Firehose of Falsehood redux: He actually used it in a court filing!

My post yesterday discussed an unsigned, 32 page document (the Firehose of Falsehood) that claims there is no evidence the 2020 election was stolen or fraudulent, or that Biden won the 2020 election. I stated in my post that DJT had not used it in any court filings that I was aware of. That was basically wrong. I stand corrected and retract my statements about this. The WaPo reports that Trump actually did cite this pack of lies and slanders in a court filing:

Trump lawyers’ doozy of a filing on voter fraud

Tucked into Trump’s latest legal brief in his appeal for presidential immunity in his federal Jan. 6 case is a remarkable citation. His attorneys refer to a social media post from Trump the same day of the filing — Tuesday — which links to a report from an unnamed source running down various voter-fraud claims.

The filing cites the report to argue that there remain “vigorous disputes and questions about the actual outcome of the 2020 Presidential election.”

The report, to put it lightly, is a mess. And that Trump’s legal team would see fit to include it in a filing would not seem to augur well for his defense.

The report begins with a series of astonishing and false claims. “In actuality, there is no evidence Joe Biden won,” its first paragraph concludes. It then recounts how Trump led in key battleground states on election night and maintains that, as of that point, before millions of votes were counted, “the election was over.” But even Trump allies had acknowledged before the election that the expected late arrival of ballots from populous and heavily Democratic areas, as well as mail-in ballots, would create an illusion of an early Trump lead — a “red mirage.” There is nothing suspicious about how those states flipped as time went on.

The introductory paragraph also includes a footnote that says Arizona “was fraudulently called for Joe Biden by Fox News” on election night. A network’s calls on any given race do not determine the election, and Biden won Arizona.

The report goes on to cite multiple accounts of alleged fraud that don’t appear to be publicly available.

The report goes on to cite purported evidence of voter fraud and irregularities in five key states. A sampling:

• For Wisconsin, it begins by citing how the state Supreme Court declared ballot drop boxes illegal — but that was in 2022, two years after the 2020 election.

• For Pennsylvania, it cites the idea that there were more votes than voters. This is an oft-cited claim based on lagging data from a database called the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE). Such claims were debunked both before Jan. 6 and long after.

• For Arizona, it begins by claiming Maricopa County illegally accepted 20,000 absentee ballots after the deadline of 7 p.m. on Election Day. Multiple fact checks have noted that this assertion relies on a misreading of the dates; the dates actually indicate when the ballots were handed off to a private vendor for scanning, not when they were received.

These are just a few examples of the claims that have already been debunked or have no actual proximity to voter fraud. Many of the claims don’t appear to have been publicly lodged before the report’s release Tuesday and are difficult to trace because of the scant sourcing. Most of the report is devoted to supposed procedural irregularities that say nothing about a stolen election.

But it’s one thing to say these things in public; it’s quite another to include them in a legal filing. Trump’s attorneys have been careful not to actually vouch for his wildest claims, because doing so involves trying to substantiate them, and legal scrutiny has been unkind — to put it mildly.

Trump’s lawyers do not say that the claims in the report are true, instead using the document in an effort to substantiate the idea that there remain “vigorous disputes” and “questions” about the results. The aim is to apparently cite the smoke without actually claiming there’s fire.

But what it demonstrates is how much this entire effort was about manufacturing smoke. And in that way, the Trump lawyers in effect just proved the prosecutors’ point.

This is a clear example of aggressive contempt that DJT has for the courts, the rule of law and people’s intelligence. Equally disturbing, many of his supporters will believe this document speaks truth. Many will take this as just more evidence that DJT is an innocent, patriotic martyr that the Democrats are persecuting in the name of the law, but without evidence.

This gigantic lie to the court is well beyond a Whopper or double Whopper. It’s a quadruple bypass heart attack Whopper.

Quadruples, fortunately served by trained, 

qualified medical personnel (DJT’s lawyers)

(Hm, she looks a lot like Malaria Trump!?)