JUDGE DISMISSES GOHMERT ELECTION LAWSUIT
Congressman sued to broaden Pence’s Electoral College role
A federal judge in Texas has dismissed a long-shot lawsuit by Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, that sought to overturn the presidential election, saying neither the congressman nor his allies have legal standing to pursue the case.
The judge’s Friday night ruling tosses out what many election law experts considered a far-fetched theory to challenge the formal mechanism by which Presidentelect Joe Biden will be affirmed as the winner of the race for president.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle issued an order dismissing the case because, he found, neither Gohmert nor his fellow plaintiffs have a sufficient legal stake in the process to justify the lawsuit. Kernodle was nominated to the federal bench by President Donald Trump.
The judge’s ruling comes less than 12 hours after lawyers for Gohmert filed court papers arguing that Vice President Mike Pence has far more power than the government claims to alter the outcome of the presidential election. It was not immediately clear if Gohmert’s legal team plans to appeal the decision.
In response to a Justice Department request to reject the suit, the Friday filing by Gohmert’s legal team accused the government of trying to “hide behind procedural arguments.” Gohmert’s lawyers contended that arguments made by the Justice Department and Congress — that the suit upends long-established procedures and that Pence is an inappropriate target for the suit — are unfounded.
“They say that the Vice President, the glorified envelope-opener in chief, has no authority to preside over anything else or to decide anything of substance or to even count the votes in those weighty envelopes. He is only the envelope-opener,” Gohmert’s filing states.
Gohmert claimed the vice president has the power to effectively pick the next president during the formal recording of Electoral College votes by Congress on Wednesday. Pence oversees that ceremony and, as president of the Senate, has the power to declare Biden electors in a handful of key states invalid and instead recognize electors supporting President Trump, the filing contends.
Pence “may count elector votes certified by a state’s executive, or he can prefer a competing slate of duly qualified electors. He may ignore all electors from a certain state. That is the power bestowed upon him by the Constitution,” the filing states.
Gohmert and a number of Republicans in Arizona filed the suit in Texas, arguing that an 1887 law governing how Congress certifies presidential elections is unconstitutional.