Sen. Tommy Tuberville said when former President Donald Trump called to ask for help slowing Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results, he cut short the conversation, telling Trump that Vice President Mike Pence had been evacuated from the Senate.
“He didn’t get a chance to say a whole lot because I said, ‘Mr. President, they just took the vice president out. I’ve got to go,’” Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, told reporters Wednesday.
The call occurred as rioters broke into the U.S. Capitol, and near when Trump charged in a tweet that his vice president lacked “the courage” to halt the certification of Electoral College results codifying Biden’s win.
Footage shown by the House Democratic impeachment managers in Trump’s second trial show Pence being evacuated at 2:14 p.m., 10 minutes before the president issued his scathing tweet.
At 2:24 p.m., Trump wrote: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
The exact timing of the call isn’t known, and Trump may have learned from Tuberville of Pence’s evacuation after sending the tweet.
Video footage shown by Democratic House members presenting the impeachment case documents pro-Trump supporters chanting as they roamed the halls of the Senate, “Hang Mike Pence.” Outside, some erected a gallows.
Pence had been under pressure by Trump to help overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election, publicly and privately, a former White House official told the Washington Examiner at the time.
Addressing supporters on Jan. 6 at a rally near the White House, Trump urged his supporters to go to the Capitol and even suggested that he would join them. (The then-president instead returned to the White House immediately following his remarks at the rally.)
“We will not let them silence your voices,” Trump said, telling his backers to go to the legislative hall and “fight like hell.”
Trump and Pence did not talk for days after the riot.
Tuberville, a Trump ally and newly elected senator, revealed new details of the call after the second day of Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate.
The House impeached Trump in January on a charge of incitement of insurrection. Democrats and six Senate Republicans voted to move forward with the impeachment trial.
