A onetime aide to former President Donald Trump corroborated an allegation by the Jan. 6 committee that her boss expressed approval of calls for his vice president, Mike Pence, to be hanged for not tossing out electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden.
“I can confirm — I heard from somebody with firsthand knowledge that he agreed with the sentiment that they should hang Mike Pence,” Alyssa Farah, former White House communications director, said during a CNN panel Friday.
During a prime-time hearing Thursday, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who is the ranking member of the panel, said Trump signaled his support for rioters attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6 who were chanting in favor of hanging Pence.
“Aware of the rioters’ chants to ‘hang Mike Pence,’ the president responded with this sentiment: ‘Maybe our supporters have the right idea. Mike Pence deserves it,’” Cheney said.
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Trump denied the claim. “I NEVER said, or even thought of saying, ‘Hang Mike Pence,’” he wrote on Truth Social. “This is either a made up story by somebody looking to become a star, or FAKE NEWS!”
Farah, who also served as Pence’s press secretary for a time, resigned from the White House in December 2020. She later told Politico that she made the decision because of her discomfort with Trump’s challenges to the integrity of the 2020 election results. Farah voluntarily met with the Republican members of the Jan. 6 committee to provide information, CNN reported.
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“Just to underscore further, though, these chants and the push from him that, you know, Mike Pence was an enemy,” she added on CNN, “that wasn’t just an attack on a vice president for being disloyal. What he was truly instigating with this Capitol riot was the potential attack on the line of succession. It wasn’t just Mike Pence — it was also Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi whose life was at risk that day.”
Farah also said the panel showed Thursday that Trump is “wholly unfit” to serve in office.
