Dana Nessel, the attorney general of Michigan, rebuked a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the presidential election results of four states, including hers.
She called the lawsuit “really one of the more outrageous that we’ve ever seen in the United States,” adding, “Texas has no standing to disenfranchise the 5.5 million voters in the state of Michigan … there’s been no injury that’s been demonstrated to the state of Texas.”
The Texas lawsuit was filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton with the Supreme Court, which is given “original jurisdiction” to hear disputes between the states. These cases are usually ones over water rights or disputes about borders where one state is or is at risk of harm by another.
All four states being sued by Texas — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia — maintain that state has suffered no harm that would give it standing to sue.
“If Texas’s theory of injury were accepted,” Wisconsin’s response brief said, “it would be too easy to reframe virtually any election or voting rights dispute as implicating injuries to a state and thereby invoke this court’s original jurisdiction. New York or California could sue Texas or Alabama in this court over their felon-disenfranchisement policies. Garden-variety election disputes would soon come to the court in droves.”
It’s outrageous that they filed this and the fact that they would try to disenfranchise the 39 million people that live in these four states,” Nessel told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “It’s really disturbing.”
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She blasted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the attorneys general of 17 other states who signed amicus briefs supporting the suit.
“I took an oath to uphold the Michigan constitution and the United States Constitution to the best of my ability, so help me God,” said Nessel.
“I don’t know what they did in these other states, I don’t know what their oath was to, I don’t know if they swore to uphold the tiny, fragile ego of a man who cares about nothing but himself, but they sold their souls,” she added. “And I hope it was worth it to them.”
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