Former President Donald Trump tore into the narrative of Democrats and some Republicans that former Vice President Mike Pence had no choice when it came to certifying the electoral votes for the 2020 presidential election.
''Mike Pence told me, and everybody else, there was nothing he could do about the Electoral Vote Count — it was etched in stone,'' Trump said in a statement on Thursday. ''But if so, how come the Democrats and RINOs are working so hard to make sure there is nothing a VP can do?''
According to Just the News, a bipartisan group of senators is working on rewriting the Electoral Count Reform Act that would further restrict state electors and ensure that a sitting vice president cannot alter or reject election results.
The former president and some of his allies have been accused of attempting to set up "alternate electors" to vote for him and later trying to have then-Vice President Pence not certify the election.
''This was a major event, because everybody ganged up and said that Mike had no choice, he could not send the slates back to the States (which is all I suggested he do) for possible retabulation and correction based on largescale Voter Fraud and Irregularities,'' Trump continued.
In remarks delivered last month at the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump continued to criticize Pence for rejecting the former president's requests that he refuse to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
He called Pence a ''human conveyor belt'' for stating that he was constitutionally required to oversee the certification and could not reject electoral votes because of Trump's claims of voter fraud.
''Mike Pence had a chance to be great,'' Trump said at the time. ''He had a chance to be, frankly, historic. But just like [former Attorney General] Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people, Mike — and I say it sadly because I like him — but Mike did not have the courage to act.''
Pence has repeatedly said he did not have the authority to reject the electoral votes and his break with Trump on the issue has been an ongoing source of friction between them.
''President Trump is wrong,'' the former vice president said in February, according to The Hill. ''I had no right to overturn the election.''
At its public hearing on Thursday, the House Jan. 6 committee sought to show how Trump and his supporters pressured Pence to stop the certification of the election and praised the former vice president for refusing to do so.
In his statement, Trump unleashed a litany of things that would potentially be different had he had been certified the winner of the 2020 election instead of President Joe Biden.
''This may have proven to be an Election-changing event, so we would have no inflation, inexpensive gasoline, be energy dominant, have no war or largescale death with Russia and Ukraine (this conflict never would have happened), would have left Afghanistan on same timetable, but with dignity and strength, and would have kept Bagram Air Base, not had dead soldiers, taken out all American hostages, and would not have given the Taliban $85 billion worth of first-class military equipment,'' he said.
''What a difference it would have made if the State Legislatures had another crack at looking at all of the Fraud, Abuse, and Irregularities that have been found,'' the former president added. ''Our Country would have been a different place!''
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