While Republicans are filing lawsuits asking courts to expand the Vice President’s power to reject slates of certified electors, Mike Pence rejected the expanded power they want the courts to give him, which would enable the Vice President to ignore the Electoral College and pick the incoming President.
This lawsuit may be the most hare-brained effort by Trump’s cult to throw out the Constitution.
Vice President Pence asked a judge late Thursday to reject a lawsuit that aims to expand his power to use a congressional ceremony to overturn the presidential election, arguing that he is not the right person to sue over the issue.
The filing will come as a disappointment to supporters of President Trump, who hoped that Pence would attempt to reject some of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college votes and recognize votes for Trump instead when Congress meets next week to certify the November election.
The filing came in response to a lawsuit from Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) and a number of Republicans in Arizona, who argued that an 1887 law that governs how Congress certifies presidential elections is unconstitutional. The suit argues that the Constitution gives the vice president, in his role as president of Senate, sole discretion to determine whether electors put forward by the states are valid.
It asks a federal judge to take the extraordinary step of telling Pence that he has the right, on his own, to decide that the electoral college votes cast earlier in December for Biden are invalid and to instead recognize self-appointed Trump electors who gathered in several state capitals to challenge the results.
While experts agree that the law is vague and confusing, it has never before been challenged; it has been accepted by officials in both parties for more than 130 years as establishing a process in which the voters, ultimately, choose the president. This year, 81 million voters supported Biden, earning him 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232.
To win a lawsuit, a plaintiff must convince a judge that the interests of the person they are suing are opposed to their own — there must be some controversy or conflict between them that could be resolved through the litigation.
In this case, a Justice Department lawyer, writing on Pence’s behalf, wrote that the interests of Gohmert and the other plaintiffs were not sufficiently opposed to Pence’s own — since they were seeking to expand his power — to justify a suit.
“The Vice President is not the proper defendant to this lawsuit,” wrote Deputy Assistant Attorney General John V. Coghlan. “The Vice President — the only defendant in this case — is ironically the very person whose power they seek to promote,” he added. “A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction.”
Instead, Coghlan wrote that Congress was the proper defendant for such a suit.
Coghlan wrote that the lawsuit has other problems, too, and that, as a result, the judge should reject the suit, particularly given the limited timeline before next week’s vote, without trying to weigh difficult and never-before-tested constitutional issues.
While the filing dealt with a narrow legal issue, it still offered the first indication that Pence may not plan to reinterpret his role in next week’s ceremony in an attempt to change the election results. Since the election, Pence has echoed some of Trump’s unfounded complaints about the election, but he has been silent on Trump’s attempts to badger Republicans into overturning the results.
Lawyers for the House of Representatives also asked the judge to reject the suit late Thursday, arguing that it called for “a radical departure from our constitutional procedures and consistent legislative practices” and would “authorize the Vice President to ignore the will of the Nation’s voters.” In a statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the suit had “zero legal merit” and was “yet another sabotage of our democracy.”
This is all plain insanity!
Will Trump fire Pence or will Pence resign to spend more time with his family? Welcome to upside down reverse order world. Geezus, this takes nuttiness to an all-time high.
Should we feel sorry for Pence since he and his family will start getting death threats from some of Trump’s MAGA hat-wearing fascists?
…a badge of honor with this administration.
You would think Trump would be careful what he says about Pence if he plans to resign and have Pence pardon him.
That would be hilarious (justice served!) if Pence refused to do so!
Like his boss, however, Dense likes to do…nothing.*
But unlike his boss, he enjoys remaining ghostlike (doesn’t he seem ghostly to y’al?), in the background, avoiding notice.
*What has he done for the last 4 years, anyway?
This feckless lawsuit will be peremptorily dismissed. Under the Constitution, the Vice President has no power to meddle with the electoral college’s votes.
The Framers foresaw that the Vice President could well have an interest in the election and for that reason gave him about as much power to change the outcome as does the person who calls out letters and numbers in a game of Bingo.
In 2016, Biden announced Trump’s victory in the same ceremony. And Al Gore declared Bush the winner in 2000.
Those were both very close elections.
2020 was not.
Diane,
I am worried by the number of Republican lawmakers and voters who seem to prefer a second Trump presidency to a democratically elected Biden. These Republicans continue to allege voter fraud and voting irregularities, despite the absence of actual evidence, whipping themselves into a frenzy. Some even continue to demand “investigations,” as if the fact that the People have elected Biden is in itself a wrong to be investigated, like the assassination of JFK or the 9/11 attacks, both of which were the subject of a formal investigation.
