Nearly a dozen Republican senators plan to challenge Biden’s victory when Electoral College results are tallied in Congress on January 6.
US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Saturday said he will spearhead a drive by nearly a dozen Republican senators to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s victory when Electoral College results are tallied in Congress on January 6, Reuters reports.
In a statement, Cruz and the other 10 senators said they intend to vote to reject electors from states that have been at the center of President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud.
They added that Congress should immediately appoint a commission to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of election results in those states.
“Once completed, individual states would evaluate the commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed,” they added.
It was not immediately clear which states would be subject to the proposed audit, Cruz’s office said.
The effort by Cruz and the other Republicans comes days after Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri became the first sitting member of the Senate to announce he would challenge the election result.
Cruz was joined in Saturday’s statement by Senators Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, along with Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis, Tommy Tuberville, Bill Hagerty, and Roger Marshall, all of whom will be sworn in as senators on Sunday in the new Congress.
The electors recently met and officially affirmed Biden’s election win. Following that, several senior Republicans congratulated Biden, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who acknowledged Biden for the first time as President-elect.
However, Utah Senator Mitt Romney, who was the only Republican to vote to impeach Trump last year, expressed dismay at his party’s support of the effort to overturn election results.
“I could never have imagined seeing these things in the greatest democracy in the world. Has ambition so eclipsed principle?” Romney, who has often opposed President Trump, said in a statement quoted by Reuters.
(Arutz 7).