Loeffler resists joining 'Dirty Dozen' senators in blocking Congress certifying election for Biden

Kelly Loeffler wouldn’t say Sunday whether she will join the ‘dirty dozen’ Republican senators planning to block Congress from certifying the election for Joe Biden on January 6 – as Donald Trump pushes claims at least 40,000 Georgia votes weren’t counted for him.

‘I’ve said from the start, everything is on the table here, and I’m seriously looking at that,’ Loeffler told ‘Fox News Sunday’ host Brett Baier when asked about Senator Ted Cruz leading an effort by 12 senators to challenge the Electoral College results.

Trump continued pushing on Sunday morning a disputed claim that thousands of Georgia votes were flipped from him to Joe Biden in the presidential election and another 30,000 were completely removed.

‘Georgia election data, just revealed, shows that over 17,000 votes illegally flipped from Trump to Biden.’ @OANN This alone (there are many other irregularities) is enough to easily ‘swing Georgia to Trump’. #StopTheSteal @HawleyMO @SenTedCruz @Jim_Jordan’, Trump posted to Twitter.

Data scientists testified Wednesday that Georgia’s election data shows more than 30,000 votes were removed from Trump and another 12,173 were switched to Biden, the Epoch Times reported Saturday.

The data, however, is not new – and has been debunked by two separate recounts in Georgia since the election on November 3.

This isn’t stopping several Republican lawmakers from launching an effort to dispute Electoral College votes in Georgia and four other swing states that went blue in 2020.

A dozen senators said they would join a handful of GOP representatives to challenge the results, and Vice President Mike Pence, who will oversee the joint session meant to certify the election this week, finally embraced the idea over the weekend. 

The senators who joined the effort are hoping to establish a commission to determine who gets the Electoral College votes, rather than just outright seeking to overturn the election in favor of a second Trump term.

The commission would kick start an independent investigation of those states’ elections being challenged.

The same steps were taken in the 1876 election, paving the way for Rutherford B. Hayes to become president.

‘We should follow that precedent,’ Cruz and 10 other current and incoming senators said in a joint statement, referring to that race.

‘To wit, Congress should immediately appoint an Electoral Commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states,’ the statement continued. ‘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.’

Loeffler, however, is less committal than her colleagues. 

‘Well, I’m looking very, very closely at it, and I’ve been one of the first to say, everything is on the table,’ the Georgia Republican senator reiterated in a Fox News interview. ‘I’m fighting for this president because he’s fought for us. He’s our president and we are going to keep making sure that this is a fair election and I’m looking very closely at it.’

The Trump loyalist, however, did not outright say if she would join the Trump-endorsed effort – despite having a 100 per cent voting record in line with the president.

She also refused to cast a vote last week where the Senate overturned Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act, and wouldn’t say when pushed on the matter which way she would have voted if she showed up.

Loeffler is trying not to sway too far from the president just two days before her runoff
election against Democrat Reverend Raphael Warnock – one of two Georgia elections on January 5 that will decide control of the Senate.

‘Look, I stood with the president 100 percent of the time,’ Loeffler told Baier, who was filling in for ‘Fox News Sunday’ host Chris Wallace. ‘He’s putting America first.’

She said she didn’t turn out for the NDAA vote because she was too busy campaigning in Georgia for her runoff on January 5.

‘Understanding the campaigning is important, if you’re saying how important this election is on January 5th, but obviously, Georgia is a big defense state, current and former military here, defense business here,’ Baier said. ‘How would you have voted had you voted on that veto override?’

‘Well, look, I voted to support the NDAA,’ she said of her previous vote on the matter before Trump’s veto. ‘The bill that came out of conference was very different from what we’ve been promised. So, I don’t know.’

‘Right, but you would have sustained the veto, the president’s veto on the NDAA’ Baier pushed.

Loeffler again dodged the question.

‘I won’t belabor it but that’s not a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ whether you would sustain the veto or not,’ Baier clarified.

Loeffler shot back: ‘That’s right.’

The Senate voted 81-13 to overturn Trump’s veto of the Defense funding legislation – making that the first veto override of his presidency.

Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, issued a statement Saturday saying the VP ‘shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election.’

‘(Pence) welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on Jan. 6th’, the statement continued. 

Pence gave the plot his backing just hours after Ted Cruz said he would be among the 12 GOP Senators trying to block the certification. 

Dozens of Republicans also reportedly participated in a conference call with President Trump and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Saturday night to discuss the plan to reject Electoral College votes.

Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama tweeted that he and Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio lead a call with ’50+ congressmen who join & fight for America’s republic. 

 ‘Our fight for honest & accurate elections gains momentum,’ Brooks said.

Twelve Republicans have now said they will vote to reject the electors on January 6, after Missouri Senator Josh Hawley became the first to announce his intentions this week to challenge the result.

In a statement on Saturday with ten more GOP senators, Cruz demanded the appointment of an emergency commission to conduct a 10-day audit of the election returns in ‘disputed states’.   

Until such a commission is appointed, they vowed to intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from those states – a largely symbolic move that has little chance of preventing Biden from taking office. 

The effort is considered separate from but parallel to that of Senator Hawley, who earlier this week became the first sitting member of the Senate to announce he would challenge the election result.   

Cruz was joined in the statement by Senators Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, along with Cynthia Lummis, Tommy Tuberville, Bill Hagerty, and Roger Marshall, all of whom will be sworn in as senators on Sunday in the new Congress. 

In a statement, Cruz and the other senators said they intend to vote to reject electors from swing states that have been at the center of President Donald Trump’s unproven assertions of election fraud and will call for the establishment of a commission to investigate claims of fraud on an emergency basis. 

‘We intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not `regularly given´ and `lawfully certified´ (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed,’ they wrote in the statement.

