What happened

Donald Trump "resorted to crimes to try to stay in office" after losing the 2020 presidential race, special counsel Jack Smith argued in a court filing unsealed Wednesday. And Trump's "increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results" were "fundamentally private" in nature, not "official" acts deemed immune from prosecution under a recent Supreme Court ruling. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan released the redacted 165-page brief over Trump's objections.

Who said what

Smith's "explosive" filing "offers a searing portrayal of Trump" as he tried to cling to power, The Washington Post said, even as Mike Pence, campaign officials and lawyers, and Republican state officials told him "there was no proof the election was stolen." None of the "new details were game-changing revelations," said The New York Times, "but they add further texture to the available history" of Trump's actions leading up to Jan. 6, 2021.

Three White House aides and an FBI forensic computer examiner revealed that Trump was alone in his Oval Office dining room, watching his followers storm the Capitol on Fox News and Twitter, when he personally posted his tweet accusing Pence of lacking the "courage" to block certification of President Joe Biden's electoral victory, the filing said. "One minute later, the Secret Service was forced to evacuate Pence to a secure location in the Capitol." When an aide then rushed in to tell Trump that his vice president was in danger, the brief recounted, Trump "looked at him and said only, 'So what?'"

Trump's campaign called the filing's release "unconstitutional," and Trump told NewsNation "they should have never allowed the information" to "come before the public."

What next?

Trump's team asked Chutkan to extend the deadline for their response to Nov. 21. Chutkan will consider both arguments, the Times said, and determine which parts of Smith's indictment "survive the Supreme Court's immunity ruling." The case is "likely to make its way back to the Supreme Court," the Post said. And "if Trump wins the election, he is widely expected to order the Justice Department to end the case."

A presidential nominee's choice of a running mate is one of the more high-profile decisions made prior to the general election. Political science research shows that these choices have limited impact, but in the kinds of agonizingly close elections that have characterized American presidential politics for most of this century, running mates can be consequential. 

The likely Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, is vetting her short list, and GOP nominee Donald Trump selected Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) earlier this month. Vance has subsequently come under fire for a series of controversial statements over the previous few years, fueling speculation that Trump might dump him from the ticket before it is too late. While it is much too early to say whether Vance will help or harm the Trump campaign, modern history is full of running mates who either helped the ticket across the finish line — or turned out to be a drag on losing campaigns. 

The best picks compensate for a nominee's weaknesses

George H.W. Bush (1980): In 1980, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan's brand of social and fiscal conservatism was in the process of taking over the GOP. But the party still included millions of moderates who were uncomfortable with the hawkish Reagan and considered him too extreme. So Reagan took the unusual step of tapping his moderate rival for the nomination, former U.S. Rep. and C.I.A. Director George H.W. Bush, as his running mate. Bush, who would later run successfully for the nomination and win the presidency in 1988, was from the Republican old guard of social liberals. He helped make voters comfortable with Reagan, who only a few years earlier was considered a firebrand who might accidentally start a nuclear war with the Soviets. The soft-spoken Bush ultimately helped Reagan deliver one of the worst defeats of an incumbent in American history when they vanquished Democratic President Jimmy Carter in a landslide. 

Mike Pence (2016): Critics derided him as "Mike Dense" and mocked Trump's selection of the pious incumbent governor of Indiana. But the staid and steady Pence helped solidify support from white evangelical voters – perhaps the single most important Republican voting bloc – who were uncomfortable with Trump's personal history as a twice-divorced man with a reputation for womanizing. When the infamous Access Hollywood tape that included Trump talking about sexually assaulting women was leaked to the press in October 2016, Pence's standing on the ticket may have made it possible for Trump to survive the episode. Pence's wife, Karen, told him that she "would no longer appear in public if he carried on as Trump's running mate," after hearing the tape, said journalist Tim Alberta. But Pence stuck with Trump, and together they won the election, in part by winning 80% of white evangelical voters, according to exit polls. 

Al Gore (1992): After 12 years of Republican control of the White House and three straight blowout presidential losses, Democrats were desperate to get their nominee right – especially because the incumbent, George H.W. Bush, looked increasingly vulnerable as the party conventions approached. Already dogged by allegations of extra-marital affairs (and possibly worse), Democrats worried that their nominee, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, would be seen as too liberal despite his status as one of the early members of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Gore, a Tennessee senator, was also a charter member of that centrist Democratic group, which wanted to move away from the party's reliance on a brand of liberalism that had become unpopular. Clinton gambled that a young ticket of self-styled ideological moderates would persuade the electorate to once again trust Democrats with the country's highest office, and they were proven right when they won the election decisively.

The worst picks compensate for the wrong problem

Sarah Palin (2008): Palin is the ultimate cautionary tale in running mate selection lore. GOP nominee John McCain, a longtime Arizona senator with a carefully cultivated image as a "maverick," wanted to pick his friend and longtime colleague Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) as his running mate. But Republican strategists feared that the party's base would revolt, and McCain impulsively chose the little-known Palin to increase enthusiasm from the conservative wing of the party. Despite an electric debut at the Republican National Convention, Palin later gave a series of disastrous interviews in the following weeks that led to her enduring Saturday Night Live caricature as an intellectual lightweight. In one infamous exchange, Palin was unable to tell CBS's Katie Couric the names of any newspapers that she read. As the campaign dragged on, even Palin's own staff grew frustrated with her and voters began to doubt her credibility as a possible successor to McCain, who would be 72 by Election Day. McCain went on to lose to Democratic nominee Barack Obama by 7.3 points. The "Palin effect," ultimately "cost McCain almost 2% of the final vote share," according to one 2010 study

Tim Kaine (2016): Riding high in public opinion polls and watching Republicans make the seemingly suicidal choice of Donald Trump as their nominee, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton decided to pick Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) as her running mate. The moderate Kaine was not from a swing state, was not particularly charismatic, and did nothing to shore up Clinton's left flank with progressives still seething from the outcome of the bitter primary contest against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Reports suggested that Clinton chose Kaine precisely because of their ideological affinity, a callback to her husband Bill Clinton's choice of Al Gore in 1992. Clinton and Kaine "are cut from the same political cloth," said The New Yorker's John Cassidy about the puzzling selection. Kaine was thought by Clinton's advisors to be "someone with whom they might work closely for four or eight years," Cassidy said. Instead, they only got to work together for a few months before their shock loss to the Trump-Pence ticket. 

Joe Lieberman (2000): For Democrats, it is hard to think about Joe Lieberman outside the context of what followed his losing campaign with then-Vice President Al Gore in 2000. A social moderate, Lieberman, a veteran senator for Connecticut, became so disenchanted with his party during George W. Bush's two terms that he ran successfully as an independent for another term in 2006.  In 2008 Lieberman campaigned for the Republican nominee, John McCain and appeared at the Republican National Convention. But in 2000, Gore chose him as a way of distancing himself from President Clinton's sordid personal history. Lieberman had given a fiery speech on the Senate floor during Clinton's 1998 impeachment trial denouncing his conduct while still voting to acquit. Lieberman was also the first Jewish candidate to serve on a major-party presidential ticket and was very popular in his home state. But Gore's real problem was with the disenchanted progressive wing of his own party, and enough people deserted him for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader to cost Gore the crucial swing state of Florida and thus the election. 

'American political dysfunction is harming national security'

Stefan Katz in The Bulwark

"American political dysfunction is becoming a weakness abroad and even a threat to our national security," says Stefan Katz. Our partisan chaos "makes democracy look unappealing," which benefits autocrats. It also "incentivizes" opposite sides of the political divide to disagree with each other rather than uniting behind shared national defense objectives, and hurts military recruiting and readiness. If we want to enhance national security, we need to work on "our ability as a people to govern ourselves."

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'Elite colleges walked into the Israel divestment trap'

Gary Sernovitz in The New York Times

Some elite colleges, including Brown and Northwestern, have agreed to talk with pro-Palestinian student protesters about divesting from investments associated with Israel as "part of agreements to end campus encampments," says Gary Sernovitz. But administrators are walking into a "trap." If they do divest, "when should it end," and what companies will they avoid? What other countries will university endowments have to ditch next? "Divesting is an easy chant. Investing is hard enough as it is." 

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'Democrats ignore election security, create distrust'

Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board

Nevada Democrats have pushed through changes in election rules — like allowing mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day — without any apparent concern about potential fraud, says the Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board. They care more about their expected "political gain" than "election security." This is only increasing "public distrust" in elections. "Encouraging participation in the democratic process is important. But safeguards to ensure the integrity of the vote are equally vital."

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'Dog shooter Kristi Noem is probably out, but Trump still has many questionable people angling to be his veep'

Jack Ohman in the San Francisco Chronicle

"Self-confessed dog killer Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota" is probably out in the GOP veepstakes, says Jack Ohman. But "there are plenty of questionable people" still interested in being Donald Trump's running mate, a job that didn't end well for the last guy who had it, Mike Pence. Trump clearly wants someone who would be loyal and not "overshadow" him, and options like North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) fit the bill.

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'What if America runs out of bombs?'

Matthew Petti in Reason

The United States has the world's "most powerful military," says Matthew Petti. But what if it "runs out of bombs?" America has sent mountains of ammunition to Ukraine and Israel. Ukraine is firing 155 mm artillery shells "faster than everyone is making them." And Israel's Gaza war "has eaten up gargantuan" stockpiles. "These proxy wars should be a wake-up call." Even if the money to fund our seemingly never-ending conflicts "doesn't run out, the bombs do." 

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'Now's not the time to double down on protectionism'

Bradley Vasoli at The Dispatch

Donald Trump pushed protectionism with "a zeal" not seen since Herbert Hoover's presidency, says Bradley Vasoli. President Joe Biden reversed some Trump policies but "surrendered" to his trade plans. Biden is now doubling down "on that surrender at an inapt time," blasting "the anticipated sale of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel to Japan-based Nippon Steel" to protect American steel companies and workers. But consumers will pay the price, because trade restrictions inhibit competition and fuel inflation.  

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'John Eastman tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. Of course he should be disbarred.'

Los Angeles Times editorial board

Upholding a recommendation to disbar lawyer John Eastman should be an easy call for California's Supreme Court, says the Los Angeles Times editorial board. A judge found Eastman "violated his oath" by providing "legal cover" for former President Donald Trump's "dishonest bid to subvert the 2020 election." Eastman counseled then-Vice President Mike Pence "to break the law," insisting Pence "had superpowers to accept or reject state election results" and reverse his own ticket's loss.

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'Colleges are facing an enrollment nightmare'

Rose Horowitch at The Atlantic

The new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, eventually will help low-income students get more aid, says Rose Horowitch. "But we just might sacrifice the class of 2028 to get there." Glitches made the streamlined FAFSA's rollout "disastrous." Many applications have been delayed. The Education Department has processed four million forms "but two million remain in bureaucratic purgatory." Hundreds of thousands of high school seniors didn't submit forms at all and "might not enroll anywhere."

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'Caitlin Clark is just the beginning'

Alex Kirshner at The Atlantic

Caitlin Clark's record-setting season has made University of Iowa women's basketball games "competitive in TV viewership with NBA games and the highest-profile men’s college matchups," says Alex Kirshner. But "Clark's singular level of stardom" is just a sign of a broader shift in college sports. Collegiate women with "freshly monetized star power" are building online followings and showing fans how fun their games are to watch, surpassing men in popularity "after decades of treatment as second-class citizens."

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'AI doesn't have to destroy jobs. It can empower the working class.'

Eduardo Porter in The Washington Post

The consensus is "that artificial intelligence is coming for our jobs," says Eduardo Porter. If we let that happen, "the end game includes a working class of no economic or political power." But human employment doesn't have to "become the stuff of folklore." With some firm "political decisions," we can ensure that this time new technology is used to help workers "perform more complex tasks" — to "expand human potential" instead of simply making "Silicon Valley plutocrats" richer.

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'Mike Pence should be the biggest story of the 2024 campaign'

Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark

Mike Pence earned "the nation's gratitude" on Jan. 6, 2021, by doing his duty even though "an armed mob came to murder him," says Jonathan V. Last. Then the outgoing vice president attended Joe Biden’s inauguration, safeguarding his legitimacy and making it clear former President Donald Trump alone owned "the breach in the peaceful transfer of power." Now Pence refuses to endorse Trump. The fact Trump's own vice president believes he is a "threat to democracy" says it all.

