Mike Pence: ‘Trump asked me to choose him or the constitution – I chose the constitution’ – as it happened

Mike Pence is now officially on the presidential campaign trail, after kicking off his bid for the White House with a speech in Iowa where he unsurprisingly attacked Joe Biden, but also went directly at Donald Trump. Pence accused his former running mate of drifting away from conservative values and of asking him to violate the constitution, as the former vice-president sought to carve a place out for himself in the crowded Republican field. In the months to come, we’ll find out what voters think.

Here’s what else happened today:

• North Dakota governor Doug Burgum started his own campaign for the Republican presidential nomination with a speech in Fargo.

• Trump said he has not been told he is being indicted, after days of reports that prosecutors are nearing the end of their investigation into his possession of classified documents.

• Major East Coast cities including Washington DC and New York City are grappling with an influx of wildfire smoke that has drifted down from Canada, rendering the air quality hazardous for some groups.

• Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice, asked for extra time to file his financial disclosures following reports that he’d accepted gifts and travel from a Republican megadonor.

• Ron DeSantis isn’t letting the wide gap between his second place and Trump’s lead in the polls phase him.

Donald Trump says he has not been told he is being indicted, despite reports in recent days that prosecutors are nearing the conclusion of their investigation into the classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort last year.

Here’s what the former president wrote on his Truth social account:

No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong, but I have assumed for years that I am a Target of the WEAPONIZED DOJ & FBI, starting with the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, the “No Collusion” Mueller Report, Impeachment HOAX #1, Impeachment HOAX #2, the PERFECT Ukraine phone call, and various other SCAMS & WITCH HUNTS. A TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE & ELECTION INTERFERENCE AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE. REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS MUST MAKE THIS THEIR # 1 ISSUE!!!

Earlier this week, attorneys for the former president met at justice department headquarters in Washington DC with top officials, including Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed to handle the investigation into the classified documents, as well as Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection and the plot to overturn the 2020 election result.

Such meetings typically take place before charging decisions are announced in federal investigations. Today, an aide to the former president, Taylor Budowich, said he had spoken to a grand jury investigating Trump.

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has reported the Budowich was among those summoned by federal prosecutors to appear before a new grand jury convened in Florida, which is focusing on Trump’s handling of national security matters and potential obstruction of justice. It remains unclear what that grand jury’s empaneling implies for the status of the overall investigation, but you can read more about it here:

Ron DeSantis doesn’t appear to be too worried about trailing Donald Trump in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination, and claims to be “really excited” about the enthusiasm he believes he has generated.

Florida’s governor, who entered the race with a glitch-ridden launch event on Twitter last month, has just been speaking at a immigration roundtable in Arizona, and was asked by a reporter about his numbers.

“Did you just see the Iowa polls that just came out?” DeSantis said, presumably referring to his own internal polling, reported by the New York Post, that purportedly shows him gaining ground on the former president in the state.

“We can talk about polls all day long. You’ve seen some some great stuff. When you run in these things, you run and you persuade people. I mean, that’s the whole point of it. Like you don’t do a poll a year out and say that that’s how the election runs out.

“If that were the case, you know, I wouldn’t have been elected in the first place as governor, and even my reelection I had people saying we were going to win by a couple of percentage points. We won by 20.

“So we’re really excited about the enthusiasm we’ve generated. I think you’re gonna see a lot of really good stuff over the ensuing weeks and months.”

The latest polling by Real Clear Politics for the Republican nomination has Trump at 53% and DeSantis at 22.

The academic and public intellectual Cornel West could pose a threat to Joe Biden’s hold on the White House, the former Trump strategist Kellyanne Conway said – not because West’s People’s Party candidacy has a chance of winning the race but because it could draw young voters and voters of colour away from the Democratic president.

“Even if you don’t become president, you, as a third-party candidate spoiler, can decide who is the president,” Conway told Fox News.

Conway gave the example of Ross Perot, the millionaire businessman whose third-party run is widely held to have cost George HW Bush dear in 1992, when he was turfed out of the White House by Bill Clinton.

Other third-party candidates who have had an impact on presidential races include Ralph Nader, widely held to have damaged Al Gore in the knife-edge 2000 election against George W Bush.

In 2016, when Conway managed Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, both the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, and the Green candidate, Jill Stein, made an impact at the polls in states that decided the contest.

Conway continued: “It’s important also … that if you play to win and you’re Cornel West, and you are still not satisfied with the trajectory of the Democratic party being progressive enough for you under a Biden-Harris administration, then you’re going to run to the left of them.”

West, Conway said, is “going to make a play for people who feel forgotten, who feel abandoned by this Democratic party, who feel like nobody’s listening to them and including them.

“It’s part of how Trump won in 2016, but I think he could do it from the left.

“I know him. He’s a super-smart guy. He’s very committed to the principles and policies that he thinks more Americans want to hear.”

The supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has asked for extra time to file his financial disclosures, records keenly awaited amid the ongoing scandal concerning his links to, and extensive gifts from, the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow.

Crow and another conservative on the court, Samuel Alito, asked for 90 more days to file their annual financial disclosures, the Washington Post reported.

The Post added: “Both requests were confirmed by the Administrative Office of the US Courts on Wednesday, the same day that disclosure reports filed by their court colleagues were posted on the court system’s website.”

As the Post also said, the supreme court “is under increasing pressure from Democratic lawmakers and transparency advocates to strengthen disclosure rules and adopt ethics guidelines specific to the justices after news reports revealed Thomas’s undisclosed real estate deals and private jet travel, and raised questions about the recusal practices of both conservative and liberal justices”.

