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Former Vice President Mike Pence told a gathering of world leaders and international dignitaries on Friday that there is still hope for a peaceful resolution to the North Korean nuclear crisis, but stressed that America must show strength in the face of rising missile tests and other provocations from Pyongyang.

Weakness arouses evil, and a resurgence of missile tests and provocations from Pyongyang, [including] this weeks promises to shake the world, are a testament to this truth, Mr. Pence said, referencing North Koreas claim in recent days to be confronting the U.S. by shaking the world with missile tests.

While he did not mention the Biden administration by name, Mr. Pence suggested Washington is not responding aggressively enough to a growing wave of missile tests by Pyongyang, asserting that former President Donald Trumps diplomatic breakthrough with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un proved that peace follows strength.

The former vice president made the remarks at a summit to promote world peace and mobilize hope behind efforts to end the North Korean nuclear crisis and the decades-old conflict between North and South Korea.

The World Summit 2022 event was organized by the Universal Peace Federation and is bringing participants from every continent together, both virtually and at an in-person program in Seoul, where Mr. Pence was a featured speaker at an opening ceremony Friday.

Other top officials of the former Trump administration, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper, were slated to address the gathering in Seoul over the weekend.

During Fridays opening ceremony, Mr. Pence said the former administration showed that the dream of peace on the Korean peninsula is possible.

Under our administration we proved to the astonishment of the world that peace is possible when America is strong, the former vice president said. He referenced direct summits that Mr. Trump held with Mr. Kim after exerting economic and other pressure on Pyongyang in response to a surge in North Korean missile tests and nuclear provocations in 2017.

Few people imagined that they would see the leaders of the United States and North Korea sitting down to discuss peace, but thats exactly what happened at that historic summit in Singapore in 2018 and the summit and meetings that followed, said Mr. Pence. President Donald Trump showed it was possible, the nuclear testing stopped, the missile testing stopped and we began a productive dialogue for peace between our nations.

The historic diplomacy ultimately failed to achieve a breakthrough denuclearization deal. Mr. Trump walked away from a second summit with Mr. Kim in 2019, saying the North Korean side had demanded sweeping relief from sanctions in exchange for only a limited commitment to destroy part of the nuclear arsenal it has been building for decades in violation of repeated U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Attempts at diplomacy with the North Koreans have gone nowhere during the years since, while the Kim regime engages in increasingly brazen new missile tests.

Mr. Pences sobering remarks on the situation came amid speeches by a range of other prominent international figures at Fridays opening ceremony for the World Summit, an event being hosted by Hak Ja Han Moon, the co-founder of UPF, and co-hosted by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and former U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Mrs. Moon, the widow of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, is the leader of the Unification movement that grew from the Unification Church that the Rev. Moon founded in 1954 a year after war between North and South Korea was frozen by a U.S.-backed armistice. She and her late husband devoted their lives to the reunification of the Korean Peninsula and to the promotion of world peace. They founded The Washington Times in 1982.

A range of prominent political figures and current world leaders are participating in this weekends summit, including Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Albanian President Ilir Meta, Senegal President Macky Sall and former European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Mr. Pence and other speakers praised the work of Mrs. Moon on Friday. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who also addressed the gathering in Seoul, praised participants for coming together in the name of peace for the world and for the Korean peninsula.

The human race will move forward to safety, to prosperity and to freedom only if good people take the time, show the courage, and get involved, Mr. Gingrich said.

The human race is at one of those amazing turning points, when the technology that brings us together can also be the technology that destroys us, and I think these efforts, this commitment to talk together, to bring together the kind of really remarkable groups that come from all over the world to this kind of conference, to make friendships, to go back home realizing that you have things in common that allow you to build a better future, I think all this is very, very vital, he said. So I want to commend everyone both people who are here, people who are with us virtually, and people who will, in the future, see all of this on social media.

Mr. Pence spoke of humankinds inexhaustible thirst for freedom, asserting that the U.S. plays a special role in promoting freedom around the world.

In the face of such renewed belligerence from North Korea, of Russian tanks on the border of Ukraine, of Chinas warplanes flying into Taiwans defense zone in record numbers, you can be sure of this: The American people will always stand for freedom and we will always stand with the people of the Republic of Korea, the former vice president said.

