“I think it’s important that the American people know what happened in the days before January 6,” Pence said. “President Trump demanded that I use my authority as vice president presiding over the count of the Electoral College to essentially overturn the election by returning or literally rejecting votes. I had no authority to do that.”
For those who might doubt him, Pence urged them to “read the indictment.”
Pence is featured prominently throughout the 45-page indictment, but there are seven and a half pages that specifically deal with “The Defendant’s [Trump’s] Attempts to Enlist the Vice President to Fraudulently Alter the Election Results at the January 6 Certification Proceeding.” That section relies heavily on interviews Pence provided to federal prosecutors, and the indictment references “contemporaneous notes” Pence kept to memorialize some events and conversations.
According to the indictment, “As the January 6 congressional certification proceeding approached and other efforts to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function failed, the Defendant [Trump] sought to enlist the Vice President to use his ceremonial role at the certification to fraudulently alter the election results. The Defendant did this first by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to convince the Vice President to accept the Defendant’s fraudulent electors, reject legitimate electoral votes, or send legitimate electoral votes to state legislatures for review rather than count them. When that failed, the Defendant attempted to use a crowd of supporters that he had gathered in Washington, D.C., to pressure the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results.”