Greg Jacob, who served as one of former Vice President Mike Pence’s lawyers, testified June 16 before the House Jan. 6 committee that the Constitution did not provide a means for Pence to refuse count electoral votes for Biden and therefore change the outcome of the 2020 election, as former President Donald Trump suggested.
“There is just no way that the framers of the Constitution — who divided power and authority, separated it down, had broken away from George III and declared him a tyrant — there is no way they would put in the hands of one person the authority to determine who was going to be president of the United States,” Jacob said.
“In 230 years of history, no one had ever claimed to have that kind of authority, hadn’t claimed authority to reject electoral votes and not claim authority to return electoral votes back to the states, in the entire history of the United States, not once had a joint session ever returned electoral votes back to the states to be counted,” Jacob said.
The hearing was the third of several planned by the Jan. 6 committee that focused on Trump’s efforts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to reject Congress’ official count of Electoral College votes on the day of the Capitol attack. In the year since its creation, the committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, seeking critical information and documents from people witness to, or involved in, the violence that day. The committee postponed a hearing scheduled for June 15 that was meant to focus on Trump’s efforts to replace Attorney General Bill Barr, who did not support his claims of voter fraud after the election.
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