Mike Pence considered skipping Jan. 6 election certification: report
Vice President Mike Pence considered skipping the congressional count of the 2020 Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021, worrying that his attendance would be “too hurtful” to former President Donald Trump.
Pence, 64, disclosed his eleventh-hour concerns about presiding over the peaceful transfer of power during a deposition taken by prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith’s office earlier this year, ABC News reported.
Sources familiar with Smith’s investigation spoke with the outlet about Pence’s recollection of the former president’s pressure to decertify the electoral count.
Smith subpoenaed Pence in February, and the former vice president later sat for interviews and shared details about handwritten notes — currently stored at the National Archives — that revealed his misgivings.
On Christmas Eve 2020, Pence reportedly made one note that he would step aside and allow a Trump-picked successor to fill his position for the electoral certification
“Not feeling like I should attend electoral count,” the former vice president wrote. “Too many questions, too many doubts, too hurtful to my friend. Therefore I’m not going to participate in certification of election.”
In subsequent interviews with Smith’s office, Pence described the unraveling of his friendship with Trump despite his attempts to remain loyal in the face of the president’s “stolen election” claims.
At one point in late December 2020, the vice president told House Republicans in a private meeting to “get your evidence together” about election irregularities and said Trump allies would have “our day in Congress.”
“My only higher loyalty was to God and the Constitution,” Pence told Smith’s office of his thoughts in late 2020, while adding that he remained “very open to the possibility that there was voter fraud.”
But during a Christmas vacation to Colorado, he had a conversation with his son, a Marine pilot, that strengthened his resolve to oversee the certification count.
“Dad, you took the same oath I took,” said his son, Michael Pence, referring to all US officials’ “oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Pence told Smith’s office, solidifying his decision to preside at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Pence frequently referenced his decision to certify former Vice President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory that day during his four-month campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination this year.
The concluding words of the oath also became the title of Pence’s 2022 memoir, “So Help Me God,” which also recounts a Christmas Day 2020 phone call with Trump in which the veep stressed he didn’t “have the authority to change the outcome” of the election.
“You know, I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome,” Pence said he told Trump, but later clarified to Smith’s office that the comma should have been removed from the sentence — to imply both he and the former president understood the limits of their powers at the time.
Neither a spokesman for Pence nor reps from Smith’s office responded to a request for comment Tuesday.
Smith indicted Trump on four counts in August, accusing the 77-year-old of having made “knowingly false” claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election and conspiring and attempting to obstruct the certification of the electoral count.
The charges involved direct pressure on Pence in the final days of the Trump administration to reject Biden’s victory in battleground states, and a scheme by attorney John Eastman to send electoral results back to state legislators.
“Tens of millions of Americans, including Vice President Pence, as he repeatedly stated himself, have had grave and serious concerns about the legitimacy of the rigged and stolen 2020 Presidential Election, further proving that the lawless indictment against President Trump should be summarily dismissed,” a Trump spokesperson told ABC News in a statement.
Pence in discussions with prosecutors also denounced Trump’s legal effort to subvert the result with the help of “crank” lawyers and “un-American” theories that moved the nation toward the brink of a “constitutional crisis.”
The former vice president grew concerned that hours after the polls closed on Election Day, Trump declared “major fraud” had taken place and sought outside counsel from Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who were later indicted as co-defendants with the former president for trying to overturn results in Georgia.
Pence told Smith’s office the attorneys “did a great disservice to the president and a great disservice to the country” in pushing notions of widespread voter fraud — and that Trump “knew” his vice president disregarded their claims.
“I told him I thought there was no idea more un-American than the idea that any one person could decide what electoral votes to count,” Pence said of his heated discussions with Trump. “I made it very plain to him that it was inconsistent with our history and tradition.”
Another disclosure to Smith’s team shows even Trump considered leaving the White House without a fuss during a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting in the Oval Office.
Asked for his opinion, Pence told the president he “should simply accept the results,” “take a bow,” thank his supporters across the nation “and then run again if you want” in 2024.
“And I’ll never forget, he pointed at me,” Pence told Smith’s office, “as if to say, ‘That’s worth thinking about.’ And he walked [away].”
