Mike Pence changed the script long used to certify elections on Jan. 6 to send a message, his aides said. He wanted to explicitly tell the world he didn't have the legal authority to introduce Trump's false electors.
When Mike Pence walked into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, facing a withering pressure campaign by Donald Trump, he’d already made a history-defining decision to rewrite the vice presidential script for publicly counting electoral votes.
Embracing fringe legal theories crafted by his closest boosters, Trump wanted Pence to introduce those illegitimate electors on Jan. 6 and use them to block Joe Biden’s victory, throwing the election into democracy-altering disarray. Days before Jan. 6, 2021, Short said, Pence took an active role in crafting the specific language he used during the session of Congress that was later disrupted by a pro-Trump mob intent on preventing the election from being finalized.
According to Short, Pence revised the script in consultation with top aides, including counsel Greg Jacob and legislative affairs director Chris Hodgson. Congressional parliamentarians ultimately signed off on it, but they had little involvement in choosing the words Pence would soon use as the mob bore down on the Capitol.
The Jan. 6 select committee has been keenly interested in the mystery of Pence’s added words, too. The panel’s top investigator, Tim Heaphy, earlier this year asked Short about Pence’s decision to change the language — and even played a video clip comparing Pence’s remarks to those of previous vice presidents, according to aof Short’s testimony to the committee that was released in court filings last week.
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