Why The Kraken Fails Legally
The previous post on Sidney Powell focused mostly on the goofy aspects of the filing, such as the bizarre typographical errors. What wasn’t addressed was a discussion on why the complaint fails on substantive legal questions.
u/Rov_Scam took the time and effort to provide a big picture view on why the complaint fails (and spectacularly so) on just basic legal principles.
One of the big problems in even trying to address the issues with the complaint is how absurdly ridiculously long it is. Rule 8(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires "a short and plain statement" explaining why there's jurisdiction, what kind of relief you want, and why you are entitled to this relief. Powell's complaint is 104 pages long (not including exhibits), and several years ago, Lance Armstrong had a federal lawsuit dismissed simply because it was way too long at 80 pages.
When judges get a lawsuit in their docket, they primarily just want to know who are you suing? Why are you suing them? What do you want from them? Do you have standing to sue them? Why in this courtroom? Etc. Even if you ignore the typographical errors, Powell's complaint is just a tornado. The goal here appears to provide as much unrelated and irrelevant information thrown together in a giant pile to maybe sort of if you squint the impression that something nefarious is going on.
If you want to see what an actually successful attempt to have a federal court overturn a state election, check out the first time this ever happened in the Marks v. Stinson 3rd Circuit 1993 court case.
As you read that opinion, there should be plenty of obvious distinctions between how the challenger went about uncovering actual fraud, and how Powell is doing it. Namely, they had a lot more than just "It's very suspicious that I lost!" and actually narrowed it down to a small margin of victory and not only could articulate how fraud happened, but also had the evidence to back this up.
If what you're ultimately interested in an official response to the Powell lawsuit, you'll see it soon enough. I anticipate that it will get dismissed outright, because the sloppiness in how the thing is constructed flagrantly violates numerous procedural rules that a judge wouldn't even need to get into its substance, and this has a high likelihood of happening without the other side having to respond.
If you anticipate that this is an unfair outcome (that is, dismissing a potentially valid lawsuit on 'technical' grounds), it might be helpful to understand why these procedural rules even exist in the first place and that's largely to stem an overwhelming and unworkable avalanche of baseless claims from clogging up the system. (Almost all of which will be coming from incarcerated pro se defendants filing their 8th habeas petition or a §1983 lawsuit for improper accomodations in jail or something similarly doomed to failure).
I think it's unfortunate that the legal profession is so specialized, so out of reach for most people, and so necessary to have a decent chance at making any headway. But to the extent that individuals are prejudiced by this lopsided outcome, the President of the United States is nowhere near being in that category. Given the unique advantages he enjoys (e.g. How many times do you have a plaintiff being the person who appointed the judge who nevertheless tells them to go pound sand?), it's an extremely strong argument that if he lost, he lost fairly.
Some of Trump’s supported couldn’t help but acknowledge the unserious approach on display, but the steelman is that the goal is to get to a higher court ASAP. If true, this would either excuse or even encourage the unserious approach on display. There was a lot of randos Twitter lawyering at all the courtroom clobbering, claiming that "This is all part of the plan!" There is nothing remotely intelligent about somehow strategically losing lawsuits at the lower level in order to get a higher court ASAP. Maybe the biggest problem by far is that lower courts are where you introduce the evidence. Appellate courts generally therefore can only look at what's "on the record" as it was handed to them from the district court. This is why you never have SCOTUS take witness testimony or anything like, they operate purely on the grunt work done at the district court level. If you really want to get to a higher court ASAP (which to be clear, I have no idea why), you can easily do so by asking for emergency motions if you have a good basis for it. This is like shooting yourself in the knee to get to the Burger King across from the hospital faster.