Livetweet thread - Sidney Powell/Georgia

Good evening all. I've got a little bit of time free, so I thought I'd do a run-through of the "Emergency Motion for Declaratory, Emergency, and Permanent Injunctive Relief and Memorandum in Support Thereof." https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.284055/gov.uscourts.gand.284055.6.0_2.pdf

For background:
This is not a court order.
This is not a new filing.

This was filed Friday. It's a request for emergency relief of some kind in the Georgia branch of the Kraken suit.

The defendants (Georgia) will respond to this sometime between now and Wednesday (at least per the scheduling order we saw earlier) and there will be a hearing Friday.

So I thought it might be interesting to read through the thing.

At the start, this strikes me as a little strange. I know that it's possible to get temporary restraining orders and *preliminary* injunctions through emergency proceedings, but I can't remember if I've seen someone try to get a *permanent* injunction that way.

But I doubt it will matter.

Moving on, I'll say that this is better than the complaints were. By which I mean that the table of contents and table of authorities aren't making my eyeballs actually bleed. (Although a bit more care to widow/orphan issues would have been nice.)

Oh, no, no, no. You don't want to do it this way. No. Oh no.

I mean, granted, well done finding someone without a spacebar phobia to type this up but did you want to refer them back to THAT complaint? And did you want to ask the court, when it's finished reading this 30-page document + attached zibits to go read that much more??

For the nonlawyers:
If you want emergency relief it is very helpful to be as clear and concise as humanly possible. Pointing the court back to your 100+ page complaint with its 29 exhibits isn't how that is best done.

To put it very mildly.

OK. So we know that this is making a fraud allegation. And we know that it's swinging for the fences when it comes to the type and amount of fraud.

The question is whether they're swinging with a baseball bat or a pool noodle. And if they're playing the right sport.

I hope this isn't the only place in this document where they mention Union County or wiping voting machines. But based on the wording in the order(s) we saw earlier, I've got a sinking suspicion that it was.

For the nonlawyers:
If you want to get a court to stop doing something, there are a bunch of things to do. This does very nearly one of those things, in that it almost asks the court to tell them to stop doing it. But that's the only one, so I hope there's more later on in this.

OK - so we're starting with Ramsland.

And the first thing that strikes me is this: how does he know these dates are right? As in, how do you know they're not data entry errors?

There were 1.3 million absentee ballots. With about 6k in his "impossible" bucket, that would be 0.5% with errors of some kind.

Also, how is 2 days impossible? GA had, IIRC, drop boxes.

Also - and the delay here was me first looking FOR, then looking at, teh exhibit - I can't find any explanation for exactly what these three lines mean, let alone how that data was collected or analyzed.

I have to - again - wonder why Matt Braynard's data is being analyzed by someone else. I also have to wonder, if I'm the reader, who Braynard is. (Courts don't go googling stuff to fill in blanks.)

Also, I have to wonder why I'm not told *WHICH* Exhibit 1 I need - there's Exhibit 1 to the Complaint, and Exhibit 1 to this. They don't bother to distinguish.

For the nonlawyers:
Asking for a motion like this to be heard on an emergency basis means you're asking the court to drop everything else and take care of you now. You really don't want to make them waste time trying to figure out what the everliving hell you are going on about.

Oh - FFS!

I'm looking through the exhibit - this is at the top of this "expert's" CV? Come on, Briggs.

OMG IT GETS WORSE - the whole exhibit is 33 pages long. The CV is about 13 pages, which isn't unusual for an expert, but it's massively unprofessional.

Not only is it too-twee-by-half for ANY purpose, it's VERY not what you want for court.

And the report itself is A BLOODY JOKE. The substantive part is 3 pages that are just the biggest waste of time and space. They're utterly useless. Let's start with this: the data were provided by Matt Braynard.

WHO IS NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN EVER IN THE DOCUMENT.

Seriously.

Matt Braynard provided the data. We don't know who he is. We don't know what he does for a living. For all we know, he might be - AND PROBABLY IS - a literal circus clown. We know damn damn little about what data was collected or how.

There's a bunch of pages of crosstabby-looking stuff, but we don't know a single thing beyond what's in there, including (for example) WHO THEY CALLED OR HOW THOSE PEOPLE WERE PICKED.

The Briggs report is, based on that alone, best used as toilet paper. It's otherwise worthless.

For the nonlawyers:
This should go without saying, but:
Courts don't Google. They can't. And wouldn't even if they could. If you want them to know An Thing you need to tell them that thing. Properly.

This exhibit does not do that at all in any way at all nope.

