Mike Pence Rejects Notion He Had Right To Overturn 2020 Election

Mike Pence pushed back on Donald Trump’s claim that he could have overturned the election on Jan. 6, 2021, when as vice president he presided over the Electoral College count before a joint session of Congress.

“This week, I heard President Trump say I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election,” Pence said in a speech to the Federalist Society.

CNN carried Pence’s speech, and MSNBC had portions of it. Fox News did not have live coverage, but reported on his comments moments later.

Pence’s comments were a rare break from Trump, to whom he had been steadfastly loyal during the former Celebrity Apprentice host’s White House tenure.

In a statement he issued earlier this week, Trump railed against the January 6th Committee, which is investigating the attack on the Capitol that day, and said, that the committee should instead look into “why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval.”

In his speech, Pence said that “the presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone, and frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.”

More than a year after the January 6th siege at the Capitol, new information continues to come to light over the extent to which Trump pressured his vice president to reject the results, armed with specious legal rationales from former Chapman University professor John Eastman. According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book Peril, Pence sought the advice of one of his predecessors, Dan Quayle, who assured him that his role on January 6th was ceremonial.

In his speech on the Ellipse on January 6th, Trump told his supporters, “Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn’t, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our Constitution.”

Shortly after Trump’s speech, outside the Capitol, some of the rioters had set up a gallows and some in the crowd chanted “Hang Mike Pence.”

Pence was ushered away from the Senate chamber when it was clear that rioters had gained entry into the Capitol complex.

In his speech, Pence said that January 6th “was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol. Lives were lost. Many were injured. But thanks to the courageous action of Capitol police and federal law enforcement, the violence was quelled, the Capitol was secured, and we reconvened the Congress that very same day to finish our work under the Constitution of the United States and the laws of this country.”

Earlier on Friday, the Republican National Committee voted to censure two Republican members of the January 6th Committee, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL). In contrast to Pence’s characterization of the Capitol siege, the censure resolution chided the two lawmakers for participating in “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

Pence’s speech quickly triggered speculation of his own plans for 2024, as Trump also weighs whether he will try to win back the White House.