Former Vice President Mike Pence, a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that former President Donald Trump and his lawyers asked him to “reject” the 2020 presidential vote.
Anchor Dana Bash said, “I’m sure you’ve heard the former president’s lawyers saying that he, quote, ultimately asked only that you pause in counting the electoral ballots. I want to be clear. Did the former president ask you to pause or did he at any point ask you to overturn the election and keep him as president?”
Pence said, “Well, you can look at the tweets and public statements that the president made, all the way up to the night before and the morning of. Look, what the president was convinced it seemed to me in December that I had some right to reject or return electoral votes, even though no vice president in American history had ever asserted that right. No vice president or any one president has ever had the right to choose the American president. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone.”
He added, “But, look, in the days before, the president was talking about us rejecting votes, then late in the process, his lawyers suggested that we return votes to the states, but frankly, the day before January 6th, if memory serves, they came back, his lawyers did, and said, we want you to reject votes outright. They were asking me to overturn the election. I had no right to overturn the election. I know we did our duty that day and I couldn’t be more encouraged whether it’s here in New Hampshire, in Iowa, or all across the country how many people come up to me and express their appreciation for the stand that we took.”
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