Rep. Mo Brooks’ Plan Has Libs Scared: “It would be likely Mr Trump would receive a second term in that scenario.”

I’ve been telling you the route to a Trump victory may very well go through Congress using the 12th Amendment and NOT the Supreme Court.

I first reported on this four weeks ago.

Now Rep. Mo Brooks and Rand Paul appear to be getting on board.

The plan started with the Alternative Electors and then goes straight to Mike Pence!

IMHO, Joe Biden DID NOT win lawful vote majority in Georgia.

Per its right & duty, Congress should reject any Georgia submission of 16 electoral college votes for Joe Biden.

That is EXACTLY what I hope to help do.

See below lawsuit for more! SORDID!https://t.co/B4wxjGZaaB

— Mo Brooks (@RepMoBrooks) November 27, 2020

CBS News19 had more details:

Rep. Mo brooks is moving ahead with his plan to challenge the 2020 presidential election when Congress meets to certify the votes of the Electoral College on January 6th. Brooks said he will follow through with the threat even though the Electoral College and American voters voted in favor of President-Elect Joe Biden.

“For Congressman Brooks it’s a politically advantageous move. But the likelihood that it will alter the outcome of the Presidential Election is in my view very very very slight,” said News 19 political analyst Jess Brown.

Brooks said he wants certain State’s electoral votes cast aside, based on the president’s allegations of mass voter fraud. So far no evidence of any fraud at all has materialized, and dozens of court cases claiming fraud at the state and Supreme Court levels have failed.

The Congressman still needs the support of a Senator to trigger a debate before Congress. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell poured cold water on the idea this week and urged his Senate colleagues not to join the effort.

Local political analysts have different views on whether or not it is a shot Brooks should take.

“This is what’s disturbing about these efforts, by Mo and others. They don’t seem to have the focus or the energy to try to address arguably the largest health crisis of the past 50, 60 years, but they have all of the energy and all of the focus in the world to focus on an election that was lost,” said political analyst and radio host David Person.

“Not only does Congressman Brooks have a right to do it. He has a duty to do it if he feels there is a problem with the election, then he should raise objections to it. And I know there will be a number of other members of The House of Representatives that will probably go along with Congressman Brooks on this,” said political analyst and attorney Mark McDaniel.

You can watch Brooks talk about it here:

Here’s more on the plan, from The Independent:

Conservatives have been arguing for weeks that there was widespread election fraud in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin, although the paucity of evidence they have presented so far has led to a string of humiliations in the state and federal court systems.

Leading the effort to overturn the electoral vote is Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks, who has been prowling around the US Capitol in recent weeks trying to drum up support for the scheme among conservative House members and senators.

He needs just one senator to support his and other House Republicans’ challenge to the electoral results to force a two-hour debate period and then a vote series on scrapping a state’s Electoral College submission.

So far, the New York Times reported when it first broke the news of this scheme, no senator has stepped up to the plate, although GOP Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky have shown some interest.

If Congress were to scrap the electoral results in the five states in question, neither Mr Trump nor Democratic President-elect Joe Biden would have the necessary 270 votes to claim the presidency. The House of Representatives would then vote for president by state congressional delegation. Republicans will control more state delegations than Democrats in the next Congress even though Democrats will have a slight overall majority in the chamber.

It would be likely Mr Trump would receive a second term in that scenario.

Mr Brooks, a member of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus that has included the likes of Congressman Jim Jordan and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, told the Times his primary aim is “[fixing] a badly flawed American election system that too easily permits voter fraud and election theft.”

He added: “A possible bonus from achieving that goal is that Donald Trump would win the Electoral College officially, as I believe he in fact did if you only count lawful votes by eligible American citizens and exclude all illegal votes.”

But while Mr Brooks may be able to cajole a senator into forcing a vote on the Electoral College’s integrity, his master plan is doomed to ultimately fall short. Mr Biden will become the 46th US president.

The motion to toss into the fire the Electoral College vote in the five states is certain to fail since majorities in both the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-held Senate are needed to pass it.

Democrats and even several Republicans in both chambers have roundly rejected the GOP’s legal challenges to the election results. Actually overturning the will of the Electoral College — whose composition is determined by the American people’s vote on 3 November — would represent an even more momentous step away from democracy.

“Madness,” Utah GOP Senator Mitt Romney told reporters last Tuesday. “This is madness. We have a process. Recounts are appropriate. Going to the court is appropriate. Pursuing every legal avenue is appropriate. But trying to get electors not to do what the people voted to do is madness.”