And that is the one dumbest thing that he could possibly have said in the document and this is where if I was the judge/clerk the paper copy would sail across the room in the general direction of a recycling bin.

I'm going back to the motion.

We went through this nonsense back near election day with Nevada.

1: I'll bet you that the great majority are, as was the case in Nevada, military-connected. Members of the military remain domiciled at their home of record and are eligible to vote there.

Because I'm that kind of masochist, I went to see the complaint at 120.

Here's what I found there:

Also, who puts paragraph numbers centered above the paragraph?

OK, I found it - kind of - at paragraph 122. And now I'm off on a search becuase I have to see bloody id my way back to it.

And "it" here is apparently one of the attachments to the damn thing I just threw across the room.

And after going back to Exhibit 1 and attachments I can't find it anywhere at all. Totally not there.

Seriously, y'all - the way I read these documents when I'm reading for the first time isn't terribly different from the first read this would get in a judge's chambers.

I'm not being overly picky. Clerks and judges, when they see a huge assertion like that, WAY more often than not go look to at least see what you're basing it on.

If they can't find it, you just took a dump on your own credibility. And credibility MATTERS in court. A LOT.

I just got sent on a scavenger hunt through multiple documents and the docket reference sheet to find a KEY document supporting a CRITICAL factual assertion, and when I get to the end the thing is missing.

That's --
It's not good.

Moving on:
I'm not a litigator. But I did well enough when I took evidence to land the TA gig the following year. I have literally no clue what they're trying to use Rule 404(b) for here - it's...

This just makes no sense to me. I don't understand it.

For the nonlawyers:
I want to explain to you what they are trying to do here but I cannot figure it out. This is a rule that has literally nothing to do with anything relevant here.

Rule 404 is so inapplicable to them trying to string a bunch of stuff together and call it a conspiracy that I can't figure out how to explain how inexplicable it is.

It's like they just yelled "infield fly rule." But it's a chess game.

Apparently trespass to feels is a violation of the United States Constitution. Who knew?

OK. I guess I should at least look at this affidavit. BRB

OK - so this part of the paragraphs in question is essentially useless, and may be slightly exaggerated.

Nothing in the affidavit clearly supports the allegation that the ballot was being reviewed in a way that would violate privacy. And the "irregularities" aren't specified.

This part doesn't help either - at most, it shows a minor counting irregularity during the hand recount. (And the affidavit indicates that this was raised at the time and handled.)

This is just authentic conspiracist gobbledygook.

But - pro tip: if it's an affidavit, cite to the affidavit. Because now I've got another damn scavenger hunt on my hands.

I swear, these hunts are taking so long I should do a Let's Play video.

Para 85 refers us to "Id." And has nothing to do with the watermark thing.
Id refers us to the Silva affidavit, but that can't be the right ref because this is "yet another" not Silva.
But maybe in Ex 18?

Nope. It's not in Exhibit 18. Exhibit 18 is the Silva affidavit only, and nothing else is there.

And, if I'm the court, this is the point where I stop looking and pull the local version of what's sometimes known as the "NYB cite."

The NYB cite is the one every court has. It says something about pigs and truffles, or squirrels and nuts, and means that the court is not your female canine, if we can't find the stuff you hid, it's most definitely a "you" problem, not a "me" problem.

Exhibit 13 is the other screenshot. It does not have 29 paragraphs. It does not have 29 sentences. NYB, moving on.

At this point, I'm not really digging more. These allegations have a common theme and that theme is that a bunch of Trump supporters went to the audit, think they saw some stuff that was wrong, and are certain that everything they saw that they think was wrong is hardcore fraud.

None of it's alleging fraud. None of it's alleging anything that's a constitutional violation.

Oh, good, now we've got the "expert" "analysis" of Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai. Dr. Shiva is a noted kook, unlikely to qualify as an expert in shoe-tying let alone election analysis, and I'm sure there was nothing racist at all about applying "ethnic distributions" to 3 counties.

Sorry, no, I'm not reading 121+ paragraphs of Dr Siva nonsense. Even my masochism has limits.

They've not offered any proof of illegal ballots. They've offered useless speculation and uninformed conjecture, but nothing remotely like proof.

And none of the cited "testimonials" alleged fraud.

This is garbage.

These are assertions, and at this point they really needed to back this crap up with something WTF more specific than referring me to the 33 pages of the brigs report and the howeverthefuck many of the Ramsland Affidavit.

It is VERY VERY noticeable that while they've had affidavits - even dumb ones - for everything else, they're referring me back to a single paragraph of the complaint for these alegations.

