Rep. Louis Gohart, Republican from Texas, outside the Capitol, December 3, 2020.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Rep. Lowe Gohart became the last Republican to file a long-running lawsuit in an effort to annul the president-elect Joe BidenVictory – this time to sue the Vice President Mike Pence.
The latest legal attempt, lifted on Sunday, came from Gohmert, an eight-term congressman from Texas, along with 11 Arizona residents who were nominated by that state’s Republican party to serve as voters.
This comes more than a week before Pence is scheduled to chair a joint session of Congress where the Electoral College votes for Biden and the president. Donald Trump Will be counted.
The electors were Already cast their vote two weeks ago. Biden won 306 electoral votes – 36 more than he needed to win – while Trump won 232.
The lawsuit asks federal judge Jeremy Kernodel, Trump-appointed in East Texas, to declare that Pence has “the exclusive power and discretion alone” to decide the electoral votes from a particular state that should be counted.
Biden won the pro-Trump voters in some states They cast their votes symbolicallyExperts say these votes have no legal weight.
The Republic complaint claims that part of the Electoral Counting Act of 1887 must be declared unconstitutional because it conflicts with the Twelfth Amendment.
This amendment contains “exclusive dispute resolution mechanisms,” as the lawsuit claims, including that “Vice President Pence specifies the list of votes to be counted, or none of them count for this mandate.”
Legal scholars quickly dismissed the Republicans’ claim as hopelessly elusive.
“No, it’s not going to work,” election law expert Rick Hasen at the University of California, Irvine tweeted.
“It’s not going anywhere,” wrote Joshua Giltzer, executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Defense and Constitutional Protection.
“This is crazy,” Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Chris wrote on Twitter.
Spokesmen for Pence’s office did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The lawsuit also asserts that “public reports” have “highlighted widespread electoral fraud” in battlefield states, citing a document written by White House Counselor Peter Navarro containing many of the allegations that have been dismissed in other lawsuits or Expose By fact checkers.
Trump refused to concede to Biden. He erroneously asserted that he won the race while publicly pressuring Republican lawmakers to “escalate and fight for the presidency.” Meanwhile, Trump is spreading unfounded conspiracy theories and allegedly exposing widespread voter fraud and election fraud.
Some House Republicans have stated that they will challenge the election results when Congress meets to count the electoral votes on January 6. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R. He was reportedly urged His party not to make similar objections.
Any objections to electoral votes must be submitted in writing and signed by at least one member of the House of Representatives and one member of the Senate. If an objection appears, the two chambers shall consider the objection separately.
The Trump campaign and many of the president’s allies have launched dozens of attempts to challenge election results in several swing states. None of these legal efforts were successful in invalidating the votes in Biden’s favor or turning the presidential election results for any state.
The US Supreme Court earlier in December Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton refused to prosecute four major swing states On the changes they made to voting procedures. Trump had called that lawsuit “the big case.”
