On Sunday night, former president Donald Trump released a statement that said his Vice President, Mike Pence, could have overturned the 2020 presidential election. But what is new here is Trump admitting, even bragging, that he wanted his VP to overturn the election.
The Washington Post notes:
Trump has expressed frustration before that Pence did not use his role to try to reject the votes of several states that Joe Biden won. But the language in Sunday’s statement was among Trump’s most explicit in publicly stating his desire.
In recent weeks, a bi-partisan group in Congress has been working to change the Electoral Count Act to further clarify the vice president’s role in counting the electoral votes is purely ceremonial.
Politico’s Playbook adds:
In addition to clarifying that the VP has no authority to ignore electoral slates, raising the bar for the number of lawmakers needed to protest slates, and protecting election workers, the group is considering a legal process that would rely on a federal judge to quickly litigate any discrepancies about who won the state.
The move comes after DONALD TRUMP tried to get GOP statehouses to send rogue slates of electors on his behalf to Congress on Jan. 6. The Senate gang wants to ensure that if that were to ever happen, the legal system could quickly dispense with the matter — rather than relying on Congress to figure out how to handle the situation.
Washington attorney George Conway, a frequent Trump critic wrote on Twitter:
The answer is: The Twelfth Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887 already make it entirely clear that the Vice President merely opens the envelopes. But sometimes we want to make laws even clearer so that even semiliterate psychopaths have a chance at understanding them.
George Conway
Historian Heather Cox Richardson writes Trump has finally said the quiet part out loud.
After more than a year of insisting he just wanted to address the problem of voter fraud, which he falsely claimed had stolen the election from him, Trump just came right out and said he wanted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Former U.S. attorney and legal commentator Joyce White Vance wrote: “This is what prosecutors call guilty knowledge. And also, intent.” CNN’s Jim Acosta was more succinct: he tweeted, “Coup coup for Cocoa Puffs.”