Although he believes “no one is above the law”, the former US vice president Mike Pence says he hopes federal prosecutors will “give careful consideration before taking further action” in the investigation into Donald Trump’s role in inciting the rioters who staged the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and tried to hang him.
Pence made the remarks Sunday in an interview with the NBC host Meet the pressChuck Todd, in which he also said the FBI “sent the wrong message” by raiding Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August to retrieve government secrets stored there without permission.
According to Pence, Trump was “repeating … what he was hearing from that group of lawyers around him” before the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol nearly two years ago, which then-president’s supporters launched in a desperate but unsuccessful attempt. to stop certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Trump was investigated by Congress after telling his supporters – some of whom wanted Pence to stop certification or hang from a gallows – to “fight like hell” that day, among other things . Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday appointed a special counsel to weigh charges against Trump for the attack on Capitol Hill and government secrets at Mar-a-Lago, two days after the former president announced that would again seek the Republican nomination for the White House.
But, when asked on Sunday if he thinks Trump committed a crime in connection with the attack on the Capitol, Pence replied, “I don’t know if it’s criminal to listen to bad advice from attorneys” who were consulting with the president on efforts to sow suspicion over his loss to Biden.
As for the search for Mar-a-Lago, Pence suggested that federal authorities had not exhausted alternative methods to recover the secret documents in question. “There had to be many other ways to solve these problems,” Pence told Todd.
The Justice Department had issued a grand jury subpoena requesting all documents bearing classification marks in Trump’s possession prior to the Mar-a-Lago search.
Trump’s attorneys produced documents in early June in response to that subpoena. But the Justice Department later received evidence that other classified documents remained at Mar-a-Lago, leading to the search there on August 8.
Ultimately, Pence said he sent a “wrong” and “divisive” message, particularly “to the whole world that sees America as the gold standard.”
“I want to see the credibility of the [US] Justice Department restored after years of politicization,” Pence added.
Pence’s relatively supportive remarks to Trump contrast with more critical ones he had leveled against his former running mate in his new memoir, So Help Me God. Part of the memory says Trump erred in failing to condemn the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., marked by a fatal police helicopter crash and the killing of a counter-protester.
The book also claims that Trump took a misstep in not acknowledging Russian interference in the 2016 election he won against Hillary Clinton, saying it would not have cheapened the victory.
Pence also responded to Trump’s latest run for the White House by telling ABC News, “I think we’ll have better choices in the future.” For his part, Pence told ABC he also gives “praying consideration” to his possible competition for the Republican nomination.
Authorities have linked up to nine deaths to the Capitol attack, including the suicides of officers traumatized by the need to defend the ground. More than 800 participants have been charged, including members of violent far-right groups, and many have already been convicted and jailed for their roles that day.
Pence said Sunday he was proud that no chamber of Congress let the attack on Capitol Hill derail certification of the 2020 election result.
“The leaders of both political parties” reached “unanimous agreement that whatever had to be done, we had to reconvene Congress that day and finish our job,” Pence said.