Analysis: Can Mike Pence stop Joe Biden from becoming president?
The vice president will preside over Congress s Jan. 6 confirmation of results that Joe Biden won the presidential election, but his role is administrative.
By Amber PhillipsThe Washington Post
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Vice President Mike Pence gives a speech on Friday, July 17, 2020, at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin.
Alex Martin/The Post-Crescent via AP
Vice President Mike Pence is about to be in an awkward position: Next week he’ll be presiding over the final confirmation that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
Pence is supposed to serve as the presiding officer when Congress meets Jan. 6 to confirm the electoral college’s results. That’s got some allies of President Donald Trump hoping they can find a way around the law to get Pence to actually award the election to him.
WASHINGTON – There’s one final maneuver that more than a dozen of President Donald Trump’s allies in Congress, including a sitting Republican senator, say they will use to attempt to deny Joe Biden a win.
They’re going to use an 1880s law that allows members of Congress to challenge a state’s results and make the whole Congress vote on whether to accept the results. It’s been attempted after almost every election for the past two decades. It got nowhere in the past, and it almost certainly won’t now.
For this plan to work, the 18 or so House members who have said they’ll challenge results need at least one senator to sign on to each challenge they raise. On Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he would join them in objecting to at least Pennsylvania and perhaps other states. Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who will be in the Senate by Jan. 6, has expressed openness to the idea, too.
Pence s very limited options to challenge Biden s win washingtonpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtonpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Trump s fundraising efforts take a sketchy turn with bogus claim
While asking for money, Trump told prospective donors he d vetoed the economic relief bill. That plainly wasn t true. It got me thinking: can he do that?
Anfisa Kameneva / Getty Images/EyeEm
Dec. 29, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC
BySteve Benen
As a rule, political fundraising letters are written in deliberately vague ways. Those responsible for writing these appeals are trained to be careful about giving prospective donors certain impressions, without being too explicit.
For example, when Donald Trump s political operation wanted to take advantage of interest in Georgia s U.S. Senate runoff elections, it sent out a message that said, We MUST defend Georgia from the Dems! The phrasing probably led contributors to believe that if they give Team Trump money, it d benefit the Republican candidates in next week s races.
WASHINGTON â Weeks before two Georgia runoff elections that will decide which party controls the U.S. Senate, Democrats were hammering Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler over stock trades that, to critics, seemed suspiciously well-timed â and not entirely unlike the ones that landed former Rep. Chris Collins in federal prison. The Justice Department investigated Perdue for insider trading! noted an ad from a Democratic Super PAC. Corrupt stock trades! proclaims another Democratic Super PAC ad attacking Loeffler.
In fact, federal investigators dropped their probes into Perdue s stock trades, as well as Loeffler s â but the duo from Georgia are by no means alone among senators whose trading habits raised suspicions this year. Similar allegations swirled around Sens. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, and Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, but investigators dropped their probes of those two senators, too. And Sen. Richard Burr, a Republica