Gohmert proposes ‘violence on the street’ after judge rejects bid to force VP Pence to reject Biden’s victory

Updated at 20:00 with the Court of Appeal against Gohmert.

East Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert has suggested that ‘violence in the streets’ may be the only remaining option to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president, after a federal judge rejected his lawsuit against the vice president Forcing Mike Pence to reverse the election.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle, an appointment of President Donald Trump of Gohmert’s hometown of Tyler, heard the case late Friday and ruled that he and other plaintiffs – including the GOP president in Arizona and the defeated Republican voters in the state – did not stand. do not have. Late Saturday, a federal appeals court upheld the ruling.

Late Friday on Newsmax, Gohmert said he had asked for redress in court “so you don’t have to have riots and violence on the street.”

“The bottom line is that the court says, ‘We’re not going to touch on this, you have no solution,'” Gohmert said. “In fact, the decision would actually be that you should go to the streets and be as violent as antifa and BLM.”

This is not the first time Gohmert – a former state court judge who has just won his ninth term in Congress – has expressed admiration for using force to stop an election.

At a ‘Million MAGA March’ in November near the White House, he urged Trump supporters to consider ‘revolution’ like the Egyptian uprising seven years ago and the uprising of the American colonies against England.

‘They rose up all over Egypt, and because of the fact that the people rose up in the greatest numbers in history, everywhere, everywhere, they turned the country upside down … If they can do it there, think to what we can do here, ”he told thousands of cheering supporters.

On Saturday afternoon, Gohmert insisted that “violence is not the answer” and that he did not plead otherwise.

“I have not encouraged and am not unequivocally campaigning for violence,” he said in a written statement that he only “realized what lies ahead when the institutions created by a self-governing people to resolve disputes peacefully. to leave, to hide from their responsibility. ‘

Congress is meeting Wednesday to confirm the results of the election college. Biden defeated President Donald Trump by a decisive margin of 306-232 and came out on top with 7 million votes nationwide.

By law, the vice president presides over the joint meeting, but in a completely ceremonial capacity.

Gohmert and his co-plaintiffs wanted the court to have Pence throw out Biden’s victories in a handful of states, destroying tens of millions of ballots and replacing the will of the electorate with their own desire to give Trump a second term.

Kernodle ruled that Gohmert’s lawsuit depended on a series of hypothetical allegations “completely too uncertain to substantiate.”

“Plaintiffs assume what the Vice President will do on January 6, what electoral votes the Vice President will count or reject from disputed countries, or whether a representative and a senator will object in terms of section 15 of the Election Act to how ‘every member of the House and Senate will vote on such objections, and how any State delegation in the House would possibly vote under the 12th Amendment without a majority of the election vote,’ the judge wrote in the 13-page ruling.

The judge also found that Gohmert, as a lone congressman, could not sue on the grounds of alleged damages to the House as a whole, even if he could prove such damages.

Gohmert is appealing to the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which upheld the lower court’s ruling late Saturday.

The lawsuit challenged the 1887 election count law, which defines the role of the vice president in announcing the results as solemn. Members of the House and Senate may object to the elections of any state, forcing a debate, but the vice-president has no word on this; he only announces the results.

Gohmert insisted in court that the law violates the 12th Amendment, which provides for separate votes for the Electoral College for President and Vice-President.

Lawyers casually rejected his argument that vice presidents have actual authority in the process, noting that generations of vice presidents have not noticed such a great power to elect the commander-in-chief.

Pence himself sided with Gohmert in court and asked Kernodle to drop the case. In a 14-page submission by the Department of Justice, it is argued that the lawsuit should be directed at Congress, not at Pence: ‘This is the role that the Senate and the House of Representatives prescribe in the Electoral Act against which plaintiffs object, and not any actions taken by Vice President Pence. ”

Five Texas lawmakers objected to the election college on Wednesday, citing unproven allegations of fraud: Gohmert and representatives Brian Babin of Woodville, Lance Gooden of Terrell, Randy Weber of Friendswood and the newly elected Ronny Jackson of Lubbock, who will be sworn in on Sunday.

GOP members of the House say that 140 or more of their colleagues will object to it, although with democracy in the majority they certainly have no chance of stopping Trump’s defeat.

Congress will be expected to debate the results and vote on them if at least one senator objects to them.

Senator Ted Cruz and ten other GOP senators announced on Saturday that they would oppose the certification of Biden’s victory when Congress convenes on Wednesday to review the outcome of the Electoral College and demand a ten-day delay to emergency “audit” of the results in battlefield states where Trump disputes the result.

Even in the Senate, such objections are doomed with McConnell and the rest of the IDP leadership is strongly opposed to it.