Trump says he will keep fighting
Electoral College to meet, vote as president refuses to concede race
Despite recently suffering the most consequential in a string of defeats in his quest to subvert the results of November’s election, President Donald Trump continued to insist that his plans to challenge his loss were “not over.”
“It’s not over. We keep going,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News that aired Sunday and was taped Saturday at the Army-Navy football game. “And we’re going to continue to go forward.”
The president’s vow to press on came the day after the Supreme Court rejected a Texas lawsuit against four battleground states, effectively ending his attempt to overturn the results. Trump’s allies have also lost dozens of times in lower courts.
The Electoral College meets Monday to cement President-elect Joe Biden’s win.
But as the president continues to refuse to concede, a small group of his most loyal backers in Congress is plotting a finalstage challenge on the floor of the House of Representatives in early January to try to reverse Biden’s victory.
Constitutional scholars and members of the president’s own party say the effort is all but certain to fail.
But the looming battle Jan. 6 is likely to culminate in a divisive spectacle that could thrust Vice President Mike Pence into the excruciating position of having to declare that Trump has lost the election.
The fight promises to shape how Trump’s base views the election for years to come, and to pose yet another awkward test of allegiance for Republicans whohave privately hoped that the Electoral College vote would be the final word on the election result.
For the vice president, whomtheConstitution assigns the task of tallying the results and declaring a winner, the episode could be particularly torturous, forcing him to balance his loyalty to Trump with his constitutional duties and considerations about his own political future.
The effort is being led by Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala.
Under rules laid out in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the group’s challenges must be submitted in writing with a senator’s signature also affixed. NoRepublican senator has stepped forward to say he or she will back such an
effort, although a handful of reliable allies of Trump, including Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have signaled they would be open to doing so.
Trump has praised Brooks on Twitter but has thus far taken no evident interest in the strategy. Aides say he has been more focused on battling to overturn the results in court.
Even if a senator did agree, constitutional scholars say the process is intended to be an arduous one. Once an objection is heard from a member of each house of Congress, senators and representatives will retreat to their chambers on opposite sides of the Capitol for a two-hour debate and then a vote on whether to disqualify a state’s votes. Both the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate would have to agree to toss out a state’s electoral votes — something that has not happened since the 19th century.
Manytop Republicans in Congress continued to stand by Trump in refusing to recognize Biden as the president-elect.
Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, did so again Sunday, arguing on “Fox NewsSunday” that the legal process was not over despite the Supreme Court ruling.
“There will be a president sworn in on Jan. 20, but let this process play out,” he said.
Some party elders, though, have begun to say more than a month after Election Day that it is time to move on.
“The courts have resolved the disputes. It looks very much like the electors will vote for Joe Biden,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., in a prerecorded interview aired Sunday by NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Alexander, who will retire at the end of the year, said Trump had lost the election because of “the president’s conduct, his behavior” and his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 16 million Americans have confirmed infections and nearly 300,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Trumphas madebaseless claim after baseless claim of election fraud in his attempt to deny Biden’s victory. Some states “got rigged and robbed from us,” he falsely claimed in the interview. “But we won every one of them.”
When the interviewer, Brian Kilmeade, tried to ask if Trump would attend Biden’s inauguration, Trump interrupted. “I don’t
want to talk about that,” he said. “I want to talk about this.”
Healso tore into Attorney General William Barr again for not violating Justice Department guidelines against publicly discussing open cases and trying to keep information from leaking out about an investigation into the finances of Biden’s son, Hunter, during the presidential campaign.
Trump, who spent months denouncing the work of Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, used Muel
ler as a positive example when compared with Barr.
The president noted that Mueller had said that an article by BuzzFeed News claiming that Trump had directed his lawyer to lie to Congress was flawed. He argued that Barr should have contradicted Biden’s statements in one of the presidential debates minimizing questions about his son.
“Bill Barr, I believe — not believe, I know — had an obligation to set the record straight, just like Robert Mueller set the record straight,” Trump said.