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'Joe Biden should be angry and anxious'

Rich Lowry at National Review

It's easy to understand why President Joe Biden reportedly has been "angry and anxious" recently, given "the precarious state of his reelection bid," says Rich Lowry. His approval rating is "in range with Donald Trump" and Jimmy Carter. And Biden must be aware losing "would expose his decision to run again for president at age 81, when he's visibly in decline, as a historic blunder resulting from selfishness and an utter lack of realism."

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In the end, Mike Pence's decision to suspend his quixotic 2024 presidential bid in Las Vegas was a strangely fitting one; the incongruity of an evangelical Christian making his announcement to the Republican Jewish Coalition at their annual convention in a city that represents the antithesis of Pence's teetotaling moralist persona is, in a way, similar to the incongruity of Pence's broader campaign to represent a party under the thrall of a man whose supporters wanted Pence hanged just two years ago. That Pence would end his candidacy by acknowledging 2024 was simply "not my time" raises an obvious follow-up question: was it ever? 

With anemic polling numbers and moribund fundraising hauls, Pence's campaign had been "DOA for months," according to Politico, which called it "surprising" that former veep had held out for as long as he did "given the hostility he endured from Trump’s most ardent supporters." If anything, Pence was caught in something of a "political no-man's land," The Dispatch reported, citing GOP strategist Brad Todd, who told the outlet that Pence's ultimate failure wasn't one of ideology, but because "he was too Trumpy for Trump's detractors and not Trumpy enough for Trump’s admirers."

Although that sort of political limbo may have been fatal for his presidential aspirations, it does not mean Pence is wholly without options for his future. With the re-ascendency of his former boss looking more and more likely by the day, Pence's next steps as a non-candidate could end up being nearly as consequential as if he'd never dropped out to begin with.

What the commentators said

One thing Pence will most likely not do is follow his old boss' advice and throw his weight behind Trump's juggernaut of a campaign, In spite of Trump's call for Pence to "endorse me" now that he's out of the race  ("You know why?" he told RJC conference attendees. "Because I had a great, successful presidency and he was the vice president"), Pence had predicted his entire run on rejecting Trump's populist bombast, and seems unlikely to return to the MAGA fold anytime soon — especially after Trump conditioned his suggestion with the longtime critique that Pence was  "very disloyal."

If anything, Pence is now less encumbered to speak out against Trump where it matters — in court, MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos predicted. Noting that Pence has "already provided evidence" for Special Counsel Jack Smith's various investigations into the former president, Cevallos put the odds of Pence actively testifying against Trump at "high to almost a certainty," with "absolutely nothing holding him back now." 

Blocking Trump politically, however, may be Pence's most immediate concern. He is "considering his options" for a potential endorsement of one of his many GOP rivals, Time Magazine reported, saying he's "likely to pray on the decision and consider who is most plausible to block Trump from the nomination." To that end, his onetime adversaries have largely reacted to Pence's exit by lauding the former veep, including Nikki Haley, "widely presumed to be the main beneficiary of Pence’s exit," who praised Pence as a "good man of faith," according to The Guardian. Florida Gov. Ron Desantis also hailed Pence as a "principled man of faith" while thanking the Pence family for "their willingness to put themselves forward in this campaign."

What next?

In the immediate future, Pence is likely focusing on the November 14 publishing date of his next book, "Go Home for Dinner," a series of anecdotes on "how faith makes a family and family makes a life" co-authored with his daughter Charlotte. Pence is also expected to continue his political advocacy through his Advancing American Freedom think tank created after he left office as "an alternative to The Heritage Foundation," The Associated Press reported. 

Ultimately, Pence seemed to be campaigning more "for his place in the history books than the Iowa caucuses," Politico said. With potential enforcement coming, and Trump's federal trials looming, his departure from the race is "not likely the last time Pence will make news in the coming months."

President Biden sat for a "voluntary interview" this weekend with Robert Hur, the special counsel investigating how documents with classified markings ended up at an office the president used in Washington and in his Delaware home, White House spokesman Ian Sams said Monday night. Biden has maintained that he was surprised to learn his papers contained classified material.

The interview, conducted at the White House, "concluded Monday," Sams said. "As we have said from the beginning, the president and the White House are cooperating with this investigation" and "being as transparent as we can consistent with protecting and preserving the integrity of the investigation." Interviewing the high-profile focus of an investigation like this "would typically signal the inquiry is close to the end," Politico reported.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur special counsel in January. Since then, Hur "appears to have been exhaustively interviewing everyone with insight into how the documents were packed and moved," The New York Times reported.

The Biden inquiry is one of three high-profile classified document cases from the past two years. The Justice Department told former Vice President Mike Pence in June that he would not face prosecution over the dozen or so classified documents his lawyers and the FBI discovered when searching his Indiana home. Biden and Pence both discovered and voluntarily turned over the classified documents found in their possession.

Former President Donald Trump had to be asked, then subpoenaed, to turn over classified documents he brought with him from the White House. The FBI subsequently found dozens more in a raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate. "Unlike Biden, Trump declined to be interviewed by special counsel Jack Smith," Politico noted. Smith has since charged Trump with felonies tied to both his retention of national security secrets and his allegedly illegal efforts to overturn his loss to Biden in 2020.

Former Vice President Mike Pence this week said he wouldn't rule out testifying against Donald Trump in the former president's criminal case over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Pence, a long-shot contender for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination Trump is expected to win, said Trump's effort to pressure him into blocking the certification of the election result on Jan. 6, 2021, had forced him to choose between Trump and the Constitution.

The comments marked Pence's marked his clearest break yet with his former boss, and Trump wasn't pleased. In a social media post, Trump said Pence was "delusional" and had "gone to the Dark Side." A Trump campaign spokesperson mockingly called Pence "Joe Biden's biggest cheerleader." How did the rift between Trump and Pence become so wide?

"So Help Me God"

The split started in November 2020 after President Biden beat Trump in the presidential election. Pence, in his memoir "So Help Me God," describes a meeting in the Oval Office where Trump gathered his team together to go over legal challenges of what Pence described in the book as "the election we had lost." In an excerpt published by Axios, Pence wrote that what started as a briefing "quickly turned into a contentious back-and-forth" between campaign lawyers who were "pessimistic" about the grounds for a challenge, and outside attorneys led by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Giuliani told Trump, "Your lawyers are not telling you the truth, Mr. President," according to Pence.

"That day the president made the fateful decision to put Giuliani and Sidney Powell in charge of the legal strategy ... The seeds were being sown for a tragic day in January." Trump pressured Pence, who as vice president was to preside over Congress' Jan. 6 certification of the states' electoral votes, to block the process and send the matter back to the states. Trump hoped GOP-dominated legislatures would overturn some narrow losses and return him to the White House. "Pence himself had denied having such power, which resulted in an angry phone call between himself and Trump," with some name-calling, according to Maureen Groppe and Savannah Kuchar at USA Today. "Wimp is the word I remember," former Trump assistant Nicholas Luna said in a clip played by the Jan. 6 committee.

"Hang Mike Pence!"

The Jan. 6 Capitol attack drove Trump and Pence apart for good. In a speech just before the riot, Trump put the spotlight on Pence, saying the vice president could send the results "back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people." When a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, some chanted "Hang Mike Pence!" Trump waited for hours before telling his "very special" followers to "go home," still insisting the election had been stolen.

Fighting the subpoena

Pence kept his distance from Trump after Jan. 6, but didn't back efforts to hold him accountable for stoking the rioters' anger. He dismissed the Jan. 6 committee appointed by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as partisan. And he said last year and again earlier this year he didn't think Trump should be indicted. "I think the president's actions and words on Jan. 6 were reckless, but I don't know that it's criminal to take bad advice from lawyers," Pence said. He added that indicting a former president "would be terribly divisive ... at a time when the American people want to see us heal."

Pence challenged a subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith to testify before the grand jury that was considering criminal charges against Trump over his effort to overturn the election. Pence maintained he was immune from testifying, but tried to simultaneously set himself apart, saying Trump had recklessly "endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol." But a judge ordered him to testify, over Trump's objections, and Pence decided not to appeal.

He told the grand jury about the pressure Trump exerted over him, and handed over his notes, putting his and Trump's conflicting accounts of the run-up to Jan. 6 at the heart of the charges. "The latest Jack Smith indictment has intensified the breach between Pence and Trump created by Jan. 6," said Rich Lowry at National Review. He did "the right thing" and "paid the price," turning Trump's wrath on himself and virtually assuring that he would not "inherit" any of their administration's MAGA base.

"There's the sellout! There's the traitor!" hecklers yelled at Pence, polling a distant third in a 2024 GOP field dominated by Trump, as he arrived at a New Hampshire campaign event, his first after Trump pleaded not guilty. "Why'd you sell out the people?"

What next?

The rift might only get wider. Pence says he doesn't plan to testify in Trump's trial but will "respond to the call of the law if it comes, and we'll just tell the truth." "It is possible that Pence's testimony might provide damaging evidence against the former president," said Jeff Charles at RedState. But if he only rehashes previous public claims, "his testimony might not be as effective a weapon as the prosecution and Democrats are hoping."

Many people will "never buy the whole 'Mike Pence was a hero' business," said Bret Stephens at The New York Times. "He was Trump's faithful enabler for more than four years, his beard with evangelicals, his ever-nodding yes man. He was mute for the eight weeks after the 2020 election when his boss was busy denying the result."

Pence seems determined "to do the right thing with the least physically measurable quanta of dignity possible," said Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. He didn't have the power to overturn the election, but he spared the nation from the constitutional crisis that would have erupted if he had tried. "Since that day Pence has been in a sort of long twilight struggle to evade credit for that critical moment." But why? "You're either on Team Coup or you're not."

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday that he had "no plans" to testify against his old boss, former President Donald Trump, but would do so if required.

Pence was asked during an interview on CBS News' "Face The Nation" if he would involve himself in the most recent indictment of Trump, who is facing federal charges for allegedly trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. When CBS's Major Garrett asked if Pence would testify against Trump at trial, Pence replied that he had "challenged in court the scope of any testimony that I could provide ... and I have no plans to testify."

The former vice president argued that, because of his prior position as president of the Senate, "the Constitution provides me with the protections that are afforded to members of Congress." However, Pence added that the American people "can be confident we'll obey the law. We'll respond to the call of the law, if it comes, and we'll just tell the truth," seemingly insinuating that he would testify against Trump if subpoenaed.

Pence has previously argued that his vice presidency precluded him from providing testimony against Trump, after he was subpoenaed earlier this year by the federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. However, a judge eventually ruled that Pence's conversations with Trump were not covered by executive privilege. Pence declined to appeal that ruling, and gave testimony to the grand jury earlier this year.

The former vice president has gone back and forth since leaving office about his feelings on Trump, but has begun using stronger language about his attempts to overturn the election. "Trump was wrong. He was wrong then. He's wrong now," Pence said. "Trump asked me to put him over the Constitution that day, but I chose the Constitution."

Former President Donald Trump has perhaps no greater asset than his ability to take any situation or circumstance, no matter how threatening or embarrassing or potentially disastrous, and convert it into a referendum on himself at large. Details become fuzzy, particulars are flattened, and in the end, Trump is able to convert just about anything into its most basic binary dynamic, with him at the center.

Now, facing a historical federal indictment for allegedly flouting espionage laws with his retention and mishandling of highly classified national security documents, Trump has once again maneuvered his critics and rivals within the GOP into an awkward, if familiar, gap between a rock and a hard place. While Democrats (and much of the public at large) are fairly uniform in their assessment of the seriousness of his alleged criminality, Republicans — particularly those vying against Trump for the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination — are stuck triangulating how best to respond to these unprecedented charges, even as they risk the wrath of Trump's unfailingly faithful base, upon whom their own political futures may very well rest.

Broadly, those responses have fallen into three (occasionally overlapping) buckets:

Trump did nothing wrong

For the most part, proclamations (or unsubtly heavy-handed insinuations) of Trump's absolute innocence have come from the former president's congressional allies not troubled by the electoral math of a national campaign. Blasting the "phony Boxes Hoax indictment against President Trump," Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) claimed the indictment "reflects the most severe election interference on the part of the federal government that we have EVER seen!"

"The Biden DOJ is interfering in the 2024 election by bringing bogus charges against Biden's chief political opponent, President Trump," echoed Illinois Republican Rep. Mary Miller.

