Trump thanks Alabama congressman who says he will challenge Electoral College votes
Members of Congress may object to a state's returns during joint session
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}President Trump on Thursday thanked Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks, who said he plans to challenge the Electoral College votes next month when Congress meets Jan. 6 to certify the 2020 presidential election.
“Thank you to Representative Mo Brooks!” Trump tweeted Thursday.
Brooks, R-Ala., has repeatedly raised Trump’s concerns of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}TRUMP SAYS IF HE'S RIGHT ABOUT ELECTION FRAUD, BIDEN CAN'T BE PRESIDENT
“I’m doing this because in my judgment this is the worst election theft in the history of the United States,” Brooks told The Hill this week. “And if there was a way to determine the Electoral College outcome using only lawful votes cast by eligible American citizens, then Donald Trump won the Electoral College.”
Brooks added that he is “not focused on what is in the legal pleadings in all these lawsuits all over the country.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“There’s some number of votes that probably were illegal in some different places to some degree,” he told The Hill. “That is not abnormal.”
But Brooks said that it is “extremely difficult in a court of law to determine how many illegal votes were cast and who they were cast for.”
“And that is one of the reasons why the FBI, the Justice Department, and the federal judiciary are wholly inadequate for handling this issue,” he said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, at least one member from both the House and Senate are needed to challenge a state's Electoral College returns in writing. If that happens, the House and Senate would each begin two hours of debate and then vote on whether to accept the returns. Both chambers would be needed to exclude any state's returns from the Electoral College vote.
Brooks said he is trying to find a senator to join him in challenging the results.
The Alabama lawmaker's comments come after Attorney General William Barr said this week that the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election—despite claims by the president and his campaign’s legal team.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Barr, during an interview with The Associated Press Tuesday, said that U.S. attorneys and FBI officials have been working to follow up on specific complaints and information they have received, but have not uncovered enough evidence that would change the outcome of the election.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election," Barr told The Associated Press.
The DOJ on Tuesday attempted to clear up Barr's statement, with a spokesperson saying that a number of media outlets have "incorrectly reported that the Department has concluded its investigation of election fraud."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“Some media outlets have incorrectly reported that the Department has concluded its investigation of election fraud and announced an affirmative finding of no fraud in the election," the spokesperson said. "That is not what the Associated Press reported nor what the Attorney General stated. The Department will continue to receive and vigorously pursue all specific and credible allegations of fraud as expeditiously as possible.”
Last month, Barr issued a directive to U.S. attorneys across the country allowing them to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities if they existed, before the results of the 2020 presidential race were certified.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Barr’s move gave prosecutors the ability to go around Justice Department policy that typically would prohibit investigations of the time before the election was certified. Soon after Barr’s memo was issued, the Justice Department’s top elections crime official announced he would step aside from that position.
The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in a number of key battleground states where President-elect Joe Biden led by a razor-thin margin. The Trump campaign has been alleging a widespread conspiracy to dump millions of illegal votes into the system, but has not provided substantial evidence to support those claims. The campaign’s legal effort, led by Rudy Giuliani, has, in large part, been focused on Republican poll watchers being blocked from viewing vote counting at polling sites in some locations. Those claims have been dismissed by even Republican-appointed judges, who have said the cases lack evidence.
Election officials in many of those states, though, have certified Biden’s victory.
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Brooks' comments also come as the president posted an address on his Twitter and Facebook pages that he described as possibly “the most important speech, I’ve ever made.” Trump charged that “lots of bad things happened” during the election, claiming it was rigged and rampant with fraud.
And he argued that "if we are right about the fraud, Joe Biden can't be president. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of votes. We're talking about numbers like nobody has ever seen before."