Sen. Vance says if he were VP, he would've gone along with Trump effort on alternate electors

Feb. 6—U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, suggested a president can ignore U.S. Supreme Court rulings and said that he would have allowed Congress to consider alternate slates of Trump electors during voting to certify Joe Biden's Electoral College win in the 2020 presidential election.

Vance's remarks during a Sunday interview with ABC News "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos prompted a response from former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wisconsin Republican who sat on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump and Trump's efforts to overturn Biden's election.

"Yesterday, JD Vance claimed that Trump could defy rulings of the Supreme Court as President. Vance also admitted he would have done what VP Pence refused to do on January 6th — help Trump illegally seize power. That's tyranny. Neither Trump nor Vance is fit to serve," Cheney posted to X on Monday.

Vance's office and Trump's campaign have not responded to requests for comment.

Trump, the Republican front-runner for the 2024 presidential election, still contends that the 2020 election was stolen from him. But there is no evidence of that, and rulings in more than 60 court cases rejected Trump and others' efforts to overturn Biden's win of both the popular and Electoral College votes.

Trump pleaded not guilty to pending criminal charges in federal and Georgia state courts on allegations involving his efforts to overturn the election. Both indictments, and cases in other states, include allegations that the Trump campaign or others tried to produce fraudulent lists of Trump electors to send to Congress for the Jan. 6, 2021 election certification vote on Biden's Electoral College win.

On Tuesday the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected Trump's assertion of broad immunity from prosecution for acts committed when he was president.

Vance, who was endorsed by Trump, elected in 2022 and has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Trump this year, told Stephanopoulos that he believed there were problems with the 2020 election. Vance alleged that big technology companies worked with the Trump administration's intelligence services to "censor" Trump's campaign in 2020 and he criticized Pennsylvania's election procedure changes in 2020.

"If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there," Vance said during his Sunday interview.

Vance's comments about the Supreme Court came after Stephanopoulos asked him about remarks Vance made in a September 2021 podcast about his advice to Trump.

"Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people," according to Vance in audio of the Jack Murphy Live Podcast. "And then when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.'"

Stephanopoulos asked if Vance believed it was OK to defy the Supreme Court.

"If the Supreme Court says that the president of the United States can't fire a general that would be an illegitimate ruling," Vance told Stephanopoulos.

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