WASHINGTON (AP) – The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to dismiss a suspended lawsuit filed by a House Republican seeking to give Vice President Mike Pence the power to overturn the results of Joe Biden’s presidential election when Congress formally counts the votes of the Electoral College next week.
Pence, as president of the Senate, will oversee Wednesday’s session and declare the winner of the race in the White House. The Electoral College consolidated Biden’s 306-232 victory this month and the multiple legal efforts of President Donald Trump’s campaign to challenge the results have failed.
The lawsuit names Pence, who plays a mostly ceremonial role in next week’s trials, as the defendant and asks the court to expel the 1887 law detailing how Congress handles the counting of votes. He states that the vice president “can exercise exclusive authority and exclusive discretion to determine which electoral votes are counted for a given state.”
The Justice Department represents Pence in a case that seeks to find a way to keep his boss, President Donald Trump, in power. In a court hearing Wednesday in Texas, the department said Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and a group of Arizona Republican voters “have sued the wrong defendant,” if, in fact, any of the plaintiffs have “A judicially recognizable claim.”
“It’s the role prescribed by the Senate and House of Representatives in the Electoral Count Act that the plaintiffs oppose, not any action taken by Vice President Pence. … A lawsuit to establish that the vice president has discretion over the count, filed against the vice president, is a traveling legal contradiction. “
Trump, the first president to lose a re-election candidacy in nearly 30 years, has attributed his defeat to widespread election fraud. But several election officials and Republican supporters have confirmed that there was no fraud in the November contest that would change the election results. This includes former Attorney General William Barr, who said he saw no reason to appoint a special lawyer to examine the president’s claims about the 2020 election. He resigned last week.
Trump and his allies have filed about 50 demands to challenge election results and almost all have been dismissed or withdrawn. He has also lost twice to the Supreme Court.