Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) will lead a coalition of 12 senators to object to the certification of electors on Jan. 6, 2021 "unless and until there is an emergency 10-day audit" of the disputed states. A joint statement from the senators cited a precedent set in 1877 following serious allegations of fraud and illegal conduct in the Hayes-Tilden presidential race, "Congress appointed an Electoral Commission—consisting of five Senators, five House Members, and five Supreme Court Justices-to consider and resolve the disputed returns."
Sen. Ted Cruz. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo
The Senators proposed the appointment of a similar Electoral Commission with "full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the Commission's findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed."
Cruz is joined by Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.), and Senators-Elect Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) had already pledged to object on Jan. 6 because some states, like Pennsylvania, "failed to follow their own state election laws."
Currently, there are six swing states in question due to fraudulent activity; Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, filed a lawsuit against four states; Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, because they used the pandemic as an excuse to change or ignore state and federal election laws in advance of the 2020 Presidential election. The case went directly to the Supreme Court, but the Court decided not to take the case.
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GOP House members met with President Trump on Dec. 21 to discuss plans to object to Electoral College votes on Jan. 6. Reportedly, 140 GOP House representatives have pledged to object on the 6th, including Louie Gohmert (R-TX), who filed a lawsuit on Dec. 27 against Vice President Pence seeking to declare the Electoral Count Act of 1887 unconstitutional because it violates the 12th amendment. He filed the lawsuit in conjunction with 11 defeated Republican electors from Arizona.
According to the Gohmert complaint, the Electoral Count Act (ECA) also "unconstitutionally violates the Electors Clause by usurping the exclusive and plenary authority of State Legislatures to determine the manner of appointing Presidential Electors, and instead gives that authority to the State’s Executive." Since alternate slates of electors were sent in seven states on Dec. 14 representing Republicans, Gohmert's lawsuit aimed to pave the way for Pence to hold the exclusive authority to recognize the alternate slates when he presides over Congress on Jan. 6.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle issued an order dismissing the case because he found that neither Gohmert nor his fellow plaintiffs have a sufficient legal standing in the process to justify the lawsuit. Kernodle was nominated to the federal bench by President Trump. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Arizona, and New Mexico were the seven states that sent alternate Republican elector slates in December.
Gohmert pushed back Friday saying, "if he as a member of Congress doesn't have standing to bring the unconstitutionality of the ECA to the court, then no one does." He also highlighted the fact that there still has not been "one court, state or federal that has had an evidentiary hearing and allowed the evidence of fraud to come in and be introduced. So all this stuff about it being debunked or unsubstantiated—those are absolute lies." Gohmert told NewsMax' Emerald Robinson that he and his attorneys are currently preparing an appeal to be heard by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in hopes they will hear his case before the 6th of January.
The President and his attorneys, led by attorneys John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, are currently briefing GOP members of Congress on the evidence of fraud in preparation for deliberations on Jan. 6. Interviews (timestamp 23:52) on Jan. 2 with Eastman and Giuliani on Bannon's War Room confirmed those ongoing preparatory meetings.
