‘President Trump Was Wrong’: A Defiant Pence Defends Certifying Election At FedSoc Conference — And Gets Applause

Former Vice President Mike Pence disputed that he had the ability to overturn the results of the 2020 election in a speech at the Federalist Society’s annual conference.

He then delivered comments that were viewed as a strong repudiation of former President Donald Trump.

Trump has repeatedly contended that Pence could have chosen to recognize so-called “alternate electors” following the tense and divisive 2020 election. Pence refused to do so, and after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, he presided over the counting of Electoral College votes certifying Joe Biden as the winner.

The former vice president drew a strong condemnation from Trump, who has attacked him well into this year for not interrupting the certification of those results.

While addressing the Federalist Society in Orlando on Friday afternoon, Pence remembered Jan. 6 and rebuffed Trump.

Pence said, “As Constitutional conservatives, the American people must know we will always keep our oath to the institution, even when it would be politically expedient to do otherwise.”

“The American people must know, as the Bible says, that we’ll keep our oath, even when it hurts. Jan. 6 was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol,” Pence addd. “Lives were lost. And many were injured.”

Pence thanked Capitol Police officers for securing the Capitol.

The former vice president was met with a round of applause.

He then noted that “elections are conducted at the state level.”

“The only role Congress has with respect to the Electoral College is to open and count votes submitted and certified by the states,” he said. “No more, no less. Actually, our founders were deeply suspicious of consolidated power in our nation’s capital. Were rightly concerned with foreign interference in our presidential elections, if they were decided in our new capital. That’s why the Constitutional Convention settled on state-based elections.”

Pence then issued his sharpest rebuke yet of Trump:

There are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, that I possess unilateral authority to reject Electoral College votes. And I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election.

But President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly, there’s no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.

Pence concluded, “I had no right to change the outcome of our election, and [Vice President] Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024.”

Watch above, via CNN.