Democrats' heads "must ache painfully from never ending think tank sessions in white walled rooms" trying to "come up with" endless "fake accusations," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) claimed in the midst of a lengthy, rambling Twitter message that encouraged followers to "beat these sick people."

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, longtime Trump ally and chair of the House Judiciary Committee, opted for brevity:

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) was similarly curt, tweeting simply that "we have now reached a war phase" and threatening retribution.

This could be bad for Trump

Among the officially declared candidates vying for their party's presidential nomination, none have come out quite so forcefully against Trump as former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. "Donald Trump's actions—from his willful disregard for the Constitution to his disrespect for the rule of law—should not define our nation or the Republican Party," Hutchinson said in a statement, concluding that although Trump is "entitled to the presumption of innocence, the ongoing criminal proceedings will be a major distraction" which "reaffirms the need for Donald Trump to respect the office and end his campaign."

Other GOP candidates were slightly more circumspect. "I had said I had hoped that the DOJ would see it's way clearer not to move forward here," former Vice President Mike Pence said, before adding that "no one is above the law."

"Stop hiding behind the Special Counsel," Pence urged special counsel Jack Smith during a speech to a group of North Carolina Republicans the day after the indictment was published. "Stand before the American people and explain why this indictment went forward."

Pence also took oblique aim at Trump himself, telling the crowd that "anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States."

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has made attacking Trump head on the center point of his candidacy, was similarly cautious, affirming that "no one is above the law, no matter how much they wish they were," before officially weighing in about the specifics of Trump's alleged crimes. He later called the indictment "devastating," telling CNN that Trump's alleged crimes are "particularly awful for someone who has been president and who aspires to be president again."

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, long considered one of the Republicans' most ardent Trump opponents, weighed in on the indictment with a brief statement that echoed Hutchinson's declarative condemnation of the former president. "Mr. Trump brought these charges upon himself by not only taking classified documents, but by refusing to simply return them when given numerous opportunities to do so," Romney said, adding that if true, Trump's crimes fit a broader pattern of "actions offensive to the national interest."

Blame the system (and Democrats)

Of all the declared Republican presidential candidates, perhaps no one stands to benefit from Trump's downfall more than Florida Gov. Ron Desantis, who trails the former president in distant second place in most primary polls. Nevertheless, seemingly aware that a frontal attack on Trump would, as a result, alienate him from the sizeable bloc of diehard MAGA voters, DeSantis instead reacted to the indictment by pivoting away from its target entirely. Instead, he focused on "the weaponization of federal law enforcement" which "represents a mortal threat to a free society." Neither affirming nor defending the former president's alleged criminality, DeSantis only mentioned his rival in the context of asking why the Justice Department has been "zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?"

While other Republicans had leveled similar complaints as part of a broader, more overt defense of Trump, DeSantis instead focused solely on the politics of the indictment — not its contents.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Younkin, long rumored to be weighing his own 2024 bid, offered a similar pivot away from the substance of the indictment toward allegations of a "two-tiered justice system," claiming somewhat incongruously that "parents in Virginia know firsthand what it's like to be targeted by politically motivated actions."

Claiming he will "purge all the injustices in our system so every American is seen by the Lady of Justice with a blindfold on," presidential candidate and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott framed the indictment as something that gives the impression that the scales of justice are "weighted." In a nod toward bipartisanship, Scott added that "you don't have to be a Republican to see injustice and want to fix it."

Without mentioning Trump at all, former administration official and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley continued her trend of only indirectly attacking the former president. "The American people are exhausted by the prosecutorial overreach, double standards, and vendetta politics," Haley declared, condemning "the endless drama and distractions" — a swipe at the indictment, Trump, or both.

Will it change?

Beyond the immediate issue of whether Trump will ultimately be found guilty on any of the 37 federal counts included in his Justice Department indictment, there is also a broader question of whether a guilty verdict — or even just the indictment itself — will matter in the eyes of his supporters, and rivals. To date, with the majority of his fellow 2024 candidates refraining from a frontal attack over the indictment, Trump has once again managed to use his own legal peril to assert dominance over a disparate field of Republicans. If, however, his alleged crimes become a political liability for him among his own base, opportunistic GOP candidates will likely feel emboldened to attack the former president more overtly — and without fear of fatally angering his MAGA voting bloc.

Former President Donald Trump has received a letter informing him he's the target of a federal criminal investigation, several major news organizations reported Wednesday evening, suggesting special counsel Jack Smith may be close to indicting Trump in the classified documents case. Former Vice President Mike Pence, hours after he launched his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, told a CNN town hall in Iowa he hopes "the DOJ thinks better of it and resolves these issues without an indictment."

CNN's Dana Bash reminded Pence had just talked about his commitment to the rule of law and asked him if he was really arguing that the Justice Department should not prosecute Trump if they thing he committed a crime. He said yes.

"Let me be clear that no one's above the law, but with regard to the unique circumstances here," Pence began, "I would just hope there would be a way for them to move forward without the dramatic and drastic and divisive step of indicting a former president of the United States. We've got to find a way to move our country forward and restore confidence in equal treatment under the law in this country."

Pence added later that he doesn't "know the facts of the former president's case," and declined to say if he would pardon Trump, if he were elected and Trump convicted, saying he would not speak to hypotheticals. "No one is above the law" he repeated, and "the handling of classified materials is a very serious matter," but so is indicting a former president, and that would send "a terrible message to the world."

Trump's former attorney general, William Barr, had a different take on CBS This Morning, noting that Trump would not be in this situation if he had just returned the classified documents when asked.

Former Vice President Mike Pence filed paperwork officially launching his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. He will do battle his old boss, former President Donald Trump, to become his party's candidate in the general election. Trump is dominating in the polls so far, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Pence is mired in single digits, fighting for a distant third place with the rest of the growing field.

Pence has fallen out of favor with the GOP's MAGA base after refusing Trump's call to block the certification of President Biden's 2020 election victory. Pence has distanced himself from Trump since a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, hoping to keep Trump in power by getting Congress to reverse the election results. Some in Pence's inner circle had tried to discourage him from going for the White House, arguing he would be better positioned to win Indiana's open Senate seat in 2024.

Pence's "largest task will be attempting to win back Republicans who largely cast him aside following Donald Trump's presidency," according to Politico. But it won't be easy. "He has occasionally faced boos from the MAGA base at GOP confabs in places such as a Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Florida in 2021 and even on his home turf at a National Rifle Association meeting in Indianapolis this year," Politico added. Most political analysts give Pence little to no chance of winning the nomination. Given such long odds, why is he running?

The obvious answer

The question isn't why Pence is running, said Ben Mathis-Lilley at Slate. The man wants to be president — "that much has been clear since he accepted an invitation to be Donald Trump's running mate in 2016 despite his obvious incompatibility." He's "a 'traditional family values' guy and national security 'hawk,'" while Trump is "pretty obviously a case of careerism over principle." The real puzzler is why Pence thinks he has any chance of winning.

It's "far-fetched" to think anyone as fiscally and socially conservative as Pence can win a general election. But he's also unlikely to win the primaries, even if Trump implodes. DeSantis has far more money, and Sen. Tim Scott can match Pence's "return-to-traditional-Republican-values theme," without all the Trump-era baggage Pence has to lug around.

Pence could win, in theory

A candidate with Pence's resume should have a chance, said Anthony Zurcher and Sam Cabral at BBC News. He has served in Congress, as governor, and as vice president. He "had multiple high-profile administration roles and four years to build connections with his party's grass-roots." His biggest strength is his "long history of close ties to the U.S. evangelical community," which was the main reason Trump, a "thrice-married New Yorker with considerable personal baggage," needed him on his ticket in the first place. But for Pence to have a chance Trump has to "falter." And even then Pence won't automatically get the evangelical vote, with all the other strong conservatives in the primary field.

He's living in a fantasy world

"Trump is vulnerable," said Keith Naughton in The Hill. So Pence has this "fantasy" about filling his former boss' place. And there was a moment when he could have seized the role of the GOP's main alternative to Trump. "Untainted by scandal," Pence could have taken ownership of popular Trump administration policies, leading Trump voters "without the schizophrenic indiscipline and manic rage that even many in the MAGA crowd found off-putting (and repelled independents into the Biden camp)."

Unfortunately, he "choked in the clutch" when he failed to "come out resolutely against Trump as the future nominee" after his second impeachment. "Pence wilted" under the heat, and since then "Republican voters have abandoned Pence in droves." The main reason for Pence's "pointless candidacy" now is "his inability to come to grips with political reality."

But he could still foil Trump's comeback

Pence is an afterthought "as long as he's polling in the single digits," said Ross Douthat at The New York Times. He'll have an opportunity to stand out in the debates as "the Republican with the strongest incentive to attack his former boss on character and fitness rather than just on issues — because his history with Trump sets him apart from the other non-Trump candidates." His "only possible path to the nomination involves persuading primary voters that he was right on Jan. 6 and Trump was wrong." This could make for "interesting theater." If Pence does take Trump down a peg, he "might even help someone beat the former president; that someone, however, is still unlikely to be Pence himself."

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday spent more than five hours testifying before the federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Associated Press.

In February, Pence received a subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith for his testimony and documents related to the Jan. 6 investigation. In the weeks before the Capitol attack, Trump attempted to pressure Pence into using his role as president of the Senate to block the certification of the Electoral College results; Pence refused. Attorneys for Pence and Trump challenged the subpoena, and Pence had a partial victory when the chief judge overseeing the grand jury ruled he did not have to answer any questions about his role as president of the Senate on Jan. 6.

Trump's lawyers claimed his discussions with Pence were all protected by executive privilege, and on Wednesday night, an appeals court rejected Trump's emergency attempt to postpone Pence's testimony.

Pence is the most high-profile Trump administration official to appear before the grand jury. Other former officials who have testified include ex-White House counsel Pat Cipollone and former Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

Former Vice President Mike Pence will not appeal a federal judge's ruling that he must testify before a federal grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump's efforts to stay in office despite losing the 2020 election, a Pence spokesman said Wednesday. That means Pence will likely testify under oath in the coming weeks, potentially providing Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigators crucial information about Trump's actions and mindset leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the Capitol, while Pence was overseeing the congressional certification of President Biden's electoral victory.

Pence will not, however, be compelled to testify about his actions on Jan. 6 as they pertain to his ceremonial role as president of the Senate. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled last week that, as Pence's team had argued, vice presidents do have some congressional immunity from being questioned under the Constitution's "speech and debate" clause, due to their role as Senate president. "He must still testify about any illegal acts by Trump," CBS News notes.

"Pence allies say Baosberg's decision was narrower than they preferred — opening Pence up to questions about his legislative duties they had hoped would be shielded — but they have largely treated it as a victory on the principle Pence set out to defend," Politico reports.

"Having vindicated that principle of the Constitution," Pence spokesman Devin O'Malley said in a statement, "Vice President Pence will not appeal the judge's ruling and will comply with the subpoena as required by law."

Trump's team had objected to Pence's testimony on different grounds, arguing their discussions were projected by executive privilege. Boasberg rejected that argument last week. "Trump and his team could still appeal the ruling, but they have lost similar cases previously," The Associated Press reports.

Former Vice President Mike Pence has been ordered by a federal judge to testify before a grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, people familiar with the matter told The New York Times, NBC News, and CNN.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Pence, in a ceremonial role, presided over the congressional certification of the 2020 election results. In the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, Trump urged Pence to block or delay the certification. Pence aides described this pressure campaign during testimony before the House select committee that investigated the Capitol riot, and Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing two Justice Department investigations involving Trump, issued a subpoena for Pence's own testimony and documents in February.

After receiving the subpoena, Pence said he would fight it because "no vice president has ever been subject to testify about the president with whom they served." Trump's lawyers also wanted to keep him from testifying, arguing he could not discuss some matters due to executive privilege.

In a bygone era of politics, former Vice President Mike Pence would be sitting comfortably as the unquestionable heir apparent to the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Even without his White House experience, Pence's experience as a former congressman and governor are the sort of bona fides to make him a formidable candidate. And yet, as the GOP field for the upcoming presidential election starts to take shape, Pence has thus far held back, making feints toward tossing his hat into the race without actually capitalizing on his ostensible status as an elder statesman in the party.

