would surely spread through the conservative media, the Times reports. The argument was that Trump states could ask the Supreme Court to reject 20 million votes in certain states that President Biden won because, they claimed, those Biden states effectively cheated. “Only one type of lawyer can take a case brought by one state against another directly to the Supreme Court: a state attorney general,” reports the Times. “The president’s original electoral lawyers doubted that any attorney general would be willing to do so,” but Texas attorney general Ken Paxton took the chance. When the Texas attorney general refused to be involved in the lawsuit, Paxton hired Joseph as a special outside attorney, not revealing to the court that Joseph and other Trump external advisers had written the petition. Read more about Trump’s extralegal campaign in The New York Times. More stories from theweek.comRise of the Barstool conservativesBiden has to choose whether to replace Trump’s inspectors general, especially 1 pushed by McConnellMeatballs, f-bombs, vote fraud conspiracies: a Trump Oval Office meeting so insane, Giuliani was’ the voice of reason ‘