I have written several articles on postings related to politicians. A list of links have been provided at bottom of this article for your convenience. This article will, however address different aspects on these politicians.

I am writing this article to set the debacle that took place in Jan. 6, 2021. There has been a lot of mud slinging before and after that date in regards to the the 2020 election. Despite my bias on Mike Pence, I will do my utmost to write an inpartial article as possible. To be fair and before I start writing on this topic, I want to put it out there that I think Pence was to Trump what Brutus was to Caesar. I believe that what Trump asked of Pence was totally ethical and constituitonal and was nothing different that was asked in previous elections, can anyone remember the chad problem in Florida? Pence has gone out of his way to continue twisting the blade in Trump’s back every chance he gets. Though in the 2024 primaries it shows that all of his efforts did little to dampen our countries feelings toward his old boss. Pence’s campaign was an abject failure. Also of note, the only people that were armed in Jan 6, were the police and capital guards. Case in point how many people did Trump’s followers shoot? The only person shot and killed was an unarmed Trump follower. Now that you know how I feel about him, I will press on. Thanks to Google’s bias, I am having to use other search engines.

In an interview hours after former President Donald Trump was indicted for an alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election, one of his attorneys said that all Trump had ultimately asked his vice president to do was “simply pause” the Electoral College count at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

On Fox News the following night, Aug. 2, former Vice President Mike Pence called that claim “completely false.” Pence said Trump and his “gaggle of crackpot lawyers” asked him “to literally reject votes.”

“I think it’s important that the American people know what happened in the days before January 6,” Pence said. “President Trump demanded that I use my authority as vice president presiding over the count of the Electoral College to essentially overturn the election by returning or literally rejecting votes. I had no authority to do that.”

For those who might doubt him, Pence urged them to “read the indictment.”

Pence is featured prominently throughout the 45-page indictment, but there are seven and a half pages that specifically deal with “The Defendant’s [Trump’s] Attempts to Enlist the Vice President to Fraudulently Alter the Election Results at the January 6 Certification Proceeding.” That section relies heavily on interviews Pence provided to federal prosecutors, and the indictment references “contemporaneous notes” Pence kept to memorialize some events and conversations.

According to the indictment, “As the January 6 congressional certification proceeding approached and other efforts to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function failed, the Defendant [Trump] sought to enlist the Vice President to use his ceremonial role at the certification to fraudulently alter the election results. The Defendant did this first by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to convince the Vice President to accept the Defendant’s fraudulent electors, reject legitimate electoral votes, or send legitimate electoral votes to state legislatures for review rather than count them. When that failed, the Defendant attempted to use a crowd of supporters that he had gathered in Washington, D.C., to pressure the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results.”

Here are some of the related events described in the indictment leading up to Jan. 6:

Dec. 23, 2020: Trump retweeted (and later deleted) a memo titled “Operation ‘PENCE’ CARD,” which, the indictment states, “falsely asserted that the Vice President could, among other things, unilaterally disqualify legitimate electors from six targeted states.”

The same day, the indictment says, co-conspirator 2 (whom we have identified as John Eastman, a Trump attorney) “circulated a two-page memorandum outlining a plan for the Vice President to unlawfully declare the Defendant the certified winner of the presidential election.” In the memo, Eastman “transmitted two slates of electors and proposed that the Vice President announce that ‘because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States.’” The indictment says the Eastman memo then “proposed steps that he acknowledged violated the ECA [Electoral Count Act]” and ended with, “Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.” It was a position, the indictment says, that contradicted a position Eastman himself had staked out just two months prior.

Dec. 25, 2020: When Pence called Trump to wish him a Merry Christmas, Trump requested that Pence reject electoral votes on Jan. 6. Pence responded, as he had in previous conversations, “You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome.”

Dec. 29, 2020: Citing Pence’s “contemporaneous notes,” the indictment says Trump “falsely told the Vice President that the ‘Justice Dept [was] finding major infractions.’”

Jan. 1, 2021: Trump called Pence and “berated him because he had learned that the Vice President had opposed a lawsuit seeking a judicial decision that, at the certification, the Vice President had the authority to reject or return votes to the states under the Constitution.” Pence told Trump he didn’t think there was any constitutional authority for that. In response, Trump reportedly told Pence, “You’re too honest.”

Jan. 3, 2021: Trump again told Pence “that at the certification proceeding, the Vice President had the absolute right to reject electoral votes and the ability to overturn the election.” Pence said he disagreed and noted that “a federal appeals court had rejected the lawsuit making that claim the previous day.”

That same day, the indictment states, Eastman “circulated a second memorandum that included a new plan under which, contrary to the ECA, the Vice President would send the elector slates to the state legislatures to determine which slate to count.”

Jan. 4, 2021: Trump held a meeting with Eastman and Pence, along with Marc Short, who was Pence’s chief of staff, and Greg Jacob, who was Pence’s counsel. The purpose of the meeting, the indictment states, was to convince Pence “based on the Defendant’s knowingly false claims of election fraud, that the Vice President should reject or send to the states Biden’s legitimate electoral votes, rather than count them.”

Based on Pence’s contemporaneous notes from the meeting, the indictment says, Trump “made knowingly false claims of election fraud, including, ‘Bottom line — won every state by 100,000s of votes’” and asking, “What about 205,000 votes more in PA than voters?” (The indictment says Trump was parroting a claim that senior Justice Department officials had told him the night before was false. We debunked this claim when Trump repeated it two days later in his Jan. 6, 2021, speech.)

Trump and Eastman then asked Pence “to either unilaterally reject the legitimate electors from the seven targeted states, or send the question of which slate was legitimate to the targeted states’ legislatures.” When Pence told Trump even Eastman said he wasn’t sure if Pence had that authority, Trump responded, “That’s okay, I prefer the other suggestion,” meaning the one in which Pence simply rejected the electors unilaterally.

(That allegation contradicts any claims that Trump only asked Pence to pause the voting. A pause to return the issue to the states was only one of the options put to Pence, according to Pence and the indictment. We should note that Trump attorney John Lauro qualified his claim on CNN on Aug. 1, saying that a pause was Trump’s “ultimate request” or “final ask” of Pence, not that it was the only request ever put to Pence.)

The indictment also includes a conversation from that day that was highlighted in the final report issued by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Eric Herschmann, an attorney working for Trump in the White House, told the committee he had told Eastman he thought Eastman’s plan was “crazy” and that if implemented, “you’re going to cause riots in the streets.” Herschmann said Eastman responded with “words to the effect of there’s been violence in this history of our country to protect the democracy or to protect the [R]epublic.”

Jan. 5, 2021: At Trump’s direction, Short and Jacob again met with Eastman, who advocated that Pence “unilaterally reject electors from the targeted states,” as Trump the previous day had said he preferred. According to the indictment, Jacob told Eastman that “following through with the proposal would result in a ‘disastrous situation’ where the election might ‘have to be decided in the streets.’”

That same day, Trump posted to social media, “The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.” Trump met alone that day with Pence. According to the indictment, “When the Vice President refused to agree to the Defendant’s request that he obstruct the certification, the Defendant grew frustrated and told the Vice President that the Defendant would have to publicly criticize him.”

Despite Pence’s stance, hours later Trump had his campaign issue a false public statement saying, “The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.”

Jan. 6, 2021: In the early morning on the day that Congress met to officially count the electoral votes, the indictment states, Trump “raised publicly the false expectation” that Pence might “fraudulently alter the election outcome.” Trump posted on social media, “States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud … All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”

At 11:15 a.m., the indictment says, Trump called Pence “and again pressured him to fraudulently reject or return Biden’s legitimate electoral votes. The Vice President again refused. Immediately after the call, the Defendant decided to single out the Vice President in public remarks he would make within the hour, reinserting language that he had personally drafted earlier that morning — falsely claiming that the Vice President had authority to send electoral votes to the states — but that advisors had previously successfully advocated be removed.”

“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing,” Trump told the crowd at the “Save America” rally that day. “I hope so. I hope so because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do. This is from the number one or certainly one of the top constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We’re supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our constitution, and protect our constitution. States want to revote. The States got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the States to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people.”

Just before 1 p.m., the indictment notes, Pence released a statement “explaining that his role as President of the Senate at the certification proceeding that was about to begin did not include ‘unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.’”

When Trump supporters soon after violently attacked the Capitol and temporarily halted Congress’ election proceedings, the indictment notes that some in the crowd chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” and “Bring him out!” and “Traitor Pence!”

That night, the indictment says, just after the House and Senate reconvened in a joint session, Eastman made one last appeal to Pence’s counsel, writing, “I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation [of the ECA] and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here.”

At 3:41 a.m. on Jan. 7, Pence announced the certified results and declared Biden the victor.

The day after the indictment was handed down, Trump posted a message on social media, saying Pence did not “fight against Election Fraud.” And, Trump insisted, “The V.P. had power that Mike didn’t understand, but after the Election, the RINOS & Dems changed the law, taking that power away!”

That’s not accurate. As we wrote when Trump made a similar claim in a CNN town hall in May, Pence didn’t have the legal right to send electoral votes back to the states. Also, although Congress revised the Electoral Count Act in December 2022, the revision merely “reaffirmed” that a vice president’s role in the electoral vote counting process is “ministerial.” It was not an admission that the law previously allowed a vice president to take the steps Trump sought.

Why Mike Pence failed to make inroads in Trump’s party

Former Vice President Mike Pence bowed to the inevitable when he dropped his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, as he was unable to resolve the central dilemma of his campaign.

Pence was running as a repudiation of former President Donald Trump’s changes to the Republican Party while his service as Trump’s vice president was the main reason for primary voters to want to send him to the White House.