Democracy is a hazy abstraction to some folks. For many of them, the allure of our authoritarian president is irresistible. It is possible that soon or someday we will be a democracy in name only. Such places exist.
Finally! Someone in a position to make a difference set a limit! As e.e. cummings wrote, “There is some sh** I will not eat…”
Pence the Dense is nonetheless smarter than Trump is. That’s not saying much, but Pence has his eye on the bigger prize. He knows that the boss is an utter moron and a basket case. And he knows that this last attempt by Trump to rescue himself from defeat is utterly doomed, that only someone as ignorant of most things and as delusional as Trump is would think so. Pence knows that if he were to attempt this, he would just look like Ghoulini at Four Seasons Total Landscaping–like a complete fool, and this would affect his political future negatively.
On a different thread, on this site, someone posted an article by Glenn Greenwald arguing, at length, that Trump isn’t as awful as he is made out to be by “the liberal press.” And the supposed evidence for this is that Trump didn’t actually declare martial law and send the military into the streets. But, of course, this isn’t because Trump didn’t want to. IQ45 made it quite clear that this is precisely what he wanted, and even the abject toadies around him stood up to him because what Trump wanted to do was quite literally insane and at any rate disallowed by our current system of government. We actually have laws about this stuff–The Posse Comitatus Act, for example. Too little has been made of the breathtakingly heroic stance taken by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who told Trump “No.”
Some have also written on this blog about how smart, how crafty Trump actually is. For example, despite being a criminal, he has evaded prosecution for all these years. The Teflon Don v2.0. And he built this big base base. And blah, blah, blah. But this is the man who thought that stealth airplanes were actually invisible, who ran his businesses into bankruptcy, who thought that injecting disinfectant might be a very good idea for doctors to look into. Not the brightest bulb. His ignorance of the Constitution and of how government works is PROFOUND. All his life, he has been the rich boy who didn’t have to learn, didn’t have to work, who could simply bully and throw his weight around and hold out and throw crooked lawyers at problems and pay people off and get away with things. And when bankers were stupid enough to lend to him, they then had no choice but either to see it all lost or prop him up. And when that was no longer possible, he went to the Russians.
Trump’s failure to become an absolute autocrat is NOT because he lacks the desire to become one. He’s made it very clear, again and again and again, that that’s precisely what he wants. He wants to bark at people and watch them scramble. He’s an ignorant bully. The failure of the wannabe fascist Trump, the admirer of strongmen around the world, was due, instead, to absolute incompetence. He simply doesn’t know how things are done.
Here’s the key bit from the Becoming an Autocrat for Dummies handbook: get the key players controlling the mechanisms of state violence under absolute control FIRST–the military leaders, the judges, the Supremes, the AG, the directors of the intelligence agencies. Only then can the play be made. Trump failed to do that from the beginning. He simply assumed that people would do whatever he screamed at them to do, as his employees have always done.
Coming to a theatre near you, soon, folks!
Those who want to pick up where Trump left off, with that 46.9 percent of the electorate, are generally smarter and better informed than Trump is. And they aren’t going to go all the way down on the Trumptanic.
So, it was ignorance of how things work that made Trump think that
a. he could fix the election by suing to disallow mail-in voting
b. he could undo the election results by suing to throw out the mail-in votes
c. he could overturn the election by getting Republican leaders in the various states to appoint different, Trump electors
and so on. Utter ignorance and incompetence. Sidney Powell, Lin Wood-level incompetence. Even Ghouliani and Pence the Dense won’t go to this last level of crazy.
So, when Trump tweeted confidently about the Supremes overturning the election results, this is because, in his mind-blowing ignorance and given his lifetime experience of having crooked toadies who worked for him follow orders, however crazy, he actually thought that this is what would happen. If you followed his tweets, he was shocked that it didn’t. And very angry at “his” justices.
Bottom line: Trump is simply another of an American type–the backwoods or frontier Medicine Show Man. And the time always came for those guys when they ran out of town just ahead of the law.
Happy NewYear! Love you all!
Bob: while I agree that Trump is not the sharpest tool in the shed, I would maintain that he is surrounded by some pretty smart and devious manipulators of public opinion. Miller and Company have been guiding this ship throughout the presidency. To what extent the personal character of our leader dominated wiser (if more devious) heads is not something we can know.
This is not to say that we should not be watchful of our democratic institutions. I do not want dead people voting anywhere, and the integrity of elections has always been a problem. Imagine now, the local people who are working elections who believe that they have to counteract the corruption in one part of the country by cheating for their candidate where they work. Thus Trump’s claims that urban areas cheated the results could spawn a widespread rural cynicism that leads to corruption of the ballot box.
