Former Vice-President Mike Pence said Donald Trump received terrible legal advise from “crackpot lawyers” who told him what he wanted to hear instead of the truth, after the former president’s loss in the 2020 election.
“I want people to know that I had no right to overturn the election and that what the president maintained that day, and frankly has said over and over again over the last two and a half years, is completely false. And it’s contrary to what our Constitution and the laws of this country provide,” Pence told reporters Wednesday.
“The first time I heard in early December somebody suggest that as vice president I might be able to decide which votes to reject and which to accept, I knew that it was false. I dismissed it out of hand,” Pence added. “Sadly, the president was surrounded by a group of crackpot lawyers that kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear.”
Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury on Tuesday on four charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy against rights.
The indictment makes it clear that Pence is a key witness in the case, and prosecutors say the former vice-president took extensive, contemporaneous notes.
Pence, Trump’s rival in the GOP primary race, released a statement after the indictment saying “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”
