Tag Archives: Mike Pence

Pelosi Is Officially Launching Second Trump Impeachment, Will Also Activate 25th Amendment, by Tyler Durden

Posted on January 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

What are they so afraid of, Trump’s gone in 10 days. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Update (1900ET): In a letter sent late on Sunday, Nancy Pelosi confirmed that the coming week will be focused entirely on removing Trump out of office, when she informed colleagues that the House will pass a resolution calling on Pence to invoke the 25th amendment. This will be followed by impeachment.

Her full letter below:

Dear Democratic Colleague,

On this Sunday, as we pray that God will continue to Bless America, I write to inform you of our next actions, which will be made with the great solemnity that this moment requires.

I want to call to your immediate attention the action to be taken tomorrow morning, when Majority Leader Hoyer will request Unanimous Consent to bring up the Raskin resolution. This resolution calls on the Vice President to convene and mobilize the Cabinet to activate the 25th Amendment to declare the President incapable of executing the duties of his office, after which the Vice President would immediately exercise powers as acting President. The text of the resolution can be found here.

If we do not receive Unanimous Consent, this legislation is planned to be brought up on the Floor the following day. We are calling on the Vice President to respond within 24 hours.

Next, we will proceed with bringing impeachment legislation to the Floor.

In protecting our Constitution and our Democracy, we will act with urgency, because this President represents an imminent threat to both. As the days go by, the horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this President is intensified and so is the immediate need for action.

I look forward to our Caucus call tomorrow. I am grateful to all Members for the suggestions, observations and input that you have been sending. Your views on the 25th Amendment, 14th Amendment Section 3 and impeachment are valued as we continue. I am answering your communications in chronological order and will do so into the night.

Thank you for your patriotism.

Prayerfully,

In other words, the second impeachment of Trump will begin on Tuesday if Pence refuses to invoke the 25th amendment, for which Pelosi has given the VP 24 hours.

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Don’t expect Mike Pence to save us on January 6, by Carol Brown

Posted on January 3, 2021 | 1 comment

A bearish for President Trump take on January 6. From Carol Brown at americanthinker.com:

There’s been a lot written about the power Vice President Pence has to turn the stolen election around on January 6. Many commentators on various sites (including AT) have weighed in, some expressing hope, while other have expressed doubt Pence would do the right thing.

But it appears all of this is moot, as Bill Jacobson, founder of Legal Insurrection writes:

A claim has circulated widely in the past few days that Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, has the power and discretion to reject certifications. If Pence had such power and chose to exercise it, it would be over, but he doesn’t.

Jacobson cites relevant language from the Constitution (Article II, Section I, after the 12th Amendment) to support his assertion and then summarizes.

Note the words. “Shall … open all the Certificates” and “the Votes shall then be counted.” Shall is mandatory, there is no discretion. The certificates must be opened by Pence, and the votes must be counted (it’s unclear who does the counting, but the votes must be counted regardless). No Vice President (whether Mike Pence, Al Gore or future VP Kamala Harris) performing the function of opening the votes has discretion to reject votes. No Vice President has authority to accept votes presented through some extra-constitutional other process.

There is an interesting legal question of what would happen if a state authority presented conflicting votes — for example the legislature certified one set of electors but the executive branch certified a different set — but that has not happened here. No state authority has certified more than one set of electors. A bunch of legislators acting on their own getting together outside the constitutional certification process to announce electors is not presented for counting any more than if I got together with some friends and we delivered an envelope to Pence with our chosen slate of electors. Maybe if legislatures (not legislators) had so acted, we would have a legal conundrum, but that has not happened.

The Congressional legislation provides a mechanism for objections to be raised and resolved. Neither the constitution nor the legislation makes the Vice President king for a day.

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If enough senators challenge the election results, Trump wins, by Andrea Widburg

Posted on January 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

We’ll see. From Andrea Widburg at americanthinker.com:

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) officially stated that he will object to the Electoral College vote count to be held in the Senate on January 6.  May this courageous man be the first of many senators to take a stand against the overwhelming evidence of election fraud.  If neither candidate wins enough Electoral College votes on January 6, Trump should win — and it’s all in the Constitution without the need for any strained statutory interpretations.

Let me start with an overview of what happens on January 6.  It’s crucial to appreciate how this can end if Hawley is joined by several senators who refuse to certify Electoral College votes achieved through manifest fraud.  I’ve culled this information from Petr Svab’s excellent article at The Epoch Times (hat tip to Dan Bongino):

The Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution is the primary authority for events on January 6.  The Electoral Count Act (3 USC §15) plays a role, but, thankfully, that act is probably unconstitutional in one very specific and important way.

Under the Twelfth Amendment, the president of the Senate (i.e., Mike Pence) opens the certificates sent from the states, “and the votes shall then be counted.”  That’s all that the Constitution says about the vice president’s role.

Meanwhile, 3 USC §15, enacted in 1887, after prescribing details for conducting the count, says members of Congress can object.  If one House member and one senator object, that triggers a separate vote about the objection by both the House and the Senate.  If both House and Senate agree there’s a problem, the challenged electoral votes are gone.

