NEW: Judge Brann dismissed Trump campaign’s Pennsylvania lawsuit with prejudice

https://pacer-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/147/127057/15517440654.pdf

Here’s the order dismissing the case and rejecting the Trump campaign’s attempt to stop Pennsylvania certifying Joe Biden’s win

https://pacer-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/147/127057/15517440657.pdf

Will try to post a highlights thread later, but suffice it to say that this opinion excoriates the Trump campaign's legal strategy https://twitter.com/kadhim/status/1330288598013382656

Some highlights:

Judge Brann writes that the Trump campaign is seeking to "disenfranchise almost seven million voters", but has offered only "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence."

Despite being <2 weeks old, the lawsuit has "already developed its own tortured procedural history," Brann writes, noting the Trump Campaign "made multiple attempts at amending the pleadings, and [has] had attorneys both appear and withdraw in a matter of seventy-two hours"

Judge Brann likens the campaign's equal protection claims -- the idea that D counties doing more to help people vote than R counties is unconstitutional -- to "Frankenstein's monster", saying the theory "has been haphazardly stitched together" to avoid controlling precedent

"That Plaintiffs are trying to mix-and-match claims to bypass contrary precedent is not lost on the Court," writes Brann, effectively saying: 'Did you really think I wouldn't notice?'

Brann says that yes the two individual voters who sued alongside the Trump campaign did suffer an injury because their counties (neither of which were named in lawsuit) rejected their ballots, but blocking PA from certifying its results only extends this harm to more people

"Prohibiting certification of the election results would not reinstate the Individual Plaintiffs’ right to vote. It would simply deny more than 6.8 million people their right to vote." https://twitter.com/kadhim/status/1330310917209395207

Brann says that not only does the Trump campaign not have standing to bring the case, it has not even "pled a cognizable theory" of its standing to bring the case

Brann writes that it is not an equal protection violations for some counties to do more to help people vote than others. "Expanding the right to vote for some residents of a state does not burden the rights of others."

But if the individual plaintiffs had shown such a violation, their remedy is unacceptable, Brann writes.

"Rather than requesting that their votes be counted, they seek to discredit scores of other votes, but only for one race. This is simply not how the the Constitution works."

Brann says that the Trump campaign's poll watcher argument "falls flat" because they don't actually allege their watchers were treated differently to Biden's and that its invocation of Bush v. Gore similarly fails because "they misapprehend the issues at play in that case"

Finally there's this footnote about the suggestion of blocking certification of only PA's presidential results:

"[E]ven if it were logically possible to hold Pennsylvania’s electoral system both constitutional and unconstitutional at the same time, the Court would not do so."

Judge dismisses Trump campaign lawsuit in Pennsylvania https://www.ft.com/content/8fa5ec6d-a7c6-4eec-88c0-f56aa42b29a8

Trump campaign says it will appeal the ruling to the Third Circuit and ultimately to the Supreme Court.

Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis say their strategy is "to get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court"

This statement references Judge Brann's appointment by Barack Obama, but neglects to mention that Brann is a Republican and Federalist Society member: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/MatthewBrann-PublicQuestionnaire.pdf https://twitter.com/kadhim/status/1330322937380003840