234 Pages of Sworn Affidavits: Legalism Without Politics in the Attempt to Overthrow the 2020 Election

Abstract

The lawsuits challenging the 2020 election tried and failed to overturn the results of the election. This article positions their contribution to constitutional decay by considering the affidavits filed by Republican election challengers who observed the processing of absentee ballots in Detroit. Using the concepts of legal consciousness and legal mobilization, this article traces the mechanisms that carried doubts about the election processes from politics to law, returning that doubt as legally acknowledged truth that could be deployed in ongoing politics. Features of the affidavits allowed the voter fraud narrative to borrow a legal concept seemingly detached from politics. Given that constitutional theories recognize strict legality as a tool of authoritarians, this article considers the affidavits’ use as a legal and political tool, indicating particular ways that it can be wielded for antidemocratic purposes.

Keywords:

• 2020 election
• election litigation
• constitutional decay
• voter suppression
• Detroit
• legal consciousness

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Amy Fried, Douglas Harris, Suzanne Mettler, Marc J. Hetherington, Deondra Rose, and to members of the Center for Law, Justice & Culture at Ohio University.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Neale Spencer, “‘The President Wants Justice’: Kayleigh McEnany Says Trump Campaign Has 240 Pages of Sworn Affidavits Proving Voter Fraud,” Washington Examiner, November 10, 2020, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/the-president-wants-justice-kayleigh-mcenany-says-trump-campaign-has-240-pages-of-sworn-affidavits-proving-voter-fraud.

2 Jacob Kovacs-Goodman, “Post-Election Litigation Analysis and Summaries,” SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY, March 10, 2021), https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3978063; William Wilder, “Voter Suppression in 2020,” Brennan Center for Justice, August 20, 2021, https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2021-08/2021_08_Racial_Voter_Suppression_2020.pdf; American Bar Association, “Litigation in the 2020 Election,” October 27, 2022, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/election_law/litigation/.

3 Kovacs-Goodman, “Post-Election Litigation Analysis,” 3–4.

4 Jackie Valley and Riley Snyder, “Trump Campaign Announces Lawsuit Challenging Registration Status of Voters amid Razor-Thin Election Margin,” The Nevada Independent, November 5, 2020.

5 Joan Donovan, Kaylee Fagan, and Frances Lee, “‘President Trump Is Calling Us to Fight’: What the Court Documents Reveal about the Motivations Behind January 6 and Networked Incitement,” Working Paper (Technology and Social Change Project and Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center, July 18, 2022).

6 Richard L. Hasen, “Research Note: Record Election Litigation Rates in the 2020 Election: An Aberration or a Sign of Things to Come?,” Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy 21, no. 2 (June 2022): 150–54; Marc J. Hetherington, Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 2005); Amy Fried and Douglas B. Harris, At War with Government: How Conservatives Weaponized Distrust from Goldwater to Trump (Columbia University Press, 2021); Lilliana Mason and Nathan P. Kalmoe, “The Social Roots, Risks, and Rewards of Mass Polarization,” in Democratic Resilience: Can the United States Withstand Rising Polarization?, eds. Robert C. Lieberman, Suzanne Mettler, and Kenneth M. Roberts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 185–87.

7 Jack M. Balkin, “Constitutional Crisis and Constitutional Rot,” in Constitutional Democracy in Crisis?, eds. Mark A. Graber, Sanford Levinson, and Mark Tushnet (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 15.

8 Robert C. Lieberman, Suzanne Mettler, and Kenneth M. Roberts, “How Democracies Endure: The Challenges of Polarization and Sources of Resilience,” in Democratic Resilience: Can the United States Withstand Rising Polarization?, eds. Robert C. Lieberman, Suzanne Mettler, and Kenneth M. Roberts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 7; Mason and Kalmoe, “Roots, Risks, and Rewards”; Samuel Issacharoff, “Populism versus Democratic Governance,” in Constitutional Democracy in Crisis?, eds. Mark A. Graber, Sanford Levinson, and Mark Tushnet (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 445–58.

9 Jeffrey K. Tulis, “The Possibility of Constitutional Statesmanship,” in The Limits of Constitutional Democracy, eds. Jeffrey K. Tulis and Stephen Macedo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 112–23. “Republican Election Official in Philadelphia Says He’s Seen No Evidence of Widespread Fraud,” CNN Politics, November 11, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/11/politics/philadelphia-city-commissioner-2020-election-cnntv/index.html.