JOHNSON SPEAKERSHIP SPELLS TROUBLE FOR DEMOCRATS IN WASHINGTON SPENDING FIGHT

Incumbent and former vice presidents generally run as an additional term for the presidents they serve.

Pence was running against Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 nomination. He understandably had broken personally with Trump, given the events of Jan. 6. And he was campaigning against Trump’s populist redefinition of the GOP.

Yet at the same time, Pence was running on the accomplishments of the “Trump-Pence administration.”

It was a difficult needle to thread. And ultimately, Pence couldn’t thread it.

If an evangelical candidate is polling in the low single digits in Iowa, as Pence was at 2% in the NBC News/Des Moines Register poll and 1% in the Iowa State/Civiqs survey, the path to victory is not there.

Pence was not in a position to replicate even what candidates like Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz have done in the past, much less Republican candidates who have gone on to clinch the nomination.

In many respects, Pence was in a similar situation in 2024 as George H.W. Bush in 1988. Bush was running as the “kinder, gentler” Ronald Reagan. Bush was a throwback to pre-Reagan Republicanism with a longer political resume. Bush loyalists in the administration were seen as an obstacle to the Reagan revolution, even though most of them had more government experience than the movement conservatives working for the 40th president.

Pence was a throwback to pre-Trump Republicanism. Like Bush 41, he was consciously chosen as vice president as an ambassador to the old guard. Pence’s lieutenants were among those seen as thwarting Trump’s populist initiatives. Many of them became key witnesses against Trump’s activities on Jan. 6.

The only difference working in Pence’s favor is that he did not run against the man whose ticket he joined in the primaries, as Bush did against Reagan in 1980. Pence merely endorsed Cruz and attempted to pull the Texas senator across the finish line in the 2016 Indiana primary. Instead, Indiana functionally marked the end of Cruz’s campaign when Trump won anyway.

All of the other differences with Bush worked against Pence. Reagan was term-limited out of running in 1988. Bush, for all his caveats and qualifications, was running as Reagan’s third term, with the Gipper’s blessing over more conservative candidates.

Jan. 6, when Pence rebuffed his boss on Electoral College certification as “Hang Mike Pence” rioters stormed the Capitol, is an event without precedent. Unfortunately for Pence, Trump retained a hold on the GOP primary electorate afterward that may not rival Reagan’s but certainly approached it.

If Bush had run for president in 1988 as the candidate seeking to return to “Eastern Establishment” Republicanism — saying supply-side is “voodoo economics,” casting a way eye toward the Christian conservatives who joined the Reagan coalition — he would have failed as surely as Pence did this year.

By 1988, there wasn’t much of a constituency for rolling back Reaganism in the Republican Party. Reagan was four years removed from a 49-state landslide victory that came within fewer than one vote per precinct of being a 50-state sweep. (The District of Columbia was hopeless for the GOP.)

There might be a real constituency for rejecting Trumpism in the GOP circa 2024, despite the former president’s commanding polling lead. But Pence was not the ideal candidate for it.

It was easier for former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley to run as a fresher face for non-populist conservatism or for former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to bill himself as an anti-Trump pugilist than the man’s erstwhile understudy.

Pence was a loyal vice president for four years. His anti-Trump conversion may have began on Jan. 6. But Pence did not pursue it with much fervor until he came close to mounting a presidential campaign himself. Trump’s veep was a poor fit for Never Trump standard-bearer.

That left Pence without much of a lane for the nomination. Thus, the end of the road came before Iowa.

Pence, Trump lawyer clash over what Trump told his vice president ahead of Jan. 6

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s defense attorney says the former president never asked Mike Pence to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 election, but only wanted the former vice president to “pause” the certification of votes to allow states to investigate his claims of election fraud. Those baseless claims had already been rejected by numerous courts.

Speaking on several Sunday morning news shows, Trump attorney John Lauro said Trump was within his First Amendment rights when he petitioned Pence to delay the certification on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The ultimate ask of Vice President Pence was to pause the counts and allow the states to weigh in,” Lauro said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He added that Trump was convinced there were irregularities in the election that needed to be investigated by state authorities before the election could be certified.

Pence, who like Trump is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024, flatly rejected that account during an interview Sunday, saying Trump seemed “convinced” as early as December that Pence had the right to reject or return votes and that on Jan. 5, Trump’s attorneys 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,” Pence said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Pence’s role in certifying Joe Biden’s win over Trump in the 2020 election makes him a central figure in the prosecution against Trump on charges that he sought to overturn the will of the voters and remain in office even after the courts had roundly rejected his claims of electoral fraud. Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general also had said there were was no credible evidence the election was tainted.

Last week’s indictment chronicles how Trump and his allies, in what special counsel Jack Smith described as an attack on a “bedrock function of the U.S. government,” repeatedly lied about the results in the two months after he lost the election and pressured Pence and state election officials to take action to help him cling to power. Those efforts culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification.

Trump pleaded not guilty to those charges. Separately, he also faces charges that he falsified business records relating to hush money payments to a porn actor in New York and improperly kept classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida, resort and obstructed an investigation into their handling.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Lauro said Pence’s testimony will show Trump believed the election was rigged and that he was listening to the advice of his attorneys when he sought to delay the certification. Pence, who appeared before the grand jury that indicted Trump, said he will comply with the law if asked to testify.

“I cannot wait until I have the opportunity to cross examine Mr. Pence,” Lauro said. “He will completely eliminate any doubt that President Trump firmly believed that the election irregularities had led to an inappropriate result.”

The 45-page indictment details how people close to Trump repeatedly told him he had lost and that there was no truth to his claims of fraud. In one encounter days before the riot, Trump told Pence he was “too honest” after the vice president said he didn’t have the authority to reject electoral votes, the indictment says.

Former allies of Trump have said Trump knew he lost but spread false claims about fraud anyway. After he failed to convince state officials to illegally swing the election, Trump and his allies recruited fake electors in swing states to sign certificates falsely stating Trump had prevailed.

“He knew well that he had lost the election,” Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr told CNN last week.

Lauro said Trump’s defense team will seek to move the case from Washington because it wants a more diverse jury. He said he would support televising the trial, and dismissed speculation that it could wrap up before the 2024 election.

“In 40 years of practicing law, on a case of this magnitude, I’ve not known a single case to go to trial before two to three years,” Lauro said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Responding to questions about whether Trump can get a fair trial in the nation’s capital, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor and a Republican, said he can.

“Yes, I believe jurors can be fair. I believe in the American people,” Christie said Sunday on CNN.

A slew of people charged in the Jan. 6 riot have tried to get their trials moved out of Washington. Yet judges have rejected those motions in every case, saying fair jurors can be found with proper questioning.

Trump’s legal team has until 5 p.m. Monday to respond to the prosecution’s request for a protective order limiting Trump’s ability to publicly disclose information about the case. The decision is up to U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan.

Protective orders are common in criminal cases, but prosecutors said it’s “particularly important in this case” because Trump has posted on social media about “witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him.”

Prosecutors pointed specifically to a post on Trump’s Truth Social platform from Friday in which Trump wrote, in all capital letters, “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!”

Pence details fracture with Trump over his refusal to overturn 2020 election in new book

Former Vice President Mike Pence wrote in his new memoir that former President Donald Trump warned him days before the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol that he would inspire the hatred of hundreds of thousands of people because he was “too honest” to attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The comments are part of the vivid ending of Pence’s new memoir, “So Help Me God.” It’s being released as Trump prepares what an aide has said will be the launch of his 2024 presidential campaign Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago.

Pence has also hinted at his own potential 2024 run, recently telling ABC News he thinks “we’ll have better choices in the future” than Trump. But in his memoir, he largely defends Trump – touting the former president’s achievements, downplaying controversies and excusing Trump’s personal vendettas, including against the late Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Still, Pence – who said Trump was “reckless” with his tweet attacking his vice president that day – was critical of Trump over the events surrounding the insurrection, writing that he told Trump directly afterward that he was angry and that what he’d seen that day infuriated him.

“The truth was, as reckless as the president’s tweet was, I really didn’t have time for it. Rioters were ransacking the Capitol,” Pence wrote. “Some of them, I was later told, were chanting, ‘Hang Mike Pence!’ The president had decided to be part of the problem. I was determined to be part of the solution. I ignored the tweet and got back to work.”

The conversations between Trump and Pence have been one of the key themes of the House’s January 6 committee hearings, and the book gives Pence, who has not testified before the committee, the chance to weigh in on his exchanges with Trump.

Pence said that he’d begun election night in 2020 confident, but things changed later in the evening, he wrote, when results in states with large shares of mail-in ballots “began to shift” and the Trump-Pence ticket’s lead “started to vanish.”

“The mood in the White House, initially ebullient, began to sour,” Pence wrote.

He described watching Trump claim in an early Wednesday morning speech that the election process had been “a fraud on the American public” and said the days that followed the election were “a little like the twilight zone,” as Trump’s team challenged states’ results.

The Saturday after the election, Pence wrote, Trump’s son-in-law and top aide Jared Kushner called him to ask whether he thought there had been fraud in the election. He told Kushner there likely was some fraud, but he doubted it was why they’d lost, according to the book.

Here are other key moments Pence described in his memoir:

‘What if we hadn’t had the rally?’

While Pence acknowledges the reality of the electoral vote count, he does not describe Joe Biden as having won the 2020 race fairly, or take issue with the Trump campaign’s strategy of fighting swing states’ results in court. He discusses turning the Texas effort to challenge some states’ electoral votes into an applause line while campaigning in Georgia for two Republican senators in runoff elections.

