Mike Pence Welcomes the Effort by Republicans to Challenge Election Results

Vice President Mike Pence has said that he will support an attempt by a dozen Republican senators to overturn Joe Biden's election victory in Congress next week.

Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, made a statement on Saturday saying that the VP shares millions of Americans' concerns about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election.

He said Pence welcomes House and Senate members' efforts to use their authority under the law to object and present evidence to Congress and the American people on January 6.

Pence gave his backing to the effort just hours after Ted Cruz said he would be among 12 Republican senators trying to block the certification.

Dozens of Republicans also reportedly took part in a conference call with President Trump and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Saturday night to discuss the plan to reject the Electoral College vote.

Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama tweeted that he and Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio were holding a call with over 50 congressmen who are joining and fighting for the American republic.

Brooks also said that our fight for honest and correct elections is gaining momentum.

Twelve Republicans have now stated they will vote to reject the measure on Jan 6th. This started when Missouri Senator Josh Hawley became the first to announce this week, he would challenge the results.

In a statement Saturday with 10 other Republican senators, Cruz called for creating an emergency commission to conduct a 10-day review of election results in contested states.

Until a commission is appointed, they vowed to vote on January 6 to reject those states' votes.

The effort is seen separately from, but in parallel with, Senator Hawley, who became the first sitting member earlier this week of the Senate to announce he would challenge the election results.

Cruz joined Senators Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Tommy Tuberville, Roger Marshall, and Bill Hagerty, all of whom will be sworn in as senators in the new Congress on Sunday.

Cruz and the other senators said in a statement they would vote to reject the electors from swing states which have been at the hub of President Donald Trump's allegations of voter fraud and will call for the creation of a commission to investigate allegations of fraud on an emergency basis.

They also said that they intend to vote on January 6 to reject voters from contested states as not being regularly given and lawfully certified (the legal requirement) unless this 10-day emergency exam is completed.

They said they are not taking this action lightly.

It puts him in opposition to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, who has urged his caucus not to block confirmation of the Electoral College results.

McConnell has reportedly argued in conference calls with colleagues that any attempt to block Biden's confirmation would be futile and would only divide the party.

Cruz's statement pointed out that Democrats in Congress had previously objected to the outcome of a presidential election, including in 1969, 2001, 2005, and 2017.

Cruz argued that the most direct precedent on this issue arose in 1877 following serious allegations of fraud and illegal conduct in the presidential campaign between Hayes and Tilden.

Specifically, the elections were held illegally in three states - Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina.

In 1877, Congress did not ignore these claims. The media did not simply dismiss those who made them as radicals seeking to undermine democracy.

The memo continued on, saying that instead, Congress appointed an election commission - consisting of five House of Representative members, five senators, and five Supreme Court justices - to review and resolve the disputed results.

Several Republicans in the House of Representatives also plans to challenge the vote count.

Senator Hawley of Missouri was the first to challenge McConnell, announcing that he would join House Republicans in protesting the state recounts at Wednesday's joint session of Congress.

The moves were immediately condemned by Democrats, including former Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, who wrote on Twitter there were indeed 12 senators pointing a loaded gun at the heart of democracy. They should always be known as the #dirtydozen.

The Dirty Dozen was a 1967 war film about a group of hardened criminals recruited to form an elite Allied unit sent on a virtual suicide mission against high-ranking Nazi officers.

In the other part of the GOP divide, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska warned that such challenges are a "dangerous ploy" threatening the country's civic norms.

The issue is forcing Republicans to make decisions that will shape the post-Trump era's contours and an evolving Republican Party.

In a lengthy social media post, Sasse wrote that he's not going to be part of a project to overturn the election. Sasse, a possible 2024 presidential candidate, said he was' urging my colleagues to reject this dangerous stunt as well.

Sasse was joined by several other Republicans who also sharply criticized their colleagues' efforts to prevent Biden's victory, including Senators Mitt Romney, Pat Toomey, and Lisa Murkowski.

In a statement released Saturday night, Romney called the move an egregious ploy that dangerously endangers our Democratic Republic.

Toomey wrote on Twitter that he recognizes that there were irregularities in this election, as in all elections. However, the evidence is overwhelming that Joe Biden won this election.

Murkowski said in a statement that she will vote to affirm the 2020 presidential election. She also claimed the courts and state legislatures have all done their duty to hear legal allegations and have found nothing to justify overturning the findings.

Pence will be closely watched as he heads into the customary routine vote-counting session in Congress but is now heading for a protracted showdown that could drag on into Wednesday night, depending on how many challenges he faces.

The vice president has been sued by a group of Republicans that want Pence to have powers that would allow him to overturn the election results by repealing an 1887 law that governs how Congress handles the vote count.

Trump's own Justice Department may have also complicated the count.

The department asked a federal judge to throw out the lawsuit brought by Republican Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and a group of Republican voters from Arizona who wants to force Pence to pull out of the ceremony and influence the outcome of the vote.

In a lawsuit in Texas, the department said it "sued the wrong defendant," and Pence should not be the lawsuit's target.

A lawsuit filed against the vice president to determine the vice president's discretion over the courts is an ongoing legal contradiction, the department argues.

A Texas judge dismissed Gohmert's lawsuit on Friday night. Jeremy Kernodle, U.S. District Judge, and Trump appointee wrote that the plaintiffs claim an injury that cannot be fairly attributed to Pence and are unlikely to be remedied by the relief sought.

That decision was upheld Saturday night by a federal appeals court ruling.

On Thursday, McConnell convened a conference call with Republican senators to head off a dramatic resolution to discuss the upcoming joint session and the vote count's logistics, several Republicans said anonymously.

The Republican leader asked Hawley to answer questions about his challenge to Biden's election victory, two of the Republicans said.

But there was no reaction because Hawley was a no-show, according to Republicans.

Hawley's office didn't respond to a request for comment.

Several Republicans have hinted that they are being pressured by voters at home to show they are fighting for Trump.