Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 11:55 am
Donald Trump was impeached over his criminal scheme to get nonexistent political dirt from Ukraine, but Vice President Mike Pence was at the center of the plot, too.
As Rachel Maddow pointed out on Monday, multiple officials in the administration were essentially trying to reassure the Pentagon that Trump’s quid pro quo with Ukraine would be complete and the military aid would be released once Pence met with the president of Ukraine.
In other words, the VP wasn’t out of the loop; he was very much a key player in the scandal.
“So it was Mike Pence who was supposed to personally get the assurance from the Ukrainian government at that meeting that they were going to announce the investigations?” Maddow asked.
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Maddow said:
We now know that after all those weeks of consternation and conflict and concern and CYA inside the administration, we know right before Vice President Pence went and took this meeting at the highest levels of the Defense Department, the chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense was reassuring other officials inside the Pentagon, ‘Oh, don’t worry. This is all going to be over soon. When Mike Pence takes that meeting with Zelensky on Tuesday, it’s all going to get sorted.’ Why did he think it was all going to get sorted? President Trump was just impeached for demanding that Ukraine give him investigations into Joe Biden that would help him in his 2020 reelection effort and him conveying to Ukraine that they wouldn’t get their much-needed military aid until they made that commitment to do those investigation. Right? ‘You won’t get the military aid unless you agree to do those investigations. Announce publicly you’re doing those investigations or you’re never going to see that military aid.’ We now know that in the Defense Secretary’s office, they thought that that would all click into place as soon as this meeting between Mike Pence and the Ukrainian president took place. So it was Mike Pence who was supposed to personally get the assurance from the Ukrainian government at that meeting that they were going to announce the investigations? Because that was the deal, right? That’s what everybody was waiting on. They can’t get the military aid until they announce the investigations. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be able to get the military aid as soon as Mike Pence has that meeting.’
Throughout this impeachment saga, Mike Pence has largely flown under the radar as most of the attention is fixed on Trump or other officials in the administration who testified during the House inquiry.
But as Maddow noted on Monday – and as other evidence has shown – it’s clear that the vice president was a key player in Trump’s plot to extort a foreign power into handing over dirt on a political opponent.
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