10 John Fabian Witt, “What Really Happened During the Ballot Count in Pennsylvania,” The Yale Review, https://yalereview.org/article/wondrous-banality-democracy.

11 See Anthony Nadler and Joan Donovan, “Weaponizing the Digital Influence Machine,” Data & Society Research Institute, October 17, 2018, https://datasociety.net/library/weaponizing-the-digital-influence-machine/.

12 James W. Ceaser, “Demagoguery, Statesmanship, and Presidential Politics,” in The Constitutional Presidency, eds. Joseph M. Bessette and Jeffrey K. Tulis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 247–88.

13 Balkin, “Constitutional Rot.”

14 Julie Novkov, “Donald Trump, Constitutional Failure, and the Guardrails of Democracy,” Maryland Law Review 81, no. 1 (2021): 280 and 279; See Dan Zak, “The Kraken Is Loose in America,” Washington Post, December 10, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/kraken-trump-election-powell-giuliani/2020/12/09/6f6944ea-381e-11eb-bc68-96af0daae728_story.html.

15 Kim Lane Scheppele, “Autocratic Legalism,” University of Chicago Law Review 85, no. 2 (March 2018): 556.

16 Tulis, “Constitutional Statesmanship,” 120.

17 US Senate, Roll Call Vote 117^th Cong. 1^st sess. Guilty or Not Guilty (Article of Impeachment Against Former President Donald John Trump), 57-43. Ryan Goodman and Josh Asabor, “In Their Own Words: The 43 Republicans’ Explanations of Their Votes Not To Convict Trump in Impeachment Trial,” Just Security (blog), February 15, 2021, https://www.justsecurity.org/74725/in-their-own-words-the-43-republicans-explanations-of-their-votes-not-to-convict-trump-in-impeachment-trial/.

18 House managers provided evidence of impeachments of former public officials. See Manager Raskin, Managers’ Opening Statements, U.S. Senate, February 9, 2021, 177^th Cong., 1^st sess., Congressional Record 167, No. 24, S591. “Portman Statement on Senate Impeachment Trial,” Senator Rob Portman, February 13, 2021, https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/portman-statement-senate-impeachment-trial.

19 Tulis, “Constitutional Statesmanship,” 121.

20 Jeffrey K. Tulis, “Impeachment in the Constitutional Order,” in The Constitutional Presidency, eds. Joseph M. Bessette and Jeffrey K. Tulis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 237.

21 Whitley Kaufman, “The Truth about Originalism,” The Pluralist 9, no. 1 (2014): 39–54; Calvin TerBeek, “Originalism’s Obituary,” Utah Law Review On Law 2015 (2015): 29–47.

22 Neither fixed meaning nor even the Constitution solely as text are in keeping with the framers’ understandings of constitutionalism. Jonathan Gienapp, “Written Constitutionalism, Past and Present,” Law and History Review 39, no. 2 (May 2021): 321–60.

23 Kaufman, “The Truth about Originalism”; Saul Cornell, “Heller, New Originalism, and Law Office History: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss Symposium: The Second Amendment and the Right to Bear Arms after D.C. v. Heller,” UCLA Law Review 56, no. 5 (2009 2008): 1095–1126; On constitutional faith, see Sanford Levinson, Constitutional Faith, Pbk. reissue, with a new afterword by the author, 2011 ed. (Princeton, N.J. ; Woodstock, Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press, 2011). Some scholars see the internal inconsistencies and blatant inaccuracies of the originalist project only remaining persuasive because the New Right coalition controls the Court. TerBeek, “Originalism’s Obituary”; Jack M. Balkin, “Abortion and Partisan Entrenchment,” SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY, September 8, 2022), https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4215863.

24 Fried and Harris, At War with Government.

25 Yochai Benkler et al., “Mail-In Voter Fraud: Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign,” SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY, October 2, 2020), https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3703701; David T. Canon and Owen Sherman, “Debunking the ‘Big Lie’: Election Administration in the 2020 Presidential Election,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 51, no. 3 (September 2021): 546–81.

26 Michigan Department of State, “Election Administration Basics,” https://www.michigan.gov/sos/elections/informed-voter-panel/election-administration-basics.

27 Niraj Warikoo and Joe Guillen, “Detroit Voter Turnout May Be Highest in Decades,” Detroit Free Press, November 4, 2020; Trump Donald J., “STOP THE COUNT!,” Twitter (blog), November 5, 2020, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1324353932022480896.

