Donald Trump escalates pressure campaign on Mike Pence to overturn election results

Vice President Mike Pence told Donald Trump Tuesday that he cannot reject electoral college votes when he presides over Congress’ confirmation of the election result Wednesday – shortly after the president tweeted that he could.

The vice president delivered the bad news over lunch, the New York Times reported, sugaring the pill by suggesting he could in some way acknowledge Trump’s discredited claims when he presides over the Senate.

Pence’s move came on the eve of biggest challenge of his career on Wednesday when he presides over a Joint Session of Congress where some Republican lawmakers plan to object to Joe Biden’s victory.

Ahead of the traditionally ceremonial event, President Donald Trump had escalated his pressure campaign on Pence to help him overturn the election results and spend another four years in the White House.

‘The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors,’ the president tweeted on Tuesday morning, wrongly stating what Pence can do when he is in the presiding chair.

But shortly after when the two met for their regular lunch, Pence delivered the bad news that he could not. 

The New York Times reported that Pence also told Trump to lighten the blow that he would keep ‘studying the issue’ until the joint session begins at 1pm Wednesday.

In fact Pence spent hours this week with the Senate Parliamentarian, who advises senators and the vice president on the rules when they are on the floor of the Senate – or in Pence’s unique case, presiding over the joint session certifying the election. 

If a member of the House and Senate both object to one of the state’s slates of electors, the two chambers split to debate the objection for two hours – with Pence presiding over the Senate.

That is when he could offer some ‘acknowledgment’ of Trump’s claims about fraud to ameliorate both the blow to his boss, and the potential for the president to turn on his ultra-loyal deputy in the dying days of the administration, and beyond. 

Pence is said to be particularly concerned that his certification of Biden’s victory could be weaponized against him on social media.

His delivery of bad news to Trump came after a lawsuit brought by Louis Gohmert, an ultra-loyalist congressman, which demanded that federal courts say Pence could disqualify electoral college votes was dismissed rapidly by a judge and an appeals court. 

That legal move would have offered Pence some cover that he could point to judges as having ruled out the possibility that he could disqualify voters – which no vice president had ever done and which constitutional experts had said was simply legally impossible.

But an ‘acknowledgment’ of Trump’s claims represents a Pyrrhic victory for the president – with Republican senators dealing his campaign to have them vote against approving swing states’ votes a series of blows Tuesday, as more and more said they would not get behind it.

Senators Tim Scott and Jim Inhofe became the latest GOP lawmakers to risk the wrath of Trump with their decision to back Biden.

‘As I read the Constitution, there is no constitutionally viable means for the Congress to overturn an election wherein the states have certified and sent their Electors. Some of my colleagues believe they have found a path, and while our opinions differ, I do not doubt their good intentions to take steps towards stamping out voter fraud,’ Scott said in a statement.

Inhofe also cited the Constitution as his reason.

‘My job on Wednesday is clear, and there are only two things I am permitted to do under the Constitution: ensure the electors are properly certified and count the electoral votes, even when I disagree with the outcome,’ he said in a statement. 

More and more Republican senators joined in as the clock ticked toward Wednesday, including Senators Jerry Moran and John Boozman. 

Moran said the plan to object would ‘risk undermining our democracy–which is built upon the rule of law and separation of powers.’

And Boozman made a similar argument.

‘Under the Constitution, Congress does not have the legal authority to change the outcome,’ he said. ‘These principles are enshrined in the Constitution to ensure the American people, not the party in control of Congress, have the power to choose their president.’

At least 24 Republican senators will vote to certify Biden’s election win, according to a count by Politico while 13 are supporting Trump. And 14 are undecided. The Senate is short one senator as David Perdue’s term ended January 3rd. The winner of Tuesday’s special election in Georgia will take the seat. 

It takes a simple majority of 51 senators to sustain the objection to a state’s electoral college result, upending it. 

But with all 48 Democrats unlikely to do so and the 24 Republicans joining them, that’s 72 votes for Biden, leaving Trump’s hopes in the dust. 