Trump or none, money in politics continues to be a bipartisan problem. Now that the Supremes (I use your phrase, but I bet Dianna Ross is angry at this) have made it clear that the door is open for all money from all sources, we will be obliged to spend huge sums of money tracing money.
Then there is the National Atlantis Pipeline of idiotic news association, where the conspiracy du jour becomes mainstream.
As you have often said, there is much to fear from the next fascist wannabe (or from the next Stalinist wannabe), whose playbook is now obvious. The sad truth is that knowing the playbook apparently does not rule out public support for autocrats.
Oh, I don’t know Roy. Seems like dead people have a lot more sense than 74 million Americans. On that note, did anyone else out there see the ironic consonance between them and the notorious The 74? Who knew a fraudulent website would be a foreshadowing of sorts? Looking forward to the insights you will share this year.
Now when I think “The 74” I will think of Trump voters.
I do not want dead people voting anywhere, and the integrity of elections has always been a problem.
It’s my understanding that the election we just had was the most carefully monitored, at the polls, of any in our history.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/its-official-election-was-secure
Pennsylvania found evidence of 3 dead people voting. They voted for Trump.
This is really off thread, but I needed to make a comment RE: class size, & no one would see it if I posted it on an earlier post (especially since I can’t find that one). People were discussing the way in which teacher:student ratio has been presented. It is even worse:
my daughter went to a public K-12 school district which told a magazine reporter that the ratio was 15:1. This was in a major magazine–Chicago–which was reporting on both suburban & Chicago Public Schools, in order to inform parents as to the statistics RE: each school district so that parents could make an informed choice for their children.
“Informed” my a**: NO public school district–not even in the wealthiest Chicago ‘burbs–had a ratio as low as 15:1. (At the time, Daughter was attending s.d. w/approx. 25% free lunch students.) Daughter attended a private school (gifted education, because her s.d. didn’t have gifted ed.–the Asst. Supt. thought it to be “racist”–looong story, that) in Grades 7 & 8, & the ratio at that school was 15:1. Because it was private (NOT a charter school–hell, no!). Anyway, I’d called the reporter & refuted the #s given him, & suggested he fact-check the story. He was very rude, insisting, “Well, that’s what the school official told me!” & would not investigate.
Anyway, how did they come by this fantastic teacher-to-pupil ratio? Why, they counted EVERY adult employee as a “teacher”–administrators, janitors, cafeteria workers–EVERY adult.
And got away with it. I still feel sorry for hoodwinked families who found their kids in classes of…30:1. This was in the ’90s. &–I know–so many have 40 in a class. (My brother-in-law who taught Art at LAUSD at that time.)
The fallacious student/teacher ratio as is and has been (since at least the 90s) used is just another example of how educrats and adminimals lie through their teeth to make things appear better than they are. The state depts of ed are ultimately responsible for promulgating such BS-ya know you have to have a “common metric”, a commonly derived standardized number to use to “objectively and fairly” judge the various districts against one another. If it’s been quantified, assigned a number then it must be objective, right, fair, just, etc. . . .
Not sure which is worse an educrat or an adminimal.
NOW it’s 2021 here! HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!
Bah humbug! 😉
As I’ve been reading on FB today: 2020 ain’t over until the Tangerine Wankmaggot is out of office on 1/20/21.
I just sent him a “Happy Birthday” wish:
Hope next year for your birthday you are in prison. You are not above the law. GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD RUBBISH!
Wonder if that site monitors what is being said? It’s one of the far R things that I get.
It’a amazing how far these Trump lovers will go to thwart our constitution and our history. If they are willing to go public with such nonsense, what hatred for Biden is brewing in people’s minds who are not being picked up by the media?
Biden will have to be very carefully protected because those loonies with guns are going to be very angry. They want Trump who gives them freedom to hate, speak out loud what is in their disturbed minds and not listen to scientists.
Also: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
2021 HAS TO BE A BETTER YEAR!
Y Próspero Año Nuevo a Ud y a su familia.
Sadly, it ’21 doesn’t have to be a better year. Hopefully it won’t be a bitter year, but there is a lot left over from ’20 that needs to be taken care of before we can get on with ’21 (even though we don’t get a choice in that getting on, eh!)
Duane E Swacker: I like to look at promising thoughts, at least on this one day, Jan. 1.
Auld Lang Syne – Inspirational NEW YEAR Quotes
An inspiration video of quotes set to beautiful wildlife scenes and the soundtrack of Auld Lang Syne by Shalee to start your New Year on a positive note.
