File picture: On this picture from video, a safety video reveals Vice President Mike Pence being evacuated as rioters breach the Capitol on Jan. 6.
By Jill Colvin | Related Press
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday instantly rebutted Donald Trump’s false claims that Pence in some way might have overturned the outcomes of the 2020 election, saying that the previous president was merely “flawed.”
In a speech to the conservative Federalist Society in Florida, Pence addressed Trump’s intensifying efforts this week to advance the false narrative that he might have carried out one thing to stop Joe Biden from taking workplace.
“President Trump is flawed,” Pence mentioned. “I had no proper to overturn the election.”
Whereas Pence up to now has defended his actions on Jan. 6 and mentioned that he and Trump will possible by no means see “eye to eye” on what occurred that day, the remarks Friday marked his most forceful rebuttal of Trump thus far. And so they come as Pence has been laying the groundwork for a possible run for president in 2024, which might put him in direct competitors along with his former boss, who has additionally been teasing a comeback run.
In a press release Tuesday, Trump mentioned the committee investigating the lethal Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol ought to as an alternative probe “why Mike Pence didn't ship again the votes for recertification or approval.” And on Sunday, he blasted Pence, falsely declaring that “he might have overturned the Election!”
Vice presidents play solely a ceremonial position within the the counting of Electoral Faculty votes, and any try and intervene within the depend would have represented a profound break from precedent and democratic norms.