He loves that movie, don’t you know, but I don’t think it counts as legitimate legal precedent.
rudy giuliani, citing that key election law case, "my cousin vinny" pic.twitter.com/OVhxnUIvAB
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) November 19, 2020
Where’s the hook to drag this clown offstage?
There was an Onion article a while ago crediting Giuliani with inspiring people to go to law school, because “apparently any fucking idiot can be a lawyer.”
As funny and incompetent as this coup attempt is, it is still a bad idea not to prosecute all elected officials and their enablers. If things were closer it would be Bush vs. Gore all over again, since there is no downside to trying. The downside of prosecuting the lot would be that republicans would think the democrat run government would be an ilegitimate tyranny. Which they already do regardless of the circumstances, so no downside.
No sane and functioning democratic political system leaves the people trying to destroy democracy around. Last year some “Freemen” or “Reichsbürger” were sentenced to 14 years because they attempted to overthrow the government. Unlike Trump and his cronies they didn’t even have any political or military power, so there was no real danger to the government at all (thats why some people call the sentence excessive).
I thought the point in Vinny was the near-sighted witness was not wearing her glasses, not specifically the distance between them. That analogy is only applicable were Ghouliani claiming the observation crew was severely mear sighted and were not allowed to wear their glasses when corralled.
His reputation as a lawyer is long expired by senility.
Vinny‘s a great movie, but a bit plebeian for a man of Giuliani’s stature. I would go for Dickens at least:
If I recall correctly, this worked in an episode of The Paper Chase. Giuliani also might want to binge-watch that fine TV show for more tips of the trade.
https://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/10/bs2.gif
Republicans Before the election: We completely agree with all election rules and vote count monitoring rules for this election
Republicans After the election: These election rules and vote count monitoring rules are unfair to Republicans. We want you to throw out the votes and just declare us the winner.
Actually, the point made for the myopic witness was, she couldn’t see Vinnie’s fingers with her glasses on.
Lawyers actually do tend to like the film, as the methods and technical procedures are accurately depicted. Hence, yet again, Rudy misses the point entirely.
I’d not be surprised if he ends up disbarred by the time this clusterfuck is over.
Although, it would’ve be richer if he made that claim in court, as video, photographic and sworn testimony in other cases stated as fact that observers were allowed to be six feet away and Rudy is trying to say 6 = 30.
What is perjury and contempt of court again?
And he’ll have forgotten the first law of court trials, “don’t pass off the judge!”.
I finally watched the clip. So he thinks he can bullshit and “charm” his way through a meritless case? I’m ashamed to admit that I thought his delivery was sort of good (at least in a meta-way of Can you believe he’s doing this?) and I chuckled. The fact that he liked My Cousin Vinny “because he comes from Brooklyn” is so smarmy and irrelevant, I would have objected right there (note: IANAL).
Yes, bring back the Vaudeville hook, or at least have a gong for crap like this.
I don’t get it. Why do so many members of the established commentariat bother to initcap the first word in a line of text, and end that line with a full stop, when they end every line of text with an end of line, a.k.a. a return?
You could just enter your words of wisdom in all-l.c. and no stops.
Re: Rene’ @ #9…
thank you
–archie the cockroach
In a similar vein, we should remind those wanting to recant their cert votes with the old legal precedent of, “No Backsies”
The Karate Kid was driving a car that couldn’t possibly have made those tire marks, therefore Trump wins the election in a landslide. <—— that is a sentence no one could have possibility predicted would be written one day. Society as a whole has jumped the shark. Stop the planet… I wanna get off.
Also, why is it the court’s problem is Republicans employ only myopic poll observers? It is only the fault of Republicans that ALL their members are myopic.
nomadiq@12 Sadly though, the sentence “Votes from Black people don’t count, therefore…” has a lot of historical precedent and is the operative principle in every single one of these “recount fights.”
Why is nobody noticing that his own hair dye can’t stand being on his head and is trying to run away?
https://www.towleroad.com/2020/11/rudy-giuliani-hair-dye/
@7:
That would be a disappointment. Stuck in the lockup for contempt.
Unless, as a certain online lawyer pointed out, your trying to play off the judge’s reactions to you against the jury’s sympathy.
@several of you above:
Why are you even attempting to argue as if they actually care about restoring election integrity? I mean, it’s surely obvious they don’t, and the arguments are about PR rather than truth. Please, please, please just stop. Seriously. I mean, there’s a lot going on in the world I don’t particularly like, but the thing that really gets my goat most consistently at the moment is so-called left/progressives arguing as if the other side are arguing in good faith. (Most hateably I see this attitude from the Guardian. If I watched tv then I might also care more about the BBC, but their problems run deeper and are not just a matter of editorial choice.) We know they’re not. That should be obvious. So just fucking stop pretending that any form of argument at all is a useful tool in this fight: they do not think the same about you and that is why we keep consistently losing.
(Err, the facts to counter obvious lies have to be researched, published, and publicised. Beyond that no direct engagement with the argument.)
The thing is that even with competent legal counsel and even with constitutional support (e.g. some shenanigans involving state legislators) there is no way to overturn the fact that Trump is subverting the will of the voters. While I really don’t want to get to this point, I admit I wonder hypothetically what would happen. We basically rolled over in 2000, though a recount in Florida carried out in good faith could have sent the vote either way. In 2016, we were screwed by the electoral college.