In no small part, Pence's "will-he-won't-he" status is a byproduct of his onetime boss and current GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, who not only dominates the nomination race, but has also primed his sizable MAGA base to despise Pence for certifying President Biden's 2020 victory. Adding to that already complicated calculus is the declared candidacy of fellow Trump administration official Nikki Haley, as well as the undeclared Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose presence looms large over the GOP field as a whole.

So what, if anything, is Mike Pence waiting for, and what is he doing in the meantime?

Will he run?

This, more than anything else, is the operative question for Pence who is "considering a run," as reported by The New York Times this week. That consideration, CNN's Chris Cillizza wrote, comes from both an earnest desire to be president, as well as the fact that Pence "knows that if he doesn't run in 2024, it's likely that he will be too far removed from the world of politics to run in 2028 or beyond." With that time crunch in mind, Pence certainly appears to be readying himself for this coming election, vising the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire over the past few months, while releasing the sort of glossy, high-profile memoir that often serves as a precursor for a forthcoming campaign.

Pence has kept a visible media presence, offering a number of speeches, interviews, and opinion essays, avoiding the risk of fading from the public eye ahead of any possible announcement.

The former VP has not shied away from the speculation that he's gearing up for a campaign of his own. "We're listening, we're reflecting, we're talking to firms," he told NBC in late February. "By the spring, our family expects to have a very clear sense of our calling."

Despite his attempts to dodge the question — or at least, avoid giving a definitive answer, Pence "does not seem to lack clarity about or determination about running for president in 2024," even though he insisted to Yahoo News in a lengthy interview Friday that he has "made no decision" about doing so," the outlet reported this week.

So what's Pence's game plan?

Assuming that Pence is running, all his work over the past year seems to point to a broader effort to frame himself as a combination of pre-Trump conservatism, and a post-Trump panacea to the former president's MAGA extremism.

"Pence world has long believed that the former congressman and Indiana governor could occupy the adult-in-a-room 2024 lane, in that he is uniquely positioned to speak truth to power now that he is free of the constraints of the vice presidency," Politico's Adam Wren wrote after Pence's recent speech to the Gridiron Club of D.C.-area media figures, which was conspicuous for the (relative) ferocity with which he went after Trump.

"Pence's inner circle sees the 2008 campaign of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as a template," Wren reported. "Then, much as Pence is now, McCain found himself written off by other competitors — deemed a relic of an outdated type of politics as he rode around on the Straight Talk Express."

Pence's pre-campaign set-up has also featured some tentative toe-dipping into the ongoing legislative battle over the federal budget and — in particular — the GOP's struggles with how to address entitlements. Speaking with Fox News in February, Pence proclaimed the country needed to replace programs like Social Security and Medicare with a "better deal." In doing so, Pence both harkened back to George W. Bush's 2005 State of the Union address and demonstrated his willingness to engage in a thorny intra-party debate.

Conversely, Pence in the same Gridiron speech also went out of his way to laud the D.C. press corps, telling the assembled journalists that "I don't deny that you infuriate me … and I'm sure I infuriate you … but I genuinely value what you do to keep us a democracy." It's the sort of notable deviation from his former boss's frequent claims of "fake news" and "lying press" that makes sense in the broader context of someone courting a necessary bloc of professionals for his own personal gain in the future.

But can it work?

As Politico's Ryan Lizza asked after the Gridiron speech, D.C. media circles may have appreciated the former VP's remarks, but "will Pence talk like this in front of Iowa Republicans?" A non-televised event is one thing, but "will he show the courage to blast Trump in front of Republican primary voters?"

To Roll Call's Stuart Rothenberg, no amount of Pence positioning is enough to surmount his fundamentally untenable position of having "spent four years as Trump's obsequious companion, complimenting the president on everything he did and said." Pivoting to a Trump critic, however, "doesn't get him much credit among the anti-Trump crowd or the pro-Trump wing of the GOP — a wing that accounts for at least a third of the party."

The notion that ideological waffling poses a serious risk to Pence's theoretical campaign was supported by a recently-released CNN poll showing nearly two-thirds of GOP voters prioritizing ideological affinity over winnability in 2024, meaning any appeal to undecided right-leaning anti-Trump voters may not be enough.

Of course, there are still months to go before Republicans will decide who they want to represent their party in 2024, and Pence has plenty of time to continue honing his reintroduction to political life before he announces a presidential run (if he does so at all). But with Trump currently holding a solid lead over the entirety of the GOP field, Pence seemingly has his work cut out for him in making his pitch to rally a majority of conservatives behind him.

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday delivered another strong rebuke of his old boss, former President Donald Trump, for the latter's role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Speaking at the annual Gridiron Club dinner, a lavish event thrown in Washington, D.C., by a journalistic group, Pence rebuffed Trump's claim that the vice president could have altered the results of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to President Biden.

"President Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day," Pence said. The former vice president added that "history will hold Donald Trump accountable" for his actions.

In addition, Pence also shot back at Republicans who have attempted to downplay the events of Jan. 6. This includes people such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has framed the attackers as tourists.

"Tourists don't injure 140 police officers by sightseeing," Pence said. "Tourists don't break down doors to get to the speaker of the House or voice threats against public officials." He added that "what happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way."

The former vice president also claimed that the public has a right to transparency regarding Jan. 6, despite the fact that his attorneys filed a request to block a subpoena for his testimony about the attack just days prior.

All of this comes in the shadow of Pence potentially launching his own presidential campaign for 2024. He has previously said that he was talking about the possibility with his family.

The Washington Post reported that Pence joked about his potential candidacy during the dinner, saying he would "unreservedly support the Republican nominee for president in 2024, if it's me."

It's been nearly half a century since then-Governor Ronald Reagan addressed the first Conservative Political Action Conference, peppering his 1974 speech with invocations of American greatness and invectives against government regulations, while praising future senator and presidential nominee John McCain's Vietnam War-era courage as "typical of this land."

In the decades since Reagan's address, CPAC has become one of the primary annual focal points of mainstream conservatism — even as that mainstream incorporates increasing extremes, particularly in recent years — standing on par with the Republican National Convention. It's where right-wing aspirants and operators make their appeals to the base, who in turn jostle for access, influence, and proximity to those working their way up the conservative ranks. It is, per longtime GOP pollster Jim McLaughlin, "the ultimate barometer of what's going on in the conservative movement." As factions within the Republican party grapple with how former President Donald Trump fits into the GOP's future, this year's conference is just as notable for who is scheduled to participate as who isn't. In the vacuum left by these conspicuous absences, the question arises: Is CPAC losing steam in the conservative world? Here's everything you need to know:

Who's going, and who's not?

Ahead of the March 1-4 conference, the guest list is set. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the star attraction at this year's event will be former President Donald Trump, who has made CPAC a regular annual stop for dropping tantalizing hints about his political future and airing his favorite grievances. Trump has treated CPAC as more an extension of his political rallies rather than an ostensibly neutral conference, and as the conference has reshaped itself in kind to become "more TPAC — as in Trump — than CPAC," The Hill''s Albert Hunt noted two years ago.

Joining Trump this year, however, will be former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, the other major candidate who has officially tossed their hat in for the GOP's presidential nomination, and someone who has indiscreetly taken shots at her onetime boss as she works to establish herself as a post-Trump figurehead for the party.

"There's a lot of next-generation candidates out there, and I think that Nikki is tactfully going to try to make the case that there's a real choice between these older guys like Trump and this younger generation of leaders that are changing the world," one Republican consultant told The Hill's Max Greenwood. "Having them both at CPAC, you're going to have two very different types of personalities to compare."

If CPAC presents such an ideal platform for comparative candidate shopping, however, then why have both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence — both heavily rumored to be preparing their own presidential bids — chosen to skip this year's conference? While DeSantis will reportedly be dining with GOP donors and notables as part of his ongoing book tour instead, Pence has explicitly declined an invitation to speak at CPAC in a repeat of his 2021 decision. It's not just potential candidates eschewing the conference either; according to The Daily Beast, Fox News — once a major sponsor of the event — has essentially gone dark ahead of this year's event.

"None of Fox News Media's outlets are listed among CPAC 2023's list of partnering sponsors, which includes the network's conservative arch-rival Newsmax as well as far-right competitors like Real America's Voice," The Daily Beast's Justin Baragona reported just days before the conference is set to begin. "Additionally, Fox staffers told The Daily Beast they have yet to receive any guidance on how they will cover CPAC."

Who is to blame for CPAC's faltering popularity?

These conspicuous absences all come as the conference is reportedly straining under the allegations that Matt Schlapp, whose American Conservative Union group runs CPAC, sexually accosted a staffer for GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker. Schlapp has denied the allegations. Nevertheless, in both Pence and Fox's cases those allegations may have contributed to the decision to step back from the conference this year.

"It shouldn't come as a surprise that CPAC is not attracting the big names that it once did," one source told ABC News regarding Pence."There's a feeling within the Republican Party that CPAC has long abandoned the traditional values that it once stood for." The allegations against Schlapp seemingly have only served to "exacerbate" the preexisting frustrations with the group "and are likely to contribute to further decline by the organization."

For Fox, the decision to remove itself from this year's conference is seemingly part of a broader push by the conservative media powerhouse to sever ties with Schlapp and his wife Mercedes, both former contributors to the network who have each been absent from broadcasts since the allegations were made public. As The Daily Beast's Justin Baragona reports, Fox's downgraded relationship with the pair has prompted the Schlapps to find "a willing partner in Fox's wannabe rival Newsmax," where the couple has made "regular appearances."

"With Newsmax hosts blithely ignoring the groping allegations, the couple has been able to hype up the confab," writes Baragona.

DeSantis' decision to skip CPAC this year may be less a question of moral objection to Schlapp's alleged behavior, and more a matter of sheer political calculus.

"CPAC has been getting more and more extreme with each passing year," longtime political consultant Mac Stipanovich told the South Florida Sun Sentinal. "I think that DeSantis has probably pretty well established his credentials and his credibility with the people who are going to be sitting in the audience at CPAC." In other words, Stipanovich calculates, "there may be ways for him to better spend his time without some of the exposure that, in a national race, might not be beneficial."

No matter the reasons behind their decisions, the fact that CPAC is now faced with so many high-profile absences ahead of a presidential election cycle doesn't bode well for the longtime powerhouse of conservative conferences. While by no means a death knell for the event, the fact that kingmakers like Fox News and would-be-kings like DeSantis are evidently comfortable skipping the annual festivities entirely suggests that CPAC's clout might be waning, after all.

Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by Jack Smith, the special counsel who is leading investigations into former President Donald Trump, people familiar with the matter told ABC News, The New York Times, and NBC News.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November, tasking him with overseeing the Department of Justice's inquiries into Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents.

It is not clear what information Smith is seeking to obtain from Pence, ABC News reports, and the subpoena comes after months of negotiations between the former vice president's legal team and federal prosecutors. This move will likely set up a "clash over executive privilege," the Times adds, which "Trump has previously used to try to slow, delay, and block testimony from former administration officials in various investigations into his conduct."

A small tranche of documents with classified markings was discovered in the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence, according to a letter from a Pence representative to the National Archives dated Jan. 18, CNN reported on Tuesday.

In his communication with the National Archive, Pence representative Greg Jacob wrote that "a small number of documents bearing classified markings" were "inadvertently boxed and transported to the personal home of the former vice president at the end of the last administration." Jacob also wrote that Pence was "unaware" of the classified material in his home, and "stands ready and willing to cooperate fully with the National Archives and any appropriate inquiry." Jacob did not expand upon what sort of material was uncovered but said the items were immediately locked in a safe by Pence. Accordingly, Jacob wrote, "counsel did not review the contents of the documents once an indicator of potential classification was identified."

The disclosure that Pence had uncovered classified material in his private possession follows — and was in part prompted by — the ongoing investigation into classified material discovered in both the office and home of President Biden, dating back to his term as vice president, Jacobs aid.

Attorney General Merrick Garland did not respond to questions about the documents found in Pence's possession. Garland has named a special counsel to oversee a Justice Department investigation into Biden's documents, as well as another to supervise the investigation into former President Donald Trump, following the court-approved FBI search at his Mar-a-Lago compound which uncovered a significant batch of classified material allegedly covering Chinese intelligence operations and Iran's nuclear program. While both Biden and now Pence have reportedly been fully cooperative with the Justice Department, the search of Trump's property followed months of negotiations and obfuscation by the former president prompted by National Archives concerns that he possessed documents legally required to be turned over at the end of his presidential term.

