Former Vice President Mike Pence writes in a forthcoming memoir that he was “not afraid ... but angry” as a mob of former President Donald Trump's supporters searched for him in the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Pence said he believes the rioters calling for his head did not represent the tens of millions of Americans who supported them.
“I was not afraid, but I was angry,” Pence wrote in a back-cover blurb for “So Help Me God,” the book that hits shelves on Nov. 15.
“I was angry at what I saw, how it desecrated the seat of our democracy,” Pence added. “(It) dishonored the patriotism of millions of our supporters, who would never do such a thing here or anywhere else.”
Pence’s memoir is billed as an account of his “journey from his youth in Columbus, Indiana, to the vice presidency of the United States.”
“This is the inside story of the Trump Administration from its second-highest ranking official and of a profound faith that has guided Pence throughout his life,” his publisher says.
The book includes “the most robust defense of the Trump record” but also “chronicles President Trump’s severing of their relationship on January 6, 2021, when Pence kept his oath to the Constitution.”
Pence has said little about his experience on Jan. 6. Two of his top aides have described his refusal to leave the Capitol even as thousands of violent Trump extremists erected a mock gallows and chanted “hang Mike Pence.”
Trump egged on his supporters by tweeting an attack on Pence as the mob stormed the Capitol. He later told aides that he would not defend the building in part because Pence “deserved it.”
Pence has resisted calls for him to testify before the congressional committee investigating Jan. 6 even though he gave his chief of staff and top counsel the green light to do so.
Some members of the committee say they still expect to testify in the coming weeks.
Pence is barnstorming the country and laying the groundwork for a 2024 Republican presidential bid, which could put him on a collision course with Trump, ABC News reported.
Since leaving the White House, he has barely spoken to the former president, who calls him a turncoat for refusing to go along with the unconstitutional scheme to cling to power after losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
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