This time there is zero “plausible deniability”. What happens when 78 million Americans engaged enough to cast a vote realize they’ve been disenfranchised? I hope it doesn’t come to that, and I wish I could have faith that there won’t be another “narrative” that gets us to suck it up and hope for next time. There won’t be a next time.
And he leaves out the best part, when the judge blurts it out!
This is all, of course, extremely stupid – all of the observers, Republican and Democratic, were at the same distance.
Dang I thought for sure he would be stomping his foot, shouting “my biological clock is ticking down like this.”
@17 PaulBC
The thing is, their actions are now guaranteeing that this will be the result no matter which side ends up on top.
There have been shady elections at various points in our nation’s past (Kennedy-Nixon 1960 most recently), but even Nixon put the good of the country and its faith in democracy ahead of his personal ambitions. But Giuliani’s rat-fuckery guarantees one half of the country or the other will lose that faith.
The thing is, he may be a bit senile, but I doubt he’s completely around the bend. We should be prepared in case he’s got decent evidence for just a tiny bit of fraud: somebody changing the dates on mailed ballots, not asking for photo ID in states that require it, that sort of thing. Even if it’s just a few cases, he’s going to try to spin that up into “there was fraud, so we won.” This can’t end well.
17. PaulBC “ We basically rolled over in 2000, though a recount in Florida carried out in good faith could have sent the vote either way.”
Several organizations recounted the ballots and all agreed that if the count had been allowed to continue in the way that Gore requested Bush would still have won. Only in one instance of ballots counted in a different way would Gore have won. Still people say that the election was stolen by the Republicans. Not so, though the Supreme Court was out of line.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore#Recount_by_media_organizations
Florida disgusts me. So how the hell would Georgia of all Solid South states become the one to give me hope? Kudos to GA, the peach slice into the hold of the orange menace. A pecan pie binge to celebrate?
chesapeake@21 Regardless, we had already capitulated long before the retroactive analysis was done. It was reasonable to expect that there was a change of switching the outcome with such a small margin (especially when you consider Georgia just finding new boxes of uncounted ballots).
I think the “butterfly ballot” was confusing enough to affect the outcome as well. But I don’t really want to go there. The main thing is that the “Brooks Brothers riots” were not a good faith attempt to normalize an election process. They were certainly carried out with the fear that an accurate recount might show that Gore won.
There’s just a lot of pain here… Gore was also a pretty lousy candidate, though I like his environmental stance. But my larger point was that this time around there would be no ambiguity at all. If Trump is still in the White House on January 21, it’s because he went against voters and usurped the presidency. No matter how he goes about it.
I don’t want to give any credence to Trump’s team, whatsoever, but in the UK poll watchers stand on the other side of the trestle tables as the votes are counted. You’re allowed to be so close that an experienced poll-watcher can get a good estimate of the number of votes per ‘box’. At the end of the count, all candidates are invited to view the discounted ballots and if all agree then the vote is added to the agreed candidate. (which is where you can all have a chuckle at the various insults that voters have written about you in lieu of a vote – someone I know got a vote agreed by all the other candidates that it should go to him in light of all the other candidates having had ‘arse’ written against them; the conclusion was that ‘not arse’ should count as a vote)
Journalists noted his hair dye ran down his face. Is it a bad sign if your lawyer starts melting?
birgerjohansson@25 Many cosmetologists have chimed in that hair dye doesn’t do that. The explanation I liked was that he decided to do a touch-up job with mascara. Who knows, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all.
@PaulBC #26:
Maybe Giuliani bought some sub-standard hair dye on the cheap from a travelling Kazakhstani grifter.
@21 chesapeake
You need to read your own source. Yes, if the recount had only been partial as Gore requested, Bush would have still won.
In every instance of recounting the entire state, Gore won.
Remember, there were two issues going on: Which counties to recount and what standard should be used regarding these “dimpled chads.”
Again: In every instance of recounting the entire state, Gore won.
As far as fraudlent voting (or attempts at voting) go this year, I have heard of one, count ’em, one, case of attempted voter fraud. Some guy in Pennsylvania tried to get an absentee ballot for his deceased mother so he could have her vote for…Trump.
Methinks the Republicans are protesting a bit too much. In an actual open, fair and honest election, they’d probably do even worse.
whheydt @29
Like maybe one in which they weren’t suppressing the “demographics” most likely to vote against them.
The pictures we see every time of voters waiting in line ought to be a tip-off. I have lived in plenty of places with high population density (including Baltimore, oddly) and have never had to wait in line. We know how to run elections efficiently and conveniently. Certain states design them to be onerous in locations of their choosing.
I was close to saying something nice about Raffensperger in Georgia, since he understands his job is to produce an accurate count. But if you look at his Wikipedia page, he worked pretty hard to put his party’s thumb on the scales ahead of time. While I trust him to produce accurate results, I am sure he is thinking ahead to the next election about how he can prevent this awful “failure” from happening again.
@28 “ You need to read your own source. Yes, if the recount had only been partial as Gore requested, Bush would have still won.
In every instance of recounting the entire state, Gore won.
Remember, there were two issues going on: Which counties to recount and what standard should be used regarding these “dimpled chads.”
Again: In every instance of recounting the entire state, Gore won.”
Don’t have time to reread my source, but my point remains the same- that if the court had stayed out of it Bush would still have won. Another reason why we need to get rid of the electoral college. If I remember correctly gore won the popular vote by 500,00?