WATCH: Greg Jacob says Pence believed framers would not put election outcome in hands of one person

[Rhiannon12866]

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., spoke on June 16 as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack presented its findings to the public.

The Jan. 6 committee chairman said President Donald Trump, not liking the outcome of the 2021 election, “latched onto a completely nonsensical and anti-democratic theory that one man – his own vice president – could determine the outcome of the election.”

Thompson asked Greg Jacob, who was Pence’s chief legal counsel, what he concluded when he reviewed this theory that the vice president had the power to overturn the election.

Jacob said there’s “a sentence in the constitution that’s inartfully drafted,” but testified that Pence’s “first instinct, when he heard this theory, was that there was no way that our framers … would ever have put one person … in a role to have decisive impact on the outcome of the election.”

“Our review of text, history and – frankly, just common sense – all confirmed, there is no justifiable basis to conclude that the vice president has that kind of authority,” he added.

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 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. - PBS NewsHour - 06/16/2022.

[ShazamIam]

1. To me that was the most obvious and important point, why would one man have that kind of power?

Last edited Thu Jun 16, 2022, 06:55 PM - Edit history (1)

But I don't know if I can credit Pence, no scholar, and a pure authoritarian and bigoted (religion) conservative ideologue, for coming up with the idea but if he wants to claim that ok at least he used it.


Edit: add, I (if I can)

[Rhiannon12866]

2. Whatever he used, whoever he consulted for advice, even if it's someone we have disagreed with

We can be grateful for that. Chuck Rosenberg just said much the same thing on MSNBC.