Pence rebukes Trump: ‘I had no right to overturn the election’

In a speech to the conservative Federalist Society on Friday, former Vice President Mike Pence rebuked his one time boss, Donald Trump, decrying the notion that he could have overturned the election results on the 45th president’s behalf.

“Our Founders were deeply suspicious of consolidated power in the nation’s capital and were rightly concerned with foreign interference if presidential elections were decided in the capital,” Pence said. “But there are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, I possessed unilateral authority to reject electoral college votes. And I heard this week, President Trump said I had the right to ‘overturn the election’. President Trump is wrong…I had no right to overturn the election.”

The line constituted some of the most aggressive pushback Pence has offered to date on the question of election certification. And it comes days after Trump attacked Pence, saying he “could have overturned the Election!” as he presided over the Senate after the Capital riots on Jan. 6, 2021.

Pence has maintained that while he remains a supporter of Trumpism, he and Trump do not see “eye to eye” on the events of Jan. 6. He has never wavered from his position that he did not have constitutional authority to do anything more in Congress than certify the 2020 election results.

“Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024,” he said in his address.

Pence’s insistence on that point has made him persona non grata in some circles on the right. While Trump and other potential 2024 hopefuls like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Mike Pompeo are scheduled to speak at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., Pence has not been formally asked to come.

“We did not officially invite him but in our last conversation over a year ago, I told the Vice President that we would welcome him and he should call us when he is ready to come back,” said Matt Schlapp, the chair of the American Conservative Union that hosts the event. “His voice is important in explaining the extend (sic) of voter fraud from 2020 and why the 1/6 committee is a renegade destructive political effort aimed at maligning former White House staffers and Trump/Pence supporters.”

Still, Pence remains a popular speaker at conservative events, and he and Trump are both expected to be special guests at a Republican National Committee donor retreat in New Orleans in March.

Pence’s remarks on Friday came just hours after the RNC formally declared that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was “legitimate political discourse” and censured two House Republicans — Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — for participating in the House committee investigation of that day. RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel issued a subsequent statement distinguishing peaceful protestors from those who inflicted “violence at the Capitol.”

Trump has long criticized that investigation. He has also insisted that the riots at the Capitol — which are connected to the death of a handful of people, resulted in dozens of police officers being injured, and led to the desecration of the grounds — was a peaceful protest of the electoral process.

Trump has openly weighed pardoning those who have been charged in relation to the riots, should he be reelected president. And, in a statement this week, he lashed out against bipartisan efforts in Congress to make changes to the election law to affirm that the vice president can not overturn the electoral counts from the states.

In that statement, Trump criticized Pence specifically, insisting he had the constitutional authority to overturn the election. "Unfortunately,” Trump wrote, “he didn’t exercise that power.”

Pence has tried to downplay the events of Jan. 6 and cast the committee’s investigation as an attempt to “demean” Trump supporters. But in his speech on Friday, he called it a “dark day in the history of the United States Capitol.”

“Lives were lost and many were injured,” Pence said, “but thanks to the courageous action of the Capitol Police and federal law enforcement, violence was quelled, the Capitol was secured, and we reconvened the Congress that very same day to finish our work under the Constitution and the laws of this country.”