Representative Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and members of the House Freedom Caucus hold a press conference to ask Attorney General William Barr to release the findings of an investigation into allegations of 2020 election fraud outside the Capitol, the Thursday, December 3, 2020.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
The Justice Department on Thursday criticized a desperate Republican-led lawsuit to reverse the election of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College and called the case against Vice President Mike Pence a “legal contradiction.”
The Justice Department said in a new lawsuit that Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas and 11 Arizona Republicans have “sued the wrong defendant,” Pence, in the case.
And top DOJ officials urged a judge to reject the request to issue an emergency order that would allegedly allow Pence to ignore the votes of the Electoral College of a handful of battlefield states they have given in Biden his margin of victory over President Donald Trump.
Pence, next week, will chair Congress when he meets to certify Biden’s victory.
Gohmert’s lawsuit asks federal judge Jeremy Kernodle, appointed by Trump to the U.S. court for the East Texas District, to declare that Pence has “the exclusive authority and exclusive discretion” to decide which election votes of a particular state must be counted.
Republicans are calling on Kernodle to hand over that power to Pence by removing key sections of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, a law they say contradicts the 12th Amendment.
Gohmert’s claim conflicts with legal experts who say the role of Pence, or that of any vice president, is to preside over the counting of votes cast by the Electoral College, not to judge which ones are valid or not.
Pence is the sole defendant in the case, a fact that John Coghlan, the deputy deputy director general of the civilian division of the DOJ, highlighted while arguing against the execution of the lawsuit.
“The lawsuit of these plaintiffs is not an appropriate vehicle to address these issues because the plaintiffs have sued the wrong defendant,” Coghlan wrote in a lawsuit.
“The vice president – the only defendant in this case – is ironically the same person whose power he seeks to promote,” Coghlan wrote.
“The Senate and the House, and not the Vice President, have legal interests that are adverse enough for plaintiffs to warrant a case or dispute under Article III. The defendant respectfully requests the denial of the emergency motion. of the plaintiffs because the plea filed by the plaintiffs is not adequately against the Vice President. “
Coghlan also suggested that if there was any suitable target for Gohmert’s demand, it would be the House and Senate, not Pence.
“In fact, as a matter of logic, they are those bodies against which the plaintiffs’ application must be directed.”
On Thursday, a House attorney filed his own brief, urging Kernodle to dismiss the case.
“Leaving aside the claims of Rep. Gohmert (for whom it clearly has no value), this case is simply one more attempt by Arizona’s defeated election candidates to nullify the results of the popular vote in their state,” he said. write Douglas Letter, Advocate General of the House.
“Arizona plaintiffs have tried and been unable to annul the election because of lawsuits they filed in Arizona federal and state courts,” Letter wrote.
“So now they’re asking this Texas court to help them get what they didn’t do in Arizona. This court should reject the plaintiffs’ proposal to lay a cornerstone of our nation’s democratic processes.”
The latest Republican trial follows dozens of failed attempts by the Trump campaign and its allies to get the courts to reverse or invalidate the election votes for Biden.
Many House Republicans have supported some of these efforts, most notably Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s proposal for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of four key states. The high court refused to hear the case.
Some Republican lawmakers plan to challenge election results when Congress meets next Wednesday. Missouri Republican Josh Hawley became the first senator to take that step this week.
If a member of the House and a senator jointly oppose a list of voters in a state, the two houses must debate separately and vote on the objection.
Experts say there is no real chance of overturning the election result. Pence has shown no evidence to support these objections or otherwise attempt to annul the election.