A day after the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 aggression illustrated the grave danger posed by the mutineers to Mike Pence, former President Donald J. Trump unleashed a new attack on the man who he had exercised it as vice president, criticizing him for refusing to interfere. with the certification of the Electoral College of the presidential contest 2020.
In statements Friday afternoon before a faith group, Mr. Trump said “Mike didn’t have the courage to act” in an attempt to unilaterally reject the Electoral College votes being cast by Joseph R. Biden Jr.
On Thursday, the House panel showed that Mr. Trump and his advisers were repeatedly told that Mr. Pence had no power to block the certification and to do so would violate the law, but pressured him to try anyway.
The committee also used witnesses to dismantle and disprove Mr. False’s allegations. Trump of widespread election fraud, arguments he repeated in his keynote speech Friday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Nashville.
Mr. Trump has been angry looking at the hearings, knowing he lacks a bully pulpit from which to respond, according to his advisers. He used much of his Friday speech to repeat his false election claims and to denigrate Mr. Pence.
The issues of the hearings of the House Committee on January 6
Most striking was the context of the attack on Mr. Pence, whose presence on the 2016 presidential ballot was instrumental in reassuring evangelical voters that Mr. Trump, a three-time New York real estate developer whose first divorce was a tabloid feed for months and who had supported abortion rights, had become quite conservative on social issues.
Mr. Pence, who often talks about his religious faith, is a favorite among the type of voters who attend the conference. But that didn’t stop Mr. Trump from denouncing him from the stage on Friday.
After repeating allegations about election fraud that have been widely denied, including by his former attorney general, William P. Barr, Mr. Trump looked at Mr. Pence.
First, he insisted that he had not called Mr. Pence is an “easy” in a phone call with the vice president on the morning of January 6, 2021, even though the former aide to Mr. Trump, Nick Luna, had testified under penalty of perjury over such a comment. “I don’t even know who these people are,” Trump told the crowd.
“I never said Mike Pence was a coward,” he said. Trump, whose daughter Ivanka was present at the call and then told her chief of staff that Mr. Trump had called Mr. He thinks of a coward, using vulgarity. At that time, Mr. Trump went on to describe Mr. Think of it as weak.
“Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be, frankly, historic,” the former president said. “But like Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people,” he said, Mr. Pence “didn’t have the courage to act.” The comment was received with applause.
Mr. Trump continued to make fun of Mr. Pence, whose aides testified that he had repeatedly told Mr. Pence. Trump who did not have the power to dismiss the victory of the Electoral College of Mr. They call or declare a 10-day break in the Congress session to send the votes back to the states to be re-examined.
“Mike Pence had absolutely no choice but to be a human conveyor belt,” Trump said.
Mr. Trump also misrepresented the 1801 certification of Thomas Jefferson’s presidential victory — a process that Jefferson, then vice president, oversaw — to argue that Mr. Pence should have used this model to keep Mr. Trump in office. .
“I said to Mike, ‘If you do that, you could be Thomas Jefferson,'” Trump said. “And after it all fell apart, I looked at him one day and said, You are not Thomas Jefferson. “
Marc Short, former chief of staff to Mr. Pence said this conversation never happened. Mr. Short did not comment further on Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump also complained that the House committee had released videos of the testimony of his former aides so that they would not be reproduced in their full context. He reportedly referred indirectly to the testimony of his daughter Ivanka, whose comments have been used against her father in two hearings.
Speaking of the mob leaving his speech on the Ellipse on January 6 and swarming the Capitol, Mr. Trump remained on the defensive. “It was just a protest,” he said. “It got out of hand.”