Donald Trump and Mike Pence in 2016. On the morning of January 6, 2021, the US President lambasted his Vice-President as someone who would go down in history as a 'wimp'. Photo / Getty Images
Donald Trump and Mike Pence in 2016. On the morning of January 6, 2021, the US President lambasted his Vice-President as someone who would go down in history as a 'wimp'. Photo / Getty Images
On the morning of January 6, 2021, United President Donald Trump lambasted then-Vice-President Mike Pence as someone who would go down in history as a “wimp”, according to newly published details in a forthcoming book by ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl.
Karl’s book, Retribution: Donald Trump and theCampaign that Changed America, contains an imagefrom previously unreleased handwritten notes taken by Pence during their final phone call before the attack on the US Capitol.
Leading up to that day, Trump had been trying to persuade Pence to block the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College win himself, but Pence refused, saying he did not have the authority to do so.
“You’ll go down as a wimp,” Trump told Pence, according to notes the former Vice-President wrote in his day planner.
Other messages Pence scrawled in his day planner indicate Trump continued to pressure Pence on the call, at one point suggesting Trump told him he had “made a big mistake five years ago” in choosing Pence to be his vice-president.
“You listen to the wrong people,” Trump also told Pence, as written elsewhere on the page beneath a scribble of an angry face. Pence wrote that he replied, “I listen to my heart and my mind”.
Before the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling on presidential immunity, special counsel Jack Smith had planned to use Pence’s handwritten notes as evidence if the case went to trial.
In the Justice Department’s report on the case, released shortly before Trump took office again in January, Smith said he believed that had the case gone to trial he had enough to convict Trump of trying to obstruct the 2020 election results.
Video with the quote 'Hang Mike Pence!' shown during a public hearing in June 2022 of the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Photo / Jabin Botsford, The Washington Post
According to Karl, this phone call between Trump and Pence took place before Trump appeared at the “Save America” rally on the Ellipse, when he falsely told his supporters that Pence could simply send the election “back to the states to recertify”.
“I just spoke to Mike,” Trump told the crowd then. “I said, ‘Mike, that doesn’t take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage,’ and then we’re stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot, and we have to live with that for four more years. We’re just not going to let that happen.”
ABC News reported today that Karl’s book also describes a “forensic copy of Trump’s own phone documenting his digital activity on January 6”. The article says that Trump changed his speech on the Ellipse to target Pence directly.
A few hours after Trump’s rally on the Ellipse, the US Capitol would be under siege by a violent mob of pro-Trump rioters, resulting in five deaths and leaving about 140 members of law enforcement injured.
Pence was inside the Capitol during the attack and had to be evacuated from the Senate floor with his family as rioters stormed the complex.
Many in the mob chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” on the misguided belief that Pence could have stopped Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. Even years later, Trump would continue to blame Pence for the violence.
Pence has steadfastly defended his actions on January 6, saying it would have been unconstitutional to reject electoral votes already certified by the states, as Trump had falsely suggested Pence had the power to do.
Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in August 2023 on four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, in a case investigating his involvement in the January 6, 2021, attack and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Trump continues to call the 2020 election results “rigged” and contends that he was unfairly prosecuted.
Smith resigned from the Justice Department in January shortly before Trump took office again.
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