A documentary film crew that the House Jan. 6 select committee subpoenaed captured former Vice President Mike Pence’s reaction to reading a draft House resolution calling on him to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove former President Trump from power, CNN reported.
CNN obtained the video Thursday showing Pence first saw the draft on Jan. 12, 2021, six days after the Capitol insurrection, while sitting for an interview with filmmaker Alex Holder. In the video, Pence told his aide “Yeah, excellent” as he saw the draft and asked his aide to have someone else print him a hard copy to read.
The House approved the resolution that evening, but Pence sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saying that he would not push for invoking the amendment as it would “set a terrible precedent.” Under the amendment, the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet need to affirm that the president is unfit for office to remove him under the amendment.
The House voted to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol insurrection the next day. Trump was ultimately found not guilty at the conclusion of a trial in the Senate. A majority of senators voted to convict him, but the number voting in favor did not reach the required two-thirds majority.
Holder conducted interviews with Trump, Pence, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as he documented the end of Trump’s reelection campaign. He took the footage to incorporate it in an upcoming three-part documentary series called “Unprecedented.”
The committee issued a subpoena to Holder last week to request any raw footage he has “pertaining to discussions of election fraud or election integrity” related to the 2020 presidential election. Holder said in a statement Tuesday that he turned over the footage he took as the insurrection was happening and interviews he conducted starting in September 2020.
After showing Pence’s reaction, the video clip shows him saying “I’m always hopeful about America” and “I always believe that America’s best days are yet to come, and I still believe that.” Videos of people putting up fences surrounding the Capitol are interspersed with those comments.
Pence did not immediately return a request for comment from The Hill.