Senator Ted Cruz, who is leading the objection effort, will challenge the results of Arizona on Wednesday while Senator Kelly Loeffler will likely lead the objection when it comes to the results in her home state of Georgia. Senator Josh Hawley, another GOP leader in the movement, will challenge Pennsylvania’s. 

The focus of the objections would be on those three states – down from the original six lawmakers originally discussed.  

Even without the outcome highly unlikely to go Trump’s way there is bound to be plenty of fiery floor debate and political theater. 

But Trump may not get a mass gathering of Republican lawmakers protesting on the floor.

The House Sergeant at Arms and Capitol physician sent a memo to lawmakers Tuesday evening about the joint session, requesting that ‘access to the Floor of the House will be limited to those Members who are scheduled to speak during the joint session.’

And for Pence, who has walked the tight rope of Trump’s presidency for four years without faltering, what he does Wednesday will be the ultimate loyalty test, at least in the eyes of the president, who is publicly putting on the pressure. 

Trump has made it clear he expects his second-in-command to keep him in the White House even if Pence does not legally or constitutionally have the power to do so.

‘I hope Mike Pence comes through for us. He’s a great guy,’ Trump told a campaign rally Monday night in Dalton, Georgia. ‘Of course if he doesn’t come through I won’t like him quite as much.’ 

Ultimately, Biden is expected to be certified as the winner of the election on Wednesday, which Pence, in his role as president of the Senate, is expected to announce after the certification is complete.

Pence’s role in Wednesday’s session is largely ceremonial but he will have to balance his constitutional duties with a reluctance to anger Trump and his power political base. 

But, despite the pressure campaign, Trump cannot grant powers by tweet, leaving Pence limited in what he can legally do. 

The 12th amendment of the Constitution – along with the Electoral Count Act of 1887 – makes it clear Pence’s role is to make parliamentary rulings. It does not include any power in how Congress counts the electoral votes. 

When it comes to a conflict between the House and Senate over whether or not to certify a state’s electoral college count, the Electoral Count Act of 1887 gives the deciding power to the state’s governor and not the vice president, meaning the state’s result will stand and Pence has no legal path to overturning it.

Pence would not be the first vice president to have to preside over his party’s loss of the White House: Richard Nixon, Dan Quayle, Al Gore and Joe Biden all presided over counts that handed them, or their party, a defeat. Biden even gaveled down an effort to object to Trump’s victory when he presided over the electoral count in January 2017.

But Pence is likely the first vice president who will be blamed by his boss for it.

Biden won the electoral college by 306 votes to Trump’s 232. And while some Republican lawmakers plan to object to the certification of some states’ results when they are announced on Wednesday, they are highly unlikely to overturn the election results. 

When all is said and done, Biden will be inaugurated the 46th president on January 20th.

Trump, however, has refused to concede the contest. He continues to claim massive voter fraud but has shown no proof of any such thing. His former Attorney General Bill Barr said he saw no evidence of widespread voter fraud. 

Pence, 61, who is known to have presidential ambitions of his own, will be on the hot seat Wednesday as he sits at the Speaker’s rostrum in the House, gavel in hand.

He will act according to constitutional procedure, according to reports, and follow the rules as outlined in the law.

But he has to balance that with his desire not to anger Trump’s large base of power in the party – support he’ll need in any future political endeavors.  

A report in Roll Call raised questions about what exactly Pence will do Wednesday. The Capitol Hill newspaper quoted Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, the pro temp of the Senate, saying he would be presiding instead of Pence because ‘we don’t expect him to be there.’ 

But Pence’s office was quick to say the vice president would be present and Grassley’s office quickly clarified the senator was referring to having to take over if Pence needed a break. 

It raised questions, however, if Pence would be taking those breaks when things got hot politically speaking.

Pence’s role is to open the states’ sealed certificates in alphabetical order and hand them them to one of four ‘tellers’ — a Republican and a Democrat from each chamber of Congress  – who will announce how each state voted. 

As each state’s result is read, Pence will ask whether any member of Congress wishes to raise an objection. If an objection is raised from both a House and Senate member, the matter goes to each chamber for two hours of debate and a vote on whether or not to sustain the objection.

As part of his parliamentary duties, it’s Pence who will decide if the objection is valid to warrant the two hour debate and vote in each chamber. 

