Nearly two dozen House Republicans are urging President Trump to direct Attorney General William Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate election integrity.
The group of Republicans, led by Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas, sent a letter to the president on Wednesday morning, which was obtained by the Washington Examiner. The letter, which is nearly identical to a letter Gooden recently sent to the president alone, was signed by 22 House Republicans. Five others agreed to the letter but didn’t sign it.
The letter comes on the heels of a continuing string of legal defeats for the Trump campaign and GOP-adjacent groups that have sought to overturn the election, which President-elect Joe Biden won with 306 Electoral College votes.
The letter requests that the president directs “Attorney General Barr to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate irregularities in the 2020 election” because “the American people deserve a definitive resolution to the uncertainty hovering over the outcome of our election, but legitimate questions of voter fraud remain unanswered.”
It does not go into details about the “legitimate questions” surrounding allegations of voter fraud.
More than a week ago, Barr said the Justice Department has “not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.” He also shot down the conspiracy theory that voting machines “were programmed essentially to skew the election results,” adding that the Department of Homeland Security and the DOJ investigated it and found nothing that “substantiates” it.
Despite Barr’s statement, the House Republicans’ letter to the president claims that “the Department of Justice has been asked on multiple occasions to launch an investigation into this matter, but inaction from the Department along with public comments made by the Attorney General indicate a lack of willingness to investigate the irregularities your campaign and other elected officials across the nation have alleged.”
A number of the Republicans who signed their name to the letter are taking additional measures in a last-ditch attempt to hold off the inevitability of a Biden presidency.
Rep. Alex Mooney of West Virginia, whose name is on the letter, but didn’t sign it, introduced a resolution on Tuesday that would condemn any Republican who “prematurely” declares Trump should concede. It specifically says that neither candidate should “concede until all investigations of fraud are completed.”
Additionally, a handful of Republicans on the letter have signaled their intent to challenge Electoral College returns when Congress counts the votes next month. Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama was the first lawmaker to say he would object on Jan. 6 when the vote-counting process takes place in front of the joint session of Congress. The process requires a member of the Senate for it to work, and none have said they’d do so.
“In my judgment, if only lawful votes by eligible American citizens were cast, Donald Trump won the Electoral College by a significant margin, and Congress’s certification should reflect that,” Brooks said. “This election was stolen by the socialists engaging in extraordinary voter fraud and election theft measures.”
Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, another lawmaker whose name was on the letter although he hadn’t signed it, told Newsmax last week that people shouldn’t be “surprised” if Republicans challenge the results and that he is “sure kicking it around.”
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney rebuked his colleagues’ plans to object.
“This is madness. We have a process, recounts are appropriate, going to the court is approp & pursuing every legal avenue is appropriate, but trying to get electors not to do what the people voted to do is madness,” he said before adding that he was confident no senator would join their efforts, according to a tweet from NBC.
Democrats tried the same tactic in 2001 and in 2017 — when Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, respectively, lost the Electoral College vote but won the popular vote. In both years, Democratic House members objected to the certification, but no senators joined them.
Neither the White House nor the Department of Justice responded to requests for comment.
