Former President Donald Trump has urged congressional Jan. 6 investigators to open up a probe against his former vice president, Mike Pence, over his refusal to help Trump overturn the 2020 election result.
Pence and Trump haven’t been on speaking terms since last year, when the then-VP went against Trump’s orders and fulfilled his duty to certify Joe Biden’s election victory in Congress. But their relationship plumbed new depths Tuesday, when Trump released a statement saying that Pence should be under investigation for not reversing the 2020 election result.
In a furious statement posted by Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington on Tuesday, the former president once again attacked the House committee investigating the Capitol riot and said the panel should be focusing on Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, rather than himself.
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The ex-president wrote, “The Unselect Committee should be investigating why Nancy Pelosi did such a poor job of overseeing security and why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval, in that it has now been shown that he clearly had the right to do so!”
Trump’s obsession with Pence’s part in the presidential transition last year has been renewed in recent days as he’s seized on plans to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887— the federal law that Trump tried to abuse to have Pence refuse to certify Biden’s victory last January.
Trump’s flawed argument is that, as a bipartisan group of senators now wants to overhaul the law to help clarify that it can’t be used in the antidemocratic way Trump intended, it proves he was right to say Pence should have stepped in last year to block Biden’s certification.
In his Tuesday statement, Trump went on to say that “there would have been no ‘January 6’ as we know it” if Pence had simply refused to certify the Biden victory, and if Pelosi had heeded his warning to increase security on the day of the Capitol riot to deal with his mob of supporters.
Last week, Pence made clear that he and Trump are no longer 0n good terms by telling Fox News that he hadn’t spoken to Trump since last summer. Trump’s latest intervention won’t improve matters.