Pence wrote that he asked his general counsel for a briefing on the procedures of the Electoral Count Act after Trump in a December 5 phone call “mentioned challenging the election results in the House of Representatives for the first time.”

Over lunch on December 21, Pence wrote, he tried to steer Trump to listen to the White House counsel’s team’s advice, rather than outside lawyers.

“I said, ‘You’ve got a good team at the White House,’ to which he grumbled, ‘No, I don’t,’” Pence wrote. “If the president had chosen to listen to those good men and not the gaggle of outside lawyers who took over the election challenges from the campaign, things would have been very different.”

Pence wrote that Trump told him in a New Year’s Day phone call: “You’re too honest,” he chided, predicting that “hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts” and “people are gonna think you’re stupid.”

“Mr. President, I don’t question there were irregularities and fraud,” Pence wrote that he told Trump. “It’s just a question of who decides, and under the law that is Congress.”

“With that, the president said that he guessed it probably just ‘takes courage,’ implying that was what I lacked,” Pence continued. “I paused before replying and, facing him from my seat in front of the Resolute Desk, said firmly, ‘Mr. President, I have courage, and you know that.’”

Pence wrote that Trump relented and “said with more than a little sadness, ‘Well, I’m gonna have to say you did a great disservice.’”

Pence, who said he refused to leave the Capitol on January 6, also wrote about his meeting with Trump in the days after January 6. Trump asked Pence, “Were you scared?” the former vice president wrote. “‘No,’ I replied, ‘I was angry. You and I had our differences that day, Mr. President, and seeing those people tearing up the Capitol infuriated me.’”

Pence wrote that he told Trump he was praying for him and encouraged him to pray. Trump didn’t say anything initially, Pence said, and then responded with “genuine sadness” in his voice: “What if we hadn’t had the rally? What if they hadn’t gone to the Capitol?”

A personal warning to Putin

Pence wrote that in 2018, when he was representing the United States at the ASEAN conference in Singapore – the type of meeting he says Trump “was never big on” – he was approached at a plenary session with a tap on the shoulder by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I noticed that Putin projected a familiarity toward me. It came, I concluded, from his friendly meeting with Trump earlier in the year. It was as if we were old acquaintances,” Pence wrote. “I didn’t return the favor. I kept my expression firm and fixed, and the photo of me looking down at him with a furrowed brow and a grim expression was published around the world, just as I’d hoped it would be.”

At the end of the session, during a brief meeting requested by the Russians, Pence said Putin “was just inches from me, expecting a friendly chat.”

When Putin wrapped up his comments about restarting nuclear nonproliferation negotiations, Pence said he told the Russian leader: “Mr. President, we know what happened in 2016, and it can’t happen again.”

“Though Putin speaks English, he listened as his translator leaned in, relaying my message. His expression grew incredulous. He turned with a question to his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, presumably asking what I was talking about. The only word I recognized was ‘elections,’” Pence wrote. “Then he spoke through his translator, saying Russia had nothing to do with the election. To which I responded, ‘Mr. President, I’m very aware of what you’ve said about that, but I’m telling you we know what happened in 2016, and it can’t happen again.’ Putin seemed taken aback. Then he shrugged and changed the subject back to his upcoming summit in Argentina.”

Pence wrote that it was “absolutely right” for the FBI to investigate claims of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, but pushed back on the idea “the investigation was into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia and into Trump himself.”

Pence acknowledged that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election but insisted “its mischief had not elected Trump president” and called it an “attempt to sow discord, to destabilize US democracy, to spread false information across both left-wing and right-wing platforms so as to turn Americans against one another.”

“I always had the impression that the president felt that acknowledging Russian meddling would somehow cheapen our victory,” he wrote. “But in my view, there was no reason for Trump not to call out Russia’s bad behavior; it wasn’t an admission of collusion but a declaration that our intelligence services knew what Putin’s regime had been up to. I had no problem calling Russia out.”

Meeting with North Koreans at 2018 Olympics scrapped

Pence confirmed that he had been set to meet with North Korean officials during the 2018 Olympic Games, but the meeting was pulled down hours beforehand by Pyongyang.

The North Koreans had been the ones pushing for engagement in Pyeongchang, Pence said, also noting that former South Korean President Moon Jae-in had “wanted to politely force a meeting.”

The former vice president said that while the Olympics began, “the North Korean government was making back-channel overtures to me about having a meeting.”

“I relayed the information to Trump. See what they have to say, he told me. If the meeting can be arranged, take it,” Pence recounted.

The meeting “appeared to be a go” and was arranged to take place on Pence’s last day in South Korea, at the Blue House. However, “two hours before the meeting was set to begin, we got word that the North Koreans were no longer willing to participate and we were told that the order ‘came from Pyongyang,’ leading to speculation that Kim Jong Un was irritated by my refusal to engage with his sister while the cameras clicked and the world watched.”

Pence had been seated in the same box with Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, at the Olympic Stadium, but as Pence put it: “I ignored her.”

The former vice president also described what he said were efforts by the former South Korean leader to get him to engage with the North Korean leaders.

“Before the opening ceremony, there was a large reception and dinner for the two hundred national leaders in attendance,” he recalled, noting that Moon had arranged for he and the North Koreans to be seated at the head table, and that “a group photograph was arranged at the outset of the banquet.” Pence and former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe intentionally arrived late to the banquet and did not participate in the group photo.

“That would have been a huge symbolic victory for North Korea. No chance,” Pence said.

Trump’s relationship with Fauci

Pence delves into his role in the Trump administration’s battle against the coronavirus pandemic, and details the relationship between Trump and Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert.

Pence praised Fauci, writing, “I was glad he was there. He was a reassuring voice to the public; Mitch McConnell had advised me, correctly, that Fauci would be a valuable member of the team because of his stature.”

However, Pence expressed how he didn’t understand why Fauci “was so insistent that Covid-19 had not emerged from a Chinese lab,” adding that he believed Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during most of the Trump administration, held a correct assessment in the lab leak theory.

“Dr. Robert Redfield of the CDC always held that it had, and the more we have learned, the more I believe that Bob was right,” Pence wrote.

Pence commented on Trump and Fauci’s relationship, writing that it was “very good” initially.

“Trump is from Queens, Fauci from Brooklyn, and Fauci was not put off by Trump’s New York brashness. He had grown up around it. He is a brash New Yorker, too,” Pence wrote.

Frustration with McCain over Obamacare vote

Pence detailed the personal angst between Trump and McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee who died in 2018. Trump had attacked McCain during the 2016 presidential campaign, saying he didn’t consider the man who had been a prisoner of war in Vietnam to be a hero.

“They were both sharp-elbowed men who punched back hard when attacked. But I always believed that had McCain lived, they would eventually have become friends,” Pence wrote.

He also made clear that he still resents the terminally ill McCain’s return to the Senate floor to cast the vote that would doom the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Pence wrote that he had put Trump and McCain on the phone together. McCain, in Pence’s retelling of the call, told Trump he was honored by the call, and gave no indication he would vote against the GOP bill.

“Then he walked out of the office, onto the Senate floor, caught the eye of the Senate clerk, gave a thumbs-down, walked over to his desk, and sat down,” Pence wrote. “There was an audible gasp. The effort to repeal and replace Obamacare was dead. The Trump administration had just been knocked back on its heels. Trump was irate. I was, too.”

Pence wrote that South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close friend of McCain, “deserved better” on the Obamacare repeal effort from his friend.

“In a fitting twist, immediately after McCain voted down Obamacare repeal, Rand Paul blocked consideration of the fiscal-year spending for the Departments of Defense, Energy, and State, which was nicknamed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act,” Pence wrote. “Trump was delighted. McCain was incensed. He actually said, ‘It is unfortunate that one senator chose to block consideration of a bill our nation needs right now.’ Takes one to know one.”

Mike Pence rejects Trump’s call to overturn Biden election

Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday refused President Donald Trump’s demand that he try to block confirmation by Congress of Joe Biden’s election as the next president of the United States.

Pence said in a letter that he did not believe, as Trump has claimed, that a vice president has the power to reject some Electoral College votes for a candidate.

“It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not,” Pence wrote in his three-page letter addressed to members of Congress.

His dramatic break from Trump came minutes before the Republican vice president began presiding over a joint session of Congress, which is meeting to declare former Democratic Vice President Biden the victor.

Pence said in his letter that he shared “the concerns of millions of Americans about the integrity of this election,” which Trump and his supporters have claimed without evidence was corrupted by widespread ballot fraud.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence presides over a joint session of Congress on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Saul Loeb | Getty Images

But Pence also wrote that “vesting the Vice President with unilateral authority to decide presidential contests would be entirely antithetical to” the system of check and balances between branches of the government designed by the framers of the Constitution.

“The Presidency belongs to the American people, and to them alone,” Pence wrote.

“When disputes concerning a presidential election arise, under Federal law, it is the people’s representatives who review the evidence and resolve disputes through a democratic process.”

Vice President Mike Pence presides over a joint session of the House and Senate as it convenes to confirm the Electoral College votes cast in November’s election, at the Capitol in Washington, DC, January 6, 2021.

Erin Schaff | AFP | Getty Images

Trump less than two hours later blasted Pence for his action.

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump wrote in a tweet.

“USA demands the truth!”

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Trump’s tweet came as protesters backing him stormed the Capitol and led to a suspension of debate, with Pence being ushered out of the Senate as a precaution.

As Pence released his statement, Trump was speaking at a rally outside of the White House, where he reiterated his call that the vice president undo Biden’s election.

Trump and his allies claim that he and Pence lost to Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris because of significant electoral ballot fraud in a handful of states that gave Biden his margin of victory.

