Source: Politics<\/p>\n
When Mike Pence walked into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, facing a withering pressure campaign by Donald Trump, he\u2019d already made a history-defining decision to rewrite the vice presidential script for publicly counting electoral votes.<\/p>\n
But the story of Pence\u2019s revisions hasn\u2019t been clear until now. Pence aides tell POLITICO that he sent a deliberate message to Trump supporters about the reason he was refusing to introduce \u201calternate\u201d slates of presidential electors, which had become a central part of the former president\u2019s plan to overturn the 2020 election results.<\/p>\n
Pence knew that he was about to demolish Trump\u2019s effort to cling to power. But doing so meant contending with an immediate problem: the slates of false electors that the sitting president and his allies had hyped for weeks. Trump allies had coaxed loyalists in five swing states to submit signed certificates falsely claiming they were \u201cduly elected and qualified\u201d members of the Electoral College.<\/p>\n
Embracing fringe legal theories crafted by his closest boosters, Trump wanted Pence to introduce those illegitimate electors on Jan. 6 and use them to block Joe Biden\u2019s victory, throwing the election into democracy-altering disarray.<\/p>\n
Pence never intended to introduce the fake electors \u2014 and in fact understood that he was legally prohibited from doing so, his chief of staff Marc Short said in an interview. But Pence wanted to clearly communicate his rationale for that decision to Trump supporters, who had been led to believe it was possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a transparent effort to get in front of any accusations that there was any other slate that could\u2019ve been legally accepted,\u201d Short told POLITICO. \u201cWe were trying to be transparent with the American people. We figured there\u2019d be confusion with this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Days before Jan. 6, 2021, according to top aides, Pence took an active role in crafting the specific language he used during the session of Congress that was later disrupted by a pro-Trump mob intent on preventing the election from being finalized.<\/p>\n
Per Short, the new language simply elaborated on long-settled laws and rules governing the counting of electors. While anyone can theoretically submit a slate of electors to Congress, authorities have long only considered those certified by state authorities \u2014 like governors and secretaries of state \u2014 to be legitimate. Pence wanted to make that explicit in his remarks.<\/p>\n
His decision to alter the Jan. 6 script other vice presidents had used for decades shines new light on how consciously he resisted the pressure Trump exerted on him to try to single-handedly overturn the election. One year ago, it was unclear why Pence delivered a new version of the boilerplate vice presidential language or whether he was doing it at the behest of House and Senate parliamentarians.<\/p>\n
According to Short, Pence revised the script in consultation with top aides, including counsel Greg Jacob and legislative affairs director Chris Hodgson. Congressional parliamentarians ultimately signed off on it, but they had little involvement in choosing the words Pence would soon use as the mob bore down on the Capitol.<\/p>\n
And Pence\u2019s choice sounded fairly standard in the moment<\/a>, at least to most people watching the session on Jan. 6, 2021: Vice presidents begin the counting of electoral votes by indicating that votes will be counted \u201cafter ascertaining that the certificates are regular in form and authentic.\u201d But Pence added another line to this explanation.<\/p>\n Not only would each certificate he introduced be \u201cregular in form and authentic,\u201d he said at the time, but they would be the ones that \u201cthe parliamentarians have advised me is the only certificate of vote from that state, and purports to be a return from the state, and that has annexed to it a certificate from an authority of that state purporting to appoint or ascertain electors.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a mouthful with a purpose. Pence was incorporating the specific legal language<\/a> of the Electoral Count Act \u2014 the 1887 law that, along with the 12th Amendment, governs the counting of electoral votes. The law requires that any electoral votes counted by Congress be submitted by official state authorities, like governors and secretaries of state.<\/p>\n The Jan. 6 select committee has been keenly interested in the mystery of Pence\u2019s added words, too. The panel\u2019s top investigator, Tim Heaphy, earlier this year asked Short about Pence\u2019s decision to change the language \u2014 and even played a video clip comparing Pence\u2019s remarks to those of previous vice presidents, according to a partial transcript<\/a> of Short\u2019s testimony to the committee that was released in court filings last week.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, obviously, Vice President Pence in 2021 alters, amplifies, adds language to the script that had been read by Vice Presidents reaching back 20 or 30 years,\u201d Heaphy said. \u201cTell us about the decision, the purposeful decision by Vice President Pence to add that language to the ascertainment script.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c[T]he predominant reason was that the Vice President wanted to be as transparent as possible,\u201d Short replied. But the transcript was curtailed mid-sentence.<\/p>\n Short explained in an interview that the added words were designed to clearly address Pence\u2019s views of Trump allies\u2019 push for false slates of presidential electors. Supporters of the then-president would be wondering why Pence refused to consider those slates during the Jan. 6 session.<\/p>\n Indeed, top Trump allies like Stephen Miller and John Eastman pointed to these alternate electors as a way to keep the former president\u2019s election challenge alive. Eastman built them into his last-ditch strategy to pressure Pence to overturn the election himself.<\/p>\n So the language Pence used had to explain his rationale for saying no.<\/p>\n The former vice president hasn\u2019t stopped subtly critiquing Trump in the year since he resisted the election subversion push. Pence told donors last week<\/a> that \u201cthere is no room in this party for apologists for Putin,\u201d viewed as a deliberate if delicate reference to Trump\u2019s periodic warm words for the Russian leader currently attacking Ukraine. He also recently explicitly declared that Trump was \u201cwrong\u201d for claiming Pence could unilaterally determine the outcome of the election.<\/p>\n The select committee is continuing to probe the involvement of Trump and his network<\/a> in the submission of false elector slates to Congress in late 2020. Under the Electoral Count Act, electors picked by the party of the winning candidate in each state are required to meet in mid-December to formally cast their ballots.<\/p>\n In seven states won by Biden, however, the Trump campaign worked with state Republican parties to assemble their own elector meetings and cast ballots for Trump. Those false electors then signed certificates and mailed them to Washington, following the same process they would have adhered to if they were legitimate representatives of states Trump had won.<\/p>\n Eastman urged Pence to introduce the \u201cdual\u201d slates on Jan. 6 and claim the outcome was in dispute. Then, per Eastman, Pence could adjourn the legally required session of Congress and urge state legislatures to resolve the so-called disputes.<\/p>\n