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A photograph of former Vice President Mike Pence looking at a tweet by former President Donald Trump while he and his staff took shelter in an undisclosed location is displayed during a hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol at the Capitol in Washington, June 16, 2022. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON He started the day with a prayer.

Vice President Mike Pence, preparing to withstand the final stage of a relentless campaign by President Donald Trump to force him to illegally try to overturn the results of the 2020 election, began Jan. 6, 2021, surrounded by aides at his official residence at the Naval Observatory, asking God for guidance.

The group was expecting a difficult day. But what followed over the next 12 hours was more harrowing than they imagined.

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An angry mob with baseball bats and pepper spray chanting hang Mike Pence came within 40 feet of the vice president. Pences Secret Service detail had to hustle him to safety and hold him for nearly five hours in the bowels of the Capitol. Trump called Pence a wimp and worse in a coarse and abusive call that morning from the Oval Office, Trumps daughter and former White House aides testified.

And a confidential witness who traveled to Washington with the Proud Boys, the most prominent of the far-right groups that helped lead the assault on the Capitol, later told investigators the group would have killed Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi if they got the chance.

Those were among the extraordinary new details that emerged during the third public hearing held Thursday by the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol.

Pences day dawned as it often did. The vice president, whose evangelical faith was a selling point for adding him to the presidential ticket in 2016 but often a source of skepticism for Trump, was joined by three people in prayer: his chief counsel, Greg Jacob; his chief of staff, Marc Short; and his director of legislative affairs, Chris Hodgson.

Pence and the team had been subjected to a barrage of demands from Trump that the vice president refuse to certify Joe Bidens Electoral College victory in a joint session of Congress an unconstitutional action never before taken in the 2 1/2 centuries since the nations founding.

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We just asked for guidance and wisdom, knowing the day was going to be a challenging one, Short said in videotaped testimony played by the committee.

While Pence was at the Naval Observatory, Trump was in the Oval Office with aides and family members trickling in and out, including Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Ivanka Trump. He had already sent two Twitter posts further pressuring Pence, the first at 1 a.m. The second, at 8 a.m., concluded, Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!

At 11:20 a.m., Trump called Pence, who stepped away from his aides to take the call.

The group in the Oval Office could hear Trumps side of the call but paid little attention to what seemed to start as a routine conversation. But as Trump became increasingly heated that Pence was holding firm in his refusal to give in, the call became hard to ignore.

I remember hearing the word wimp, Nick Luna, an aide to Trump, said in videotaped testimony. Wimp is the word I remember.

Ivanka Trump, the presidents older daughter and a former top White House adviser, said in her videotaped testimony that it was a different tone than I heard him take with the vice president before.

Ivanka Trumps chief of staff, Julie Radford, appeared in videotaped testimony to say that Ivanka Trump told her shortly after the call that Donald Trump had an upsetting conversation with Pence. The president, Radford said, used the P word. (The New York Times reported previously that Trump had told Pence, You can either go down in history as a patriot or you can go down in history as a pussy, according to two people briefed on the conversation.)

Over at the Naval Observatory, Pence returned to the room after taking the call looking steely, determined and grim, Jacob told the committee.

Trump in the meantime revised a speech that he delivered later that day to throngs of supporters on the Ellipse. An early draft of the speech, the committee said, included no mention of Pence. But after the call, the president included language that video footage showed riled up the mob.

I hope Mike is going to do the right thing, Trump said in his speech. I hope so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win.

All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people, Trump continued, referring to one of his demands that Pence send the election results back to the states, a delaying tactic that he hoped would ultimately keep him in office. If Pence failed to comply, Trump told the crowd, that will be a sad day for our country.

He added, So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesnt listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that hes listening to, using the term for Republicans in name only.

Trump directed his supporters to march to the Capitol and make themselves heard.

By the time Pence arrived at the Capitol with his wife, Karen Pence, and their daughter Charlotte, an angry mob was already massing outside.

