TPM Reader MA flagged something for me last night. Sidney Powell, pardon-play attorney for Mike Flynn and now Trump election steal lawyer, seems to go back a ways in the Trump world. MA notes that she wrote with some frequency in The New York Observer, then owned by Jared Kushner. She even co-bylined one piece on criminal justice reform with Bernard Kerik, a top and perpetual Rudy Giuliani crony in addition to being an ex-con.

Here’s the order …

“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”

Tierney Sneed has more.

All 50 states and D.C. have now certified their 2020 election results:

Biden 81,282,376 (51.3%)
Trump 74,222,576 (46.9%)

That's a 2.4 point margin swing against Trump vs. 2016 and a 15.9% increase in votes cast.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 11, 2020

A margin of more than 7 million votes, 4.4%. A 74 vote margin in the electoral college.

It is over and it was not close.

TPM Reader JG thinks we need at least some partial reappraisal of Bill Barr’s tenure running the DOJ …
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A substantial number of states and roughly half the Republicans in the House have now signed on to the Texas lawsuit again against Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. On its face Texas asserts the right to review the voting laws of states Joe Biden won, finds them lacking and asks the Supreme Court to throw out the results in those states.

Much of Trump’s 2020 infrastructure, established solely around the cause-célèbre of President Trump and his reelection, has not made the jump to the President’s post-election crusade to overturn his loss. Instead, that space is being filled by the President himself and a rag-tag band of allies.

At the suggestion of TPM Reader JC, I pulled up this article Jane Mayer published in The New Yorker just before the November election. It’s about why and how Trump feared losing – specifically legal vulnerability and crushing debt. But Mayer talked to Michael Cohen, who quite presciently described the aftermath of Trump’s defeat.

There are a few paragraphs about Mayer’s discussion with Trump. But this is the key one.

This is not a surprising number. But a new Quinnipiac Poll finds that 77% of Republicans believe there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Overall 60% believe the election was legitimate.

Break that down and you have 3% of Democrats believing there was widespread fraud, 35% of independents and 77% of Republicans.

A month ago New Hampshire Republicans reclaimed control of the state House of Representatives. Last week Rep. Dick Hinch (R-Merrimack) became the new Speaker of the House. Yesterday he died of COVID. It appears that a GOP caucus meeting on November 20th may have a superspreader event.

Special thanks to TPM Reader IE for letting me know.

President Trump often enlists the vice president to fight his more serious battles for him.