It’s well known Trump was furious with Pence for not cooperating with a scheme to overturn the election, which involved Pence refusing certify electoral votes of key states.
This would have either allowed the House to overturn the election, or GOP-controlled legislatures in states Biden won to do so. (Under the Constitution, written before there were political parties, if no candidate for president gets a majority of electoral votes, the House chooses the president with each state getting one vote.)
What’s emerging from the House investigation of the Capitol riot is that Trump knew the mob was violent but did nothing to stop them.
Mary Trump, a niece and fierce critic of the ex-president, suggested during an MSNBC interview on Friday, June 17, 2022, that he might have wanted the mob to kill his vice president so he could declare martial law and stay in power that way.
Once Pence refused to “cross the line,” she argues, Trump had “few options left” for nullifying the election. She explained, “He needed an excuse to do something absolutely radical like perhaps call for martial law and the death of his vice president would have fulfilled that for him.”
She added, “People who had been around Donald for years still didn’t … understand the depths he would sink to, or the lengths he would go to to get his way.”
This, of course, is speculation. But the pieces do seem to fit. The mob was chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” and an informant told the FBI the Proud Boys “would have killed” Pence “given a chance” (see that story here). But did Trump know that? Or understand that Pence was in actual danger? (In a video here, Trump suggests the mob had a right to be “very angry,” but insists Pence was “in good shape.”)
It’s a serious accusation, one that demands proof of the highest order, not just the circumstantial evidence which exists right now. Mary Trump has provided a plausible motive for Trump wanting Pence killed: To use martial law to stay in power, after all his other schemes had collapsed. And we know enough about Trump character to believe he considered Pence expendable. (In his world, everyone is expendable, except perhaps his own children.) But that doesn’t prove he tried to get Pence killed.
Read story here.