Inside, as the joint session began, Mike Pences aides released a memo to the public laying out the vice presidents view that he did not have the power over the certification that Trump and his lawyer, John Eastman, insisted he did.

Shortly after 2:10 p.m., the proceedings were interrupted by loud noises. The mob was swarming into the building. At 2:24 p.m. when Democrats on the committee said Trump was aware that the Capitol had been breached the president posted to Twitter that Mike Pence didnt have the courage to do what was necessary.

At that point, the Secret Service had moved Pence from the Senate chamber to his office across the hall. His advisers said the noise from the rioters had become audible, leading them to assume they had entered the building. Yet there was not yet a pervasive sense of alarm.

Once in his office, Pence sat with his family, including his brother, Rep. Greg Pence, R-Ind., and top aides as Short ducked downstairs to grab some food. Karen Pence drew the curtains to keep the rioters from looking in.

Short made his way back to the office. By then, Tim Giebels, the lead Secret Service agent for Mike Pence, had made a few attempts to nudge Pence and his family to move to a different location. But soon he was no longer making a suggestion. Pence, he said, had to get to safety.

The entourage began to make its way down a stairway toward an underground loading dock the point at which they came within 40 feet of the rioters. Pence and his aides did not know at the time just how close they were to the mob, some of whom were threatening to kill him.

I could hear the din of the rioters in the building, Jacob said Thursday at the hearing. I dont think I was aware they were as close as that.

From the loading dock, Pence handled calls to congressional leaders who had been evacuated from the Capitol complex and ordered the Pentagon to send in the National Guard. The Secret Service directed him to get into a car and evacuate, but he refused to leave the building.

The vice president did not want to take any chance that the world would see the vice president of the United States fleeing the United States Capitol, Jacob said Thursday, noting that Pence did not want to give the rioters the satisfaction of disrupting the proceedings more than they had already done. He was determined that we would complete the work that we had set out to do that day.

One person he never spoke with again that day was Trump, who did not call to check on Pences safety. Neither did the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

Just after 8 p.m., the Senate chamber opened again, after the rioters had been cleared from the complex.

Today was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol, Pence said as the proceedings began again. He was greeted with applause when he said, Lets get back to work.

Back at the White House, egged on by some of his advisers, Trump told aides he wanted to bar Short from entering the West Wing from then on.

At 3:42 in the morning, it was all over. Bidens victory had been certified.

At 3:50 a.m., as Pence and Short went their separate ways, Short texted his boss a passage from the Bible.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith, the message read.

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For Mike Pence, Jan. 6 Began Like Many Days. It Ended Like No Other.

Mike Pence was described as the hero of the hour, the man who stood his ground to Donald Trumps coup plot and saved America from a violent revolution.

Yet among the rows of committee members, witnesses, reporters, congressmen and women and young citizens at Thursdays January 6 hearing into the attack on the Capitol, the former vice-president was nowhere to be seen. Pence was 500 miles away in Ohio to promote American energy dominance.

Both events could ultimately lead in the same direction: Pence 2024, a once unlikely presidential campaign illuminating the complexity of his relationship with his former boss, Trump.

Pence has dropped numerous clues already, from founding an organisation, Advancing American Freedom, to touring Republican primary battlegrounds. Nothing that the 63-year-old says on the early campaign trail, however, might be as crucial as the near three hours that played out in his absence on Thursday before a TV audience of millions.

But the panel came to praise Pence, not to bury him, or to hang him, for that matter like some of Trumps insurrectionists wanted. Even while he was taking part in a roundtable discussion in Cincinnati, the ex-vice-presidents ears might have been burning as the congressional committee investigating last years deadly assault on the US Capitol cast him as the savior of the republic.

They spoke of a man who put his loyalty to country ahead of his loyalty to Trump, a potential selling point to Republican voters who may want to move on from the former president. But the session could also prove a serious liability for Pence with the Trump base, hardening its view of him as a traitor.

The third public hearing was about Trumps attempts to pressure Pence to overturn his 2020 election defeat. It heard how the president was told repeatedly that Pence lacked the constitutional and legal authority to meet his demands.

Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee, began the hearing by observing: Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong. We are fortunate for Mr Pences courage on January 6. Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe. That courage put him very close to tremendous danger.

The vice-chairwoman, Liz Cheney, a Republican who in theory could run against Pence in 2024, added: Pence understood that his oath of office was more important than his loyalty to Donald Trump. He did his duty. President Trump unequivocally did not.

The committee heard how Trump latched on to a nonsensical plan from a conservative law professor, John Eastman, and launched a public and private pressure campaign on Pence days before he was to preside over the January 6 joint session of Congress to certify Joe Bidens election victory.

Witness Greg Jacob, who was the vice-presidents counsel, testified that Pence refused to yield to it. The former Indiana governor understood the founding fathers did not intend to empower any one person to affect an election result and never wavered from that view.

It was the death knell for the Trump and Pences marriage of political convenience. The president whined: I dont want to be your friend any more if you dont do this.

And as a giant screen in the cavernous caucus room showed, it lit the fuse for a mob on January 6 to make bellicose declarations such as Mike Pence has betrayed the United States of America! The sound of chanting Hang Mike Pence! was juxtaposed with the image of a mock gallows against the backdrop of the US Capitol dome.

Computer graphics demonstrated how Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber but was just 40 feet from the mob and in great peril. Jacob recalled: I can hear the din of the rioters in the building while we moved. I dont think I was aware they were as close as that.

The committee noted that a confidential informant told the FBI that the far-right group the Proud Boys would have killed Pence if they got the chance. Jacob recalled how Pence declined to leave, insisting that the world must not see the vice-president fleeing the United States Capitol.

Yet Trump never called to check on his safety. Asked how Pence and his wife Karen reacted to that, Jacob replied simply: With frustration.

The implication was that Pence bravely alone stood between America and catastrophe. But the praise singing was jarring to critics who wondered why he was far away in Ohio and not here to speak for himself.

Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, tweeted: Why wont Pence testify before the January 6 House Committee and tell all of us what really happened?

Pence did, after all, act as Trumps enabler for the previous four years. As vice-president he gave speech after speech lauding his boss and his policies, betraying no hint of dissent. In one strange example of sycophancy, he even seemed to imitate Trumps actions in placing a water bottle on the floor.

Asha Rangappa, a lawyer, CNN analyst and former FBI special agent, wrote on Twitter: Pence is not a hero. Pence is a coward. It just so happens that on Jan 6, his fear of displeasing Trump was (fortunately) outweighed by a fear of something else either being implicated in a failed coup and/or aiding and abetting criminal activity but hes still a coward.

Even now, while stating that Trump was wrong to seek to overturn the election, Pence also regularly trumpets the achievements of the Trump-Pence administration, pushes rightwing talking points and savages Biden and the woke left.

A presidential run would presumably try to square the circle by offering a resumption of the America first agenda but within recognised constitutional and democratic boundaries. Look, Im Donald Trump but without the violence, as Michael DAntonio, a Pence biographer, has put it.

But Thursdays hearing might just as easily be the breaking, not the making, of a Pence bid for the White House. His defiance of Trump has now been luminously displayed for a national audience and recorded for posterity. He will not be speaking at this weeks Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Nashville after being booed last year; Trump is the star turn on Friday.

If the Republican party was still team normal, Pence would now be strongly placed to make the case that he was a loyal vice-president who showed his independence when it mattered. This weeks primary election results, however, suggest that the party remains team Maga and some still believe that Pence should hang.

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Pence the hero who foiled Trumps plot could it lead to a 2024 run ...

The Jan. 6 committees slate of hearings is less a chronological recounting of the events leading up to the attack on the Capitol and rather a series of discrete stories that make up a broader whole. On Thursday, the committee turns to the chapter starring former Vice President Mike Pence.

