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  • 2020-11-18 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Giuliani Say These Things in Trump Campaign's Pennsylvania Court Case? (en)
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  • In the aftermath of the 2020 general election, outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump made several unfounded claims that electoral fraud had played a telling role in Democratic candidate Joe Biden's projected victory over him. As part of that broader effort to undermine public confidence in the validity of the results, Trump's campaign pursued lawsuits in several key states, including Pennsylvania. In mid-November, attorneys who had been taking part in the campaign's litigation in federal court in Pennsylvania stepped down and were replaced in part by Trump's personal lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. On Nov. 17, Judge Matthew Brann oversaw oral arguments at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in the case of Donald Trump for President Inc. vs. [Pennsylvania Secretary of State] Kathleen Boockvar et al. Several noteworthy quotations, attributed to Giuliani, emerged on social media later that day. One meme in particular took what it described as quotations from Giuliani and matched them with still images of Charlie Kelly, a character from the FX sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia who has poor literacy skills, low intelligence, and often displays an inability to grasp basic logical concepts. One of the show's many running jokes about Kelly is that, without any basis or qualifications, he describes himself as an expert in bird law, and occasionally tries to pass himself off as an attorney. The meme, posted to Twitter by Josh Billinson, consisted of Charlie Kelly pretending to be a lawyer, except it’s things Rudy Giuliani actually said in court today. Those three quotations were as follows: On Nov. 19, after this fact check was originally published, the court released an audio recording of the oral arguments from Nov. 17. The recording corroborates the authenticity of all three of those quotations. Giuliani's confusion over the meaning of the word opacity came while he was reiterating some of the claims the Trump campaign made in their complaint. Addressing Brann, he skim-read and paraphrased sections of that document, saying: Giuliani's Mickey Mouse remark came in response to a question from Brann, who pointedly asked the Trump campaign's legal team: Giuliani responded as follows: Giuliani's apparent confusion over the term strict scrutiny was a particular source of concern, since it described what should be a fairly basic legal and constitutional concept. Roughly speaking, strict scrutiny is a standard used by courts to decide whether a certain law is constitutional. It means that an especially high standard of justification is required any time the state seeks to curtail a fundamental right or to engage in or facilitate some form of discrimination, and the state has the burden of proving that its actions or policies are not unconstitutional. Strict scrutiny is the most stringent of three standards of judicial review used to determine constitutionality, with intermediate scrutiny being less stringent, and rational basis review being less stringent still. At one point in the oral arguments, Brann asked the Trump campaign's legal team for their opinion on what standard of review he should use in the case at hand. The following exchange ensued: (en)
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