In a November interview with ABC News' David Muir, Pence was directly questioned about Trump's possession of classified documents, with Muir saying at one point: "let me ask you, as we sit here in your home office in Indiana, did you take any classified documents with you from the White House?"

Pence answered simply: "I did not."

Former Vice President Mike Pence's promotion of his new memoir So Help Me God has generated renewed speculation about his political future. Is Pence going to challenge his former running mate for the White House in 2024? Here's what you need to know:

Is Pence planning to run for president in 2024?

Pence's recent press tour for his book coincided with Trump's official declaration of his intent to run for president again in 2024. Pence made headlines for breaking his silence on the Jan 6. insurrection, and for offering his take on Trump's role in inciting the mob. While the former VP hasn't formally announced plans to run in 2024, some of his answers to the press hint that he's at least considering the possibility.

In a Nov. 14 interview for ABC's' World News Tonight, for example, David Muir asked Pence if he believed he could defeat Trump if they faced off in the primaries. Pence replied: "Well, that would be for others to say, and it'd be for us to decide whether or not we'd want to test that." When asked if he would run for president in 2024, Pence said his family was giving the question "prayerful consideration."

Pence doubled down on this answer during a CNN town hall event hosted by Jake Tapper. When asked about Trump's announcement, Pence said he believed there would be "better choices." When Tapper questioned whether he considered himself one of those better options, Pence told him, "I'll keep you posted," reiterating that his family will have "prayerful consideration to what role we might have."

Pence further stirred rumors that he is eyeing a 2024 bid while touring the country on behalf of Republican candidates during the midterm elections. He made multiple appearances in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada — the first states to vote for the GOP presidential nomination, per Fox News. Pence's attempts to forge political relationships in the early-voting primary states represent an action that Fox says "often precedes the launch of an actual White House campaign."

How does Pence rank among the potential GOP candidates?

With Trump officially in the running, many pundits are speculating about who could run against him in the GOP primary. Recent polls show Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has emerged as one of the top contenders, but that hasn't eliminated Pence as an option. Pence remains high on The Washington Post's ranked list of the top 10 potential candidates for the GOP, holding onto a third-place spot behind DeSantis and Trump.

While Pence has openly criticized Trump's actions on Jan. 6, both in his memoir and during his press tour, many of his statements are also peppered with praise for his time in the Trump-Pence administration. He went as far as to call Trump's choice of words on Jan. 6 "reckless," but overall appeared hesitant to separate himself entirely from the Trump-Pence administration's legacy. While he admitted Trump "endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building," he also has plenty of positive takeaways from their time together.

Pence's careful attempts to toe the line between bashing Trump and reminiscing about the good times indicates the core problem he could face if he decides to run, the Post says. To be successful, Pence will "need lots of Trump backers to forgive him for the sin of not overturning American democracy." While many conservatives have begun to separate themselves from Trump, Pence "probably needs the party to break with Trump much more completely to have a shot," per the Post.

In a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll, Pence was the only potential GOP candidate besides the two top runners, Trump and DeSantis, to get at least 5 percent of the vote. Among the likely Republican primary voters surveyed, 7 percent said they would support Pence in the primaries. However, he came in a distant third to Trump's 45 percent and DeSantis' 30 percent. "It's not a matter of when Republicans are ready to turn on Trump," one aide told The Atlantic in 2018. "It's about when they decide they're ready for President Pence."

What does Pence think of Trump running for re-election in 2024?

With the release of his memoir coinciding with Trump's "special announcement" about 2024, Pence was questioned several times about his thoughts on his former running mate's campaign. Without directly speaking against Trump's bid, Pence has alluded to there being "better choices" for a candidate in a number of interviews.

When asked during his interview with ABC if his former boss should ever serve as president again, Pence replied, "I think that's up to the American people. But I think we'll have better choices in the future. People in this country actually get along pretty well once you get out of politics. And I think they want to see their national leaders start to reflect that same, that same compassion and generosity of spirit. And I think, so in the days ahead, I think there will be better choices."

Former Vice President Mike Pence has been approached by, and is potentially open to speaking with, Justice Department investigators probing efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

While Pence has not been subpoenaed, the Times' Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt report that he was approached by DOJ investigator Thomas Windom, and is actively considering giving witness testimony about former President Donald Trump's alleged efforts to subvert and overturn his 2020 electoral loss. Pence has rejected similar overtures to participate in Congress' separate investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, but allegedly sees the Justice Department's criminal investigation as a potentially more palatable alternative.

Haberman and Schmidt's report comes days after Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of longtime former DOJ prosecutor Jack Smith as a special counsel overseeing both the department's 2020 election inquiry and its investigation into Trump's mishandling of classified information at his Mar-a-Lago estate. According to the Times, Windom approached Pence about potential testimony several weeks before Smith was appointed.

Both Pence and the Justice Department declined to comment on the report.

Pence is in the process of expanding his political staff as he considers a potential 2024 presidential run of his own. He has also spent his fall promoting his book So Help Me God, in which he defends much of his tenure in the Trump administration, while wryly noting it "did not end well."

Former Vice President Mike Pence revealed that former President Donald Trump apologized not in words but "in sentiment" for putting his life in danger during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Pence shared this with ABC's World News Tonight anchor David Muir during an interview at his Indiana home. On Jan. 6, 2021, Pence was overseeing Congress' certification of the Electoral College results when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, forcing lawmakers to go into lockdown. Outside, someone had built a gallows and noose, and some of the rioters were heard chanting, "Hang Mike Pence!"

Pence told Muir that he didn't speak to Trump until five days later, and the first thing Trump asked was how his wife, Karen, and daughter Charlotte were doing. Pence said Trump had "just learned" they were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and "I told him we were ... fine. And then he asked, 'Were you scared?' I said, 'No, I was angry.' We had our differences, and I told him that seeing those people ransacking th Capitol infuriated me. And I sensed genuine remorse by the president."

Muir asked Pence if Trump apologized for the events leading up to the attack, when he urged supporters at a rally on the Ellipse to go to the Capitol. "Not in so many words, but in sentiment, he did, if you get my meaning," Pence responded. "I sensed the president was genuinely saddened by what had happened, and he expressed it."

When pressed to elaborate, Pence said, "Well, at ... one point I think he simply said, with his voice much more faint than it had ever been, he said, 'What if we hadn't had the rally?' He said, 'It's so, it's so bad to end like this.'"

Pence also told Muir he and his family are giving "prayerful consideration" into whether he should run for president in 2024, and it's up to the "American people" to decide whether Trump should serve a second term. "I think we have better choices in the future," he added. "People in this country actually get along pretty well once you get out of politics. And I think they want to see their national leaders start to reflect that same, that same compassion and generosity of spirit."

Former Vice President Mike Pence criticized former President Donald Trump for being "part of the problem" on the day of the Jan. 6 capitol attack, calling his words online and at the rally "reckless" in an interview with ABC's World News Tonight.

The interview marks Pence's first appearance on network television since the Jan. 6 riot occurred, and his strongest remarks on the day. ABC's David Muir asked Pence about Trump's tweets that day claiming Pence lacked the "courage" to use his power to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

"It angered me," Pence responded. "But I turned to my daughter, who was standing nearby. And I said, 'It doesn't take courage to break the law, it takes courage to uphold the law.' The president's words were reckless. It was clear he decided to be part of the problem."

Pence rebuked Trump's speech before the riot that forced Pence and other officials into lockdown, saying Trump's stance "endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building."

During his tenure as Trump's second-in-command, Pence stood beside him through several controversies, but his tone seemed to shift in the aftermath of the riot. At the time, some of Trump's supporters chanted "hang Mike Pence" after Trump began falsely claiming he could reject Electoral College votes.

Pence denounced Trump's assumptions a month later, saying, "President Trump is wrong." Since then, a public rift has emerged, with Trump announcing that the former vice president "very greatly disappointed me."

In an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir So Help Me God, former Vice President Mike Pence recounts the build-up and aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as well as the trajectory of the false claim that he could overturn the results of the election (though he does indicate his support for "legitimate challenges" to the contest).

In the section shared Tuesday with The Wall Street Journal, Pence begins by recounting when Trump first suggested challenging President Biden's win, and when "speculation" about his role in presiding over the race's results first began. At this point, Pence points to an ad from The Lincoln Project as having put the idea that the VP could overturn the election into Trump's head.

Pence then touches on the dubious legal guidance he received from lawyer John Eastman, and says Trump told him "hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts" if he didn't push for the authority to return electoral votes. During the actual riot on Jan. 6, Pence claims he fought with the Secret Service to stay at his post, rather than give rioters "the sight of a 16-car motorcade speeding away from the Capitol." He was eventually returned to safety, and the election results were certified.

On Jan. 11, Pence met with Trump. When Pence told Trump he'd always pray for him, despite their disagreements, Trump first replied, "Don't bother," before later telling Pence: "That's right — don't ever change."

Initial online reactions to the excerpt seemed mixed. Some thought it notable that Pence, a rumored 2024 hopeful, chose to release the book segment immediately after Trump's poor showing in the midterms, while others felt it was an attempt to shift the blame for Jan. 6. Still others figured it simply a worthwhile and telling read regardless.

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday urged Republicans to stop lashing out at the FBI over its search last week at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence.

During an event in New Hampshire, Pence said Republicans can question the FBI and Department of Justice "without attacking the rank-and-file law enforcement personnel." The Republican Party, he continued, "stands with the men and women who stand on the thin blue line at the federal and state and local level, and these attacks on the FBI must stop."

The FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago as part of an investigation into Trump's handling of classified material. This outraged Trump's most vocal supporters, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who said Congress must "defund the FBI," and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who tweeted, "We must destroy the FBI."

Pence pushed back at these statements, saying, "Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police." In the wake of the Mar-a-Lago search, a gunman tried to breach the FBI field office in Cincinnati, and the Department of Homeland Security and FBI issued a joint intelligence bulletin warning they have seen an "increase in threats and acts of violence" against federal law enforcement.

Well, can't say we saw this coming!

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday signaled he'd be open to testifying before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot if he received "an invitation to participate," CNN reports.

During a Q&A session following a speech at New Hampshire Institute's "Politics & Eggs" breakfast series (described by CNN as a popular spot amongst prospective presidential candidates), Pence said he would give "due consideration" to a committee appearance if "there's ever any formal invitation rendered to us."

"You heard me mention the Constitution a few times this morning. Under the Constitution, we have three co-equal branches of government, and any invitation to be directed to me, I would have to reflect on the unique role I was serving in as vice president," Pence said. "It would be unprecedented in history for a vice president to be summoned to testify on Capitol Hill. But, as I said, I don't want to pre-judge, so if there's ever any formal invitation rendered to us, we would give it due consideration."

A "person with knowledge of Pence's thinking," however, warned against jumping to conclusions regarding Wednesday's comments, noting the ex-VP would have "serious constitutional issues" about testifying, CNN writes.

The panel has been considering requesting Pence's testimony for months, hoping to perhaps hear his account of the Jan. 6, 2021 exchange in which former President Donald Trump allegedly "berated" him for failing to block the certification of the 2020 election results, per Politico.

Former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence presented contrasting-yet-overlapping visions for the future of the Republican party in a pair of speeches delivered Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Trump, speaking at the America First Policy Institute Summit, served up red meat for his base, pushing an ambitious — some might say draconian — law and order agenda. Policy proposals included executing drug dealers, moving the homeless to federally funded encampments on the outskirts of major cities, and deploying National Guard units to Chicago neighborhoods with high crime rates. He also veered off script to discuss transgender athletes, the planned obsolescence of windshield wiper blades, his own "persecution," and his baseless claim that he was the true winner of the 2020 election.

Pence, delivering to Young America's Foundation Student Conference a speech originally intended for the Heritage Foundation, stayed on-topic as he outlined his new "Freedom Agenda." Pillars included state-level abortion bans, free-market healthcare reform, slashing taxes and regulations, and supporting Ukraine.

Which way, American conservative?

Amber Athey of The Spectator World praised Trump's focus on law and order, suggesting that it could be his "golden ticket to the White House in 2024" the way immigration was in 2016. Trump wrapped up his speech with the 60s soul hit "Hold On, I'm Comin'," which Athey suggested might be "a promise to the many Americans struggling with inflation, high gas prices, crime, a porous southern border, and a looming recession." Trump appeared to hit all the right notes for a 2024 comeback.

