Secret notes made by then-Vice President Mike Pence during the tumultuous final days of his and then-President Donald Trump’s term in office have been made public.
The “contemporaneous notes” Pence took of his conversations with Trump in the days before the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol Building were revealed in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of the former president late Tuesday.
Pence’s previously undisclosed notes are being presented as evidence against Trump, who is currently facing four federal charges in connection with his actions following the 2020 presidential election and unverified allegations of election fraud. The former president is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct, an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights, Fox News reported.
“As the January 6 congressional certification proceeding approached and other efforts to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function failed, [Trump] sought to enlist the Vice President to use his ceremonial role at the certification to fraudulently alter the election results,” alleges the 45-page indictment.
“The Defendant did this first by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to convince the Vice President to accept the Defendant’s fraudulent electors, reject legitimate electoral votes, or send legitimate electoral votes to state legislatures for review rather than count them. When that failed, the Defendant attempted to use a crowd of supporters that he had gathered in Washington, D.C., to pressure the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results,” it added.
The network’s report noted further:
The indictment cites several phone calls between Trump and Pence in late December 2020 and early January 2021 in which Trump allegedly made “knowingly false” claims about the election and pressured his vice president to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. Pence recounted some of these conversations in his memoir, “So Help Me God.”
According to Smith, Pence called Trump on Dec. 25, 2020, to wish him a Merry Christmas but Trump “quickly turned the conversation to January 6 and his request that the Vice President reject electoral votes that day.” Pence pushed back, asserting that he lacked the authority to change the election outcome.
Four days later, Trump purportedly informed Pence that law enforcement had found evidence of unlawful activities in the election. Pence’s notes record Trump stating that the “Justice Department [was] uncovering major infractions,” an assertion that the special counsel deemed false.
The indictment then proceeds to detail a meeting on New Year’s Day between Trump and his vice president, which Pence had written about in his memoir. The former VP said Trump talked about a lawsuit filed by Republicans asking a judge to declare the vice president had “exclusive authority and sole discretion to decide which electoral votes should count.” Pence said he repeated back to Trump “that I didn’t believe I possessed that power under the Constitution.”
“You’re too honest,” Trump reportedly responded, according to both Pence’s book and the indictment. “Hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts… People are gonna think you’re stupid.”
The argument apparently went on for days, but on Jan. 3, “Co-Conspirator 2 circulated a second memorandum that included a new plan under which, contrary to the ECA, the Vice President would send the elector slates to the state legislatures to determine which slate to count,” the indictment noted.
The following day, Trump convened a meeting involving “Co-Conspirator 2,” Pence, Marc Short, the former chief of staff to the vice president, and Greg Jacob, the former counsel to the vice president. The purported aim of this meeting was to persuade Pence to overturn the election, with the specifics of the discussion recorded in Pence’s notes.
The indictment goes on to allege that Trump deliberately left the White House Counsel out of the meeting “because the White House Counsel previously had pushed back on the Defendant’s false claims of election fraud.”
“During the meeting, as reflected in the Vice President’s contemporaneous notes, the Defendant made knowingly false claims of election fraud, including, ‘Bottom line-won every state by 100,000s of votes’ and ‘We won every state,’ and asked — regarding a claim his senior Justice Department officials previously had told him was false, including as recently as the night before — ‘What about 205,000 votes more in PA than voters?'” the indictment notes.
In a meeting on Jan. 5, Trump reportedly “grew frustrated with Pence and told his vice president he would have to publicly criticize him.”
Fox News noted: “Trump did so the next day in a speech to his supporters at his now-infamous rally in Washington, D.C. The indictment observes Trump’s supporters chanted ‘Hang Mike Pence!’ and ‘Traitor Pence!’ as they left the rally and marched on the Capitol.”
