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      Donald Trump said maybe mob was right to chant ‘Hang Mike Pence’ – report

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      Donald Trump said maybe mob was right to chant ‘Hang Mike Pence’ – reportNew York Times reports witnesses told Capitol attack committee about ex-president’s comment, made on day of January 6 riot Donald Trump reportedly reacted to chants about hanging his vice-president, Mike Pence, during the US Capitol attack by saying maybe the mob was right.Capitol attack panel to hold six public hearings as it aims to show how Trump broke lawRead moreThe New York Times reported the bombshell White House comment on Tuesday.Two witnesses, the paper said, have confirmed to the House committee investigating the events of 6 January 2021 that Mark Meadows, then Trump’s chief of staff, described Trump “saying something to the effect of, maybe Mr Pence should be hung”.The Times said it was not clear if Trump was serious.Pence was at the Capitol to preside over certification of Joe Biden’s victory, the process the mob tried to stop after being told to “fight like hell” by Trump.A makeshift gallows was set up outside. Rioters inside were heard to chant “Hang Mike Pence”. Multiple accounts have said aides pleaded with Trump to call off the mob but he delayed for hours.Despite Trump advisers’ attempts to persuade him otherwise, Pence concluded he did not have the authority to reject electoral college results.Trump has defended the chants about hanging Pence before, telling the author Jon Karl, “Well, the people were very angry,” and adding that it was just “common sense” to be so because Pence was not attempting to block electoral college results.News of Trump’s contemporaneous remark about Pence and hanging comes at a time of tension between the two men, as both eye a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.Trump continues to broadcast his lie about electoral fraud in 2020, which fueled the Capitol attack, and to endorse Republicans who repeat it.Pence has backed candidates opposed to the Trump lie including Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia who scored a landslide victory over a Trump-backed challenger in a primary contest on Tuesday.A Trump spokesman, Taylor Budowich, told the Times: “This partisan committee’s vague ‘leaks’, anonymous testimony and willingness to alter evidence proves it’s just an extension of the Democrat smear campaign that has been exposed time and time again for being fabricated and dishonest.”But, as the paper put it: “Mr Budowich did not address the substance of the information provided to the committee.”Meadows did not comment. He cooperated with the House committee then withdrew. It referred him to the Department of Justice for a charge of criminal contempt of Congress, like that to which the Trump ally Steve Bannon has pleaded not guilty. Contempt of Congress can bring prison time but in Meadows’ case no charge has been forthcoming.The Times also cited unnamed sources as saying witnesses have told the January 6 committee Meadows “used the fireplace in his office to burn documents”.The Guardian reported this week that the House committee is preparing to hold six public hearings in June, the first and last in prime time.TopicsDonald TrumpMike PenceUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump called top aides including Pence ‘losers’ as 2020 protests raged, book says

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      Trump called top aides including Pence ‘losers’ as 2020 protests raged, book saysMemoir from ex-defense chief Mark Esper details extraordinary outburst in Oval Office in which president seethed at advisers In the heated summer of 2020, thwarted in his desire for a violent crackdown on protesters for racial justice, Donald Trump raged that senior advisers including his vice-president, Mike Pence, were “losers”.Trump’s second defense secretary, Mark Esper, details the extraordinary Oval Office outburst in a new book. A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Trump the hero for anti-abortion movement after bending supreme court his wayRead moreEsper’s account of an extraordinary presidential question in the same meeting – “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something” – has already been reported.But the former defense secretary’s full account of the meeting, which happened as Washington and other US cities were convulsed by protests inspired by the police murder of George Floyd in late May 2020, is equally remarkable.Esper’s account of Gen Mark Milley’s attempts to explain to Trump the role of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff echoes others, including by the reporter Michael Bender in a book published last year and by William Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, who was present.Like Barr in his own memoir, the former secretary of defense does not stint when describing what he says Trump said when he was told Milley had no command authority over active duty or national guard forces the president wanted to deploy against protesters.“‘You are losers!’ the president railed. ‘You are all fucking losers!’“This wasn’t the first time I had heard him use this language, but not with this much anger, and never directed at people in a room with him, let alone toward Barr, Milley and me.”Esper expands on Barr’s account of what the then-attorney general called a “tantrum”, saying Pence was also a target.“He repeated the foul insults again, this time directing his venom at the vice-president as well, who sat quietly, stone-faced, in the chair at the far end of the semi-circle closest to the Rose Garden. I never saw him yell at the vice-president before, so this really caught my attention.”Pence was a loyal vice-president to Trump until 6 January 2021, the day of the deadly Capitol riot, when he refused to attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. Like Trump, Pence is now eyeing a run for the presidency in 2024.Esper also writes that “Trump shouted, ‘None of you have any backbone to stand up to the violence,’ and suggested we were fine with people ‘burning down our cities’.”The former defense secretary then details the question about whether protesters could be shot.Esper, who presents himself throughout his book as one of a group of aides who resisted the wilder impulses of Trump and his acolytes, says Trump did not order the shooting of protesters but was instead “waiting, it seemed, for one of us to yield and simply agree”.That, Esper writes, “wasn’t going to happen”.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansMike PencenewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack panel set to subpoena Trump allies, Republican Kinzinger says