28 Tresa Baldas et al., “Chaos at TCF Center Over Ballot Counting,” Detroit Free Press, November 5, 2020, 4A, 15A.

29 Michigan Department of State Bureau of Elections, “The Appointment, Rights and Duties of Election Challengers and Poll Watchers,” September 2020, https://mielections.csod.com/clientimg/mielections/MaterialSource/f82645e1-1ee1-461c-ac50-60cb3584f345_9_23_20_Challenger_Booklet.pdf; Costantino v. The City of Detroit, No. 20-014780-AW (Third Judicial Circuit Court for the County of Wayne November 13, 2020).

30 Michigan Senate Oversight Committee, “Report on the November 2020 Election in Michigan,” 2021, 13.

31 Richard L. Hasen, The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown (Yale University Press, 2012).

32 Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018); Gilda R. Daniels, Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2020); Jesse H. Rhodes, Ballot Blocked: The Political Erosion of the Voting Rights Act, Stanford Studies in Law and Politics (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2017); see Paul Frymer, “Racism Revised: Courts, Labor Law, and the Institutional Construction of Racial Animus,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (August 2005): 373–87; and Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, “Race, Reform, and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law,” Harvard Law Review 101, no. 7 (1988 1987): 1331–87.

33 Benkler et al., “Mail-In Voter Fraud,” 40, 45.

34 Anderson, One Person, No Vote.

35 Michigan Department of State, “Democracy MVP,” https://www.michigan.gov/sos/resources/initiatives/democracy-mvp.

36 Michigan Department of State; Michigan Department of State Bureau of Elections, “Appointing and Training Election Inspectors,” in Election Officials’ Manual, 2019, 13.1–13.15, https://www.michigan.gov/sos/elections/admin-info; Clara Hendrickson, “Mich. Republicans Eye Poll Worker Jobs,” Detroit Free Press, May 16, 2022, 5A.

37 Michigan Department of State Bureau of Elections, “Appointing and Training Election Inspectors”; Citing Christopher Thomas, Hendrickson, “Mich. Republicans Eye Poll Worker Jobs.”

38 Hendrickson, “Mich. Republicans Eye Poll Worker Jobs”; In the 2016 General Election, 96.38% of Wayne County voters voted a straight Democratic ticket. See Wayne County, Michigan, “November 8, 2016 Official General Election Results,” November 8, 2016, https://detroitmi.gov/document/november-8-2016-official-general-election-results.

39 Detroit’s population is 78% Black or African American. United States Census, “Quick Facts: Detroit, Michigan,” July 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/detroitcitymichigan,MI/PST045221.

40 Kovacs-Goodman, “Post-Election Litigation Analysis”; Atiba R. Ellis, “‘This Lawsuit Smacks of Racism’: Disinformation Racial Coding, and the 2020 Election,” Louisiana Law Review 82, no. 2 (2022/2021): 462.

41 Salt and Light Global, “Our Passion,” 2023, https://www.slgwitness.com/our-passion/; Great Lakes Justice Center is a law firm that is part of Salt & Light Global, a 501 c(3) organization which “equips the church with strategies to transform the culture,” relying on the Great Lakes Justice Center to fight “for faith and freedom, defending truth and protecting liberty in the courtroom and other public forums.” Great Lakes Justice Center, “Our Mission,” 2022, https://www.greatlakesjc.org/about-us/mission/.

42 “Complaint and Application for Special Leave to File Quo Warranto Complaint,” Costantino v. City of Detroit, November 8, 2020.

43 Trump v. Benson Complaint, No. 1:20-cv-01083 (W.D. Mich.) (United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan November 11, 2020).

44 Kayleigh McEnany, “Twitter Thread,” November 11, 2020, https://twitter.com/kayleighmcenany/status/1326634874988617729?lang=en.

