Judge shreds RNC’s ‘red herring’ attempt to invalidate Georgia votes

[Thiệu Ngô]

The Trump appointee said the GOP’s eleventh-hour claims against Democratic-leaning counties were based on “no supporting facts."

By Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein


A federal judge in Georgia said an eleventh-hour bid by the Republican Party to set aside some absentee votes from Democratic-leaning counties was rife with dishonesty, “red herrings” and demands that would have required him to break his oath to the Constitution.

In a stinging oral ruling denying the Republican National Committee’s bid for emergency action, U.S. District Judge R. Stan Baker, a Trump appointee, warned that the party’s bid to toss absentee ballots collected in seven historically Democratic-leaning counties in Georgia over the weekend was based on “no supporting facts” and was an attempt to “tip the scales of this election by discriminating against” people less likely to back Republican candidates.

The RNC and Georgia Republican Party sued the seven counties, including Democratic strongholds like Cobb, Fulton and Gwinnett, on Sunday, claiming they had improperly accepted hand-delivered ballots from voters over the weekend. State officials emphasized that the practice was legal, but the claims ignited a firestorm among Donald Trump’s allies, who used them to stoke efforts to sow doubt about the outcome of the election.

Baker agreed that the GOP claims were based on a misreading of state law — they conflated “early voting,” which ended Friday, with absentee voting, which continues through Election Day — and were accompanied by exaggerated assertions that could erode faith in the election process.

“A lawyer’s words matter,” Baker said as he forcefully rejected the GOP request to segregate the ballots at issue. “Please don't take us any closer to that ledge.”

Baker noted that the RNC’s demands in the case would have effectively eliminated an untold number of absentee ballots, including those delivered on Election Day, even though the law explicitly allows them to continue coming in until the polls close.

As he concluded his ruling Tuesday afternoon, Baker dressed down the attorneys who filed the case, saying it contained erroneous claims and arguments that appeared to “cherry-pick” targeted counties based on their perceived political affiliation. Baker said the filing of such a flimsy case ran the risk of undermining public confidence in the election and raising public doubt about future claims that might be more legitimate. Lamenting the GOP’s “litigation tactics,” he urged the lawyers representing the state and national party to read “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

“There’s no supporting facts. There’s no supporting law,” Baker said. “That parade of horribles is factually and legally incorrect.”

Lawyers for the seven counties targeted by the GOP described dismay at what they said was a bad-faith effort to challenge long-accepted voting practices available to every county in the state. At least one attorney also suggested the Republicans engaged in “forum shopping” — a tactic to maneuver the case in front of a Trump appointee — by adding a single county in Baker’s district to the case, when most of the counties sued are elsewhere in the state.

In his admonition to the lawyers, Baker expressed concern about forum shopping and the “duty of candor” that lawyers are required to uphold. But said he wasn’t going to impose any sanction on the lawyers.

There were other reasons, Baker said, that he was unlikely to advance the case further: It was brought too late, ran afoul of long-standing legal principles not to change voting procedures on the cusp of Election Day and overlapped with a state-level case brought earlier in Fulton County. The judge in that case similarly rejected the claims, Baker noted.