After the breakout session, lawmakers return to the joint session to continue the roll call of state results. If there is another objection, the process begins all over again.

Given the Democratic control of the House and the fact that many Republican senators don’t support the objections, none are expected to be sustained.

Trump and his allies were hoping enough objections would occur to bring Biden under the 270 mark in the electoral college count – the amount needed to win the presidency.

That would throw the election to the House. Under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, each state congressional delegation gets one vote. While Democrats control the House, Republicans control the majority of state delegations, which is how Trump hopes to be ‘elected.’ 

Pence, who was in the Capitol on Sunday to swear in the newly-elected senators, also met with the Senate parliamentarian to discuss Wednesday’s procedure.

And while campaigning for Georgia’s Senate candidates in that state on Monday, Pence responded to shouts of the ‘stop the steal’ with this: ‘We all got our doubts about the last election. And I want to assure you, I share the concerns of millions of Americans about voting irregularities. And I promise you, come this Wednesday, we’ll have our day in Congress.’ 

He made no promises of an outcome. 

Other points of pressure are coming Pence’s way.

Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, claimed inaccurately on Fox News over the weekend that Pence could call for an ’emergency 10-day audit’ of the election returns in the states Trump allies are disputing.  Pence does not have that power.

Additionally, a group of Republican House members filed legal action to try and expand Pence’s powers in the certification process, but Trump’s own Justice Department came out against it and a judge appointed by Trump threw it out of court. 

Pence and his chief of staff Marc Short were in the Oval Office with President Trump and other advisers on Monday night before the president left for Georgia to campaign for the two Republican senators on the ballot in Tuesday’s special election.

But most of Trump’s remarks at that rally were about himself. 

‘You know I’ve had two elections, I’ve won both of them, it’s amazing,’ Trump said. ‘And I actually did much better in the second one.’ 

‘Don’t argue with fools!’ Top Democrat Cedric Richmond warns party’s reps not to get dragged into debate in Congress over Republicans’ bid to overturn the election results on Wednesday 

President Trump’s demand that Congress overturn the election results in states he lost has provoked a split in his party – and Democratic leaders are now cautioning their own members to steer clear of arguments when the vote gets
certified.

Rep. Cedric Richmond, a Louisiana Democrat who is joining the incoming Biden administration as director of White House engagement, has told colleagues there isn’t an upside to jumping into a point-by-point clash over Trump’s election fraud claims.

‘You don’t argue with fools, because at a distance you can’t tell who the fool is,’ he said on a party conference call Monday, Politico reported.  

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is mindful of the spectacle that the election challenges could provoke – and wants her members to be ‘dignified’ through the process – although unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud by Texas GOP Rep. Louis Goehmert and others is certain to provoke an angry backlash.

The House meets Wednesday in a special joint session to count the Electoral College votes. 

The number of Republican senators planning to go along with election challenges grew to 13 at Trump’s Georgia rally when Sen. Kelly Loeffler announced she was behind the effort.

But the leaked recording of Trump’s call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger may have undermined the Senate GOP efforts by linking claims the lawmakers hitched to the Constitution to the president’s request that Raffensperger ‘find’ 11,780 votes for him.  

It was unclear if the explosive call had prompted Senate Republicans to dial back some of their plans and focus on a smaller number of states to launch challenges. 

Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling debunked many of the president’s ‘fantastical’ claims in a press conference Monday.

GOP strategist Doug Heye told The Hill regarding Trump’s leaked call: ‘The tape now makes it harder for other people to join on. They had a legal process argument that they could make even if it wasn’t the most credible one,’ he continued. ‘The tape blows that out of the water.’

Whatever Democratic leaders caution, rank-and-file Democrats who get opportunities to speak when Republicans raise protests to states’ electoral votes are likely to get heated.  

Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.) is among those who have erupted at Republicans going along with Trump’s effort. 

‘It’s treasonous. The fact of the matter is the election results have been certified,’ he said. 

If a House and Senate member object to a state’s certification, each chamber will meet separately for two hours to consider the challenge, where members will give speeches, followed by a vote.

More than 100 House Republicans are expected to back election challenges.