Rep. Matt Gaetz, a vocal ally of President Trump, said he will join the long-shot congressional challenge to the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The Florida Republican, who is a critic of the widespread mail-in voting adopted during the pandemic, tweeted on Monday that he will join fellow GOP lawmakers in both the House and the Senate to “OBJECT to electors from states that didn’t run clean elections.”
On January 6th, I’m joining with the fighters in Congress.
We’re going to OBJECT to electors from states that didn’t run clean elections.
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) December 21, 2020
The effort to protest President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Congress began with Rep. Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican who this month declared his intention to overturn the results of what he called a “stolen” election.
Gaetz adding his name gives the campaign more star power, but the Trump allies can’t hope for success without at least one member of the Senate joining the cause. Brooks appears to have that ally in Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican who said during a rally for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in Georgia that he would fight to “get [the election outcome] corrected.”
These Republicans are set to put their plan in motion on Jan. 6, when the House and Senate hold a joint session on the certification date days after the new Congress is seated. Their bid to persuade colleagues to discard contested Electoral College votes will be difficult because Democrats retained a narrow majority in the House and, in the Republican-controlled Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell discouraged fellow GOP senators from joining Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s win.
Still, the GOP effort to scrutinize and contest the election results pushes on with more than a dozen House lawmakers joining Brooks in urging House and Senate leadership to hold election fraud hearings ahead of the Jan. 6 Electoral College vote submissions. As it stands, Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, and the popular vote tally shows the former vice president ahead by approximately 7 million votes.
18 House colleagues joined me in sending a letter to @senatemajldr, @SpeakerPelosi, and various House & Senate committee chairs seeking election fraud hearings ahead of the Jan 6th Electoral College vote submissions. pic.twitter.com/IcRvZ5pSED
— Mo Brooks (@RepMoBrooks) December 17, 2020
In spite of the long odds, Trump’s legal team is forging ahead with its legal challenges.
Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney to the president who was temporarily sidelined by a bout of the coronavirus, touted a revised legal strategy on Saturday while insisting that the litigation would continue. On Sunday, the Trump campaign filed an independent lawsuit with the Supreme Court challenging the outcome in Pennsylvania by claiming that three Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings concerning modifications to the state’s mail balloting laws were wrongly decided.
When questioned about the efficacy of the litigation, the former New York City mayor chuckled.
“We’re not finished,” he said. “Believe me.”
