Among the 106 Republican members of the House of Representatives filing an amicus brief with a Texas lawsuit challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election — which President Donald Trump has claimed without evidence was compromised by widespread fraud — were five lawmakers whose districts include Department of Energy nuclear weapon sites.
“This brief presents [our] concern as Members of Congress, shared by untold millions of their constituents, that the unconstitutional irregularities involved in the 2020 presidential election cast doubt upon its outcome and the integrity of the American system of elections,” the slate of Republican lawmakers wrote in the brief. “[I]t is the solemn duty of this Court to provide an objective review of these anomalies and to determine for the people if indeed the Constitution has been followed and the rule of law maintained.”
The friend-of-the-court filing alleged, as did Texas’ original complaint, that “the usurpation of legislative power” in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, swing states that Trump lost, “produced unconstitutional ballots” on the night of the Nov. 3 presidential election.
Texas sued these states this week. The Supreme Court, an independent branch of the federal government, has jurisdiction to hear cases where one state sues another.
According to results reported by local and state officials following the election, U.S. voters elected Joe Biden President president, with popular votes across the 50 states translating to a 306-232 electoral college victory for the former vice president over the incumbent Trump.
Trump has since claimed, without presenting any supporting evidence for either courts of law or the public, that he would have won a second term had it not been for widespread voter fraud and voting machines programmed to favor Biden, among other things. Recounts in some swing states, undertaken at the Trump campaign’s expense, have affirmed Biden as the winner.
The lawmakers with DOE constituencies who joined the amicus brief were:
- Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.-3): The Oak Ridge National Laboratory; the Oak Ridge Site/East Tennessee Technology Park; the Y-12 National Security Complex. Oak Ridge, Tenn.
- Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.-4) – The Hanford Site, Washington state.
- Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho-2) – Idaho National Laboratory. Simpson is the ranking member of the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, which writes the first draft of DOE’s annual budget bill.
- Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio-2) – The Portsmouth Site, Piketon, Ohio.
- Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.-2) – The Savannah River Site, Aiken, S.C.
Also on the amicus brief is Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.-2) whose district includes the Fort Calhoun Generating Station that closed down in 2016 and awaits decommissioning.
A Harvard Law progressor who used to clerk for the ultra-conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told Fox News that some intervenors in Texas’ lawsuit were engaging in “political posturing” and probably had no expectation that their case would prevail in the high court.
