Photos of former Vice President Mike Pence and his family hiding during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot were unveiled Wednesday.
ABC Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl described the images in his book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show and previously said the ex-vice president’s team did not want him to release them.
The photos were published one day before the Jan. 6 committee is expected to hold a hearing on the pressure campaign by former President Donald Trump and his allies against Pence to overturn the 2020 election results.
Minutes later, Pence and his family were evacuated to a loading dock beneath the Capitol complex. That night, Pence tweeted these photos from his loading-dock hideaway after the Capitol was cleared of rioters pic.twitter.com/2Dr2otsmKB
— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) June 15, 2022
Pence was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to preside over the counting of electoral votes. Despite pressure from Trump, Pence did not try to send the results back to certain states Trump lost in November over claims of election fraud. In fact, he sent a letter to Congress saying he did not have the power to reject Electoral College votes, dealing a blow to Trump’s hopes to deny a victory for President-elect Joe Biden.
‘HANG MIKE PENCE’ RIOTERS ACTED ON ORDERS ‘FROM ABOVE,’ JAN. 6 INVESTIGATOR SAYS
When rioters stormed the complex, Pence’s Secret Service detail moved him, along with his wife and their daughter, Charlotte, first to his ceremonial office. One photo from Karl shows them there with the former vice president’s brother, Rep. Greg Pence (R-IN), also in the room sitting on a chair.
Mike Pence and his family were then moved to an underground loading dock area where the vice president refused to get in a vehicle and leave the Capitol.
In November, Karl described to late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert how he got in touch with an “official White House photographer” who was with Mike Pence during the several hours “he was hidden away in the bowels of the Capitol in a place no one has ever really known.” Karl said he saw all the photographs himself.
“It is wild to see that he was in a loading dock in an underground parking garage beneath the Capitol complex,” Karl said in a CBS clip shared by The Late Show. “No place to sit, no desk, no chairs — nothing. He was in this concrete … parking garage with his family.”
“This is the vice president of the United States, and he’s … holed up in a basement,” he added.
In one of the photos, Karl said an aide was showing Mike Pence a tweet from Trump that slammed his vice president for not having “the courage” to try and overturn the results of the 2020 election while he was presiding in the Senate chamber over lawmakers certifying Biden’s victory on the day of the riot.
“It kind of looks like Pence is grimacing, but you can never really tell,” he said to laughs from the audience.
Although he was able to see them, Karl said Mike Pence’s team “refused to let me publish the photographs.” Karl surmised that the House select committee investigating the siege of Congress would be interested in viewing the photos.
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Although some of the rioters were threatening Trump’s vice president, chanting “hang Mike Pence” at the Capitol, Mike Pence has downplayed the events of the riot as “one day in January” and critiqued the media’s focus on it as being a way to distract from the Biden administration’s “failed agenda.”
Trump has consistently disparaged the Jan. 6 panel as a political witch hunt. “The Unselect Committee’s sole goal is to try to prevent President Trump, who is leading by large margins in every poll, from running again for president, if I so choose,” he said in a statement last month.
The committee’s next hearing is set for 1 p.m. Thursday. Greg Jacob, former counsel to Mike Pence, and J. Michael Luttig, a retired judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and informal adviser to the onetime veep, are listed as witnesses.
