What Trump Really Asked Of Pence

The media has lied about what Trump requested of his VP on January 6, 2021. Read the truth.

There are any number of lies told about the 2020 presidential election. One of them is that on January 6, 2021, then-President Trump was pressuring his then-VP Mike Pence, to “overturn” the election. Under this narrative, Pence was the man of courage. It’s a narrative Pence repeated to Fox News’ Jesse Watters in a recent television appearance and one the former Vice-President clearly hopes to use to gain support among that element of the Republican Party that wishes to rid itself of Donald Trump.

The only problem with The Narrative is that it’s not remotely true. Donald Trump never asked Pence to overturn the election. In fact, Trump only asked Pence to do what state legislatures themselves were requesting.

Let’s briefly backtrack to understand what took place on January 6. The Congress was convened to do the final certification of the electoral vote count that ultimately put Joe Biden in the White House. Pence, as the one constitutionally designated to oversee such a proceeding effectively had to “sign off” as the House and Senate ratified each state, one by one, in a joint session.

Of course, as you may have heard, there was some debate over whether the presented results in certain states (Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada) really represented what the people in those states had voted for.

In three of these states—Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania—there were requests from the state legislature for additional time to review the legality of their elections. That is, to decide if the original certification, which must take place at the state level, had been correct. These states wanted an additional 10 days to conduct their investigations.

These states needed help in Washington. First off, they needed at least one person from the Senate and one from the House to officially challenge the results in their specific state. That would start a debate of two hours. Pence would then have to decide whether to give final acceptance to the certification or to send it back to the states.

Or would he? There was (and remains) considerable constitutional debate over whether the Vice-President has the authority to do this. Is the VP a figurehead in these situations or is he a real part of the process?

Suffice it to say, those in Trump World believed the Veep could do just that. Those outside of it were more skeptical. Pence subscribed the latter view.

I’ll be frank—I have no idea who’s right. I’m not a constitutional scholar. And to be even more blunt, I’m not all that sold that Mike Pence (or Donald Trump or anyone else for that matter) have any idea who’s right either.

 A court would have to interpret both the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act, passed in the late 19th century, which are the two key legal pieces that govern this situation. Interpreting those means some scholarly research into what the Founders and the 19th century legislators were saying about the laws at the time of their passage.

What I do know is this—the only way a court will settle this is for a specific cause of action to be brought before them. Think of it this way—you and your neighbor have a dispute over whether a fence they built is encroaching on your property. You want a court to settle the matter. But the court won’t just casually issue an opinion on hypotheticals. You have to bring a specific lawsuit with a specific grievance.

In this scenario, forcing that cause of action would have required Pence to decline signing off on final certification. To effectively “set them aside” with the objective of honoring the state’s request for 10 additional days of investigation. I think it’s fair to say that had this occurred, the Biden campaign would have immediately filed a lawsuit. I think it’s equally fair to say that the Supreme Court would have convened in a hurry to make the decision.

Does any of this sound like “overturning” the election? If Pence had done what he was requested to do, the entire matter would have still been settled by January 16 or 17 at the very latest. The only date that anything has to be settled by is January 20.

Would it be unusual to cut everything that close to the January 20 deadline? Sure. About as unusual as mass mail-in voting. An unusual ending to an unusual election seems fitting.

The truth of what Trump really asked Pence to do is slowly starting to slip out, especially among Republican-leaning voters. As this happens, Trump-haters are switching gears. They are saying it was still shameful to delay the final certification, even for 10 days.

I’ll just ask a simple question—Why? We’ve already covered that January 20 is the only true deadline and that 2020 was the Year of the Unusual. The “it’s still shameful” argument makes no sense on its face and has no real depth to it.

It makes even less sense as we return to the biggest point in our story—Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia wanted the time to do an investigation. Legislators felt like they’d been had in the information their election officials reported to them. Arizona felt strongly enough to do a complete forensic audit of the entire election even after the fact. Pennsylvania is about to start the same.

Taken collectively, these three states would have prevented Joe Biden from getting to the required 270 electoral votes.

What Trump asked Pence to do on January 6 was to honor the requests of state legislatures. It was never to change the results of the election. It’s long past time for this Big Lie to be put to rest, and those that propagate it to be tuned out.