Pence, as the panel will discuss, was the subject of a weekslong pressure campaign from his boss, former President Donald Trump. The goal was as simple as it was illegal: have Pence discard the Electoral College votes from enough states to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In memos and meetings, tantrums and tweets, Pence was told that he not only had this power, but that he had to use it.

There were times when Pence wavered in the face of this effort. He reportedly called former Vice President Dan Quayle at one point, who was adamant that Pence had no flexibility on the matter. His top lawyer, Greg Jacob, argued in a memo that blocking or delaying the electoral vote count would be illegal and leave him in an isolated standoff against both houses of Congress.

On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, Pence told Trump in no uncertain terms that he would not do as he was asked. Trump then berated him in person, at a rally at the Ellipse and later in a tweet that a Trump supporter with a megaphone would read out as his fellow insurrectionists ransacked the Capitol. When told that afternoon that the crowd was chanting Hang Mike Pence, Trump mused that maybe his supporters have the right idea since Pence deserves it.

All of this and more is likely to be recounted during Thursdays hearing. We are slated to hear live testimony from Jacob, and likely clips from the committee's deposition with Marc Short, who served as Pences chief of staff and warned the Secret Service on Jan. 5, 2021, about the security threat his boss faced. Many of the sentiments expressed will likely echo a recent article in The Atlantic that argued in its headline, Mike Pence Is An American Hero. Its author, Jonathan V. Last, argues that Pence in his defiance did more to protect democracy both on January 6 and since than any other person inside the Trump administration.

But what of the time before the election? That will not likely be in focus on Thursdays hearing for the inconvenient truth that it would reveal. As The New Yorker's Susan Glasser aptly noted about former Attorney General William Barr and Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien after Mondays hearing, Pence was onboard with Trumps lies about the election until he wasnt.

Pence was onboard with Trumps lies about the election until he wasnt.

Pence did not speak out when Trump falsely warned of the dangers of mail-in balloting in April 2020. He was silent when Trump declared that there was no way that he would lose unless the election was rigged. And at no time before Jan. 6 did he speak out to counter Trumps claim from Election Night that frankly, we did win this election. It was only when he was being told that silent compliance was not enough, and that his action advancing the plot was required, that he balked.

Since then he has said in a speech to the Federalist Society that Trump was wrong about the vice presidencys power to overturn the election. Nowhere in that speech, however, did he reject Trumps claims that there was rampant voter fraud in the election, even though his own team had debunked them before he left office. Pence did, however, find time to disparage attempts to protect voting rights, and he praised Senate Republicans filibuster of the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.

On the standard alignment chart in the game Dungeons & Dragons, characters morality can be charted on a 3x3 grid, with one axis spanning from good to evil and one axis ranging lawful to chaotic. (Each axis also has "neutral" as an option.) Trump easily fits into the parameters of the Chaotic Evil alignment. He has no regard for rules, no sense of reverence for anything but himself and his personal profit, in the form of money, power or both. The same cant be said of Pence but despite the courage he showed on Jan. 6, he cant be classified as a hero.

He was fine with the idea of disenfranchising voters in the Trump campaigns failed court challenges to mail-in ballots. He was complicit in Trump laying the groundwork for the Big Lie. Only when he was faced with a task that fell outside of the rules that he had accepted as valid and would result in personal consequences if he broke them did he refuse Trump.

Those actions should lead us to characterize Pence as being Lawful Evil: willing to act in a way that will hurt others, but only within a set of rules and personal moral code. It wasnt solely out of moral fortitude or love of small-d democracy that Pence did his duty. There just wasnt strong enough an argument to exploit any loopholes that existed in the law. And that alone does not a hero make.

Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.

Continued here:
Pence defied Trump on Jan. 6. That doesn't make him a hero.

WASHINGTON, DC A new photo obtained exclusively by ABC News shows then-Vice President Mike Pence and his family in hiding after rioters broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and he was evacuated from the Senate floor.

ABC News is publishing the image for the first time on the eve of the House Jan. 6 committee's hearing Thursday focused on former President Donald Trump's pressure campaign against Pence.

