62 Facts About Louie Gohmert

Louie Gohmert was born in Pittsburg, Texas, the son of German Texan architect Louis Buller Louie Gohmert and his first wife Erma Sue.

Louie Gohmert was raised in Mount Pleasant, Texas, where he graduated from Mount Pleasant High School in 1971.

Louie Gohmert commanded a cadet brigade in the Corps of Cadets and served as class president.

Louie Gohmert was a student leader for the MSC Student Conference on National Affairs alongside future US Representative Chet Edwards, and a member of the Ross Volunteer Company.

Louie Gohmert received a Juris Doctor degree from Baylor Law School in 1977.

Louie Gohmert attended The JAG School at the University of Virginia and entered US Army JAG Corps.

Louie Gohmert served in the JAG Corps at Fort Benning, Georgia, from 1978 to 1982.

Louie Gohmert was elected as a state district judge for Texas's 7th Judicial District, serving Smith County from 1992 to 2002.

In 2002, Texas Governor Rick Perry appointed Louie Gohmert to fill a vacancy as Chief Justice on Texas's 12th Court of Appeals, where he served a six-month term that ended in 2003.

Louie Gohmert only faced an independent in 2008, and a Libertarian in 2010.

On January 3,2013, Louie Gohmert broke ranks with the House leadership to nominate Representative Allen West for Speaker of the House, although West narrowly lost his bid for reelection in 2012 and was no longer a member of Congress.

In 2017, Louie Gohmert expressed fear that he might become the target of gun violence similar to that experienced by former Representative Gabby Giffords and refused to hold public town hall meetings.

Louie Gohmert is considered to be a conservative Tea Party Republican.

Louie Gohmert signed the Americans for Tax Reform's Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

Louie Gohmert offered an alternative plan to kick-start the economy with his tax holiday bill, which would allow taxpayers to be exempt for two months from having federal income tax taken out of their paychecks.

Louie Gohmert was one of a number of Republicans who voted against the Budget Control Act of 2011 on grounds it did not do enough to deal with the government's growing debt.

Louie Gohmert was one of four Republicans who joined 161 Democrats to vote against a balanced budget Constitutional amendment in November 2011.

Louie Gohmert rejects the scientific consensus on climate change and has asserted that data supporting it is fraudulent.

Louie Gohmert opposes cap-and-trade legislation, such as the one that passed the US House when it had a Democratic majority, and supports expanding drilling and exploration in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Louie Gohmert supported the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

Louie Gohmert has said that he believes that life begins at conception.

Louie Gohmert sponsored the Sanctity of Human Life Act and voted for the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, a bill that prohibits the transportation of a minor across state lines for the purposes of an abortion without their parents' consent.

At a congressional hearing on May 23,2013, on an abortion bill that would ban the procedure after 20 weeks of pregnancy, Louie Gohmert told the story of a couple he knew who decided to go through with their pregnancy despite learning of fetal anomalies.

Louie Gohmert told Zink, a witness, that she should have gone through with her pregnancy despite a doctor's opinion that the brain function was impaired, and then have a better assessment of the baby's health once it was born.

In 2010, Louie Gohmert opposed allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the US military and voted against the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act.

In 2015, Louie Gohmert cosponsored a resolution to amend the US constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

On December 16,2012, two days after the Sandy Hook shootings, Louie Gohmert appeared on Fox News Sunday and suggested that the tragedy would have never happened had the teachers been armed.

On February 26,2020, Louie Gohmert voted against making lynching a federal hate crime.

Louie Gohmert said the 10-year sentence for lynching in the act was "ridiculous" and that crimes such as lynching should be prosecuted through state murder statutes, which is punishable up to death in Texas.

On May 15,2013, Louie Gohmert said in a House Judiciary Hearing that he believed the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not act with due diligence concerning alleged bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Louie Gohmert's contention was that the FBI was more interested in Christian groups such as those led by Billy and Franklin Graham than in groups that might be considered less politically correct to target.

Louie Gohmert objected to this on the grounds that Holder had "challenge[d]" his character and made several unsuccessful attempts to inject his viewpoint as a point of personal privilege.

In September 2021, Louie Gohmert was among 75 House Republicans to vote against the National Defense Authorization Act of 2022, which contains a provision that would require women to be drafted.

