The Titanium Sombrero
By 
Don’t you be so crude and feckless:
President Donald Trump and his legal allies earned a platinum sombrero Friday, striking out five times in a matter of hours in states pivotal to the president’s push to overturn the election results — and losing a sixth in Minnesota for good measure.
It was another harsh milestone in a monthlong run of legal futility, accompanied by sharp rebukes from county, state and federal judges who continue to express shock at the Trump team’s effort to simply scrap the results of an election he lost. Several of the most devastating opinions, both Friday and in recent weeks, have come from conservative judges and, in some federal cases, Trump appointees.
The losses included a rejection in Wisconsin from the state Supreme Court, where the majority was gobsmacked at the effort by a conservative group to invalidate the entire election without any compelling evidence of voter fraud or misconduct.
“The relief being sought by the petitioners is the most dramatic invocation of judicial power I have ever seen,” said Brian Hagedorn, a conservative elected justice, in a concurring opinion. “Judicial acquiescence to such entreaties built on so flimsy a foundation would do indelible damage to every future election. Once the door is opened to judicial invalidation of presidential election results, it will be awfully hard to close that door again. This is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread.”
An Arizona county judge, similarly, tossed a suit brought by state GOP chair Kelli Ward. “The court finds no misconduct, no fraud and no effect on the outcome of the election.” Ward has vowed to appeal that ruling.
A Nevada judge issued a point-by-point rejection of every claim lodged by the Trump team, emphasizing that the facts they presented were sparse and unpersuasive. Carson City District Judge James Russell’s opinion repeatedly emphasized their case would not have succeeded “under any standard of proof.”
“There is no credible or reliable evidence that the 2020 General Election in Nevada was affected by fraud,” Russell wrote.
If Bush v. Gore showed the immense explanatory power of legal realism, Rudy’s Elite Strike Force is showing that there are limits to legal realism, which can be summarized in technical terms as “you have to give them something to work with.”
Amazing that this could happen with this kind of formidable legal talent on hand:
Ms. Ellis, 36 years old, is part of what she called an “elite strike force” of Trump lawyers introduced by Rudy Giuliani at a Nov. 14 press conference at Republican National Committee headquarters. President Trump praised Ms. Ellis that day on Twitter as part of his “truly great” legal team.
“I’m the Cinderella story of the legal world,” Ms. Ellis said in an interview, noting that she had come from neither a Big Law background nor attended an Ivy League school.
[…]
In her online bios, Ms. Ellis has portrayed herself as “an experienced defense attorney who was formerly an attorney for the U.S. Department of State and a Colorado prosecutor.” She also has described herself as a constitutional-law attorney and as having “extensive experience in litigation in both trial and appellate levels.”
Ms. Ellis’s work as a prosecutor lasted about six months, during a stint in Weld County, Colo., that started in September 2012, about a year after she graduated from the University of Richmond School of Law in Virginia. She handled traffic cases and other misdemeanors, the Weld County District Attorney’s office said.
Ms. Ellis confirmed she was fired as a Weld County prosecutor in early 2013. She said she was fired because she refused to bring a case to trial that she believed was an unethical prosecution. A spokeswoman for the Weld County district attorney’s office declined to comment, citing human-resources rules.
[…]
As for Ms. Ellis’s claim to be a constitutional-law attorney, a search in federal courts database PACER doesn’t turn up any listing of Ms. Ellis as an attorney in any federal case. She isn’t currently permitted to practice in federal court in Colorado because she didn’t pay a fee the court assesses to lawyers practicing there, a federal-court staffer said.
Ms. Ellis began building her national profile through conservative Christian legal circles, carving a niche as a self-identified constitutional-law specialist. In 2015, she self-published a book, through WestBow Press, “The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution: A Guide for Christians to Understand America’s Constitutional Crisis.”
In the book and in subsequent public talks, she has argued that the Constitution can only be interpreted through a biblical lens. She takes aim at the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that same-sex couples nationwide have a constitutional right to marry, saying in her book that the decision could help legitimize polygamy and even pedophilia. The “homosexual slogan ‘love is love’ will become the mantra of the pedophile,” she wrote.
Apparently the clock has struck midnight.