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      Capitol attack panel set to subpoena Trump allies, Republican Kinzinger saysMembers of Congress involved in attempt to overturn election have refused to testify voluntarily before June public hearings

      This Will Not Pass review: Dire reading for Democrats
      The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol will decide “in the next week or two” whether to issue subpoenas trying to force Republican lawmakers to testify about Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, one of two Republicans on the panel said on Sunday.‘A horrible plague, then Covid’: Biden and correspondents joke in post-Trump return to normalityRead more“If that takes a subpoena, it takes a subpoena,” Adam Kinzinger said.The Illinois congressman also told CBS’s Face the Nation public hearings planned for June will aim to “lay the whole story out in front of the American people … because ultimately, they have to be the judge” of Trump’s attempt to hold on to power.Kinzinger and nine other House Republicans voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol attack, which a bipartisan Senate committee linked to seven deaths.But Senate Republicans stayed loyal, acquitting Trump, and Kinzinger is one of four anti-Trump House Republicans who have since announced their retirements.He and Liz Cheney of Wyoming are the only Republicans on the January 6 committee.The June hearings, Kinzinger said, will involve laying out “what led to January 6, the lies after the election, fundraising, the 187 minutes the president basically sat in the Oval Office [as the Capitol was attacked] … the response by [the Department of Defense].“It’s important for us to be able to put that in front of the American people because ultimately, they have to be the judge. The Department of Justice will make decisions based on information but the American people … have to take the work we’ve done and decide what they want to do with it or what they want to believe.”Majorities of Republicans in Congress and in public polls believe – or choose to support and repeat – Trump’s lie that Biden stole the presidency via electoral fraud.Prominent Trump supporters in Congress who have advanced that lie and were involved in attempts to overturn the election before 6 January have refused to speak to the House committee.“I won’t say who I think we need to talk to yet,” Kinzinger said. “I mean, I think everybody needs to come and talk to us. We’ve requested information from various members.“In terms of whether we move forward with a subpoena, it’s going to be both a strategic tactical decision and the question of whether or not we can do that and get the information in time. Decisions we make every day.”Kinzinger added, “I think ultimately, whatever we can do to get that information. I think if that takes a subpoena, it takes a subpoena.“But I think the key is, regardless of even what some members of Congress are going to tell us, we know a lot of information … we’re going deeper with richer and more detail to show the American people.”Kinzinger said he would “love to see” Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president who ultimately refused to reject electoral college results on 6 January, testify before the committee.“I hope he would do so voluntarily,” he said. “These are decisions I think that we’re going to end up making from a tactical perspective in the next week or two, because we basically pinned down what this hearing schedule is going to look like, the content.“And as we go into the full narrative of this thing. I would hope and think that the vice-president would want to come in and tell this story, because he did do the right thing on that day. If he doesn’t, we have to look at the options we have available to us if there’s information we don’t already have.”Marjorie Taylor Greene accused of lying in hearing in Capitol attack caseRead moreA lawyer for Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a far-right Republican congresswoman shown in court filings by the committee to have been in contact with the White House around 6 January, has claimed she was in fact a victim of the riot.“I’d love to ask her a few questions,” Kinzinger said. “We know some things. I won’t confirm or deny the text messages of course, but let me just say this.“For Marjorie Taylor Greene to say she’s a victim, it’s amazing … I mean, she assaulted I think a survivor … from a school shooting at some point in DC. She stood outside a congresswoman’s office and yelled through a mail slot and said [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] was too scared to come out and confront her.“And then when Marjorie Taylor Greene is confronted she’s all of a sudden a victim and a poor helpless congresswoman that’s just trying to do a job? That’s insane.“We want the information.”TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpMike PenceRepublicansUS politicsTrump administrationDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump endorses Pence’s brother after sparring with ex-vice-president