“Mike Pence, I hope you’re gonna stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country, and if you’re not I’m gonna be very disappointed in you, I will tell you right now,” Trump said at the rally.

“I’m not hearing good stories.”

Multiple courts have rejected Trump’s claims of fraud and election irregularities.

Shortly after Pence gaveled in the joint session of Congress, several Republicans objected to Arizona’s Electoral College results in Biden’s favor, triggering a period of debate.

GOP lawmakers are expected to object to the election results of several other states, but those efforts are also expected to merely delay the confirmation that Biden won the presidency, not block it.

How Pence came to finally blame Trump for Jan. 6 Capitol attack

After months of silence, the former vice president has repeatedly called Trump’s words ‘reckless’

As the U.S. Capitol came under attack on Jan. 6, 2021, then-Vice President Mike Pence and his family hid from rioters who wanted to hurt him for refusing to overturn the 2020 election results. In the months that followed, Pence defended his decision and denounced the violence — but he rarely mentioned Donald Trump in doing so.

More than a year after the attack, Pence told a group of conservative lawyers that Trump was “wrong” to think a single person could overturn the will of voters.In November, as Pence promoted his memoir and mulled a run for president, he began to place blame. At least seven times over the last fourmonths, Pence has publicly said that Trump’s “reckless” words fueled the insurrection.

The latest statement came in a speech at a white-tie dinner hosted by journalists on Saturday night, during which Pence said: “President Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

The remarks were nearly word-for-word what Pence said in previous interviews, with an added call for accountability — even after he declined to participate in a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack and as he continues tofight a grand jury subpoena for a criminal investigation.

Here’s a timeline of what Pence has said about the Jan. 6 attack and Trump:

Jan. 6, 2021: Rioters ‘will be prosecuted’

As vice president, Pence presided over the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6. He’d faced pressure from Trump’s inner circle for weeks to use this role to refuse to certify some states that Joe Biden won.

As Pence prepared to travel to the U.S. Capitol to oversee that certification, Trump held a rally on the White House grounds and said:“Mike Pence, I hope you’re going tostand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. … And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you.”

Soon after, as rioters arrived on the Capitol grounds,Pence posted a letter on Twitter calling his role “largely ceremonial” and making clear that he wouldn’t stand in the way of the transfer of power. The letter doesn’t mention Trump by name.

At 2:20 p.m., the Senate was called into recess becauserioters breached the Capitol building. Pence and his family were taken to a secure location. Four minutes later, Trump wrote on Twitter: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”

At 3:35 p.m., as lawmakers and others called on Trump to urge the rioters to stand down,the vice president called for an end to the violence on Twitter and said “those involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” Within the hour, Trump put out a video statement with much softer language.

Pence reopened the Senate at 8 p.m. He did not publicly say anything about Trump.

Jan. 7, 2021: ‘You did not win’ to rioters

At 3:32 a.m., Pence officially affirmed Biden’s win.

“To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today: You did not win,” Pence said in a floor speech. “Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the people’s house. And as we reconvene in this chamber the world will again witness the resilience and strength of our democracy.” He did not mention Trump or GOP lawmakers who voted against the election’s certification.

June 3, 2021: ‘I don’t know if we’ll ever see eye to eye on that day’

About four months after leaving office, Pence spoke at a GOP dinner in New Hampshire and cast the former president as simply having a different perspective on what happened at the Capitol. “President Trump and I’ve spoken many times since we left office,” Pence said. “And I don’t know if we’ll ever see eye to eye on that day. But I will always be proud of what we accomplished for the American people over the last four years.”

Later that month, Pence gave a speech at a conservative conference in Florida, and the crowd chanted: “Traitor!”

June 24, 2021: ‘Un-American’ to overturn election results

In a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.,Pence explained that the vice president does not possess “the authority to reject or return electoral votes certified by states.”

“And the truth is, there’s almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president,” Pence said.

He repeatedly praised Trump but did not directly connect him to the Capitol attack and attacked Democrats investigating the Jan. 6 attack for being “intent on dividing our country to advance their leftist agenda.”

Dec. 1, 2021: ‘I know I did the right thing’ on Jan. 6

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Pence reiterated that he “did the right thing” in certifying the election results. Pence said he believed “there were irregularities” in voting, but said he didn’t think Congress was the appropriate venue to resolve those disputes because “elections are to be governed at the state level.”

“I know in my heart of hearts that on that day, we did our duty, under the Constitution,” Pence said. He added: “I don’t know if President Trump and I will ever see eye to eye on that day. Or that many of our most ardent supporters will agree with my decision that day. But I know I did the right thing.”

Feb. 4, 2022: ‘President Trump is wrong’

More than a year after the attack, Pence told a crowd of conservative lawyers at a Federalist Society conference that Trump was “wrong” to say that Pence had the authority to overturn the 2020 election results. He reiterated that it is “un-American” to try to subvert elections and said that Jan. 6 was a “dark day in the history of the United States Capitol.”

Oct. 14, 2022: Trump-Pence relationship ‘broke down’ after 2020

Pence’s name repeatedly came up during hearings held by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, and several of his advisers and former aides testified. But he never did. The day after the committee held its final hearing before the midterm election, snippets of Pence’s soon-to-be-published memoir emerged on Oct. 14.

The jacket copy of the memoir said: “On January 6, 2021, as the president pressured him to overturn the election, a mob erected a gallows on Capitol Hill and its members chanted ‘Hang Mike Pence!’ as they rampaged through the halls of Congress. The vice president refused to leave the Capitol, and once the riot was quelled, he reconvened Congress to complete the work of a peaceful transfer of power.”

The memoir also described a “tight bond” between Pence and Trump that “broke down after the 2020 election.”

Nov. 13, 2022: Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 were ‘reckless’ and ‘endangered me and my family’

As Pence prepared for the Nov. 15 release of his memoir, he said in an interview with ABC News that Trump’s “words that day at the rally endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building.” He added that Trump’s comments were “reckless” and said, “It was clear he decided to be part of the problem.”

“I turned to my daughter, who was standing nearby, and I said, ‘It doesn’t take courage to break the law. It takes courage to uphold the law,’” Pence said.

Nov. 15, 2022: ‘The president had decided to be part of the problem’

Pence’s memoir, titled “So Help Me God,” opens with the Jan. 6 attack.He blames Trump for believing “crank” lawyers who laid the groundwork for “a tragic day in January” and for egging on the rioters with his tweet.

“The truth was, as reckless as the president’s tweet was, I really didn’t have time for it. Rioters were ransacking the Capitol,” Pence wrote. “Some of them, I was later told, were chanting, ‘Hang Mike Pence!’ The president had decided to be part of the problem. I was determined to be part of the solution. I ignored the tweet and got back to work.”

Pence also wrote that Trump told him he was being “too honest” when he refused to help in overturning the 2020 election results.

Pence wrote in the book’s epilogue that the two men couldn’t reconcile given Trump’s continued attacks on his decision to not contest the election. “I decided it would be best to go our separate ways.” He wrote that he told Trump he’d continue to pray for him.

Nov. 18, 2022: ‘I hope the Justice Department is careful’

In an interview with NBC News, Pence blamed Trump’s legal counsel for misleading him about the 2020 election and said he hoped the Department of Justice would not charge the former president.

“I think the president’s actions and words on January 6th were reckless,” Pence said. “But I don’t know that it is criminal to take bad advice from lawyers. And so I hope the Justice Department is careful.”

Nov. 20, 2022: Trump’s ‘words and actions in and around January 6 were reckless’

During a CBS News “Face the Nation” interview, Pence repeated his talking points yet again.

“The president’s words and actions in and around January 6 were reckless,” Pence said. He added that Trump’s tweets on Jan. 6 “endangered my family and endangered people that were in the Capitol and was indefensible.”

In a clip of the interview published on Nov. 16, 2022, Pence also said he was “closing the door” on speaking with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. The committee called the move “disappointing” in a statement.

Nov. 22, 2022: Is Trump a good man? ‘Only God knows our hearts’

And Pence repeated those talking points againduring an NPR interview. “President Trump was wrong, and his words and actions that day were reckless,” Pence said. “They endangered my family and people at the Capitol building. And I’ll never hold any other view.”

Asked whether he still considers Trump a “good man,” as he said during the 2016 speech accepting his vice-presidential nomination, Pence replied, “I truly do believe that only God knows our hearts,” and “I’ll leave it to others to make their own judgments.”

Nov. 29, 2022: ‘Congress has no right to my testimony’

And Pence repeated those words again during an appearance at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics:“His words were reckless. They endangered my family, and they endangered everyone at the Capitol. … In that moment, he decided to be part of the problem.”

Pence also explained his reasoning for rebuffing congressional inquiries. “Congress has no right to my testimony,” Pence told the audience. When asked why he wrote a book about his account but didn’t testify to the House, he said, “I think the American people deserve my story.”

Dec. 1, 2022: Trump felt ‘a deep remorse’ about Jan. 6

In a December interview with PBS News Hour, Pence said he met with Trump several days after the attack. Trump did not apologize, Pence said, but the former vice president said he sensed “a deep remorse” within Trump.

Host Judy Woodruff pressed Pence on why he supported the Trump campaign’s post-election lawsuits and would not declare Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud were not backed up by evidence.

“It never occurred to me … that the violence of that day would ensue,” Pence said. “And the tragedy that unfolded that day was something that I, frankly, never imagined.”

Feb. 15: Pence fights DOJ subpoena in Jan. 6 investigation

The Justice Department issued Pence a subpoena as part of the special counsel investigating potential criminal interference by Trump in the 2020 election, media outlets reported on Feb. 9. Pence’s legal counsel has decided to fight the order.

