A federal appeals court has filed a lawsuit against Rep. Louie Gohmert
Louis (Louie) Buller Gohmert Judge Dismisses Gohmert’s Election Case Against Pence That Louie Gohmert Lawsuit Arizona GOP Chairman YouTube Comments Could Undermine Republican Election Case Against Pence MORE (R-Texas) and other Republicans who sought to extend Vice President Pence’s legal authority to effectively overthrow President-elect Joe Biden
Joe Biden Trump calls Georgia Senate runoffs ‘both illegal and invalid’ in New Year’s tweets Judge Dismisses Gohmert’s Election Case Against Pence Ex-GOP Senator Proposes Forming New Party, Calls Trump ‘Ringmaster’ of Republicans MORE‘s election victory.
A panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a lower court decision Friday that the GOP plaintiffs had no legal right to file a lawsuit.
The ruling was the last setback before President Trump
Donald Trump Trump calls Georgia Senate runoffs ‘both illegal and invalid’ in New Year’s tweets Judge Dismisses Gohmert’s Election Case Against Pence Ex-GOP Senator Proposes Forming New Party, Calls Trump ‘Ringmaster’ of Republicans MORE and his allies who have increasingly looked to Pence to challenge normal election protocols when he presides over a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.
The three-judge panel that ruled Saturday consisted of Republican appointees, including two judges tapped by former President Ronald Reagan and one Trump appointee.
They largely endorsed the lower court ruling issued by Texas-based U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump-appointed individual, who said the GOP plaintiffs had no standing.
Kernodle found that Gohmert suffered no legally identifiable injury, and that the other plaintiffs, a group of Arizona Republicans who identify themselves as an alternate “slate” of pro-Trump voters, were unable to link their alleged harm to Pence.
The dismissal of the suit was expected. The consensus among electoral law experts was that the judge would hear the case without reaching the substantive claims of the Republican plaintiffs.
The legal effort was intended to allow Pence to bypass federal electoral law when he presides over a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. Rather than carrying out his legal duty to finalize Biden’s win, Pence would be free to effectively change the 2020 results.
The vice president’s role in chairing the January 6 meeting is usually a ceremonial role governed by an 1887 federal law known as the Electoral Count Act. But the Republican lawsuit asked the judge to invalidate the law, arguing that it imposes an unconstitutional restriction on the vice president’s authority to choose between competing claims of victory when state-level election results are disputed.
The lawsuit was an outgrowth of GOP efforts in several major battlefield states to undo Biden’s victory based on allegations that his victory was compromised by widespread fraud.
Republicans in several key swing states have contested Biden’s victory and offered alternative “slates” of pro-Trump voters to count on Wednesday, but experts say these efforts have no legal weight.
Pence, for his part, told the court this week that he was not a real defendant in the lawsuit. As a vice president, he said, his legal interests are not “sufficiently unfavorable to plaintiffs” to clear the constitutional requirement that there be a “case or controversy” before a court weighs in.
“The vice president – the sole defendant in this case – is ironically the very person whose power they are trying to promote,” wrote a Justice Department attorney representing Pence. “A lawsuit to determine that the vice president has discretion over the count, filed against the vice president, is an ongoing legal contradiction.”
Updated at 9:05 PM