Trump’s chaotic final days ‘were new low’ says Mike Pence

Former Vice President claims Trump’s decision to appoint a misfit team of outside lawyers set the US on a path towards the deadly January 6 riot.

House impeachment managers presented video evidence of then-Vice President Mike Pence being ushered away with his family during the Capitol riots.

Mike Pence, the former US vice-president, has claimed that Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election result was a “new low” in their troubled relationship.

In an extract from his new memoir, So Help Me God, Pence, 63, criticised Trump’s “fateful decision” as president to discard the advice of his campaign team as he refused to accept defeat by Joe Biden.

Trump’s decision to put a misfit team of outside lawyers in charge of his legal strategy set the country on a path towards the deadly riot on January 6 last year, when his supporters stormed the US Capitol, Pence said.

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they storm the US Capitol in Washington. Picture: AFP.

In his most explicit criticism of Trump since leaving office, and as he lays the groundwork for his own challenge for the White House in 2024, Pence described a furious standoff in the Oval Office in November 2020 as Trump demanded evidence to back up his claim that the election had been stolen from him through widespread fraud.

Pence said that Trump was swayed by his discredited outside lawyers, led by Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, who persisted in telling him what he wanted to hear, despite the White House finding no evidence that the vote had been stolen.

“After the campaign lawyers gave a sober and somewhat pessimistic report on the state of election challenges, the outside cast of characters went on the attack … Giuliani told the president over the speaker phone, ‘Your lawyers are not telling you the truth, Mr President,’ ” Pence wrote in an extract of the memoir obtained by the Axios website. “Even in an office well acquainted with rough-and-tumble debates, it was a new low.”

The extract does not reveal Pence’s thoughts on the events of January 6, when he was forced to flee the Senate chamber under armed guard as rioters threatening to kill him poured into the building. Trump has been accused of inciting the violence when he issued a tweet at 2.24pm, with the riot under way, declaring: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”

President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani perpetuated the myth that the election had been stolen. Picture: AFP.

The release of Pence’s memoir on November 15 comes as he prepares another challenge for the Republican presidential nomination, presenting himself as the saviour of the party and an alternative to Trump.

Although Trump, 76, remains favourite to be the Republican candidate in two years’ time, Pence is one of several rivals eyeing the nomination, hopeful that the former president’s legal troubles will force him out.

Pence’s claim that Trump sidelined advisers who did not back his claims of fraud echoes testimony from other White House staff to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 riot. The committee issued a subpoena to Trump two weeks ago, demanding that he turn over documents and testify under oath.

The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into Trump’s involvement in the plot to overturn the election result and his alleged hand in inciting the violence.

The Times