- At least 140 Republican members of the House reportedly plan to vote against the certification of the Electoral College’s vote on January 6.
- The vote would only delay confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, but has no chance of overturning the November presidential election result, which Biden won with 306 votes at the Electoral College.
- President Donald Trump and his Republican allies spent the weeks following the election working to overturn the results and sharing false allegations of electoral and electoral fraud.
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At least 140 House Republicans are planning to vote against the count of electoral votes that would certify the election for President-elect Joe Biden, two Republican congressmen told CNN.
Biden obtained 306 electoral votes, well above the 270 needed to secure the presidency of the United States, and became five states that in 2016 voted for Trump.
Trump and his campaign alongside Republican allies in Congress spent nearly two months working to contest the election results and make baseless allegations of fraud.
Last week, Congressman Mo Brooks and several other conservative members of the House met with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to discuss allegations of fraud and said they were confident that members of the House and Senate would vote to debate legitimacy. of the votes.
On January 6, Pence will chair a joint session of Congress to finalize the results. If no member objects to the results, they will be certified. But if a member of the House and a member of the Senate vote to challenge a state’s voters, Congress will have to deliberate on the acceptance of those voters.
On Wednesday, Republican Senator Josh Hawley announced that he would object to certifying electoral votes during the joint session.
Hawley is a staunch ally of Trump’s, and while efforts to debate the results are likely to delay certification of Biden’s victory by just a few hours, it won’t change the outcome.
The Trump campaign and Republican allies have not won any of the at least 40 lawsuits they have launched since election day.
Lawyers like Sidney Powell, who filed lawsuits on his own behalf on Trump’s behalf, accused without foundation Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, two companies that manufacture voting equipment and software, of exchanging votes from Trump to Biden.
The U.S. Department of Justice conducted an investigation that found no evidence of fraud that altered the elections.
Several Republicans have spoken out against any effort to try to overthrow the Trump election.
The president attacked Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell after he told senators not to join Trump’s attempts to delegitimize electoral votes.
McConnell is concerned that such behavior could cause Republicans to have two Senate seats in contention in Georgia.
After Brooks and other Republicans met with Trump and Pence, Senate majority Republican Whip John Thune said, “I think what they need to remember is that this is not going anywhere. I mean, in the Senate, it would sink like a shot. “
On Wednesday, Republican Senator Ben Sasse beat Republicans who planned to postpone certification.
“The president and his allies are playing with fire. They have been asking – first to the courts, then to the state legislatures, now to Congress – to overturn the results of a presidential election. They have unsuccessfully summoned judges and are now summoning detainees. federal offices to invalidate millions and millions of votes, “wrote Sasse.
“If you make big claims, you better have the evidence. But the president doesn’t have it, and neither do the institutional arsonists in Congress who oppose the Electoral College vote.”