Awkward: Pence Enters 2024 Race as a Potential Witness in a Trump Criminal Trial

Talk about awkwardness.

This past April, Mike Pence testified in front of a federal grand jury that could soon indict Donald Trump about the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. That’s when he allegedly rebuffed both public and private pressure from Trump to reject the 2020 election results showing Joe Biden would be the next president.

That same day, Donald Trump hugged one of his supporters at a Manchester, N.H., diner who was sent to prison for her role in the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6 when rioters shouted “Hang Mike Pence” as U.S. Secret Service agents evacuated the vice president to a secure location. 

The supporter, Micki Larson-Olson, told NBC News she “would like a front seat of Mike Pence being executed" for certifying the election results, making her part of a group of die-hard Trump fans who believe Pence committed treason. 

It’s a contrast that will only be more apparent as Pence joins Trump on Wednesday in an increasingly-crowded field of 2024 Republican presidential candidates. Pence's official entry into the race sets up a dynamic with no comparison in American history: A former vice president potentially acting as a star prosecution witness against his former boss.

As Pence launches his White House campaign, his allies argue there remains a path forward for his presidential hopes that looks beyond the violence, the insurrection and the legal morass surrounding the outcome of 2020. Pence has addressed the issue “head-on,” one of his strategists, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic, told The Messenger. For example, Pence told the Washington press corps during this year’s Gridiron dinner that “history will hold” Trump accountable.

“President Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable,” Pence said during the Gridiron dinner.

'He had no other choice'

Pence’s post-election break from Trump will be “one of those contrasts that we seek to draw between the vice president and his former boss,” the Pence strategist said. “There’s a large enough swath of the primary electorate that understands he had no other choice but to uphold the results of the election on that day.”

But critics say the former vice president is already in a difficult bind. He was too loyal to Trump throughout his presidency to truly define himself as a critical voice, which would hurt him with Democrats and Republicans who are skeptical of Trump. Yet he broke away from Trump at a juncture that still angers the former president’s fans.

“There’s a good chunk of Trump voters who think Pence wasn’t loyal enough at the very end,” former White House press secretary Sean Spicer told The Messenger. The former vice president will need to rise above the events of January 6 and sell a coalition of voters on his policy ideas– but it’s not clear how Pence or any candidate is prepared to do so, Spicer said.

“What is that issue coalition that gets Pence even to 20 percent [of the vote]?” Spicer said. “It’s just not there.” 

Spicer and others, including the vice president's brother, said they believe January 6 is more an issue in national media conversations than retail politics.

"I don't know what will transpire for him, but I was with him on Jan. 6. That does not come up anymore," Indiana Republican Rep. Greg Pence told The Messenger. "People just aren't talking about Jan. 6 as much as the media and the Democrats are."

Pence has a long track record as a conservative and a years-long alliance with Trump that makes it difficult for him to appeal to moderate Republicans or, if he were to win the primary election, to Independents and Democrats, critics told The Messenger. 

“Doing the right thing on one day doesn’t erase or remove the stain of history that is the other 1,461 days that Trump was in office,” said former Hillary Clinton advisor Jesse Ferguson. “His problem now is he’s trying to compensate for his issues with the Republican base by doubling down on opposing a right to choose and a variety of positions that put him further outside of the mainstream of the country.”

Probes on collision path with '24 campaign

In Iowa last week, Republicans searching for a candidate to support said they liked Pence and had sympathy for what happened to him on Jan. 6.

But they didn't express urgency to support him for president.

“I like Mike Pence, I’m not sure he has the ability to make it because of the Trump connection. Not that I’m against the Trump connection, but I think that has some baggage for him," Scott Smith, an aviation insurance salesman from Ankeny, Iowa, told The Messenger. Smith rode into the Ernst Roast and Ride with Pence and a pack of veteran bikers.

Previews of Pence’s forthcoming campaign show he is angling to impress Evangelical voters, highlighting his strong support for abortion bans and pushing a conservative policy agenda that veers away from Trump’s populism.

But while Pence tries to carve out an identity on the campaign trail that has little to do with the 2020 election, two ongoing investigations into the aftermath of the 2020 election could put the vice president repeatedly in headlines for his actions during the final days of the Trump administration.

In both Fulton County, Ga. and Washington D.C., authorities are investigating potential 2020 election fraud and could issue indictments – including charges against Trump himself – this summer. Should Trump face federal charges in a criminal trial involving anything dealing with the 2020 election, it’s entirely possible that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team will call Pence to testify, and repeat what he told the grand jury as a witness. 

While Pence has stood by his decision to certify the election results, he has not fully embraced the role of being an anti-Trump crusader. He repeatedly resisted efforts to make him testify about January 6, for example, and criticized the Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump over alleged hush money payments made to a porn star during the 2020 election.

Earlier this year, Pence fought the subpoena from the Department of Justice, calling it a “Biden DOJ subpoena” and saying he should not have to testify under the Constitution’s speech and debate clause. (Pence later testified after being ordered to by a judge, though the court did determine certain questions weren’t permitted due to the fact the vice president was working at the time of Jan. 6 in his capacity as president of the U.S. Senate.)

The former vice president was more successful in resisting a subpoena from Congress’ January 6th committee, which he openly criticized.

“The partisan nature of the January 6th committee has been a disappointment to me,” Pence said in a 2022 interview with Face the Nation. “It seemed to me in the beginning, there was an opportunity to examine every aspect of what happened on January 6, and to do so more in the spirit of the 9/11 Commission, nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and that was an opportunity lost.”

This independence could help Pence endear himself to Trump’s base. It could also make it difficult for Pence to set himself apart from Trump or other candidates in the field who themselves are wavering over how much to criticize the former president– and failing to make gains in the polls, said Reed Galen, co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project and a former aide to George W. Bush and John McCain. 

“He needs to say, ‘When I wouldn’t give [Trump] what he wanted, he was willing to let me and my family be killed,’” said Galen.  “The strategy would have to be, ‘I need to be the anti-Trump even though there is a majority of primary votes who believe I am responsible for the election being stolen from Trump.’”