Pence seeks dismissal of suit aiming to overturn election
- by Lorene Schwartz
- in People
- — Jan 2, 2021
But a range of nonpartisan election officials and Republicans has confirmed there was no fraud in the November contest that would change the results of the election.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and other Republicans last week filed a lawsuit against Pence, requesting that the court grant Pence power to decide which votes to count on January 6, 2021, when lawmakers will gather to observe the formal certification of states' electoral votes for the president of the United States.
On CNN Friday, Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio broke down the significance of outgoing Vice President Mike Pence distancing himself from the president's push to overturn the election.
"If an incumbent vice president could keep his or her job that way, then votes of millions of people and votes of duly elected and certified electors would be meaningless, and our nation's most cherished principle - "here, We the People rule" - would be eviscerated", Kennedy said.
Pence's filing notes that Gohmert's interests are not sufficiently opposed to his own to justify a lawsuit, as their case would expand the vice president's powers.
The power of the vice president to count or reject electoral votes is disputed.
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In another filing Thursday, Colorado elector Alan Kennedy argued Gohmert's lawsuit is based on flawed legal arguments and debunked claims of election fraud.
"Plaintiffs have presented this Court with an emergency motion raising a host of weighty legal issues about the manner in which the electoral votes for President are to be counted". They say the president of the Senate has "exclusive authority and sole discretion under the 12th Amendment to determine which slates of electors for a state, or neither, may be counted".
Gohmert will also be joining the effort backed by more than 140 House Republicans to object to state vote counts during the Congressional session.
Under the Electoral Count Act, that challenge would be resolved by separate votes of the House and Senate - and in the case of the 2020 election, those challenges would effectively be doomed.
Trump retweeted a supporter's theory that Pence could overthrow the results of the election last week. He noted that the Twelfth Amendment is straightforward and that there are no "competing slates of electors".
Gohmert's new brief contends Pence is the proper defendant in the case, but also says the congressman could add the United States or House or Senate parliamentarians as defendants if that would clarify Gohmert's right to relief. In a court filing in Texas on Wednesday, the department said Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and a group of Republican electors from Arizona "have sued the wrong defendant" - if, in fact, any of those suing actually have "a judicially cognizable claim".
