POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[ReluctantSamurai]

Continuation of the Pence Saga:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/1...lawsuit-453207

Vice President Mike Pence has asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit brought against him by Republicans seeking to empower him to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

But Pence, in a 14-page filing brought by Justice Department attorneys, said the suit shouldn’t be aimed at him, since he is who Gohmert is trying to empower. “A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction,” Pence’s brief said.

From the case filing:

Plaintiffs have presented this Court with an emergency motion raising a host of weighty legal issues about the manner in which the electoral votes for President are to be counted. But these plaintiffs’ suit is not a proper vehicle for addressing those issues because plaintiffs have sued the wrong defendant. The Vice President—the only defendant in this case—is ironically the very person whose power they seek to promote. The Senate and the House, not the Vice President, have legal interests that are sufficiently adverse to plaintiffs to ground a case or controversy under Article III. Defendant respectfully request denial of plaintiffs’ emergency motion because the relief that plaintiffs request does not properly lie against the Vice President.

These plaintiffs’ claims against the Vice President in his capacity as President of the Senate also fail to address the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause, which prevents the other Branches of Government from questioning Congress in connection with “legislative acts,” which have “consistently been defined as an act generally done in Congress in relation to the business before it.” United States v. Brewster, 408 U.S. 501, 512 (1972). See also supra n.1. Moreover, nothing in Ex Parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), or its progeny supports these particular plaintiffs’ novel suit to enjoin the Vice President in the exercise of his constitutional authority as President of the Senate. See Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, Inc., 575 U.S. 320, 327 (2015) (looking to history to understand the scope of equitable suits to enjoin executive action). To the extent the Court is inclined to address these and other issues, the House of Representatives has informed the Defendant that it intends to present this Court with a number of arguments in response to plaintiffs’ motion. In light of Congress’s comparative legal interests in the Electoral Count Act, Defendant respectfully defers to the Senate and the House of Representatives, as those bodies see fit, to present those arguments.

An amusing sidenote:

Ironically, Representative Gohmert’s position, if adopted by the Court, would actually deprive him of his opportunity as a Member of the House under the Electoral Count Act to raise objections to the counting of electoral votes, and then to debate and vote on them.

Pence probably has his bags packed for his "diplomatic trip" as the coming Trump twitter-storm against him on Jan 6 is going to be nuclear fallout....

Republicans suing Republicans......