After Sidney Powell was fired as a lawyer for the Trump campaign after making all manner of wild conspiracy theories about how the CIA and Hugo Chavez had worked with Dominion Voting Systems machines to swing the election against Trump, one could be forgiven for thinking that her 15 minutes of fame were over. But no.

She is back in the limelight for two reasons. One is that Dominion is threatening legal action against her unless she withdraws the allegations made against the company that they claim has damaged its reputation and resulted in its employees being threatened.
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It is hard to identify which of the around 50 failed lawsuits filed to try and overturn the US presidential elections is the worst. But the one that most reveals the utterly cynical depths to which the Republican Party has sunk is the lawsuit that the Texas attorney general filed with the US Supreme Court that was joined by 18 other Republican state attorneys general and 127 members of the Houser of Representatives. Trump touted it as ‘the big one’, as if all the others were practice runs and that this would succeed where all the others had failed.

We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2020

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Trump is learning what it feels like to be suddenly viewed as a paper tiger. Before the election, almost all Republicans would snap to attention when he said anything and would not dream of criticizing him even when he said and did the most outrageous things. But ever since it became clear that he lost and is on his way out, more and more Republicans, especially at the state and local levels, are feeling freer to defy him, especially when it comes to his demand that they overturn the results of the election.
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This election has made many of us aware of the minutiae of US election processes and the series of dates that lead up to the results of the presidential election becoming official. One major date is December 14th which is when the people who were elected on November 3rd to serve as Electoral College voters meet in their respective states to cast their votes for president and vice-president. That is what is meant by the Electoral College meeting. But while much attention has focused on that date, today saw the so-called ‘safe harbor’ deadline when each state has to certify its election results, resolve any controversies about who the electors are, and submit their names, thus ending any unresolved issues. Enough states have done so for Biden to get over 270 electoral college votes and those electors are thus fixed, making the December 14th vote mostly a formality.
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In a 5-3 vote, the Wisconsin Supreme Court yesterday threw out yet another Trump legal challenge to the election. Such actions by courts around the country have become so routine as to be hardly worth noting, though if one is counting, there have been 46 such losses by Trump and his allies.

What I want to highlight is the incredulous tone of the majority opinion issued by justice Brian Hagedorn of both the merits of the challenge and the asked for remedy.

The Wisconsin Voters Alliance and a group of Wisconsin voters bring a petition for an original action raising a variety of questions about the operation of the November 3, 2020 presidential election. Some of these legal issues may, under other circumstances, be subject to further judicial consideration. But the real stunner here is the sought-after remedy. We are invited to invalidate the entire presidential election in Wisconsin by declaring it “null”—yes, the whole thing. And there’s more. We should, we are told, enjoin the Wisconsin Elections Commission from certifying the election so that Wisconsin’s presidential electors can be chosen by the legislature instead, and then compel the Governor to certify those electors. At least no one can accuse the petitioners of timidity.

Such a move would appear to be unprecedented in American history. One might expect that this solemn request would be paired with evidence of serious errors tied to a substantial and demonstrated set of illegal votes. Instead, the evidentiary support rests almost entirely on the unsworn expert report of a former campaign employee that offers statistical estimates based on call center samples and social media research.

This petition falls far short of the kind of compelling evidence and legal support we would undoubtedly need to countenance the court-ordered disenfranchisement of every Wisconsin voter. The petition does not even justify the exercise of our original jurisdiction.
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In a surprise move, attorney general Bill Barr has said an interview with the Associated Press that the department of justice has found no evidence of widespread fraud in the last election, at least not enough to overturn the results.

His comments are seen as a big blow to Mr Trump, who has not accepted defeat.
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“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results,” Mr Barr, who is seen as a top Trump ally, told AP News on Tuesday, referring to the assertion that ballot machines were hacked to give more votes to Mr Biden.
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Mr Barr said that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security have investigated that claim, “and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that”.
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Reacting to his comments, Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in a joint statement: “With the greatest respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud.”

The reason that this is a surprise is not because what he is saying is untrue but that he said it at all, since it goes completely counter to what Trump has been saying. Barr has up to now seemed to have seen himself as more of Trump’s personal lawyer rather than the nation’s top law enforcement official, often going to great lengths to use the department to support some of Trump’s most extreme claims. He could have just kept quiet on the election fraud issue and need not have weighed in on this matter publicly.

So why did he, since he had to know that this would anger Trump who sees anyone who disagrees with him as disloyal? After all, Trump fired Christopher Krebs for saying that this election was the most secure ever. As Democratic senate leader Chuck Schumer wryly noted after Barr’s statement, “I guess he’s the next one to be fired.” Maybe Barr is hoping for that to happen, because like so many people who have been deeply tainted by their proximity to Trump, he is trying at the last minute to salvage something of his tattered reputation.