Pence does not to be viewed as a rogue that tried to thwart the Constitution. Mitch and the mainstream Republicans are tired of Trump’s feckless, bipolar leadership. They want Trump gone as he as served his purpose. Who knows what kind of mischief he could do in a second term?
“Mitch and the mainstream Republicans. . . ”
If anyone thinks Mitch is a mainstream Republican. . . I’ve got some great white sand ocean front beach property over at the Lake of the Ozarks for salel
The Republican Party has moved so far right that Mitch is now a centrist in that swamp.
Duane, how about your Senator Hawley?
Stanford, Yale Law School, clerkship with Chief Justice Robert’s and now he trashes the Constitution to please Trump
Yes, he’s a senator allegedly from Missouri. He’s also a POS. I say allegedly because he doesn’t own or rent a residence in Missouri and he and his family own a home and reside in Virginia. He uses his sister’s address for his Missouri residence address. A similar thing happened when he was AG of MO. By law the AG must live in Jefferson City (the capitol city of MO for all you that don’t know) and he never did.
He’s an xtian regressive reactionary fundie who would love to see an xtian caliphate be instituted in the US. He’s anti-American through and through.
And he ain’t mine! (and obviously he isn’t a Missouri resident-how do these types get away with this shit?) I don’t claim any politician from either of the two parties of the duopoly.
On a different note: How about them Dims caving on the $2,000?
The Washington Post ran an editorial yesterday against the $2,000 because (I did not know this) it benefits people all the way to incomes of $300,000. I assumed it was targeted for those whose income is under $100,000. It was not.
Of course, Republicans prefer to aid billionaires, but the Dem plan was too generous to people not in dire need, who number in the millions.
I had thought that only those making under $70K/yr were eligible. Seems like a lot of different information out there.
Duane,
I googled Hawley. Wikipedia says he was born in Arkansas and his family moved to Lexington, Missouri.
His Senate website says he is a native of Lexington, Missouri.
More lies from a lying POS, eh!
When the KC Star questioned Hawley about not having a legal address, he attacked the newspaper.
https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article247282199.html
Duane E Swacker: Hawley is the “son of a banker and graduate of Stanford and Yale”. This proves that being intelligent and having lived with money doesn’t transfer over to having any common sense or ethics.
Here are two other lackluster ‘geniuses’ that have been in the news:
Jared’s felon-father (legally) bribed Harvard by donating $2.5 million to Harvard before he was admitted.
The reason why Trump won’t release his grades or SAT scores is that he cheated to get where he is. [You mean you can’t have someone else take your SAT tests? Gee.] Donald proved he was stupid by making sure all of his past school grades couldn’t be found.
Joe Biden to Have New Secret Service Team Amid Concern About Trump Loyalty
By Victoria Bekiempis, Guardian UK
01 January 21
Joe Biden is expected to receive Secret Service protection with a new team that is more familiar to him and replacing some agents amid concerns that they may be politically allied with Donald Trump.
In a changing of the guard as well as the man to be guarded at the White House, Biden’s security detail will undergo some staffing changes, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.
Several “senior” Secret Service agents are poised to return to the president-elect’s protection team and Biden knows these agents well because they guarded him and his family during his time as vice-president, according to the article, echoed in a report by CNN, citing a law enforcement source.
Re-assignments and promotions are common during transition periods between presidential administrations and are meant to increase comfort and trust between a president-elect and his security team, who shadow the commander-in-chief closely, including during private moments and sensitive discussions.
Although staffing changes are typical, several incidents reportedly contributed to the heightened concerns from Biden’s allies that some agents and officers might be loyal to Trump.
Some members of the president’s detail reportedly urged their colleagues not to wear masks during trips, for example – despite the federal government’s official guidance on Covid-19 – as Trump himself disparaged mask-wearing and held out for months before being seen wearing one in public…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/31/joe-biden-secret-service-team-trump-loyalty?CMP=share_btn_link
These IDIOTS never give up.
……………………….
PatrioticPulse The true voice of the American right:
Donald Trump hit Mitch McConnell with an ultimatum that could change everything
Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are at odds.
McConnell’s gone along with the idea Joe Biden won the election and sold out the President.
And now Donald Trump hit Mitch McConnell with an ultimatum that could change everything.
Donald Trump called out Mitch McConnell for incorrectly declaring Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election by citing voting statistics out of Pennsylvania that the President argued proved his case that voter fraud tipped the state to Joe Biden.
