CNN's Jake Tapper wonders how long Republicans are going to continue to defer to Trump's legal team which has been embarrassing themselves in one courtroom after another with their frivolous lawsuits based on hearsay, rumors, insinuations, lies and conspiracy theories.
Trump claimed, for example, that Republican election observers were banned from being present in the Philadelphia Convention Center for vote counting. That's a lie. The issue was whether the observers could stand 6 feet or 20 feet away, not whether or not there were Trump campaign observers there. There were.
In court, Judge Paul Diamond, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ended up pressing the Trump campaign lawyer Jerome Marcus, quote, "Are your observers in the counting room?" the judge asked. Marcus admitted, "There's a non-zero number of people in the room." Ah (ph), yes, a non-zero number.
"I am asking you as a member of the bar of this court," the judge said, "are people representing the plaintiffs," the Trump campaign, "in the room?" Admitted the Trump lawyer, "Yes."
This kind of thing has been playing out all over the country where the standards of evidence are a little bit higher than they are on social media.
In Georgia, the Trump campaign alleged that proper chain of custody was not maintained for 56 ballots. Fifty-six ballots in a state that president-elect Biden won by more than 14,000 votes. But 56 ballots during the canvassing process. The judge looked into that, found that the claim was unsupported. Case dismissed.
All over the country it's been like this. In Wisconsin, Trump allied lawyers contesting a Biden win tried to stop the certification of votes claiming they could prove fraud. OK. Where is the proof?
The lawyer said, quote, "evidence will be shortly forthcoming." In other words, we don't have any evidence.
Same basic thing in Michigan where Trump lawyers tried to stop the counting of the vote based on what Michigan Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens called, quote, "inadmissible hearsay within hearsay."
It's been, frankly, embarrassing. No evidence, unprofessional, desperate.
Increasingly Trump campaign lawyers seem to realize being involved in fact-free desperation efforts to overturn the results of a free and fair election might not necessarily enhance their resumes.
The Trump legal team in Arizona, and trust me, you do not even want to know about the crazy Sharpie nonsense they were pushing there, that legal team has folded up their tent.
Other law firms have withdrawn their representation from the Trump campaign.
On Friday, nine cases from Trump and his allies intended to attack an undue President-Elect Joe Biden's victory in key states. Nine cases were rejected or dropped. Nine.
So what now? Well, now the President of the United States is literally embracing a deranged conspiracy theory that millions of votes were changed using software. The problem here, a group of national, state, and private election officials issued a statement Thursday which was promoted online by the cybersecurity czar at the Department of Homeland Security with this sentence bolded, "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," unquote.
The problem with Republican officeholders arguing that President Trump has the right to present his evidence in court is that the president's efforts do not have anything to do with evidence. They have to do with hearsay and rumor and insinuations and lies and conspiracy theories. And once these efforts have been rejected by every court, outgoing President Trump will likely continue to make them.
How long is the Republican Party going to continue to defer to unhinged mendacious desperation, led by the gang that couldn't sue straight?
I hate to break it to Tapper, but don't expect the Republican party to start acting like any of them have a single redeemable quality any time in the near future, or ever for that matter. They were like this long before Trump and aren't going to change now that he's lost the election.
