Depending on who you talk to this is number 90 in a long string of legal defeats for Trump and his desperate attempt to overturn the election. As legal arguments go, this has to be the most spurious and is, without a doubt, the most dangerous.
The yahoo from Texas, Louis Gohmert (pronounced “Gomer” as in Gomer Pyle but with a “t” on the end) filed a suit alleging Pence has extraordinary powers to shred votes for President. According to Gohmert. Pence has the power to pick the next President!
Now I am not a constitutional scholar but I can read. The 12th Amendment to the Constitution says:
“The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;—The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President…”
The “votes” to be counted are those of the 538 electors in the Electoral College not the popular vote. The “President of the Senate” is the Vice President, in this case Pence. Nothing in the language above suggests that counting the electoral votes certified by each State includes the right to not count, reject or alter electoral votes. And yet this is exactly what Trump through his proxy Gohmert argues in the suit.
To underscore the lunacy of this argument lets reduce it to its basest terms. Under this argument, Pence could declare himself (and Trump as the President) the winner of the 2020 election. This would be so even if all 538 electoral votes had been cast for Biden. The Oscar’s letter opener for best picture could substitute the picture he favors for the Academy’s choice.
I am in jaw-dropped awe at the audacity of these desperadoes. Gohmert will be paid in cash or in kind for his role as proxy. He’s from Texas so he’ll be hailed as another hero of the Confederacy. Pence is between a rock and a hard place. He can read his lines in this sh*t show as written for him by Trump and sacrifice his political ambitions to a failed coup attempt. Or he can open the envelope and announce Biden as the winner and incur the wrath of Trump and his base. A wrath that given Trump’s hold over the GOP and its finances could also sink his career. And there’s the threat oof violence and intimidation tactics of the far right and conspiracy lunatics that will surely follow if he deviates from Trump’s script. Trump has nothing to lose. He sacrifice’s nothing for a chance, however remote, to stay in office.
It is clear that these miscreants don’t give a hoot about the Constitution, democratic norms like the peaceful transition of power or the stability of our country. In fact they are actively engaged in the destabilization of America. What I cannot understand though is the fact that lawyers are allowed to file endless motions based on the flimsiest of legal arguments with zero consequences. Without so much as a shrug from the American Bar Association whose mission is to maintain and enforce standards and protect the rule of law. If there were any real consequences like suspension or sanction for filing these beyond frivolous lawsuits, the courts would not be flooded with them. Is there no end to the failures of the institutions and organizations that should be bulwarks against fascism but are instead allies?