Louie Gohmert was among 19 House Republicans to vote against the final passage of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.

In June 2021, Louie Gohmert was one of 49 House Republicans to vote to repeal the AUMF against Iraq.

On Fox Business, Louie Gohmert later claimed that an airline passenger with a relative in Hamas had a grandchild who was to be intentionally born in the United States.

Louie Gohmert asserted that the children would then be returned to the mothers' home countries and undergo terrorist training.

When repeatedly asked by the host for evidence of this, Louie Gohmert did not provide substantiation for either the ex-FBI agent story or the airline passenger story, but he did refer to a Washington Post article that said Chinese tourists sometimes travel to the US to give birth in the US Louie Gohmert said this practice takes advantage of a "gaping hole in the security of our country".

Louie Gohmert voted against the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019 which would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate the per-country numerical limitation for employment-based immigrants, to increase the per-country numerical limitation for family-sponsored immigrants, and for other purposes.

Louie Gohmert voted against the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020 which authorizes DHS to nearly double the available H-2B visas for the remainder of FY 2020.

Louie Gohmert said that only a fourth of the government was shut down as Congress had already approved other portions of the funding through September 2019 and answered that Trump should keep it closed "till hell freezes over" as Congress owed Americans border security.

Louie Gohmert was one of three Republicans who called for the resignation of Robert Mueller, the prosecutor investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, on the grounds that they believed Mueller could not conduct his investigation fairly "because of his relationship with James Comey, his successor at the bureau".

Louie Gohmert urged the Food and Drug Administration in April 2020 to approve the drug as an official treatment.

Louie Gohmert tested positive for COVID-19 on July 29,2020, a day after he attended a House Judiciary Committee hearing without wearing a mask, a practice he had largely maintained for some time.

An anonymous Gohmert aide emailed Politico with complaints, thanking Politico for letting the office know Gohmert tested positive; that "Louie requires full staff to be in the office, including three interns, so that 'we could be an example to America on how to open up safely'"; and that "people were often berated for wearing a mask".

Louie Gohmert said he planned to take hydroxychloroquine as part of his treatment.

In December 2020, Gohmert was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump.

On December 27,2020, Gohmert filed a federal lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, authored by attorney Lawrence J Joseph, in an attempt to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.

Louie Gohmert's lawsuit alleged that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 was unconstitutional, seeking to grant the Vice President the power to reject state-certified presidential electors in favor of "competing slates of electors".

Louie Gohmert was joined in his lawsuit by 11 Arizona Republicans who would have become presidential electors had Trump actually won Arizona.

On January 1,2021, Louie Gohmert's lawsuit was dismissed by federal judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, because the plaintiffs lacked standing.

Kernodle ruled that Louie Gohmert lacked standing due to precedent set by the Supreme Court in 1997: alleging an "institutional injury to the House of Representatives" does not grant Louie Gohmert standing to sue.

Additionally, Kernodle ruled that the injury Louie Gohmert was alleging depended on so many hypothetical and not yet realized events that it was "far too uncertain to support standing".

Louie Gohmert failed to make a case for how he was injured "as an individual", Kernodle said.

Louie Gohmert was one of the 147 members of Congress to vote against certifying the results of the 2020 Electoral College in Congress on January 7,2021, the day after the Capitol attack.

In July 2021, Louie Gohmert suggested the Capitol attack was a conspiracy possibly set up by Democrats.

In June 2022, Louie Gohmert said, "if you're a Republican, you can't even lie to Congress or lie to an FBI agent or they're coming after you", in response to the indictment of Trump adviser Peter Navarro for non-compliance with the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

Louie Gohmert was one of 32 Republican congress members to cosponsor Andy Biggs' August 2021 resolution to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

Louie Gohmert was one of six Republican congress members to cosponsor Lauren Boebert's September 2021 resolution to impeach President Biden.

In November 2021, Louie Gohmert announced his candidacy in the 2022 Texas Attorney General election to challenge incumbent Ken Paxton in a crowded Republican primary.

Louie Gohmert made the announcement to run after saying he would join the race if he could reach $1 million in political donations in 10 days, he stated he had reached the goal.

However, campaign finance report show Louie Gohmert had not met the $1 million goal Louie Gohmert ended last in the four-candidate primary.