Pro-Biden states deliver furious rejoinder to Republican AGs’ attempt to throw election

Ear­li­er this week, cor­rupt Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton (a Repub­li­can) announced he was fil­ing a law­suit in the Unit­ed States Supreme Court aimed at pre­vent­ing Penn­syl­va­nia, Wis­con­sin, Michi­gan, and Geor­gia from par­tic­i­pat­ing in next Mon­day’s 2020 meet­ing of the Elec­toral Col­lege — all because the vot­ers in those states did­n’t back Pax­ton’s can­di­date, Don­ald Trump.

After Pax­ton announced his plans, more than a dozen oth­er Repub­li­can attor­neys gen­er­al decid­ed to use pub­lic resources in their states to back his des­per­ate gam­bit to use the Unit­ed States Supreme Court to throw the elec­tion and block the win­ners (Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris) from tak­ing office.

The four defen­dant states have now all deliv­ered furi­ous, scathing rejoin­ders to Pax­ton’s law­suit, while a large group of oth­er states have rushed to stand at their side by fil­ing their own ami­cus (“friend of the court”) brief.

The cohort of states (and enti­ties that should be states) join­ing with Penn­syl­va­nia, Michi­gan, Geor­gia, and Wis­con­sin in oppo­si­tion to Pax­ton’s law­suit con­sists of the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, Cal­i­for­nia, Col­orado, Con­necti­cut, Delaware, Guam, Hawaii, Illi­nois, Maine, Mary­land, Mass­a­chu­setts, Min­neso­ta, Neva­da, New Jer­sey, New Mex­i­co, New York, North Car­oli­na, Ore­gon, Rhode Island, Ver­mont, Vir­ginia, the U.S. Vir­gin Islands, and Washington.

All vot­ed for Biden except for North Car­oli­na (which vot­ed for Trump) and the ter­ri­to­ries of Guam and the U.S. Vir­gin Islands, which have no rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the Elec­toral Col­lege because they are not yet states.

The pro-Biden states’ posi­tion is that the Supreme Court should not even take up the case. The pro-Biden states warn that doing so would send a ter­ri­ble mes­sage and set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent of inde­fen­si­ble judi­cial meddling.

“The court should not abide this sedi­tious abuse of the judi­cial process, and should send a clear and unmis­tak­able sig­nal that such abuse must nev­er be repli­cat­ed,” Penn­syl­va­nia declared in its brief.

“Texas pro­pos­es an extra­or­di­nary intru­sion into Wisconsin’s and the oth­er defen­dant states’ elec­tions, a task that the Con­sti­tu­tion leaves to each state,” Wis­con­sin told the Court. “Texas asserts that this court’s inter­ven­tion is nec­es­sary to ensure faith in the elec­tion. But it is hard to imag­ine what could pos­si­bly under­mine faith in democ­ra­cy more than this court per­mit­ting one state to enlist the court in its attempt to over­turn the elec­tion results in oth­er states.”

“The under­ly­ing legal claims Texas belat­ed­ly seeks to lit­i­gate in this Court can be, and indeed have been, lit­i­gat­ed — and thus far lost — in alter­nate forums where facts can be devel­oped and issues ful­ly aired, sub­ject to this Court’s ordi­nary cer­tio­rari review,” the ami­ci point­ed out in their brief.

“Ken Pax­ton con­tin­ues to do dis­ser­vice to the crit­i­cal work we do as state Attor­neys Gen­er­al,” said Mass­a­chu­setts AG Mau­ra Healey and Neva­da AG Aaron Ford, the Co-Chairs of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Attor­neys Gen­er­al Association.

“This lat­est law­suit filed by the Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al, which seeks to under­mine the will of vot­ers in states that are not Texas and that will have absolute­ly no impact on the out­come of the elec­tion, is mer­it­less and desperate.”

“Indeed, the Geor­gia Attor­ney Gen­er­al [who is a Repub­li­can] got it right, and instead of con­tin­u­ing to sow doubt and dis­trust in the 2020 elec­tion, state AGs — regard­less of par­ty — should con­tin­ue to speak out in sup­port of the will of the peo­ple and pro­tect­ing our democracy.”

