The GOP's last gasp attempt to steal the election for Trump is already doomed to failure: attorney

Responding to threats from two Republican lawmakers who have threatened to disrupt Congress taking the final step and certifying Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States, an attorney writing for the conservative Bulwark explained they are wasting their time.

With Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) and newly elected Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, also of Alabama, suggesting they will attempt to contest the final vote of the Electoral College on January 6th, attorney Philip Rotner -- with an assist from Harvard Law constitutional expert Laurence Tribe -- wrote that the 12th Amendment provided no mechanism for the lawmakers to keep Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

According to Rotner the plain text of the 12th Amendment which reads, "The president of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates [recording the votes of the electors of each state], and the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest number of votes shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed . . ." offers no avenue to the lawmakers to override the Electoral College results.

As he explains, Congress is only allowed to report on the final votes with the determination of who will be the new president left in the hands of the electors who represent their respective states.

In other words: Biden has already been awarded the presidency and the votes to be announced and counted on the floor of the Senate is a mere formality.

"The Constitution says only that the president of the Senate (Vice President Mike Pence in this case) shall 'open all the certificates and that 'the votes shall then be counted.'" Rotner explained. "There is no provision for objections, or for any congressional role in the process other than 'opening' and 'counting' the certified electoral votes."

The exception to the rule, he points out, would be if there was evidence that the Electoral votes had been miscounted -- which is not what the president of his advocates are alleging.

"Trump’s argument is that certain state election results should not have been certified, and that the electors should not have voted in accordance with the certified results in their respective states. (Because of alleged irregularities in the voting process)," Rotner wrote. "But these objections do not concern errors in the counting of votes of the electors. They are, instead, a sweeping, substantive objection to the electoral process itself. For which the Twelfth Amendment provides no remedy."

According to the attorney, Professor Tribe of Harvard backed up his interpretation, writing, "[T]he 1887 Electoral Count Act cannot be regarded as an even arguably constitutional path along which the special Joint Session of Congress called for in the Twelfth Amendment might opt to engage in substantive second-guessing of how any given State chose to conduct its Article II function of appointing Electors."

Insisting, "This sounds like case closed," Rotner added, "The Constitution placed the final certification process squarely on the electors, not on Congress. The constitutional language on this job is clear: The 'electors' shall 'sign and certify' the results to Congress. If the Framers had intended to add yet another layer of certification and to grant that authority to Congress, they were more than capable of doing so in plain English."

With that, the attorney had a blunt suggestion for Republican lawmakers who are trying to help the president defy the will of the voters: "The ECA may seem to give Trump’s supporters the right to object to alleged irregularities in the voting process on January 6, but the Constitution doesn’t," he wrote before adding, "Earth to Congress: Shut up and count."

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