45 Costantino v. Detroit: 12–13.

46 Costantino v. Detroit: 4.

47 “I was harassed and threatened to be thrown out multiple times.” Affidavit of Alexandra Seeley, Exhibit 1, Trump v. Benson; “I witnessed a pattern of chaos, intimidation, secrecy, and hostility by the poll workers.” Affidavit of Anna Pennala; “I proceeded to take my own personal notes when a floor supervisor immediately approached me and in an authoritative manner and told me I was not social distancing. I responded that he was also not social distancing.” Affidavit of Beverly Ballew; “we were low on GOP challengers. This is because they kept kicking out GOP challengers, using police in the room to physically remove them.” Affidavit of Braden Gaicobazzi; “The antagonistic staffers invented any kind of reason to prevent me from doing my job and getting agitated.” Affidavit of Braden Gaicobazzi; “I was accused by a democrat [sic] volunteer of being part of a ‘cult’ for my support of Trump. Affidavit of Emily A. Steffans; “persistent hostility from workers.” Affidavit of Ilie Antoine; “I experienced intimidation by poll workers wearing BLM face masks and another man of intimidating size with a BLM shirt on, very closely following challengers, including myself.” Affidavit of Jacqueline Zaplitny; A worker stared at a GOP challenger with disdainful looks. Affidavit of Kim Tucco; “I felt outnumbered and intimidated.” Affidavit of Linda Cavaliere; “I heard a man yell ‘we gonna get yall’ and I believe this was directed at Republican challengers.” Affidavit of Angelic Johnson; “This room was very disorganized and there was a contemptuous feeling toward the GOP challengers who were there — nothing like one would expect considering the importance of a US presidential election.” Affidavit of Jean Leonard.

48 “They wouldn’t let any other GOP people near the table.” Affidavit of Alexandra Seely; “The poll worker who duplicated the ballot hovered over the ballot and blocked me from being able to see the duplication process.” Affidavit of Andrew John Miller; “We weren’t allowed by the area at the table where envelopes were scanned not could we hear there [sic] conversations.” Affidavit of Betty Tyson; “Poll workers used their bodies to prevent me from watching and observing.” Affidavit of Beverly Ballew.

49 Affidavit of Alexandrea Seely.

50 “Poll workers would cheer, jeer and clap when poll challengers were escorted out of the TCF Center.” Affidavits of Anna Penalla and Beverly Ballew, using the same wording; “EVERY SINGLE ‘NON-PARTISAN’ POLL WORKER in my area STOOD AND CLAPPED AND CHEERED EVERYTIME A GOP CHALLENGER WAS REMOVED.” Affidavit of Amanda M. Posch.

51 “I was escorted from the room by police after about 9 or 10 hours of peacefully doing my job for simply standing my ground at a table with people who were denying me access to see ballots and threatening me. I did not resist police in any way and left peacefully.” Affidavit of Braden Gaicobazzi; Seeing two men carry USPS bins of ballots, the challenger asked tabulators where they came from, receiving a response that the tabulators didn’t know. “I’m just doing my job,” the challenger responded. Affidavit of Diana Burton.

52 While checking in, a challenger saw someone with a packet of instructions titled, “Tactics to Distract GOP Challengers.” “Another man in the group started telling me, ‘our main job is to distract and disrupt the GOP challengers,’ then a woman in the group grabbed the packet of papers from my hands and said, ‘no, no, no, she’s a republican [sic], she doesn’t need that, bye, bye.’” Affidavit of Kathleen Daavettila.

53 “I was told that I could not speak to the poll workers at any time. The only question I could ask is what their party affiliation was. I did ask one of my tables this question and was promptly told I was in violation by speaking to them. I cordially told them I was told I was in in [sic] accordance with the rules and they responded by saying they refused to answer my question.” Affidavit of Gina Paschke; “Poll workers verbally combative and (i.e., profanity) open [sic] admitted she would be ‘sneaky.’” Affidavit of Kim Tocco; A challenger heard a supervisor advise that it was important for everyone to be respectful, then observed that supervisor and a poll worker exchange a laugh. Affidavit of Kim Tocco.

54 Affidavit of Jeffrey A. Gorman; Affidavit of Jeremy McCall; Affidavit of Angela Marie Eilf.

55 Judge Kenny notes that election official Christopher Thomas invited challengers and parties to a walkthrough of the TCF Center on October 29. “None of the Plaintiff challenger affiants attended the session.” Costantino v. Detroit: 9.

