Is Mike Pence on his way out?
As the Donald Trump debacle has slowly dragged on toward its inevitable conclusion (Trump’s ouster), the question all along has been just how much damage the Trump-Russia criminal conspiracy would do to Mike Pence. Will it be bad enough to eventually oust Pence as well, or will he inherit the presidency and simply be crippled by scandal until the clock runs out on the term? Suddenly, the equation looks very different for him.
The first sign of serious trouble for Mike Pence came this Tuesday, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed the sentencing memo for Michael Flynn. Nearly all of Flynn’s cooperation in various criminal investigations was redacted, to the point that it’s not even clear what all of the investigations are. But Mueller made a point of not blacking out the fact that the Trump transition team was dirty on Russia. The head of the transition team: Mike Pence.
Was this Mueller’s way of signaling to Mike Pence that he’s got him nailed, and it’s time for Pence to come in and negotiate a plea deal? It sure looked like it. But we still had to wait for another shoe to drop before we had a better sense of what was really going on here. Then, today, it did.
Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff Nick Ayers was all set to become Donald Trump’s new Chief of Staff, but then at the last possible second he decided to turn down the Trump job and resign his current job with Pence. This strongly suggests that Ayers doesn’t think Trump or Pence is going to survive this for much longer. So now what?
Back when everyone knew Richard Nixon was eventually going down for Watergate, and his vice president Spiro Agnew was going down for his own criminal scandals, prosecutors basically gave Agnew a free pass in exchange for his immediate resignation, in order to get him out of the way before dealing with Nixon. Is the same fate about to await Mike Pence? These court filings and personnel shakeups are at least hinting at it.
