Vice President Mike Pence told President Trump on Tuesday that he didn’t believe he had the power to block Congress’s certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the presidential election, despite Trump’s unfounded insistence that he did, people informed about the conversation said.
Pence’s message, delivered during his weekly lunch with the president, came hours after Trump further increased public pressure on the vice president to make his offer when Congress meets on Wednesday in a joint session to ratify the victory of the Biden Electoral College.
“The vice president has the power to reject fraudulently chosen voters,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning, an inaccurate statement that mischaracterized Pence’s largely formal and constitutionally prescribed role of presiding over the House and Senate as they receive and certify the electoral votes transmitted by the states and announcing the result.
Mr. Pence has no unilateral power to alter the results sent by states to Congress.
More Republican senators spoke out on Tuesday against attempts to undermine the results, including Tim Scott of South Carolina and James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, who said he considered challenging any state’s certification as “a violation of my oath” .
In a lawsuit that is likely to last many hours, Pence will chair a statewide call list on Wednesday. If at least one senator and a deputy object to a state’s results, they can force a debate of up to two hours over those results. Each chamber will vote separately on the certification of the results of that state.
For the results to be annulled, both the House and the Senate would have to agree to do so. Since the House is controlled by Democrats, there is no realistic possibility of rejecting the results of any state. In addition, many, if not most, Senate Republicans seem likely to join all Democrats in rejecting challenges to the results.
The House and Senate are expected to debate objections to the results in at least three states – Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania, all attributed to Biden – but, ultimately, will certify Biden’s victory at the Electoral College by 306 to 232.
Lawmakers anticipated possible objections for up to three more states – Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin – although it was unclear whether they would obtain the necessary support from a member of the House and Senate.
After assessing the results of all the states, Mr. Pence, who as vice president also chairs the Senate, will be asked to read the votes of each candidate’s Electoral College, formalizing Biden’s victory.
Mr. Pence has spent the past few days in a delicate dance, seeking to immediately convey to the president that he has no authority to overturn the election results, while appeasing the president to avoid a rift that could torpedo any hopes that Pence will run. in 2024 as Trump’s loyal heir.
Even when he tried to make it clear that he does not have the power that Mr. Trump seems to think he does, Mr. Pence also indicated to the president that he would continue to study the matter until the last few hours before the joint session of Congress begins. at 1 pm on Wednesday, according to people informed about the conversation.
One option being considered, according to a person close to Trump, was to get Pence to acknowledge the president’s allegations of electoral fraud in some way during one or more Senate debates on the results of certain states prior to certification. Mr. Pence will chair these debates.
Trump has been persuading Pence in public and private to find a way to use his paper on Wednesday to give credence to his baseless allegations – rejected by the states and in numerous lawsuits and without supporting evidence – that the election was stolen from him by means of widespread fraud.
The president told several people in particular that he would rather lose with people thinking it was stolen from him than simply lose, according to people familiar with his comments.
Pence has spent hours with lawmakers and lawyers in the past few days. His allies said they expected him to fulfill his constitutional duties on Wednesday.
If Mr. Pence was for some reason unable or unwilling to fulfill his role as president of the Senate, that role would fall to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the oldest Republican member of the chamber.
There was brief confusion on Tuesday morning, when Mr. Grassley was quoted as saying that he would be the president of certification, not Mr. Pence, because “we don’t expect him to be there”.
Grassley’s aides later said that he was suggesting a hypothesis in case Pence left to take a break at some point.
How much leeway Mr. Pence could have to present his views or to manage the stage is a matter of debate among experts.
“As Trump is expressing it, there is no merit,” said Edward B. Foley, director of the Ohio State University electoral law program. “What Trump is asking for is control of the outcome that will lead him to be declared president. This is definitely not within Pence’s reach. “
But Foley said that Pence would be able to add a little “drama to the theater” if he so wished. As an example, Foley said the vice president could present “rival” packages of electoral votes for some states and force Congress to debate both simultaneously.
“We know the end result,” he said, “we just don’t know when we will get there or what procedure we will take to get there.”
In the days immediately following the November 3 election, Trump was in shock, but realized he had lost, advisers said. However, the more time that passes and the more he was empowered by a small group of people who fueled his belief that there is a mechanism to eliminate Biden’s victory, the more he invested in trying to reverse the outcome. Trump became.
Some of the president’s closest advisers publicly tried to cover Pence on Tuesday, while Trump increased the pressure on him.
“Some speculated that the vice president could simply say, ‘I will not accept these voters’, that he has the authority to do so in accordance with the constitution. In fact, I don’t think that’s what the Constitution has in mind, ”said Jay Sekulow, one of the president’s personal lawyers, on his radio show on Tuesday, not to mention that his client was one of the people who did this affirmation.
“If that is the case, any vice president could refuse any election,” he said. “It is more of a function of ministerial procedure.”
Several of Pence’s allies said the vice president was receiving conflicting advice on what to do and was desperate to find a middle ground.
An ally said that Pence would follow the rule of law, but that he was looking for a way to “thread the needle” so that his words would not be reproduced on social media and used to end Trump.
Another said that his advisers were being “realistic” about his options.
But some admitted that he would have benefited if he telegraphed more aggressively in the past few days that he would not be able to rescue the president from defeat, instead of allowing the suspense to increase and, at the same time, attracting more attention to what they see as a no win situation.
They said he could have better explained the ceremonial nature of the role to the public, rather than giving hope to Trump supporters as he did on Monday in Georgia, when he said “we will have our day on Wednesday”.
“He is not going to unilaterally intervene and make a decision,” said David McIntosh, president of the Anti-Tax Club for Growth and a friend of Pence. “He will let the Senate consider it and, if they certify, there is no way for him, as President of the Senate, to change that decision.”
Mr. Trump sought the opinion of another of his personal lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani; his commercial advisor, Peter Navarro; and John Eastman, a lawyer who represented the president during a case filed by several Republican attorney generals against a handful of conflicting states. The lawsuit has been shelved, but Trump’s advisers believe Eastman is among the people who advise Trump that Pence has broad powers.
Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, who has always been at odds with Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, has been described by several senior advisers as essentially allowing Trump’s hope of finding a magic pill to change the election situation results.
Meadows facilitated the president’s call with Georgia’s secretary of state on Saturday, during which Trump begged the officer to “find” enough votes in the state to remove him from Biden’s column.