Mike Pence Is Falling On His Sword For Trump. For The Worst Legal Reason Imaginable

Play with Gumby! Play with Pokey!  Childs toy television ad

For those of you unfamiliar, Gumby and Pokey were childhood toys from about 60 years ago. And they couldn’t be more simple. Gumby was a green rough humanoid shape with bulging eyes, made of rubber with wire spines running through it. Pokey was a brown horse, with a flat rubber body and four legs. The whole thing was that you could move the arms and legs in different directions and they would stay in place.

I bring this up because that’s the perfect simile for Donald Trump and Mike Pence. Especially former Vice President Mike Pence. For the last seven long years, Pence has contorted himself into joint twisting contortions to match up to whatever his orange Gumby wanted him to be.

Since breaking free from Gumby in 2021, Pokey Pence has gone to great lengths to make himself somehow independent from his maniacal master, but it never works. Pence has tried to aver in interviews that The President was reckless in his words on January 6th, but Pence has the personality of a cigar store Indian, so his protestations have no more effect than watching a Teddy Ruxpin read a book.

And now, while he’s desperately trying to cobble up the support for an already doomed 2024 presidential bid, Pence is about to put a dagger through its heart. And that is because he is every bit the spineless, gutless, craven sycophant we all saw from 2016-2021.

Today former Vice President Mike ounce announced that he will fight the DOJ’s subpoena to appear in front of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s grand jury to discuss the events surrounding January 6th. This wasn’t totally unexpected, but the justification was. Most people thought that Pencec would join Trump in arguing that their communications were protected by executive privilege. Problem is that the Supreme Court has already shit all over that.

Instead, Pence is basing his suit on the basis of the Speech and Debate clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution. For those unfamiliar, the clause reads, as posted on Wikipedia;

The clause states that members of both Houses of Congress “shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

Look, I get where Pence is coming with this one. If you notice, the amendment protects members of the US House and Senate from liability for things that are said on the floor of either chamber. And as Vice President, Pence held the ceremonial post of President of the Senate.

There’s just one problem, it’s all bullshit. The term President of the Senate is a purely ceremonial role. By Senate rules, the Vice President is not a Senator, he cannot propose legislation, debate legislation, or vote in the Senate for any other reason but to break a tie on a Senate vote. Worse yet, Pence himself admitted in public statements in congress on January 6th that his role was purely ceremonial, he was to open the envelopes and announce the state electoral vote results.

But Pence’s attempt to obstruct the subpoena is ridiculous on another front. The Speech and debate clause clearly states that it is designed to protect congressional members from statements they make on the floor in congress while debating business. This is why nobody, congressional or civilian can sue a member for slander or defamation for statements they make from the floor.

But Special Counsel Jack Smith is going to be asking Pence about his personal conversations with Trump in the days leading up to January 6th. And none of those conversations took place on the floor of either chamber.Smith, already smelling blood in the water, has stated that he will invoke the crime/fraud exemptions to compel Pence to testify.

The thing that makes me scratch my head about the stupidity of this is that Pence’s claim has already been tried in court, and failed! When SC GOP Senator Lindsey Graham was subpoenaed to testify in front of the Fulton county grand jury about his phone conversations with Georgia SoS Brad Raffensperger, Graham went to court protesting under the same dan speech and debate clause. The court ruled that since Graham was not speaking on the floor of the Senate, the exemption didn’t apply. Graham appealed, lost, and was forced to testify.It’s rolling over on the boss.

This is literally too stupid to even be talking about. I can only see one logical path here. Pence is going to testify, and he knows he’s going to have to testify. But while desperately trying to keep his already doomed presidential candidacy afloat, Pence picks the single worst possible constitutional excuse to keep from testifying, wanting to prove to Trump’s base that he isn’t rolling over on the boss. Life lesson for ya Mike. Next time, try an appeal that hasn’t already been thrown out of court! Freakin’ Milquetoast moron.