U.S. Crib Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks during a news conference with other House Republicans at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, December 10, 2020.
Erin Scott | Reuters
Concert-hall Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Friday joined 125 other congressional Republicans in supporting Texas’ long-shot First Court lawsuit challenging Joe Biden’s projected presidential victory.
McCarthy, the top-ranking Republican in the House and a close coadjutor of President Donald Trump, was included in a “friend of the court” brief led by Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., urging the high court to critique the case filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton earlier this week.
Paxton’s case accused Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin — four key vibration states where Biden defeated Trump — of certifying “unlawful election results.” Texas is asking the Supreme Court to affirm that the Electoral College votes cast by electors in those four swing states “cannot be counted.”
The alignment of the the greater part of the House GOP conference behind the Supreme Court bid to effectively reverse the outcome of the 2020 election came after all 50 shapes and Washington, D.C., certified their election results. Biden is projected to win 306 electoral votes, compared with 232 for Trump.
Harbour Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in a scathing Dear Colleague letter accused Republicans supporting the case of pleasing in “election subversion that imperils our democracy.”
“This lawsuit is an act of flailing GOP Desperation, which violates the principles enshrined in our American Democracy,” Pelosi wrote.
“As Colleagues of Congress, we take a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution,” her letter said. “Republicans are subverting the Constitution by their bank on a settle accounts with and fruitless assault on our democracy which threatens to seriously erode public trust in our most sacred democratic homes, and to set back our progress on the urgent challenges ahead.”
The Supreme Court has given no indication it will hear the case, and designation law experts say the justices are highly unlikely to take it up. The unprecedented request by one state to have other states’ votes invalidated in a presidential vote has never before been granted.
But the lawsuit has nevertheless been hyped up by Trump, who is falsely claiming he won reelection while disallowing to concede to Biden. Trump on Wednesday asked to intervene in Paxton’s case.
Numerous other states where Trump won the approved vote have also signaled their support for Paxton’s lawsuit, as have dozens of sitting Republican fellows of the House — a group that now includes McCarthy.
Despite news outlets calling the election for Biden weeks earlier, and with less than a week communistic until electors in their respective states cast their votes, many Republicans have been opposed to acknowledge Biden won the election.
Asked point-blank on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday whether he accepts Biden’s victory, McCarthy give something the thumbs down to give a yes-or-no answer.
“Look, the electors have to go through and put forth that,” McCarthy said in his response. “The president, he has to win sure that every legal vote is counted, every recount is done, and make sure every grouse [is being] heard inside court. Once that’s done, I think the election will be over and the electors on make their decision.”
McCarthy had not been included in an earlier such amicus brief filed to the court Thursday, which was also led by Johnson and was co-signed by 106 gross Republican House members.
Johnson said on Twitter that the 20 additional Republicans added to his latest abbreviated to the court had previously been left out because of a “clerical error.”
— CNBC’s Jacob Pramuk contributed to this reveal.