According to a report by the Hill on the 28th, on the 27th local time, Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert and several other Republicans sued Vice President Pence. This difficult lawsuit seems to be aimed at overthrowing President-elect Biden. The winning result of the election.
The lawsuit focuses on Pence’s role in the upcoming joint meeting of the Senate and the House of Representatives on January 6, at which the results of the electoral college votes of each state in the United States will be counted and confirmed, thus formally determining Biden’s victory in the U.S. presidential election.
The report said that such meetings are usually presided over by the Vice President of the United States, but the role of the Vice President is largely ceremonial and is subject to the Federal Act of 1887, the Election Count Act. However, the lawsuits initiated by these Republicans against Vice President Pence’s official status asked a Texas federal judge to overturn the law for unconstitutionality. These Republicans even asked the court to empower Pence to effectively overturn Trump’s election results in key battleground states in the United States on January 6.
U.S. election law experts believe that the prospect of success of the lawsuit is slim. Edward Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, said, “The idea that the vice president has the sole power to decide whether to count the electoral votes submitted by a state or decide which one should be counted in the submitted results is inconsistent with the correct understanding of the constitution.”
Republicans who filed the lawsuit include Kelly Ward, the chairman of the Arizona Republican Party and a former senator in the Arizona State Assembly. Ward amplified the allegations surrounding Trump and his allies, claiming widespread “fraud” in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, which is behind the previous failure to overthrow Biden’s victory in Arizona. However, these allegations have been dismissed in the U.S. courts.
According to the report, as Republicans in the United States sued Pence, Pence found himself facing increasing pressure from Trump supporters – even the president himself. These people asked Pence to use his statutory role to subvert the usual election process and overthrow the election results.
Last week, Trump retweeted a tweet from one of his own supporters who called on Pence to “take action” on January 6 to block the Electoral College vote that confirmed Biden’s victory. CNN previously reported that Trump complained that Pence had not done enough to support his efforts to overturn the election results.
While Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin by a decisive margin, Republicans in the lawsuit called the results of these states doubtful. They sought a U.S. court to authorize Pence to select voters from these states to vote for Trump instead of Biden.
