In the Oval Office last week, the day before the vote, Trump pushed Pence through a series of meetings, including one that lasted at least an hour. John Eastman, a conservative constitutional scholar at Chapman University, was in the office and argued with Pence that he had the power to act.
The next morning, hours before the vote, Richard Cullen, Pence’s personal lawyer, called J. Michael Luttig, a former judge at the appeals court revered by conservatives – and for whom Eastman had previously worked. Luttig agreed to quickly write his opinion that the vice president had no power to change the outcome and then posted on Twitter.
Within minutes, Pence’s team incorporated Luttig’s reasoning, citing him by name, in a letter announcing the vice president’s decision not to try to block voters. Contacted on Tuesday, Luttig said it was “the greatest honor of my life” to play a role in preserving the constitution.
After the furious call cursing Mr. Pence, Mr. Trump angered supporters at the rally against his own vice president, saying, “I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people he’s listening to.”
“He set Mike Pence up that day by putting him on his shoulders,” said Ryan Streeter, a Pence adviser when he was governor of Indiana. “This is unprecedented in American politics. For a president to throw his own vice president under the bus like that and encourage his supporters to face him is simply unscrupulous in my mind. “
Mr. Pence was already on his way to the Capitol at that point. When the mob invaded the building, Secret Service agents evacuated it, along with his wife and children, first to the office and then to the basement. His agents urged him to leave the building, but he refused to leave the Capitol. From there, he spoke with Congressional leaders, the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – but not with the president.
A Republican senator later said he had never seen Pence so angry, feeling betrayed by a president for whom he had done so much. For Trump, an adviser said, the vice president had entered “session territory”, referring to Jeff Sessions, the attorney general who was tortured by the president before being fired. (A vice president cannot be dismissed by a president.)