President Trump has said that Vice President Pence is in “total agreement” with him and analysis performed by National File, in that the VP has the power to act on the Electoral College.
President Trump has recently been vocal on the power that Vice President Mike Pence has when dealing with the Electoral College, even tweeting on Tuesday evening of the VP’s constitutional power to “reject fraudulently chosen electors.”
The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2021
However, in an article by Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni posted late Tuesday, the New York Times claimed a source within the White House said that Pence “told President Trump on Tuesday that he did not believe he had the power to block congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the presidential election despite Mr. Trump’s baseless insistence that he did.”
In a statement, President Trump described the New York Times report as total “fake news,” and said that he and the Vice President are “in total agreement” that he has “the power to act”:
The November 3rd election was corrupt in contested states, and in particular it was not in accordance with the Constitution in that they made large scale changes to election rules and regulations as dictated by local judges and politicians, not by state legislators. This means that it was illegal. Our Vice President has several options under the U.S. Constitution. He can decertify the results or send them back to the states for change and certification. He can also decertify the illegal and corrupt results and send them to the House of Representatives for the one vote for one state tabulation.
Until recently, it wasn’t clear whether Vice President Pence’s heart was truly in the fight for election integrity. At his speech at TPUSA’s SAS summit, he dedicated a mere 24 seconds of his 30 minute speech to discussing it, with White House reports claiming that Trump was “infuriated” by Pence’s refusal to take his role over the Electoral College seriously.
This attitude seemingly changed at the start of the month, with the Vice President’s chief of staff saying last week that Pence now “welcomes” the Electoral College challenge on January 6th. A planned trip to Israel, Bahrain, and Poland for Pence, set to start on January 6th, which sources claimed was being used as a method to distance himself from the upcoming fallout, was also cancelled at the end of December.
National File has been at the front of the pack when discussing the Vice President’s power over the Electoral College. After National File reported on the so-called #PenceCard White House memo late last month, discussing the power Pence had to reject electors on December 23rd, it trended number 1 on Twitter, with President Trump himself retweeting the memo.