WASHINGTON – A federal judge on Friday rejected a lawsuit led by President Trump’s allies in Congress to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results, striking a blow to lawmakers’ latest effort to challenge President-elect Joseph R Biden Jr .. victory
Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle of the Eastern District of Texas ruled that Republican lawmakers, led by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, did not have the legitimacy necessary to prosecute Mr. Pence in the matter. The lawsuit challenged the law of more than a century that governs the Electoral College process, in an attempt to expand one ceremonial function to another with the power to reject electoral votes cast for Biden.
As president of the Senate, Pence has the responsibility to open and compute the envelopes sent by each state and announce his election results when Congress meets on January 6 to certify Biden’s victory. Gohmert, along with his colleagues and voters in Arizona, hoped that the lawsuit, which opened on Sunday, could force Pence to assume a broader role, exposing the vice president to pressure to invalidate the election results.
But Judge Kernodle, who was appointed by Trump, dashed those hopes on Friday, although Gohmert said in an interview with Newsmax that his lawyers would appeal. His decision came a day after the Justice Department asked him to reject the lawsuit. The department also argued that Mr. Gohmert had no legitimacy to sue Mr. Pence for performing the duties defined in the law, but maintained that he should sue Congress, which passed the original law.
The president was unhappy when he learned that the Justice Department was representing Pence in a lawsuit that his supporters filed, and he approached the vice president on Friday morning to discuss the matter, said three people informed of the discussion.
In his conversation, Mr. Trump expressed surprise at the development, although the Justice Department followed the appropriate procedure because Mr. Pence was being prosecuted in his official capacity, according to one of the people informed about the discussion. Mr. Trump was more vocal to the advisers than to Mr. Pence about his frustrations with the Justice Department’s involvement.
Trump’s allies in Congress are mounting a doomed last-minute effort to subvert election results, objecting to certification of major states’ electoral results when Congress meets to certify them, the final procedural step to assert Biden’s victory . His effort, led by Gohmert in the House and Josh Hawley of Missouri in the Senate, will force each chamber to debate objections for up to two hours, followed by a vote on Biden’s victory.
With a majority of Republicans in the Senate expected to certify the election and with the House controlled by Democrats, the candidacy is destined to fail. But the lawsuit could ultimately put Pence in the dying position of declaring that Trump lost the election.
Although Republicans in the Senate faced gambit largely with reticence – and even outright contempt – House legislators met to support the effort. In the document that Gohmert initially filed with the federal court, he indicated that more than 140 House Republicans intended to object to Biden’s victory.
Trump continued to falsely claim that Biden won the election unfairly because of widespread voter fraud and demanded that Congressional Republicans work to overturn the results.
But there was no evidence of widespread impropriety, and former Attorney General William P. Barr acknowledged that the Justice Department did not discover any fraud that could change the outcome.
The Supreme Court and courts in at least eight critical states across the country have equally rejected or rejected the challenges that the Trump campaign undertook in an attempt to reject the election results. These challenges did not come close to dropping the results in a single state.