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      Trump endorses Pence’s brother after sparring with ex-vice-presidentEndorsement for Congress comes after Mike Pence rejected Trump’s claim that he could have reversed his election defeat Even though Donald Trump recently sparred with Mike Pence over whether the former vice-president could have done more to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, Trump on Friday handed an endorsement to Pence’s brother in an Indiana congressional race.Trump’s endorsement of Greg Pence, who is seeking a third term as the US House representative for Indiana’s sixth congressional district, is politically intriguing for a couple of reasons.Trump defended rioters who threatened to ‘hang Mike Pence’, audio revealsRead moreIt comes a little more than a year after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 and demanded – among other things – Pence’s hanging. A bipartisan Senate committee has connected seven deaths to the attack, which delayed a joint session of Congress to certify Biden’s win by several hours.And the endorsement comes a couple of months after Mike Pence, in a rare stand against the former president, rejected Trump’s claim that Pence could have reversed Trump’s election defeat during the joint congressional session that was temporarily interrupted by the Capitol insurrection.At one point that day, Secret Service agents tried to drive Pence away from the Capitol, where he was tasked with leading lawmakers’ certification of the presidential election results. But Pence wouldn’t leave, signaling his opposition to the mob’s goal of keeping Trump in power, the Maryland Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, who serves on a House panel investigating the Capitol attack, said recently.“President Trump is wrong,” Pence told the conservative Federalist Society in February, according to National Public Radio (NPR). “I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion any one person could choose the American president.”When asked later about his brother’s remarks, Greg Pence stopped well short of agreeing with them, highlighting how reluctant Republicans are to speak out against Trump while it remains unclear how much power his still-coveted endorsements carry.“I stand by my brother and always will, and I’ll let him speak for himself about his remarks,” Greg Pence told NPR, in part.US Capitol attack: Liz Cheney says Mike Pence ‘was a hero’ on 6 JanuaryRead moreGreg Pence earlier this month also voted against referring criminal contempt charges against Trump aides Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino to the US justice department. Congress ultimately ended up making the referral, saying Navarro and Scavino ignored subpoenas issued to them as part of the investigation into the Capitol attack that put Mike Pence in jeopardy.That stance on Friday helped the former vice-president’s brother net a statement from Trump reading: “Greg Pence has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”Trump also hailed the Republican congressman for opposing Biden’s immigration policies on the southern border, keeping guns accessible, opposing abortion and supporting the military.Greg Pence’s office didn’t immediately issue a statement in response to Trump’s endorsement. The former oil executive and Marine Corps veteran is facing a challenger in James Dean Alspach in the Republican primary on 3 May.The victor would advance to an 8 November runoff against the winner of the Democratic primary, whose candidates are George Thomas Holland and Cynthia Wirth.TopicsDonald TrumpMike PenceUS politicsRepublicansIndiananewsReuse this content More

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      ‘I know how much it hurts’: Biden to release US oil in bid to lower gas prices – as it happened

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      Key events

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      ‘Incontrovertible evidence that this [war] has been a strategic disaster for Russia’ – White House

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      Biden confirms draw on oil reserves to lower gas prices

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      Biden confirms draw on oil reserves to lower gas prices

      Joe Biden says his plan to release 1m barrels daily from the US strategic oil reserves will: “Ease the pain families are feeling right now, end this era of dependence and uncertainty and lay a new and new foundation for true and lasting American energy independence.”
      The president is speaking live at the White House to announce the move, which he said would last up to six months and which will represent the largest ever draw ever on the country’s emergency supplies.
      “I know how much it hurts,” he said of rising gas prices that have followed the decision by the Russian president Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.
      “Putin’s price hike is hitting Americans at the pump.” More

