The Supreme Court took just seven hours to shut down the Trump administration’s bid to intervene in California’s ballot count on the eve of the midterms, a “merciless rebuke” that New York Times chief legal correspondent Adam Liptak said could signal the start of a “new era.”
The justices didn’t even ask California to respond, Liptak wrote in a biting analysis Thursday. Instead, they issued a one-sentence order Monday evening with no public dissent, a turnaround Liptak said suggested the court “had run out of patience” with Trump.
Even Texas’ 2020 bid to throw out Joe Biden’s wins in four battleground states got a fuller hearing on paper, Liptak noted. The justices asked those states to respond and took four days to reject the case.
Liptak also spotted a telling phrase in Solicitor General D. John Sauer’s filing.
“This office has been informed,” Sauer wrote before relaying the administration’s claim that 20,000 registered voters were likely noncitizens.
“Variations on that odd phrase turned up two more times in the 22-page filing,” Liptak wrote in his analysis. “Sauer, in other words, refused to vouch for what officials elsewhere in the administration were telling him.”
“And for good reason,” he continued, “given that the administration’s data was deeply flawed.”
In a separate federal court hearing Monday, a Justice Department lawyer acknowledged the data had a high error rate.
Had the justice taken longer, Liptak argued, the filing itself might have made headlines while Americans were voting, giving the allegations a veneer of credibility.
“Anticipating voters’ stunning repudiation of Trump on Tuesday, the court’s order the previous evening seemed to signal the start of a new era,” he concluded.
Report typos and corrections to corrections@rawstory.com.
For customer support contact support@rawstory.com.
