Trump’s attorney, John Lauro, commented on various news shows Sunday that Trump stood by his First Amendment rights when he asked Pence to delay certification on January 6, 2021.
“Vice President Pence’s main job was to pause the recounts and allow the states to intervene,” Lauro said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He added that Trump was convinced that there were irregularities in the elections that needed to be investigated by state authorities before the elections could be certified.
Pence, who like Trump is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024, flatly rejected that version during an interview Sunday, saying that Trump seemed “convinced” in December that Pence had the right to reject or return votes and that on 5 On January 1, Trump’s lawyers instructed him: “‘We want you to reject the votes outright.'”
“They were asking me to annul the elections. I had no right to annul the election,” Pence said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Pence’s role in certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election makes him a central figure in the indictment against Trump for trying to override the will of the voters and remain in office even after he the courts had roundly rejected his accusations of voter fraud. Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general also maintained that there was no credible evidence that the election was rigged.
The indictment filed last week details how Trump and his allies, in what special counsel Jack Smith described as an attack on a “critical function of the United States government,” repeatedly lied about the results in the two months after to lose the election and pressured Pence and state election officials to take steps to help him cling to power. Those efforts culminated on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent certification.
Trump pleaded not guilty to those charges. Separately, he also faces charges of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to a porn actress in New York and improperly withholding confidential documents at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate and obstructing an investigation into its management.
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