‘We do not take this action lightly,’ they said.

It comes in defiance of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, who has pleaded with his caucus not to attempt to block certification of the Electoral College results.

In conference calls with colleagues, McConnell has reportedly argued that any attempt to block certification of Biden would be futile, and only divide the party.

Cruz’s statement pointed out that Democrats in Congress had previously raised objections to the result of a presidential election, including in 1969, 2001, 2005, and 2017. 

‘The most direct precedent on this question arose in 1877, following serious allegations of fraud and illegal conduct in the Hayes-Tilden presidential race,’ the senators argued.

‘Specifically, the elections in three states-Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina-were alleged to have been conducted illegally,’ they continued.

‘In 1877, Congress did not ignore those allegations, nor did the media simply dismiss those raising them as radicals trying to undermine democracy. 

‘Instead, Congress appointed an Electoral Commission-consisting of five Senators, five House Members, and five Supreme Court Justices-to consider and resolve the disputed returns,’ the statement added. 

A number of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives also plan on contesting the vote tally.

The days ahead are expected to do little to change the outcome. Biden is set to be inaugurated January 20 after winning the Electoral College vote 306-232.

Senator Hawley of Missouri was the first to defy McConnell by announcing he would join House Republicans in objecting to the state tallies during Wednesday’s joint session of Congress.

The moves drew swift condemnation from Democrats, including former Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, who tweeted ‘There are actually 12 Senators ‘pointing a loaded gun’ at the heart of democracy. They should always be known as the #dirtydozen.’

The Dirty Dozen was a 1967 war film about about ragtag group of hardened criminals who were recruited to form an elite Allied commando unit sent on a virtual suicide mission against high-ranking Nazi officers.

On the other side of the Republican party’s split, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska warned such challenges are a ‘dangerous ploy’ threatening the nation´s civic norms.

The issue is forcing Republicans to make choices that will set the contours of the post-Trump era and an evolving GOP.

‘I will not be participating in a project to overturn the election,’ Sasse wrote in a lengthy social media post. Sasse, a potential 2024 presidential contender, said he was ‘urging my colleagues also to reject this dangerous ploy.’

Sasse was joined by several other Republicans who also blasted their colleagues’ efforts to block Biden’s win, including Senators Mitt Romney, Pat Toomey and Lisa Murkowski.

 In a statement released on Saturday night, Romney described the move as an ‘e
gregious ploy that ‘dangerously threatens our Democratic Republic.’

‘I acknowledge that this past election, like all elections, had irregularities. But the evidence is overwhelming that Joe Biden won this election,’ Toomey posted on Twitter.

Murkowski said in a statement: ‘ I will vote to affirm the 2020 presidential election. The courts and state legislatures have all honored their duty to hear legal allegations and have found nothing to warrant overturning the results.’

Trump, the first president to lose a reelection bid in almost 30 years, has attributed his defeat to widespread voter fraud, despite the consensus of nonpartisan election officials that there wasn’t any. 

Of the roughly 50 lawsuits the president and his allies have filed challenging election results, nearly all have been dismissed or dropped. He´s also lost twice at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Still, the president has pushed Republican senators to pursue his unfounded charges even though the Electoral College has already cemented Biden´s victory and all that’s left is Congress´ formal recognition of the count before the new president is sworn in.

‘We are letting people vote their conscience,’ Sen. John Thune, the second-ranking Republican, told reporters at the Capitol.

Thune´s remarks as the GOP whip in charge of rounding up votes show that Republican leadership is not putting its muscle behind Trump´s demands, but allowing senators to choose their course. He noted the gravity of questioning the election outcome.

‘This is an issue that´s incredibly consequential, incredibly rare historically and very precedent-setting,’ he said. ‘This is a big vote. They are thinking about it.’

Pence will be carefully watched as he presides over what is typically a routine vote count in Congress but is now heading toward a prolonged showdown that could extend into Wednesday night, depending on how many challenges are mounted.

The vice president was sued by a group of Republicans who want Pence to have the power to overturn the election results by doing away with an 1887 law that spells out how Congress handles the vote count.

Trump’s own Justice Department may have complicated what is already a highly improbable effort to upend the ritualistic count. 

It asked a federal judge to dismiss the last-gasp lawsuit from Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and a group of Republican electors from Arizona who are seeking to force Pence to step outside mere ceremony and shape the outcome of the vote.

In a court filing in Texas, the department said they have ‘have sued the wrong defendant’ and Pence should not be the target of the legal action.

‘A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction,’ the department argues.

A judge in Texas dismissed the Gohmert lawsuit Friday night. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee, wrote that the plaintiffs ‘allege an injury that is not fairly traceable’ to Pence, ‘and is unlikely to be redressed by the requested relief.’

That decision was affirmed by a federal appeals court ruling Saturday night. 

To ward off a dramatic unraveling, McConnell convened a conference call with Republican sen
ators Thursday specifically to address the coming joint session and logistics of tallying the vote, according to several Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the private call.

The Republican leader pointedly called on Hawley to answer questions about his challenge to Biden´s victory, according to two of the Republicans.

But there was no response because Hawley was a no-show, the Republicans said.

His office did not respond to a request for comment.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who has acknowledged Biden´s victory and defended his state´s elections systems as valid and accurate, spoke up on the call, objecting to those challenging Pennsylvania´s results and making clear he disagrees with Hawley´s plan to contest the result, his office said in a statement.

McConnell had previously warned GOP senators not to participate in raising objections, saying it would be a terrible vote for colleagues. In essence, lawmakers would be forced to choose between the will of the outgoing president and that of the voters.

Several Republicans have indicated they are under pressure from constituents back home to show they are fighting for Trump in his baseless campaign to stay in office.