After James Comey’s damning testimony about Donald Trump leaks, Mike Pence hits the panic button
Now that an advance copy of former FBI Director James Comey’s public testimony has been posted a day ahead of time (link), how are Donald Trump and his administration interpreting it? We’ll have to wait for Trump himself to launch into an inevitable Twitter rant to get his take. But in the mean time, Mike Pence is already hitting the panic button.
Just a few moments after Comey’s planned opening statement was posted to the United States Senate website, Mike Pence abruptly canceled a scheduled interview with PBS Newshour, according to the show’s executive producer Sara Just (link). It couldn’t be more clear why: Pence knows he would have been asked about the damning assertions about Trump in Comey’s testimony, and Pence is afraid to answer those questions one way or the other.
Mike Pence has already gotten caught making multiple false statements about the Trump-Russia scandal. For instance Pence had been informed by Congressman Elijah Cummings that Michael Flynn was on the take from foreign governments, yet months later, Pence insisted that he didn’t know. These incidents have served to undermine Pence’s credibility, and raise suspicion as to whether he might have been involved in the Trump-Russia conspiracy himself.
So you can take Pence’s sudden cancelation today as a sign that he’s afraid he might get caught in more Trump-Russia lies and bring more suspicion on himself, or you can take it as a sign that Pence is no longer willing to stick his neck out by defending Donald Trump on these matters. But either way, the Comey testimony leak has been bad enough to prompt fairly level-headed Mike Pence to hit the panic button. That means it should be enough to send Trump through the roof with enraged and likely self-incriminating Twitter posts tonight or tomorrow. Follow Palmer Report on Facebook and Twitter. If you’re a regular reader, feel free to support Palmer Report
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report