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      US Capitol attack trial begins for Cowboys for Trump founder

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      US Capitol attack trial begins for Cowboys for Trump founderTrial of Couy Griffin is the second among hundreds of people charged with federal crimes related to the January 6 riot An elected official from New Mexico went on trial on Monday with a judge, not a jury, set to decide if he is guilty of charges that he illegally entered the US Capitol grounds on the day a pro-Trump mob disrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.That’s not the only unusual feature of the case against Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, an Otero county commissioner, whose trial in Washington DC, is the second among the hundreds of people charged with federal crimes related to the January 6 riot.Griffin is one of the few defendants not accused of entering the Capitol or engaging in violent or destructive behavior. He claims he has been prosecuted for his political views.One of three members of the county commission in southern New Mexico, he is among a handful of defendants who either held public office or ran for a government post in the years before the attack.He is among only three defendants who have asked for a bench trial, which means a judge will decide his case without a jury. A US district court judge, Trevor McFadden, was scheduled to hear one day of testimony.Griffin, a 48-year-old former rodeo rider and pastor, helped found a political committee called Cowboys for Trump. He vowed to arrive at the courthouse on horseback. Instead, he showed up on Monday as a passenger in a pickup truck that had a horse trailer on the back.Griffin is charged with two misdemeanors: entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds and disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds. His attorney, Nicholas Smith, said prosecutors apparently believe Griffin engaged in disorderly conduct by peacefully leading a prayer on the Capitol steps.“That is offensive and wrong,” Smith told the judge in brief opening statements.Prosecutors didn’t give any opening statements. Their first witness was Matthew Struck, who joined Griffin at the Capitol as his videographer. Struck has an immunity deal with prosecutors.In a court filing, prosecutors called Griffin “an inflammatory provocateur and fabulist who engages in racist invective and propounds baseless conspiracy theories, including that communist China stole the 2020 presidential election”.Griffin’s attorneys say hundreds if not thousands of other people did exactly what Griffin did on January 6 and have not been charged.“The evidence will show that the government selected Griffin for prosecution based on the fact that he gave a speech and led a prayer at the Capitol, that is, selected him based on protected expression,” they wrote.More than 770 people have been charged with federal crimes. More than 230 have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors, and at least 127 have been sentenced. About 100 others have trial dates.Earlier this month, a jury convicted a Texas man, Guy Wesley Reffitt, of storming the Capitol with a holstered handgun in the first trial for a riot defendant. Jurors also convicted him of obstructing Congress, of interfering with police officers guarding the Capitol and of threatening his two children if they reported him to law enforcement.Reffitt’s conviction could give prosecutors more leverage in negotiating plea deals or discourage other defendants from going to trial. The outcome of Griffin’s trial also could have a ripple effect, helping others decide whether to let a judge or a jury decide their case.In a video taken in a parking lot outside the Capitol on 5 January, Griffin said he came to Washington for “possibly the most historic day for our country in my lifetime” and trusted that the vice-president, Mike Pence, would “do the right thing” and stop certification of Biden’s win.After attending Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally, Griffin and Struck walked over barriers and up a staircase to enter a stage under construction on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace for Biden’s inauguration, according to prosecutors.Struck is listed as one of three government witnesses. Prosecutors also intend to call a Capitol police inspector and a US Secret Service inspector. Prosecutors want to use Griffin’s own words against him. They plan to play video recordings of his statements and actions in Washington.After climbing over a stone wall and entering a restricted area, Griffin said: “This is our house. We should all be armed.” He called it “a great day for America” and added: “The people are showing that they have had enough,” prosecutors said.A key question is whether he entered a restricted area while Pence was on Capitol grounds, a prerequisite for the US Secret Service to invoke access restrictions. Griffin’s attorneys say Pence had departed before Griffin could have entered a restricted area.“The government responds that the vice-president’s precise location ultimately doesn’t matter,” the judge wrote on Friday. “Perhaps, although the lack of clarity about the metes and bounds of the restricted area and the vice-president’s movements on January 6 undermine this argument.”TopicsUS Capitol attackNew MexicoMike PenceUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      It’s Trump’s time to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth | Lloyd Green

