Former President Donald Trump speaks because the keynote speaker on the 56th Annual Silver Elephant Dinner hosted by the South Carolina Republican Party on August 5, 2023 in Columbia, South Carolina.
Melissa Sue Gerrits | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump’s attorney John Lauro said Sunday that he believes former Vice President Mike Pence can be one in all the defense’s “best witnesses” within the federal case over Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 election.
Trump was indicted on 4 federal felony charges Tuesday that centered on his supposed attempts to discount legitimate votes within the 2020 presidential race and subvert the election itself. The indictment describes how Trump and his lawyers pressured Pence to overturn Joe Biden’s victory by refusing to certify the ends in the Senate on Jan. 6, 2021. Pence refused and needed to be evacuated from the Senate chamber when members of the Jan. 6 mob called for him to be hung.
The previous president is facing additional federal charges in reference to a probe centered on his retention of classified documents after leaving office in 2021. He was also charged by Manhattan prosecutors with falsifying business records related to hush money payments to women who say they’d extramarital affairs with him.
Pence has not been officially called to testify within the election case, but Lauro told ABC’s “This Week” he believes Pence’s testimony would help illustrate that the previous president was not acting with criminal intent.
“I cannot wait until I even have the chance to cross-examine Mr. Pence, because what he’ll do is totally eliminate any doubt that Mr. Trump, President Trump, firmly believed that the election irregularities had led to inappropriate results,” Lauro said Sunday.
Pence told CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday that if he’s ultimately asked to testify, he’ll follow the law.
Lauro added that Trump and his lawyers asked Pence to “pause the voting” to permit states time to audit votes, in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. Pence, who also spoke with CNN Sunday, said that was not the total story.
“Frankly, the day before January 6, if memory serves, they got here back — his lawyers did — and said, ‘We wish you to reject votes’ outright,” Pence said. “They were asking me to overturn the election. I had no right to overturn the election.”
“I do not know what was in [Trump’s] heart, I do not know what his intentions were, but I do know what he and his lawyers asked me to do. And it’s what no vice chairman in American history had ever done before, and admittedly what no vice chairman or anybody person in Washington should ever do again,” he added.
