Did Trump consult a former NC chief justice ahead of Capitol attack?

The New York Times reported Sunday that the president pointed to former Justice Mark Martin's analysis in arguing the vice president could undo an election.

Posted 8:50 p.m. Jan 11, 2021 — Updated 4:32 p.m. Jan 12, 2021

Travis Fain

, WRAL statehouse reporter

RALEIGH, N.C. — In the run-up to last week's attack on the U.S. Capitol, President Donald Trump told Vice President Mike Pence that he spoke with former North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin about the constitutional issues at play, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Martin has not responded to questions about the report, which comes as an unsourced, one-sentence note in a longer Times piece about moves House Democrats are making to impeach the president and the back and forth that led to last Wednesday's Trump rally-turned-riot.

The Times reported that Trump called Pence in an effort to convince him he could reject Electoral College votes when the House and the Senate met to certify the election, a power constitutional scholars have said repeatedly is not granted the vice president.

"At one point, Mr. Trump told the vice president that he had spoken with Mark Martin, the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, who he said had told him that Mr. Pence had that power," the Times reported. "Mr. Pence had assured Mr. Trump that he did not. Mr. Trump made the vice president defend his rationale in a meeting with lawyers whom Rudolph W. Giuliani had helped line up."

WRAL News has not been able to independently verify the Times' reporting. Martin, who left the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2019 to become dean of the law school at Regent University in Virginia, declined an interview request Monday through a university spokesman.

Spokesman Chris Roslan, reached first thing Monday morning, said he hoped to provide a statement Monday afternoon. No statement was provided.

Just what powers Pence had in presiding over Congress' joint session was discussed at length in the run-up. Pence said in a letter that quoted, among others, a former U.S. Supreme Court justice involved in a disputed 1876 election, that his role was largely ceremonial. Members of Congress were free to object to the presidential election results from various states, as a number of Republicans did, Pence wrote.

But the vice president cannot simply reject those results and send them back to the states.

“No vice president in American history has ever asserted such authority," Pence said in his letter.

During Wednesday's rally, Trump called the vice president out by name as he continued his false claims of a rigged election. When the Trump-supporting mob marched into the Capitol, people could be heard chanting "Hang Mike Pence!”

At least two of the men arrested in the aftermath were carrying zip ties, suggesting they hoped to take hostages.

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