The Department of Justice is trying to downplay a “humiliating” loss while its hopes of a Supreme Court intervention dwindle, a legal expert said Sunday.
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The DOJ, in its bid to grab voter roll data ahead of the midterms, has filed 30 lawsuits in multiple states seeking driver’s license and Social Security numbers — elections lawyer Marc Elias has won 22 straight cases against them.
Elias, during an interview Sunday with progressive political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen, said the DOJ’s chances of undoing its string of losses by appealing to the Supreme Court are fleeting.
Elias noted the DOJ’s reaction after the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear one of those losses in Michigan: Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, highlighted the “very powerful dissents” that agreed with the DOJ despite the setback handed down by the majority of the court.
“She is celebrating the powerful nature of the opinions that were written by the judges that did not carry the day,” he said.
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Elias argued Dhillon wasn’t being quite honest about her feelings on the ruling.
“This is a humiliating devastation if you are a lawyer at the Department of Justice working on these cases,” Elias said.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a Sunday interview on Meet the Press that he’s considering taking the DOJ’s voter roll data case to the Supreme Court.
Elias was not surprised by this move.
The DOJ will be “inclined to go straight to the Supreme Court” to overturn these losses, Elias said. “Sure they haven’t had success below, but you know, just looking at the composition of the court, maybe they pull a rabbit out of a hat.”
But Elias does not believe that rabbit will be forthcoming.
“The problem here is that they are 0 for 22, and in those 22 cases, it has included 12 judges appointed by Republican presidents, eight by Donald Trump,” Elias said. “They’re just going to see a whole lot of judges who are very conservative who have ruled against [the] DOJ, and if they lose there, then they slam the door shut.”
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