[ad_1]
A US federal judge on Friday (local time) dismissed a last-minute lawsuit led by a House Republican that aimed to give Vice President Mike Pence the power to overturn the results of the presidential election won by Joe Biden when Congress formally counts the Electoral College. vote next week.
Pence, as president of the Senate, will oversee Wednesday’s session and declare the winner of the White House race. This month, the Electoral College consolidated Biden’s 306-232 victory, and multiple legal efforts by US President Donald Trump’s campaign to challenge the results have failed.
The lawsuit named Pence, who has a largely ceremonial role in next week’s proceedings, as the defendant and asked the court to repeal the 1887 law that explains how Congress handles vote counting. He affirmed that the vice president “can exercise exclusive authority and exclusive discretion to determine which electoral votes to count for a given state.”
In dismissing the lawsuit brought by Representative Louie Gohmert, a Republican from Texas, and a group of Republican voters from Arizona, Trump-appointed Texas District Judge Jeremy Kernodle wrote that the plaintiffs “allege an injury that is not reasonably traceable “to Pence,” And unlikely to be repaired with requested repair. “
The Justice Department represented Pence in a case that was aimed at finding a way to keep his boss, US President Donald Trump, in power. In a court filing in Texas Thursday, the department said the plaintiffs “have sued the wrong defendant” if, in fact, any of the plaintiffs have “a judicially recognizable claim.”
READ MORE:
* The Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, asks the judge to reject the lawsuit that seeks to authorize him to annul the elections
* US Electoral College formally confirms Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election
* US Election: Supreme Court Rejects ‘The Big One’, Trump Says Supreme Court ‘Let Us Down’ By Rejecting Lawsuit That Challenges Biden’s Victory
The department said, in effect, that the lawsuit opposes long-standing procedures set forth in the law, “not any action taken by Vice President Pence,” so he should not be the target of the lawsuit.
Lynne Sweet / AP
Vice President Mike Pence will play a largely ceremonial role in the proceedings confirming Joe Biden’s victory next week.
“A lawsuit to establish that the vice president has discretion over the charge, filed against the vice president, is a walking legal contradiction,” argued the department.
Trump, the first president to lose a re-election bid in nearly 30 years, has attributed his defeat to widespread electoral fraud.
But a number of nonpartisan and Republican election officials have confirmed that there was no fraud in the November contest that would change the election results.
Patrick Semansky / AP
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, lost his candidacy for re-election.
That includes former Attorney General William Barr, who said he saw no reason to appoint a special counsel to investigate the president’s claims about the 2020 election.
He resigned from his post last week.
Trump and his allies have filed roughly 50 lawsuits challenging the election results, and nearly all of them have been dismissed or dropped. He also lost twice on the Supreme Court.
