PANEL RECONSTRUCTS PENCE’S HARROWING DAY AT U.S. CAPITOL
Testimony reveals new details about pressures on him
He started the day with a prayer.
Vice President Mike Pence, preparing to withstand the final stage of a relentless campaign by President Donald Trump to force him to illegally try to overturn the results of the 2020 election, began Jan. 6, 2021, surrounded by aides at his official residence at the Naval Observatory, asking God for guidance.
The group was expecting a difficult day. But what followed over the next 12 hours was more harrowing than they imagined.
A mob with baseball bats and pepper spray chanting “hang Mike Pence” came within 40 feet of the vice president. Pence’s Secret Service detail had to hustle him to safety and hold him for nearly five hours in the bowels of the Capitol. Trump called Pence a “wimp” and worse in a coarse call that morning from the Oval Office, Trump’s daughter and former White House aides testified.
And a confidential witness who traveled to Washington with the Proud Boys, the most prominent of the far-right groups that helped lead the assault on the Capitol, later told investigators the group would have killed Pence — and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — if they got the chance.
Those were among the extraordinary new details that emerged during the third hearing held Thursday by the House committee investigating the attack.
Pence’s day dawned as it often did. The vice president was joined by three people in prayer: his chief counsel, Greg Jacob; his chief of staff, Marc Short; and his director of legislative affairs, Chris Hodgson.
Pence and the team had been subjected to a barrage of demands from Trump that the vice president refuse to certify Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory in a joint session of Congress.
While Pence was at the Naval Observatory, Trump was in the Oval Office with aides and family members trickling in and out, including Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Ivanka Trump. He had already sent two Twitter posts pressuring Pence, the first at 1 a.m. The second, at 8 a.m., concluded, “Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”
At 11:20 a.m., Trump called Pence, who stepped away from his aides to take the call.
The group in the Oval Office could hear Trump’s side of the call but paid little attention to what seemed to start as a routine conversation. But as Trump became increasingly heated that Pence was holding firm, the call became hard to ignore.
Trump revised a speech that he delivered later that day to supporters on the Ellipse. An early draft of the speech, the committee said, included no mention of Pence. After the call, the president included language about Pence.
“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing,” Trump said in his speech. “I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win.” Trump directed his supporters to march to the Capitol and make themselves heard.
By the time Pence arrived at the Capitol with his wife, Karen Pence, and their daughter Charlotte Pence Bond an angry mob was already massing outside.
Inside, as the joint session began, Mike Pence’s aides released a memo to the public laying out the vice president’s view that he did not have the power over the certification that Trump and his legal adviser, John Eastman, insisted he did.
Shortly after 2:10 p.m., the proceedings were interrupted by loud noises. The mob was swarming into the building. At 2:24 p.m. — when Democrats on the committee said Trump was aware that the Capitol had been breached — the president posted to Twitter that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what was necessary.”
At that point, the Secret Service had moved Pence from the Senate chamber to his office across the hall. His advisers said the noise from the rioters had become audible, leading them to assume they had entered the building. Yet there was not yet a pervasive sense of alarm.
Once in his office, Pence sat with his family, including his brother, Rep. Greg Pence, R-Ind., and top aides as Short ducked downstairs to grab some food. Karen Pence drew the curtains to keep the rioters from looking in.
Short made his way back to the office. By then, Tim Giebels, the lead Secret Service agent for Pence, had made a few attempts to nudge Pence and his family to move to a different location. But soon he was no longer making a suggestion. Pence, he said, had to get to safety.
The entourage began to make its way down a stairway toward an underground loading dock — the point at which they came within 40 feet of the rioters.
From the loading dock, Pence handled calls to congressional leaders who had been evacuated from the Capitol complex and ordered the Pentagon to send in the National Guard. The Secret Service directed him to get into a car and evacuate, but he refused to leave the building.
Just after 8 p.m., the Senate chamber opened again, after the rioters had been cleared from the complex.
At 3:42 in the morning, it was all over. Biden’s victory had been certified.