by WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Mike Pence briefly considered not presiding over the ceremony that formalized the 2020 election loss to his boss, raising questions again about Chuck Grassley’s contemporaneous scheme. Iowa to lead instead.
In his daily planner, in which he also took journal-like notes, Pence wrote on Christmas Eve in 2020 that it might be better to exercise his constitutionally prohibited role in overseeing the Electoral College to avoid a scandal at that time – the ego of President Donald Trump.
“I don’t feel I should attend an electoral count,” he wrote, according to a Tuesday report by ABC News. “Too many questions, too many doubts, too hurtful for my friend. So I am not going to participate in election certification.”
But Pence soon abandoned that notion and returned to his previous plan to preside over the ceremony on Jan. 6, 2021, citing a conversation with his son, an active-duty Marine, who reminded him that both of them took an oath to protect and uphold. The US Constitution.
Former Pence aides declined to comment on the ABC report, which offers new details about Pence’s testimony before the federal grand jury that ultimately indicted Trump on four felony counts based on his attempt to stay in power despite losing re-election.
President Donald Trump speaks as Vice President Mike Pence stands behind him at the White House press briefing room on November 24, 2020. A month later, Pence wrote that he should step down from his role overseeing the count the Electoral College.
Trump’s lawyers are legally allowed — Trump is entitled to grand jury testimony from witnesses that special counsel Jack Smith may call at his trial — to release that evidence, absent a gag order. They did not respond to HuffPost’s inquiries Tuesday.
Trump began pressuring Pence to use his role as Senate president to rule that the election ballots from several states were invalid due to “massive voter fraud” and simply to declare Trump the winner instead of Joe Biden. Pence, however, repeatedly told Trump that he had not seen any evidence of fraud widespread enough to affect the outcome and, in any case, that he did not have the authority to do as Trump demanded.
In the weeks after the election, Pence discussed with his staff but decided against the option of not showing up for the January 6, 2021, certification ― to the extent that Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1969 did not show up for the certification of the vote. a man who defeated him for president, Richard Nixon.
However, Trump and his aides continued to push for the “Penny Card” option, as they described it, with two of Trump’s lawyers actually hinting that Grassley, a Republican and then president pro tempore of the Senate, could , to be. in the chair on January 6.
One of the lawyers, John Eastman, cited in September his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself and refused to answer questions about Grassley during his trial in California.
Grassley, on January 5, 2021, told reporters, “If the vice president is not there, and we don’t expect him to be there, I will preside over the Senate and obviously I will listen to the debate without to say nothing. “
But his office quickly clarified that he was only referring to the Senate session that day regarding challenges that may be faced by slates of electors from certain states, not the joint session where the votes would be counted.
Grassley’s spokesman, Taylor Foy, said Tuesday that Grassley had no knowledge of Trump’s suit. “As he has said in the past, he only found out about those schemes when they were publicly reported many months later,” Foy said.
The January 6 Jack Smith case is just one of four criminal prosecutions Trump is currently facing. Smith also indicted the former president in South Florida for withholding and denying secret documents taken from the White House to his Palm Beach country club at the end of his term. A Georgia grand jury indicted him separately for trying to overturn his election loss in that state. In New York state, a grand jury charged Trump with falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star just before the 2016 election.
If convicted on any of the more serious charges, Trump could face decades in prison. However he is seeking a return to the White House and is currently the poll leader for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
Penn until last month was also a candidate for that nomination, but dropped out due to poor polling and fundraising — at least in part because a large number of GOP primary voters remain angry with him for rejecting Trump’s bid do and cancel 2020. election.
