Former vice president Mike Pence said Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to appoint a special counsel to oversee two criminal investigations into former president Donald Trump is “very troubling.”
The special counsel, Jack Smith, will take over investigations surrounding the extent of Trump’s involvement in the events leading to the January 6 Capitol riot and his alleged mishandling of sensitive government documents, Garland said at a press conference on Friday. The special counsel, Jack Smith, will be tasked with determining whether criminal charges should be filed against the former president.
“The appointment of a special counsel is very troubling,” Pence told Fox News at the Republican Jewish Coalition annual leadership conference. “No one is above the law, but I am not sure it’s against the law to take bad advice from your lawyers.”
He added: “The timing of this decision — just a few short days after the president announced his intention to seek re-election, I think that the history of it, the facts that I am aware of behind it, I think it is very troubling.”
The announcement comes three days after Trump formally announced his plans to run for president again in 2024, complicating the investigations into the former president, who is now President Biden’s top political rival.
Garland cited Trump’s announcement and Biden’s “stated intention” to run in 2024 as reasons for the special counsel, saying he has “concluded that it is in the public interest.”
The appointment of a semi-independent prosecutor allows the Justice Department to address concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
Pence decried “years of politicization at the Justice Department.”
“There have been disclosed FBI agents falsifying documents, the FBI using a Clinton campaign-funded opposition research document to support two and a half years of the Russia hoax,” he said, referring to now-debunked claims that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Pence added that he was “deeply troubled” by the FBI’s search of Trump’s personal residence in August in connection to the government documents investigation.
“It had never been done in history,” he said.
Pence said the raid “sent a divisive message across the country” and “sent a wrong message about America around the world.”
“There were many more opportunities — short of executing a search warrant on the personal residence of the president of the United States to resolve the issues of classified documents that were present there,” said Pence, who noted he is familiar with how the DOJ operates after serving on the House Judiciary Committee for a decade.
“Now would be a good time for the Justice Department to be working on restoring its credibility with the American people,” he added.
Trump told Fox News he “won’t partake in” the DOJ’s investigations after Garland announced the special counsel appointment on Friday.
“I have been going through this for six years — for six years I have been going through this, and I am not going to go through it anymore,” he said. “And I hope the Republicans have the courage to fight this.”
“I have been proven innocent for six years on everything — from fake impeachments to [former special counsel Robert] Mueller, who found no collusion, and now I have to do it more?” Trump said. “It is not acceptable. It is so unfair. It is so political.”