Lawrence O’Donnell Says ‘Star Witness’ Mike Pence and a Single Quote Will Doom Donald Trump: ‘You’re Too Honest’ (Video)
Lawrence O’Donnell believes that “star witness” Mike Pence – and a single Donald Trump quote that the former vice president will corroborate on the stand – are the keys that will bring down the former president in the federal election interference indictment filed this week.
A Washington, D.C., grand jury announced Tuesday that it had indicted Trump and others on counts including conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding – the third criminal case being brought against the former president. Trump is due to be arraigned Thursday.
To prove his case, special prosecutor Jack Smith must show that Trump committed those crimes “knowingly.” That’s where Pence comes in.
The indictment doesn’t name Pence as the person who told the grand jury about what was said in a private phone call – in which Trump says “You’re too honest” – but O’Donnell says there’s no other viable possibility.
“The witness who spoke those words,” O’Donnell said Tuesday night on “The Last Word,” “is obviously Donald Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence. That is the only way that those words could appear in quotation marks, on page 33 of today’s indictment.”
The quote is presumably from a late December 2020 phone call in which Trump is trying to convince Pence that he has the authority to overturn the election results. When Pence is firm in saying he does not, that’s when Trump says “You’re too honest” – words that O’Donnell believes show Trump knew that what he was suggesting was legally dubious.
“That is going to be a very dramatic moment in this trial,” O’Donnell said. “That line – ‘You’re too honest’ – will be the headline in that day’s coverage of the trial. … It will go a very long way, if not all the way, to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump knew that he was lying about Mike Pence’s power to overturn the election.”
O’Donnell believes Pence “will be the star witness when the case that the United States of America vs. Donald J. Trump is presented to a trial jury in Washington, D.C.”
Watch O’Donnell’s entire monologue in the video above.
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