Speaking to reporters in Iowa on Feb. 15, Pence said the subpoena was “unconstitutional” and that he’d fight the case “as far as it needs to go, if needs be to the Supreme Court of the United States.”

“No vice president in American history has ever been compelled to testify against a president with whom they served. But we live in unprecedented times,” Pence said during a Feb. 16 speech in which he vowed to “fight the subpoena from Biden’s DOJ.”

March 11: ‘History will hold Donald Trump accountable’

As a featured speaker at the Gridiron Club’s annual dinner, Pence cracked jokes about Trump’s legal troubles and made his strongest rebuke yet of Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack.

“Donald Trump was wrong,” Pence said. “I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

He continued: “The American people have a right to know what took place at the Capitol on January 6th. But make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence will not endorse Trump in 2024

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Friday that he would not endorse his former boss for president in the 2024 election.

Pence revealed the decision during an interview on Fox News. “I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” the Republican said.

Pence’s announcement came as Trump secured enough Republican delegates this week to clinch the party’s nomination.

Trump “is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years,” said Pence.

“As I have watched his candidacy unfold, I’ve seen him walking away from our commitment to confronting the national debt,” Pence said. “I’ve seen him starting to shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life.”

Pence also noted Trump’s “reversal on getting tough on China and supporting our administration’s effort to force a sale of [ByteDance’s] TikTok.”

Trump recently reversed his long-held position on whether TikTok should be permitted to continue operating in the U.S. under the ownership of China-based ByteDance.

Pence mounted his own run for president against Trump and a crowded field of Republican hopefuls, but dropped out in October 2023 after his campaign failed to gain traction with GOP primary voters.

Pence added Friday that he would “never vote” for Democratic President Joe Biden, who also secured his party’s nomination in March 12 primary contests.

“I’m going to keep my vote to myself,” said Pence.

Pence served as Trump’s vice president for their single term in office, from January 2017 through January 2021.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Pence and congressional lawmakers were forced to flee Senate and House chambers when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol complex.

Trump had urged his followers that morning to march to the Capitol and protest the certification of Biden’s victory in the 2020 election over him.

As the mob breached the Capitol security fence and attacked law enforcement, Pence was inside presiding over a joint session of Congress meeting to ratify Electoral College votes.

Mike Pence Reveals Four Reasons He Is Not Backing Donald Trump

Former Vice President Mike Pence outlined four reasons he is refusing to back Donald Trump’s presidential bid during the Indiana 250 Off the Record podcast, which came out Thursday.

Pence cited Trump’s continued belief that Pence should have refused to certify the 2020 presidential election results, his concern that the GOP nominee was pursuing a more “isolationist” foreign policy, the rising national debt and his concern that abortion is deemphasized in the GOP’s 2024 policy platform.

Pence, who served as Trump’s vice president from January 2017 to January 2021, helped shore up the president’s support with the religious right. However, the two fell out badly when Pence defied Trump and certified the 2020 presidential election results in Congress. Trump claimed, without evidence, that the election had been rigged against him, a view that was repeatedly rejected in the courts.

On January 6, 2021, hundreds of Trump supporters stormed Congress in an effort to prevent the election’s certification, with some chanting, “Hang Mike Pence.”

Speaking on the podcast, which interviews prominent community and business figures in Indiana, Pence said that after Trump secured the 2024 Republican nomination he “reflected on it.” He concluded he couldn’t offer his endorsement “because the president has not changed his view of my constitutional duties on January 6 and also because I see President Trump leading our party away from many of the policies that we governed on for four years.”

Pence also criticized the direction Trump has been taking the Republican Party in on foreign policy. “I see the president and some of his most ardent supporters, including his running mate now, advocate a more isolationist view, which is not my view of the proper role of the United States or the Republican Party.”

Earlier this month, Trump announced he had selected Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate. In 2022, Vance said he didn’t “care enough” about the Ukraine conflict to “get a bunch of our citizens killed and pour more and more money into the war sinkhole.”

On the podcast, Pence contrasted this view with Trump’s first term, in which “we believed in a strong defense and a robust foreign policy.”

He went on: “We directed our military to take down the ISIS caliphate and their leader, we took out Qassem Soleimani, we sent cruise missiles not once but twice when they used chemical weapons on their own people.”

Pence went on to criticize Trump for not focusing on the rising U.S. national debt, which the Treasury estimates hit $33.17 trillion in 2023. He also hit out at the GOP’s 2024 policy platform, which, unlike past versions, made only a brief mention of abortion.

The Indiana Republican said: “I believe the national debt represents one of the greatest threats to the vitality of our country, and to our children and grandchildren, and I see my party and our standard-bearer walking away from dealing with the national debt, even being willing to talk about entitlement reform. And, of course, just in the last week the Republican Party removed historic language endorsing the sanctity of human life from our party’s platform.”

Mike Pence: history will hold Donald Trump accountable over Capitol attack

Former vice-president, speaking at Gridiron dinner, says it ‘mocks decency’ to portray January 6 as anything other than a ‘disgrace’

Mike Pence has offered a rebuke of his one-time boss Donald Trump, saying history will hold the former president accountable for his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

Pence, then vice-president, was in the Capitol when thousands of Trump supporters breached the building in an attempt to stop Congress certifying the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.

As Senate president, Pence presided over the ceremonial task of approving the votes of the electoral college.

Throughout the siege, Trump sent several tweets, one calling on Republicans to “fight” and others making false claims of voter fraud. He also criticised Pence for certifying the results.

Some rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence”. A makeshift gallows was erected outside. Pence was spirited to safety by Secret Service agents.

On Saturday at the Gridiron dinner in Washington, Pence told journalists and their guests: “President Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

Pence is now considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 – against Trump, the clear leader in polling.

Pence rarely addressed January 6 in the months after the riot but he has now upped his criticism of the rioters and Trump. In a memoir released in November he accused Trump of endangering his family.

“What happened that day was a disgrace,” Pence told the Gridiron audience. “And it mocks decency to portray it any other way. For as long as I live, I will never, ever diminish the injuries sustained, the lives lost, or the heroism of law enforcement on that tragic day.”

A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pence’s remarks came a few days after the Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired highly selective, misleading security footage of the Capitol attack, in an attempt to claim many rioters were “orderly”.

Carlson’s depiction was sharply criticised by Democrats and Senate Republicans. Many other Republicans, particularly in the House of Representatives, shrugged off the episode.

On Sunday, a relatively moderate House Republican was asked if Pence was right to say history would hold Trump accountable for January 6. Nancy Mace, from South Carolina, sidestepped the question.

“I see this in two parts,” she told CNN’s State of the Union. “I think both sides are really struggling, looking at the nomination process. You’ve got some on the left that don’t want Biden to run, you’ve got those on the right that don’t want [Trump] to run.

“You know, a lot of folks on both sides keep bringing up January 6, and it’s keeping us from moving our country forward.”

Mace was not among the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol attack, making Trump’s second impeachment the most bipartisan in US history.

Nonetheless, she also saluted her own success in defeating a challenger endorsed by Trump last year, and said Republicans should unite behind a candidate “who can win the White House”.

Asked again if Trump would be held accountable, Mace said: “He is one of the only candidates in right now … we have a long way to go for additional candidates to jump in and see how the field lays out.”

Asked if the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was right to have released more than 40,000 hours of Capitol security footage to Carlson – a decision for which McCarthy has faced fierce criticism – Mace said: “I said early on … it was important that it should be released to every outlet including CNN, every media outlet, every defense attorney so that the public can see for itself.

“There was violence on that day. You cannot deny that and you know, it was a dark day in our history. But so was the summer of 2020.”

Mace proceeded to compare the deadly attack on Congress – now linked to nine deaths, more than a thousand arrests and hundreds of convictions including some for seditious conspiracy – to protests for racial justice after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.

“We saw very few arrests when there were attacks by … members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. I had my house spray painted two summers ago and no one’s been held to account for that.”

Trump admits for the first time he wanted Pence to ‘overturn the election’ during the January 6 joint session and slams VP for not ‘exercising his power’

Former President Donald Trump suggested for the first time Sunday night that he wanted Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election when the vice president chaired the joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College vote count on January 6, 2021. 

Trump pointed to efforts on Capitol Hill to change the Electoral Count Act, including firming up the language to make clear that the vice president is only there to count votes and can’t override the will of the voters. 

‘Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away,’ Trump claimed. ‘Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!’ 

Trump had argued, ‘If the Vice President (Mike Pence) had “absolutely no right” to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election?’ 

Collins, a Maine Republican, is part of a bipartisan group taking a look at making changes to the Electoral Count Act, which dictates how disputes over the vote count are handled. 

Former President Donald Trump suggested Sunday night that he wanted Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election when the vice president chaired the joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College vote count on January 6.

Trump’s statement comes after CNN reported that Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and other Trump campaign officials oversaw efforts to assemble alternate slates of pro-Trump electors, hoping Pence would choose to count their votes on January 6 instead of the legitimate Electoral College members. 

In the run-up to the vote count, Pence sent out a statement saying publicly that he didn’t believe he had the power to pick and choose from slates of electors.    

The morning of December 14, when electors met in state capitals around the country, Trump adviser Stephen Miller previewed the plan. 

‘As we speak, today, an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote and we’re going to send those results up to Congress,’ Miller said on Fox & Friends that morning.   

‘This will ensure that all of our legal remedies remain open,’ Miller continued. ‘That means if we win these cases in the courts, we can direct that these alternate electors be certified.’

On Friday, the January 6 select committee subpoenaed 14 people involved in the scheme to send fake certifications of the electoral vote to the National Archives. 

