Texas AG Files Reply Briefs in Last Ditch Effort to Upend Election Result
Amicus filings of various sorts continued to pour in to the Supreme Court last night and into this morning, when Texas filed its replies, and now the briefing in Texas v. Pennsylvania is complete. For additional background, here are links to my prior posts on the initial Texas filing, the supporting filings by Donald Trump and 17 other state AGs, and some of yesterday’s pleas for intervention and amicus briefs. All of the filings are available here.
Among the filings posted late yesterday were an amicus from #Kraken attorney L. Lin Wood, submitted on his own behalf, asking to submit a never-filed petition for certiorari in another case as his amicus brief, and a brief from Montana Governor Steve Bullock, pointing out that neither Texas nor Trump has sought to invalidate the selection of presidential electors in states that made equivalent changes to voting rules as the defendant states but where Trump prevailed. As Bullock’s brief notes, this underscores “that this action is less about election integrity than it is about attempting to overturn the will of the electorate.” [Update: Last, but perhaps not least, this afternoon the Court received a filing in support of Texas on behalf of State of New California and New Nevada State.]
This brings us the Texas AG Ken Paxton’s reply–or, rather, replies, as there are multiple filings, including a motion to enlarge the word-count limit a supplemental declaration dated today from Charles Cicchetti, and a new affidavit prepared yesterday from one Lisa Gage.
The first reply brief focuses on rebutting the factual and legal claims made by the four defendant states. The brief starts with the facts, and AG Paxton’s choice of emphasis here is quite interesting, as the brief leads with an extended defense of statistical stupidity contained in the initial filing and the Cicchetti declaration (hence the newly drafted supplemental declaration which is attached). Here, the Paxton brief argues “Dr. Cicchetti did take into account the possibility that votes were not randomly drawn in the later time period but, as stated in his original Declaration, he is not aware of any
Article from Latest – Reason.com