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      It’s Trump’s time to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truthLloyd GreenA New York judge has ruled Trump will have to testify in his fraud investigation, leaving Trump sweating and his investors shaking their heads Donald Trump’s bad luck continues. On Thursday afternoon, Arthur Engoron, a Manhattan judge, gave the thumbs up to subpoenas issued to Trump, favorite child Ivanka, and Donald Trump Jr, by Tish James, New York’s attorney general. The court’s ruling follows a decision by Trump’s accountants to walk away from the one-term president and disavow years of financial statements issued by his company.Much as the Trump trio tried, they could not shut down James’s investigation into the Trump Organization’s business practices, which could lead to a civil suit by James. Unlike a criminal prosecution, a civil action comes with a lower burden of proof for the government. At the same time, civil lawsuits can drag on – like right into 2024. Barring a stay, Trump and his two children have been ordered to appear at deposition within 21 days.Trump and two eldest children must testify in New York case, judge rulesRead moreIf they tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, who knows what liability may result? On the other hand, if they invoke their right to remain silent, they will probably be portrayed as criminals.“You see, the mob takes the fifth,” Trump observed on the campaign trail in 2016. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the fifth amendment?”Time sure flies. And if the Trump family refuses to appear at deposition or simply stays mum when grilled, they risk being charged with contempt, a distinction presently held by Steve Bannon, Trump’s White House counselor and 2016 campaign guru.At this moment, Trump must be sweating while his lenders have to be shaking their collective heads. How much is Trump worth and how bad can things get are no longer hypothetical issues. In the absence of operative financial statements, restructurings and bank-called defaults have spilled into the realm of the real.As one Trump insider confided: “Hey, this might be serious. Could Donald Trump [and his business] be screwed? I don’t know, but I’m not as confident as I once was in saying, ‘No’.”Meanwhile, 2024 Republican presidential aspirants are likely stifling a collective smirk. Trump’s legal woes stand to broaden the Republican party’s presidential field, and for some it is downright personal.For Mike Pence, Trump’s hapless vice-president, these recent developments may well trigger a sense of schadenfreude. It wasn’t that long ago when Trump’s loyalists came with makeshift gallows for Pence as they stormed the Capitol, and Trump said nothing to deter the mob. Instead, he demanded loyalty from his No 2.As for Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, Trump’s troubles could not come at a better time. Trump has all but called DeSantis a coward for refusing to say whether he was vaccinated. Beyond that, Florida’s recent per capita Covid mortality rate is the seventh highest in the US, and DeSantis is having a hard time denouncing neo-Nazi violence.“So what I’m going to say is these people, these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me as if I had something to do with that,” the Sunshine state governor declared. “We’re not playing their game.”To be sure, Trump’s Maga base would stick with him through thick-and-thin. The party’s deep-pocketed donors are a different story. Trump may have delivered them a trove of tax cuts and ambassadorships, but he’s emotionally draining.Beyond that, his antics in the run-up to the 2020 Georgia runoff elections cost the Republicans control of the Senate. There are reasons Mitch McConnell rejects Trump’s lie that the election was stolen and is seeking to bypass the 45th president.Thursday’s ruling was scathing. At one point, the court concluded that the attorney general had uncovered “copious evidence of possible financial fraud”. Elsewhere, the judge excoriated Trump & Co for their flight to fantasy and fiction, invoking Alice in Wonderland, 1984 and Kellyanne Conway all in a single sentence.“The idea that an accounting firm’s announcement that no one should rely on a decade’s worth of financial statements that it issued based on numbers submitted by an entity somehow exonerates that entity and renders an investigation into its past practices moot is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll (‘When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said … it means just what I chose it to mean – neither more nor less’); George Orwell (‘War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength’); and ‘alternative facts.’”In the past, Trump managed to weather storms surrounding his finances and credibility. Trump University did not stop the ex-reality show host’s political ascent. What happens next remains to be seen.Right now, Joe Biden’s poll numbers are in the low 40s, inflation is on the loose, and Nancy Pelosi is poised to lose the speaker’s gavel. Against that tableau, Trump poses a distraction from Republican ambitions, an unwelcome detour from anticipated outcome.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York. He was opposition research counsel to George HW Bush’s 1988 campaign and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
      TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionUS politicsDonald Trump JrIvanka TrumpMike PenceKellyanne ConwayNew YorkcommentReuse this content More

