About
Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2005–2022, representing Texas’ 1st Congressional District. He left Congress—along with a long trail of lies and offensive statements—at the end of 2022 after opting to run for attorney general in Texas and losing in the GOP primary to incumbent Ken Paxton (who has since been impeached by the the Republican-controlled Texas House and was forced to step down in May 2023 pending a trial in the state Senate).
After the 2020 presidential election, Attorney General Paxton filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court contesting the election results and attended Trump’s March to Save America rally in Washington. In 2022, the ex-president endorsed Paxton instead of Gohmert in the Texas AG race, even though he conceded that the latter “is a man who’s been a friend of mine from day one.”
Prior to being elected to Congress, Gohmert was elected to three terms as a district judge in Smith County, Texas and was later appointed by then-Gov. Rick Perry (R) to complete a term as the chief justice of the 12th Court of Appeals. He has a long history of Islamophobia and anti-LGBT legislation and rhetoric, and describes himself as “an unapologetic warrior for our most cherished freedoms, which are under attack.” He considers those “freedoms” to include “Constitutional authority, freedoms of religion and speech, state’s rights, 2nd amendment rights, and all those rights most of us hold dearest.” He once compared President Obama to Hitler, equated homosexuality with bestiality and grieved over the arrest of the rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Formerly caucusing with the Tea Party, Gohmert moved further to the right during Trump’s first term, becoming a member of the House Freedom Caucus and emerging as a loyal backer of the former president. After the 2020 presidential election, he helped spread the Big Lie, objected to certifying President Biden’s electoral win, and voted against both impeaching Trump for inciting the mob and establishing a special House committee to investigate the insurrection, among other measures.
January 6, 2021
- Just hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Gohmert joined 146 other congressional Republicans in refusing to certify Biden’s win of the 2020 presidential election.
- After serving as one of Trump’s most ardent advocates during his first impeachment, Gohmert voted against impeaching the president a second time for his role in inciting the mob that disrupted congressional certification of the 2020 election.
- Gohmert voted against establishing a House committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack.
- On June 23, 2022, Gohmert released a statement in which he dismissed the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection as “nothing more than a Soviet-style propaganda production.”
- According to testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, the aide to Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Gohmert requested a presidential pardon after the insurrection for as yet unclear reasons. He has denied the allegations and demanded an apology from the House Select Committee.
The Big Lie
- On Nov. 6, 2020, Gohmert claimed, without evidence, that there had been “rampant” voter fraud in Philadelphia and that German computer servers had been used to change American votes.
- On Dec. 1, 2020, Gohmert signed a letter from fellow House Republicans to Attorney General Bill Barr urging the Justice Department to investigate irregularities and accusations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
- On Dec. 3, 2020, he claimed, “There’s widespread evidence of fraud because people haven’t done their jobs. [John] Durham and [William] Barr will deserve a big notation in history when it’s written of the rise and fall of the United States if they don’t clean up this mess, clean up the fraud. Do your jobs and save this little experiment in self-government.”
- On Dec. 10, 2020, Gohmert signed an amicus brief in a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of the presidential election in four swing states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
- On Dec. 17, 2020, Gohmert was one of 19 House Republicans who signed a letter to House committee members demanding an investigation into allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.
- Gohmert filed a lawsuit against Vice President Pence on Dec. 27, 2020, in an effort to force him to throw the election for Trump. The suit argued that “under the Twelfth Amendment, Defendant Pence alone has the exclusive authority and sole discretion to open and permit the counting of the electoral votes for a given state, and where there are competing slates of electors, or where there is objection to any single slate of electors, to determine which electors’ votes, or whether none, shall be counted.”