In an excerpt from his forthcoming book 'So Help Me God,' former Vice President Mike Pence blamed former President Donald Trump for the events of Jan. 6, saying that meetings, where Trump's advisers urged him to deny the election results, were "a new low."
In the excerpt published by Axios, Pence described meetings led by Rudy Giuliani in which Trump advisers attacked campaign lawyers over the election results. The former second-in-command said he did not support the action and thought Trump shouldn't either.
The meeting in the excerpt took place shortly after the 2020 election, and Pence described the moment as a tragic day.
"In the end, that day the president made the fateful decision to put Giuliani and Sidney Powell in charge of the legal strategy," Pence wrote. "The seeds were being sown for a tragic day in January."
Pence risks joining other Republicans — like Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) — who are on the outside looking in for publicly blaming Trump for the U.S. Capitol attack.
The memoir from pence will be published on Nov. 15, and in it, he also talks about how quickly the talks turned from accepting to denying the election results.
"What began as a briefing that Thursday afternoon quickly turned into a contentious back-and-forth between the campaign lawyers and a growing group of outside attorneys led by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, an attorney who had represented Gen Mike Flynn," Pence wrote.
He said that after campaign lawyers shared a downtrodden report on election challenges, the group of outside lawyers "went on the attack."
"Giuliani told the president over the speakerphone, 'Your lawyers are not telling you the truth, Mr. President,'" Pence wrote. "Even in an office well acquainted with rough-and-tumble debates, it was a new low …. [and] went downhill from there."
The book comes a month after the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol voted unanimously to subpoena the former president.
The Justice Department is also investigating Trump over his involvement and the possession of potentially classified documents.
Pence has not kept his ambitions to run for president a secret by any means, but Trump still remains at the top of most polls when voters are asked who they would like to receive the GOP nominee.
Though no one has officially announced their intentions to run for president in 2024, Trump continues to flirt with the idea, as does his next closest challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
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