CNN —

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit from Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas and several Arizona Republicans seeking to force Vice President Mike Pence to help throw the election to President Donald Trump next week when Congress meets to count the Electoral College votes.

Judge Jeremy Kernodle of the Eastern District of Texas said on Friday that Gohmert and the others lacked standing to sue. In a filing late Friday, Gohmert and other plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal to the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Gohmert's suit was part of the GOP's attempt to overturn the presidential election using unproven allegations of mass voter fraud and charging that multiple states that President-elect Joe Biden won illegally changed their voting rules due to the pandemic.

Those arguments have failed dozens of times in state and federal courts over the past two months.

Gohmert and a slate of would-be Trump electors from Arizona had said only Pence could decide what electoral votes count — a remarkable argument suggesting vice presidents can directly determine who wins a presidential election, regardless of the results.

Kernodle, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed in the Senate by voice vote in 2018, wrote that Gohmert "alleges at most an institutional injury to the House of Representatives. Under well-settled Supreme Court authority, that is insufficient to support standing."

As for the group of Arizona Republicans, who claimed that Biden's electors in the state were unlawfully certified, Kernodle wrote that they "allege an injury that is not fairly traceable to the Defendant, the Vice President of the United States, and is unlikely to be redressed by the requested relief."

Kernodle does not get into the constitutionality of the Electoral Count Act or Pence's ceremonial role overseeing the certification process in his 13-page opinion.

Pence on Thursday asked Kernodle to reject the case, arguing that the legal issues from Gohmert should be directed to the House and Senate, rather than the vice president. Pence's filing did not say if he would entertain the possibility of interfering in the Electoral College count, but there is no public indication that he will.

"(A) suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction," Pence said.

"Ironically, Representative Gohmert's position, if adopted by the Court, would actually deprive him of his opportunity as a Member of the House under the Electoral Count Act to raise objections to the counting of electoral votes, and then to debate and vote on them," Pence's filing added.

At least 140 House Republicans are expected to vote against counting the electoral votes on Jan. 6, CNN reported Thursday. Gohmert has said he will be one of them.

There have been no credible allegations of any issues with voting that would have impacted the election, as affirmed by dozens of state and federal courts, governors, state election officials and the departments of Homeland Security and Justice.

Both a House member and senator are required to mount an objection when Congress counts the votes. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said Wednesday he will object, which will force lawmakers in both the House and Senate to vote on whether to accept the results of Biden's victory.

The Justice Department gave the White House a heads-up earlier this week that the Pence filing was coming, according to a person familiar with the matter. Word was sent to chief of staff Mark Meadows that the department would be asking the judge to reject the lawsuit. White House counsel Pat Cipollone was also aware it was coming.

It's not clear whether Trump, who remains furious at the Justice Department for its perceived inaction on voter fraud, was informed himself. He has taken an interest in Pence's role during the Jan. 6 proceedings, though Pence and others at the White House have tried to explain to him that it's merely a ceremonial post.

House General Counsel Doug Letter filed an amicus brief with the court on Thursday, asking for the Gohmert case to be dismissed, calling it a "radical departure from our constitutional procedures and consistent legislative practices."

"At bottom, this litigation seeks to enlist the federal courts in a belated and meritless assault on longstanding constitutional processes for confirming the results of a national election for President," the House attorney wrote.

The Trump campaign is also continuing its quest at the Supreme Court with the same baseless and unproven voter fraud claims. It twice this week asked the court to overturn Biden's win in Wisconsin. Other cases from the President and his allies looking to throw out Biden's victories in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona are pending on the court's docket.

On Wednesday, the newly-seated Congress will count the Electoral College votes to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in last year’s presidential election.

President Donald Trump has been building up Wednesday's joint session of Congress, but it appears there is little he or his allies in Congress can do to stop Biden from taking office on January 20.

While the event has generally been simply a matter of procedure in years past, Wednesday’s vote will have more tension than past counts.

