Rep. Elise Stefanik said she would not have allowed the 2020 presidential election results to be certified on Jan. 6, 2021, if she had been vice president at the time.
“I would not have done what [Vice President] Mike Pence did. I don’t think that was the right approach,” the New York Republican said on CNN on Thursday. “I specifically stand by what I said on the House floor.”
Ms. Stefanik voted against certifying the election results in Pennsylvania on Jan. 6 – the same day that hundreds of Trump supporters headed to Washington and attacked the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
“There was unconstitutional overreach in states like Pennsylvania and I think it’s very important that we continue to stand up for the Constitution and have legal and secure elections which we did not have in 2020,” she said.
On the House floor in 2021, the Republican lawmaker pointed to a 2020 court case out of Pennsylvania that said that the state’s mail-in ballots cannot be rejected because of signature comparisons.
Mr. Trump asked Mr. Pence to use his presiding ceremonial role to not certify the election results, but the then-vice president said he had no such power.
Ms. Stefanik’s name has been floated for a shortlist as Mr. Trump’s running mate. She said on CNN that she is “happy to be one of the top surrogates for President Trump.”
“I voted for him in 2016. I was proud to work with him on his impeachment defense team when the first witch hunt started against him,” she said. “I would [be] proud to serve in a Trump administration, but we have a lot to do. I have a lot of responsibility as the [House] Republican conference chair.”
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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