President Donald Trump is skipping his New Year’s Eve event at his Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida on Thursday to return to the White House as several of his GOP allies plan to challenge Congress’ official certification of the Electoral College’s votes for President-elect Joe Biden on January 6.
Trump and First Lady Melania Trump departed from Palm Beach at 11 AM ET on Thursday.
According to CNN, guests had already arrived at Mar-A-Lago for the glitzy soiree. They reportedly were not informed that Trump would not be there.
CNN reports that the President has been fixating on the congressional joint session next week as a hail Mary in his crusade to subvert the election after his other attempts to do so through the courts repeatedly imploded.
As such, Trump is banking on Republicans and Vice President Mike Pence, who will oversee the session, to somehow prevent the Electoral College results from being certified that day, even though they do not have the power to do so.
But despite there being no chance of any lawmaker unilaterally overturning the election, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and several House Republicans have announced that they will disrupt the proceedings with objections. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), currently fighting to keep her seat in the Georgia runoffs, hinted on Wednesday that she may join her colleagues in the doomed ploy.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) slammed the scheme in a Facebook post on Wednesday, calling the involved lawmakers “institutional arsonist members of Congress.”