How the process works

Electoral College votes are divvied by state based on population. In 48 states and the District of Columbia, the candidate who won the most votes wins all of that state’s electors. In Maine and Nebraska, those states divided Electoral College votes based on how the state’s congressional districts voted.

On Jan. 6, a joint session of Congress, with Vice President Mike Pence in his role as president of the Senate, will count each state’s Electoral College votes. Senators and representatives will be given an opportunity to object to each state’s slate of electors. It takes one representative and one senator to stop the process and raise an objection.

The objection must be made in writing, and members of the Senate and House will go to their separate chambers to debate on the objections.

What Trump’s allies are hoping to accomplish

In the days following the election, Trump alleged that the election was rigged. Trump lost the Electoral College vote by a 306-232 margin. Trump’s campaign specifically has raised objections in five states won by Trump in 2016 that Biden flipped in 2020. Biden won the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona by less than 3%.

In the two months since Election Day, Trump’s campaign has lost dozens of lawsuits alleging fraud and irregularities. Courts have dismissed the lawsuits due to hearsay, lacking standing, or lacking direct allegations of fraud.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, said he would sign on to a challenge. Hawley claimed Pennsylvania did not follow its own election laws. Hawley also alleged that Facebook and Twitter interfered in the election.

“I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on January 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws. And I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega-corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden,” Hawley said.

Facebook and Twitter have been frequent targets of Trump’s in recent months as the companies began flagging inaccurate claims made by Trump as “misleading.”

This has prompted Trump to call for the repeal of Section 230 in the federal code, which offers legal protections for companies like Facebook and Twitter.

Without these protections, experts claim that companies like Facebook and Twitter would be forced to censor materials posted on their sites heavily.

Biden won the state of Pennsylvania by 1.2%.

While Hawley did not specifically say what laws were not followed in Pennsylvania, some Republicans were upset at a US Supreme Court decision that gave the green light to Pennsylvania to continue accepting mail-in ballots that had been mailed in before Election Day for three days.

Pennsylvania law originally stated ballots must be received by Election Day in order to be counted. Democrats argued that given slowdowns in mail service that the votes should be counted if the ballots were sent before Election Day.

The decision to include the ballots added about 10,000 votes -- most but not all for Biden -- to the final count in Pennsylvania.

Given Biden’s 80,000-vote victory in Pennsylvania, the late-arriving ballots would not have been nearly enough to change Pennsylvania's outcome.

Why Trump’s efforts are likely to fail

For an objection to be sustained, both the House and Senate would have to agree on rejecting some or all of a state’s electors.

Given that Democrats hold the US House, that alone should mean the objection will fail in the House.

Even with Hawley’s backing in the Senate, a number of Republican senators have been critical of efforts to undo the vote of electors.

2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, now serving as one of Utah’s two Republican senators, said despite irregularities, he lost “fair and square.”

”Look, I lost in 2012. I know what it’s like to lose,” Romney told CBS News. “And there were people that said there are irregularities. I have people today who say, ‘Hey, you know what, you really won’ — but I didn’t, I lost fair and square. Of course, there were irregularities. There always are. But spreading this kind of rumor about our election system not working is dangerous for democracy here and abroad.”

Procedurally, it appears the most Hawley’s effort can achieve is to delay formalizing Biden’s win by a few hours or, at most, a few days. Debate on each objection must end after two hours before a vote is called and the two chambers resume their joint session.

It should be noted that the 2021 Electoral College count is not the first time an objection has been raised.

In 2005, following John Kerry’s loss to George W. Bush, an objection was considered for the state of Ohio. While all sides knew the objection would go nowhere, several Democrats aired grievances over long lines at the polls and voters being purged from the record in the state of Ohio, where Kerry narrowly lost.

On Wednesday, the latest extraordinary development in an extraordinary election will unfold.

