Federal Judge Dismisses Election Lawsuit Against
Pence
President Trump’s congressional allies had hoped to
give the vice president the power to reject electoral votes that were cast for
Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Catie
EdmondsonMaggie Haberman
By Catie
Edmondson and Maggie Haberman
Jan. 1,
2021
WASHINGTON
— A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit led by President Trump’s allies
in Congress that aimed to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the
results of the election, dealing a blow to lawmakers’ last-ditch effort to
challenge President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
Judge
Jeremy D. Kernodle of the Eastern District of Texas ruled that Republican
lawmakers, led by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, lacked the proper
standing to sue Mr. Pence in the matter. The lawsuit challenged the more than
century-old law that governs the Electoral College process, in an attempt to
expand an otherwise ceremonial role into one with the power to reject electoral
votes that were cast for Mr. Biden.
As the
presiding officer of the Senate, Mr. Pence has the responsibility of opening
and tallying envelopes sent from each state and announcing their electoral
results when Congress meets on Jan. 6 to certify Mr. Biden’s victory. Mr.
Gohmert, along with his colleagues and electors in Arizona, had hoped that the
lawsuit, filed on Sunday, could force Mr. Pence to take on an expanded role,
opening the vice president up to pressure to invalidate the election results.
But Judge
Kernodle, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, dashed those hopes on Friday, though
Mr. Gohmert said in an interview with Newsmax that his lawyers would appeal.
His decision came a day after the Justice Department asked him to reject the
lawsuit. The department also argued that Mr. Gohmert did not have standing to
sue Mr. Pence over performing the duties as defined by the act, but maintained
that he should sue Congress, which had passed the original law.
The
president was unhappy when he learned that the Justice Department was representing
Mr. Pence in a suit that his supporters had filed, and he reached out to the
vice president on Friday morning to discuss it, three people briefed on the
discussion said.
In their
conversation, Mr. Trump expressed surprise about the development, even though
the Justice Department followed proper procedure because Mr. Pence was being
sued in his official capacity, according to one of the people briefed on the
discussion. Mr. Trump was more vocal to advisers than to Mr. Pence about his
frustrations over the Justice Department’s involvement.
Mr. Trump’s
allies in Congress are mounting a doomed, last-minute effort to subvert the
results of the election by objecting to the certification of key states’
electoral results when Congress meets to certify them, the final procedural
step in affirming Mr. Biden’s victory. Their effort, led by Mr. Gohmert in the
House and Josh Hawley of Missouri in the Senate, will force each chamber to
debate the objections for up to two hours, followed by a vote on Mr. Biden’s
victory.
With a
majority of Republicans in the Senate expected to certify the election and with
the House controlled by Democrats, the bid is destined to fail. But the process
could ultimately put Mr. Pence in the agonizing position of declaring that Mr.
Trump has lost the election.
Though
Republicans in the Senate have met the gambit largely with reticence — and even
open contempt — lawmakers in the House have flocked to support the effort. In
the brief that Mr. Gohmert initially filed in federal court, he indicated that
over 140 House Republicans intended to object to Mr. Biden’s victory.
Mr. Trump
has continued to falsely claim that Mr. Biden unfairly won the election because
of widespread voter fraud, and has demanded that congressional Republicans work
to overturn the results.
But there
has been no evidence of widespread impropriety, and former Attorney General
William P. Barr has acknowledged that the Justice Department uncovered no such
fraud that would have changed the outcome.
The Supreme
Court and courts in at least eight critical states across the country have
similarly rejected or dismissed challenges the Trump campaign has waged in an
attempt to throw out the results of the election. Those challenges have not
come close to overturning the results in a single state.
Catie
Edmondson is a reporter in the Washington bureau, covering Congress.
@CatieEdmondson
Maggie
Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015 as a
campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018
for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. @maggieNYT
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