Ramaswamy won’t say whether he would have done what Pence did on Jan. 6

MILFORD, N.H. — Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy would not say if he would have certified the election results like former Vice President Mike Pence did on Jan. 6, 2021, sidestepping repeated questions on Thursday.

“I would have never let it get to that point,” Ramaswamy said in response to POLITICO's questions. “I would have never put myself — or been part of an administration, if I was in a serious position of leadership — to ever have allowed us to have gotten to that doorstep.”

Pressed on whether he would have tried to stop Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Ramaswamy again said “we would have never been in that position.”

Ramaswamy comments, coming the same day former President Donald Trump was charged with crimes related to his actions around the certification of the 2020 election, underscore the difficult line the Republican field continues to walk around Jan. 6. Candidates who outright denied election results were soundly rejected by voters in 2022, but Trump maintains a hold in the Republican base and has not backed down in his insistence the election was stolen from him in wake of the latest indictment.

On Thursday, Ramaswamy argued that a “year of systemic, pervasive suppression of truth” led to the riots on Jan. 6, casting the violent disruption of Congress’ election certification as “the final domino of a domino effect that started far earlier.”

He did, however, restate his pledge to pardon Trump if elected president. But Ramaswamy noted one exception in the classified documents case: He would not pardon Trump if he is found to have been “selling secrets for private personal gain to foreign adversaries.” Ramaswamy said earlier this week that he’s suing the Justice Department for more details about that case.

Ramaswamy’s comments on Trump came hours after the former president was arraigned in Washington, D.C. Earlier on Thursday, Ramaswamy had stood outside the courthouse and cut a video demanding “the truth” about the charges the former president is facing in what he called “politicized persecution through prosecution.”

Special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with four felony counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, witness tampering, conspiracy against the rights of citizens and obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding. He pleaded not guilty.

The only other Republican rival who has weighed in on the case is Pence, who is sharpening his rebuke of Trump. Pence is even selling new “Too Honest” campaign merchandise — a reference to the words Trump berated Pence with when he declined to go along with his Jan. 6 scheme, according to the latest indictment.

And yet, Trump’s deepening legal morass is rarely mentioned in the Elks lodges and diners of New Hampshire. Trump’s rivals are more commonly asked in the first primary state about their stances on Ukraine and various economic issues. The only question Ramaswamy faced about Trump from voters at two events in southern New Hampshire that played out simultaneously with the former president’s arraignment in D.C. was about how the two differ in policy and personality.

Later, after fielding several queries about Trump from reporters, that same voter said: “You guys need to come up with better questions.”