Welcome to Courtside, everyone, a discussion of the post-election litigation brought by Donald Trump.

It's day 56 after the election. Yes, that's right. Eight weeks ago, we had this election.

And just about eight weeks ago, we know who won. The litigation count stands at one out of 60 cases that Donald Trump has won.

Put differently, 59 different courts across the country

have rejected his ludicrous claims of election fraud.

And it's not just courts.

The FBI has rejected it.

Former Attorney General for Trump, Bill Barr,

has rejected it.

Even Mitch McConnell has rejected it, but Trump like a sore loser

continues on. And its new hope is that Vice President Pence somehow will rule for him on January 6th.

This has about as much chance of happening as President Trump nominating Merrick Garland and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

to the United States Supreme Court in the next two weeks. I explained this in detail in the

New York Times today in an op-ed, and I'm going to do some summarizing here, but I'm also going

to add some Katyal color, because color isn't really, you know, what the New York Timesy kind of style is. So here we go.

First of all, there are two different texts that you have to understand. One is the 12th Amendment,

and the other is the Electoral Count Act of 1887. And together, what they do is they give the vice president

what we lawyers call a ministerial role.

That means a ceremonial role.

That's a role particularly suited to this vice president who seems incapable of having an actual

independent thought or frankly any real connection of neurons. But, you know, basically what the

Electoral Count Act says is that on a certain day this year on January 6th, the vice president is to be,

...