Former Vice President Mike Pence mentioned Wednesday he’d “think about” testifying earlier than the Democrat-led Home choose committee investigating final 12 months’s Capitol riot.
“If there was an invite to take part, I might think about it,” Pence mentioned throughout an occasion at Saint Anselm Faculty in Manchester, NH.
“I must replicate on the distinctive function that I used to be serving in as vice chairman,” the previous Indiana governor added. “It’d be unprecedented in historical past for a vice chairman to be summoned to testify on Capitol Hill.”
The committee typically videotapes interviews with topics after which airs snippets of essentially the most damning components at public hearings.
“I don’t need to prejudge. If there’s ever any formal invitation rendered to us, we’d give it due consideration,” Pence emphasised Wednesday. “However my first obligation is to proceed to uphold my oath [and] proceed to uphold the framework of presidency enshrined within the Structure.”
The previous vice chairman’s failure to rule out testifying is prone to outrage pro-Donald Trump Republicans who’ve condemned the committee’s course of as a “present trial” of the forty fifth president. The panel’s vice chair is outgoing anti-Trump Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who on Tuesday misplaced her Republican main to Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman.
In January of this 12 months, committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) urged the panel would ask the previous vice chairman to seem voluntarily.
The one sitting or former vice chairman to seem earlier than Congress was Schuyler Colfax, Ulysses S. Grant’s second-in-command, who appeared of his personal accord earlier than a Home choose committee in 1873.
Pence was a pivotal participant within the occasions of Jan. 6, 2021, refusing Trump’s demand that he reject electors for President-elect Joe Biden whereas presiding over the official certification of the 2020 election.
Trump tore into Pence in a mid-riot tweet for missing the “braveness” to single-handedly try to overturn Biden’s victory, and pro-Trump demonstrators chanted “Dangle Mike Pence!” after smashing into the Capitol and disrupting proceedings.
“The place’s Pence? Present your self!” a rioter shouted after breaking onto the Senate ground. The then-vice president had fled to a safe location simply minutes earlier.
Pence’s refusal to toss out the swing-state electors for Biden made him a hero to many individuals, together with Democrats who beforehand detested him for his socially conservative views.
The 63-year-old is taken into account a possible 2024 Republican presidential candidate, although Trump stays the heavy favourite for the GOP nomination if he runs once more, based on a number of polls.
Since leaving workplace, Pence has tried to minimize speak of a rift between himself and the previous president, saying final month that “I don’t know that the president and I differ on points” earlier than including: “However we could differ on focus.”
On the identical New Hampshire occasion, Pence broke with pro-Trump Republicans calling for the FBI to be defunded or abolished following final week’s raid on the previous president’s residence in Florida, which the FBI says was to retrieve categorized paperwork.
“These assaults on the FBI should cease,” Pence mentioned. “Calls to defund the FBI are simply as incorrect as calls to defund the police.”