Crow is the subject of attempts by Senate Democrats to obtain details of gifts given to Thomas.

Supreme court justices are nominally subject to the same ethics rules as all federal judgs but in practise govern themselves. Thomas and Crow deny wrongdoing. Thomas has said he did not declare extensive and costly gifts from Crow because he was advised he did not have to.

In a statement after news of Thomas’s request for an extension, Kyle Herrig, president of the pressure group Accountable.US, said: “Justice Thomas and his billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow can’t dodge accountability forever. It was their decades-long improper relationship that sparked the supreme court corruption crisis in the first place.

“What more is Thomas trying to hide? Are his gifts and connections so extensive that he needs more time to account for them all? Chief Justice [John] Roberts needs to act immediately to clean up his court.”

Further reading:

Mike Pence is now officially on the presidential campaign trail, kicking off his bid for the White House with a speech in Iowa where he unsurprisingly attacked Joe Biden, but also went directly at Donald Trump. He accused his former running mate of drifting away from conservative values and asking him to violate the constitution in an attempt to carve a place out for himself in the crowded Republican field. In the months to come, we’ll find out what voters think.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• North Dakota governor Doug Burgum started his own campaign for the Republican presidential nomination with a speech in Fargo.

• An aide to Trump confirmed he had spoken to a grand jury that the Guardian reports has been empaneled in Florida to look into the former president’s handling of national security matters and potential obstruction of justice.

• It’s really smoky on the East Coast. Also, a volcano is erupting in Hawaii, and you can watch it happen live.

A major Pac supporting Donald Trump has responded to Mike Pence’s campaign announcement with a statement that dismisses both him and Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

“Mike Pence’s entrance into the race caps off another bad week for Ron DeSantis’ faltering campaign, but the question most GOP voters are asking themselves about Pence’s candidacy is ‘Why?’” Make America Great Again Inc spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.

As Pence’s speech wrapped up, he accused Donald Trump and Joe Biden of being too mean to lead.

“Joe Biden promised to restore decency and civility if he was elected president. He broke that promise on day one. He’s continually vilified those of us that disagree with him, and even vilified members of his own party,” Pence said.

‘Our politics are more divided than ever before, but I’m not convinced our country is as divided as our politics. Most Americans treat each other with kindness and respect even when we disagree. We know how to be good neighbors. That’s not too much to ask our leaders to do the same. But sadly, it’s clear that neither Joe Biden or Donald Trump share this belief.”

Pence is taking both Joe Biden and Donald Trump to task over their approach to managing the US government’s debt and spending, and their support for Ukraine.

“Joe Biden’s policy is insolvency,” Pence said, after recounting the looming challenges the massive government Social Security and Medicare problems face. “But you deserve to know, my fellow Republicans, that Donald Trump’s position on entitlement reform is the same. Both of them refuse to even talk about the issue taken to the American people.”

He then turned to both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the possibility of war with China.

“America is the leader of the free world. We’re the arsenal of democracy … Donald Trump and others who would seek the presidency would walk away from our traditional role on the world stage,” Pence said.

“President Trump, he described Vladimir Putin as a ‘genius’ at the outset of the invasion and another candidate for the Republican nomination described the invasion of Ukraine as a quote, territorial dispute,” he continued in a reference to Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a competitor for the Republican nomination.

“I know the difference between a genius, I know the difference between a territorial dispute and a war of aggression. The war in Ukraine is not our war but freedom is our fight and America must always stand for freedom, and when I’m your president, we will.”

One more broadside at Trump: “What President Trump and others are forgetting is that our administration succeeded not because we compromised or abandoned conservative principles, but because we acted,” Pence said.

Pence hasn’t held back on criticizing Joe Biden.

Earlier in the speech, he decried his “disastrous presidency”, and promised to, if elected, lower taxes, “give the American people freedom from excessive federal regulations” and end Biden’s “trillion-dollar spending spree that’s driving inflation”.

But Pence also needs to get through a crowded Republican primary field that includes Donald Trump if he wants to appear on the general election ballot, and the former vice-president has spent a considerable portion of his speech criticizing his ex-boss.

“You know, when Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to govern as a conservative. Together, we did just that. Today, he makes no such promise,” Pence said.

“After leaving the most pro-life administration in American history, Donald Trump and others in this race are retreating from the cause of the unborn. Sanctity of life has been our party’s calling for a half-a-century, long before Donald Trump was a part of it. Now he treats it is an inconvenience, even blaming our election losses in 2022 on overturning Roe v Wade,” he continued.

“Mr. President, I will always stand for the sanctity of life, and I will not rest and I will not relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the land,” Pence said.

What he did not say: whether he would sign a federal law banning abortion.

As Pence continues his speech, his strategy for taking on Donald Trump has become clear.

The former vice-president is touting the Trump administration’s accomplishments, while simultaneously portraying his former running mate as straying from true conservative principles.

“I’ll always be grateful for what president Trump did for this country. I’ve often prayed for him over the past few years. And I prayed for him again today. I had hoped he would come around, see that he had been misled about my role that day,” Pence said, referring to January 6.

“The Republican party must be the party of the constitution of the United States. We’ve had enough of the Democrats in the radical left repeatedly trampling on our constitution, threatening to pack the court, to dismantle the God given rights that are enshrined,” Pence continued, saying the GOP must protect the “right to life” as well as keep firearms freely available.

And then he again turned to Trump.

“I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the constitution should never be president of the United States. And anyone who asked someone else to put them over the constitution should never be president of the United States again,” Pence said. “Our liberties have been bought at too high a price.”