Posted on 08/03/2023 6:00:55 AM PDT by george76
Pence has repeatedly maintained he lacked the constitutional authority to send the elections results back to the contested states for review and insisted he saw no evidence of voter fraud swaying the outcome of the 2020 election.
Special Counsel Jack Smith's most recent indictment of former President Donald Trump repeatedly referenced former Vice President Mike Pence objecting to Trump's efforts to overturn the election and insisting that the vice president had no authority to halt the electoral certification process.
Pence has repeatedly maintained he lacked the constitutional authority to send the elections results back to the contested states for review and insisted he saw no evidence of voter fraud swaying the outcome of the 2020 election, a point Smith notes early in the indictment.
The former vice president's own words prior to the events of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, however, seem to contradict his post-vice-presidency narrative.
Video footage from a public address less than one week prior to the electoral certification on Jan. 6, 2021 shows Pence expressing concerns about election irregularities in the contest and vows to hear the objections of his supporters during the certification process, seemingly suggesting he held a belief in his authority to do so.
"I know we all got doubts about the election. I share the concerns of millions of Americans about voting irregularities," he told supporters on Jan. 4. "I promise you this Wednesday. We'll have our day in Congress. We'll hear the objections. We'll hear the evidence."
...
Pence made the remarks during a rally to support then-GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in the Georgia runoff elections.
Smith's indictment includes six other co-conspirators with whom Trump allegedly conspired to unlawfully overturn the election. One of those individuals, he alleges, put forward plans outlining the theory that Pence could deem the elector slates from seven disputed states invalid.
"The Defendant's Vice President-who personally stood to gain by remaining in office as part of the Defendant's ticket and whom the Defendant asked to study fraud allegations-told the Defendant that he had seen no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud," the indictment states.
...
Pence on Monday blamed Trump's efforts on a gaggle of "crackpot lawyers" for telling Trump "what his itching ears wanted to hear."
"You know, I’m a student of American history. And the first time I heard in early December somebody suggest that as vice president I might be able to decide which votes to reject and which to accept. I knew that it was false... I dismissed it out of hand," he said.
The great culling is taking place with sheep being separated from goats. I hope enough Americans are paying attention…
The author seems to be deliberately blurring the distinction between two different courses of action. Just because VP Pence stated that he would allow objections to state electoral votes to be heard in Congress, it doesn’t mean he’s acknowledging that he had the authority to reject those EVs outright or even just “send them back for review.”
Boy, thats a stretch on your part. There would be no reason to hear them if they were not actionable.
Pence seems to be lying. I am not surprised.
I started watching who lies and who doesn’t...ghastly, just ghastly. It makes me wonder who, exactly, tells the truth.
It must be a very small number of people.
Pence is really dense, low-IQ’s and fundamentally dishonest. He is a traitor and I believe he chose to be so. No one was asking Pence to reject votes. He was being asked to send the issue back to the States to be resolved. That was exactly the situation with electors in Pennsylvania.
I DO NOT accept that the Vice President’s role in the electoral college is purely ceremonial. It serves a tangible function, and that function was clearly needed in the 2020. Get this through your pea brain head, Pence: elections are the purview of the States. They decide how elections are conducted, how the votes are cast and counted and how electors are selected. State legislatures determine these things. It was the PA legislature asking you to not accept an uncertified slate of electors and send them back to Pennsylvania until the State Legislature resolved or not resolve their issues. Yes, the latter is an option and I would be royally pissed if it was the case because I would be disenfranchised. Accepting a non certified slate of electors has disenfranchised me. It doesn’t get any more serious for me than that and with zero doubt I blame Pence.
Pence needs to stop listening to Mother and be a honest man. Flip flopping and making whiny excuses just makes Pence like the vast majority of Republican pussies.
The question of the states determining the electors was not for Judas to make. That was a SC decision. Wonder what his bank account looks like.
Yea, and think of all the Trump corruption the Mueller investigation rooted out. The man is totally corrupt, and not just Jack Smith, Adam Schiff has the proof too.
Pence is a machine pol. Period.
Trump is a citizen pol. Exclamation point.
Pence - one of “them”; Trump - one of us.
And former VP. His resume reads like the Republican Biden.
Just a SWAG…
He is compromised and leveraged.
He has no choice.
I think time will tell.
Judas... er I mean pence is now claiming he did have the authority... only now, after spending all his 30 pieces of silver while his boss is being harassed, does he come out and say it- on,y now that he feels it is safe to do so does he admit whz5 everyone knew to be true!
As a private citizen, I have to admit that I don’t know all the ins & outs of the election process, but I think that anyone who runs for elective office should know them & should be bound by law to expound on them truthfully. Of course, we as citizens know by now that doesn’t always happen. It would be a good thing if schools taught things such as this instead of teaching some of the crap that they do now.
Under the applicable Federal statute (which is almost certainly unconstitutional, but that’s a different matter), any objections to electoral votes are to be acted upon in Congress on the day of the formal process for counting the electoral votes.
There were a number of formal objections raised in Congress during that January 6th session. None of them went anywhere. They all failed miserably. Only two of them — Arizona and Pennsylvania — could even meet the minimal threshold required (at least one objector from each house of Congress) to have Congress vote on the objection.
Mike Pence drove the final nail into the coffin of Truth.
My recall was there was a desire that state legislatures make decisions, and the legislatures had GOP leadership, which was usually GOPe.
This was the true revealing. They rec’d their marching orders from elsewhere. They challenged nothing.
And btw, as for crackpot lawyers, that is called acting on advice of counsel. This is generally an immunizing choice.
I hold the Republican legislatures of those states in total contempt for refusing to address the voting irregularities in their own states when they could.
“I started watching who lies and who doesn’t...ghastly, just ghastly. It makes me wonder who, exactly, tells the truth.”
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Politicians are always playing word games. To them politics is just a career and therefore requires them to constantly engage in deft obfuscation and self-serving verbal gymnastics.
They will say whatever best serves their own interests at a particular moment. They talk a lot about principles but in reality very few of them have any.
“They all failed miserably.”
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Situation normal, basically.
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