Mike Pence Stands Alone as Trump Heads to Court

Former Vice President Mike Pence is starting to show he's willing to go where only a handful of his fellow Republican presidential hopefuls are as GOP frontrunner Donald Trump heads to court on another series of federal charges.

Mike Pence is going to the mat.

Still a top contender but languishing in the polls, Pence in recent days has begun to lodge sharper criticisms at the former president for his role in the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, creating space between himself and fellow candidates who see any criticism of Trump as a third rail with voters who still see him as the de facto leader of the GOP.

After Trump's receipt of four criminal counts Tuesday in the Department of Justice's investigation into the former president's role in the riots, Pence—who was previously reluctant to attack his former president—held nothing back, saying Trump's indictment and his insistence on Pence to reject the result of the vote in 2020 was the result of his willingness to blindly follow the advice of a series of "crackpot lawyers."

"I don't know if the government can meet the standard of proof, the burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt, for criminal charges," Pence told Fox News' Martha McCallum in a Wednesday interview. "But the American people deserve to know that president trump and his advisors didn't ask me to 'pause.' They asked me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election. To keep faith with the oath that I made to the American people and almighty god, I rejected that out of hand, and I did my duty that day."

Newsweek has emailed Pence's campaign via email for comment.

The response ignited a firestorm in the GOP. While some portrayed Pence's attack as a necessary move to attack a vulnerable frontrunner in Trump, others saw it as a betrayal of the Republican position that Trump's false belief the election was stolen was not a criminal issue, but a free speech issue, and nowhere near meriting criminal charges.

"Donald Trump bears some responsibility for this, but Trump didn't storm the Capitol," former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, a leading presidential candidate, said in a Thursday morning interview on a New Hampshire radio station. "It is not a crime to say you thought you won the election."

On his 'War Room' podcast, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon—along with Trump fundraiser Caroline Wren—speculated Pence's attack on the former president potentially doomed him with Republican voters, with Wren speculating the decision to criticize Trump was not to improve his standing in the polls, but to secure his future outside of public life.

"I'd be surprised if Mike Pence was elected to his condo board association some day," Wren claimed.

Even then, Pence's words, some noted, still fell short of a full-throated attack on the former president.

While saying he believed Pence's actions on Jan. 6 were correct, the vice president's former chief of staff, Marc Short, noted in a CNN interview Wednesday afternoon that Pence had stopped short of claiming Trump's actions that day were criminal.

Pence's preference, he said, was for the American people to pass judgment on Trump, as opposed to a "criminal system many on the right feel is partisan, and has a two-tiered system of justice." Pence, Short said, was simply being honest to voters about what happened that day, and was encouraging voters to consider that at the ballot box.

"He's been very clear these charges are real," Short said. "And the reality is that Trump did ask his vice president to put Donald Trump above his vice president's oath to the constitution."

The reality for Pence, however, is that most voters don't care—or even believe—Trump did anything wrong that day. According to a New York Times/Siena College poll of more than 1,300 registered voters nationwide released this week, fewer than one-in-five voters believed Trump had committed any serious federal crimes at all, notwithstanding his actions on Jan. 6.

Pence himself, meanwhile, has struggled to convince Republican voters he's the best option to lead the party into a contentious election against incumbent president Joe Biden. According to that same poll, Pence currently holds the support of just 3 percent of likely voters among all candidates in the Republican field.

His best-performing demographic, according to the poll? Voters with a "very unfavorable" opinion of Trump, of which Pence drew 10 percent.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, meanwhile, drew 16 percent of that group.