For others on the right, Trump's obsession with the 2020 election and with his own persecution are inherently disqualifying. "The choice should be clear," Charles Hilu wrote in National Review. Conservatives "can either emulate [the] lies and narcissism that poorly represented the conservative movement's ideology and grand history" — that'd be Trump — "or they can embrace a message of articulating hopeful policy to help Americans for the future" by siding with Pence.

At ABC News, Rick Klein saw the two speeches as different aspects of an "emerging GOP agenda" rather than as two separate and competing visions. This agenda is "not a timid one" and appears to be "relatively uncontroversial" among "national GOP figures," he wrote. Pence expressed a similar idea when he claimed that he and Trump disagree on "focus" but not on "issues."

Looking forward, looking back

Pence repeatedly emphasized the need for conservatives to "focus on the future" while avoiding "the temptation to look back." The Washington Post's columnist Dana Milbank found this ironic. "[A]fter calling for a forward-looking vision, [Pence] gave a speech looking backward to the Trump administration," he wrote. In The New York Times, Michael Bender noted Pence's numerous references to the achievements of the "Trump-Pence administration." Trump, on the other hand, "never mentioned Pence, or even acknowledged him," Joan Walsh observed in The Nation.

Arguably, Pence was looking even further backward. In a 2019 column for The Week, Matthew Walther described Pence as "a fossil of the conservative movement as it existed before Trump." Aside from a few references to critical race theory and gender in women's sports, Pence's speech could have been delivered in 2012.

Trump looked backward in his own way. NPR's Barbara Sprunt highlighted the former president's reference to "blood, death, and suffering" in America's streets, noting echoes of the "American carnage" he described in his 2017 inaugural address.

The energy in the room

The consensus appears to be that Trump's high-energy style overshadowed the more mild-mannered Pence. Bender contrasted the "tepid applause" Pence received with the "numerous standing ovations" Trump drew from his much larger crowd.

Walsh called Pence "pathetic" and wrote that he was "delusional if he thinks he has a future in GOP presidential politics." Pence, she noted, is polling at just 6 percent for a 2024 bid, while Trump dominates with 49 percent. Milbank described Pence's speech as a feeble attempt "to differentiate himself from his former boss and tormentor — while simultaneously praising" him. "The result," Milbank wrote, "is a profile in timidity."

Trump, Athey argued, seemed "sleepy" at first but "began to shine" 20 minutes in as he deviated from the teleprompter, displaying a "vigor" that President Biden lacks. Sprunt had the opposite impression, writing that, when Trump went off-script, his speech "devolved" from a "policy message" into a "crass comedy routine."

Athey particularly appreciated Trump's "hilarious pantomiming" of a "female [weightlifter] struggling to lift a barbell, and then [a transgender woman] easily pumping out reps." Walsh classified that moment as one of several "ludicrous transphobic jokes" Trump made during his speech.

Former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday delivered speeches at separate events in Washington, D.C., in which they laid out their dueling visions for the future of the Republican Party.

Trump, speaking at the America First Policy Institute Summit, delivered an address that focused mainly on law and order. He called for the swift execution of drug dealers, praising similar policies in China and Singapore. Trump also advocated deploying the National Guard to high-crime neighborhoods in Chicago, even over the objections of local authorities. It was only toward the end of the speech that he claimed to have "won a second time" in 2020.

Aside from a few references to critical race theory and defending women's sports, Pence's address laying out his new "Freedom Agenda" at the Young America's Foundation Student Conference could have been delivered in 2012. Main points included cutting taxes, implementing "free-market solutions in healthcare," securing the border, and expanding the military. He also celebrated the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade (1973), an issue entirely absent from Trump's remarks.

The speech was far from a repudiation of Trump, however. The former vice president referred eight times to the "Trump-Pence administration." Trump never mentioned Pence.

During the Q&A session, Pence claimed that he and Trump differ in "focus," not "on issues." Pence added that the GOP must not "give way to the temptation to look back," perhaps making a veiled reference to Trump's stolen election claims.

Former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence have gone from unlikely allies to bitter rivals. What happened?

How did Trump's relationship with Pence begin?

Trump decided on Pence at the last minute. According to Politico, Trump "didn't particularly like Pence" when they first met, and "just four days before the [2016] Republican National Convention," the unlikely nominee "was still waffling on who to pick as his running mate." Pence was a top contender, but so were New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — the first 2016 presidential candidate to drop out to endorse Trump — and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was still angling for the job.

"I told [Trump] ... he could have two pirates on the ticket or a pirate and a relatively stable and normal person," Gingrich said during a Facebook Live Q&A. Trump liked the sound of that.

Per Politico, the devout Pence helped Trump's poll numbers with evangelicals who were uncomfortable with the mogul's checkered past, but "Pence felt a lot like the medicine Trump didn't want to choke down." However, thanks to the machinations of Paul Manafort and a flat airplane tire that stranded Trump in Indianapolis for an extra night, choke it down he did.

Writing for The Week in 2019, Matthew Walther pointed out that Trump's barnstorming style and populist platform were always an odd match for Pence's plainspoken manner and passé neoconservatism. "This is exactly why Trump chose Pence to be his vice president. He is a throwback, and a useful one," Walther wrote.

What was Pence's role in Jan. 6?

Trump called Pence on the morning of Jan. 6 to urge him, one last time, not to certify President Biden's victory. Witnesses said Trump got "heated" and told Pence he would "either go down in history as a patriot" or as "a pussy."

Trump's pleas fell on deaf ears. In a letter to Congress, Pence rejected the idea that "the Founders of our country intended to invest the vice president with unilateral authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted."

When the Capitol riot began, several members of the mob chanted "hang Mike Pence," while others erected a makeshift gallows. When Trump heard the chants, he told White House staff that Pence "deserves" it, former aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the House committee investigating Jan. 6. As rioters stormed through the Capitol building, Trump tweeted that Pence "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done."

One White House security official testified that Pence's Secret Service detail began "to fear for their own lives" as they scrambled to secure an evacuation route for the vice president. "There were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth," the official said. Pence was taken to a secure location but refused to leave the Capitol complex entirely. Just after 8:00 p.m., Pence reconvened the Senate, and by 3:30 a.m., Biden's victory had been certified.

What has happened to their relationship since then?

Nothing good. Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) told CNN in February 2021 that Pence had spoken to him "very favorably about his relationship" with Trump, giving Banks "the sense they speak often and maintain the same personal friendship and relationship now that they have for four years."

Even if that was true at the time, it doesn't seem to be anymore. A little less than one year later, Pence told Fox News' Jesse Waters that he and the former president hadn't spoken since the previous summer. The following month Pence again rejected the idea that he could have handed the election to Trump. "I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to 'overturn the election.' President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election," Pence said at a Federalist Society event. The idea "that any one person could choose the American president" is "un-American," he continued.

That spring Trump told the Washington Examiner that he had ruled out Pence as a 2024 running mate. "I don't think the people would accept it," Trump said, even as Pence himself began setting the stage for his own presidential run.

What's next for Pence and Trump?

With the 2024 campaign season shifting into gear, Pence and Trump have each ratcheted up their respective rhetoric against one another as both men vie for their party's presidential nomination. Since officially launching his campaign in June, Pence has made clear that there is little love lost between him and his former running mate, going so far as to leave open the possibility of testifying against Trump at his upcoming election fraud trial.

"Trump was wrong. He was wrong then. He's wrong now," Pence said in an interview with CBS' Face the Nation. "Trump asked me to put him over the Constitution that day, but I chose the Constitution." Still, speaking with a prospective supporter in New Hampshire this summer, Pence insisted he was "not interested in trading insults with my old friend" in order to win the GOP nomination. Pence has nevertheless faced increasingly hostile heckling from Trump supporters on the ground at various campaign stops in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Trump, for his part, has vacillated between treating his former veep as a serious threat to his current domination of the GOP field, or merely an afterthought in the wake of other, higher polling rivals. "Liddle' Mike Pence, a man who was about to be ousted as Governor Indiana until I came along and made him V.P., has gone to the Dark Side," Trump exclaimed on his Truth Social platform in August, in response to Pence's sharpened campaign barbs against his one-time ally. But Trump has also reserved his most frequent — and caustic — assaults for other Republican candidates who either represent a more viable challenge to his frontrunner status, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, or who have made a point of their own to attack the former president head on, like former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Pence and Trump may have the opportunity to address one another face to face in late August, after the former vice president passed the minimum threshold to participate in the first Republican presidential debate. Despite enjoying a commanding lead over the GOP presidential field as a whole, it remains unclear whether Trump will actually participate in the upcoming debate. He has thus far refused to sign a prerequisite pledge to support the eventual Republican presidential nominee, and has eschewed the notion of participating in general given his significant lead, suggesting there's nothing to be gained by appearing onstage with his rivals. "It's not a question of guts," he explained to Newsmax's Eric Bolling. "It's a question of intelligence."

Is there precedent for presidents and vice presidents not getting along?

Plenty. In the early years of the republic, whoever received the second most electoral votes would become vice president. This led almost immediately to the acrimonious cohabitation of Federalist John Adams and Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson. Then, after attempting to steal the election of 1800, Aaron Burr allegedly tried to start his own country out west and ended up on trial for treason, with Jefferson "fully intending to hang" his former VP, Ranker noted.

The constitution was quickly amended to ensure that presidents could choose their own vice presidents, but egos still clashed. John C. Calhoun resigned as Andrew Jackson's vice president in 1832 after a dispute over states' rights. Jackson later threatened to "secede" Calhoun's head "from the rest of your body" if he attempted to lead South Carolina out of the Union. (This technically makes Trump at least the third president to have responded positively to the idea of his ticket-mate being executed).

Several other president-VP relationships were adversarial, but not life-threateningly so. Richard Johnson, who served under Martin Van Buren, was dropped from the ticket in 1840 after disappearing from D.C. for nine months to run a tavern in Kentucky. Franklin Roosevelt got himself drafted for a third term to avoid being succeeded by Vice President John Nance Garner, who opposed the New Deal. Al Gore and Bill Clinton left office on bad terms, with Gore blaming Clinton for his loss in the 2000 election.

Updated Aug. 14, 2023: This article has been updated throughout.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) as a congressman representing Arizona. This has since been corrected. We regret the error.

Marc Short, the onetime chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, testified last week before a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, The New York Times reports.

Short, who spent between two to three hours testifying, was subpoenaed by federal prosecutors, people familiar with the matter told the Times. He is the highest ranking official from the Trump administration known to have appeared before the grand jury.

No details have been released regarding Short's testimony. Previously, Short appeared before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, and shared information on former President Donald Trump's attempts to pressure Pence into joining the plot to overturn the 2020 election.

In the spring, the Department of Justice expanded its criminal probe into the Jan. 6 riot to include the organization of the "Stop the Steal" rally that took place right before the Capitol attack, several people familiar with the matter told ABC News, and subpoenas have been issued to people who helped plan the event.

Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters there "is a lot of speculation about what the Justice Department is doing, what it's not doing, what our theories are and what our theories aren't, and there will continue to be that speculation. We have to hold accountable every person who is criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election, and we must do it in a way filled with integrity and professionalism."

Former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence held competing rallies in Arizona on Friday, touting rival candidates in a gubernatorial primary that has become a major proxy fight in the battle for the GOP.

Pence is backing businesswoman Karrin Taylor Robson, who also has the support of term-limited incumbent Gov. Doug Ducey (R). Pence told the crowd that, by electing Robson, they would signal that "the Republican Party is the party of the future." Later, Pence tweeted that "[s]ome people want this election to be about the past," presumably referring to Trump's stolen election claims. "If the Republican Party allows itself to become consumed by yesterday's grievances, we will lose," the former VP wrote.

The Associated Press notes that Robson has taken a moderate line on Trump's 2020 grievances. She's willing to blame liberal judges and big tech companies for tilting the election in Democrats' favor, but "has stopped short of saying Trump lost because of fraud."

Trump has endorsed former television anchor Kari Lake, who he said understands "how to fight back against the fake news media and the radical left." Lake is a vocal proponent of Trump's stolen election claims, even going so far as to call for the imprisonment of Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), who oversaw the 2020 election in that state.

A poll conducted earlier this month by public affairs firm HighGround showed Lake leading Robson 39-35 — within the 4.9 percent error margin — with 21 percent of voters still undecided.

