House Democrats on the select committee that accused President-elect Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, are not saying whether they will vote to certify Trump’s victory next Monday, Jan. 6, 2025.
A week after two prominent Democratic lawyers penned an op-ed urging House Democrats to overturn the 2024 presidential election, Democrats have been largely mum.
The Daily Signal contacted the offices of House Democratic leadership, as well as those of members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol to ask about the op-ed and whether they would vote to certify Trump’s victory when a joint session of Congress convenes on Monday.
Two members of the select panel—its chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.—have previously voted against the certification of electoral votes when Republicans won a presidential race. On Thursday, President Joe Biden was scheduled to present the Presidential Citizens Medal to Thompson and the panel’s vice chair, former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.
After the Supreme Court ruled last year that individual states could not disqualify Trump from the ballot, Raskin co-sponsored legislation that would prohibit anyone who engages in an insurrection from returning to public office. However, after Trump’s victory, Raskin’s office told FactCheck.org that he “has always remained committed to certifying the results of a free and fair election.” But the statement, as reported, was not an affirmative statement that Raskin would vote to certify Trump’s victory.
The Dec. 26 op-ed in The Hill, by lawyers Evan Davis, a former president of the New York City Bar Association, and David Schulte, a Chicago investment banker—both of whom clerked for then-Justice Potter Stewart on the Supreme Court—argued that Congress should try to stop Trump from taking office, despite Trump’s popular-vote victory and a decisive Electoral College victory.
Both lawyers reportedly donated to outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
Davis and Schulte contend that Trump is an “insurrectionist” based on findings of a majority Senate vote in his second impeachment trial that fell short of the necessary two-thirds supermajority to convict, on the House select committee’s report that called Trump an insurrectionist, and on the Colorado Supreme Court ruling—which was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court—that held he could be removed from the state’s ballot.
The two lawyers further argued the 9-0 U.S. Supreme Court ruling reversing Colorado’s court determination does not mitigate a congressional role.
“On further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the court held that states lack power to disqualify candidates for federal office and that federal legislation was required to enforce Section 3. The court did not address the finding that Trump had engaged in insurrection,” they wrote.
The op-ed further adds: “Counting the Electoral College votes is a matter uniquely assigned to Congress by the Constitution. Under well-settled law, this fact deprives the Supreme Court of a voice in the matter, because the rejection of the vote on constitutionally specified grounds is a nonreviewable political question.”
The offices of select committee members Thompson; Raskin; Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.; and House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., did not respond to email inquiries. The Daily Signal also contacted the office of Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a former congressman who was also a member of the select committee. His office did not respond.
Two other Democrats and two Republicans who were on the select committee are no longer in Congress.
On Jan. 6, 2005, Thompson voted with 30 other House Democrats against certifying the reelection victory of President George W. Bush, specifically against accepting the electoral votes from Ohio.
On Jan. 6, 2017, seven Democrats objected 11 times to certifying Trump’s victory. That included Raskin’s objection to certifying Florida’s electoral votes for Trump in the 2016 election. Other Democrats objected to certifying Trump’s victory in deep red states such as South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The Daily Signal also reached out to the offices of House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York and House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass. Neither responded.
It’s highly unlikely that Democrats would have enough votes to overturn the 2024 election utilizing the Electoral Count Act of 1887.
The law was in part a response to the 1876 election stalemate between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden, after four states—South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon—sent Congress competing sets of electoral votes. To give Congress a means for settling the matter going forward, the 1887 law required a joint session of Congress to count the Electoral College votes from each state and stipulated that the vice president, as presiding officer, would certify the results.
Under the law, if an objection to the count is declared in writing by a House member and signed by at least one senator, the joint session would temporarily adjourn, and both the House and the Senate would be required to debate the objection for two hours. The chambers would vote on the lawmakers’ objection before reconvening in the joint session.
After the 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, then-President Donald Trump’s lawyers argued that the law could be used to reject state electoral votes from states where they suspected fraud. There were 139 House Republicans who objected to states Biden won and eight Republican senators supported those objections, forcing floor debates. The objections were easily defeated, however, and Biden was certified the winner.
No senator sponsored the House Democratic objections in January 2017.
In 2005, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., sponsored an objection from 31 House Democrats to certifying electoral votes for a reelected Bush. After that forced debate, both the House and Senate voted against the objection.
In 2001, House Democrats made 20 objections to certifying votes for Bush. Those objections were not debated, since no senators sponsored them.
After the 1968 presidential election—in which Republican Richard Nixon defeated Democratic Vice President Hubert Humphrey—a Democrat in the House and another in the Senate objected to a faithless elector from North Carolina who decided to vote for independent candidate George Wallace instead of Nixon, who won the state. After debate on the floor, the objection was defeated.
In the 1960 election, when Democrat John F. Kennedy beat Nixon, then the vice president, the results in Hawaii were extremely close in its first U.S. presidential vote after becoming a state the year before. Fewer than 200 votes in Hawaii separated the candidates.
The state’s governor certified Nixon as the winner, but a state judge determined Kennedy had won. So, the state had two sets of electors. Though close nationally, the state’s three electoral votes would not have made a difference. As Democrats were prepared to make an objection, Nixon—as presiding officer in the joint session of Congress—called for unanimous consent to accept the Democratic slate of electors.
Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal. Reproduced with permission. Original here.