56 Affidavit of Emily A. Steffans.

57 One challenger saw “many indications of duplicate ballots on the computer screen” that were just passed along. “When I questioned this many times, I was told they have their own process and don’t interrupt.” Seeing ballots that didn’t come up on the computer, “When I asked to verify and why there were separate piles, the woman screamed at me, to ‘Get away, and don’t worry, we have a different process than other tables.’” Affidavit of Abbie Helminen. When a challenger watched a ballot being duplicated, they asked the supervisor if there was a Republican on hand to witness it. The supervisor said he didn’t know. Affidavit of Bonnie Pettibone; “I asked him ‘Is there a Republican supervisor present to witness this ballot duplication.’ He said ‘It’s not required and he does not have to look for one. The supervisor continued to duplicate the ballot I was challenging.’” Affidavit of Brett Kinney. When witnessing people running ballots through the machine a second time after the machine became jammed, “I asked the first set of women if they were getting counted twice and they said no. I moved down the line and asked again and I was told to pretty much mind my own business.” Affidavit of Colleen Schneider; When a table captain identified 32 problem ballots, the challenger wanted to challenge them, was refused, and asserted that again “but George refused and said, ‘we will put it in the computer.’” Affidavit of David Piontek; “The last direction given by the leader ‘was to make sure that the Republicans were following the rules and not nit picking, harassing and interrogating us’ [sic] I soon realized that ‘us’ were the DEMOCRATS.” Affidavit of Linda Cavaliere; When a challenger told a table supervisor she could not see the monitor, “the supervisor said ‘too bad.’ She then informed me that I needed to get back 6 feet from the table,” Affidavit of Pauline Montie; In asking for more supervision of the use of blank ballots, a challenger was told by a male worker “you need to get away from me.” The worker approached a police officer to initiate assault and battery charge against the worker. When asked to point him out, he did, and the man said, ‘I told you, you need to stay away from him.’” Affidavit of Glen Sitek.

58 Challengers noted coolers and suitcases in the room, Affidavit of Abbe Helminen; putting cardboard on the windows, Affidavit of Abbe Helminen; USPS boxes of ballots, Affidavit of Articia Bomer; cardboard going up on the window, Affidavit of Emily A. Steffans; opened ballots in a bin under the table, Affidavit of Holly Spalding; As police were locking the security door after letting press into the room, “I put my foot in the doorway, which kept it from closing. The officer asked me to remove it. I said ‘Sir, I will remove it as soon as you tell me HOW MANY challengers are inside.’” Affidavit of James Frego; Two young men looked suspicious because they “kept looking our way.” Affidavit of Kimberly Valice.

59 McEnany, “Twitter Thread.” Two groups of Democratic poll challengers arrived “but they had no credentials, only BLM masks and other political message markings. I attempted to apprise them of the irregularities that I observed. They did not appear interested in my report; it was clear they were only there to observe us.” Affidavit of Holly Spalding; “I was told ‘go back to the suburbs Karen” and other harassing statements.” Affidavit of Jennifer Lindsey Cooper.

60 “The first thing I noticed was that at least one person outside the ballot room entrance had a BLM mask on.” Affidavit of Braden Gaicobazzi; “I witnessed a meeting between election worker ‘team leads’ where they gathered together and spoke, this meeting ended in a cheer. Many of these team leads wore mask [sic] or other materials supporting ‘Black Lives Matter’ or other political causes.” Affidavit of Articia Bomer; “I heard one of the team leads yell ‘this is our house tonight!’ At approximately midnight, I heard this same man say racist remarks about black people who support Donald Trump. I believe these remarks were directed at me.” Affidavit of Articia Bomer; Cheers and clapping after GOP poll challengers were escorted out of the room. Affidavit of Heidi Kiilunen.

61 Rolling their eyes as they passed a ballot with a Donald Trump vote to a co-worker, Affidavit of Articia Bomer; “Poll worker said he wouldn’t take ballots to be tabulated until he had 200, but surprised us when he then got up to take 50 — my partner followed him to machines.” Affidavit of Betty Tyson; A lawyer was called derogatory names by a table of workers, then workers “started screaming that two republicans [sic] cannot be at the same table, called the police, and the police escorted him out to loud cheers from ALL of the workers. Then she told me she was calling the police on me ‘because I told them to stop the count.’” Affidavit of Colleen Schneider; “I was not treated with respect by a single person that I had interaction with” except for one supervisor, Affidavit of Kathleen Daavettila. These acts of resistance resemble the practices recounted in James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

62 “I was also told a SWAT team was there to make sure we did not ‘argue too much.’” Affidavit of Ulrike Sherer; “At which point one of the workers I had been watching all day said in my direction ‘They acting like kindergarteners, I hope the police come and shoot them, like you do to us.’ I asked her if she was threatening violence towards me, and she mumbled something under her breath that sounded like you heard me.” Affidavit of Amanda M. Posch.

63 Michigan Department of State Bureau of Elections, “The Appointment, Rights and Duties of Election Challengers and Poll Watchers,” 4–5.

