I had heard earlier that Pence’s people were in contact with Mar-a-Lago about how to respond to deal with the January 6thy Committee. This piece doesn’t report that but it does show that, once again, Mike Pence is laboring under the illusion that he can repair his reputation in the GOP and become president someday, which is just sad. He keeps trying to find a way to stay relevant and run for office again without acknowledging that Trump made him an enemy and sicced his violent mob on him.
As the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol rushes to gather evidence and conduct interviews, how far it will be able to go in holding former President Donald J. Trump accountable increasingly appears to hinge on one possible witness: former Vice President Mike Pence.
Since the committee was formed last summer, Mr. Pence’s lawyer and the panel have been talking informally about whether he would be willing to speak to investigators, people briefed on the discussions said. But as Mr. Pence began sorting through a complex calculation about his cooperation, he indicated to the committee that he was undecided, they said.
To some degree, the current situation reflects negotiating strategies by both sides, with the committee eager to suggest an air of inevitability about Mr. Pence answering its questions and the former vice president’s advisers looking for reasons to limit his political exposure from a move that would further complicate his ambitions to run for president in 2024.
But there also appears to be growing tension.
In recent weeks, Mr. Pence is said by people familiar with his thinking to have grown increasingly disillusioned with the idea of voluntary cooperation. He has told aides that the committee has taken a sharp partisan turn by openly considering the potential for criminal referrals to the Justice Department about Mr. Trump and others. Such referrals, in Mr. Pence’s view, appear designed to hurt Republican chances of winning control of Congress in November.
And Mr. Pence, they said, has grown annoyed that the committee is publicly signaling that it has secured a greater degree of cooperation from his top aides than it actually has, something he sees as part of a pattern of Democrats trying to turn his team against Mr. Trump.
For the committee, Mr. Pence’s testimony under oath would be an opportunity to establish in detail how Mr. Trump’s pressuring him to block the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory brought the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis and helped inspire the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
What a sad, deluded, little weasel he is.
I’ll just leave this here: