Pence hits Trump over election charges as indictment reveals a lot of the information came from him

Former President Donald Trump’s latest 45-page indictment references his former vice president, Mike Pence, or the office of the vice presidency more than 100 times, demonstrating Pence’s importance in the investigation, The Washington Post reports. According to the indictment, Pence took “contemporaneous notes” about Trump and his associates’ efforts to overturn the former president’s 2020 electoral defeat in the leadup to the attack on the Capitol carried out by a mob of Trump supporters. 

The indictment explicitly cites Pence’s notes twice in connection to two interactions he had with Trump or his allies ahead of Jan. 6, 2021. The first references an exchange with Trump on Dec. 29, 2020, where he allegedly told Pence that the Department of Justice was “finding major infractions,” according to the notes. The second outlines a Jan. 4, 2021, meeting, in which Trump allegedly repeated his false claims of election fraud and Pence questioned if Trump lawyer John Eastman’s proposal to return the election results to the states was “defensible.” 

“Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,” Pence said in a post to X, formerly known as Twitter, Tuesday night. “Our country is more important than one man. Our constitution is more important than any one man’s career. On January 6th, Former President Trump demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution. I chose the Constitution and I always will,” he added.