Big Tierney Sneed report for TPM:
Before Texas filed a lawsuit that asked the Supreme Court to block President Biden’s win in four battleground states, a draft of the petition was circulated to the Louisiana attorney general’s office.
The template then was very similar to what was eventually filed by Texas on Dec. 8. Much of the same language proposed in the draft lawsuit made it into the final Texas complaint, and certain sections of the two versions are almost word-for-word the same. But there was one main difference. It was written to be filed by Louisiana, as well as some yet-to-be-determined states, listed as states “A” and “B.” The draft complaint left template language for the future plaintiff state for fill in its lawyer and contact info. It also targeted six battleground states that went for Biden, while the final Texas version only sued four.
As the New York Times previously reported, a group of lawyers seeking to reverse Trump’s loss had turned to Louisiana in late November to bring a case before the Supreme Court, after they had initially been rebuffed by the Texas attorney general’s office. The previously-unreleased draft of the lawsuit they floated to Louisiana’s attorney general was recently obtained by TPM, via a public records request filed by the left-leaning watchdog group American Oversight. Internal communications between the Louisiana office and the Trump-aligned lawyers, which included a former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, were also obtained in American Oversight’s request and shared with TPM.
They show how Kobach repeatedly pestered Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office and what materials were used to pitch Landry on bringing the lawsuit. Much of the content of the emails is redacted. But, as the New York Times reported, the outreach to Attorney General Landry was part of a larger campaign that targeted Republican attorneys general who had previously aligned themselves with Trump. Landry was one of nine attorneys general part of a group called Lawyers for Trump, and at the time also led the Republican Attorneys General Association.
Yet, the newly-obtained emails show how Landry’s associate, Louisiana Solicitor General Elizabeth Murrill, tried to keep at arms’ length the lawyers who were pushing the election-reversal lawsuit.