- In one last unlikely effort to succeed, Congressman Louie Gohmert is among those suing to try to get Vice President Mike Pence to declare President Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 elections.
- President-elect Joe Biden won the election, and Pence is expected to chair a joint session of Congress to certify the results on Wednesday.
- The Justice Department responded to Gohmert’s lawsuit by saying that Pence was the wrong person to sue, and Gohmert responded by saying that the vice president was not just a “glorified chief opener”.
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Texas deputy Louie Gohmert wasted no time in responding to the Justice Department’s request on New Year’s Eve to reject his lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 election.
In a last pointless effort, Gohmert and other diehard supporters of President Donald Trump are suing Vice President Mike Pence, trying to get him to declare Trump the winner when he chairs the joint session of Congress to certify the results of the Electoral College on Wednesday market.
President-elect Joe Biden won the election, capturing 306 electoral votes against Trump’s 232.. Each state certified its results, and voters officially voted to make Biden the president-elect in December. The final ceremonial event before Biden’s inauguration on January 20 is the joint session of Congress.
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Pence and the Justice Department said in a lawsuit on Thursday that the vice president was the wrong person to sue and asked the judge to deny Gohmert’s request.
On New Year’s Day, Gohmert and his allies responded with a 55-page response saying that DOJ and Pence were wrong and that the vice president is not just “the glorified chief envelope opener” and is the right person to sue try to make Trump president again, the Washington Post first reported.
Trump’s allies have argued that Pence may decide to change the rules when he presides over the joint session of Congress on Wednesday: “Under the Constitution, he has the authority to conduct this process as he sees fit. He can count the electoral votes certified by an executive state, or he may prefer a competing slate of suitably qualified voters. He can ignore all voters in a given state. That is the power conferred on him by the Constitution. “
Gohmert’s action also mentioned 140 House Republicans and a Republican Party senator who plan to oppose the election results during the joint session as a reason to consider the case.
But Law & Crime said experts said the Gohmert lawsuit was “absurd”.
“Their case is defective for reasons noted by the defendants’ lawyer, including Vice President Pence,” Ross Garber of Tulane Law told Law & Crime. “And his litigation is more of a political and public relations campaign than a serious effort to seek a judicial solution to a legitimate dispute.”
Wednesday must be a spectacle, however. In addition to the objections expected in Congress, Trump is encouraging his supporters to come together in DC.
In contrast, when Biden chaired the joint session of Congress to certify the results of the 2016 elections, the former vice president objected to his Democratic colleagues and made Trump the 45th president.