Fat chance
Mike Pence is busily pretending that he has a chance to win the GOP nomination for president and is being confronted with uncomfortable questions:
Former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday he would give “due consideration” to any formal invitation to testify before the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, while hinting at potential executive privilege issues.
Pence made the remarks during a Q&A after a speech at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics’ “Politics & Eggs” breakfast, a common stop for candidates considering a run for office.
“If there was an invitation to participate, I would consider it,” Pence said, after calling January 6 a tragic day for all Americans. “But, you heard me mention the Constitution a few times this morning. Under the Constitution, we have three co-equal branches of government, and any invitation to be directed to me, I would have to reflect on the unique role I was serving in as vice president. It would be unprecedented in history for a vice president to be summoned to testify on Capitol Hill. But, as I said, I don’t want to pre-judge, so if there’s ever any formal invitation rendered to us, we would give it due consideration.”
He is wrong. It is not unprecedented. Presidents and Vice Presidents have testified before congress:
President Abraham Lincoln
House Judiciary Committee
February 13, 1862
Vice President Schuyler Colfax
House Select Committee to Investigate the Credit Mobilier
January 7, 1873
President Woodrow Wilson
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
August 19, 1919
President Gerald R. Ford
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, House Judiciary Committee
October 17, 1974
Formers who testified: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Harry S. Truman, Gerald R. Ford
It’s not common but then insurrections in which people storm the capitol demanding to hang the Vice President aren’t common either. In fact, that is unprecedented.
I will be shocked if Pence agrees to do it. He should. It’s not as if he can do anything worse that what he’s already done in the eyes of GOP voters. He might as well act like a patriot. But that would require him to testify in depth about the threat from Donald Trump and I can’t see him summoning the courage to do that.