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According to a report from the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, former vice president Mike Pence’s chief of staff sat down with the head of the VP’s Secret Service detail on the day before the Jan 6th insurrection to warn them that his boss’s life might be in danger.
The report states that Marc Short explained, “The president was going to turn publicly against the vice president, and there could be a security risk to Mr. Pence because of it.”
Earlier this week it was reported that Trump had no problems with the crowd who stormed the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and the new report indicates that the former vice president and his staff were already worried about what would follow the “Stop the Steal” rally.
According to Haberman’s report, based upon her upcoming book due out in October, “Mr. Short did not know what form such a security risk might take, according to people familiar with the events. But after days of intensifying pressure from Mr. Trump on Mr. Pence to take the extraordinary step of intervening in the certification of the Electoral College count to forestall Mr. Trump’s defeat, Mr. Short seemed to have good reason for concern. The vice president’s refusal to go along was exploding into an open and bitter breach between the two men at a time when the president was stoking the fury of his supporters who were streaming into Washington.”
Haberman adds that it is unclear what the Secret Service’s Tim Giebels did with the information given to him by Short.
“New details from the weeks leading up to Jan. 6 help to flesh out how Mr. Trump and his allies sought to intimidate Mr. Pence into accepting their baseless theory that the vice president had the authority to block congressional certification of the Electoral College results — and how Mr. Pence’s refusal to do so would lead him to peril,” she wrote. “A few weeks after Election Day on Nov. 3, 2020, aides to Mr. Pence learned that some in Mr. Trump’s loose network of advisers were discussing the possibility of Jan. 6, 2021 — set under statute as the day of the Electoral College certification — as a potentially critical date in Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in power.”
Haberman reports that neither a spokesperson for the Secret Service nor anyone representing Pence responded when asked to comment on the reported meeting.
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