Peter Navarro falsely claims Pence can delay Biden's inauguration

Top Trump aide Peter Navarro has falsely claimed  Mike Pence has the power to delay the inauguration while Republicans scramble to overturn the Joe Biden’s election.

The White House trade advisor made the comments in an interview with Jeanine Pirro on Saturday after she questioned whether they would be able to conduct a 10-day audit of the election in contested states before Biden is sworn in on January 20. 

‘I would not be surprised to see a special counsel on this,’ Navarro said.

‘And Vice President Pence, he has the authority to give that 10-day window to do what needs to get done. And I cannot imagine, when he goes through the facts, he won’t vote the right way on that.

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Pirro, a former New York State judge, noted that the 10-day commission could be postponed, but the day of the inauguration cannot, as per the Constitution. 

‘Well it can be changed, actually. We can go past that date … we can go past that date if we need to,’ Navarro insisted. 

Pirro did not push back on Navarro’s false claims which go against the 20th Amendment passed by Congress in March 1932.

The law states that the terms of the president and vice president ‘shall end at noon on the 20th day of January.’ 

Before 1933, the president had been sworn in on March 4, typically the final day of the congressional season. 

But the stretch between the November elections and the March 4 inauguration led to a lengthy lame-duck sessions of Congress and became a concern during times of national crisis.

Navarro’s claims come after Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, issued a statement Saturday saying the VP ‘shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election.’ 

‘(Pence) welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on Jan. 6th’, the statement continued. 

Pence gave the plot his backing just hours after Ted Cruz said he would be among the 12 GOP Senators trying to block the certification. 

Dozens of Republicans also reportedly participated in a conference call with President Trump and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Saturday night to discuss the plan to reject Electoral College votes.

Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama tweeted that he and Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio lead a call with ’50+ congressmen who join & fight for America’s republic. 

 ‘Our fight for honest & accurate elections gains momentum,’ Brooks said.

Twelve Republicans have now said they will vote to reject the electors on January 6, after Missouri Senator Josh Hawley became the first to announce his intentions this week to challenge the result.

In a statement on Saturday with ten more GOP senators, Cruz demanded the appointment of an emergency commission to conduct a 10-day audit of the election returns in ‘disputed states’.   

Until such a commission is appointed, they vowed to intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from those states – a largely symbolic move that has little chance of preventing Biden from taking office. 

The effort is considered separate from but parallel to that of Senator Hawley, who earlier this week became the first sitting member of the Senate to announce he would challenge the election result.   

Cruz was joined in the statement by Senators Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, along with Cynthia Lummis, Tommy Tuberville, Bill Hagerty, and Roger Marshall, all of whom will be sworn in as senators on Sunday in the new Congress. 

In a statement, Cruz and the other senators said they intend to vote to reject electors from swing states that have been at the center of President Donald Trump’s unproven assertions of election fraud and will call for the establishment of a commission to investigate claims of fraud on an emergency basis. 

‘We intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not `regularly given´ and `lawfully certified´ (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed,’ they wrote in the statement.

‘We do not take this action lightly,’ they said.

It comes in defiance of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, who has pleaded with his caucus not to attempt to block certification of the Electoral College results.

In conference calls with colleagues, McConnell has reportedly argued that any attempt to block certification of Biden would be futile, and only divide the party.

Cruz’s statement pointed out that Democrats in Congress had previously raised objections to the result of a presidential election, including in 1969, 2001, 2005, and 2017.