Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and the defeated voters of Arizona’s President Donald Trump can force Vice President Mike Pence to publicly choose a side in Trump’s attempt to reverse his defeat in the 2020 elections.
Gohmert and a handful of voter candidates sued Pence in federal court on Monday in an attempt to overturn the rules governing the counting of Congressional electoral votes next week. It is an effort they hope will allow Pence – who is tasked with leading the January 6 session of the House and Senate – to simply ignore voters of President-elect Joe Biden and count Trump’s defeats.
The lawsuit states that the 1887 law known as the Electoral Counting Law, the vague law that has long governed the process of counting electoral votes with minimal drama, unconstitutionally imposes Pence to exercise full authority to choose which votes to count.
“According to the Twelfth Amendment, Defendant Pence alone has exclusive authority and exclusive discretion to open and allow counting of electoral votes for a given state, and where there are competing voter lists, or where there is an objection to any voter list. , to determine which voters’ votes, or if none, will be counted “, the action maintains.
The lawsuit continues before Judge Jeremy Kernodle, appointed by Trump to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. It is not clear whether he will grant the request for an accelerated trial.
While the process itself is unlikely to gain legal force, it puts Pence in the position of having to challenge the process – putting him on the opposite side from Trump and his Republican Party defenders – or supporting him and revealing his intention to subvert the goes on voters in the 2020 election.
Pence became involved with Republican lawmakers seeking to reverse election results, but avoided publicly taking sides on the issue, and he gave no indication of how he intends to deal with his role presiding over the January 6 session of Congress set to certify the victory of Biden.
Although Biden was the certified winner in states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and others, Republicans who would have been Trump voters met anyway and intended to cast their votes for Trump’s re-election. They are counting on Pence and Congressional Republicans to treat these informal votes as equal to the certified slates in the states where Trump was defeated.
Pence, sustains the action, can only be guided by constitutional provisions and can exercise “exclusive discretion in determining which electoral votes to count for a given state, and must ignore and cannot rely on any provisions of the Electoral Counting Law that would limit his authority exclusive. “
Gohmert indicates in the process that he will be one of the House Republicans who intend to challenge Biden voters in key states. Dozens of other Republicans in the House intend to follow suit, and at least one newcomer Senator from the Republican Party – Tommy Tuberville of Alabama – has signaled that he is likely to join them. It is not clear whether other Republican senators will do so as well.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell worked to dissuade his caucus from participating in the challenges, and the second Republican Party leader, Senator John Thune (RS.D.), attracted a ferocious attack from Trump after he told reporters that any challenge to the results were doomed to failure.
According to the rules that Gohmert is challenging, just one member from each branch is enough to challenge voters from various states to force a vote on the matter. But any challenge is likely to fail under the expected rules. The Democratic-led House will vote to defend Biden’s victory, and several Republican senators have indicated that they do not intend to support Trump’s efforts.
Dismissing these rules, according to Gohmert, would allow Pence to decide which voters to consider first, raising the specter that he could simply choose to count the Trump list.
Trump’s allies have repeatedly pointed to Pence’s role at the center of the Electoral College certification process as a reason to hope that the election results can still be reversed. Trump even expanded on one of these theories last week, retweeting a suggestion that Pence could intervene in passing on electoral votes to the National Archives.
At least earlier this month, Pence planned to oversee Biden’s victory and then try to escape Trump’s wrath by going abroad for what could be his last diplomatic trip in office. If Pence finally chooses not to attend the session, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the provisional president of the Senate, is likely to chair.
Gabby Orr contributed to this report.