Where is your law degree from, again?
Erosion of norms is a thing.
KevinC
13592
I understand what youāre saying, but I think I disagree. Putting aside the baseless claims of massive voter fraud, it seems to me that Mike Lee was attempting to find āone weird trickā to ignore the results of a presidential election. Even if there was some undiscovered edge case that could be argued before a heavily biased Supreme Court, the intent was still to toss aside the will of the people, overturn norms that have governed this country since its founding, and install someone as President who had clearly lost the vote.
I donāt see it much different, honestly. Mike Lee just wanted to provide a fig leaf for the coup.
I agree. Lee wasnāt making an argument like let us get this evidence of voter fraud and bring it to peopleās attention. He was making an argument like let us get these people to change the rules, because they have the power to change the rules.
Timex
13595
Perhaps, but at some point he recognized that the actual law didnāt support Trump, and then he stopped trying to keep Trump in power.
Alstein
13596
The thing is Republicans consider letting state legislatures overturn election results as being within the rules.
I mean, if that ends up being the rules, there is no reason to consider the government legitimate at that point.
Thrag
13597
Or he realized the coup had already failed and jumped off the bandwagon.
Timex
13598
I think that the texts show that he was committed to things being above board regarding the law and the Constitution prior to January 6th, criticizing some of the other GOP members like Cruz and Hawley who declared they were going to object to certification, and Trump attacking Lee prior to January 6th because he apparently wasnāt on board with Trumpās crazy ideas at that point.
Sharpe
13599
There is actually a standard for this!
Per the American Bar Association:
āA lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous, which includes a good faith argument for an extension, modification or reversal of existing law. A lawyer for the defendant in a criminal proceeding, or the respondent in a proceeding that could result in incarceration, may nevertheless so defend the proceeding as to require that every element of the case be established.ā
The argument for the people criticizing folks like Mike Lee or calling for State Bar discipline against the Kraken lawyers is that they did not in fact have either āa basis in law and factā¦ that is not frivolousā. Iām willing to cut Mike Lee a few days slack right after the election to look at the facts and so on but by the time we got to electoral vote counting in December, with all the hasty lawsuit dismissals, the laughable press conference at Four Seasons Landscaping and so forth, there was just no good faith basis for pushing on. No non-trivial basis for the continued legal BS of the Kraken Lady or Prof. Eastman, etc.
Thatās the issue.
Edit: the chunk of WaPo article I was able to access did not give exact dates as to when Lee gave up the ghost. Iām willing to cut Lee some slack for examining this issue on 11/7, up to a point. I think by 1/6/21, anyone contesting the election was in very bad faith. I donāt recall exactly where I would draw the dividing line but probably in late Nov/early Dec.
The CNN article (CNN had the exclusive here, everyone else is just echoing them) shows Lee was on board from Nov 7 to Nov 19. That was when Trump had the press conference with Powell and publicly started talking about Krakens and rigged voting machines and election fraud and obvious conspiracy theory nonsense. After that Lee was trying to talk them out of it or at least pressing for evidence.
I think Leeās position is super defensible here.
Sharpe
13601
So based on the CNN Article I agree with Tortilla and Timex. It looks like Lee was looking for evidence of fraud or other āgood faith basisā for a few weeks but then backed away as the evidence failed to materialize. That IMO, is allowed conduct. I still think Lee can be criticized for the obsequious way he tiptoed around Trump but that is just typical political cowardice not Constitution-shredding problems.
Hereās a good example of where Lee stood at the line IMO:
On December 16, Lee asked Meadows for guidance: āIf you want senators to object, we need to hear from you on that ideally getting some guidance on what arguments to raise.
āI think weāre now passed the point where we can expect anyone will do it without some direction and a strong evidentiary argument.ā
On the one hand itās a bit pathetic the way heās bowing to Trump but also he IS looking for āa strong evidentiary argumentā which is allowed. OTOH I do think it was clear legally by Dec 16 that the evidence was not there. I guess I feel like Lee is a coward, but not a traitor. My two cents.
Edit: I wouldnāt say Leeās position is āsuperā defensible so I donāt fully agree with Tortilla, but its at least arguably defensible.
Super defensible from a legal standpoint. He wasnāt willing to break laws to overturn the election. He was upholding the constitution. Morally indefensible from the standpoint of not publicly standing up and saying āthis is nonsenseā when it became clear it was. I think we see eye to eye on this one.
KevinC
13603
I donāt think anyone here has been claiming Lee was trying to break the law, unless I missed the posts. For my part, Iām not speaking of legality at all. He didnāt actually do anything so I donāt really know how it could be illegal.
āUpholding the Constitutionā is a bit of a stretch when he was looking for legal ways to disregard the will of the people.
Bolding mine.
That CNN article is strangely kind to Lee. This one, from the Salt Lake Tribune, seems better, or at least more complete.
Immediately after the election, with no evidence of any voter fraud, Lee was promoting Sidney Powell and trying to get her into a room with Trump.
After her crazy press conference on 11/19, he dropped her and on 11/23 began promoting the Eastman plan to have audits in some states and use the audits as a basis for Trump to reject the results in that state. At this point, he still had no knowledge of nor any evidence of any fraud.
On 12/8, he was endorsing Eastmanās plan to have several state legislatures appoint alternate Electors. Again, with no personal knowledge of, nor any evidence of, voter fraud. He has since lied about when he knew about Eastmanās plan.
On 1/3, he was still on board with the plan to throw the election to the house, as long as they had the alternate electors / decertification from some states to back them up. In fact, he was so on board with that plan that he was personally calling state legislators in an effort to get them to act. Again, he had no personal knowledge of or any evidence of voter fraud.
Itās true he eventually voted to certify electors, but he clearly would not have, had any state legislatures given him the cover he wanted. I donāt really see how any of this is defensible.
Sharpe
13606
Depends on what charge is being defended against. I consider Leeās behavior cowardly and reprehensible but I donāt see it as violating the oath of office. It does come up to the line though IMO - he apparently was looking for ways to throw the election but didnāt find them.
Maybe we were talking about different things. I donāt see exploring legal ways to overturn an election, assuming evidence of fraud exists, as failure to āUphold the Constitution.ā Continuing to look at such things once itās become clear that no evidence exists is a whole different story of course.
Lee manifestly had no evidence of voter fraud. He was begging the White House to give him some.
Thrag
13609
He was for the coup until he realized it wouldnāt likely succeed. Sure, the legal basis was part of that reason, but that doesnāt somehow make him noble. He wasnāt upholding the law, he saw how batshit the attempt would be and bailed. Itās like a criminal who plans and starts to take part in a heist but bails out when they realize the rest of the gang are incompetent chucklefucks.
KevinC
13610
I agree. Mike Lee is like a stuffier version of Lindsey Graham. He was a vehement Trump opponent until the moment Trump won and immediately switched to being a sycophant. He was looking for ways to keep his golden boy in power regardless of election results but when that wasnāt panning out, backed away. Not because of some great moral epiphany, it was because he didnāt want to be on the losing side.
Thereās a reason Romney has thus far refused to endorse Lee in his re-election campaign.
