In the Oval Office last week, a day before the vote, Mr. Trump mr. Pence pushed into a series of meetings, including one meeting that lasted at least an hour. John Eastman, a conservative constitutional scholar at Chapman University, was in the office and spoke out against Mr. Pence argued that he did have the power to act.
The next morning, hours before the vote, Richard Cullen, the personal counsel of Mr. Pence, J. Michael Luttig called, a former judge of appellate court honored by conservatives – and for whom Mr. Eastman once clerked. Mr. Luttig agreed to quickly write down his opinion that the vice president does not have the power to change the outcome, and then posted it on Twitter.
Within minutes, the staff of Mr. Pence the reasoning of mr. Luttig, with its name, included in a letter announcing the vice president’s decision not to try to block voters. Mr Luttig was reached on Tuesday, saying it was ‘the highest honor in my life’ to play a role in upholding the Constitution.
After the angry call that Mr. Pence cursed, Mr. Trump supporters acted against his own vice president, saying, “I hope he does not listen to the RINOs and the stupid people he listens to.”
“He set up Mike Pence that day by putting it on his shoulders,” said Ryan Streeter, an adviser to Mr. Pence, said when he was governor of Indiana. “It’s a pretty unprecedented thing in American politics. The fact that a president throws his own vice president so under the bus and encourages his supporters to tackle him is just unscrupulous in my mind. ‘
Mr. Pence was already in his driveway to the Capitol at the time. When the mob burst into the building, secret service agents evacuated him and his wife and children, first to his office from the floor and later to the basement. His agents encouraged him to leave the building, but he refused to abandon the Capitol. From there, he spoke with congressional leaders, the defense secretary and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff – but not with the president.
A Republican senator later said he met Mr. Pence had never seen so angry, and he felt betrayed by a president for whom he had done so much. An adviser told Mr. Trump said the vice president had entered ‘Sessions area’, referring to Jeff Sessions, the attorney general who was tortured by the president before he was fired. (A Vice President cannot be dismissed by a President.)