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Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday issued his strongest break yet from Donald Trump, refuting a claim made by his old boss and clarifying that he had no right to overturn the 2020 election results.
“There are those in our party who believe that, as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, that I possessed unilateral authority to reject Electoral College votes. And I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to ‘overturn the election,’” Pence said to a conservative audience Friday during a Federalist Society event in Florida.
“President Trump is wrong,” Pence said, adding that “there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person can choose the American president.”
Cartoons on the Republican Party
The former vice president, who is widely believed to have presidential ambitions of his own, reiterated to the group of conservatives that he had no right to overturn the election results under the Constitution. He said that he understands “the disappointment many feel about the last election,” adding that Vice President Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election “when we beat them in 2024.”
The remarks come after Trump has routinely criticized Pence over certifying the election results after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The former president earlier this week reiterated that message in a statement, suggesting that a recent effort to revise the counting of electoral votes was evidence that Pence could have overturned the election results.