More than 100 House Republicans signed onto a brief backing a dubious Texas lawsuit seeking to throw out millions of valid votes in four contested states, CBS News reports.
The brief, led by Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson and backed by 105 of his colleagues, was submitted to the Supreme Court to back Texas’ lawsuit seeking to block Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, arguing that their pandemic-related mail voting changes violated federal law.
"The simple objective of our brief is to affirm for the court (and our constituents back home) our serious concerns with the integrity of our election system," Johnson wrote to his colleagues. "We are not seeking to independently litigate the particular allegations of fraud in our brief (this is not our place as amici). We will merely state our belief that the broad scope of the various allegations and irregularities in the subject states merits careful, timely review by the Supreme Court."
Johnson said Trump called him on Wednesday to “express his great appreciation for our effort."
"He said he will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review," he added.
Lawsuit splits GOP:
The rest of the Republican Party was not eager to sign on to the brief.
Texas Rep. Chip Roy, a Trump ally, said that the lawsuit represented a “dangerous violation of federalism and sets a precedent to have one state asking federal courts to police the voting procedures of other states."
"I cannot support an effort that will almost certainly fail on grounds of standing and is inconsistent with my beliefs about protecting Texas sovereignty from the meddling of other states," he added. "Our remedy must be, from this day forward, to decline to allow the usurpation of our authority as people — through our states — to govern ourselves in all respects.
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney called the effort “simply madness.”
"The idea of supplanting the vote of the people with partisan legislators is so completely out of our national character that it's simply mad," he said. "Of course the president has the right to challenge results in court, to have recounts. But this effort to subvert the vote of the people is dangerous and destructive of the cause of democracy."
AGs fire back:
The attorneys general of the states targeted in the lawsuit fired back at the lawsuit in Supreme Court filings on Thursday.
"Texas's effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact," said Pennsylvania AG Josh Shapiro. "The court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated."
"The novel and far-reaching claims that Texas asserts, and the breathtaking remedies it seeks, are impossible to ground in legal principles and unmanageable," Georgia officials said in their filing. "This court has never allowed one state to co-opt the legislative authority of another state, and there are no limiting or manageable principles to cabin that kind of overreach."
