Books on Trump clarify Pence’s role
Three accounts retrace events on and before Jan. 6
WASHINGTON – This summer features a spate of books offering revelations on President Donald Trump’s last year in office.
Michael Wolff ’s “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,” Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender’s “‘Frankly, We Did Win This Election’: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,” and “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year,” by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker delved into the Trump administration’s chaotic actions during 2020.
They reveal details on former Vice President Mike Pence’s role in Trump’s election fraud conspiracy theories and the riot Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol.
Pence pushes back
Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, was a crucial player in the final days of the vice president’s tenure after Trump lost the election, according to Wolff in “Landslide.”
Short was not one of the aides in the administration who supported the false election fraud claims spewed by Trump and other conspiracy theorists.
“Short was privately telling both party leaders and West Wing aides that there was ‘zero debate’ in the Vice President’s Office about his role in presiding over the electoral vote count,” Wolff wrote.
During a meeting Jan. 5 with constitutional scholar John Eastman, Pence pushed back against Eastman’s arguments that he had the power to accept or reject electors. In “Frankly, We Did Win,” Bender alleges that “Pence thought Trump was getting bad legal advice.”
After the meeting with Eastman, “Pence and Short believed they could not have been clearer about their views and about the actions the vice president would take, and those he would not,” Wolff wrote.
Trump expected Pence to stop Congress from confirming the election.
When pro-Trump rioters ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, Pence’s Secret Service detail rushed him to safety.
Pence was moved to his ceremonial office, but it was still a vulnerable spot. Timothy Giebels, the lead special agent in charge of Pence’s detail, twice asked the vice president to get out of the Capitol. Pence refused.
“I’m not leaving the Capitol,” he told Giebels, according to “I Alone.”
Giebels asked Pence a third time to leave: “The room you’re in is not secure. There are glass windows. I need to move you. We’re going.”
Pence was moved “to a secured subterranean area that rioters couldn’t reach, where Pence’s armored limousine awaited.”
Pence refused to get into the limousine, fearing he would be seen fleeing the Capitol, vindicating the rioters.
As military leaders figured out how to deploy the National Guard and federal law enforcement of neighboring states to the Capitol, Pence called acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller from his secured location, according to the account in “I Alone.”
“Get troops here; get them here now,” a calm Pence ordered Miller. “We’ve got to get the Congress to do its business.” “Yes, sir,” Miller replied.
This was the sternest Miller had ever heard Pence speak, Leonnig and Rucker wrote.
“Get troops here; get them here now,” a calm Pence ordered Miller. “We’ve got to get the Congress to do its business.” From “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year.”
Insurrection Act
Trump summoned top military, law enforcement and West Wing advisers to the White House after The New York Times reported that he, first lady Melania Trump and son Barron were moved to a basement bunker during protests that erupted after George Floyd’s death.
Pence suggested invoking the Insurrection Act, according to “Frankly.”
“Are you freaking kidding me? one senior administration official thought,” Bender wrote.
Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “was horrified by Pence’s suggestion,” Bender wrote.
Pence as a rival
Trump has flirted with running for office again in 2024, when he could encounter his former vice president as a rival.
When asked about this by Leonnig and Rucker in “I Alone,” Trump told the reporters, “It’s a free country, right?”
Trump did not commit to choosing Pence as a potential running mate and rejected former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. In all three books, he expressed “disappointment” in Pence for certifying results of the 2020 election.