Several Donald Trump allies listened in from the Oval Office, but Mike Pence’s side of the call remains elusive.
Congressional investigators entering the last stage of their probe are gathering new evidence about a crucial moment on the Jan. 6 timeline: the final, fateful phone call between Donald Trump and Mike Pence before a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol.
They’ve had a lot of success on that front — court records and Jan. 6 select committee documents reveal that the panel has obtained significant details about that call. In recent weeks, they’ve learned even more from several high-profile witnesses who were in the Oval Office while Trump berated Pence for refusing to overturn the election.
Yet one crucial gap remains. Top Pence aides say the former vice president was in his residence when the call came in. He then left the room and was out of earshot for 15 to 20 minutes. Those aides told the select committee that Pence never disclosed to them the contents of the conversation. More importantly, Pence’s aides say he never revealed how he replied to Trump’s intense last-minute pressure.
That gap of information looms as the House panel works to finalize a minute-by-minute account of Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, when he pushed Pence to prevent the transfer of power to Biden. Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) has remained publicly undecided about whether to seek testimony from Pence himself, noting that Pence’s closest advisers have cooperated fulsomely. But investigators must also confront whether Pence’s side of that conversation — for which no Pence advisers were present — is significant enough to ask him to fill in the blanks.
It’s unlikely the committee will attempt to force Pence to testify. There are imposing legal obstacles for subpoenaing a former vice president, and the panel considers Pence a witness, not a target of their probe. Whether they ask for his voluntary help is another question.
An hour after the call, Pence would publicly declare what he’d privately told Trump for weeks: He would not assert unprecedented power to overturn the election. Barring some unforeseen twist, Joe Biden would be the next president. Aides who had been working all morning to finalize Pence’s statement delayed it to give Trump a chance to address his supporters, but the decision had long been settled.
But Pence’s words to Trump could be significant as congressional and criminal probes of Jan. 6 advance. A federal judge has concluded that Trump “more likely than not” criminally conspired to obstruct Congress’ proceedings to finalize Biden’s victory. He described Trump’s pressure campaign against Pence as “a coup in search of a legal theory.” The select committee has also argued that Trump committed multiple crimes as he leaned on Pence to subvert the election.
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NEW: The Jan. 6 committee has been methodically reconstructing the final call between Donald Trump and Mike Pence before a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.
They've made significant strides but there's still one crucial gap.
Story w/ @woodruffbets https://t.co/BAGLvMUjI9
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) April 20, 2022
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