January 6, 2021, will forever be the defining moment of former Vice President Mike Pence’s life. That’s when he ignored calls to not count the Electoral Votes from contested states in the 2020 election and certified Joe Biden as the rightful winner.
Since then, Pence has shown a willingness to do whatever it takes to keep Trump from winning another term in the White House, including running a failed presidential campaign and being humiliated in early primary states.
Now the former vice president has dished dirt to one of the President Trump’s biggest adversaries: Jack Smith, the prosector who has charged the former president with crimes related to overturning the 2024 election.
Speaking with special counsel Jack Smith’s team earlier this year, former Vice President Mike Pence offered harrowing details about how, in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, then-President Donald Trump surrounded himself with “crank” attorneys, espoused “un-American” legal theories, and almost pushed the country toward a “constitutional crisis,” according to sources familiar with what Pence told investigators, according to ABC News.
The sources said Pence also told investigators he’s “sure” that — in the days before Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob tried to stop Congress from certifying the election — he informed Trump he still hadn’t seen evidence of significant election fraud, but Trump was unmoved, continuing to claim the election was “stolen” and acting “recklessly” on that “tragic day.”
Pence is the highest-ranking current or former government official known to have spoken with the special counsel team investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election. What he allegedly told investigators, described exclusively to ABC News, sheds further light on the evidence Smith’s team has amassed as it prosecutes Trump for allegedly trying to unlawfully “remain in power” and “erode public faith” in democratic institutions.
Pence could take the stand against Trump should Smith’s election interference case go to trial, which is currently slated to occur in March.
Trump’s lawyers have recently accused Smith’s prosecutors of suppressing information key to his defense. The Messenger reported that “in a pair of late-night court filings Monday, attorneys for Donald Trump accused Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team of withholding records and information they believe is necessary to challenge the facts and assumptions underlying the Washington, D.C. election-subversion felony federal criminal charges against the former president.”
Both motions request the court to force the government to turn over an extensive array of records. They suggest that Trump’s defense in the case is anticipated to challenge the claim made by Smith’s office, asserting that the former president is accountable for the events of January 6, 2021.
