Former Vice President Mike Pence delivered a stern rebuke to former President Donald Trump, who decried him for not trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election,” Pence said Friday at a Federalist Society event in Florida. “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.”
He was referencing a statement Trump made on Sunday that many observers took as an admission that Trump sought to overturn a legitimate loss to President Joe Biden rather than challenging the contest over concerns about widespread fraud and irregularities.
“If the Vice President [Mike Pence] had ‘absolutely no right’ to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election? Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away,” Trump argued in a statement released by his Save America PAC.
MIKE PENCE: “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. 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.” pic.twitter.com/7feWD75Fq1
— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) February 4, 2022
“Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!” he added.
Pence resisted pressure from Trump and his allies to stall the Jan. 6, 2021, Electoral College vote count and even sent a letter to Congress saying that he did not have the power to reject Electoral College votes.
“’He could have overturned the election.’ This is an admission, and a massively un-American statement. It is time for every Republican leader to pick a side… Trump or the Constitution, there is no middle on defending our nation anymore,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the Jan. 6 committee, tweeted Sunday in reaction to Trump’s statement.
Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro has opened up about working with Steve Bannon to implement what he dubs the “Green Bay Sweep.” The plan was to enlist members of Congress and put pressure on Pence to stall the Jan. 6 certification and send electoral votes back to several battleground states where GOP-led legislatures could try to overturn the results over concerns about fraud and irregularities. Navarro claimed the rioters who swarmed the Capitol, disrupting the counting of electoral votes, messed up the plan.
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Election officials and the courts have roundly rejected claims of widespread fraud, and now efforts to disrupt the process, as well as the Capitol riot, are under investigation, including by a select committee in the House. Both the Justice Department and the Jan. 6 panel are looking into slates of alternate electors for Trump in several states won by Biden.
