According to MSNBC's Joy Ann Reid, if President Donald Trump is impeached for his scandal tsunami and cover-ups, Vice President Mike Pence should be forced out along with him.
"There is a consciousness of guilt here," Reid said of Trump asking Pence and his attorney general Jeff Sessions to leave the room. "It's not that he doesn't understand. Not only does he ask Jeff Sessions, the head of the Department of Justice to leave, he asks him twice."
Reid said that even Sessions, "who's no paragon of virtue" had to have recognized that there was "something entirely improper about leaving them alone."
"Even Jeff Sessions understood that," Reid reiterated. "Trump insists that he leave the room, twice, two requests and he also ushers Mike Pence out of the room. And by the way, I think that Sessions and Pence are not out of the woods either. Russiagate is going to ensnare everyone who touches it. Mike Pence has a very implausible story as well, which is that he knew absolutely nothing about anything ever, including when Sally Yates comes in and informs the transition team, of which he's the head! He's the head of the transition team! The idea that he was completely and wholly ignorant makes him also unfit to succeed Donald Trump even if Congress did have a mind to impeach him."
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has been insistent that Pence was complicit in Russiagate from the beginning. In several bombshell reports, Maddow walked through warning after warning that Pence was confronted with regarding Russia and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
"Either they were criminally negligent — or they weren’t and they knew," Maddow said in March.
When it came to Pence knowing about Flynn's side job as an unregistered foreign agent for Turkey, Maddow also called BS.
“That cannot be true,” Maddow said. “It is impossible this is the first Mike Pence has heard of it. Mike Pence was the head of the [Trump] transition, while all of those news stories of Mike Flynn being on the Turkish government’s payroll were breaking. He was the head of the transition when Mike Flynn was being vetted for the National Security Advisor job. He was the head of the transition when Congress formally notified the head of the transition that Mike Flynn appears to be on a foreign government’s payroll. He was the head of the transition when Mike Flynn’s personal lawyers came and told the transition that Mike Flynn maybe needed to register as a foreign agent.”
Later that month, Maddow developed the full timeline of those warning Pence about Flynn's concerning foreign ties.
“Mike Pence’s role in the Mike Flynn scandal is flashing like a red beacon for anyone who sees him as the normal Republican in this setting,” she concluded.
Flynn was reportedly warned by the transition team in November, just after the election, that he should be cautious in his communications with Russia. If Pence was the head of the transition team, plausible deniability is growing increasingly impossible.
Watch the panel discussion below:
Joy Reid nails potential 'President Pence' as... by sarahburris
