Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC, on June 22, 2024. (Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP)
A federal judge in Georgia gave an angry and demeaning lecture to Republican Party attorneys late Tuesday afternoon during a hearing over a lawsuit challenging last-minute efforts by Democratic-leaning counties to allow more people to vote in the Peach State.
On Friday, as the in-person early vote period ended in Georgia, numerous counties said they would allow voters to drop off their mail-in ballots at county buildings over the weekend.
With a quickness typical to election-related litigation, Donald Trump‘s campaign and state Republicans sued to segregate those ballots in state court. Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee sued in federal court using substantially similar legal arguments.
Now, both of those lawsuits have been rejected.
In the federal case, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge R. Stan Baker chastised GOP lawyers for their literacy — in terms of both their professional-legal and elementary acumen.
In caustic terms, the jurist described the lawsuit as betraying a lack of “basic level of statutory review and reading comprehension,” according to a courtroom report by Politico journalist Kyle Cheney.
As Law&Crime previously reported, the RNC and state Republicans are represented by attorney Alex B. Kaufman, who previously sat in on then-President Donald Trump’s now infamous 2021 call with Raffensperger during which Trump implored Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes to help him win the state after it was won by President Joe Biden. Kaufman later said he played “no role” in the conversation and did not represent any of the parties involved in the call.
A terse docket entry denied the GOP’s requests as follows:
For the reasons and in the manner stated on the record of the January 5, 2024 Telephonic Motions Hearing, the Court denies Plaintiffs’ Emergency Motion for Preliminary Injunction / Temporary Restraining Order.
The 21-page lawsuit characterized the late-stage ballot-collection efforts by seven Georgia counties that have voted for Democrats in recent years as “unlawful actions” that “came at the expense” of the RNC’s own efforts in the hotly-contested battleground state. In other words, the filing cast those counties’ efforts as a nakedly partisan attempt to deliver an electoral victory for the Democratic Party.
From the filing, at length:
[I]n order to maintain competitive parity with its Democratic opponents, the RNC must shift resources this weekend from other mission-critical efforts to chase absentee ballots and encourage voters to return them to the Defendants’ newly opened offices. If the RNC doesn’t shift those resources, it will suffer a competitive disadvantage. If it does shift those resources, it must sacrifice other activities that are critical to its mission of turning out Republican voters and electing Republican candidates. Regardless, the Defendants’ illegal actions harm the RNC’s ability to pursue its core activities.
More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Election Day is Election Day’: Trump supporters rejoice as Georgia Supreme Court reverses extension of absentee ballot deadline
Audibly upset, the judge reportedly said the lawsuit itself was a partisan attempt to “tip the scales of this election by discriminating against [counties] less likely to vote for their candidate.”
The GOP lawsuit singled out “Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Gwinnett, Athens-Clarke, Clayton, and Chatham counties.” In only those counties did they aim to stop officials from accepting ballots over the weekend.
The practice is allowed under Georgia law, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a post on X, noting that “several counties” had exercised their right to accept such ballots in the days leading up to Election Day but after early polls closed.
The basic thrust of the lawsuit was a major issue for the judge, who said he would “unquestionably” be depriving people of their state and constitutional voting rights if he ruled in favor of the GOP, according to a courtroom report by Lawfare editor Anna Bower.
But the limited — and highly specific — relief sought by the GOP plaintiffs was a particular point of contention for the judge.
“Even more concerning, I would only be invalidating votes from the select counties that plaintiffs have cherry-picked based on nothing more than the past political preferences of the citizens in those counties,” Baker reportedly opined.
The court, in rejecting the Republican Party’s lawsuit, also had choice words for the litigators and their work product — reportedly saying parts of the original petition were “factually and legally incorrect.”
But the upbraiding did not end there.
“Particularly when it comes to matters that underpin our constitutional republic, including our elections system, those of us in the legal profession owe an obligation…that we not strike any foul blows,” Baker reportedly said. “Unfortunately, plaintiffs’ counsel missed that mark in this case.”
The judge’s lecture then went on to strike several chords along the lines of attorneys’ ethical obligations.
“It’s dangerous when a non-lawyer makes claims that are factually or legally incorrect about the right to vote,” Baker reportedly told the GOP’s attorneys. “But a lawyer, it’s even more dangerous…That’s why we have serious repercussions for those who violate the duty of candor.”
When an attorney violates their ethical obligations, they can be subject to sanctions — or, in extreme cases, discipline from bar authorities. In the end, however, the judge did not see fit to sanction plaintiffs’ counsel.
But he did recommend some remedial reading of sorts.
The judge ended the rebuke by pleading with the GOP’s lawyers to read Aesop’s fable: “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
“Please don’t take us any closer to that ledge,” Baker told the attorneys.
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