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zataomm  4mo ago (text post)   5332 thread views

Colorado Supreme Court Thread

Link to the decision

I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.

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In further "Trump's lawyers are idiots" news, Alina Habba had this to say:

I think it should be a slam dunk in the supreme court. I have faith in them. You know, people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place. He'll step up.

I don't know what Kavanaugh's natural inclination was on how to handle this case. But I know now that he's very aware that any pro-Trump ruling will make it look like Trump called in a political favour from him. This is the kind of shit that loses winnable cases.

Horrifying. Context makes it a little better but definitely bad to imply any kind of debt owed to Trump by any of the justices. Not sure who Alina Habba is exactly though, she’s not one of the lawyers whose name appears on Trump’s petition to the court, all of whom surely want to kill her right about now.

Habba's been part of the team more involved in Trump's dumb (sometimes sanctioned-level-dumb) civil suits. So not exactly some rando, but still at the point where if she ran into the SCOTUS bar team in a dark alley she'd be having a bad time.

Habba most recently represented Trump in the NY civil fraud trial (which of course has been a disaster). She's terrible at her job:

In September 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks dismissed a 2022 suit brought by Habba for Trump against Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, Jake Sullivan, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and numerous other public officials, private citizens, and private entities that Trump sought damages against for alleged conduct surrounding the 2016 presidential election.[37] Dismissing all of Trump's claims, Middlebrooks concluded that Trump's complaint was not just inadequate in any respect, but rather was inadequate in all respects, and expressly reserved the right to consider sanctions against Trump's attorneys at a later date.[37][38]

Two months after issuing that decision, Middlebrooks sanctioned the Trump lawyers, including Habba, Michael T. Madaio, Peter Ticktin, and Jamie Alan Sasson. They were assessed $50,000 penalties, plus $16,000 to cover the legal fees paid by one of the defendants.[39] Later in January 2023, Middlebrooks ordered Trump, Habba, and her firm to pay $938,000 in legal costs for 31 defendants, including the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton, and former FBI director James Comey.[40][41] The judge wrote about the lawsuit brought by Habba: "No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim."

Mind, she is hardly alone. Most of Trump's lawyers are terrible.

Most of Trump's lawyers are terrible.

Not really surprising. Good lawyers have more to lose from being fired and blacklisted, and are smart enough to know that that's what will happen to them.

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