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      Trump’s election advisers were like ‘snake oil salesmen’, ex-Pence aide says

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      Trump’s election advisers were like ‘snake oil salesmen’, ex-Pence aide saysFormer chief of staff Marc Short joins several senior Republicans to defend the former vice-president in escalating feud with Trump Mike Pence’s former chief of staff Marc Short joined several senior Republicans in rallying to defend the former vice-president on Sunday in his escalating feud with Donald Trump over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.Some of Trump’s advisers on the 2020 election were like “snake oil salesmen”, Short said on Sunday.Pence angered the former president this week by rejecting Trump’s false claim that he had the power to overturn Joe Biden’s victory by refusing to accept results from seven contested states.At a conference hosted by the conservative Federalist Society in Florida on Friday, Pence delivered his strongest rebuke to date of Trump’s election lies, declaring that it was “un-American” to believe that any one person had the right to choose the president.On Sunday, Short, and Republican senators John Barrasso, Lisa Murkowski and Marco Rubio, were among senior party figures who backed Pence’s position, adding their voices to a backlash by other prominent Republican figures apparently growing weary of Trump’s continued obsession with his election defeat and subversion of democracy.“There’s nothing in the 12th amendment or the Electoral Count Act that would afford a vice-president that authority,” Short told NBC’s Meet the Press, describing advisers who told Trump that Pence could send election results back to the states as “snake oil salesmen”.“The vice-president was crystal clear from day one that he didn’t have this authority.”Pence, as president of the US senate, certified Biden’s victory in the early morning of 7 January 2021, hours after a mob incited by the defeated president launched a deadly insurrection on the US capitol.Short, who sheltered with Pence in the Capitol as the mob outside erected a gallows and called for the then vice-president to be hanged, added that his boss had no alternative but to certify Biden’s win. “He was following what the Constitution afforded the vice-president … he was doing his duty, which was what he was required to, under an oath to the constitution to defend it,” he said.“Unfortunately the president had many bad advisers, who were basically snake oil salesmen giving him really random and novel ideas as to what the vice-president could do. But our office researched that and recognized that was never an option.”Short also attacked the Republican party’s position – crystalized this week in a widely derided censure motion for Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the only two Republicans on the House committee investigating the insurrection, that the January 6 rioters were engaging in “legitimate political discourse”.“From my front-row seat, I did not see a lot of legitimate political discourse,” said Short, who along with the vice-president had to be hustled to a place of safety as the mob rampaged through the building.“They evacuated us into a secure location at the bottom of the Capitol. There was an attempt to put the vice-president into a motorcade but he was clear to say: ‘That’s not a visual I want the world to see of us fleeing.’ We stayed there and worked to try and bring the business back together and complete the work that night.”Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican and ranking member of the Senate foreign affairs committee, agreed with Short’s assessment in an appearance on Fox News Sunday.“I voted to certify the election, Mike Pence did his constitutional duty that day,” Barrasso said.“It’s not the Congress that elects a president, it’s the American people.”Rubio, a Republican Florida senator, told CBS’s Face the Nation that he had long known that Pence lacked the authority to bend to Trump’s will. “I concluded [that] back in January of 2021, when the issue was raised,” he said. “I looked at it, had analyzed it, and came to the same conclusion that vice-presidents can’t simply decide not to certify an election.”Rubio refused to say whether he thought the riot was political discourse, but added: “Anybody who committed crimes on January 6th should be prosecuted. If you entered the Capitol and you committed acts of violence and you were there to hurt people, you should be prosecuted.”Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, is among the supporters of an “aggressive” bipartisan effort in Congress, criticized by Trump, to overhaul the 1887 Electoral Count Act and enshrine in statute that a vice-president has no role in deciding a presidential election.“We’ve identified clearly some things within the act, the ambiguities that need to be addressed,” she told CNN’s State of the Union.TopicsMike PenceUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More