64 James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New York: Dial Press, 1963); James Baldwin, No Name in the Street (New York: Dial Press, 1972); Naomi Murakawa, “Racial Innocence: Law, Social Science, and the Unknowing of Racism in the US Carceral State,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 15 (October 13, 2019); Kirstine Taylor, “Untimely Subjects: White Trash and the Making of Racial Innocence in the Postwar South,” American Quarterly 67, no. 1 (2015): 55–79.

65 Statement from Michigan Republican Party chair Laura Cox, “Deadlocked Wayne County Board of Canvassers Fails to Certify Election Results,” Click-On Detroit (November 17, 2020). https://www.clickondetroit.com/decision-2020/2020/11/18/deadlocked-wayne-county-board-of-canvassers-fail-to-certify-election-results/

66 Video of canvasser Ned Staebler’s statement @raywert Tweet dated November 17, 2020. https://twitter.com/raywert/status/1328856173513150464

67 Trump v. Benson Notice of Voluntary Dismissal, No. 1:20-cv-01083 (W.D. Mich.) (United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan November 19, 2020).

68 Pew Research Center, “Sharp Divisions on Vote Counts,” November 20, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/11/20/sharp-divisions-on-vote-counts-as-biden-gets-high-marks-for-his-post-election-conduct/; Michigan Senate Oversight Committee, “Report on the November 2020 Election,” 3. After 28 hours of testimony from 90 individuals, the committee found no evidence of widespread fraud, at 6.

69 “Trump Campaign’s Star Witness in Michigan was Deemed ‘Not Credible.’ Then, her Loud Testimony Went Viral,” Washington Post, December 3, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/03/melissa-carone-michigan-trump-giuliani-election/

70 Susan S. Silbey, “After Legal Consciousness,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 1, no. 1 (December 1, 2005): 347.

71 Anna-Maria Marshall and Scott Barclay, “In Their Own Words: How Ordinary People Construct the Legal World Symposium: In Their Own Words: How Ordinary People Construct the Legal World: Introduction,” Law & Social Inquiry 28, no. 3 (2003): 618.

72 Silbey, 347.

73 Patricia Ewick and Susan S. Silbey, The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life, Language and Legal Discourse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

74 Silbey, 350.

75 Silbey; Jennifer R. Mercieca, Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump, First edition (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2020).

76 Frances Kahn Zemans, “Legal Mobilization: The Neglected Role of the Law in the Political System,” The American Political Science Review 77, no. 3 (1983): 690–703; Michael W. McCann, Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization, Language and Legal Discourse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); George I. Lovell, Michael McCann, and Kirstine Taylor, “Covering Legal Mobilization: A Bottom‐Up Analysis of Wards Cove v. Atonio,” Law & Social Inquiry 41, no. 1 (ed 2016): 61–99.

77 See Michael McCann, “Causal versus Constitutive Explanations (or, On the Difficulty of Being so Positive) Review Section Symposium: Gauging the Impact of Law,” Law and Social Inquiry 21, no. 2 (1996): 457–82; Laura Beth Nielsen, “Situating Legal Consciousness: Experiences and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens about Law and Street Harassment,” Law & Society Review 34, no. 4 (2000): 1055–90; Douglas NeJaime, “Winning through Losing,” Iowa Law Review 96, no. 3 (2011 2010): 941–1012.

78 AP News, “Transcript of Trump’s Speech at Rally before US Capitol Riot,” January 13, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-capitol-siege-media-e79eb5164613d6718e9f4502eb471f27.

79 Silbey, 352.

80 US Dominion, Inc v. FOX News Network, No. N21C-030257 EMD (Superior Court of the State of Delaware February 16, 2023).

81 US Dominion, Inc v. FOX News Network; “The Sean Hannity Show,” February 28, 2023.

82 Lieberman, Mettler, and Roberts, “How Democracies Endure.”

83 Hendrickson, “Mich. Republicans Eye Poll Worker Jobs”; Bob Ortega, Audrey Ash, Drew Yahya Abou-Ghazala, “Michigan GOP Leaders Encourage Rule Breaking at Poll Worker Training Session,” CNN Politics, September 8, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/07/politics/michigan-gop-poll-worker-training-invs/index.html.

84 Hendrickson, “Mich. Republicans Eye Poll Worker Jobs.”

85 Alexis de Tocqueville, Harvey C. Mansfield, and Delba Winthrop, Democracy in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 262–64.

86 Hendrickson, “Mich. Republicans Eye Poll Worker Jobs.”