Mo Brooks of Alabama will object to Biden’s Electoral College votes

A House Republican who will object next month to Joseph R. Biden’s Electoral College votes, with President Trump’s encouragement, told The Washington Times on Thursday that he is gaining support among Republican colleagues for his last-ditch effort to swing the election to Mr. Trump.

“As of this moment, there are double-digit numbers of House members who say that they will publicly support the effort to object to the submission of Electoral College votes by states that have such an unreliable election process that is unworthy of adoption by Congress,” Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama said in an interview.

The long-shot effort emerged as Mr. Trump’s legal team suffered another setback in court.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to take up the president’s lawsuit seeking to revoke the state’s certification of the election for Mr. Biden. The ruling said a lower state court must consider the case first.

More evidence of election fraud has emerged this week in various states. In Georgia on Thursday, state senators reviewed security camera footage of a vote-counting center showing workers pulling suitcases supposedly filled with ballots from under a table after supervisors told other poll workers to go home.

Mr. Trump tweeted that if Georgia officials take corrective action, “This alone leads to an easy win of the State!”

In Pennsylvania, 32 Republican state legislators called on Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, to convene a special session of the legislature on election oversight and integrity.

Mr. Trump told reporters that he is disappointed in Attorney General William Barr, who he said has ignored evidence of election fraud.

Mr. Barr said this week that he hadn’t seen evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the election.

“He hasn’t done anything,” Mr. Trump said. “They haven’t looked very hard, which is a disappointment. They should be looking at all of this fraud. This is very bad criminal stuff. All over the country, they know it was a fixed election.”

Asked whether he still has confidence in the attorney general, Mr. Trump replied, “Ask me that in a number of weeks from now.”

Time is running out for the president’s attorneys to halt states from certifying their election results and resolving disputes by Tuesday’s deadline. Electors then will meet Dec. 14 in their respective state capitals to cast their ballots for president and vice president.

With the president’s legal prospects in key states diminishing, more eyes are turning to Congress.

Congress will meet Jan. 6 to certify the results of the presidential election, in which Mr. Biden has 306 electoral votes and Mr. Trump has 232. But federal law gives individual lawmakers in the House and Senate the authority to challenge the election results from the floor.

Others who have expressed a willingness to explore that approach include Rep. Warren Davidson, Ohio Republican and a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

Mr. Brooks said he plans to object to Mr. Biden’s election because the evidence of voter fraud is “overwhelming.”

“If you only counted lawful votes cast by eligible American voters, Donald Trump won a majority of Electoral College votes and was reelected president of the United States,” he said. He pointed to “systemic flaws” in the election system, including mass mail-in voting over a period of weeks and a failure of states to require voter ID.

Mr. Brooks, speaking on the House floor Thursday, said it is his duty to object on Jan. 6 to Electoral College submissions “from states whose election systems are so badly flawed as to render their vote submissions unreliable, untrustworthy and unworthy of acceptance.”

Mr. Trump tweeted after the floor speech, “Thank you to Representative Mo Brooks!”

Several House Democrats tried to object to certification of Mr. Trump’s presidential electors in January 2017, but the effort failed because no senators supported it.

Addressing what many consider the remote chances of success, Mr. Brooks said, “A lot depends on how much gumption Republicans have to protect the integrity of America’s election system.”

Democrats will retain the House majority in January, making Mr. Brooks’ effort seemingly out of reach. But the lawmaker said an interpretation of the 12th Amendment’s provisions for congressional certification of the election could favor Mr. Trump because more state legislatures are controlled by Republicans.

The 12th Amendment says that “the votes shall be taken by states.” Mr. Brooks said the question is whether the states, or their representatives in Congress, should be given the votes.

“It is a majority of the states that govern the election of the president,” he said. “Republicans control 27 state delegations, Democrats control 20, and three are tied.”

He said the question is in “uncharted waters” and suggested that Republicans could petition the Supreme Court to settle it.

“You’ve got the Republican Party controlling a significant majority of the states while the Democrat Party controls the majority of the House membership,” Mr. Brooks said. “So this would be the first time that I’m aware of that you actually have a conflict between the two possible methodologies that needs to be resolved.”

The president’s legal team is making determined efforts to challenge the election results in various states. In Georgia, Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani brought witnesses before a state Senate hearing Thursday to detail irregularities spotted during the November election.

One woman said she noticed that some absentee ballots brought in were not the same material and were not folded like the other batches. She also noted that about 98% were for Mr. Biden, which she said is statistically unlikely in Georgia.

The president’s campaign has asked for a signature audit for absentee ballots in the swing state, but Georgia officials have not agreed. Mr. Trump’s team says 38,250 to 45,626 mail-in ballots were cast unlawfully.

The state conducted a hand recount, which did not flip the election results. Mr. Biden defeated Mr. Trump in Georgia by about 12,600 votes or a 0.2 percentage point margin. The state’s certification awards Mr. Biden the state’s 16 electoral votes.

Mr. Giuliani and other members of the president’s legal team have also brought witnesses before state lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan in the hopes that the Republican-controlled legislatures would probe the accusations of election fraud and halt the states’ electoral votes from being awarded to Mr. Biden.

In a letter to Pennsylvania’s governor, state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican, said Mr. Wolf should call a special session under the state’s constitution if “public interest requires.”

“This election clearly represents an extraordinary occasion, and the public interest requires that you convene the General Assembly immediately,” the letter read. “There are numerous unanswered questions regarding the election that require a sitting General Assembly to examine and fulfill our duty to conduct oversight. A General Assembly in session is necessary to seek answers to these questions to help restore our citizens’ faith in the electoral process.”

Attorneys for the president were also appearing before a state court judge in Nevada in a case contesting the election. Attorneys for the president inspected election material in Clark County this week before the court hearing before Judge James Russell.

“In the dead of night, votes were appearing and votes were disappearing on these machines,” said Jesse Binnall, a lawyer for Mr. Trump working in Nevada. “Without explanation — and there is no good explanation.”

The campaign says there is evidence of thousands of dead voters, non-residents, and double voters in the state.

Mr. Binnall told the judge out of all mail-in ballots submitted in Nevada, at least 1% of the voters did not actually submit them.

The Nevada Supreme Court certified the election for Mr. Biden last month, awarding him the state’s six electoral votes. Mr. Biden defeated Mr. Trump in Nevada by 33,596, or 2.4 percentage points.

In Arizona, the state Republican Party, led by its chair Kelli Ward, has filed a lawsuit attempting to toss out mail-in ballots that weren’t properly reviewed by Republican poll observers and lack proper signature verification.