WASHINGTON —
Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday (Aug. 17) that he would give “due consideration” to testifying before a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol last year. During that unrest, some protesters chanted Pence to be hanged for rejecting then-President Donald Trump’s demands to overturn their defeat.
At the time of the incident, Pence was in the preliminary stages of overseeing congressional certification of Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to win the Electoral College in the state-by-state counting process. About 2,000 Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, forcing a shutdown of proceedings for several hours.
Some chanted “Hang Pence!” Protesters also erected a gallows on the National Lawn where the Capitol could be seen.
Pence, who is currently considering whether to run for president in 2024, has given political speeches in several key states where nominations were early. He said Wednesday at a rally in the northeastern state of New Hampshire that if the House committee “officially invites” him to testify, “I would consider it.”
The committee is scheduled to resume hearings in September after the summer recess. The committee has heard testimony from two of Pence’s key aides , his chief of staff Marc Short and his legal counsel Greg Jacob. They testified that Trump pressured Vice President Pence to knock back the results of states Trump lost by narrow margins, so that pro-Trump electors could take the place of pro-Biden pledges the official elector.
But Pence took the advice of numerous aides and legal experts after examining his statutory role in overseeing the electoral vote counting process. They said he could only oversee the vote count and had no power to overturn the national election results.
In the United States, the president is actually elected by each of the 50 states, not by a national popular vote. The number of electoral votes in each state depends on the state’s population, with the states with the largest populations having the most influence.
Rioters stormed the Capitol at the time, trying to prevent lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory. In the early hours of January 7, 2021, after the rioters were expelled from the Capitol, Congress finally certified Biden as winning the Electoral College by 306 votes to 232.
It is unclear whether a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 incident will ask Pence to testify voluntarily as a witness. Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson has previously said the committee ruled out subpoenaing Pence because it had obtained “material information” from Short and Jacob. The two Pence aides also testified before a grand jury in Washington investigating Trump’s role in trying to overturn the election result.
In a separate investigation, Trump is also being investigated for possession of high-level state-secret documents. At the end of his White House tenure, he brought the documents back to his private villa Mar-a-Lago in Florida, rather than turning them over to the National Archives and Records Administration as required by U.S. law.
Some Republicans have criticized FBI agents for entering the Mar-a-Lago search, which was authorized by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and approved by a federal magistrate judge. The government said in the search warrant that authorities were searching for possible evidence of a crime, the first time a former president’s home has been searched as a result.
“This unprecedented operation does require unprecedented transparency,” Pence said in a speech in New Hampshire, where Attorney General Garland must explain the reasons behind the search.
Pence, however, defended the FBI agents who carried out the search.
“I just wanted to remind my fellow Republicans that we can hold (Garland) accountable for the decisions he makes, not attack the FBI’s grassroots law enforcement. The Republican Party is the party of law and order,” he said. These attacks on the FBI must stop.”
Leave a Reply