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic AGs not­ed that Paxton:

• … is indict­ed on secu­ri­ties fraud and cur­rent­ly awaits trial.
• … is under inves­ti­ga­tion by the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion (FBI).
• … fired sev­en senior staffers who whisle­blew on his poten­tial­ly ille­gal behav­ior ear­li­er this year.
• … threat­ened cities in Texas who did not lift COVID-19 restric­tions meant to pro­tect people.
• … sup­port­ed the com­plete restric­tion of repro­duc­tive health care dur­ing the begin­ning of COVID-19 pandemic.
• … is lead­ing the Repub­li­can AG effort to repeal the entire Patient Pro­tec­tion Act which would take health care away from 20+ mil­lion peo­ple, and elim­i­nate pro­tec­tions for 135+ mil­lion with pre-exist­ing conditions.
• … served as the Chair of the Repub­li­can AG Asso­ci­a­tion and cur­rent­ly serves as Co-Chair of Lawyers for Trump.

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son also denounced Pax­ton’s unac­cept­able behav­ior in a state­ment announc­ing Wash­ing­ton’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the ami­cus brief.

“I will con­tin­ue work­ing to defend our elec­tions from these legal attacks on our democ­ra­cy,” Fer­gu­son said in a state­ment. “This law­suit has no legal or fac­tu­al basis. It will not suc­ceed in over­turn­ing the will of the voters.”

Here’s a quick guide to the dis­unit­ed states:

The greater Pacif­ic North­west states are split into all three camps.

Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon oppose the suit. Mon­tana sup­ports it. Alas­ka and Ida­ho have not tak­en a posi­tion or joined either group of ami­cus states.

Ida­ho’s Repub­li­can Attor­ney Gen­er­al Lawrence Was­den said ear­li­er this week he will not par­tic­i­pate in Pax­ton’s effort to throw the elec­tion.

“As Attor­ney Gen­er­al, I have sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns about sup­port­ing a legal argu­ment that could result in oth­er states lit­i­gat­ing against legal deci­sions made by Idaho’s leg­is­la­ture and gov­er­nor,” Was­den wrote. “Ida­ho is a sov­er­eign state and should be free to gov­ern itself with­out inter­fer­ence from any oth­er state. Like­wise, Ida­ho should respect the sov­er­eign­ty of its sis­ter states.”

Fol­low­ing the issuance of those com­ments, Ida­ho’s Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Brad Lit­tle wast­ed no time in seek­ing to cur­ry favor with the Trump fam­i­ly and oth­er Trump enablers by putting out his own state­ment back­ing the suit.

“Gov­er­nor Brad Lit­tle announced today he proud­ly stands with the Ida­ho Repub­li­can Par­ty in sup­port­ing Texas in its efforts to ensure Amer­i­can’s elec­tions meet the high­est stan­dards and expec­ta­tions of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, and he will file an ami­cus brief in sup­port of the law­suit,” his Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor Emi­ly Cal­li­han said in a state­ment sent to NPI a few hours ago.

The state­ment quot­ed Lit­tle as saying:

“Ida­ho’s elec­tions are safe and secure, and we expect the same of oth­er states. Pro­tect­ing the sanc­ti­ty of the vot­ing process is para­mount to ensur­ing a strong demo­c­ra­t­ic process, and our cit­i­zens need the con­fi­dence that their vote counts.”

What love­ly platitudes.

What’s fun­ny is that could eas­i­ly be a state­ment in oppo­si­tion to Texas’ law­suit, which is whol­ly and entire­ly with­out any mer­it whatsoever.

Also back­ing Pax­ton’s sin­is­ter action are more than a hun­dred Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress, includ­ing Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers and Dan New­house, whose loy­al­ty is clear­ly to Don­ald Trump and not the Unit­ed States Constitution.

The Unit­ed States Supreme Court must not dig­ni­fy this attack on our democ­ra­cy with any fur­ther pro­ceed­ings. Texas’ attempt to throw the elec­tion should be dis­missed with the curt order that it deserves.