The “endless lawsuits” approach has been an unmitigated disaster for Trump. None of these lawsuits have stood up to any degree of scrutiny by the courts. The attempt to bar Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from casting their electoral college votes was truly drastic. If successful, the outcome would have been electoral chaos, both now and in future.
What’s so bizarre about the Texas lawsuit?
The lawsuit was deeply flawed. The court ruled that Texas had no legal standing to file a lawsuit. It was that bad as a legal case. Support for the case came from Republicans, among whom was a group claiming substantial allegations of fraud. The trouble with that is the only allegations are coming from Trump supporters. Nobody else has found any notable issues of electoral fraud.
Texas also entered the case as a “dispute between states”. That’s highly debatable. It was a lawsuit applied to electoral operations in other states. It was not Texas vs other states over mutual disputed issues, which is the definition of a dispute. The states were not amused, with a Pennsylvania brief describing the suit as abuse of the judicial process. Georgia, after a demanding electoral count in a close race seems insulted by the Texan lawsuit for obvious reasons.
As if that weren’t bizarre enough, allegations made in other lawsuits include:
• “Truckloads” of illegal ballots brought in at night to Detroit.
• Suitcases full of illegal ballots in Georgia.
• Iranian and Chinese hacking of voting machines
No evidence at all of any such events has been found. The Republican Party has taken no action on any of them. Only Trump is making any case for these strangely evasive “facts”. The allegations were so unconvincing that courts rejected sworn statements.
It may well be that four solid years of lying has finally come back for payment by Trump. 20,000 false or misleading statements don’t exactly help anyone’s credibility.
Talking about bizarre – It may also be that the ancient conservative theory of stacking the Supreme Court has also come unstuck in the process. The decision was based on pure law, not politics. No competent lawyer, let alone a judge, could have heard that case.
What next for Trump? Who cares?
Trump is still talking about winning, but the facts are pretty unequivocal:
• He hasn’t been elected. He has no legal status after his term ends.
• He has literally thousands of lawsuits waiting for him after he leaves office.
• Multiple investigations are indicating a range of possible additional lawsuits for him and members of his family.
• His tax returns and other matters are still unfinished business.
• He is guarantor for $300-400 million loans which will fall due soon.
• He’s talking about running again in 2024, but that will depend on the legal outcomes of the next four years.
The more likely scenario is that like Custer, he’s not coming back. All that blowing of his own little big horn has left a taste. Can the world survive without Donald Trump? Well, it did, for 4.5 billion years. Maybe it’s time to give that another shot.
