Jay Weber Show transcript 12-15-20 7:10am
As expected, the WI Supreme Court rejected the Trump campaigns’ final, legitimate appeal to overturn the election results.
The only thing that I was a little bit surprised about was the fact that it was a 4-3 ruling. I assumed that another conservative justice or two would join with the Brian Hagedorn liberal coalition...and reject the idea of tossing out scores of ballots over irregularities.
There was no drama ahead of time-because Brian Hagedorn, the swing justice, had already essentially ruled on the case when he rejected the Trump request to have the court hear it as an original action-
Take it up immediately.
Hagedorn at that time made the unorthodox move of refusing to allow the court to hear the case-but then writing a commentary on the merits of it...as he refused to allow the rest of the court to hear it early.
So- Hagedorn got to pontificate on it and poison the lower court well....and then blocked his fellow justices from hearing it until Saturday.
The net effect was that we knew it was a losing effort before it ever got back to the supreme court, but i did expect that maybe a few of the conservative justices would join in the rejection. They didn’t.
Also not surprising-just disheartening-is that Hagedorn and the liberal justices didn’t even give us a meaty or thoughtful decision.
They simply fell back on the weak excuse that the lower court justices did: Trump should have objected to the rules of the WI election with lawsuits-before-the race was held.
This was the big ruling.
And it’s a cop out. Hagedorn’s opinion said
"the challenges raised by the campaign in this case ... Come long after the last play or even the last game; the campaign is challenging the rulebook adopted before the season began,” striking these votes now — after the election, and in only two of Wisconsin’s 72 counties when the disputed practices were followed by hundreds of thousands of absentee voters statewide — would be an extraordinary step for this court to take. We will not do so."
Hagedorn said the campaign's delay in not seeking relief until after the election was "unreasonable in the extreme. The issues raised in this case, had they been pressed earlier, could have been resolved long before the election. Failure to do so affects everyone, causing needless litigation and undermining confidence in the election results."
It’s amazing how much Hagedorn sounds like a liberal here. He’s trying to take the high ground while copping out and refusing to deal with serious questions related to Wisconsin elections.
He acts as if there is a time limit...or only a narrow window...in which law breaking by election officials can be remedied, and that’s nonsense.
The three conservative justices in their dissent did suggest that several of the issues raised by the Trump campaign were valid. The Chief Justice, Pat Roggensack, wrote "Once again, four justices on this court cannot be bothered with addressing what the statutes require to assure that absentee ballots are lawfully cast"
And that is the very important point to be made here: yet again...Hagedorn and the liberals on the court have found a reason-not to- clean up Wisconsin’s elections.
Roggensack is right that-all of these instances of clerks and the election commission breaking state election laws and/or making up their own last minute rules will continue thanks to Brian Hagedorn’s lack of spine.
The chief excuse the election leaders are making for their law-breaking is ‘well, we’ve been doing’ it this way for a while now’.
That’s not a reason to excuse law breaking or the intentional flouting of our election laws. And yet Hagedorn bought it.
Honest to god: the election commission and the clerks-only argument-for their law-breaking as detailed in the Trump lawsuit was.... Well, we’ve been ignoring those laws for several elections now.
That’s like saying hey...we’ve been robbing banks for a few years now and you only caught us now...so....I don’t see why we should be punished for robbing this bank, now.
The excuse is too dumb to give any merit.
But Hagedorn bought it and he got sucked in so thoroughly, that he actually used the excuse in his dissent. That’s what the stupid ‘game book’ analogy is.
He wrote....the campaign should have challenged the rules voters and clerks relied on before the election. Most of those rules have been in place for several previous elections and apply statewide.
"The challenges raised by the campaign in this case ... Come long after the last play or even the last game; the campaign is challenging the rulebook adopted before the season began, he wrote.
So...in Wisconsin if you’ve been ignoring and/or breaking the law for years before you get caught-you’re good.It anyone had a problem with your criminality before the time you were caught...they should have said something...because now you’ve got some sort of‘ established immunity’ to keep breaking that law.
That’s the dumbest reasoning I’ve ever heard coming out of a so-called conservative justice.
And the net result is that we, in Wisconsin, don’t even get to clean up our election laws or pin back the ears of our election officials...as a result of all of this trump-led litigation.
Very disappointing.
And no, i didn’t expect a different result. I was-hoping-for a different result.
But i did expect that the justices would at least have a better reason for rejecting trump’s attempt...and i did hope that they’d take the accusations of election irregularities seriously.
At least four of them didn’t.
And that is disappointing.
And the news outlets were claiming that Trump’s challenge to the results is over, as a result of this lawsuit.
No, they aren’t. Any genuine chance he had to overturn the results was over long ago.
Another strong suggestion from pundits on both sides of the aisle: it’s now time for trump to relent and allow the rest of the country to move on-
I disagree with that too, but only in this sense: it doesn’t matter if trump relents-the rest of the country is moving on.
And this is a very important point-and acknowledgement- after four years of idiotic and alarmist claims that trump was going to be a dictator for life or he was going to refuse to leave office if he lost or after two terms if he got them.
For four years, I have batted down and rejected all forms of this alarmist and foolish rhetoric: Trump’s going to refuse to leave. He’s moving to become dictator.
It was all alarmist crap.
And one reason was that Donald Trump has-never-suggested that he won’t leave when his time is up. Now or in 8 years.
He started to joke about 12 years at some point because he knew it got under the lefty’s skin but every time he was asked, ‘will you leave if you lose’, he has said, ‘yes, of course’.
But the second reason this was always alarmist bologna is that-trump would never be allowed to stay-even if he wanted to.
We have a peaceful transition of power in this country once the majority of the voters have spoken...
And- in some instances-after all of the legal wrangling has been completed.
And that’s why there has been no genuine rush for trump to concede or his supporters to blindly accept the results of the election.
It is why i have been saying: let the legal wrangling play out. Let the investigations into voter fraud and voting machines occur. We have plenty of time for these considerations ...and Joe Biden still gets his transition.
And sure enough- even as Trump objected-the transition began.
And sure enough- now that the Electoral College has certified Biden as our next president- he will be taking the oath in January.
And-sure enough- trump will be leaving the White House peacefully.
He may grumble forever that he really won. Many of us will.
But the peaceful transition of power will take place.