Asked Monday night who made him “buck” President Donald Trump’s wishes and certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, former vice president Mike Pence told a group of young conservatives that he looked to the teachings of James Madison and the Bible to help him defy Trump hours after the deadly pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
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Speaking at a Young America’s Foundation event at the University of Iowa, Pence was asked by an audience member identified only as Jared whether “someone in the White House convinced you that it would destroy your hopes of becoming president” if he followed Trump’s pressure not to certify the election results in Arizona and other states.
“My question is what is the name of the person who told you to buck President Trump’s plan and certify the votes?” the audience member asked.
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Pence, who hid from a marauding mob during the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol as some chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” responded, “James Madison” — the fourth president of the United States, who is known as the “father of the Constitution.”
The former vice president, whose answer was met with applause from the Iowa City audience, denied that he was advised it would hurt his chances of running for president if he followed Trump’s plan.
“Everything you’ve recited relative to me is false,” he said to the audience member.
Pence, referring to the oath he took to uphold the Constitution, also cited a Bible verse he said he leaned on: “Psalm 15 says he who keeps his oath even when it hurts.”
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Pence acknowledged that he had written a letter to Congress about his concerns over voting, and that he still has concerns over “irregularities” in states such as Arizona and Georgia. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, although Trump and some other Republicans continue to make that false claim.
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But Pence, who is seen as a potential GOP candidate for president in 2024, emphasized that he stands by his January decision, saying, “The only role of the federal government is to open and count the electoral votes that were sent by the states.”
“I understand the disappointment in the election. You might remember I was on the ballot,” he said to the 500 or so people in attendance. “But you’ve got to be willing to do your duty. And the time may come that some of you are in that position, or one like it. And I just have a feeling, based on the shining faces I’m seeing around here, you’re going to be men and women who do your duty in that time as well.”
Special report: The Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event.
The former vice president’s comments come days after The Washington Post reported that an attorney for Trump emailed a top Pence aide on Jan. 6 to say that Pence had caused the violence at the Capitol by refusing to block certification of the election results. The attorney, John C. Eastman, kept pressing Pence to act even after Trump’s supporters had tramped through the Capitol — an attack the Pence aide, Greg Jacob, had described as a “siege” in their email exchange.
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“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman wrote to Jacob, referring to Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.
During Jan. 6 riot, Trump attorney told Pence team the vice president’s inaction caused attack on Capitol
Eastman sent the email as Pence, who had been presiding in the Senate, was under guard with Jacob and other advisers in a secure area while pro-Trump rioters tore through the Capitol complex, some of them calling for Pence to be executed.
Trump is seeking to withhold almost 800 pages of documents from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to a court filing over the weekend. The former president is attempting to assert executive privilege regarding 46 pages of records from the files of former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former senior adviser Stephen Miller, former deputy counsel Patrick Philbin and Brian de Guzman, the former director of White House information services, according to a sworn declaration from John Laster, director of the White House liaison division at the National Archives and Records Administration.
Trump seeking to block hundreds of pages of documents from Jan. 6 committee, court filing shows
Since the Capitol riot, which led to five deaths and hundreds of injuries, Pence has acknowledged that he does not know whether he and Trump will “ever see eye to eye” about Jan. 6. Before he was banned from Twitter, Trump tweeted that Pence did not have “the courage to do what should have been done” in regard to not certifying the election results.
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But Pence has also denounced the media reporting surrounding Jan. 6, claiming that its intent is to “demean” Trump supporters.
“I know the media wants to distract from the Biden administration’s failed agenda by focusing on one day in January,” Pence told Fox News host Sean Hannity last month. “They want to use that one day to try and demean the character and intentions of 74 million Americans who believed we could be strong again and prosperous again and supported our administration in 2016 and 2020.”
In his second visit to Iowa in recent months, Pence on Monday attempted to walk a line between defending his actions on Jan. 6 and touting the Trump administration’s policy successes on taxes, the military and security at the southern border, according to the Des Moines Register. The former vice president also favorably compared Trump to former president Ronald Reagan, calling them both “one of a kind.”
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At the end of his talk, he thanked the crowd for “the affirmations of support” months after he had left office.
“It means a lot to me,” he said. “It truly does.”
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