Former Vice President Mike Pence has more than once turned his back on former President Trump. The biggest was when Pence certified President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election on January 6, 2021.
More recently, Pence handed Special Counsel Jack Smith "personal notes" detailing Trump's statement and post-election actions.
Thanks to Pence, the prosecution against the 45th president has more power after Smith filed a federal indictment against Trump alleging a series of criminal conspiracies aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.
According to legal documents, Pence took "contemporaneous notes" of conversions between him and Trump before the Capitol Hill protests in 2021.
"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," the 45-page indictment alleges.
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The court documents cite multiple phone calls between Trump and Pence in December 2020 and early January 2021, where the former president allegedly made "knowingly false" claims about the election, pressuring Pence to stop Congress from certifying Biden's win.
In January, Trump reportedly called Pence to notify him that law enforcement had discovered evidence of illegal activity regarding the election. According to Pence's notes, he said that Trump said the "Justice Department [was] finding major infractions," which Smith calls false.
The indictment continued noting that according to Pence, Trump discussed a lawsuit filed by Republicans that asked a judge to declare the vice president had "exclusive authority and sole discretion to decide which electoral votes should count." However, Pence stressed to his boss "that I didn't believe I possessed that power under the Constitution."
"You're too honest," Trump replied, according to the indictment.
On January 4, a meeting between Pence and Trump was held. "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 states.
The next day, Trump was allegedly frustrated with the vice president's refusal to agree to Trump's request regarding the certification of the election; he told Pence he would have to criticize him publicly, which he did.
In a statement following Trump's indictment, Pence accused his former boss of putting himself over the Constitution, claiming a Trump candidacy would distract from Biden's "disastrous" record.
