Vice President Mike Pence was removed from the Senate floor just one minute before insurrectionist domestic terrorists, incited by President Donald Trump, broke into that chamber last week, a new report reveals.
“If the pro-Trump mob had arrived seconds earlier, they would have been in eyesight of the vice president as he was rushed across a reception hall into the office,” The Washington Post reports.
Secret Service officers had “spirited Pence to a room off the Senate floor with his wife and daughter after rioters began to pour into the Capitol, many loudly denouncing the vice president as a traitor as they marched through the first floor below the Senate chamber.”
Indeed, President Trump at a rally designed to incite the insurrection had targeted his own vice president.
“About one minute after Pence was hustled out of the chamber, a group charged up the stairs to a second-floor landing in the Senate, chasing a Capitol Police officer who drew them away from the Senate.”
During the violent insurrection Trump’s MAGA mob repeatedly shouted, “Hang Mike Pence!” There was a gallows set up outside the Capitol.
Experts say the attack on the nation’s seat of government was planned, and assassinations of the three elected officials who are in the immediate line of succession from the President – Vice President Pence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Senate President pro-Tempore Chuck Grassley – would have been possible.