Politico:
As forces loyal to Donald Trump began calling on Mike Pence to single-handedly stop Joe Biden from becoming president, the then-vice president dashed off a request in late 2020 to his top lawyer: Just how much power did he actually have over certifying electoral votes?
His counsel, Greg Jacob, replied the next day with a four-page legal memo that marked Pence’s first crash course in an arcane legal issue with historic consequences.
The memo launched Pence into a month-long sprint toward Jan. 6, 2021, as he and his team immersed themselves in the contradictory and complicated history of counting electoral votes.
Jacob’s analysis laid out the centuries-old debate about the vice president’s role in counting electoral votes. And while it doesn’t take a side on whether Pence had the power to reject votes or not, the Dec. 8 brief reveals how quickly after the election Pence and his team began to contemplate the limits of his role presiding over the Jan. 6 session of Congress — which was required by the Constitution.
The memo anticipated and addressed some of the legal arguments that Trump and his supporters would soon use to pressure Pence to overturn the results when he led Congress in counting Electoral College votes.
The memo was a hurried effort to get Pence familiarized with the contours of the issue. A person familiar with its drafting described it as written “overnight” in response to Pence’s request, which came just as Trump allies began pushing the notion that Pence could unilaterally keep the GOP president in power.
“This legal analysis … was presented to Vice President Pence amidst disinformation about his roles and responsibilities and based on his first request for information about the mechanics of the electoral vote count on January 6,” said the person, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation. The person said that it “provides facts rather than firm conclusions, because research was not yet complete.”