A top aide to former Vice President Mike Pence downplayed the significance of alternate slates of electors in states won by President Joe Biden in 2020 that are being examined by federal prosecutors and congressional investigators.
Marc Short, the former chief of staff for Pence, acknowledged on a Sunday morning talk show that there were conversations about the purported certificates that declared former President Donald Trump the winner in several battleground states Biden won, insisting they were never a significant point of consideration. Short made the TV appearance after Pence delivered his most extensive rebuke of Trump yet about his refusal to attempt overturning the election and at a time when there is speculation about potential charges in connection to the fake Electoral College certificates, which the New York Times said could include falsifying voting documents, mail fraud, or conspiracy to defraud the United States.
“There were discussions about alternative slates in certain letters that we received. But, you know, when we had a conversation with the parliamentarian, she made it clear that, candidly, every year, they receive notes from random Americans saying, ‘Here’s my slate of electors,'” Short told Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd on NBC.
“And so, you know, unless they’re certified by the state, they’re, candidly, meaningless. And so didn’t put much weight into that,” he added.
Amid a torrent of claims about widespread fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election, 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. Pence tweaked the traditional vice president’s script during Congress’s count of electoral votes, saying repeatedly as he went through the states that the result certified by the Electoral College, “the parliamentarian has advised me, is the only certificate of vote from that state that purports to be a return from the state, and that has annexed to it a certificate from an authority of the state purporting to appoint and ascertain electors.”
PENCE SAYS TRUMP IS ‘WRONG’: ‘I HAD NO RIGHT TO OVERTURN THE ELECTION’
During a speech this week, Pence shot back at Trump after the former president chastised Pence 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.”
Law professor John Eastman, who worked with the Trump team, made the slates the focus for his memos on whether Pence had the authority to overturn the election. He told the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York the electors were contingent on a court taking action and on the possibility that “some other legitimate authority,” or more specifically a state legislature, “would invalidate the election.” No state legislature overturned the results, so “the contingencies had not occurred,” Eastman said.
Still, federal prosecutors have been reviewing the fake Electoral College certificates, which came from states including Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico.
“Our prosecutors are looking at those, and I can’t say anything more on ongoing investigations,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told CNN last month. “But more broadly, the attorney general has been clear. We are going to follow the facts and the law, wherever they lead, to address conduct of any kind and at any level that is part of an assault on our democracy.”
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The House committee investigating the Capitol riot is also setting its focus, in part, on the alternate electors, issuing subpoenas to more than a dozen people involved in the effort. In recent days, documents have been reported connecting the Trump team to the effort to create fake certificates.
While Short stuck by the view that there remain “significant concerns” about the election in certain states, he also was firm in stating that “the Constitution is clear what that process is” and that the Trump team had run out of time and options in challenging the results. Trump was surrounded by “many bad advisers, who were basically snake-oil salesmen giving him really random and novel ideas as to what the vice president could do,” Short said.
Short has cooperated with the Jan. 6 panel after being issued a subpoena but stressed it would be “unprecedented” if Pence were to be subpoenaed. He also noted “significant concerns” with the panel being too partisan.
