On the day of the Capitol riot, a staffer working for Donald Trump told the then-president that his vice president, Mike Pence, needed to be evacuated in order to keep him safe. Trump’s response was brief.
“So what?”
Trump’s lack of concern for Pence on January 6 was outlined in a 165-page court filing that was unsealed on Wednesday. The filing collects the evidence gathered thus far by federal prosecutors probing the alleged crimes Trump committed by trying to retain power even after he lost the 2024 election.
The filing was unsealed by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, and presents a sprawling “account of the defendant’s private criminal conduct,” according to special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation.
Trump’s lawyers hoped they’d be able to wriggle the former president out of prosecutorial danger by leaning on the Supreme Court’s “presidential immunity” ruling earlier this year. His defense team argued that everything Trump did before and during the Capitol riot was covered under the immunity ruling, and asked Chutkan to keep the evidence sealed from the public.
The judge rejected the argument, and permitted Smith to publish his findings, albeit with some names and details redacted.
In addition to outlining Trump’s seeming disinterest with Pence’s fate during the Capitol riot, it also paints the vice president as a lone voice of reason — at least regarding the election outcome — in Trump’s orbit.
According to the filing, Pence repeatedly told Trump he lost the election and that their efforts were better spent looking forward to 2024. A week after Election Day 2020, Pence tried to sell Trump on a “face-saving option” in which Trump would not concede, but would admit that the “process is over.”
A month later, on December 21, Pence and Trump were at a private lunch. The then-vice president advised Trump not to look at the election as a “loss” but as an “intermission.”
The filing then goes into detail about how Trump tried to force Pence into rejecting the chosen electors from states that Joe Biden won in an effort to overturn the election.
Trump’s reported frustration with Pence’s refusal to participate in the scheme culminated with the former president saying his running mate lacked “the courage” to carry out his plan just moments before MAGA supporters began marching to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
After the filing was unsealed, the former president hopped on his personal social media site to complain, predictably calling the entire thing a fabrication and a distraction.
“The release of this falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional, J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz disastrous Debate performance and 33 days before the Most important Election in the History of our Country, is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and Weaponize American Democracy and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,” Trump wrote.