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Power of Vice President to Count or Reject Electoral Votes Disputed, by Petr Svab

Posted on December 30, 2020 | 2 comments

Here’s some important background information on what’s likely to be a very confusing day: January 6, 2021. From Petr Svab at theepochtimes.com:

Vice President Mike Pence speaks at a "Make America Great Again" rally in Boulder City, Nev., on Oct. 8, 2020. (Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images)
Vice President Mike Pence speaks at a “Make America Great Again” rally in Boulder City, Nev., on Oct. 8, 2020. (Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images)

News Analysis

At 1 p.m. local time on Jan. 6, members of Congress will gather in the chamber of the House of Representatives to observe the formal certification of Electoral College votes for president of the United States.

While it’s usually a formality, nothing has been usual so far about this year’s election amid numerous allegations of voter fraud in key swing states.

The situation is complicated by a lack of clarity on the legal and constitutional guardrails for the process. The joint session of Congress may well result in gridlock, in which a clear winner of the race isn’t announced at all.

Based on current election results, former Vice President Joe Biden has received 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 votes. Meanwhile, Republicans in seven states where Biden claimed victory have sent their own sets of electoral votes to Washington, and some members of the House have indicated that they will object to Biden electors in some states. Any objection would require support from one House member and one senator to be considered, and at least one senator has left open the possibility he would join the effort.

So what will happen?

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It’s for Mike Pence to Judge whether a Presidential Election Was Held at All, by Ted Noel

Posted on December 28, 2020 | Leave a comment

What does Mike Pence do on January 6, 2021, when there is clear evidence of vote fraud in seven contested states? From Ted Noel at americanthinker.com:

On January 6, a joint session of Congress will open with Vice President Pence presiding as president of the Senate.  His power will be plenary and unappealable.  You heard that right.  As president of the Senate, every objection comes directly to him, and he can rule any objection “out of order” or “denied.”  His task will be to fulfill his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to ensure that the laws be faithfully executed.  This is a high standard of performance, and V.P. Pence will have two choices.  He can roll over on “certified” electors, or he can uphold the law.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution gives state legislatures “plenary authority” as enunciated in Bush v. Gore.  This is key, since the counting of votes is discussed in Article II, the 12th Amendment, and 3 USC 15.  To this we must add the history of counting and objections recounted by Alexander Macris (here and here).  Put bluntly, it’s as clear as mud.  Add to that the fact that the contested states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have sent dueling slates of electors to D.C.  This means that the V.P. has to decide how he will handle the situation when two sealed envelopes are handed to him from any of those states.

Macris points out that in 1800, even with constitutional deficiencies in Georgia, Thomas Jefferson blithely counted defective electoral votes from Georgia, effectively voting himself into the presidency.  This demonstrates that the president of the Senate is the final authority on any motions or objections during the vote-counting.  There is no appeal.  That doesn’t mean there won’t be any outrage.  Whatever Pence does, people will be angry.  But what does the law demand?

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Do Trump’s Hawks Speak for Trump? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on June 4, 2019 | Leave a comment

Is Trump as gang-ho for war as the people with whom he’s surrounded himself? Let’s hope not. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

For a president who won his office by denouncing the Middle East wars into which George W. Bush and Barack Obama plunged the nation, Donald Trump has assembled the most unabashedly hawkish conclave of foreign policy advisers in memory. And he himself seems to concede the point.

If foreign policy were decided by my security adviser John Bolton, the president confided recently, “We’d be in four wars by now.”

It was Bolton who ordered the Abraham Lincoln carrier group and B-52s to the Gulf and told the Pentagon to draw up plans to send 120,000 U.S. troops. It is Bolton who is charging Iran with using mines to sabotage four oil tankers outside the Strait of Hormuz.

Asked for evidence, Bolton barked back at reporters: “Who else would you think is doing it? Somebody from Nepal?”

But if Bolton is first hawk, he is not without rivals in the inner circle of the commander in chief.

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Two Contrasting Commencement Addresses a Half Century Apart, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on June 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

Contrast Mike Pence’s war mongering with President Kennedy’s vision of peace. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

On June 1, 2019, American vice president Mike Pence gave the commencement address at West Point. He told the graduates that it was a certainty that they will “be on a battlefield for America” and “will move to the sound of guns.”  https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice-president-pence-west-point-graduation-ceremony/ 

Pence did not say for whose agenda they would be fighting, whether it would be the oil companies’ agenda, or Israel’s, or the New York Banks’, or for the neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony, or for the CIA’s drug business.  Indeed, the West Point graduates will die without ever knowing for whose interest they are fighting.  

Pence’s address is a perfect illustration of The Matrix at work.  The innocent and ignorant graduates are sitting ducks for recrutiment into what US Marine General Smedley Buttler described as the hit men for American corporate interests.  https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/05/27/something-to-think-about-on-memorial-day/ 

War and the preparation for war has been the hallmark of America since the Clinton regime. In American history, the wars have always been for empire and the economic and financial interests that benefit from empire. There are very few years in American history when the government has not been at war with someone.

