Saturday, January 02, 2021
Appeal planned in the US Senate
Ted Cruz mobilizes against Biden
The states, the courts, the electorate: they all confirm Joe Biden’s election victory. In the US Congress, however, there is further resistance to the certification of the vote. Several Republican senators want to join now.
More Republicans from the US Senate want to appeal against the upcoming certification of the presidential election results in Congress. Eleven Republican Senators announced this intention in a joint statement. They justified the plans with allegations of election fraud and alleged irregularities in the votes in several US states. The group demanded that Congress immediately set up a commission to investigate the allegations in an urgent manner within ten days in order to have clarity before the inauguration of the new president on January 20. Otherwise, they might not be able to approve the results.
The group is led by Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, who is loyal to incumbent Republican President Donald Trump. Several other Republicans from the group had only made the leap into the Senate in the November election and are to be sworn in on Sunday in the constituent session of the chamber.
Trump lost the election in early November by a clear margin to his Democratic challenger Joe Biden. However, Trump has so far refused to admit defeat. He claims he was robbed of victory by massive fraud. Neither Trump nor his lawyers have provided any substantive evidence to support these claims. More than 50 lawsuits from the Trump camp have so far been thrown out of the courts, including the US Supreme Court.
The state electors have confirmed Biden’s clear victory. In the next step of the formal procedure after an election, the House of Representatives and the Senate will meet for a joint session on Wednesday to read out the votes from the states, count them and officially announce the final result. Then it is official who has won the election.
A group of Republican MPs from the House of Representatives and Republican Senator Josh Hawley had previously announced that they would appeal against results from individual states that day. This enables them to force both chambers of congress to retire to separate sessions to debate the objections and ultimately vote on whether to follow them or not. However, the disruptive action should only drag the procedure out. The project is highly controversial among Republicans.