Trump: Pence has 'power to reject fraudulently chosen electors'

FPI / January 6, 2021

Vice President Mike Pence could delay certifying the 2020 election results when Congress convenes Wednesday and instead ask legislatures in six contested states to clarify which candidate's slate of electors should be approved, a lawyer for President Donald Trump's legal team said on Monday.

"What Mike Pence could do, and what he should do, in fact, is to direct a question back to the state legislatures when there are two competing slates of delegates from these six states, he can ask that question to the states and say, 'well, state legislators, you know, I have an oath to the Constitution to uphold the Constitution as written in Article II Section 1.2 which says the state legislatures direct the manner in which electoral delegates are selected. So you tell me which of these two slates was selected in the manner that your state general assembly has designated,'" Jenna Ellis, senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign, told Just the News television.

"And that's a fair question. That's not exercising discretion. That's not setting up any sort of bad precedent. That's actually returning the authority to the constitutionally vested entity and just simply directing that question I think would then require a response from these very timid, to put it lightly, state legislators that haven't been willing to act, and it would in fact then give a very clean outcome to this election," Ellis said.

In a Tuesday tweet, Trump echoed his legal team: “The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.”

Pence told a crowd of supporters in Georgia on Monday: “I know we all have got our doubts about the last election. I want to assure you that I share the concerns of millions of Americans about voting irregularities. I promise you, come this Wednesday, we will have our day in Congress.”

The six states she cited are Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

Ellis suggested that Pence could take the action at the beginning of Congress' electoral review proceedings Wednesday, "before even opening any of the certificates that are sent," based on publicly stated objections raised by several legislators in each of the states.

Ellis described the steps she believed could be taken lawfully:

• Pence should not open any of the votes from the six states, and instead direct a question to the legislatures asking them to confirm which of the two slates of electors have in fact been chosen in the manner the legislature has provided for under Article II, Section 1.2 of the U.S. Constitution.
• The Vice President should open all other votes from states where electors have been certified and not contested, and count accordingly.
• The question would then require a response from the legislatures, which would then need to meet in an emergency electoral session.
• Pence should require a timely response from each state legislature and set a deadline of Jan. 17. If any state legislature fails to provide a timely response, no electoral votes can be opened and counted from that state. The Constitution provides that if no candidate for President receives a majority of electoral votes, the Congress shall vote by state delegation. This would provide two and one-half days for Congress to meet and vote by delegation prior to January 20 at noon for inauguration.
• Pence would not be exercising discretion nor establishing new precedent, simply asking for clarification from the constitutionally appointed authority in each of the six states.

President Donald Trump said on Monday that he hopes Pence will do more than just carry out a ceremonial role during the joint session of Congress to count Electoral College votes.

“I hope Mike Pence comes through for us. I hope our great vice president comes through for us. He’s a great guy. Of course, if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him very much,” Trump told a crowd at a rally in Dalton, Georgia.

Republican state senators in Georgia started a push on Monday to delay the Jan. 6 counting of electoral votes. At least a dozen have signed a letter directed to Pence asking him to officially delay the count.

“There’s about 16 or 18 of us now that signed this letter to the Vice President … asking him to delay the electoral vote for 10 to 12 days,” Sen. Brandon Beach told The Epoch Times.

Beach says that he is concerned about the integrity of the election. “People are saying yeah there is something here, there’s something that just doesn’t pass the smell test — that there was some irregularities, there was some impropriety going on in the voting process.”

Ballots and voting machines need to be forensically audited, especially in Fulton county, said Beach. The biggest concerns he has relate to the State Farm Arena’s vote-tabulation center in Atlanta. It appears that a state election monitor was absent for a part of the counting process and that Republican poll watchers were led to believe the counting was over when it in fact wasn’t.

Free Press International