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The Pence Prophecy: VP Predicts Perpetual War at the West Point Graduation, by Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)

Posted on May 28, 2019 | Leave a comment

Mike Pence affirms his neocon, endless war bona fides. From Danny Sjursen at antiwar.com:

Time was that a stint, or even a career, in the military did not necessarily translate into any serious combat duty. That may seem hard to believe eighteen years after 9/11, but this middle-aged middling major is just old enough to remember such a bygone era. As a cadet at West Point (2001-05), having joined the army just months before the September 11 attacks, most of my professors and tactical officers had never been to war. The colonels had joined in the early 1980s and, at worst, saw limited combat in the petite (and absurd) conflicts in Panama and/or Grenada. The captains and majors commissioned in the early 1990s. As such, most just missed Persian Gulf War 1.0, a few deployed to Somalia or the Balkans, and most hadn’t seen the elephant at all.

Back then, soldiers trained for war but didn’t necessarily expect to fight in one. The Cold War, post-Vietnam army was built as much to contain America’s enemies, and to deter war, as it was to actually engage in combat. Those days seem charmingly quaint from the viewpoint of 2019. Indeed, when I entered the U.S. Military Academy on July 2, 2001, my expectation was to travel the world and maybe do some light peacekeeping in Bosnia or Kosovo, not to fight extended wars. How naive that seems now.

Instead I spent a career training for and deploying to wars across the Greater Middle East. Hell, that’s been the story of my entire generation of soldiers. When I graduated in 2005, this still seemed unique and profound. More than a decade later it’s simply the mundane way of things. So it was, this past week, that Vice President Mike Pence addressed the graduating class at West Point, and reminded them to prepare for ever more war.

The content of this bellicose, and banal, speech should have been remarkable; should have raised Americans’ collective “spidey-sense.” Instead, hardly anyone noticed that Pence, like a Punxsutawney groundhog, was veritably predicting many more years of winter (read: warfare). Still, the vice president’s oratory was disturbing on a number of levels.

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Pence A Christian? POMPEO? by Fred Reed

Posted on April 28, 2019 | Leave a comment

How big does the divergence between Christ and a professed follower have to be before you question the follower’s sincerity? From  Fred Reed at unz.com:

There Are Christians Who Love and Christians Who Hate

The torture facility in Zacatecas, Mexico, a museum of applied Christianity

Pompeo: “My Faith in Jesus Christ Makes a Real Difference”

Pompeo says God may have sent Trump to save Israel from Iran

“As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible,” said Mr Pompeo….”I am confident that the Lord is at work here,”

Pence, a Catholic Evangelical who almost became a priest: “I made a commitment to Christ.”

Christians? These Christians support a war on Yemen in which huge numbers of people are dying of mutilation, cholera, and starvation, a war they could stop with a telephone call. They similarly support butchery of Afghans from the air, massive killing in Syria, bombing of Somalis, and torture chambers around the world. Such is their Christianity. They lack even a shred of human decency. But they are Christians.

Tell me, Mr Pompeo, Mr. Pence:. Have you ever seen a child die of starvation? I have heard it described. It takes many days. Crying, crying, crying, slowly getting weaker. The mother, frantic, desperate, going crazy. The child holds out his arms, expecting as children do that their mother will do something. The crying eventually stops. But maybe you would get more of a kick out of watching one die of cholera caused by your wars. Death by cholera is quicker, but more interesting: Puking and defecating uncontrollably, crying, crying. The dehydration kills them. Neat, huh? Meanwhile, Mike, you eat prime rib in Washington and talk of the sanctity of your faith. You are a goddamned pious monster. May you rot in hell, if any.

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Pompeo, Pence and the Alienation of Europe, by Patrick Lawrence

Posted on February 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

The two Mikes, Pence and Pompeo, recently made complete asses of themselves in Europe. From Patrick Lawrence at consortiumnews.com:

If the objective was to further isolate the U.S., the two officials could not have done a better job last week, writes Patrick Lawrence.

What a job Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did in Europe last week. If the objective was to worsen an already critical trans–Atlantic rift and further isolate the U.S., they could not have returned to Washington with a better result.
We might have to mark down this foray as among the clumsiest and most abject foreign policy failures since President Donald Trump took office two years ago.

Pence and Pompeo both spoke last Thursday at a U.S.–sponsored gathering in Warsaw supposedly focused on “peace and security in the Middle East.” That turned out to be a euphemism for recruiting the 60–plus nations in attendance into an anti–Iran alliance.

“You can’t achieve peace and stability in the Middle East without confronting Iran,” Pompeo said flatly. The only delegates this idea pleased were Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and officials from Gulf Arab nations who share an obsession with subverting the Islamic Republic.

Pompeo leaving Warsaw, Feb. 13, 2019. (State Department photo by Ron Przysucha) Pompeo leaving Warsaw. (State Department photo by Ron Przysucha)

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