By Quint Forgey
POLITICO
June 26, 2021
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday offered his most forceful rejection yet of former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6, but declined to directly criticize Trump by name or assign him any blame for inciting the deadly Capitol attack.
Instead, Pence — speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. — insisted he was not constitutionally empowered to reverse the election results when he presided over the counting of electoral votes in Congress in January. Trump had urged him to do so in the hours before the former president’s supporters stormed the Capitol.