Members of the Jan. 6 committee said recently they might subpoena former Vice President Mike Pence to testify about the pressure he faced from then-President Donald Trump to overturn President Biden's victory in the 2020 election. Witnesses have testified to the panel that Trump called Pence on the morning of Jan. 6 to urge him one last time to stop the certification of Trump's loss to Biden when Congress met to finalize the Electoral College results. "It started off [in a] calmer tone ... and then it became heated," former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told the committee, according to Axios. Ivanka Trump's then-chief of staff, Julie Radford, said Trump called Pence the "p-word" for resisting.

The committee has received the accounts of several Trump and Pence aides about the call. Now it wants to hear directly from Pence about what Trump asked him to do, and why he refused to reject Biden electors to tip the election to Trump. Trump allies vilify Pence for turning down his boss in his time of need. Critics of Trump's baseless claim that he lost to Biden due to election fraud say Pence never pushed back hard enough against the Big Lie. Still others say he's a hero for braving the backlash from MAGA world and doing the right thing to ensure the peaceful transfer of power to the duly elected president. How will history remember Pence's role in the Jan. 6 saga?

Pence saved the day

Mike Pence put the nation's interests before his own on Jan. 6, says Isaac Schorr at National Review. He has his eye on the White House, so "his political interests may have been better served by lending more credence to 'stop the steal,'" to please the MAGA base. But Pence drew the line where it had to be drawn, and bravely resisted "Trump's call to try to reject the legitimate Electoral College results." His former chief of staff, Marc Short, and former chief counsel, Greg Jacob, told the Jan. 6 committee that Pence never wavered in carrying out his duties on Jan. 6, not even as Trump "egged on a mob chanting 'hang Mike Pence' by tweeting 'Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.'" Pence, it turns out, did "have the courage to do what should have been done," and he saved the day.

Just doing your job can be heroic nowadays

A lot of liberals who used to mock Pence as spineless saw him in a new light on Jan. 6, says Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post. Not only did he stand his ground when Trump called him a "coward and worse," but he stayed at the Capitol that day — as rioters shouted "Hang Mike Pence!" — to do his job. Granted, he wavered before Jan. 6, and looked into whether there was a legal way to delay certification of the vote. Of course, the vice president has no right to stand in the way when Congress certifies the results of a presidential election, and Pence knew that. What he did took guts, but, remember: "Only in a country where duty has lost its currency and honesty is rare does doing the right thing rise to the level of heroic."

Pence should have stood up to Trump earlier

"I'm having a hard time joining the 'Mike Pence the Hero' bandwagon," says Bret Stephens at The New York Times. Why didn't he speak up in November when "Trump started lying" about the fact that Biden beat him? Or when Team Trump hired dodgy lawyers to "peddle insane conspiracy theories about voting machines and preposterous interpretations of the Electoral Count Act?" Pence is no hero. He's "a worm who, for a few hours on Jan. 6, turned into a glowworm."

The man is still a 'mealymouthed Trump stooge'

If Pence felt heroic on Jan. 6, he got over it, says Inae Oh at Mother Jones. This week, he told Fox News Digital Monday that the Jan. 6 committee's public hearings were part of a Democratic political plot to, and I quote, "use that tragic day to distract attention from their failed agenda or to demean the intentions of 74 million Americans who rallied behind our cause." The man is flirting with his former boss' "election lies," there. He also claimed to be concerned about "voting irregularities" in the 2020 election, and insisted that he and Trump had talked out their differences. In another Fox News interview, he said Biden lies more than any president in his lifetime, proving unequivocally that he's still a "mealymouthed Trump stooge."

Former Vice President Mike Pence was, in many ways, the protagonist of Thursday's third televised hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee: a man who resisted intense pressure from powerful allies and narrowly escaped violent death to do the right thing, saving the constitutional republic. The main villains were conservative lawyer John Eastman, who wrote multiple memos arguing that Pence had the right to unilaterally overturn the election result and urged him to do so, and former President Donald Trump.

Before Pence left his official residence to ceremonially oversee the counting of President Biden's electoral victory in Congress, Trump called him at 11:20 a.m., the panel recounted. Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump told the committee the conversation was "pretty heated" and Trump used a "different tone" than normal with Pence.

"I remember hearing the word 'wimp,'" Trump aide Nick Luna told committee investigators. "'Wimp' is the word I remember." Julie Radford, Ivanka Trump's chief of staff, testified that the president had used "the P word" — The New York Times previously reported that Trump had used two P words, telling Pence he could "either go down in history as a patriot" or "a pussy."

After their call, Trump added passive-aggressive references to Pence to his speech at the pre-riot "Stop the Steal" rally. By the time Pence arrived at the Capitol, an angry mob of Trump supporters was already gathering outside, the committee said, and Trump's subsequent tweets berating Pence riled up the crowd, leading to chants of "Hang Mike Pence!" When Trump learned about those chants, the committee said in an earlier hearing, he said "maybe our supporters have the right idea," and Pence "deserves it."

And it wasn't an ideal threat, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said at Thursday's hearing. A confidential witness told the FBI some of the Proud Boys who breached the Capitol said if they had found Pence, they would have killed him. When Pence was being evacuated to a secure loading dock in the Capitol basement, Aguilar said, he and his entourage came within 40 feet of angry rioters.

The Jan. 6 committee also showed some newly released photos of Pence sheltering during the riot, including one of him watching Trump attack him on his phone, his daughter scowling nearby.

Pence did not attend Thursday's hearing. Instead, while his bravery was lauded in Washington, he was in Ohio at an energy roundtable. He did not take any questions.

Former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig delivered strong testimony during the third public Jan. 6 hearing on Thursday, telling investigators that if former President Donald Trump had succeeded in pressuring then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 election, it would have been "the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the republic."

"The declaration of Donald Trump as the next president would have plunged America into what I believe, would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis in America," Luttig testified.

The former judge, a conservative legal icon who advised Pence about his Jan. 6 duties, also said he would have "laid my body across the road" before allowing the vice president to overturn the results of the 2020 contest on the basis of a faulty legal theory from attorney John Eastman. Eastman had claimed the 12th Amendment could be interpreted so as to allow the vice president to reject state electors or declare the winner of an election, The Hill summarizes.

Trump himself continues to be "a clear and present danger to American democracy," Luttig argued.

And as for the GOP, well, Luttig didn't mince words in that department, either. "The former president's party cynically and embarrassingly rationalizes Jan. 6 as having been something between hallowed, legitimate public discourse and a visitors tour of the Capitol that got out of hand," he said. "Jan. 6, of course, was neither, and the former president and his party know that."

Luttig was one of two witnesses to speak during the third public hearing, the other being Greg Jacob, former counsel to the vice president.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack heard testimony that then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told colleagues former President Donald Trump reacted approvingly to rioters chanting about hanging former Vice President Mike Pence, The New York Times reports.

People familiar with the matter told the Times at least one person provided this information to the committee, and Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Meadows, confirmed the account. The Times notes it isn't clear the tone Trump used when talking about the chants. When asked by the Times for comment, a lawyer for Meadows said he has "every reason to believe" this recounting "is untrue."

In the days leading up to the Capitol riot, Trump pressured Pence to either block or delay the certification of President Biden's victory. During the "Stop the Steal" rally before the Capitol attack, Trump told the crowd Pence "is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our country. Because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution."

From the White House, Trump watched television coverage of the riot, and after hearing the "Hang Mike Pence!" chants, Trump tweeted, "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution." Read more at The New York Times.

Former Vice President Mike Pence knows what he's doing.

That is, he knows what his plan to rally for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Monday night represents — a significant break with former President Donald Trump — and "the symbolism alone will stand" without him even having to target the ex-president or the candidate he endorsed (former senator David Perdue) "in his remarks," The New York Times writes, per aides, in a new piece analyzing Pence's political position.

The distancing from Trump is all a part of the ex-VP's plan to "reintroduce himself to Republican voters" before a potential 2024 presidential bid, the Times reports. Pence is also actually one of few in the GOP who has said Trump's decision on the matter will bear no weight in whether or not he runs.

The rallying with Kemp also arrives after Pence criticized Trump for incorrectly claiming the former vice president could have overturned the 2020 election, and is Pence's "boldest and most unambiguous step toward confronting his former political patron," the Times writes.

"We'll go where we're called," Pence told the Times regarding a 2024 run, adding that he and his wife will use prayer to decide. "That's the way Karen and I have always approached these things." Read more at The New York Times.

In his latest break with former President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence will rally with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) a day before the state's May 24 primary, NPR reports.

Kemp, who is up for reelection, is being challenged by the Trump-backed former Sen. David Perdue (R), who ran for Senate and lost in 2020. Catherine Davis, Kandiss Taylor, and Tom Williams are also vying for Kemp's spot.

Pence's decision to rally for Kemp "marks the most outward effort the former vice president has taken to buck Trump and his desired political outcome," NPR writes.

Earlier this week in Nebraska, another Trump-backed candidate — Charles Herbster — lost his primary bid for governor; outgoing Gov. Pete Ricketts' (R) pick, Jim Pillen, won instead. Notably, Ricketts also backs Kemp.

"Brian Kemp is one of the most successful conservative governors in America," Pence said in a statement. "Brian Kemp is my friend, a man dedicated to faith, family and the people of Georgia. I am proud to offer my full support for four more years of Brian Kemp as governor of the great state of Georgia!"

With a series of hearings on the horizon, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is mulling whether to call former President Donald Trump and/or former Vice President Mike Pence, neither of whom has spoken to the panel, The Associated Press reports.

Of course, there are reasons to speak with at least one or both former leaders. For starters, "[t]he committee wants to be as thorough as possible, and critics are sure to pounce if they don't even try," writes AP. But some committee members believe they have what they need without either man.

In early April, committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said the panel has been able to confirm a lot of statements attributed to both Trump and Pence without hearing from them directly. But, per AP, "there are still questions" each ex-official could answer, including what they spoke about on the morning of Jan. 6.

That said, it's unclear whether or to what extent each would even cooperate with the committee; Trump "would certainly be a hostile witness," AP posits. Not to mention that "calling a former president or vice president to testify in a congressional investigation is a rare, if not unprecedented, move that could face major legal hurdles and backfire politically," AP writes. Read more at The Associated Press.

My Washington Examiner colleague David Drucker has the scoop: Former President Donald Trump and Mike Pence, his long-suffering vice president, are splitsville. Trump said in a wide-ranging interview published Wednesday that he would be unlikely to tap Pence as his running mate were he to run for the White House again in 2024.

This isn't enormously surprising. Trump has held a grudge against Pence for not going along with his unconstitutional scheme to effectively overturn the 2020 election results. Pence has become increasingly assertive about pushing back against Trump on this question. And unlike some others, Pence doesn't seem to be deferring to his old boss on 2024 either.

But Trump didn't say Pence personally was the reason another go-round is a nonstarter. "I don't think the people would accept it," he told Drucker. Pence's actions in certifying President Biden's election discredited him with the Republican base, Trump argued.

He may be right, but that's bad news for the GOP. Republicans should want the 2024 election to be about Biden and his record, which has thus far not been very well received by the electorate. Trump wants it to be about 2020 — and, particularly if both he and Pence run and lead the GOP primary field, it will be.

Perhaps that's an opening for someone — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)? or even Pence himself? — to run as the forward-looking candidate the Republican Party needs. But is there anything that has happened since 2015 that would make you want to bet on that outcome? Whatever Trump's shortcomings, his ability to sense what motivates the base is not one of them. And 2020 could be used as a dividing line between respectable Republicans like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who in this telling craved adulation from The New York Times, and Republicans Who Will Fight. Fighting, of course, needs to be defined more broadly than, "Repeatedly punching oneself in the face to no obvious effect."

If Trump successfully makes 2024 about 2020, it would be an ironic boon for Democrats: Biden won in 2020 (really) because he was able to frame the election as a referendum on Trump, not a binary choice between the two of them. This time around, a binary choice is the Democrats' best shot.

Former President Donald Trump is acknowledging that his not-yet-launched 2024 presidential bid would not include his former vice president.

Trump told the Washington Examiner his hypothetical run for re-election would most likely not select former Vice President Mike Pence as his running mate. "I don't think the people would accept it," Trump said, alluding to his supporters' anger with Pence for failing to support Trump's false claim he actually won the 2020 race. Trump wanted Pence to somehow overturn the election's results during the congressional certification of the Electoral College votes, notes the Examiner, but Pence explained he didn't have constitutional authority for such a move.