The committee said that people tried to falsely declare Trump the winner in seven swing states, which were won by now President Joe Biden. 

‘The Select Committee is seeking information about attempts in multiple states to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including the planning and coordination of efforts to send false slates of electors to the National Archives,’ said the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson. ‘We believe the individuals we have subpoenaed today have information about how these so-called alternate electors met and who was behind that scheme.’ 

Thompson added that the ‘existence of these purported alternate-elector votes was used as justification to delay or block the certification of the election during the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.’  

George Conway, the anti-Trump lawyer husband of former Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, took to Twitter to mock Trump’s understanding of the law.  

Conway said ‘The Twelfth Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887 already make it entirely clear that the Vice President merely opens the envelopes.’ 

‘But sometimes we want to make laws even clearer so that even semiliterate psychopaths have a chance of understanding them,’ Conway added.  

Pence disputes Trump legal team’s claims, and says Trump asked him “what he thought” they should do after 2020 election

Former Vice President Mike Pence refuted the notion that former President Donald Trump only asked him to delay the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, to allow for audits of state election results, disputing the characterization of their interactions made by some members of Trump’s legal team.

“That’s not what happened,” Pence said during an interview with “Face the Nation” that aired Sunday.

“From sometime in the middle of December, the president began to be told that I had some authority to reject or return votes back to the states,” he continued. “I had no such authority.”

On Tuesday, Trump was indicted for a second time on federal charges. This most recent indictment stemmed from his efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 presidential election, efforts which culminated in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The indictment included four charges against Trump: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

One of the allegations against Trump is that he attempted to enlist Pence to use his ceremonial role in affirming the electoral vote count on Jan. 6 to “fraudulently overturn the results of the election.” Pence has said Trump went beyond asking him to pause the count for an audit and urged him to reject the Biden electors outright, in the hopes of tipping the election in Trump’s favor.

“There was no discretion ever given to the vice president in history, nor should there ever be,” Pence told “Face the Nation.” “I had no right to overturn the election and Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024.”

John Lauro, an attorney for Trump, responded to Pence’s comments on Sunday, telling “Face the Nation” that his position is consistent with Pence’s version of events.

“What I said is the ultimate ask of Vice President Pence was to pause the count and allow the states to weigh in. That was my statement, and what I’ve said is consistent with what Vice President Pence is saying,” Lauro said. “The reason why Vice President Pence will be so important to the defense is … number one, he agrees that John Eastman, who gave legal advice to President Trump, was an esteemed legal scholar. Number two, he agrees that there were election irregularities, fraud, unlawful actions at the state level. All of that will eviscerate any allegation of criminal intent on the part of President Trump.”

Pence’s notes

The indictment refers to contemporaneous notes taken by the vice president in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, when prosecutors allege Trump repeatedly pressured him to reject the electoral votes.

“From time to time, particularly at important moments, I had a practice of scribbling a note or two on my calendar just to memorialize it and remember it and I did that in this case,” he told “Face the Nation.” “I generally didn’t make a practice of taking notes in meetings over the four year period of time.”

But “given the momentous events that were unfolding,” he took a few notes to remind himself of what had been said. 

“From very early on, the very first time the president raised the issue with me, that he was being told that I had the right to overturn the election to reject or return votes, I told him, I knew I had no such authority,” Pence said.

“I truly do believe that, you know, no one who ever puts himself over the Constitution should ever be President of the United States,” Pence added.

The former vice president also recalled an occasion before Christmas 2020 when Trump asked him “what he thought we ought to do.”

“We were just the two of us in the Oval Office,” Pence said. 

“I remember, I looked at him and I said, look, let all the lawsuits play out, let the Congress do their work, to consider objections. But I said, at the end of the day, if the election goes the other way, I said we ought to take a bow, we ought to travel around the country,” he said.

“And I remember, the president is standing in front of his desk, listening very intently to me, and I’ll never forget the way he just kind of pointed at me as if to, as if to say, that’s worth thinking about,” Pence continued. “But I don’t know what was in his mind at the time.”

When asked if he would testify if the case against Trump went to trial, Pence said he would if summoned.

“We’ll respond to the call of the law if it comes and we’ll just tell the truth,” said Pence.

He also added that he “would hope” Trump would receive a fair trial in the District of Columbia.

“Whatever the outcome of this indictment,” Pence said, “I know I did my duty that day.”

How Mike Pence’s final act of defiance could reshape his political future

On Thursday afternoon, Bennie Thompson, the chair of the congressional panel probing the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, offered full-throated praise for Donald Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence for standing up to his boss that day. “He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal, he knew it was wrong,” Thompson said during the panel’s third hearing. “We are fortunate for Mr Pence’s courage on January 6. Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe.”

For years, that would have been surprising Democratic praise for a staunchly conservative Republican. Pence, the former governor of Indiana, went on to be a loyal — even obsequious — second-in-command to Trump, tolerating the president’s erratic decision-making, tweetstorms and efforts to undermine America’s institutions of government. But when it came to performing the largely ceremonial role of certifying the results of the 2020 election, Pence drew a line in the sand, bucking a massive campaign from Trump to keep himself in power and deny Joe Biden’s inauguration as president. That sole, final act of defiance is now likely to define Pence’s political past — as well as his future. With the former vice-president widely viewed as harbouring hopes to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, the move may have helped to reframe him in the minds of voters. To some, it marks a belated badge of honour. “Given the enormous pressure on him and the consistent bullying by an entire group of corrupt actors seeking to overturn a presidential election, I think getting the truth about how this all went down does change his legacy. He deserves credit for it,” said Olivia Troye, a former national security aide to Pence.

“Things could have turned out significantly differently had he not honoured his oath and carried out his constitutional duty,” she added. Yet complicating the picture is the fact that Pence has been very careful about the ways in which he has directly criticised Trump in connection with the January 6 riots. So far he has been unwilling to testify to the panel, depriving it of his personal account of the events of that day. “[Pence] is trying to walk a line,” said Joel Goldstein, a professor of law and a scholar of the vice-presidency at the University of Saint Louis law school. “I think in some respects, given the evidence that comes out about the way Trump treated him, and the danger that Pence was under, it’s surprising to me that he hasn’t been more outspoken in his criticism of [the former president].” Pence did directly rebuke Trump in February of this year, saying the former president had been “wrong” in believing Pence had the authority to change the outcome of the vote.

“The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president,” Pence said in a speech at the Federalist Society.

Though Pence has not appeared himself, key advisers have been willing to testify in the proceedings. Marc Short, his former chief of staff, has been a key witness, telling the committee that Pence had told Trump “many times” and in a “very consistent” way that he would not and could not alter the outcome of the vote.

He also recalled a conversation with the head of the vice-president’s secret service on the eve of the riot, to warn him that “the president would lash out in some way” as their disagreement became more apparent.

Greg Jacob, Pence’s legal counsel, testified that Trump was told on January 4 that a scheme cooked up by John Eastman, a lawyer, to stop the certification of the vote would violate federal law — and insisted that Pence had not wavered in his view that such a step could not be taken.

Nevertheless, Pence did not raise red flags publicly about Trump’s intentions nor clarify his position until he issued a statement on the morning of January 6. The hearings awkwardly revealed how Pence was consulting with former vice-president Dan Quayle and former House speaker Paul Ryan about his powers, rather than warning the public much earlier.

“If Pence ‘never wavered’ then why did he call up Dan Quayle to ask whether there was any way he could go along with Trump’s demand to fix the 2020 election for Trump?” asked Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, in a tweet.

Nevertheless, Pence’s ultimate resistance to Trump’s plans for a coup put him at significant personal risk as the insurrection raged. On the morning of January 6, Pence had a testy conversation with the president, during which Trump used the “p-word” to describe his number two and also called him a “wimp” — according to accounts that emerged from this week’s hearing.

Trump’s badgering of Pence continued through out the day: he urged his vice-president to have the “courage to do what he has to do” during a fiery speech at the Ellipse before the certification process began, and then wrote on Twitter his disapproval once the proceedings started, further enraging the mob.

Not only were the rioters chanting “Hang Mike Pence” as they walked through the hallways of the US Congress, but the vice-president was huddled in a room just 40 feet away from them, as his wife Karen drew the curtains to keep them out of view.

Pence even refused to get in a secret service car to be whisked to safety outside the Capitol, for fear that he wouldn’t be allowed to return to complete the certification of Biden’s victory.

That moment capped Pence’s tenure as vice-president, which he took on at a time when other Republicans were wary of working for Trump. Once in office, his performance was unremarkable. He had been put in charge of the initial coronavirus crisis response, during which he never openly challenged some of Trump’s most outlandish and unscientific ideas, such as curing the illness with bleach.

He was also tasked with selling the new Nafta trade deal struck with Mexico and Canada after months of tortured negotiations with Trump — but US trade representative Robert Lighthizer was the main architect of the deal.

Politically, he was most responsible, as a devout Christian, for keeping the religious evangelical right on Trump’s side, despite its doubts about his commitment to its causes. Now, his role in holding the line on January 6 is likely to overwhelm all those memories.

“For three years and 50 weeks, Pence was Trump’s man,” said Goldstein. “[But] on January 6, he, you know, was presented with demands to really participate in a constitutional coup. And he refused to do it.”

Trump Appears to Rule Out Pence as Running Mate in Potential 2024 Run

Former President Donald Trump suggested that former Vice President Mike Pence won’t serve as his running mate again if he ultimately decides to mount a third presidential campaign in 2024.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Trump shared some kind words for Pence. But overall, the former president expressed frustration over the 2020 election and his second-in-command’s unwillingness to overturn their defeat.

