DONALD TRUMP’S defence lawyer has claimed that the former president did not ask Mike Pence to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 election.

John Lauro said that Mr Trump only wanted Mr Pence to “pause” the certification of votes to allow states to investigate his allegations of election fraud. 

Speaking on several Sunday morning television news programmes, Mr Lauro said Mr Trump was within his first amendment rights to ask his former vice-president to delay the certification on January 6 2021.

He said: “The ultimate ask of vice-president Pence was to pause the counts and allow the states to weigh in," Mr Lauro told Face the Nation on CBS.

Mr Lauro added that Mr Trump was convinced that there were irregularities in the election that needed to be investigated by state authorities.

Mr Pence rejected the suggestion that he was merely asked to pause the process.

During interviews, he said that Mr Trump had seemed “convinced” as early as December that the vice-president had the right to reject or return votes and that on January 5, Mr Trump’s lawyers had told him: “‘We want you to reject votes outright.’

“They were asking me to overturn the election. I had no right to overturn the election,” Mr Pence said on the CNN programme State of the Union.