Judge dismisses Gohmert’s lawsuit to give Pence power to overturn 2020 election results

“Congressman Gohmert’s alleged injury requires a series of hypothetical – but by no means certain – events, the judge wrote in its 13-page decision rendered on Friday evening. “The claimants presume what the vice president will do on January 6, what electoral votes the vice president will count or reject in contested states, whether a representative and a senator will oppose under section 15 of the the electoral count, how each member of the House and Senate will vote on these objections, and how each state delegation to the House would potentially vote under the Twelfth Amendment in the absence of a majority vote. “

“All of this makes Congressman Gohmert’s alleged injury far too uncertain to support upholding the Constitution,” Kernodle added.

Kernodle’s decision hasn’t completely slammed the door on the possibility that Gohmert or potential voters could get redress in court. The judge dismissed the case without prejudice, which means Gohmert’s lawyers may try to reframe the lawsuit so that it goes to court. Gohmert, who filed the complaint on Sunday, had requested a final decision from Kernodle by January 4 in order to have time to make potential appeals.

Gohmert’s lawyers have already indicated that they may seek to name the US government, the House and Senate, or parliamentarians from those bodies as defendants. But it’s unclear whether these changes will satisfy the judge and time is running out for some relief before the Jan. 6 countdown.

Kernodle said Gohmert lacked standing under a 1997 Supreme Court ruling that individual lawmakers had no right to challenge a veto law on a section passed by Congress one year ago earlier. The New Year’s judge ruling said potential voters also lacked quality, as the harms they claimed were not really Pence’s fault, but Gov. Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.), Who certified the Biden voters as the winners in his state. These voters officially voted on December 14.

Although the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution requires Pence, as vice president, to preside over the January 6 session, his specific powers are detailed in the Electoral Tally Act of 1887. It obliges Pence to present voters by order. alphabetical by state, and it sets out a process for MPs and Senators to challenge disputed voters.

Under the Election Count Act, that challenge would be resolved by separate votes from the House and Senate – and in the case of the 2020 election, those challenges would effectively be doomed to fail. The majority in the Democratic House would certainly oppose them, and many Senate Republicans have recognized Biden as the clear winner of the contest.

According to Gohmert’s theory, if Pence refused to accept enough electoral votes to place either candidate above the 270-vote threshold, the election would be sent back to the House through a process also defined in the twelfth amendment, which gives state delegations a single vote. This wording would favor Republicans, who are in the House minority but control more state delegations than Democrats.

Pence, represented by attorneys for the Department of Justice, Thursday urged the court to dismiss Gohmert’s lawsuit against him, arguing that his fight is with the House and the Senate, not the Vice President. Pence did not indicate his own vision of his power as sitting chairman on January 6, and he did not indicate whether he intends to present the unofficial voters lists that Trump allies claim to have thrown in order to compete with the certified lists submitted. in states like Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia.

The Chamber submitted its own brief, more comprehensive, dismantling Gohmert’s effort as an unconstitutional and thinly veiled effort to overturn the democratic result of the 2020 election. The drafters would never have foreseen a process allowing a sitting vice president – often, as in this case, a real candidate in the electoral college ballot – to have the unilateral power to choose which voters to count, argued the House.