In a joint session of Congress designed as a ceremonial affirmation to President-elect Joe Biden's victory, some Republicans — but hardly all of them — are vowing to object to voting results in one or more states. Despite no evidence, they accuse the elections of being fraudulent.

Though their actions — at least outwardly — are designed to aid President Donald Trump's efforts to stay in office, the efforts face near-certain failure even as they carve an even deeper divide in the American public sphere.

Lisa Mascaro, congressional correspondent for The Associated Press, has been covering Congress since 2010 and is waist-deep in the current, extraordinary saga. Here, she breaks down exactly what's going to happen Wednesday — and why it is highly unlikely to change anything related to Biden's impending inauguration.

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WHY WON'T IT WORK?

This effort is all but certain to fail. The main reason is that there's a robust bipartisan majority in both the House and the Senate to accept the results of the election as they've been certified by the states.

So the challenge that's being mounted comes from about a dozen Republican senators — I think we're up to 13 now — and as many as 100 House Republicans. But there are a total of 535 members of Congress (minus a few vacancies). Those are the numbers.

Democrats have the majority in the house. They will almost certainly agree with the results from the states that Biden won the election. Republicans are very split over this effort. Trump's efforts to challenge the results has splintered the party in ways we have not seen. The votes Wednesday will show that. This really is a time unlike any other in the Capitol.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Under the Constitution, the Electoral College is the way the votes are counted. Laws have been enacted to govern this process — and a joint session of Congress is sort of the final confirmation.

We don't have a national election. The states confirm the results and the states determine the electors and then send that tally up to Washington.

So the House and Senate will convene for this session at 1 p.m. — all the lawmakers gathered in the House chamber to confirm the election results. And that's that Joe Biden won. Even William Barr, Trump's attorney general until last month, has said he found no evidence of fraud on a wide scale that could change the outcome. The outcomes have been repeatedly certified by state officials.

That said, a number of Republicans are taking the president's challenge and splitting the party on this issue.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS CONVENES?

There are about six states that the Republicans concerned about the elections want to challenge.

What's going to happen is that results from the states will be brought in in envelopes, and Vice President Mike Pence will open them and read the tallies. As he does, any member can object. And some will. But for any challenge to have currency, it has to have a member of the House and a member of the Senate join in writing.

Right now, we have only a few senators saying they will join any of this in writing.

One of the first states to be challenged is expected to be Arizona. A number of House Republicans will challenge that. And Ted Cruz, a senator on the Republican side, has said he will challenge it. If there's a challenge, the proceedings come to a halt.

The senators will go back to the Senate and deliberate, and the House members will stay in the house and deliberate. Each will have two hours of deliberation. And then they'll vote and they'll come back together and explain their vote. So this is expected to be a very long day.

WHY SO LONG?

In the Senate, the Republicans are split. So even though they have a majority, they're not all part of this group of a dozen or so who are willing to challenge the election.

When the lawmakers come back in the joint session, we'll see that the challenge for Arizona is likely to fail. And we'll see this over and over through the day — Arizona, Pennsylvania, possibly Georgia, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The only other state we know for sure there'll be a challenge in is Pennsylvania. Sen. Josh Hawley has said he'll challenge it. But the Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey, has said he will not challenge it.

If all these states are challenged, that's many hours of debate. The leadership is expected to try to make certain there's an outcome — that they stay until the process is finished, even if that means working through the night and coming back the next day. The leadership is set to make sure this gets finished.

WHAT'S THE PRECEDENT FOR THIS?

Other vice presidents have also had to preside over their own defeats.

Vice President Al Gore was presiding over the chamber in 2001 over the disputed 2000 election. He, too, had to sign off on the tally that essentially prevented him from becoming president. Lawmakers have made challenges before, but nothing on the scope we expect to see this time. So we're in extraordinary, unprecedented times here.

