Trump pressures powerless Pence on electoral count

President Donald Trump on Wednesday tightened the screws on his most loyal soldier, trying to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use powers he does not have to overturn the will of voters in a desperate and futile bid to undo President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the November election.

Pence finds himself in the most precarious position of his tenure as he prepares to preside over Wednesday’s congressional tally of Electoral College votes, bearing witness to the formality of the Trump-Pence team's defeat.

Beginning at 1 p.m., Pence's role is to open the certificates of the electoral votes from each state and present them to the appointed “tellers” from the House and Senate in alphabetical order. At the end of the count, Pence, seated on the House of Representatives’ rostrum, has the task of announcing who has won the majority of votes for both president and vice president.

Despite his largely ceremonial assignment, Pence is under intense pressure from the president and legions of supporters who want the vice president to use the moment to overturn the will of the voters in a handful of battleground states.

“All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN,” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. “Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!"

Pence has no such unilateral power under the Constitution and congressional rules that govern the count. It is up to the House and Senate to voice objections, and states’ electors were chosen in accordance with state law, not fraudulently.

"We’ve fought on every front on legally viable methods that are based on the Constitution of the United States. We don’t want anarchy here, folks,” said lawyer Jay Sekulow who represented Trump during his impeachment, on his radio show Tuesday. Sekulow dismissed the notion that Pence could act to overturn the vote. “Elections have consequences,” Sekulow said.

Still, Trump and Pence discussed the proceedings during their weekly lunch in the West Wing on Tuesday, according to a person briefed on the one-on-one conversation. This person was not authorized to publicly discuss the private talk and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump denied late Tuesday that Pence informed him that he could not overturn the count. But the vice president, whose office declined to discuss his plans, was not expected to deliver on Trump’s request to overturn the electors, acknowledging he has no such unilateral power.

Pence has spent hours with staff and the Senate parliamentarian to prepare for Wednesday's joint session, including studying the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs the proceedings, and relevant legal opinions.

“I think he will approach this as a constitutionalist, basically, and say, ’What’s my role in the Constitution as president of the Senate?’” said David McIntosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth and a Pence friend. “What he’ll do is allow anybody who is going to move to object to be heard, but then abide by what the majority of the Senate makes the outcome.”

In fulfilling one of the few formal responsibilities of the vice presidency, Pence risks compromising his own political future. Pence is eyeing a run for the White House in 2024 and is banking on his years of loyalty to Trump, who could be a political kingmaker for years to come, to help him stand out in what is expected to be a crowded field.

That means Pence must avoid angering Trump along with large numbers of Republican voters who have bought into the president’s unsupported claims of widespread election fraud and have been falsely led to believe that Pence has the power to reverse the outcome by rejecting the votes from states such as Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that swung from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020.

Trump planned to rally thousands of supporters on the Ellipse, just south of the White House, hours before the count in Congress.

Despite claims by Trump and his allies, there was not widespread fraud in the election. This has been confirmed by a range of election officials and by William Barr, who stepped down as attorney general last month. Neither Trump nor any of the lawmakers promising to object to the count have presented credible evidence that would change the outcome.

Nevertheless, more than 100 House Republicans and a dozen Senate Republicans have said they will challenge the electoral votes of at least one state. Majorities in both chambers are required to reject the will of voters, but enough Republican lawmakers have said they will join with Democrats to reject the last-ditch move by Trump's allies.

Trump, at a rally Monday night in Georgia for candidates in two Senate runoff elections, made clear he's putting his faith in Pence.

“I hope Mike Pence comes through for us, I have to tell you,” Trump said, adding, “Of course, if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him quite as much."