"Mike and I had a great relationship except for the very important factor that took place at the end. We had a very good relationship," Trump said. "I haven't spoken to him in a long time."

Pence himself is reportedly gearing up for a 2024 presidential run.

While Trump called Pence a "really fine person," the Examiner reports he "signaled their relationship might be irrevocably broken." He said he "was disappointed in Mike," and continued to baselessly argue that Pence could have rejected the electoral votes that secured President Biden's victory. Read more at the Washington Examiner.

Is there life for Mike Pence after Trump?

This month, the former vice president looked to put some room between himself and his old boss with remarks he made in Florida to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization. Prompted by former President Donald Trump's recent reiteration of his false claim that Pence could have overturned the 2020 election while presiding over the Jan. 6 electoral certification, Pence responded. "President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election," he told the gathering, a rare expression of plain truth in the GOP on the subject of Trump's lies.

It was also an even rarer criticism of Trump by Pence himself, who has usually acted as a simpering sycophant of the former president. While not directly attacking Trump, Pence did say there was "no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president," denouncing the very notion Trump has repeatedly pushed.

But more than evincing honor or bravery, Pence's speech served to highlight all the times he stayed quiet while Trump ran roughshod over the Constitution, demeaned the office of the presidency, and weakened the democratic foundations of the American system. Instead of showing his integrity, Pence revealed his bald self-interest. As a person close to him admitted to CNN, Pence has never wanted to rebuke Trump for any of his many wrongdoings or his numerous character failures. "But if something is falsely said about him," the source said of Pence, "he is going to correct it."

For the ambitious Pence, who has long eyed the Oval Office, defending his own reputation is finally the reason to stand up to Trump.

Not that it will work. While Pence is clearly planning a presidential run for 2024 — he's made several trips in the last year to early primary states, like Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, and has more planned in the coming months — he's barely registering with GOP voters who remain in Trump's thrall. An aggregation of recent polls shows Trump dominating the potential 2024 GOP field, racking up an almost 40-point lead over Republicans' current second-place choice, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In an even-more-distant third, Pence's polling is stuck in the single digits.

We're still some two years from when Republican voters will cast their primary ballots, yes. But given the current political landscape on the right, DeSantis seems most primed to overtake Trump, if anyone can.

There are several factors working in DeSantis' favor, including being a fairly-popular, if controversial, governor of a state with the third-largest slate of Electoral College votes. That controversy, driven by his laissez-faire handling of COVID and his aggressive response to Florida counties that sought to enact stricter pandemic regulations, has made him a darling on the right. Thanks to steady appearances on Fox News, plus lots of gushing coverage of his governorship by the network, DeSantis is gaining an impressive national profile. And his assault on voting rights and stoking of fears about critical race theory in Florida's public schools show how deftly he's pulling straight from Trump's playbook. It looks like DeSantis' strategy to win the Republican nomination comes down to out-Trumping Trump.

What's Pence's plan? If he's angling to position himself as Trump-lite — someone who can deliver Trump's hardline policies without his heinous personality — he's misjudging the moment. The mood on the right is one of revolution, not reformation. Pence's solemn, choir-boy posturing has little appeal when what so many Republican voters seem to want is an unhinged political arsonist.

Still, Pence is taking a stab at it. Fox News has reported he's spending a lot of time in South Carolina, home to the third primary on the GOP schedule, in a bid to court white evangelical voters with his strong anti-abortion stance. Yet if the last five years have shown anything, it's that conservative religious voters have shifted their political priorities to issues like immigration, national security, and, increasingly, opposing COVID regulations and vaccine mandates. Their more traditional anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ concerns are no longer at the fore. And if the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade (1973) this summer, as many legal experts expect, the question of abortion rights should be even less animating for conservative Republicans.

None of this can be the political path Pence imagined for himself when he signed on as Trump's running mate in 2016. For the devout Pence, there may be as much a spiritual lesson in that truth as there is a political one: When it comes to sacrificing yourself for Trump, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Florida governor and rumoured 2024 hopeful Ron DeSantis (R) is keeping quiet — at least on this latest piece of GOP drama.

When asked by a reporter who he sides with in the ongoing debacle concerning former Vice President Mike Pence's certifcation of the 2020 election and former President Donald Trump (who has claimed Pence could have overturned the results), DeSantis replied, "I'm not. I ...," before cutting himself off, NBC News reports.

When further pressed, DeSantis changed the subject and commended his "great working relationship" with the Trump administration, and then came after President Biden for blocking his agenda, per NBC News.

DeSantis' non-answer likely has something to do, if not much to do, with a possible White House bid and the political kiss of death that is crossing Trump (hey, just look at GOP Reps. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) and Liz Cheney (Wyo.). Notably, early polls rank DeSantis as a distant second to Trump in the 2024 presidential race, or the frontrunner should the former president decline to run, NBC News notes.

On Friday, Pence spoke out against his ex-boss' claims and correctly said "Trump is wrong" for suggesting the vice president could have changed the outcome of the contest.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is assessing whether to reform the Electoral Count Act so as to remove any ambiguity from the vice president's role in the process and "give the courts more say" in the end, notes NBC News.

The advisers working with former President Donald Trump after the 2020 presidential election "were basically snake oil salesmen," Marc Short said on Sunday's Meet the Press, leading Trump to believe that there was some way former Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the results.

Short served as Pence's chief of staff, and was with him at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack. In an address on Friday to the conservative Federalist Society, Pence pushed back at Trump's false assertion that he could have decided the election, saying, "President Trump is wrong." Short backed Pence up on Meet the Press, telling host Chuck Todd that Pence made it clear from the beginning he could not overturn the election and never intended to delay certification of the results.

Trump, Short continued, "had many bad advisers, who were basically snake oil salesmen giving him really random and novel ideas as to what the vice president could do. But our office, you know, researched that and recognized that was never an option." Short added that he didn't know if Trump sought out this advice because it's what he wanted to hear.

Short said he thinks the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack is "partisan," but he testified before its members because he was subpoenaed. "I don't know how often you've been subpoenaed, Chuck, and if you view that as cooperation, but I view that as following the law," he said.

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday rebuked assertions made by former President Donald Trump late last week, in which he alleged Pence had the power to overturn the results of the 2020 election, The New York Times reports.

"President Trump is wrong," Pence said while speaking before conservative legal organization the Federalist Society. "I had no right to overturn the election."

"The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone," he added. "And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president."

In a statement released Sunday concerning the recent congressional push to reform the Electoral Count Act, Trump falsely claimed Pence could have overturned the 2020 race during the Jan. 6 electoral certification; then, on Tuesday, the former president issued another statement, this one urging the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot to turn their attention toward Pence and focus on why he "did not send back the votes for recertification or approval."

Pence's Friday speech, however, served as his "strongest rejection" yet of both Trump and his election fraud claims, CNBC notes. The former vice president also characterized the Jan. 6 riot as "a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol," a break from language used by other members of the GOP. For example, one Republican lawmaker infamously likened Capitol rioters to tourists visiting Washington, D.C.

Also on Friday, the Republican National Committee voted to formally censure Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for their work on the House Jan. 6 committee.

In a letter sent Tuesday to former President Donald Trump, the National Archives said it will turn over former Vice President Mike Pence's White House records to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Trump has been trying to block the records from the committee. In the letter, National Archivist David Ferriero said that unless a court intervenes, the documents will be submitted on March 3.

The committee recently received documents from Trump's time in the White House, which he also attempted to shield from the panel. The records include memos and handwritten notes, and the National Archives confirmed that some documents had been ripped up by Trump and were taped together.

Several Pence aides have spoken with the committee, including Marc Short, his former chief of staff, CNN reports. Short was with Pence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and was also at a meeting held two days earlier with Trump and attorney John Eastman, who tried to coerce Pence into overturning the election results.

After baseless claims suggesting former Vice President Mike Pence could have overturned the results of the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump is back with another charge — this one directed at the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, calling on them to investigate why Pence did not on Jan. 6 "reject electoral college votes from several states won by Joe Biden," reports The Washington Post.

The ex-president's latest missive is a "more nuanced take on what he would have liked to have seen from Pence" that day, as well as a muddled criticism of Congress' decision to revise the Electoral Count Act, "a law that governs what Congress should do in the case of any disputes about which candidate won in a state," notes the Post.

There has been no evidence of widespread election or voter fraud that would have changed the outcome of the race.

"So pathetic to watch the Unselect Committee of political hacks, liars, and traitors work so feverishly to alter the Electoral College Act so that a vice president cannot ensure the honest results of the election, when just one year ago they said that 'the vice president has absolutely no right to ensure the true outcome or results of an election,'" Trump wrote, alleging the committtee "lied" about Pence's rights. The legislation Congress is considering would not change the vice president's role in election certification, it would simply make it more explicit, The Independent explains.

Instead of investigating the Capitol riot, Trump claims, the commitee should be investigating "why [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi did such a poor job of overseeing security" on Jan. 6, "and why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval, in that it has now been shown that he clearly had the right to do so!"

Pence does not currently have plans to appear before the committee.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack has spoken with Marc Short, former Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, CNN reports.

Short testified before the committee last Wednesday, after receiving a subpoena, people with knowledge of the matter told CNN. The panel is looking at all facets of how the attack came to be, including former President Donald Trump's actions before and during the riot. Short was at a White House meeting on Jan. 4, 2021, when Trump and attorney John Eastman attempted to coerce Pence into overturning the election results, and he also accompanied Pence to the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Before he testified, Short had turned over some documents that had been subpoenaed by the committee, including a memo from Trump aide Johnny McEntee that compared Trump to Thomas Jefferson, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. It is still unclear if Pence himself will appear before the committee; the panel has been in contact with his legal team, but people close to Pence told CNN he would rather have a "proxy" like Short cooperate in his place.

This weekend, Trump released a statement denouncing Pence, falsely claiming, "He could have overturned the election!" A person close to Pence told CNN that the former vice president may respond to Trump later this week when he speaks at a Federalist Society gathering in Florida.

A bipartisan group of senators is working on a bill clarifying that the vice president cannot just set aside slates of presidential electors and effectively overturn a presidential election, in response to an evident push by former President Donald Trump and his allies to exploit what they viewed as an ambiguity in the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

On Sunday evening, Trump issued a statement claiming that this legislative push shows that "Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn't exercise that power, he could have overturned the election!" One thing the House Jan. 6 committee is examining is whether Trump was involved in an effort to overturn President Biden's election, and committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) called this new Trump statement "an admission" as well as "a massively un-American statement."

Another prominent Trump critic, lawyer George Conway, summarized the legal problem with Trump's claim. "The Twelfth Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887 already make it entirely clear that the vice president merely opens the envelopes," he tweeted. "But sometimes we want to make laws even clearer so that even semiliterate psychopaths have a chance at understanding them."

Even in terms of raw-power pragmatism, Trump's argument has flaws. Trump has so far only hinted he will run for a second term in 2024 — he suggested Saturday night that if given another term, he would pardon the Jan. 6 rioters and insurrectionists, for example — but his claim that Pence could have overturned the election on Jan. 6 means Vice President Kamala Harris would enjoy that same power in January 2025.

Commentator Josh Barro quipped that Trump calling the main GOP proponent of reforming the Electoral Count Act "Wacky Susan Collins" shows he's "phoning in the nicknames," a "pretty good sign Trump's not actually going to run again." Trump, of course, has proved impervious to such witty repartee.

Former Vice President Mike Pence's famous family rabbit, Marlon Bundo, has died, reports The Washington Post.

The former BOTUS (Bunny of the United States) was adopted by Charlotte Pence Bond, Pence's daughter, and joined the family in Washington when Pence was elected. In a tribute to Bundo on Instagram, Pence Bond wrote that the rabbit "came into our lives at just the moment we needed you most."

As the Post writes, the bunny became an "unlikely gay rights figure" after Pence Bond authored several children's books starring the pet, and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver released a parody book meant to skewer Pence's opposition to gay rights. In Oliver's version, Bundo is a "boy bunny who falls in love with another boy bunny."

Former second lady Karen Pence, who illustrated the non-parody versions of the Bundo-inspired books, wrote a tribute to the black-and-white bunny on Twitter, pledging "we will never forget him."