America will always be freedoms greatest champion, libertys greatest protector and the armed forces of the United States will remain the greatest force for good the world has ever known, he said.

As our administration proved. Much can be accomplished through a combination of strength and engagement, he said. Based on the progress that I saw under the Trump-Pence administration, I remain supremely confident that a brighter future is on the horizon, for the United States, for the people of the Korean peninsula, the Asia-Pacific and the world.

No oppressive regime can last forever, Mr. Pence said. For inside every human heart is an unquenchable fire that burns to be free. Inside every human soul is an insatiable desire for freedom.

Read more:
Mike Pence tells world peace rally that U.S. must show strength in face of North Korean provocations - Washington Times

Something you may have heard once or twice over the past 15 months is that Donald Trump thinks he won the last presidential election. This is a fraud on the American public, hedeclared in the wee hours of November 4, 2020, after his lead in various battleground states began to shrink. This is an embarrassment to this country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. This, of course, was a bald-faced lie. At that point, Trump hadnt won anything because not all of the votes had been counted; later, when they were, it was clear that Joe Biden had prevailed.

However, that inconvenient fact obviously didnt stop Trump from attempting to prevent Biden from moving into the White House, a campaign that included pressuring the Justice Department to investigate an insane claim that Italian satellites changed Trump ballots to Biden ones, exploring seizing voting machines, and inciting an insurrection that left five people dead. Nor has he been deterred by the fact that there continues to be not one shred of evidence that the 2020 election was plagued by voter fraud. Even the reality that, on January 20, 2021, Joe Biden became president, and has been doing the job ever since, has failed to dissuade him.

If anything, Trump has only gone further off the deep end, ranting about the election having been stolen, a place of madness that led him, on Tuesday, to demand that his former vice president be investigated for refusing to stop the certification of Bidens win.

In a characteristically febrile, grammatically offensive statement disseminated on Twitter, Trump once again claimed that Mike Pence had this right to change the outcome of the election, and that the Unselect Committee should be investigatingwhy Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval. (As an aside, he boldly asserted that if Nancy Pelosi had taken my recommendation and substantially increased security at the Capitol, there would have been no January 6 as we know it, which is extremely rich given that the man insisted to his millions of supporters that the election had been stolen from him, held a Stop the Steal rally just before the certification of the Electoral College votes, and told them to fight on his behalf.)

Trump, of course, has been laying into Pence for over a year now, though this is the first time hes (publicly) appeared to suggest that perhaps his V.P. was in cahoots to deprive him of a second term, despite the fact that Pencewas on Trumps 2020 ticket. In the run-up to January 6, the ex-president tried various tactics to convince Pence to stop Bidens win from going through, from reportedlycallingthe evangelical Christian a pussy tothreatening to end their friendship. Later, at the Stop the Steal rally that preceded the Capitol attack, Trumptoldthe crowd, I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so, and, All Vice PresidentPencehas to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people, and MikePenceis going to have to come through for us, and if he doesnt, that will be [a] sad day for our country because youre sworn to uphold our Constitution, and finally, MikePence, I hope youre going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if youre not, Im going to be verydisappointedin you. I will tell you right now. Im not hearing good stories. In case it was unclear exactly what Trump wanted out of the guy.

Almost a year later after Pence certified Bidens win, Trump told ABCs Jonathan Karl that his former V.P. deserved the chants on January 6 calling for his hanging.

Which makes it extra wild that the worst thing Pence has to say about Trump is that they havent really been in touch for the last few months but that when they sat down in the days that followed [January 6], we spoke about it, talked through it, [and] we parted amicably.

On the other hand!

Its possible the former V.P. is simply letting people from his inner circle do the talking for him. Per CNN:

Greg Jacob, a top aide to former vice president Mike Pence, met with the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot on Tuesday. CNN spotted Jacob leaving a meeting room on Capitol Hill used by the committee to conduct witness interviews, and a source familiar with the matter confirmed he was scheduled to appear before the panel on Tuesday. Jacobs meeting with the committee comes after CNN first reported that Pences former chief of staff, Marc Short, sat for an interview last week.

Short, who was with Pence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and participated in a critical White House meeting on January 4, 2021, is seen as a potentially crucial witness in the committees investigation as the panel pieces together the pressure campaign then president Donald Trump and his allies waged to try to convince Pence not to certify the presidential election. In addition to Short and Jacob, the committee has already questioned retired generalKeith Kellogg,his former national security adviser who was with Trump at the White House on January 6, as well as retired judgeMichael Luttig, whose tweets on Pences role on January 6 were cited by Pence in his letter released the morning of January 6 announcing he would certify the election.