And that paragraph does NOT support the assertion that people kept "feeding" tabulators.

Para 117 doesn't even mention people staying behind. 118 does - to "work computers" which seems reasonable given you really want to make sure those don't get flooded.

119 refers to "an affiant" and then refers me to two affidavits and I can, I guess, figure that out for myself?

OK.

One of the affidavits doesn't talk about the leak and the closest it comes to anything about people staying behind is this:

Can't find anything definite in the other one either. Certainly no explicit allegation of people feeding ballots during a water leak.

Oh, good. The 305th MI doofus is back again

For those who don't recall: according to everything I can find, that's the unit where you go for training as a new recruit.

This is also an "expert witness" whose name and full qualifications they apparently want to keep from the defense and only provide to the judge, if so required.

That's Not. A. Thing.

You cannot have an anonymous expert witness. Not how anything works.

No, this cybersecurity advisory has nothing to do with their complaint or causes of action. It's a non-thing that's wasting time and consuming space. And the voting machine purchase isn't evidence of fraud and doesn't violate the constitution, whyamihere?

This is going to be useless - it's a thing Appel said on TV and isn't evidence of anything.

I think this is one sentence.

I'm not sure it has a verb.

And we're now meandering back to the burst pipe which in no way shape or form tries anyone's patience but what the hell maybe they'll point to evidence of actual mischief this time?

Nope, but at least in this part they're only alleging that people worked on computers, not that they were running the vote-counting machines.

If these were all the facts that are dead, this request for injunctive relief dies from failure to state a claim. Nothing rises to the specificity needed for a basic Twiqbal inquiry, let alone heighened pleading under Rule 9. Not even close.

For the nonlawyers:
The translation of the prior tweet is "they got nuttin."

Seriously, nothing in there sufficiently alleges that anyone did anything clearly wrong, let alone that federal rights were violated, let alone that there was fraud.

As was the case with the Michigan case, electors might be able to fulfill the injury-in-fact prong of a standing inquiry. But there's no attempt to address the other elements, so I wouldn't bet on standing.

It's getting late, so I'm not going to check these citations. They don't matter anyway because they've failed to state a claim so far - so they can't prove likelihood of success.

None of the elements are met here.

Page 21 before I know for sure that they're bringing an equal protection claim.

Pro tip: Don't wait that long.

Dafuq it's straightforward. Straightforward doesn't take this damn much text before you're even starting to get to your theory for how the defense violated your equal protection rights.

OH, WAIT - MY BAD

You never ever actually bothered to tell me how the specific things you said violated equal protection. Fuckaduck what a waste of time those pages were.

I don't think they can bring any challenge here under the Georgia state ballot contest law, which will have its own set of extensive procedures for how you bring such a claim.

HINT: I ain't read it but I guaran-fuggin-tee you that the first step is "in a Georgia state court"

For the nonlawyers:
State laws usually have procedures for what are known as "election contests." These give the process for losing candidates to challenge results. Those processes tend to have many technical steps, non of which they mention.

You didn't establish anything of the sort but you did manage to have a widow formatting problem and an orphan formatting problem with the same paragraph, which is always a challenge, so at least that's something.

You can't show irreparable harm without showing harm and you can't really show harm when you haven't alleged any actual violations of your rights.

First, why is this thing about a TRO in the section on harm to the opposing party and public interest?

The phrases "it must be recognized" and "a point made indisputably clear" combined with a discussion of the availability of invalidating elections as a remedy that comes without citation combine to create a distinct sense of bovine excrement being flung at a wall.

And apparently that's the closing? I'm not sure public interest was even really dealt with - I'd have to go back to look.

If they just tried the mic drop, they missed. Badly. As in, accidentally looped foot in cord and fell down stepping back from the lectern.

OK. Done with that.

This motion for injunctive relief is a Turkey. It's uncooked Thanksgiving leftovers that have been sitting unrefrigerated since the big day.

I really feel bad for whoever has to draft the response to this and the motion to dismiss, though - they're going to have to spend hours trying to figure out what the plaintiffs were trying to say and then draft a response to that.

It's the only way that they'll really be able to respond in a lawyerly fashion.

Anyway - bottom line impressions:

1: NOT as bad as the complaint. Written in standard English throughout, with only some exceptions.
2: I probably wouldn't fail it if it was turned in as student work.
3: But it most definitely wouldn't be on the good side of the grade curve. Even first year.

4: My analysis of the merits of this motion is that this motion has no merits.

5: I think the only question is whether the case dies from the bench Friday, over the weekend, or Monday.

Hope you enjoyed the thread, have a great night.