Pence won't interfere in election count - advisers
Despite growing pressure from President Donald Trump to help overturn his election loss, Vice President Mike Pence plans to stick to his ceremonial duties when presiding in Congress on Wednesday, advisers said.
Colette Luke has more.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday continued to put pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to reject the Electoral College results when they are tallied in Congress on Wednesday.
Trump on Twitter Tuesday falsely claimed that quote: “The Vice President has the power to reject (frajulently) fraudulently chosen electors.” At a rally the night before in Dalton, Georgia where he campaigned for Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the state’s run-off elections, Trump continued his efforts to get Pence to overturn President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: "I hope Mike Pence comes through for us… If he doesn't come through, I won't like him quite as much." Trump’s false claims that a vice president has the power to influence the Electoral College results would certainly have been news to former Vice President Al Gore, who in 2001 presided over the certification of his own defeat to George W.
Bush.
But the vice president, a loyal lieutenant during Trump's often chaotic presidency, has no plans to interfere.
A former White House official with regular contact with Pence's team told Reuters Pence plans to make clear in his statements that he backs the president but will stick to the constraints of his role.
Trump has also continued to assert, without evidence, that his loss in November was the result of widespread voter fraud - a claim that reviews by state and federal election officials, multiple courts and the U.S. Department of Justice have rejected.
But nearly a dozen Republican senators including Senators Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Marsha Blackburn, Josh Hawley and Tommy Tuberville have recently said they would challenge Biden’s victory on Wednesday, joining over 100 Republican House members.
The move will in the end be largely symbolic and has virtually no chance of preventing Biden from taking office.
