GOP congressman gets in on Trump's illegal coup attempt in Pennsylvania

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to block Pennsylvania from declaring Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election hours before the state is set to certify its vote.

Kelly’s emergency request to block the certification comes after he filed a separate lawsuit on Saturday in which he asked a judge to throw out all mail-in ballots in the state. That suit goes on to request that if the judge won’t throw out all of the mail-in ballots, that he instead invalidate the entire election result and let Pennsylvania’s Republican legislature appoint the state’s electors to the Electoral College to help Donald Trump.

Until now, GOP lawmakers have paid Trump’s coup attempt lip service, saying he has the right to challenge the results in court, but noting that if the courts rule against him, he should go.

But until now, none had officially joined the efforts to overturn the election results by filing lawsuits of their own.

Some GOP lawmakers are calling the Trump campaign’s legal strategy an embarrassment and saying Trump should accept the results and move on.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) said in a statement on Saturday that Trump lost Pennsylvania and should stop holding up the transition: “With today’s decision by Judge Matthew Brann, a longtime conservative Republican whom I know to be a fair and unbiased jurist, to dismiss the Trump campaign’s lawsuit, President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania.”

Toomey congratulated Biden on his win.

Kelly himself had sent an email to his constituents on Oct. 30, days before the election, educating them on how to vote by mail using ballots he now wants to see tossed out.

“My offices have received hundreds of calls from residents of Butler County who are concerned because they have yet to receive the absentee ballots they requested, or that they have mailed ballots back to the Bureau of Elections but Pennsylvania’s website tracker says their vote is still pending. The Butler County Bureau of Elections tells me they are committed to making sure everyone who intends to vote is able to do so,” Kelly wrote in the email, obtained by the American Independent Foundation, which goes on to explain to his constituents how to receive their mail-in ballots.

Kelly’s office did not immediately return request for comment on why he was joining Trump’s coup attempt, or why he would seek to throw out the results in his own state after educating his constituents how to vote by mail.

Kelly won his own reelection in Pennsylvania’s 16th Congressional District by 19 points.

Kelly’s suit is unlikely to succeed.

Both state and federal judges have thrown out lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and supporters across the country seeking to overturn the election results.

On Saturday, a federal judge excoriated the campaign’s lawsuit asking him to throw out mail-in ballots in the state, saying the argument lacked evidence or any legal basis.

Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,851 votes — almost double the 44,000-vote margin by which Trump won the state in 2016.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.