By saying he would have prevented Congress from counting the electoral votes that confirmed President Biden’s victory, Mr. Vance has admitted that he would have asserted an extra-constitutional power to abet Mr. Trump’s plot to remain in power. And he would have done so based on long-disproven conspiracy theories of fraud and illegality in the election that Mr. Trump legitimately and lawfully lost.
Even more chilling, Mr. Vance’s pledge about what he would have done in Mr. Pence’s place on Jan. 6, 2021, is a promise about what Mr. Vance will do on Jan. 6, 2029, should he preside over the electoral count as vice president. He is telling us more than four years in advance that if he is a candidate to be president himself, he would be willing to defy the courts and Congress to seize power regardless of the lawful outcome of the 2028 election.
The law is clear: The vice president, who presides over the electoral count as president of the Senate, has no constitutional power to reject electoral votes, to delay the electoral count, to send the issue back to the states or to do anything else that Mr. Vance is claiming he would have done — and that he is threatening to do if he one day sits in the vice president’s chair.