PoliticoPolitico
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

Mike Pence made more than one change to the script for presiding over the electoral votes.

As he presided over the final step of the 2020 election, Vice President Mike Pence used his own language for the first time. The attention of congressional investigators has been drawn to Pence's rewrite.

According to documents and testimony, he made a second subtle change to the script on January 6, 2021. He asked if there were any objections when a state's electoral vote results were introduced.

The federal law that allows members of Congress to challenge presidential results was the focus of an intentional emphasis by Pence.

Before a joint session of Congress, the job of Pence was to oversee the counting of electoral votes. The Constitution and the Electoral Count Act requires that the vice president lead the crucial meeting of the House and Senate in his capacity.

During the lengthy session, which was interrupted for hours by a violent mob attack, the vice president asked the lawmakers if there were any objections to the electoral votes. Since at least 1937, Gore was the only one to have done it.

The long-dormant rhetoric was embraced by Pence in part as a rebuttal to Eastman.

According to Jacob's testimony and emails released by the Jan. 6 select committee, Eastman had spent several days before that pushing a fringe legal theory: that Pence could simply refuse to count some of Joe Biden. When it became clear that Pence wouldn't go along with the proposal, Eastman fell back on another proposal. He said that the election should be declared in dispute and that the session should be adjourned for 10 days. 10 GOP colleagues were assembled by Sen. Ted Cruz to embrace a similar push.

Jacob argued that sending the election to the states would violate the Electoral Count Act, which gives federal lawmakers the chance to decide which ones to count. He noted that no previous election had Congress sought the input of state legislators to resolve disputes.

The Electoral Count Act states that the vice president shall call for objections after each state, and that the vice president made the decision to explicitly add those calls to articulate his disagreement with the theory.

Jacob told the select committee last month that he debated this point with Eastman.

Jacob told the committee that the Electoral Count Act says you shall call for objections.

Matthew Seligman, an election law expert and a Yale University fellow, said that the objection language was reintroduced for the first time in the statute.

Seligman said that prior vice presidents may not have felt the need to say out loud that members of Congress could object.

The first Electoral College session after the 20th Amendment moved the presidential inauguration from March to January was the only one in which the vice presidents objected.

Emails released by the select committee show that Jacob and Eastman continued to debate the validity of congressional objections into the morning of January 6. As the pro-Trump mob closed in on the Capitol, Jacob accused Eastman of supporting legal theories that would never hold up in court.

In the days before the rally, the vice president was going to call for objections. The then-vice president reassured Trump allies that they would have their day in Congress. We will hear the objections.

The plan to challenge the electors from a few states was worked on by Republican lawmakers. After the riot was contained, only one other challenge to Pennsylvania's electors was advanced for debate, because the proceedings were disrupted by the insurrection.

Before that day, he had signaled to the White House that he would embrace any of the extreme proposals. He made his intentions public in a letter he issued moments before the session began.

As presiding officer, I will ensure that any objections that are sponsored by both a Representative and a Senator are given proper consideration, and that all facts supporting those objections are brought before the Congress and the American people.

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