Mike Pence Repeatedly Tried to Make Trump Accept Defeat—Jack Smith Filing

10.3.24
Former Vice President Mike Pence's repeated attempts to convince Donald Trump to accept he lost the 2020 election have been detailed in new court filings. Special counsel Jack Smith's team listed multiple alleged discussions Trump and Pence had in the post-2020 election period, including an apparent "face-saving option" from Pence that the former president should not publicly concede but "recognize the process is over." The conversations were relayed in a 165-page court filing from federal prosecutors and partly unsealed Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, just over a month before Election Day. The filing alleges Trump was well aware that he had lost the 2020 election because of conversations he had with his inner circle, but still "resorted to crimes" to stay in office. The indictment kept claims Trump repeatedly pressured Pence to not certify the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021, while the vice president carried out his purely ceremonial role as presiding officer of the Senate.

The unsealed filings said one of the conversations Trump and Pence had in the wake of the 2020 election was the vice president stating he found no evidence of voter fraud that would have affected the outcome of the race. The filings also say that Pence "gradually and gently tried to convince" Trump to accept the lawful results of the election, "even if it meant they lost." Prosecutors said that Trump "disregarded" Pence in the same way that he "disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies' legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states— including those in his own party— who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false." Trump's and Pence's relationship fell apart in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

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Rogue Valley said:

There were at least 4 conversations between Mike Pence and Donald Trump in which Pence either told Trump the 2020 election was over and they had lost, or that he would not participate in Trump's scheme to violate the Constitution and defraud the people by using "alternate electors" on January 6, 2021. The 165 page superceding indictment of Donald Trump is damning and lays out the prosecution case element-by-element. It also explains how Trump was not acting in any official capacity as president, but rather as a private citizen and aspiring candidate for the 2020 election.

United States v. Donald Trump (pdf. file / superceding indictment of Donald Trump / redacted)

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