Image via Fox News screengrab
Attorneys representing the Democratic Party filed a motion to intervene in federal court on Tuesday in one of the cases recently brought by allegedly freelance pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell.
Georgia-based attorney Adam M. Sparks and powerhouse voting rights attorney Marc Elias, a top Biden campaign lawyer, lead that intervention effort.
“Among other unprecedented relief sought, plaintiffs ask this court to either (1) invalidate all 1.3 million absentee votes in the November 3, 2020 election, or (2) order the governor, the secretary [of state], and the [Georgia State Election] Board to decertify the results of the presidential election—disenfranchising all of the voters who cast ballots of any kind—and declare, by judicial fiat, their preferred candidate is the winner of the election,” the motion notes.
Recall: Powell filed a lengthy, fraud-themed lawsuit last week which asks a federal court to overturn the certified 2020 election results in the Peach State. Long-promised to be something of a biblical gauntlet-like throw-down, the filing was thoroughly mocked for its threadbare legal arguments and numerous typos over the weekend.
The Democratic Party’s legal team submitted their Monday brief along with several additional documents in a bid to have Powell’s so-called “Kraken” lawsuit dismissed due to: (1) the GOP plaintiffs’ alleged lack of standing; (2) the court’s alleged lack of jurisdiction; (3) the plaintiffs’ “extraordinary delay” in bringing the lawsuit; and (4) the GOP’s alleged failure to state a claim.
From the motion’s introduction [emphasis in original]:
[Republicans] ask this court to disregard the will of the voters—whose votes will be counted at least three times—and enter an extraordinary order decertifying the results showing that President-Elect [Joe] Biden won the state of Georgia and unilaterally “requiring Governor [Brian] Kemp to transmit certified election results that state that President Donald Trump is the winner of the election.” Plaintiffs’ complaint was filed more than three weeks after the general election, and five days after Georgia certified the results.
“In support of their unprecedented request to overturn a certified election that will be fully counted at least three times, plaintiffs proffer debunked conspiracy theories, wild speculation, and unsupported allegations of procedural improprieties recycled from other unsuccessful lawsuits,” the motion continues.
The Democratic Party’s proposed intervention comes at a key time in the case; after a spate of weekend filings and judicial orders took Powell’s much-mocked filing from a hate-clicked online sensation to a lawsuit that appears to have at least a few teeth.
U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten, Sr. conducted an hour-long non-evidentiary hearing in the case via Zoom late Sunday evening which ordered various state authorities in Georgia to refrain from “altering, destroying, or erasing, or allowing the alteration, destruction, or erasure of, any software or data on any Dominion voting machine in Cobb Gwinnett, and Cherokee Counties.”
SEE RELATED: Sidney Powell’s ‘Kraken’ Lawsuit Argues Improbability of ‘High Republican, Low Trump’ Voting Patterns
That victory, however, was exceedingly short-lived as Batten almost immediately reversed himself.
The initial granting of the injunction requested by Powell required Georgia state officials to “to impound and preserve the voting machines in the State of Georgia, and to prevent any wiping of data.” In reversing himself, Batten found that the voting machines in question are actually under the control of county election officials who are not actually named in the lawsuit as defendants.
That second order notes:
Plaintiffs’ request fails because the voting equipment that they seek to impound is in the possession of county election officials. Any injunction the Court issues would extend only to Defendants and those within their control, and Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that county election officials are within Defendants’ control. Defendants cannot serve as a proxy for local election officials against whom the relief should be sought. Therefore, to the extent Plaintiffs seek emergency relief to impound and preserve the voting machines, that request is denied.
To hear the Democrats tell it, the entire lawsuit should be dismissed for the reasons listed above–which, the motion claims, all boil down to the fact that Trump’s allies have so far failed to provide any actual evidence of fraud.
“Despite widespread acknowledgement that no fraud occurred various lawsuits have been filed in around the country and in Georgia in an attempt to sow confusion and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election,” the motion notes. “Plaintiffs apparently do not notice the irony inherent in their complaint: while failing to provide evidence of a massive conspiracy to disenfranchise millions of Americans, their suggested remedy would explicitly disenfranchise millions of their fellow Georgians who voted in November.”
Categorizing the GOP’s “requested relief” as “both unprecedented and unbelievable” in their proposed motion to dismiss, Sparks and Elias argue that the court “should dismiss this case” because their “claims fail as a matter of law” and their “allegations fall far short of federal pleading standards.”
“Finally, plaintiffs’ requested relief—an extraordinary judicial override of [Georgia’s] democratic process—would violate the constitutional rights of millions of Georgians,” the proposed filing goes on. “Every other court confronted with similar efforts has promptly and properly rejected them. This court should do the same.”
“The requested relief is not tailored to the allegations in the complaint because instead of remedying a constitutional violation, plaintiffs’ requested relief would create one,” the attorneys go on to say.
[image via screengrab/Fox News]
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