Although the joint session that sees the Senate and the House of Representatives examine and certify the nation’s Electoral College results is normally a formality, it was clear that things would be very different for the 2020 presidential election.
At first, this was due to the fact that certain Republicans in both chambers were planning to object to the results of various states. But on the afternoon of January 6, a raid on the U.S. Capitol by intruders bearing Trump paraphernalia, proved to both put this session in jeopardy and color how it was conducted after the fact.
Nonetheless, Congress was able to continue and has confirmed that President-Elect Joe Biden has indeed won the election.
Prior to the attack on the Capitol, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona objected to the Copper State’s results.
As NBC News reported , it was during the subsequent debate over this objection that both the House and the Senate had to be evacuated after intruders stormed the Capitol in a raid that resulted in the deaths of one woman who was shot by police and three others who experienced medical emergencies.
Once the Senate reconvened, several Republicans who had planned to object to Arizona’s electoral results instead chose to go along with the certification.
As Buzzfeed News reported , these included Senators Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and James Lankford of Oklahoma.
The outlet further reported that this was encouraged by some their fellow senators in the wake of the violence that afternoon, who then urged their colleagues to do the same.
However, this didn’t appear to sway a handful of Republican senators who voted in favor of sustaining the objections.
As Buzzfeed News reported , this was particularly evident in the case of Cruz and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who spoke in support of President Donald Trump’s frequent claims of voter fraud that his team has failed to provide evidence for.
Curiously, the attack on the Capitol didn’t appear to reduce support for objections against the Electoral College results in the House as 121 Representatives voted to sustain them.
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Nonetheless, NBC News reported that both the contested results of Arizona and Pennsylvania would eventually be certified by the respective votes of 93-6 and 92-7 in the Senate. As for the House, both states’ results were upheld by votes of 303-121 and 282-138.
Speaking through his deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, President Trump acknowledged the results and stated that there would be an orderly transition of power on January 20.
As we can see, this didn’t come without a claim that the facts he has proved unable to produce are on his side.
As NBC News reported , the president wasn’t able to tweet this out himself due to a 12-hour suspension of his Twitter account following a video that the platform determined could potentially increase the risk of violence.
With this certification now complete, Biden has cleared the final official hurdle before he is able to take office on January 20.
As Buzzfeed News reported , however, Trump told attendees of a Georgia rally on Monday to “watch what happens over the next couple of weeks,” suggesting that he will continue to contest the election results after the certification.
Whether those plans have since changed in the wake of the violence at the Capitol remains to be seen.
h/t: NBC News , Buzzfeed News
