Ted Cruz and 11 other Senate and soon-to-be Senate Republicans said they will object to Joe Biden’s election win and demand an “immediate” 10-day audit of the November election when Congress formally meets Wednesday to certify his victory.
Cruz was joined by Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.), and Senators-Elect Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.).
This past Wednesday, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley said he would join Republicans from the House of Representatives in objecting the certification, which will force what is normally a purely ceremonial event into another public spectacle to assuage Donald Trump, who has still refused to recognize his own defeat in the election. If a member of the House and Senate object, each chamber has to stop the certification for a two-hour debate, which will still, in all likelihood, result in Biden’s win being certified.
“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. 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,” Cruz and the other Republicans said in a statement today. “Accordingly, 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.”
To this day, nearly two months after Biden defeated Trump by more than 7 million votes and by a 306-232 margin in the Electoral College, there has been no credible evidence of any widespread voter fraud. Trump and his legal team have lost more than 50 court cases, including multiple ones by the Supreme Court.
Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th president on Jan. 20.