Trump hasn’t indicated whether he’ll run again, but he’s been testing the waters by holding more campaign rallies and fundraising through his political action committee. He’s still considered a GOP front-runner, but that hasn’t stopped other Republicans and allies interested in a bid from trying to break out of the crowded pack before he makes a decision.

“I don’t think the people would accept it,” Trump told the Examiner. “Mike and I had a great relationship except for the very important factor that took place at the end. We had a very good relationship. I haven’t spoken to him in a long time.”

Their relationship quickly deteriorated after losing their reelection race in November 2020. Trump wanted Pence to overturn the election, citing widespread voter fraud that even his own intelligence community said didn’t exist.

But Pence, who’s also seen as a potential 2024 hopeful, stood firm against Trump’s pressure campaign. As vice president, Pence presided over Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters breached the Capitol to undermine the process. Many of them shouted threats aimed at lawmakers, including some chants to hang the vice president.

Trump maintains that the election was stolen from him as he mulls running again for the GOP nomination. Last month, in responding to the former president’s claims, Pence denied that he or any vice president has the authority to change the results of a presidential election.

“There are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer of the joint session of Congress that I possessed unilateral authority to reject Electoral College votes. And I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong,” Pence said in a February speech from Florida. “I had no right to overturn the election.”

How Pence used 43 words to shut down Trump allies’ election subversion on Jan. 6

When Mike Pence walked into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, facing a withering pressure campaign by Donald Trump, he’d already made a history-defining decision to rewrite the vice presidential script for publicly counting electoral votes.

But the story of Pence’s revisions hasn’t been clear until now. Pence aides tell POLITICO that he sent a deliberate message to Trump supporters about the reason he was refusing to introduce “alternate” slates of presidential electors, which had become a central part of the former president’s plan to overturn the 2020 election results.

Pence knew that he was about to demolish Trump’s effort to cling to power. But doing so meant contending with an immediate problem: the slates of false electors that the sitting president and his allies had hyped for weeks. Trump allies had coaxed loyalists in five swing states to submit signed certificates falsely claiming they were “duly elected and qualified” members of the Electoral College.

Embracing fringe legal theories crafted by his closest boosters, Trump wanted Pence to introduce those illegitimate electors on Jan. 6 and use them to block Joe Biden’s victory, throwing the election into democracy-altering disarray.

Pence never intended to introduce the fake electors — and in fact understood that he was legally prohibited from doing so, his chief of staff Marc Short said in an interview. But Pence wanted to clearly communicate his rationale for that decision to Trump supporters, who had been led to believe it was possible.

“It was a transparent effort to get in front of any accusations that there was any other slate that could’ve been legally accepted,” Short told POLITICO. “We were trying to be transparent with the American people. We figured there’d be confusion with this.”

Days before Jan. 6, 2021, Short said, Pence took an active role in crafting the specific language he used during the session of Congress that was later disrupted by a pro-Trump mob intent on preventing the election from being finalized.

Per Short, the new language simply elaborated on long-settled laws and rules governing the counting of electors. While anyone can theoretically submit a slate of electors to Congress, authorities have long only considered those certified by state authorities — like governors and secretaries of state — to be legitimate. Pence wanted to make that explicit in his remarks.

His decision to alter the Jan. 6 script other vice presidents had used for decades shines new light on how consciously he resisted the pressure Trump exerted on him to try to single-handedly overturn the election. One year ago, it was unclear why Pence delivered a new version of the boilerplate vice presidential language or whether he was doing it at the behest of House and Senate parliamentarians.

According to Short, Pence revised the script in consultation with top aides, including counsel Greg Jacob and legislative affairs director Chris Hodgson. Congressional parliamentarians ultimately signed off on it, but they had little involvement in choosing the words Pence would soon use as the mob bore down on the Capitol.

And Pence’s choice started off like his predecessors and would have sounded like parliamentary jargon to most people watching the session on Jan. 6, 2021: Vice presidents begin the counting of electoral votes by indicating that votes will be counted “after ascertaining that the certificates are regular in form and authentic.” But Pence added another line to this explanation that the preceding vice presidents did not.

Not only would each certificate he introduced be “regular in form and authentic,” he said at the time, but they would be the ones that “the parliamentarians have advised me is the only certificate of vote from that state, and purports to be a return from the state, and that has annexed to it a certificate from an authority of that state purporting to appoint or ascertain electors.”

It was a mouthful with a purpose. Pence was incorporating the specific legal language of the Electoral Count Act — the 1887 law that, along with the 12th Amendment, governs the counting of electoral votes. The law requires that any electoral votes counted by Congress be submitted by official state authorities, like governors and secretaries of state.

The Jan. 6 select committee has been keenly interested in the mystery of Pence’s added words, too. The panel’s top investigator, Tim Heaphy, earlier this year asked Short about Pence’s decision to change the language — and even played a video clip comparing Pence’s remarks to those of previous vice presidents, according to a partial transcript of Short’s testimony to the committee that was released in court filings last week.

“So, obviously, Vice President Pence in 2021 alters, amplifies, adds language to the script that had been read by Vice Presidents reaching back 20 or 30 years,” Heaphy said. “Tell us about the decision, the purposeful decision by Vice President Pence to add that language to the ascertainment script.”

“[T]he predominant reason was that the Vice President wanted to be as transparent as possible,” Short replied. But the transcript was curtailed mid-sentence.

Short explained in an interview that the added words were designed to clearly address Pence’s views of Trump allies’ push for false slates of presidential electors. Supporters of the then-president would be wondering why Pence refused to consider those slates during the Jan. 6 session.

Another source familiar with discussions among the then-vice president and his allies in those days said Pence’s decision to revise the wording had another audience: Members of Congress aligned with Trump who also espoused the view that Pence could introduce alternate electors. Pence, the source said, intended to preempt potential points of order or other procedural challenges those members might have made by laying out his thinking.

Indeed, top Trump allies like Stephen Miller and John Eastman pointed to these alternate electors as a way to keep the former president’s election challenge alive. Eastman built them into his last-ditch strategy to pressure Pence to overturn the election himself.

So the language Pence used had to explain his rationale for saying no.

The former vice president hasn’t stopped subtly critiquing Trump in the year since he resisted the election subversion push. Pence told donors last week that “there is no room in this party for apologists for Putin,” viewed as a deliberate if delicate reference to Trump. Pence also recently declared that Trump was “wrong” for claiming he could unilaterally determine the outcome of the election.

The select committee is continuing to probe the involvement of Trump and his network in the submission of false elector slates to Congress in late 2020.

Under the Electoral Count Act, electors picked by the party of the winning candidate in each state are required to meet in mid-December to formally cast their ballots. In seven states won by Biden, however, the Trump campaign worked with state Republican parties to assemble their own elector meetings and cast ballots for Trump. Those false electors then signed certificates and mailed them to Washington.

Eastman urged Pence to introduce the “dual” slates on Jan. 6 and claim the outcome was in dispute. Then, per Eastman, Pence could adjourn the legally required session of Congress and urge state legislatures to resolve the so-called disputes, even though the Electoral Count Act prohibits adjournments during the count.

Pence’s counsel Jacob also testified to the Jan. 6 select committee; a partial transcript of his comments filed in federal court described Eastman’s repeated efforts to convince Pence to introduce the alternate elector slates. Those comments formed the core of the select committee’s recent suggestion that it believes Eastman may have criminally conspired to obstruct Congress’ certification of the 2020 election.

Eastman has rejected that assertion, claiming he thought his efforts had a legitimate legal basis. He’s fighting to shield some of his emails from the select committee by claiming attorney-client privilege.

When Pence refused to entertain the alternate electors during Congress’ session certifying Biden as the next president, Trump supporters encroaching on the Capitol became furious. Within an hour, hundreds had breached the building, with some chanting “hang Mike Pence.”

Amid the chaos, Eastman exchanged tense emails with Jacob. Pence’s counsel accused Eastman, in one remarkably blunt missive, of being “a serpent in the ear of the president of the United States.”

The plot now thickens on a Mike Pence vote recusal

One of the least examined X factors in the Jan. 6 saga is this: the possibility that Vice President Mike Pence might have recused himself from the counting of electoral votes in Congress.

Given that Pence ultimately played a decisive role in thwarting Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the election that day, and that some in Trump’s orbit apparently gamed out and even desired Pence’s recusal, it is valid to ask what might have happened if he had not been at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

We apparently came closer to finding out than we realized. ABC News reported Tuesday that on Christmas Eve 2020, Pence momentarily decided against presiding, in part since it would be “too hurtful to my friend.” ABC also reported that Pence testified that Trump personally suggested he recuse himself. (The Washington Post has not independently confirmed the reporting.)

“Not feeling like I should attend electoral count,” Pence wrote in notes obtained by special counsel Jack Smith, according to ABC. “Too many questions, too many doubts, too hurtful to my friend. Therefore I’m not going to participate in certification of election.”

Pence testified that he reversed course after a conversation with his son, who cited the vice president’s constitutional duty, according to ABC. The date of that conversation is not clear, but it came at some point during a trip that Pence took to Colorado, which records indicate lasted from Dec. 23 to Jan. 1.

It is the first evidence that Pence had actually leaned toward recusing himself, and that Trump had personally suggested it. But it is hardly the first evidence that it was under consideration and that certain people on Trump’s side had angled for it. We previously detailed the publicly available evidence on this episode, some of which has not received much attention. Here is how the new disclosures fit into the timeline:

Unknown date: Trump suggests Pence might skip the Jan. 6 session of Congress, according to the ABC report on his testimony.

