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Mike Pence's Rewriting of His January 6 Heroism. 1/2
As he makes his actions on January 6 the centerpiece of his campaign, Pence appears to have a different recollection than those of his top aides.
JULIE KELLY. AUG 28, 2023
During last week’s GOP debate in Milwaukee, the former vice president forced his Republican opponents to thank him for allegedly saving the republic on January 6, 2021. “The American people deserve to know whether everyone on this stage agrees that I kept my oath to the Constitution that day,” Pence declared.
Unfortunately, the rest of the field complied. “Mike Pence stood for the Constitution and he deserves not grudging credit, he deserves our thanks as Americans,” former New Jersey governor Chris Christie fawned. Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) agreed that Pence “did the right thing.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis admitted Pence “did his duty” and disclosed he has “no beef” with the former vice president.
In fact, the entire raison d'être for Pence’s candidacy is to give himself a national platform to brag about his self-proclaimed role in protecting the Constitution from Donald Trump’s plan to remain in power after the 2020 election. Pence, in Pence’s mind, is the hero to Trump’s villain.
But Pence appears to be rewriting the history of what he did on January 6. Contrary to his portrayal as one of the good guys on January 6, in reality,
Pence is one of the bad guys.
He intentionally delayed release of a letter outlining why he did not have the authority to reject electors from contested states. Rather than publish the statement the day before or early on January 6, Pence made it public right before the joint session of Congress convened at 1:00 p.m.
(He claimed Trump caused the delay since Pence wanted to wait until the president was done speaking at the Ellipse before sending the letter. Trump took the stage about an hour later than planned.)
By waiting until the last minute to make his case, Pence misled the president and Trump supporters who—justifiably or not—believed he could, or would, do something about an election that Pence himself admitted was not on the square.
Pence: Pence is a Hero
In his autobiography, “So Help Me God,” Pence portrayed himself as a prayerful defender of the Constitution, loyal to God and country over Donald Trump; the word “Constitution” appeared 155 times in his self-aggrandizing memoir. Pence, according to Pence, is truthful to a fault, always choosing his oath of office over political expediency.
Except his version of what happened on January 6 calls into question his honesty. Pence’s version does not match sworn testimony given by his top aides to the January 6 Select Committee last year. According to Pence, he woke up early that day,
said a prayer, and went to work writing a statement to explain why he would not follow the advice of John Eastman, a legal advisor to Trump,
and others who suggested Pence could delay the certification of Joe Biden’s election.
The subheading of the chapter documenting his actions on January 6 is Psalm 15:4: “Who keeps an oath even when it hurts.”
In that chapter, Pence offered a dramatic timeline of the morning of January 6 as he prepared his statement. “I labored over my words to make sure they conveyed my position clearly and my determination to fulfill my oath under the Constitution that day,” Pence wrote.
“I addressed it to the members of the House and Senate, but my true audience was the American people.”
After finishing his statement, Pence said he prayed again. But then something odd happened, he revealed. “I started to close the document but thought that since there had been so many versions, maybe I should print it first just in case. So I hit ‘Print’ and then thought I saved the document on my desktop computer. But when I tried to open the draft, as I had feared, it had not been saved and all the changes I had made since the day before were completely gone.”
Pence claimed his daughter quickly retyped the statement into his computer off the printed version.
According to Pence, Marc Short, his chief of staff, and Greg Jacob, his general counsel, arrived “late morning” to review the final draft, which he said had been emailed to them. Shortly thereafter, Trump called Pence at 11:00 a.m. and that’s when he lowered the boom on Trump. Once again boasting about his “forthright” character, Pence wrote how he told the president, “I do not believe I possess the power to decide which electoral votes to count.”
Conflicting Accounts Between Pence and His Advisors
But Short and Jacob told the select committee a much different story….
https://www.declassified.live/p/mike-pences-rewriting-of-his-january?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2