Vice President Mike Pence has asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit brought against him by Republicans seeking to empower him to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The suit, brought by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and 11 Arizonans who would have been electors for President Donald Trump, was aimed at throwing out the rules of a Jan. 6 session of Congress — with Pence presiding — intended to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Gohmert’s suit contends that the rules Congress has followed for more than a century are unconstitutional because they override the vice president’s power to unilaterally decide which electoral votes to count. Trump allies have urged Pence to assert control and refuse to introduce Biden’s electors in key states that handed him the presidency.
But Pence, in a 14-page filing brought by Justice Department attorneys, said the suit shouldn’t be aimed at him, since he is who Gohmert is trying to empower.
“A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction,” Pence’s brief said.
U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Kernolde, a Trump appointee who sits in Tyler, Texas, has not scheduled a hearing in the case. Gohmert is due to file a reply to Pence’s brief on Friday morning.
See here for the background. “Friday” is today, so we may get a ruling as quickly as this afternoon, given how bonkers (and yes, seditious) this action is.
In a 26-page brief calling on the court to reject Gohmert’s suit, House General Counsel Doug Letter described the effort as baseless and argued that both Gohmert and the Arizona electors lacked standing to bring it.
“At bottom, this litigation seeks to enlist the federal courts in a belated and meritless assault on longstanding constitutional processes for confirming the results of a national election for President,” Letter said.
Letter also says that Gohmert’s argument lacks substantive logic: It would make no sense for the framers to empower the sitting vice president to unilaterally control who becomes the next president, particularly when that sitting vice president is a candidate on the ticket. He also notes it would upend the accepted process for counting electoral votes that has been in practice for more than 130 years.
“Granting plaintiffs this extraordinary relief just days before the Joint Session would not only reward their inexcusably delayed filing,” Letter says, “it would also risk upending the orderly rules that have governed Congressional counting of electoral votes for more than a century and undermining the public’s confidence in the constitutionally prescribed processes for confirming—not overturning—the results of the election.”
I mean yes, if you’re going to rely on such stolid concepts as “logic” or “consistency” or “the rule of law”, then Gohmert’s suit should not only be laughed out of court, everyone associated with it should be removed from society so as not to taint the rest of us with the accompanying stink. Putting the attorneys in stocks and allowing the general public to hurl cream pies at them would also be an acceptable outcome, but alas, the law is limited in its menu of responses. We’ll have to settle for a swift dismissal, and work on winning some more elections.
Why waste a perfectly good cream pie? That’s what rotten produce is for.