Trump wrote, “A group of Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania say 200,000 more votes were counted in the 2020 Election than voters (100% went to Biden). State Representative Frank Ryan said they found troubling discrepancies after an analysis of Election Day data.”
The President fired a shot across McConnell’s bow, declaring that the Republican Party needed new leadership because McConnell and his crew only knew how to lose.
“This is far more votes than is needed by me to win Pennsylvania, not to mention hundreds of thousands of votes in other categories which increase my already big lead into a landslide. All other Swing States show likewise. WE NEED NEW & ENERGETIC REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP. This can not stand Can you imagine if the Republicans stole a Presidential Election from the Democrats – All hell would break out. Republican leadership only wants the path of least resistance. Our leaders (not me, of course!) are pathetic. They only know how to lose!” the President added.
Donald Trump has already promised to campaign against RINO Lisa Murkowski in 2022 for her vote against Brett Kavanaugh.
The President also predicted that South Dakota RINO John Thune would face a 2022 primary challenge over Thune mocking the President for challenging the results of the election.
President Trump is the most popular Republican in the country and holds influence with his 74,000,000 voters.
If Congressional leaders want to pick a fight with Trump, they will lose.
I would love to see itch & it45 have at it in an SNL opener. (Beck Bennett does a great itch.) Unfortunately, new episodes don’t start tomorrow night (in a few weeks?), & this might be old news.
Karen Pence worked as an art teacher in a private school that discriminates against gay people. Good luck on getting any money from me to support re-electing Kelly Loeffler in Georgia . Won’t happen.
Yeah, socialism is really bad. We definitely don’t want everyone to get healthcare. [I still have a Bernie for President sticker on the back window of my car.]
Here are examples of “Socialism” [failed liberal ideas] in the U.S. I personally would like to see the military defunded. Surely there is better usage for this money than killing and destruction. How about having a Department of Peace as a starter?
The United States military is the largest and most funded socialist program in the world.
Those roads and highways you drive on every single day are completely taxpayer funded.
Libraries where you go to check out books from conservative authors telling you how horrible socialism is, is in fact socialism.
Ever had a situation where you had to call the police? Then you have used a taxpayer funded socialist program.
Hopefully you have never had a fire in your home. But if you have, you probably called your local taxpayer-funded fire department to put the fire out.
Like having mail delivered directly to your front door and paying next to nothing to send mail anywhere you want? Well it’s all made possible by socialism.
Socialism through loans and grants gets people through school.
Along with our highways, our government used your taxpayer dollars to build bridges. This allows the public to travel across rivers without having to sail or swim.
Like having your garbage collected once a week instead of having to drive it to the landfill yourself? Thank socialism.
Taxpayer dollars are used to have places to dump all of our garbage that is collected by taxpayer funded garbage men.
Our government uses taxpayer funds to pay farmers and businesses to provide their income and keep them growing food for the public.
EPA – Republicans hate this taxpayer-funded government program because they have the nerve to tell corporations that they may have to follow environmental rules ad regulations for the greater good of the earth and the people who live on it. But if you don’t like breathing mercury, drinking dirty water, and breathing in chemicals, you should like this example of socialism working for the people.
…………………………………………………………………..
Stand with Kelly >>
The situation in Georgia is severe.
Senator Kelly Loeffler is facing an onslaught of attacks in her battle for re-election. She needs your help – RIGHT NOW.
Democrats are spending MILLIONS in an attempt to take over the Senate and give total control to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. Georgians are already hitting the polls and voting and Kelly is being vastly outraised.
Will you please chip in to help Kelly meet her goals and beat the Democrats? A donation of $5, $10, or $15 will help her greatly.
Yes! I want to stand with Conservatives today >>>
Don’t let the Democrats takeover the Senate. They want to bring back hundreds of failed Liberal ideas and push America further and further into Socialism. Help Kelly (and Georgians who deserve a strong conservative voice in the Senate) and fight for FREEDOM today.
I look forward to seeing your name on her donor list!
Karen Pence
I have always wanted to ask what they think socialism is.
For many, “socialism” means “just like Venezuela”; they think socialism is synonymous with totalitarianism or dictatorship.This is because many right-oriented “news” sources define it that way.
I know. My brother-in-law tends to have knee jerk reactions. He was raised in Communist Czechoslovakia.
Looks like the New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago had plenty of fun with no masks. It is known that if you are wealthy enough, COVID doesn’t matter. You can buy it off with money.
Daniel Uhlfelder (@DWUhlfelderLaw) Tweeted:
New Year’s Eve celebration at Mar-a-Lago during deadly pandemic https://t.co/oICbuJzpH1