President Trump lost key swing states by clear margins. His barrage of lawsuits claiming widespread voting fraud has been almost universally dismissed, most recently by the Supreme Court. And on Monday, the Electoral College will formally cast a majority of its votes for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
But as the president continues to refuse to concede, a small group of his most loyal backers in Congress are plotting a final-stage challenge on the floor of the House of Representatives in early January to try to reverse Mr. Biden’s victory.
Constitutional scholars and even members of the president’s own party say the effort is all but certain to fail. But the looming battle on Jan. 6 is likely to culminate in a messy and deeply divisive spectacle that could thrust Vice President Mike Pence into the excruciating position of having to declare once and for all that Mr. Trump has indeed lost the election.
The fight promises to shape how Mr. Trump’s base views the election for years to come, and to pose yet another awkward test of allegiance for Republicans who have privately hoped that the Electoral College vote this week will be the final word on the election result.
For the vice president, whom the Constitution assigns the task of tallying the results and declaring a winner, the episode could be particularly torturous, forcing him to balance his loyalty to Mr. Trump with his constitutional duties and considerations about his own political future.
The effort is being led by Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, a backbench conservative. Along with a group of allies in the House, he is eyeing challenges to the election results in five different states — Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin — where they claim varying degrees of fraud or illegal voting took place, despite certification by the voting authorities and no evidence of widespread impropriety.
“We have a superior role under the Constitution than the Supreme Court does, than any federal court judge does, than any state court judge does,” Mr. Brooks said in an interview. “What we say, goes. That’s the final verdict.”
Isn’t that special? You’ve just got to love their stubborn adherence to the spirit of democracy don’t you? Or at tleast the concept of “one Trump cultists, one vote.”
This won’t work, of course. But I have to say I will love watching MIke pence dance on the head of a pin when it happens:
Under rules laid out in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, their challenges must be submitted in writing with a senator’s signature also affixed. No Republican senator has yet stepped forward to say he or she will back such an effort, though a handful of reliable allies of Mr. Trump, including Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have signaled they would be open to doing so.
The president has praised Mr. 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.
[…]
“My No. 1 goal is to fix a badly flawed American election system that too easily permits voter fraud and election theft,” Mr. Brooks said. “A possible bonus from achieving that goal is that Donald Trump would win the Electoral College officially, as I believe he in fact did if you only count lawful votes by eligible American citizens and exclude all illegal votes.”
It remains unclear how broad a coalition he could build. More than 60 percent of House Republicans, including the top two party leaders, joined a legal brief supporting the unsuccessful Texas lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to overturn the election results. But it is one thing to sign a legal brief and another to officially contest the outcome on the House floor.
Some Republicans including Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Matt Gaetz have also signaled they could support an objection. Mr. Brooks said he had been speaking with others who were interested. But prominent allies of the president who have thrown themselves headfirst into earlier fights, like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio or even the House minority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, have so far been publicly noncommittal.
“All eyes are on Jan. 6,” Mr. Gaetz said on Fox News Friday night after the Supreme Court rejected Texas’ suit. “I suspect there will be a little bit of debate and discourse in the Congress as we go through the process of certifying the electors. We still think there is evidence that needs to be considered.”
Mr. Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said he would “wait and see how all the legal cases turn out” before deciding what to do.
Mr. Johnson plans to hold a hearing this week “examining the irregularities in the 2020 election,” featuring Ken Starr, the former independent counsel who is a favorite of the right, and at least two lawyers who have argued election challenges for Mr. Trump. Whether he proceeds to challenge results on Jan. 6, he told reporters last week, “depends on what we find out.”
So yes, they are planning to turn it into a circus.Some probably believe this horsehit and some are likely just setting the table to take on “voter fraud” so they can cheat the way they are falsely accusing the Democrats of doing. (It’s yet another example of “I know you are but what am I” politics.)
President Donald Trump is angry that Attorney General Bill Barr knew about investigations into Hunter Biden but did not make them public until after the election, according to a new report by The Wall Street Journal.
“President Trump has expressed interest in pursuing the appointment of a special counsel to investigate allegations of fraud in the November elections and issues related to Hunter Biden, according to people familiar with the matter. In recent days, the president has directed advisers to look for people who could serve in such a position, one of the people said, as lawsuits and other efforts by Mr. Trump and his campaign to reverse the election results founder,” the newspaper reported Friday evening.
There might be two special counsels appointed.
“White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has told people that the president is interested in pursuing a special counsel to investigate election fraud and wants to act quickly, one of the people said. Senior White House officials have also discussed the possibility of pursuing a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, expressing frustration over Attorney General William Barr’s handling of investigations into Mr. Biden’s business and financial dealings and concern that the incoming administration of Joe Biden could seek to shut down any probes into Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, an administration official said,” The Journal reported.
“Mr. Trump has expressed rising frustration with his attorney general in recent months, privately and publicly, according to aides, as efforts by the president and his supporters to overturn the election have repeatedly failed,” the newspaper reported. “Mr. Barr’s announcement that the Justice Department hadn’t found evidence of widespread election fraud that would reverse Mr. Biden’s victory infuriated the president, the aides said, and Mr. Trump has openly accused the Justice Department of being involved in the election fraud he has alleged.”
If Barr won’t do this I guess he’ll have to appoint a new AG — I’m sure there’s some toady he can put in there — to appoint these two special counsels on the last day and insulate them from being fired. (A new AG has the authority to fire a special counsel for cause but the idea is that these, like the Durham probe, would be too politically hot for a Biden AG to do it.) That is the Whitewater template, only in that case they pressured Clinton’s own AG into naming an Independent Counsel for every stupid scandal they dreamed up.
Gird yourselves. The entire GOP is on board a campaign to sabotage the new administration. It’s really the only thing they know how to do.