In it, Pence can be seen with members of his family -- second lady Karen Pence, his brother, Rep. Greg Pence and his daughter -- in the vice president's ceremonial office just steps from the Senate floor.

RELATED: Jan. 6 hearings: What we've learned so far, and what's to come

Taken just minutes after the mob had breached the Capitol and as Pence and his family were evacuated from chamber by his Secret Service detail, the photo shows Karen Pence hurriedly closing the curtains in the room, as her daughter looks on with fear.

According to a source who was in the room, the second lady could see rioters outside the Capitol, so she closed the curtains, worried that the attackers would see her and her family.

The photo was taken after the mob had already breached the Capitol, some of them chanting "Hang Mike Pence."

This and other photos were taken by the former vice president's official photographer, Myles Cullen, who was with Pence throughout the day and night of Jan. 6.

While they were previously described in "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show," they have never before been made public.

Minutes later, Pence and his family were rushed downstairs to a loading dock beneath the Capitol complex.

In another White House photo obtained exclusively by ABC News, you can see Pence after he returned to the Capitol with his daughter -- working on the speech he would give when the joint session of Congress reconvened to certify the election of Joe Biden.

As seen in another photo ABC News obtained, Pence returned to the House chamber later that night, to preside as Congress successfully certified Biden's victory.

"Today was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol. But thanks to the swift efforts of U.S. Capitol Police, federal, state and local law enforcement, the violence was quelled. The Capitol is secured, and the people's work continues," Pence said.

ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl is the author of "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show."

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Photo shows Mike Pence, family in hiding on Jan. 6

A new photo obtained exclusively by ABC News shows then-Vice President Mike Pence and his family in hiding after rioters broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and he was evacuated from the Senate floor.

ABC News is publishing the image for the first time on the eve of the House Jan. 6 committee's hearing Thursday focused on former President Donald Trump's pressure campaign against Pence.

In it, Pence can be seen with members of his family -- second lady Karen Pence, his brother, Rep. Greg Pence and his daughter -- in the vice president's ceremonial office just steps from the Senate floor.

Caption: Vice President Mike Pence sits with daughter, Charlotte, and brother, Greg, as wife, Karen, draws the curtains, in ceremonial room off Senate floor where he was evacuated to on Jan. 6, 2021, as Trump supporters attacked U.S. Capitol, obtained exclusively by ABC News.

The White House

Taken just minutes after the mob had breached the Capitol and as Pence and his family were evacuated from chamber by his Secret Service detail, the photo shows Karen Pence hurriedly closing the curtains in the room, as her daughter looks on with fear.

According to a source who was in the room, the second lady could see rioters outside the Capitol, so she closed the curtains, worried that the attackers would see her and her family.

The photo was taken after the mob had already breached the Capitol, some of them chanting "Hang Mike Pence."

This and other photos were taken by the former vice president's official photographer, Myles Cullen, who was with Pence throughout the day and night of Jan. 6.

While they were previously described in "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show," they have never before been made public.

Minutes later, Pence and his family were rushed downstairs to a loading dock beneath the Capitol complex.

Vice President Mike Pence, with his daughter Charlotte, works on the speech he would give to the joint session when Congress reconvened to certify Joe Biden's election after he returned to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 , obtained exclusively by ABC News

The White House

In another White House photo obtained exclusively by ABC News, you can see Pence after he returned to the Capitol with his daughter -- working on the speech he would give when the joint session of Congress reconvened to certify the election of Joe Biden.

Vice President Mike Pence stands before Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 after order was restored to the Capitol, in a photo obtained exclusively by ABC News.

The White House

As seen in another photo ABC News obtained, Pence returned to the House chamber later that night, to preside as Congress successfully certified Biden's victory.

"Today was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol. But thanks to the swift efforts of U.S. Capitol Police, federal, state and local law enforcement, the violence was quelled. The Capitol is secured, and the people's work continues," Pence said.

ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl is the author of "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show."

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Photo shows Vice President Mike Pence, family in hiding on Jan. 6: ABC ...