When it began to look like Joe Biden was winning the Presidential election, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, picked up the phone. He feverishly called around, looking for a “James Baker-like” figure to oversee the campaign’s legal challenges to the election results. Baker, a former Secretary of State, led George W. Bush’s recount effort in Florida, in 2000, managing a dream team of lawyers that included the Supreme Court litigator Ted Olson and three future Supreme Court Justices. Kushner hoped to assemble a similar A-team for his father-in-law, who, on entering office, had vowed to surround himself with only “the best” people.
On November 7th, Trump tweeted that his squad would be unveiled at a press conference “at Four Seasons, Philadelphia. 11:00 A.M.” Minutes later, he deleted the post and wrote another, clarifying that the venue was a small business called Four Seasons Total Landscaping. The blooper proved prescient: the legal eagles drafted to help the President had as much relation to James Baker as Four Seasons Total Landscaping has to the luxury hotel. At the press conference, there were many familiar faces: not white-shoe veterans of Bush v. Gore but, rather, ghosts of impeachments past. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, was there. So was Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general (and registered foreign agent for Qatar), and a smattering of angry poll watchers, one of whom turned out to be a convicted sex offender.
The campaign announced that the legal effort would be headed up by the conservative activist David Bossie (not to be confused with David Boies), who is neither a lawyer nor a college graduate. (He is an author of “Let Trump Be Trump,” a memoir co-written with Corey Lewandowski, another member of the new legal team.) Within days, Bossie tested positive for COVID-19 and went into quarantine. Then Lewandowski tested positive. Two down. The campaign turned to Giuliani, who agreed to serve as its new general for the reported asking price of twenty thousand dollars a day.
It wasn’t the most auspicious start, but, as the campaign initiated a flurry of lawsuits in swing states, it kept up a modicum of respectability. Lawyers from Jones Day, a prominent international law firm, were contesting an extended ballot deadline in Pennsylvania, where Trump’s lead was shrinking by the day. The largest firm in Arizona, Snell & Wilmer, was representing the R.N.C. in a case that it had brought alongside the Trump campaign. Soon enough, both firms backed out or backtracked. Jones Day issued a statement claiming that the firm “is not representing President Trump, his campaign, or any affiliated party in any litigation alleging voter fraud.” James Bopp, the lawyer known as the architect of the Citizens United case, dropped the election lawsuits he’d filed in four states on behalf of his conservative group, True the Vote, without explanation.
This left Trump with a motley crew of helpers. Scanning the dockets that the campaign has filed around the country, one sees a lot of local lone-ranger types. There’s the St. Louis-based Mark Hearne (nickname: Thor), who filed one of the Trump lawsuits in the wrong court. Kory Langhofer, in Arizona, was once fined for filing a frivolous medical-marijuana-related lawsuit against the town of Snowflake. In Georgia, the campaign retained Lin Wood, a former medical-malpractice lawyer whose clients have included Richard Jewell and Kyle Rittenhouse. (His former colleagues are suing him, claiming that he left them abusive messages, in which he referred to himself as “Almighty Lin” and said that he was taking orders from God.)
Two weeks ago, in Pennsylvania, lawyers from Porter Wright Morris & Arthur filed a suit seeking to stop the certification of the state’s vote count. Then they withdrew. Next up was a local divorce lawyer named Linda A. Kerns, working with two Texas attorneys. Days later, all three quit. They handed the reins to a new lead lawyer: Marc Scaringi, a Pennsylvania radio host, who was once featured in a GQ article titled “A Field Guide to Bad Conservative Hair.” (Perhaps the campaign missed that Scaringi had discussed Trump’s lawsuits on his show, predicting, “At the end of the day, the litigation will not work. It will not reverse this election.”) Then, hours before the hearing, Giuliani announced that he would step in personally. It would be his first time appearing in a federal court in this century.
The hearing took place last week, in Williamsport. “May it please the court,” Giuliani said, thanking the judge for “allowing me to be admitted pro hac vice.” He described a “nationwide voter fraud” scheme, insisting that the case “is exactly Bush v. Gore!” He alleged that treatment of Republican poll watchers “got nasty” in Philadelphia. “This doesn’t happen in an honest place,” he said.
The Trump team has brought in still more lawyers, including Jenna Ellis, who in 2016 called her new client an “idiot” and a “criminal dirtbag.” At a press conference on Thursday, she referred to the new group of lawyers as “an élite, strike-force team.” Giuliani, dark rivulets of hair dye dripping down his cheeks, like Dirk Bogarde in the final scene of “Death in Venice,” made dozens more unfounded and unhinged-sounding fraud claims. He even reënacted a scene from the Joe Pesci vehicle “My Cousin Vinny” before the networks cut away. But the effort—to overturn an election that the candidate lost by nearly six million votes—seems foolhardy. The election-law expert Edward Foley said, “I don’t think even James Baker could be successful with what they have to work with.” ♦
