GOP's PA certification last stand: “bad faith, dilatory motive, prejudice, or futility”

There's a slight delay in the PA certification announcement if only because “This is not at all frivolous.”

Now 1-36 in lawsuits, the Trump campaign tries to claim again on appeal of a technicality that every Pennsylvania postal ballot is illegal because “defective mail ballots”, that they should be thrown out to be replaced by a statistical sample substitute, and if that doesn’t work, swap it all out and substitute electors. They got shot down already, and are now down to their last gasp, which could be rendered moot by tomorrow, since the PA certification should occur this evening.

Lawyers for the Trump campaign for weeks have placed their hopes on using the law to stop the certification of Pennsylvania’s election results.

But on Monday afternoon, with their prospects of a courtroom victory dwindling, the lawyers filed only a narrow appeal of a loss in a big federal case in Pennsylvania.

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“The GOP bungles…” could be the beginning of nearly every headline over the last few weeks.

Yogi Berra said it best: “It’s like deja vu all over again.”

Ignore the noise. Relax. The will of the people will be respected. We got this. 💪https://t.co/QUwHw5q2fB— Josh Shapiro (@JoshShapiroPA) November 23, 2020

In their appellate brief filed on Monday, the Trump campaign’s lawyers asked the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to let them file a revised complaint, reversing Judge Brann’s decision. The lawyers argued further that if they were allowed to filed a revision, they should also be allowed to hold a hearing on the merits of the second complaint — even though most of the issues it would raise would be ones that Judge Brann has already ruled on and denied.

www.nytimes.com/…

“This is not at all frivolous.”

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Alright Trump has now filed his brief. Late, but filed. I will read, but just from the table of contents, it’s something else. https://t.co/Fs4Engea4r

— Raffi Melkonian (@RMFifthCircuit) November 23, 2020

This confirms my previous tweet. Note, this is their only shot on appeal. There's not like, some other brief where they can challenge the trial judge's decision on the First Amended Complaint. By filing this brief, they are done on that.

I'm going to offer some free #AppellateTwitter advice here while I go through – that's what this account normally is! – literally no one in the universe cares about this level of granular detail in your statements of facts. 3 people who *really* don't care are the judges.

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I mean, I'm done with the brief. It includes 7 pages of legal argument. That's … odd. It forfeits numerous arguments. The ones it makes are not very persuasive. I am confident the defendants' brief, filed tomorrow, will nuke this thing into outer space.— Raffi Melkonian (@RMFifthCircuit) November 23, 2020