The former vice president stood by his criticism of Trump on Wednesday, and called his former boss’ one-time lawyers “crackpots.”
For much of the first 54 days of his presidential campaign, Mike Pence has been relegated to the contest’s lower tier, fighting for scraps and single-digit polls at a crowded table featuring Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.
On day 55, the former vice president took the main stage.The indictment of Trump by special counsel Jack Smith for his efforts to undermine the 2020 election, placed a sharper focus on Pence’s actions leading up to and on Jan. 6, including the revelation that he kept contemporaneous notes. It also elevated the idea that Pence himself would be a litmus test for the rest of the field: Would they have made a different decision that day?Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Pence showed no regrets or equivocations in the hours after Smith unveiled his indictment.“With regard to the substance of the indictment,” Pence said, “I’ve been very clear: I had hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I had hoped that this issue, and the judgment of the president’s actions that day would be left to the American people. But now it’s been brought in a criminal indictment.”
He did not weigh in on what he thought the outcome of a trial would be. He also did not foreclose the possibility that he would appear as a witness. But he did let loose on Trump and his co-defendants, calling them “a group of crackpot lawyers that kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear.”
Privately, Pence’s team knew Jan. 6 would be a central theme of his candidacy. The Wi-Fi code at his campaign launch gave away their instinct: “KeptHisOath!” it read. His allied super PAC Committed to America led with an Iowa ad focusing on Jan. 6 shortly after his campaign launched. “A president begging him to ignore the Constitution. A mob shouting for him to die. And an anxious nation watching for one man to do what’s right,” a narrator said in the ad. And while the former vice president has built his campaign around his faith, his social conservatism and his service with Trump prior to the insurrection, aides understood that an indictment over Jan. 6 loomed and would inevitably suck the oxygen from the room
His team hasn’t relished having to rehash what happened that day. But they haven’t retreated from the discussion either, believing that it allows Pence to show convictions and purpose while others in the field struggle with contortions.
“He’s had a good couple of weeks,” said a senior adviser to Pence, granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
DeSantis, for one, has grappled with how best to respond to Trump’s legal foibles. Over the weekend, his campaign took an uncharacteristically aggressive swing, accusing the former president of scamming grandmothers to pay his legal bills, lying about the 2020 election results and risking the chance to unseat Joe Biden because of his unending political dramas.
But no sooner had the governor’s aides begun sharpening their hatchet than the candidate himself decided to tuck it away.
Asked on Monday about his own campaign spokesperson accusing the former president of running a scam, DeSantis claimed he was “not familiar” with those statements. After Smith unveiled the indictment, DeSantis sidestepped once again, arguing that a trial would be inherently unfair since it would be held in Washington, D.C.
He repeated his indirect defense of the GOP frontrunner in a Fox News interview Wednesday, promising to “reconstitutionalize the federal government” and “end weaponization” at the FBI and the Department of Justice. He also warned Trump will face a “stacked” jury in the nation’s capital.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), likewise, moved quickly to stand behind Trump, calling the latest indictment further evidence of “the weaponization of Biden’s DOJ.” It was a tonal shift from where Scott stood after the indictment of Trump over his handling of classified documents. Back then, he called the allegations “serious” before offering his concerns about a “double standard” for Republicans and Democrats.
