Former Vice President Mike Pence refutes Donald Trump’s claim that he had the right to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Congress.
“Our Founders were deeply suspicious of consolidated power in the nation’s capital and were rightly concerned with foreign interference if presidential elections were decided in the capital. But there are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, I possessed unilateral authority to reject electoral college votes. And I heard this week, President Trump said I had the right to ‘overturn the election,” Pence said at the Federalist Society Florida Chapters conference near Orlando.
“President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election,” Pence continued. “The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. Frankly, there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.”
He warned that the idea that a vice-president could overturn an election could be problematic in 2024 if a Republican nominee for president defeats a Biden/Harris ticket.
“Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election, and (Vice President) Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024,” Pence said.
Pence’s comment comes after Trump criticized him in recent statements, insisting he had the constitutional authority to overturn the election. “Unfortunately,” Trump wrote, “he didn’t exercise that power.”
