Vice-President Mike Pence asked a federal judge on Thursday to reject a lawsuit from Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert and a group of Arizona Republicans which seeks to grant the VP sole authority to choose electors when he oversees the Electoral College vote certification in Congress on Jan. 6.
In a 14 page filing on Thursday Pence argues that the legal issues raised by Gohmert and Arizona Republicans should be addressed by Congress.
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“Plaintiffs have presented this Court with an emergency motion raising a host of weighty legal issues about the manner in which the electoral votes for President are to be counted,” Pence’s filing states. “But these plaintiffs’ suit is not a proper vehicle for addressing those issues because plaintiffs have sued the wrong defendant.”
“A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction,” Pence adds.
Gohmert and other Republicans sued Pence earlier this week, arguing that he, in his capacity as vice-president has the sole authority to determine which states electoral votes should be counted.
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In a motion to expedite proceedings lawyers for the plaintiffs revealed that they reached out to Pence’s office to ask him to join their plan to overturn the results of the November election in Congress on January 6, but Pence refused.
Nevertheless, Republicans in the House will still object to the certification of Electoral College votes. Two Republican members of the House told CNN’s Jake Tapper that they expect at least 140 of their GOP colleagues in the House to vote against counting the electoral votes.
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They will be joined by at least one Republican in the Senate. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley. Hawley announced on Wednesday that he will object to the certification of Electoral College votes because some states did not follow their own election laws and that Big Tech interfered on behalf of Biden.
This will force Congress to debate an objection for the third time since 1887.
