US elections: Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani criticized after his performance in the Pennsylvania case

With Donald Trump’s post-election legal challenges in disarray, yesterday the president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, took matters into his own hands.

Giuliani made a last-minute request to appear on behalf of the Trump campaign in a landmark lawsuit in Pennsylvania.

Simply put, the case concerns vote-by-mail ballots and how they were handled by different counties in the state.

Large Democratic-leaning counties, such as those that span Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, gave voters a chance to “cure” problems with their ballots. For example, if a ballot did not arrive in the correct envelope, the voter was notified.

Counties in Republican-leaning areas did not give voters that opportunity. The Trump campaign contends that they “disenfranchised” the people who were most likely to support the president.

Two of his co-plaintiffs are Pennsylvanians whose ballots were not counted, because the counties in which they voted did not notify them of technical problems.

The campaign is making this argument in an attempt to prevent the state from certifying its election results.

You may wonder why Pennsylvania is so important. Of the states where Trump has taken legal action, he has the highest number of electoral votes, with 20. That makes him a critical piece of his strategy.

If the president fails to overcome Joe Biden’s 70,000-vote lead there, his hopes of nullifying the broader election result – something most legal experts already believe to be impossible – will fade even further.

Hence Giuliani’s intense interest in this particular lawsuit.

These days, Giuliani is known primarily for his politics. He was once a popular mayor of New York City and is among the most enthusiastic supporters of Trump in the media.

Decades ago, however, he was an accomplished prosecutor. Yesterday, in his first federal court appearance since 1992, Giuliani tried to put his old rhetorical skills to use.

In his opening argument, he echoed many of the president’s frequent claims about widespread voter fraud, so the campaign has yet to come up with any evidence.

“The best description of this situation is the widespread electoral fraud throughout the country, of which this is a part,” Giuliani told Judge Matthew Brann.

“This is not an isolated case. This is a case that is repeated in at least 10 other jurisdictions.

“If this is allowed without serious penalties, it will become an epidemic.

“It all happened in big cities controlled by Democrats.

“You would have to be a fool to think this was an accident.”

Giuliani said that the Democrats “stole the elections” and alleged that there were 1.5 million illegal votes. He did not explain how he got to that number.

The first problem here is that the Trump campaign lawsuit in Pennsylvania doesn’t actually contain allegations of voter fraud.

“This is not a fraud case,” Giuliani later admitted when questioned by Judge Brann.

The lawsuit contains claims that Republican election observers were not allowed to properly observe about 680,000 ballots that were counted in Philadelphia. He argues that he may have allowed fraud to occur.

In its original complaint, the campaign lobbied for those 680,000 ballots to be invalidated, but that request was removed as part of an amended filing Sunday.

The new version of the complaint did not ask for any legal recourse whatsoever in response to the problem with the watchers and instead narrowed its focus to what I mentioned earlier about healing the ballots.

By the way, while Giuliani was in court yesterday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled, by a 5-2 majority, that Philadelphia election officials gave Republican observers sufficient access to the vote count.

However, the issue featured prominently in Giuliani’s arguments.

“As far as we’re concerned, those ballots could be Mickey Mouse,” he said at one point.

“The attorney on the aisle focused on allegations that are not in the complaint,” said one of the opposing attorneys, Daniel Donovan, during his own discussion.

Judge Brann told Giuliani that the campaign would have to file a motion to amend its complaint again and reinsert some of the things it took out a few days ago.

“You should write this. That’s what lawyers do. They write things down,” he joked.

In any event, Judge Brann’s questions did not give the impression that he was sympathetic to Giuliani’s argument.

“You are asking this court to invalidate more than 6.8 million votes (that is, every vote in Pennsylvania), thus depriving all voters of the Commonwealth. Can you tell me how this result can be justified?” I ask.

Giuliani replied that the conduct of the electoral officials was “egregious”, and therefore a remedy as “draconian” as preventing the entire state from certifying their results was necessary.

Another of the opposing lawyers, Mark Aronchick, was outraged.

“The idea of ​​being asked to do that, I don’t use this word much. It’s a shame,” he told the judge.

Giuliani also covered the substance of the actual lawsuit in court, arguing that the two co-plaintiffs I mentioned earlier had “lost their right to vote.”

The men in question are from Fayette and Lancaster counties, both of which voted for the president. Rather than suing those two counties for not allowing voters to cure their ballots, the campaign is suing the Democratic-leaning counties that did, because that’s where most of Biden’s support came from.

This fact did not escape Judge Brann’s attention.

“In the amended complaint, you said your clients tried to vote in Lancaster and Fayette counties. So why didn’t you sue the counties that are responsible for your clients’ injuries?” I ask.

Giuliani’s co-attorney, Linda Kerns, said it was a federal matter and that the election result could have been “very, very different” if all counties had treated mail-in ballots the same way.

Again, the judge’s questions did not express sympathy for the Trump campaign position.

“How is it that facilitating the vote of some people overloads the voting rights of the plaintiffs?” Judge Brann asked.

When it was all over, he said he would give both sides a few more days to present more arguments before ruling, and proceeded to give the lawyers some recommendations for a friendly dinner.

It’s fair to say that different observers had different opinions about what Giuliani’s appearance in court was like. The Trump campaign’s chief legal counsel, Jenna Ellis, for example, was impressed.

Others less. Among the legal experts who criticized Giuliani’s performance was law professor Rick Hasen.

“I spent the entire afternoon listening to that hearing, and it was a shame. That was probably the worst advocacy I have ever heard from a lawyer arguing an election case in my life,” Hasen told CNN.

Giuliani was mocked for annihilating legal terms under questioning by Judge Brann.

“At one point, the judge was asking a kind of basic elective question, which was, ‘Do I judge this under strict scrutiny or on a rational basis?’ Which is kind of a Law 101 question, and Rudy Giuliani didn’t seem to know what those terms meant, “he said.

I freely admit that I don’t know what those terms mean either, so I guess I’ll take the expert’s word for it here.

MSNBC’s lead legal correspondent, attorney Ari Melber, was equally scathing.

“Those kinds of false claims do worse in court than on Twitter,” Melber said of Giuliani’s rhetoric on voter fraud.

“Now we are witnessing the last embers of the dumpster fire that is the Trump 2020 legal strategy. I say dumpster fire because the legal claims have been, in large part, garbage. That is why the judges have ruled them out.

“And I say fire because when other lawyers drop out of this project, we are left with the burning mess that is Rudy Giuliani, who is now taking on a bigger role.”

There was also mockery from legal experts online. Here is a sample.

Finally, Giuliani also received some criticism from one of Trump’s political allies, the former acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney.

“I’m still a little concerned about the use of Rudy Giuliani,” Mulvaney told Fox Business. “It amazes me that this is the biggest lawsuit in the history of the country, and they are not using the most prominent election lawyers. There are people who do this all the time. This is a specialty.

“This is not a television show. This is real.

“On the one hand, I think it should go ahead. It absolutely does. I just wish it was processed a little more efficiently.”