Pence Didn’t Trust the Secret Service

This is creepy:

Speaking at a Thursday event hosted by the Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice, Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who is also a member of the committee investigating the Capitol riot, accused former President Donald Trump of attempting to organize a coup to circumvent Joe Biden‘s victory in the 2020 presidential election and stay in power. During the talk, he called special attention to a tense moment involving Pence, NBC News reported.

After being taken to an undisclosed portion of the Capitol during the riot, Pence’s Secret Service agents, whom Raskin suspected were reporting directly to Trump’s security detail, asked him to enter an armored limousine. The intent, some have theorized, was to drive Pence away from the building, preventing him from certifying the election results, after he had signaled his unwillingness to go against his duties and keep Trump in power.

“[Pence] uttered what I think are the six most chilling words of this entire thing I’ve seen so far: ‘I’m not getting in that car,'” Raskin said. “He knew exactly what this inside coup they had planned for was going to do.”

One, I think it’s time that the Secret Service is disbanded and presidential security assigned elsewhere. Surely there is some part of the nation’s huge national security section capable of taking on the job.  The Secret Service appears to be hopelessly inept and corrupt. The bizarre story of the two guys who duped the Secret Service into believing they were federal agents is just the most recent example of how screwed up they are. It’s a wonder none of the people they are supposed to be protecting have been harmed.

Two, every time we turn around there is more evidence that the January 6 insurrection was planned as part of an attempted coup, and a whole lot of elected Republicans were in on it. This is from yesterday.

Republican members of Congress were heavily involved in calls and meetings with former President Donald Trump and his top aides as they devised a strategy to overturn the election in December 2020, according to new evidence filed in federal court late Friday.

Deposition excerpts filed by the Jan 6. select committee — part of an effort to force former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to appear for an interview — suggest that some of Trump’s top allies in Congress were frequently present in meetings where a handful of strategies to prevent then-President-elect Joe Biden from taking office were discussed, including efforts to replace the leadership of the Justice Department with figures who would sow doubts about the legitimacy of the election.

Of course they were. Of course they did.

Elsewhere — It appears Macron will get another term as President of France. That’s a relief; Le Pen would have been a disaster.

Julian Borger writes in The Guardian that Mohammed bin Salman is betting big that Trump will get the White House back in 2024.

Saudi Arabia appears to be banking on Donald Trump’s return to office by refusing to help the US punish Russia for the Ukraine invasion, and by placing $2bn in a new, untested investment fund run by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. …

…The kingdom’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, reportedly declined to take a call from Joe Biden last month, showing his displeasure at the administration’s restrictions on arms sales; what he saw as its insufficient response to attacks on Saudi Arabia by Houthi forces in Yemen; its publication of a report into the Saudi regime’s 2018 murder of the dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi; and Biden’s prior refusal to deal in person with the crown prince.

Instead, Prince Mohammed shows signs of betting on the return to office of Trump in 2024, and the resumption of the Trump administration’s cosy relationship with Riyadh.

MBS is the kind of guy that somebody, someday, is going to depose. And not gently. Not right away, but someday.