WASHINGTON — Days before rioters marched through the halls of the U.S. Capitol threatening to “hang Mike Pence,” Donald Trump told his vice president that people were going to “hate you” and “think you’re stupid” he couldn’t stop the movement. 2020 electoral certification.
The New Year’s warning was not the first time Trump pressured Pence to overturn the election results. It wasn’t the last either. In what became known as “Operation Pence Card,” Trump spent weeks publicly and privately pushing his vice president to help him stay in power after his defeat.
“You’re too honest,” Trump chastised his vice president during that early morning call on January 1.
After hanging up, the president tweeted to remind his supporters to come to Washington for the “HUGE protest rally” in a few days – what would become the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol.
The exchanges between the president and his vice president, detailed in special counsel Jack Smith’s court filing this week, show Trump’s extraordinary efforts to overturn the 2020 election, even as he lays the groundwork to contest the contest this year, if he loses.
Pence is no longer on Trump’s side and has refused to support the Republican nominee’s bid to return to the White House. Trump and his new vice presidential running mate, JD Vance, still refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election that gave the presidency to Joe Biden.
At a pivotal moment in this week’s debate between Vance and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, Vance refused to say whether he accepted the results of the last election. In a harsh retort, Walz said: “That’s why Mike Pence is not on this stage. »
Much of the special counsel’s filing recounts the tumultuous months following the November election, when Trump — surrounded by allies including Steve Bannon, his former campaign manager turned podcast host, now in prison after a conviction for contempt of Congress – ordered his team to fight. to keep him in power. The former president, indicted on criminal charges in connection with a plot to overturn the 2020 election, called the new case “election interference” and called for the case to be dismissed.
The day after the election, Trump asked Pence to “study” allegations of voter fraud in states they had previously won, when they first ran for office together in 2016.
“It was just look at this whole thing, tell me what you think,” Pence recalled of their Nov. 4 phone call. “But he told me the campaign was going to fight, that they were going to go to court and challenge it.”
That weekend, with Biden projected as the winner, Pence tried to “encourage” Trump “as a friend” to consider all he had accomplished.
“You took a dying party and gave it new life,” Pence told Trump on November 7.
As the days passed, the campaign team gave Trump what Pence described as a “sober and somewhat pessimistic report” on the status of the election challenges they were pursuing.
“Pence gradually and gently tried to convince the defendant to accept the legal results of the election, even if it meant he lost,” the court filing says.
“Do not concede but recognize that the process is over,” Pence told his defeated running mate on November 12.
Four days later, at a private lunch, Pence encouraged the president to accept the results and run again in four years. “I don’t know, 2024 is so far away,” Trump responded, according to the filing.
In early December, a change occurred. Trump was beginning to think about the role of Congress in the electoral process.
“For the first time, he mentioned to Pence the possibility of contesting the election results in the House of Representatives,” the filing said, citing a Dec. 5 phone call.
It was the start of an increasingly intense public and private campaign, orchestrated by Trump, that would descend on Pence in the coming weeks and, ultimately, raise concerns for his own safety. Some details are described in Pence’s own book, “So Help Me God.”
Trump and his team of outside lawyers, led by Rudy Giuliani, “developed a new plan” after their legal challenges failed. It focused on seven states Trump lost, guided by a proposal from law professor John Eastman to create alternative voter slates that would claim the defeated president had actually won.
And they turned their attention to Pence.
They falsely claimed that Pence, in his ministerial role as Senate president, could decide on Jan. 6 which slates of electors to select, or send them both back to the states for reconsideration, prosecutors said.
“They lied to Pence, telling him there had been substantial election fraud and concealing their orchestration of the plan,” the prosecutor wrote. “And they lied to the public, falsely claiming that Pence had the authority during the certification process to reject electoral votes. »
Members of Trump’s campaign team called the project “crazy” and disparagingly referred to those organizing it as characters from the “Star Wars bar.”
Trump told Pence of his plans for a rally on Jan. 6 and expressed the idea that it would be a “great day,” the filing said.
While having lunch together a few days later, on December 21, Pence again encouraged Trump not to view the election as a loss but as “just an intermission.”
Pence told the president that if they still failed, “after exhausting all legal processes in the courts and Congress,” then Trump should “bow down.”
But Trump would not give in. On Dec. 23, Trump retweeted “Operation Pence Card” and began “directly and repeatedly pressuring Pence,” prosecutors said, and continued to “summon” his supporters to rally in Washington.
On Christmas Day, when Pence called the president to wish him a Merry Christmas, Trump told him that he had certification discretion while presiding over Congress.
“You know, I don’t think I have the power to change the outcome,” Pence said.
As January 6 approached, the days grew more and more desperate for Trump. The president tore into his vice president in the New Year’s morning phone call. The next day, he asked Georgia’s secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” that could prove he had won the election in this state. He then told Pence that a senator would request a 10-day certification delay during the proceedings. “You can make the decision,” Trump told Pence.
Pence took five pages of contemporaneous notes during a White House meeting when Trump asked his team to outline the plan for Pence and said: “When there is fraud, the rules change. »
Pence told them: “I don’t think that argument works. »
“The conspirators were not deterred,” the prosecutor wrote, and Trump continued to publicly pressure Pence.
“I hope Mike Pence pulls through for us,” Trump said at a rally in Georgia.
Meeting privately in the Oval Office on January 5, the defeated president again told his vice president: “I believe you have the authority to decertify.”
While Pence remained unmoved, Trump threatened to publicly criticize him: “I have to say you have done a great disservice. »
This concerned Pence, the prosecutor wrote, and the vice president’s Secret Service was alerted.
Trump called Pence later that evening, along with his lawyers, to again raise the issue of removing voters in the states. Trump called Pence back late at night: “You have to be tough tomorrow. »
The next morning, January 6, before Trump took the stage, he called Pence again.
When Pence again refused the request, the prosecutor wrote, Trump was furious.
Trump reinserted remarks aimed at Pence into his speech. And Trump sent a mob of angry supporters to the Capitol.
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