If Mr Brooks and a GOP senator force such a vote in Congress, it would present Republicans with a final, crucial litmus test on their loyalty to an outgoing president whose cult of personality has subsumed their party’s identity over the last four years.

It would also put Republicans on the permanent record about Mr Trump’s allegations of election fraud that they have been abetting over the last several weeks.

Longtime GOP back-benchers like Mr Brooks — who has never chaired a congressional committee in his nearly 10 years in the House, does not contribute to the party as a prolific fundraiser, and placed a distant third in a 2017 run for Senate in Alabama — are relishing the opportunity to promote Mr Trump in such a high-profile fashion.

The failing NY Times wrote a hit piece about the plan, which only tells me it must be meritorious and have them scared:

President Trump lost key swing states by clear margins. His barrage of lawsuits claiming widespread voting fraud has been almost universally dismissed, most recently by the Supreme Court. And on Monday, the Electoral College will formally cast a majority of its votes for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

But as the president continues to refuse to concede, a small group of his most loyal backers in Congress is plotting a final-stage challenge on the floor of the House of Representatives in early January to try to reverse Mr. Biden’s victory.

Constitutional scholars and even members of the president’s own party say the effort is all but certain to fail. But the looming battle on Jan. 6 is likely to culminate in a messy and deeply divisive spectacle that could thrust Vice President Mike Pence into the excruciating position of having to declare once and for all that Mr. Trump has indeed lost the election.

The fight promises to shape how Mr. Trump’s base views the election for years to come, and to pose yet another awkward test of allegiance for Republicans who have privately hoped that the Electoral College vote this week will be the final word on the election result.

For the vice president, whom the Constitution assigns the task of tallying the results and declaring a winner, the episode could be particularly torturous, forcing him to balance his loyalty to Mr. Trump with his constitutional duties and considerations about his own political future.

The effort is being led by Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, a backbench conservative. Along with a group of allies in the House, he is eyeing challenges to the election results in five different states — Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin — where they claim varying degrees of fraud or illegal voting took place, despite certification by the voting authorities and no evidence of widespread impropriety.

“We have a superior role under the Constitution than the Supreme Court does, than any federal court judge does, than any state court judge does,” Mr. Brooks said in an interview. “What we say, goes. That’s the final verdict.”

Under rules laid out in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, their challenges must be submitted in writing with a senator’s signature also affixed. No Republican senator has yet stepped forward to say he or she will back such an effort, though a handful of reliable allies of Mr. Trump, including Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have signaled they would be open to doing so.

The president has praised Mr. Brooks on Twitter, but has thus far taken no evident interest in the strategy. Aides say he has been more focused on battling to overturn the results in court.

Even if a senator did agree, constitutional scholars say the process is intended to be an arduous one. Once an objection is heard from a member of each house of Congress, senators and representatives will retreat to their chambers on opposite sides of the Capitol for a two-hour debate and then a vote on whether to disqualify a state’s votes. Both the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate would have to agree to toss out a state’s electoral votes — something that has not happened since the 19th century.

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Several Senate Republicans — including Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah — have forcefully rejected the idea of overturning the results, and their votes would be enough for Mr. Biden to prevail with the support of Democrats.

“The Jan. 6 meeting is going to confirm that regardless of how many objections get filed and who signs on, they are not going to affect the outcome of the process,” said Edward B. Foley, a constitutional law professor at Ohio State University who has written extensively on the electoral process. “We can say that with clear confidence.”

But he noted that the session could still carry consequences for the next few years. If even one Republican senator backed the effort, it could ensure that the partisan cloud hanging over the election would darken Mr. Biden’s presidency for years to come. If none did, it could send a definitive message to the country that despite Mr. Trump’s bluster, the party trusted the results of the electoral process and was finally ready to recognize Mr. Biden as the rightful winner.

Mr. Brooks is far from the first lawmaker to try to use the tallying process to challenge the results of a bitter election loss. House Democrats made attempts in 2001, 2005 and even 2017, but they were essentially acts of protest after their party’s nominee had already accepted defeat.

What is different now is Mr. Trump’s historic defiance of democratic norms and his party’s willing acquiescence. If Mr. Trump were to bless the effort to challenge the congressional tally, he could force Republicans into a difficult decision about whether to support an assault on the election results that is essentially doomed or risk his ire. Many Republicans are already fearful of being punished by voters for failing to keep up his fight.

The dilemma is particularly acute for Mr. Pence, who is eyeing his own presidential run in 2024. As president of the Senate, he has the constitutionally designated task of opening and tallying envelopes sent from all 50 states and announcing their electoral results.