The oath is to faithfully execute the laws of the country. The basis of the argument by President Trump’s lawyer, John Eastman, was the Electoral Count Act of 1887 which was still the law of the land on Jan 6, 2022. The President of the Senate is responsible for opening the electoral vote count documents certified by the governors of the states.
The contention was that several states had submitted alternate elector counts in anticipation of a possible voiding of their state’s election process due to irregularities. The state legislatures had asked for additional time to evaluate the irregularities and vote on which elector counts should be counted.
Trump was asking VP Pence to respect the request by the states to delay opening the elector vote counts for 10 days to allow this process to go forward.
Pence was never briefed on this legal question and simply performed his function to open the documents based on the advice of his aide, Marc Short.
No one on Trump’s team directly asked Pence to do anything and even if they had briefed him, it would have been completely withing the laws of the country. Pence is completely misrepresenting the sequence of events and intent of Trump’s legal team for political purposes.
Did some states submit a separate elector list\counts?
I don’t remember that!
Which states had done that?