Originally posted here:
Trump Officially Loses It, Demands Mike Pence Be Investigated for Not Overturning the Election - Vanity Fair

WASHINGTON Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, testified privately last week before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the latest turn in weeks of negotiations between the panels investigators and Mr. Pences team.

Mr. Short appeared in response to a subpoena from the committee, according to three people with knowledge of the developments, making him the most senior person around Mr. Pence who is known to have cooperated in the inquiry.

Investigators believe that participation by the former vice president and his inner circle is critical, because Mr. Pence resisted a pressure campaign by former President Donald J. Trump to use his role in presiding over Congresss official count of electoral votes to try to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Short was with Mr. Pence on Jan. 6 as a mob of Mr. Trumps supporters attacked the Capitol, and has firsthand knowledge of the effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to try to persuade the former vice president to throw out legitimate electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in favor of fake slates of pro-Trump electors.

The people spoke on condition of anonymity about Mr. Shorts testimony, which was earlier reported by CNN.

Investigators have been in high-stakes negotiations for months with Mr. Pences team about whether he would cooperate with the inquiry. In recent weeks, they have sought the cooperation of Mr. Short and Greg Jacob, Mr. Pences former lawyer.

Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob were both closely involved in Mr. Pences consideration of whether to go along with Mr. Trumps insistence that he try to block the official count of Electoral College results by a joint session of Congress. Three days before the proceeding, the two men met with John Eastman, a lawyer then advising Mr. Trump, about a memo Mr. Eastman had written setting out a case for why Mr. Pence had the power to hold off the certification.

As a mob was attacking the Capitol chanting Hang Mike Pence, Mr. Eastman sent a hostile email to Mr. Jacob, blaming Mr. Pence for the violence.

The siege is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened, the lawyer, Mr. Eastman, wrote to Mr. Jacob.

Mr. Eastman has since invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to defy the committees subpoena.

Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was Mr. Pences national security adviser, has also testified before the committee. Mr. Kellogg told investigators that as rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump rejected pleas from him as well as from Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, the press secretary, to call for an end to the violence. He said Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trumps eldest daughter and adviser, also attempted to intervene at least twice.

Mr. Kellogg said he and Ms. Trump also witnessed a telephone call in the Oval Office on the morning of Jan. 6 in which Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Pence to go along with a plan to throw out electoral votes. Mr. Kellogg told the committee that the president had accused Mr. Pence of not being tough enough to overturn the election.

Ms. Trump then turned to Mr. Kellogg and said, Mike Pence is a good man, Mr. Kellogg testified.

The developments come as Mr. Trump has continued to criticize Mr. Pence for refusing to embrace the call to overturn the 2020 election.

Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away, Mr. Trump said in a statement, referring to a group of senators who are discussing revamping the Electoral Count Act to clarify that the vice president cannot unilaterally change the election results. Unfortunately, he didnt exercise that power, he could have overturned the election!

Mr. Trump also said at a rally over the weekend that he might offer pardons to criminal defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, and that he would organize more protests should he be charged with a crime.

Read more here:
Former Pence Chief of Staff Has Testified to the Jan. 6 Committee - The New York Times

Washington The National Archives and Records Administration will release records from Vice President Mike Pence to the House panel investigating the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, despite efforts by former President Donald Trump to shield their release.

David Ferriero, archivist of the United States, told Trump in a letter Tuesday that he will give the documents to House investigators "after consultation with the counsel to the president and the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, and as instructed by President Biden."

The Archives will deliver the records to the select committee on March 3 "unless prohibited by court order," Ferriero wrote.

The records at issue stem from two separate requests the select committee made to Archives in March and August. Trump notified the Archives in a January letter he would be asserting executive privilege over a tranche of documents, which contain vice presidential records.

But Mr. Biden rejected Trump's attempt to block the release of the records, according to a February 1 letter from White House counsel Dana Remus to the Archives, as the president determined "an assertion of such a privilege is not justified and is not in the best interests of the United States."

The records, she continued, should be turned over to the select committee in 30 days barring a court order stopping their release.