Early December: Pence and his legal counsel, Greg Jacob, discuss potential recusal and whether Pence has a conflict of interest, according to testimony by Jacob before the Jan. 6 committee. Jacob said Pence asked, “Has any vice president ever recused from the role of doing this on the grounds that they are interested in the outcome of the election?” Pence’s staff later reports back that Hubert Humphrey sat out such proceedings in 1969, leaving the job to the Senate president pro tempore.

Dec. 13: Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro in a memo floats a detailed scenario in which Pence steps aside. The scenario cites Senate president pro tempore “Chuck Grassley or another senior Republican who agrees to take on the role of defending the constitutional prerogatives of the President of the Senate.”

Dec. 23: Trump lawyer John Eastman writes an email to Chesebro and others that references not wanting to “constrain Pence (or Grassley) in the exercise of power they have under the 12th Amendment.”

Dec. 23: A Grassley aide emails a Pence aide asking if there is “any reason to believe that your boss will not preside over the electoral college vote count,” according to the Jan. 6 committee transcripts. Pence aide Paul Teller says that “it’s not a zero percent chance of that happening.”

Dec. 24: Pence concludes he will not preside, according to his notes, ABC reported.

Sometime by Jan. 1: Pence’s son, a Marine, persuades him to preside, citing the oaths they both took to support and defend the Constitution, according to ABC.

Jan. 5: Grassley sets off a brief tempest by telling the media, “If the vice president isn’t there, and we don’t expect him to be there, I will be presiding over the Senate.” A news report initially casts this as Grassley saying that Pence will be absent from the electoral college certification, but his actual comments appeared to refer to a separate session of the Senate, which his office swiftly clarified.

It is worth noting that what may have been a (momentary) decision by Pence came just after a Grassley aide reached out to his office about such a scenario and the Pence aide suggested it was on the table. So this was a possibility that plenty of people had been thinking and talking about.

For the better part of three years, those Grassley comments on Jan. 5 have spawned theories about how he might have been part of the plot. The new details in the timeline, as laid out by ABC, do not indicate that Grassley was in on anything, and he has flatly denied that he was. (Grassley and his office have denied ever being approached about such an arrangement.) In fact, both that timeline and the testimony of top Pence aides suggest this was off the table well before Jan. 5.

But a growing volume of evidence indicates that, at least at some point, a Pence recusal was a real possibility. The question is why. Thus far there are no definitive answers, but there are clues. Grassley, like many Republicans, kept relatively quiet after the election. He was not a vocal election denier. He noted that the process should be allowed to play out. He said shortly after the election that “there could be fraud” but that “I personally haven’t seen any” that would be enough to change the results.

But at times Grassley suggested the election was effectively over. On Nov. 9, his office told a local editorial board “it appears Joe Biden will be the next president.” A few days later, he pushed for Biden to receive classified briefings in preparation for his ascension. When the electoral college voted Dec. 14, Grassley was asked whether he acknowledged that Biden was president-elect, and he said, “I don’t have to. The Constitution does.” His office would go on to call Biden the “president-elect” in a Dec. 22 statement.

Grassley did not join the handful of Senate Republicans (and many House Republicans) in objecting to the election results on Jan. 6. And after the Capitol riot, he praised Pence for refusing to “kowtow” to Trump’s entreaties to overturn the election. In other words, Grassley would have seemed a less-than-ideal candidate for taking the unprecedented step of trying to overturn the election, a step that Pence ultimately refused to take.

At least for now, the reason some people angled for Grassley to replace Pence appears to boil down to the fact that Pence was not fully onboard and that Grassley was next in line. Another possible reason is that substituting Grassley and having him help overturn the results might have looked like less of a conflict of interest than it would have for Pence, who would effectively have been reinstalling himself as vice president.

Chesebro wrote in a Dec. 13 memo that “politically this will insulate” Pence “and the President from what will happen next. For it is much easier for someone acting as President of the Senate to defend the prerogatives of the office if he has no conflict of interest” other than an unavoidable partisan interest.

There is still little reason to believe the plan to have Pence removed from the equation would have resulted in a different outcome. But as we learn more, it gets clearer this was a desired variableon Trump’s side and that Trump’s demand for personal loyalty almost led us down a different, and unpredictable, path at a consequential time.

Trump loses appeal to block Pence from testifying about direct communications

Former President Donald Trump has lost an emergency attempt to block former Vice President Mike Pence from testifying about their direct conversations, in the latest boost to a federal criminal investigation examining Trump’s and others’ actions after the 2020 election.

The former president has repeatedly tried and failed to close off some answers from witnesses close to him in the special counsel’s investigation. This latest order from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals likely will usher in Pence’s grand jury testimony quickly – an unprecedented development in modern presidential history.

The decision, from Judges Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins and Greg Katsas on the DC Circuit, came in a sealed case on Wednesday night that CNN previously identified as Trump’s executive privilege challenge to Pence. No dissents were noted on the public docket.

Trump has tried to block Pence from testifying about their direct communications, even after the former vice president wrote about some of those exchanges and a lower-court judge had ruled against him.

Trump asked the DC Circuit for emergency intervention weeks ago. The court refused to put on hold Pence’s subpoena and to override the lower-court ruling, flatly denying Trump’s requests.

Trump could try to appeal again and even press the issue at the Supreme Court. Yet he gave up pushing several past executive privilege challenges to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation after similar rulings from this court of appeals.

Pence has already said he was not appealing part of a lower court’s decision, and would comply with the subpoena. Judge James Boasberg of the DC District Court has acknowledged Pence could have some congressional protections during the time he served as president of the Senate on January 6, 2021. But that ruling does not appear to prevent him from answering questions before the grand jury about his many conversations with Trump from Election Day on, when Trump and his allies were pressuring Pence to block the congressional certification of the vote.

Trump’s conversations with Pence in the days surrounding the US Capitol riot have been of keen interest to investigators probing the attack, and the former vice president wrote in his book that Trump told him he would be a “wimp” on a call the morning of the insurrection.

Conclusion

I have resored to using three other search engines besides Google, DuckDuckGo, Brave and Mojeek. Even with this expanded search, I found it incredibly difficult to find very few unbiased articles on the subject. So as a result I will post the article as is without any conclusion. I will continue checking every few months to see if there is any more information. It is apparent that both sides are still not willing to play nice.

Resources

factcheck.org, “What Trump Asked of Pence.’ by Robert Farley; washingtonexaminer.com, “Why Mike Pence failed to make inroads in Trump’s party.’ by W. James Antle III; pbs.org, “Pence, Trump lawyer clash over what Trump told his vice president ahead of Jan. 6.” By David Klepper; cnn.com, “Pence details fracture with Trump over his refusal to overturn 2020 election in new book.” By Eric Bradner, Jeremy Herb, Jennifer Hansler, Maegan Vazquez, Nikki Carvajal, Veronica Stracqualursi and Kit Maher, CNN; cnbc.com, “Mike Pence rejects Trump’s call to overturn Biden election.” By Dan Mangan and Kevin Breuninger; washingtonpost.com, “How Pence came to finally blame Trump for Jan. 6 Capitol attack: After months of silence, the former vice president has repeatedly called Trump’s words ‘reckless’.” By Matthew Brown; cnbc.com, “Former Vice President Mike Pence will not endorse Trump in 2024.” By Christina Wilkie;

newsweek.com, “Mike Pence Reveals Four Reasons He Is Not Backing Donald Trump.” By James Bickerton; theguardian.com, “Mike Pence: history will hold Donald Trump accountable over Capitol attack: Former vice-president, speaking at Gridiron dinner, says it ‘mocks decency’ to portray January 6 as anything other than a ‘disgrace’.” By Martin Pengelly; dailymail.co.uk, “Trump admits for the first time he wanted Pence to ‘overturn the election’ during the January 6 joint session and slams VP for not ‘exercising his power'” By Nikki Schwab; http://www.cbsnews.com, “Pence disputes Trump legal team’s claims, and says Trump asked him “what he thought” they should do after 2020 election.” By Sophia Barkoff; http://www.ft.com, “How Mike Pence’s final act of defiance could reshape his political future.” By James Potti and Kiran Stacey; http://www.usnews.com, “Trump Appears to Rule Out Pence as Running Mate in Potential 2024 Run.” By Lisa Hagen; http://www.washingtonpost.com, “The plot now thickens on a Mike Pence vote recusal.” By Aaron Blake; http://www.politico.com, ” How Pence used 43 words to shut down Trump allies’ election subversion on Jan. 6.” By Kyle Cheney;

edition.cnn.com, “Trump loses appeal to block Pence from testifying about direct communications.” By Katelyn Polantz;

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https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/25/ten-mainstream-politicians-1-0f-10-alexandria-ocasio-cortez/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/24/did-sarah-palin-get-a-bad-rap/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/23/why-are-state-and-local-leaders-allowing-looting-and-rioting-to-occur/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/22/was-mccarthy-right-about-communism-and-the-left/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/20/if-we-were-at-war-governor-cuomo-and-several-other-governors-would-be-charged-with-war-crimes/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/19/john-bolton-a-charlatan/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/11/09/why-are-politicians-able-to-push-for-dissidence-without-repercussions/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/11/08/how-does-kamala-harris-stack-up-against-joseph-stalin/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/11/15/aoc-and-the-accountability-project/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/01/12/the-truth-about-attorney-general-barr/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/02/09/is-susan-rice-the-puppet-master/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/03/02/is-kamala-harris-a-good-role-model-for-the-modern-woman/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/04/09/governors-behavior-during-the-pandemic/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/09/07/governor-cuomo-resigned/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2024/09/06/what-is-wrong-with-the-harris-walz-platform/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2024/10/18/was-mike-pence-a-trojan-horse-a-long-overdue-examination-of-the-facts-behind-january-the-6th/