Pence was not the ranking authority of anything.
He has no authority over the military.
None. Stupid anyway... Trump was right there... and we’d been told all along “the military wouldn’t be involved”... and they, quite ridiculously, just tried to reign in the Insurrection Act to make it HARDER for the President to deploy the Guard. But they have ZERO authority to do so without him.
It looks like:
They got caught cheating in elections... panicked... rigged a FAKE joint session of Congress to validate the fraud... and now they are launching a full blown coup.
This ends either with a full restoration of the rule of law, of a full on communist dictatorship.
But, at least, people now will know the truth about the government they have...
“Pence was not the ranking authority of anything.”
Oh, as President of the Senate he has some authority, but it is limited to very specific acts.
In the case of Washington, D.C., Trump would be CIC over the D.C. Guard (though historically a president would hand over direct control to the Commandant of the NG). But calling up the D.C. Guard is not solely reserved to POTUS (though once called up POTUS would — as I mentioned above — be the CIC).
But, from what I am now hearing Pence wasn’t involved at all with anything to do with the Guard, but that Pelosi and the Dem mayor called for it, and Guard units from Virginia and Maryland were requested by Pelosi and the mayor, as well; and the respective governors complied, and coordinated specifically with Pelosi, Schumer, and the mayor, apparently excluding any Republican officials.
Sounds a lot like a cluster f**k, anyway.