Trump threatened Pence over certification, witness testified

On Jan. 6, he allegedly urged vice president to not throw away career.

WASHINGTON — The threat from President Donald Trump to his vice president, Mike Pence, was clear and direct: If you defy my effort to overturn the 2020 election by certifying the results, your future in Republican politics is over.

“Mike, this is a political career killer if you do this,” Trump told Pence by phone on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, according to the White House valet who was with the president for much of the day and told Congress he had overheard the conversation.

The testimony of Trump’s valet, provided to the now-defunct House Jan. 6 Committee in 2022 but not previously released publicly, offers a rare firsthand look into the former president’s behavior in the hours before, during and after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol seeking to halt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

In the valet’s account, laid out in a transcript obtained by The New York Times, an agitated Trump pressured Pence to overturn the election and stewed about Pence’s refusal for hours after violence engulfed Congress. Told that a civilian had been shot outside the House chamber amid the mob attack, he recalled, Trump appeared unconcerned.

“I just remember seeing it in front of him,” the valet said of a note card Trump was given bearing news of the casualty as he watched the riot unfold on television. “I don’t remember how it got there or whatever. But there was no, like, reaction.”

As unflattering as portions of the aide’s testimony were to Trump, he did not confirm some of the more graphic and damning claims made by witnesses in front of the Jan. 6 committee.

For instance, he did not remember hearing Trump use vulgar language in describing his view that Pence was a coward, or agree with rioters who were chanting for Pence to be hanged. And he did recall hearing the president ask about contacting top officials about dispatching the National Guard to Capitol Hill — although there is no indication he ever followed through.

For more than a year, House Republicans have been investigating the work of the Jan. 6 committee, looking for signs of bias. They have suggested the panel did not release certain transcripts because they contradict some of the testimony from a prominent witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as an aide to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff at the time.