Remus said many of the records Trump asserted privilege over "were communications concerning the former vice president's responsibilities as president of the Senate in certifying the vote of presidential electors on January 6, 2021." Some of the records also involved litigation "in which certain parties were represented by the Department of Justice," she said.

Trump and his allies sought to pressure Pence to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the January 6 joint session of Congress, which was ultimately interrupted by the breach of the Capitol building by a mob of the former president's supporters.

While Trump encouraged the vice president to reject electoral votes, Pence rebuffed the former president's pressure campaign, writing in a lengthy letter the morning of January 6 he could not claim "unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not."

More than a year later, Trump has continued to allege Pence had the power to toss out state electoral votes and indicated in a statement Sunday that he wanted the vice president to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Trump on Tuesday also suggested the January 6 select committee investigate "why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval."

In the course of their examination into the events surrounding the January 6 assault on the Capitol, House investigators have interviewed more than 400 witnesses and obtained over 50,000 documents, according to Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who sits on the committee.

Greg Jacob, Pence's chief counsel, met with the committee Tuesday, while Marc Short, Pence's former chief of staff, appeared before the panel last week. Members also plan to ask the former vice president to meet with them voluntarily.

Investigators, meanwhile, continue to gain access to documents from the Trump White House. Last month, they received more than 700 pages of records that were at the center of a legal battle mounted by Trump that was ultimately unsuccessful.

Congressman Pete Aguilar of California, a member of the select committee, told reporters this week that in addition to the 700-page batch from the Archives, the agency continues to produce more records.

The committee has issued dozens of subpoenas, including ones to Trump's allies, former White House officials, campaign aides and individuals involved in the planning of the rally outside the White House before the Capitol building came under siege. Two top Trump allies, Steve Bannon and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, have been held in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas, and the Justice Department has charged Bannon. Both said they are following instructions from Trump, who has claimed executive privilege.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created the House select committee last year earlier this year to investigate the January 6 attack, when thousands of Trump supporters descended on the Capitol as Congress counted the electoral votes, a largely ceremonial final step affirming Mr. Biden's victory. Lawmakers were sent fleeing amid the riot, which led to the deaths of five people and the arrests of hundreds more. Trump, who encouraged his supporters to "walk over" to the Capitol during the rally at the Ellipse before the electoral vote count, was impeached by the House one week later for inciting the riot but was later acquitted by the Senate.

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National Archives says it will turn over Mike Pence's records to January 6 panel - CBS News

If there was ever any doubt that Donald Trump truly believed that Mike Pence had the authority to simply overturn the results of a national presidential election because the guy he worked for didnt win, the former president has gone and outed himself.

Over the weekend, Trump issued a statement in which he outright stated that Pence could have overturned the Election! And the fact that he didnt has put Donald and his former #2 on the outsso much so that Trump is now insisting that the January 6th committee should be investigating the former vice president instead. While the sheer inanity of it all has everyone talking, Jimmy Kimmel seemed absolutely astounded by the sudden turn of events.

On Tuesday night, Kimmel mentioned the current rift between Pence and Trump (the two reportedly have not spoken in months) and the weekend statement, but noted that Today, he went about eight steps further with what is certainly among the top five craziest statements made by a former president of the United States. He wrote, on paperbecause hes not allowed to post on Twitter:

So pathetic to watch the Unselect Committee of political hacks, liars, and traitors work so feverishly to alter the Electoral College Act so that a Vice President cannot ensure the honest results of the election, when just one year ago they said that the Vice President has absolutely no right to ensure the true outcome or results of an election. In other words, they lied and the Vice President did have this right blah, blah, blah.

If Nancy Pelosi, who is in charge of Capitol security, had taken my recommendation and substantially increased security, there would have been no January 6th as we know it!

But that wasnt even the end of the inanity.

Kimmels favorite part of Trumps statement came when he suggested that the Unselect Committee (that will never get old) should instead be investigating why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval in that it has now been shown that he clearly had the right to do so! In other words: Trump thinks that someone should be investigating his own vice president.

This is like Bonnie calling for an investigation into Clyde, Kimmel said. And the saddest part is Mike Pence is so pathetic, hed probably agree.

You can watch the full clip above.

Go here to see the original:
Jimmy Kimmel Compares Trump And Pence To Bonnie And Clyde - UPROXX