What will finally force Pence to squeal on Trump?
On one hand, former Vice President Mike Pence is trying to get out of complying with a subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith to give grand jury testimony on the January 6 attack. But on the other hand, Pence made waves at the Gridiron journalists' dinner over the weekend by rebuking both former President Donald Trump and Fox News personality Tucker Carlson for their own roles in fomenting the insurrection.
Speaking on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House" on Monday, former FBI counterintelligence official Frank Figliuzzi connected these two things — and outlined what they say about how much information Pence could ultimately be forced to give.
"I want to be honest with all of you, I wasn't sure what to do with the Pence speech," said anchor Nicolle Wallace. "I wasn't sure whether to cover it at all because it is so incremental that it makes me mad. And I don't want to recognize anyone for simply telling the truth, even if that someone was the intended target. The mission statement of the insurrection was to, quote, 'Hang Mike Pence.'"
"But I want to focus in on what he said," continued Wallace. "Pence says, 'tourists don't injure 140 police officers by sightseeing.' So if you're before a grand jury, say you lose as most people think he's going to do his subpoena fight, how did 140 police officers get injured? Donald Trump sends them to do something violent. It seems like the little lag, and i'm sure if that is a gross thought, but he clearly believes that donald trump incited a violent and deadly insurrection that injured 140 police officers and endangered his own life and that of his family once he loses his subpoena fight, he might actually be useful for Jack Smith."
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"Yeah, my thinking around this grand jury situation is that Pence needs to be subpoenaed this order to hold that piece of paper up and tell whatever his constituency is these days 'I had to do this,'" said Figliuzzi. "And then I think that he ultimately will let it out, but he needs that piece of paper to hold up to say, I tried to fight this, I tried do the right thing, and then he will protect his rear end by telling the truth so he can't get jammed up on lying to a grand jury."
"What he did at the Gridiron dinner here, with pretending that is he miffed at Trump, it is what he learned by the master of trying to have it both ways," Figliuzzi added. "It was Trump who all along — his tenure has been to have it both ways. We embrace democracy, for example, but we minimize what happened on January 6. We love a free and he open society, but we embrace Viktor Orban in Hungary as a model of government. We love rule and order, but not when the law is coming after us. It is, I have to have this both ways to survive. Why has Pence suddenly grown a spine right now at least this weekend? The wind is blowing against Trump in the form of potential indictments. He sees this coming. He is thinking, maybe I need to get in this kind of counter-Trump movement because the guy is going to get indicted. That could change next week if it looks like indictments aren't going to happen."
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