“Crackpot Lawyers”: Mike Pence Blames Trump’s Idiot Legal Team for January 6

Mike Pence has issued his most scathing rebuke yet following Donald Trump’s third indictment, while still somehow failing to explicitly call Trump responsible.

Trump was charged Tuesday for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He faces four counts that include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote.

Pence has a starring role in the indictment, which shows he repeatedly resisted Trump’s attempts to delay certification of votes. Pence, who is trailing badly behind Trump in the Republican presidential polls, has maintained that he was upholding the Constitution above all else.

“The first time I heard in early December somebody suggest that as vice president I might be able to decide which votes to reject and which to accept, I knew that it was false,” Pence said Wednesday at the Indiana state fair. “I dismissed it out of hand. Sadly, the president was surrounded by a group of crackpot lawyers that kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear.”

“I really do believe that anyone who puts themself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” he said. “And anyone who asks someone else to put themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again.”

Pence reiterated that he had “no right to overturn the election,” no matter what Trump has said since he lost in 2020. “It’s contrary to what our Constitution and the laws of this country provide,” he said.

These are Pence’s strongest comments to date on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, but he still couldn’t bring himself to lay blame squarely on Trump’s shoulders. He said that Trump’s lawyers encouraged him, instead of treating Trump as an adult who should have known better the whole time.

Republicans have been hesitant to criticize Trump outright, or have backed him fully. Many members of the GOP are wary of attacking Trump lest they lose the support of his fan base. Others may actually believe that he has done nothing wrong.

Soon after Donald Trump learned he was being indicted for a third time, he sat down for a private dinner with top Fox executives, who begged him to attend the Republican debate.

The New York Times reported that Trump had dinner Tuesday night with Fox News president Jay Wallace and chief executive Suzanne Scott, at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

During the two-hour dinner, the Fox executives tried to convince Trump to attend the first Republican presidential primary debate, scheduled for August 23.

Last week, Trump declared on Truth Social that he had no intention of attending the debate and would instead let the other candidates duke it out. “Let them debate so I can see who I MIGHT consider for Vice President!” he announced.

He has also repeatedly attacked Fox News, which will host the debate, on Truth Social. He has also criticized the network for lenient coverage of Ron DeSantis, Trump’s main 2024 rival.

But during the dinner Tuesday, the Times reported:

The Fox executives made a soft appeal for Mr. Trump to attend the debate, two of the people familiar with the dinner said, telling the former president that he excels on the center stage and that it presents an opportunity for him to show off his debate skills.

Trump told the executives that he hasn’t made up his mind yet on whether he’ll attend.

If he does attend, it’s sure to be a wild affair. Other Republican candidates who have qualified for the first Republican presidential debate are: Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Chris Christie. Christie has been the most vocal Trump critic in the Republican field, rightfully calling him a “coward,” “liar,” and “loser.”

Donald Trump was indicted for a record-breaking third time  on Tuesday and now faces four felony counts for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But his Republican challengers for president are brushing away the damning 45-page indictment like crumbs from the table.

“A D.C. jury would indict a ham sandwich and convict a ham sandwich if it was a Republican ham sandwich,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Fox News Wednesday, without noting any of the substantial allegations in the Trump indictment. He also blasted the indictment on Tuesday evening, before noting he hasn’t actually read it.

“We’re watching Biden’s DOJ continue to hunt Republicans, while protecting Democrats,” said Senator Tim Scott.

Vivek Ramaswamy went even further and announced a lawsuit against the Justice Department to “deliver accountability and transparency.” He also said he would file a Freedom of Information Act records request for more details on Trump’s third indictment. He also pledged once again to pardon Trump if elected. (In 2021, just six days after the insurrection, Ramaswamy declared, “What Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple.”)

Other Republicans similarly bent over backward to defend Trump.

Representative Jim Banks may have had the wildest defense of Trump in Congress, claiming that the indictment “makes him an even stronger candidate to defeat Joe Biden next November.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy dismissed the indictment as an attempt to distract from the Hunter Biden probe (which to date, has uncovered very little evidence).

“Just yesterday a new poll showed President Trump is without a doubt Biden’s leading political opponent,” McCarthy said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Everyone in America could see what was going to come next: DOJ’s attempt to distract from the news and attack the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, President Trump.”

In 2021, McCarthy said Trump “bears responsibility” for the riot at the Capitol.

“We’ve entered banana republic territory,” said Senator Ted Cruz, repeating one of his favorite talking points. In 2021, Cruz called the January 6 insurrection a “terrorist attack.”

Very few Republicans have publicly criticized Trump following the indictment, despite the gravity of the charges.

Republicans have repeatedly insisted that Donald Trump has done nothing wrong, even in the face of his record third indictment for trying to overturn the 2020 election. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski has a message for them: Just read the indictment.

Murkowski is one of Trump’s few Republican critics in Congress and one of just seven GOP senators who voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial. After the third indictment was unsealed Tuesday, Murkowski took to Twitter to explain that the charges just reinforce her conviction that she did the right thing in 2021.

“I encourage everyone to read the indictment, to understand the very serious allegations being made in this case,” she said.

An alarming number of Republican lawmakers have not read the indictment yet (or pretended they haven’t), often making illogical excuses as to why not. It’s a sign that the GOP continues to bend its knee to Trump, no matter what.

New documents in a sexual abuse lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani reveal that the former New York mayor frequently made misogynistic, antisemitic, and homophobic comments—meaning that he’s an even more disgusting creep than previously thought.

Giuliani’s former associate Noelle Dunphy sued him in May, accusing him of promising to pay her a $1 million annual salary but instead raping and sexually abusing her over the course of two years. Her lawsuit alleges that Giuliani was constantly drunk, talked openly about trying to overturn the 2020 election, and even plotted to sell pardons with Donald Trump at the low, low price of $2 million each.

Giuliani has denied all of the accusations, but Dunphy reportedly has a wealth of recorded conversations to back herself up. Her lawyer filed transcripts of some of those recordings from 2019 late Tuesday, and they are truly horrifying.

In multiple different conversations, Giuliani made aggressively lewd and possessive comments to Dunphy, at one point saying, “I want to own you, officially.”

“Legally, with a document,” he added.

He also said he gets “hard” when he thinks about her and how smart she is, even though normally, “I’d never think about a girl being smart. If you told me a girl was smart, I would often think she’s not attractive.”

Giuliani also admitted to having a two-year affair with his now-girlfriend, Maria Ryan, despite previously denying an illicit relationship.

He claimed that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and actor Matt Damon were both gay, despite there being no evidence of that. Both Bloomberg and Damon have been in relationships with women for the past 20 years.

Giuliani said that Jewish men have smaller penises than Italian men (Giuliani is Italian) and complained about Jewish holidays. He was particularly steamed about Passover and said that Jewish people should “get over the Passover.”