Trump lawyer: 'Pence is to blame' for rioters wanting to hang him – Raw Story
Before joining Raw Story, Brad Reed spent eight years writing about technology at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.
A day after Trump supporters violently stormed the United States Capitol and chanted for the hanging of then-Vice President Mike Pence, former Trump lawyer Ken Chesebro had decided whom to blame for the fiasco.
In a newly unearthed message flagged by Politico's Kyle Cheney, it seems that Chesebro said Pence was the primary culprit for the deadly riots at the Capitol.
"I think Pence is a lot to blame for this fiasco," Chesebro wrote on January 7th, 2021.
"He had top-flight advice available to him more than a month ago… I sketched what we had in mind for alternate electors, with Pence not opening envelopes. I detected no enthusiasm for any deviation from the [Electoral Count Act].
"I now think Pence had decided by then not to do anything to press the envelope or create a test case, but decided to not be straight with the president."
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Chesebro then speculated that if Pence had said from the very start that he believed Trump's plan to remain in power was flatly unconstitutional, then "Trump would have known he had no chance to win" by piling pressure on his vice president to unilaterally reject certified election results.
"If I'm right, Pence gave him false hope," Chesebro insisted. "He allowed Trump to hear of valid legal theories from Rudy [Giuliani] and [John] Eastman which gave him hope, which was crushed when Pence suddenly crushed them at the end."
In fact, the "valid legal theories" put forth by Giuliani and Eastman are widely seen as fringe by the vast majority of constitutional experts, and Trump relied upon them only after rejecting advice from his own administration lawyers that he had no chance at winning the 2020 election.
Both Eastman and Giuliani, alongside Trump, have since been indicted in the Fulton County District Attorney's Office's sprawling racketeering case alleging a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
Chesebro was also indicted, but pleaded guilty after making a deal that involved him sharing evidence with prosecutors.
Super Tuesday had big surprises voters and candidates alike, despite predicted forerunners President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump claiming the majority of the states.
With 15 states and one territory at stake, Trump had won 12 states with 271 delegates as of midnight, according to predictions from the New York Times and the Washington Post, losing Vermont and 17 delegates to challenger Nikki Haley.
Meanwhile, Biden took 15 states but lost American Samoa and six delegates to unknown Democrat, according to the Post and Times projections.
While 17 delegates might seem like a minor loss to a Republican candidate with 554 delegates, hundreds more than any of his challengers, political experts say Haley's victory was a bad sign for Trump.
"Great night for Joe Biden, and a bad night for Trump," said Fernand Amandi, a political analyst who frequently appears on MSNBC. "Why? Uncommitted 'protest vote' against Biden has been a total dud but the Haley anti-Trump Republican vote share against Donald Trump is real."
Both Biden and Trump won states across the U.S: California, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Maine, predictions show.
Biden also claimed victory in Iowa, where mail-in ballots wrapped Tuesday, and Utah, where Republican votes were still being counted late Tuesday night but showed Trump with a strong lead.
Yet while Trump delivered a victory speech — quickly and brutally fact checked by MSNBC — from Mar-a-Lago, where there was no open bar, political experts turned their eyes to Vermont and to exit polls across the U.S.
"Trump seems fine with ditching Haley’s supporters, but that could be to his peril in November," wrote USA Today columnist Ingrid Jacques. "[Haley] has consistently earned a sizable share of votes…her pull with non-MAGA Republicans and independents is strong. That should be a warning sign for Trump."
NBC News took particular notice of exit polls that they noted could spell trouble for the general election.
"The exit polls do provide some potential warning signs for him looking ahead to the general election, especially among more moderate and well-educated voters," their report notes.
"In both Virginia and North Carolina, around one-third of primary voters answered 'no' to whether they will vote for the GOP nominee regardless of who it is (31% in Virginia and 34% in North Carolina)."
The report also notes 37% of primary voters in Virginia and 31% in North Carolina said Trump would not be fit to be president if convicted of a crime.
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley was predicted to win Vermont's 17 delegates in an surprising upset victory on Super Tuesday, according to Politico and the Associated Press.
Haley won the Washington, D.C. primary over the weekend but this was her first and only state victory in a Republican race that has been dominated by former President Donald Trump.
The former governor of South Carolina, a state she lost to Trump, did not make public statements during most of Super Tuesday.
While Trump's nomination is looking like a near certainty, political experts say Haley's campaign could spell trouble for him when he faces off against President Joe Biden in November.
Karl Rove warned Republicans that Trump's rhetoric was dividing the GOP and noted Haley drew more than 20 percent of the vote in states such as Virginia, Massachusetts and Maine.
CNN reporter Manu Raju said pro-Haley exit polls in North Carolina should be considered a "warning sign for Trump."
MSNBC stopped broadcasting Donald Trump's Super Tuesday victory speech so he could be fact-checked.
Just minutes into Trump's speech, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow seemed disgusted with the broadcast.
"Why don't we fact-check the hell out of him?" co-host Stephanie Ruhle offered.
"It does not fix the fact that we broadcast it," Maddow griped.
"Let's just go through it, right?" Ruhle said before breaking down Trump's speech. "We have had the best economic recovery of any country in the developed world."
"He's telling an audience right there, oh, my goodness, that the paltry oil production — we're producing more oil today than we ever have in the history of our country," she continued. "Think about the American rescue plan, the infrastructure plan. We have created more jobs, 3.2 million more jobs than we had pre-pandemic."
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Ruhle noted that people blame the government for inflation but don't credit it for wage growth.
"And one of those reasons wages are up is all the union wins in the last two years," she observed. "And remember, President Biden has stood with those unions, the most pro-union president in American history for numbers."
Co-host Joy Reid blasted Trump for failing to protect the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"You had one crisis, bro," Reid said. "It was called the pandemic."
Watch the video below from MSNBC.
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