Thursday’s bombshell January 6th Select Committee hearing revealed just how close former Vice President Mike Pence came to the MAGA mob seeking him as they marauded through the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”–40 feet, according to panel member Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA). While most people following the hearings knew Pence had been hustled out of the Senate chamber before he was able to certify the election for Joe Biden, the Committee shared never-before-seen photos of Pence and his staff in an underground location.
As he read Donald Trump’s tweets about him on his cell phone, the Secret Service detail ordered everyone into the awaiting car to get the Vice President to a more secure place, but he refused to get into the car with his staffers. In a chilling moment during the hearings, viewers learned that Pence didn’t trust the driver of the car to follow his orders. And he didn’t want Americans to see the Vice President abandoning the Capitol during a national crisis. Ultimately, Pence wanted to wait until he could return to the Senate chamber and finish certifying the election.
[Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images]While it’s a relief that the crowd never located Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or any of their other human targets, which would have absolutely resulted in their deaths, many were quick to refrain from portraying Mike Pence as a hero for his actions on January 6th. In fact, says MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, if Pence had acted sooner based on the knowledge he had, he could have prevented the riot from happening altogether.
O’Donnell posits that there were plenty of things Pence could have done in the weeks between the election and January 6th, but did none of them, because he didn’t want to hurt his chances if he decided to run for President in 2024. “On December 19th, Donald Trump summoned his troops to Washington for a rally on Jan. 6. That would have been a very good day for the Vice President of the United States to announce that nothing can change the Electoral College count on January 6th,” he suggested.
Coup plotters came to Mike Pence with a plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He did not go public to expose the scheme. He did not alert the FBI or other authorities. He called Dan Quayle for advice on whether he could go along with the coup.https://t.co/QAzk9ujw2E
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