Ridiculed for urging 'Lord of the Rings' remedy, lawyer blasts media in new election lawsuit filing
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Updated: Fired in-house lawyer Paul MacNeal Davis has retreated from his request for a Lord of the Rings remedy in his lawsuit that contends that voting changes resulted in an illegal election.
Davis proposes an alternative in a Jan. 25 legal filing that blasts the media for ridiculing his proposal. But the pundits haven’t eased up. Nor have his troubles, including overwork, threats and vandalism, he says in the filing.
Davis, who was fired after he posted a video of himself outside the U.S. Capitol riot, made the stewardship suggestion in a Jan. 21 legal document, Law360 reports.
Davis wrote that the judiciary is the only branch of government that has legitimacy following the election.
“Gondor has no king,” he said citing Lord of the Rings. He explained in a footnote.
“During the course of the epic trilogy, the rightful king of Gondor had abandoned the throne,” he said. “Since only the rightful king could sit on the throne of Gondor, a steward was appointed to manage Gondor until the return of the king, known as ‘Aragorn,’ occurred at the end of the story. This analogy is applicable since there is now in Washington, D.C., a group of individuals calling themselves the president, vice president and Congress who have no rightful claim to govern the American people.”
Above the Law took issue with Davis’ recounting of some of the Lord of the Rings details and went on to poke fun at the legal filing.
“Hobbit Law Cited In Wacky Trump-Loving Lawsuit To Overturn Election,” Above the Law’s headline read.
Davis sets out his alternative to the stewardship idea in his Jan. 25 legal document.
“After getting a bit of rest and pondering it over the weekend,” he wrote, he now “seeks to curb the power of a disputed Congress and president by limiting their ability to enact new laws and policies” pending resolution of the lawsuit.
Davis’ filing criticized “vicious media attacks” that deemed his lawsuit to be a fantasy, apparently because of his literary analogy. He also told the court about the challenges that he is facing while trying to block what he considers to be “an illegally elected rogue government.”
“Further complicating this process,” he wrote in a footnote, “is counsel’s intense amount of sleep deprivation, having to do the work of several attorneys, mostly alone, with a skeleton staff while being plagued with threats to his safety and an apparent act of vandalism at his home where someone stuffed bundles of wood and garbage into the drain sewer at his home causing a massive sewage backup. Indeed, it is now 5:21 a.m. and counsel has not slept in an attempt to get more reasonable relief in front of the court prior to the court opening at 9 a.m.”
As of Monday, Davis had filed eight documents in his lawsuit, while the defendants had not yet responded, Above the Law points out.
Reuters reporter Brad Heath noted the new filing on Twitter.
“I’ve never, ever seen a legal filing remotely like this,” Heath wrote. “The many defendants haven’t filed a single thing; instead, this appears to be a response by the plaintiffs to mockery on Salon.com. Also, counsel is tired and had a sewage backup.”
In its new post Monday, Above the Law says the defendants still have several days to respond to Davis’ multiple filings.
“How many more briefs can Davis write before then?” the blog asks.
U.S. District Judge Alan Albright of the Western District of Texas, an appointee of President Donald Trump, told Davis on Wednesday that the suit may be tossed, report Law360, Above the Law and Law & Crime.
Albright said Davis’ claims are without merit, and he should show cause why the case shouldn’t be dismissed for failure to state a claim. He allowed Davis to amend his lawsuit.
Updated Jan. 29 at 8:30 a.m. to include information from Albright.