WASHINGTON —

Congress is resuming its joint session after a dramatic and unprecedented day saw a mob of violent protesters storm the U.S. Capitol building.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is set to open the proceeding in the Senate at 8 p.m. The Senate originally suspended its deliberations after chanting protesters gained entry to the Capitol, prompting police to lock down the building. Some lawmakers tweeted that they were sheltering in place. Thousands of pro-Trump protesters rallied in the nation's capital, answering appeals by Trump himself, who addressed supporters gathered outside the White House.

Earlier in the day, McConnell urged fellow Republicans to abandon their effort to overrule President-elect Joe Biden's election triumph, directly rebuking defeated President Donald Trump and asserting that the GOP drive threatened the country's democratic foundations.

“The voters, the courts and the states have all spoken,” said McConnell, R-Ky., as the Senate debated a challenge by a handful of GOP lawmakers to the 11 electoral votes that Arizona cast for Biden. “They've all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever.”

Arizona's were the first of several states’ electoral votes that some Republicans are challenging, encouraged by Trump’s groundless charges that the election was riddled with fraud. Congress seemed certain to reject all those challenges and formally affirm Biden’s victory. All 50 states have certified the electoral votes.

The showdown came on one of the most convulsive days in the country's recent political history.

Follow along below for updates:

8:25 p.m.

U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, says the Senate will set a peaceful example and move toward the certification of the election result, showing Joe Biden will become the next president. Lankford was among the group of senators who vowed to reject the Electoral College tallies unless Congress launched a commission to audit the election results.

8 p.m.

The Senate has resumed debating the Republican challenge against Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential election victory, more than six hours after pro-Trump mobs attacked the Capitol and forced lawmakers to flee.

Scores of Republican representatives and 13 GOP senators had planned to object Wednesday to the electoral votes of perhaps six states that backed Biden. It was unclear whether those objections would continue in light of the day’s violent events.

President Donald Trump has falsely insisted that the election was marred by fraud and that he actually won. He reiterated those claims in remarks to thousands of protesters outside the White House early Wednesday and goaded them to march to the Capitol, which many of them did.

The mayhem had forced the House and Senate to abruptly end the day’s debates and flee to safety under the protection of police. And it prompted bipartisan outrage as many lawmakers blamed Trump for fostering the violence.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of the most powerful Republicans on Capitol Hill, denounced Republican efforts to use the tallying of Electoral College votes as a last-ditch effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

During a speech from the Senate floor, McConnell told his colleagues that his vote on Wednesday would be "the most important vote I have ever cast," adding that if Trump’s allies were successful in overturning the results of the election, “it would damage our republic forever.”

"If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” McConnell said. “We'd never see our country accept an election again."

McConnell added President Donald Trump had exhausted his path to victory.

“But over and over, the courts rejected these claims — including all-star judges whom the President himself nominated," he said. "...we cannot simply declare ourselves a national board of elections on steroids. The voters, the courts and the states have all spoken."

McConnell also criticized Democrats, who raised similar objections when Congress tallied Electoral College wins George W. Bush and in President Donald Trump’s first term. He also chastised the media for attempting to “de-legitimize” Trump’s presidency throughout his first term.

McConnell declined to recognize Joe Biden as president-elect after media outlets projected him the winner of the 2020 election, saying that President Donald Trump had the right to challenge the results. It wasn't until states certified results and the Electoral College cast its votes on Dec. 14 that McConnell recognized Biden as president-elect.

However, since the Electoral College vote, McConnell has cautioned Republicans against using today's vote tallying session as an opportunity to overturn the election results.

McConnell's speech Wednesday came after several Republican lawmakers objected to the Electoral College votes in Arizona, which prompted two hours of debate. Trump's allies have also promised to raise objections in other swing states, like Michigan and Pennsylvania.

However, the push to overturn the election will more than likely fail.

A majority of lawmakers in both chambers of Congress must approve the objections in order to throw out a state's Electoral Count. Democrats control the House of Representatives, and many Republican Senators have said they do not support the effort.

Vice President Mike Pence also said Wednesday that he will not reject the Electoral College results in his role of presiding over the session.