With Mike Pence Presiding, Joint Session of Congress Confirms Electoral Votes for President-elect Joe Biden

January 7, 2021 — The joint session of Congress began on Wednesday afternoon, was delayed by a mob incursion incited by President Donald Trump, continued on Wednesday evening and concluded early Thursday morning.

After it all, Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election was confirmed.

The joint session of Congress was interrupted by the violent mob insurrection that stormed the Capitol Building and caused legislators to flee their respective chambers. It was the first time the Capitol had been attacked in such a manner since the War of 1812.

Following the procedure outlined in the 12^th Amendment to the Constitution and the 1877 Electoral Count Act, which specifies the procedures for counting and hearing objections to certified electoral vote totals, the legislators had retreated to their separate chambers to debate an objection lodged to the Arizona electors.

At the conclusion of the entire affair soon after after 3 a.m. on Thursday morning, Vice President Mike Pence presided over the declaration of the vote total  that had already been certified by the states: Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris won 306 Electoral College votes, 36 more than needed to become president.

Biden and Harris will be sworn in on January 20.

After the counting of the electoral votes, Trump issued a statement acknowledging that “there will be an orderly transition” of power on January 20, and said that the action of Congress “represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history.”

Trump’s statement came via spokesperson Dan Scavino, as the president’s Twitter account was locked for 12 hours on Wednesday. No new activity has been registered on his Twitter account as of Thursday morning.

See “Twitter Locks Account of President Donald Trump and Deletes Three Inciting Tweets,” Broadband Breakfast, January 6, 2021

In one of the aforementioned Tweets deleted by Twitter, Trump condemned Pence for not intervening in the count of the electors. Pence promptly unfollowed Trump’s account on Twitter and led the counting in the joint session, confirming the Biden victory.

On Wednesday and on Thursday, an increasing number of members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have called for Pence and a majority of the members of the administration’s Cabinet, to invoke the 25^th Amendment to remove Trump from office amid the violence at the Capitol on Wednesday.