That Sound You Hear Is Donald Trump Popping a Blood Vessel Over Mike Pence’s Jan. 6 Grand Jury Testimony - Vanity Fair

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Hide the ketchup bottles: the special counsel criminally investigating Trump apparently took a particularly keen interest in Pence’s testimony.

By Bess Levin

May 3, 2023

As you’ve probably heard by now, Donald Trump is in a whole lot of legal peril. For starters, he’s currently on trial for rape, having been accused by writer E. Jean Carroll of attacking her in a New York department store in the mid-’90s. Then there are the 34 class E felonies he was charged with by the Manhattan district attorney’s office last month, stemming from various hush money payments he allegedly made in the lead up to the 2016 election. But of course, that’s not all. The ex-president is also under investigation by the Fulton County district attorney’s office for trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia; he’s been sued by the New York attorney general’s office on allegations of massive fraud; and a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department is running a pair of criminal probes into both his handling of classified documents (and possible obstruction) and plot to stay in power following his loss to Joe Biden (plus the insurrection that followed). And the former guy is unlikely to be thrilled about the latest development in the DOJ’s election investigation.

CNN reports that special counsel Jack Smith “sat in on the federal grand jury proceeding while former vice president Mike Pence testified for more than five hours last week,” according to a trio of people familiar with the matter. As the outlet notes, the former VP’s testimony is “likely to elicit a strong negative reaction” from Trump—and not just because Trump is prone to massive outbursts over the smallest of perceived slights.

As a reminder, the ex-president has expended significant time and energy trying to block Pence from testifying about January 6 and the weeks leading up to the attack on the US Capitol; last month, his attorneys reportedly tried (and failed) to reverse a judge’s order for Pence to appear before a federal grand jury. (For his part, Pence spent the two-plus years since January 6, 2021, refusing to tell investigators what he knew about the insurrection and the days that preceded it, and then, in April, his adviser announced that he would not appeal the latest ruling ordering him to comply with the special counsel subpoena for testimony.) Trump’s desire to block Pence from speaking likely has something to do with the former VP’s unique insights into his attempt to stay in power and the lengths he went to steal a second term. Those insights include but are not limited to: the fact that Trump reportedly spent weeks pressuring Pence to overturn the 2020 election, even after being told it was illegal; told Pence, “You can be a patriot or you can be a pussy”; told Pence, in the days before January 6, that hundreds of thousands of people were going to hate him for being “too honest” to overturn the results of the election; and inspired his supporters to go after Pence by telling them at the “Stop the Steal” rally that the then VP had the power to block Joe Biden’s win, which resulted in chants of “Hang Mike Pence” and a situation wherein the Secret Service had to move Pence and his family to a secure location, lest the rioters make good on their threats.

After Pence said in March that his old boss was “wrong” to demand he overturn the results of the election and—in his most strongly worded remarks to do date—declared that “history will hold Donald Trump accountable,” Trump flew off the handle and blamed Pence for January 6, saying: “Had [Pence] sent the votes back to the legislatures, they wouldn’t have had a problem with Jan. 6, so in many ways, you can blame him for Jan. 6. Had he sent them back to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, the states, I believe, number one, you would have had a different outcome. But I also believe you wouldn’t have had ‘Jan. 6’ as we call it.”

It was a claim so divorced from reality that even the gang at Fox News couldn’t believe it.

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So, yeah, Pence (and Smith) can probably expect that a “strong negative reaction” is forthcoming.

Every single point here is true (and yet)

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Well, this seems suboptimal for democracy

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Nothing to see here, just a former Tucker Carlson producer claiming that the erstwhile Fox News host thought he could play a role in deciding whom our Speaker of the House would be