- Vice President Mike Pence responded on Thursday night to a lawsuit filed by a group of Trump supporters hoping to pressure him to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory.
- It is part of a remote attempt to enable the vice president to accept or reject the results of the presidential election in each state.
- Trump supporters, led by Texas deputy Louie Gohmert, asked a judge to tell Pence that he had unilateral power to reject the results at a Congressional meeting on January 6.
- But Pence does not want to be a part of it – in his response, government lawyers argued that the lawsuit went wrong. Pence also declined an earlier chance to enter the suit.
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Vice President Mike Pence has asked a judge to stop a lawsuit filed by pro-Trump Republicans who hope it will enable him to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking power later this month.
The Justice Department issued the request on behalf of Pence to a federal judge on the night of Thursday, December 31.
The Law and Crime media published a copy of the Pence response next to their article on the case.
The lawsuit was filed by Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, alongside a group of Arizona Trump supporters.
The goal is to expand Pence’s power as president of the United States Senate. The position means that Pence is due to chair on January 6 a joint session of Congress, where lawmakers certify the results of the presidential election.
The procedure is usually a formality to confirm what voters, and then the Electoral College, have already said.
But the suit asks a judge to tell Pence that he can unilaterally reject results from individual states on his own.
The hope of those who filed the lawsuit is that Pence will reject the results of the states that supported Biden and accept those who vote for President Donald Trump.
In the near-impossible scenario, this would guarantee Trump a second term, despite losing the election on November 3.
However, Thursday’s filing shows that Pence does not want to take part in this.
The Justice Department letter sent on behalf of Pence called the case a “legal contradiction” and said it should not have been brought against Pence.
The DOJ cited the principle that, in order to sue someone, you must oppose them in some way, according to The Washington Post.
That, he said, was not the case for Pence, as Trump’s supporters were, in a confused way, suing Pence in order to give him extra powers.
According to Politico, Gohmert and his allies also tried to get Pence to take part in the action early in the process, but he declined.
At the beginning of Friday, the United States district judge, Jeremy D. Kernodle, had still not granted Pence’s request.