7 of 9 NC Republicans in US House sign onto Texas suit to overturn Biden’s victory
Most of the Republicans representing North Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives are now formally backing a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Reps. Dan Bishop, Ted Budd, Virginia Foxx, Richard Hudson, Greg Murphy, David Rouzer and Mark Walker are among 126 congressional Republicans in an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit seeking to allow Republican President Donald Trump to remain president despite losing the election, which the lawsuit claims was tainted.
“Our constitutional republic has endured for nearly two-and-a-half centuries based on the consent of the governed,” the brief says. “That consent is grounded in the confidence of our people in the legitimacy of our institutions of government.”
Despite repeated allegations of fraud in the election, no proof has been presented to back them up. Courts across the country have rejected the president’s lawsuits for that reason.
And in an order Friday evening, the Supreme Court rejected the Texas lawsuit.
President-elect Joe Biden defeated Trump with 306 Electoral College votes. Trump will receive 232. Biden received more than 81.2 million of the popular vote — 7 million more than Trump.
The lawsuit filed by Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the votes from four swing states that voted for Biden to be president — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Some Democratic officials, including North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, have filed a brief of their own, to defend the four swing states being targeted.
Walker was added to the list Friday when another 20 or so Republicans joined, including Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of California. Walker did not run for reelection this year but has announced plans to run for North Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat that will be open in 2022.
Rep. Patrick McHenry and Rep. George Holding are the other state Republicans whose names aren’t on the list.
No proof of fraud
The brief filed by the GOP members of Congress says they support the lawsuit’s goal because “the election of 2020 has been riddled with an unprecedented number of serious allegations of fraud and irregularities.”
“Unless SCOTUS stops the sabotage of State election laws, every election will be stolen, and the Constitution’s delegation of election procedure solely to State legislatures will become a dead letter. SCOTUS must defend the Constitution, not buckle to Dems and their media,” Bishop tweeted Thursday night.
Said Budd: “Millions of Americans do not have faith in the November election. One of the best ways to air out the legitimate concerns over voter fraud, machine irregularities, and mail-in ballots is at the Supreme Court. That’s why I support the Texas lawsuit.”
But a lack of proof had led to doubts that this Texas lawsuit will succeed. Many other similar lawsuits by Trump’s own legal team or various Republican allies have failed. Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would not block election results in Pennsylvania — a state that Biden won.
North Carolina’s State Board of Elections extended the deadline for receipt of mail-in ballots before the election, over the objections of the Republican-led state legislature. Lawmakers filed suit and the case, days before the election, reached the Supreme Court, which declined to intervene, leaving in place the later deadline. The lawsuit does not challenge the results of North Carolina nor seek to invalidate the election, which was won by Trump by less than 75,000 votes.
Stein announced Thursday, not long after the list of GOP supporters became public, that he and the attorneys general from 22 other states signed onto a separate amicus brief opposing the GOP claims.
“This suit seeks to overturn the will of the people by throwing out the votes of tens of millions Americans,” Stein wrote on Twitter, adding: “This represents a profound and outrageous rejection of democracy with no precedent in our nation’s history. It would also violate some of our nation’s most basic constitutional principles, including federalism and respect for state law.”
Trump’s North Carolina victory was by fewer votes (74,481) than Biden’s victories in Pennsylvania (81,660) and Michigan (154,188).
‘A dangerous violation of federalism’
Some Republicans have also begun criticizing the efforts to overturn the election results.
CBS News reported Thursday that Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, called the Texas lawsuit “a dangerous violation of federalism” that he said “will almost certainly fail.”
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the GOP’s presidential nominee in the 2012 elections, called the lawsuit’s goals “dangerous and destructive of the cause of democracy,” The Washington Post reported.
And Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn told a reporter Wednesday, “I frankly struggle to understand the legal theory of it.”
North Carolina’s electors will meet Monday to cast their votes, The Observer reported.
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This story was originally published December 10, 2020 at 5:21 PM with the headline "7 of 9 NC Republicans in US House sign onto Texas suit to overturn Biden’s victory."
