Five True Things About Mike Pence

Image courtesy The Atlantic, "God's Plan for Mike Pence"

by Gaius Publius

In the wake of ultra-right bombings and shootings, with the Mueller investigation in mind and thoughts of the 2020 election close at hand, it seems appropriate to look at Vice President Mike Pence. He could be made president before 2020, and if so, he may be president afterward as well.

So let's consider this set of five true things about Mike Pence.

1. Mike Pence Is the Most Powerful Christian Supremacist in U.S. History

In 2016, just after the November election, Jeremy Scahill wrote this about the soon-to-be vice-president:

Pence’s ascent to the second most powerful position in the U.S. government is a tremendous coup for the radical religious right. Pence — and his fellow Christian supremacist militants — would not have been able to win the White House on their own. For them, Donald Trump was a godsend. “This may not be our preferred candidate, but that doesn’t mean it may not be God’s candidate to do something that we don’t see,” said David Barton, a prominent Christian-right activist and president of Wall Builders, an organization dedicated to making the U.S. government enforce “biblical values.” In June, Barton prophesied: “We may look back in a few years and say, ‘Wow, [Trump] really did some things that none of us expected.’”

Trump is a Trojan horse for a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist Christian theocracy, and Pence is one of its most prized warriors. With Republican control of the House and Senate and the prospect of dramatically and decisively tilting the balance of the Supreme Court to the far right, the incoming administration will have a real shot at bringing the fire and brimstone of the second coming to Washington.

“The enemy, to them, is secularism. They want a God-led government. That’s the only legitimate government,” contends Jeff Sharlet, author of two books on the radical religious right, including “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.” “So when they speak of business, they’re speaking not of something separate from God, but they’re speaking of what, in Mike Pence’s circles, would be called biblical capitalism, the idea that this economic system is God-ordained.”

This is extreme as it gets in the world of Christian dominionism. "They want a God-led government" — their god that is, an Old Testament god who terrorizes enemies, punishes unsanctioned sex and permanently assigns to women a status less than human. If you were to equate this god's dogma with Sharia law, you'd not be wrong.

Interestingly, one of the most prominent voices for dominionism, R.J. Rushdoony, was also a fan of Ludwig von Mises and his extreme form of economic libertarianism, a belief that put Rushdoony in the same economic camp as Charles Koch. Expect a President Pence to follow in those footsteps as well — religious restriction for you, extreme economic freedom for him and his friends.

2. Mike Pence Is Anti-Science

In 2002 Mike Pence said on the floor of the House (h/t Mike Stone at Progressive Secular Humanist):

I would simply and humbly ask, can we teach it as such and can we also consider teaching other theories of the origin of species? Like the theory that was believed in by every signer of the Declaration of Independence. Every signer of the Declaration of Independence believed that men and women were created and were endowed by that same Creator with certain unalienable rights. The Bible tells us that God created man in his own image, male and female he created them. And I believe that, Mr. Speaker. ...

I believe that God created the known universe, the earth and everything in it, including man. And I also believe that someday scientists will come to see that only the theory of intelligent design provides even a remotely rational explanation for the known universe. ...

I just would humbly ask that, as new theories of evolution find their ways into the newspapers and into the textbooks, let us demand that educators around America teach evolution, not as fact, but as theory [among competing explanations]. ... But let's also bring into the minds of all of our children all of the theories about the unknowable, [so] that some bright day in the future, through science and perhaps through faith, we will find the truth of from whence we come. [bolding mine]

It's easy to imagine a Mike Pence Education Department mandating this teaching to the extent it can, and a Supreme Court dominated by "five Antonin Scalias" — Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh — upholding him.

3. Mike Pence Is Virulently Homophobic

Pence is not only anti-woman, he's rabidly anti-gay, so much so that others suspect he has "those urges" himself. So far those suspicions have proved groundless, but there's no doubting the virulence of his homophobia.

Just one example (h/t Mike Gallagher at LGBTQ Nation): As Governor Mike Pence signed a bill to jail same-sex couples who apply for a marriage license. "To prove that he wasn’t singling gay people out, Pence was also willing to jail marriage clerks who supplied a license or clergy who performed the wedding."

4. Mike Pence Could Well Be Guilty of Obstruction of Justice in the Comey Firing

From Jed Shugerman at Law and Crime in 2017 (emphasis added):

On Friday, news broke that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had obtained a draft letter written by President Trump and advisor Stephen Miller explaining Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director Jim Comey. They wrote the letter over the weekend of May 5-7, and then on May 8th, Trump distributed and read the letter to senior officials, including White House Counsel Don McGahn and Vice President Mike Pence. Then the letter was edited, and Trump fired Comey the next day.  On Friday, I suggested on Lawrence O’Donnell’s “The Last Word” on MSNBC that the most significant development was Pence’s potential criminal liability for his role in obstruction of justice (and I emphasize “potential,” because all we have at this stage are allegations in media reports and a lot more questions about the contents of the letter and Pence’s role in revising or editing it).

I have explained in other posts why Trump’s firing of Comey constitutes obstruction of justice under 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2), and arguably Sections 1503 and 1505. “(c)Whoever corruptly- (2)… obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.” 18 USC 1515 defines “official proceeding,” and includes Congress and authorized government agencies. The 2d and 5th Circuits have held that an FBI investigation is an official proceeding (but a 9th Circuit case raises questions about that interpretation). But keep in mind that 1) Congress had already started its investigation (including having Comey testify about the Russia probe), and 2) prosecutors had already obtained grand jury subpoenas in the Flynn case. These official proceedings had already begun, particularly in the Flynn investigation, which had been the focus of Trump’s questions to Comey in January through April. Firing Comey would impede those official proceedings, and Trump himself more or less confessed to trying to influence and impede the Russia investigation by firing Comey: first on national TV to NBC’s Lester Holt, then in the Oval Office to Kislyak and Lavrov on an official transcript.

In this new post, I explain Vice President Pence’s potential criminal jeopardy for conspiring to obstruct justice, aiding the obstruction of justice, and “misprision of a felony” in concealing the obstruction of justice. ...

This should put him squarely in Robert Mueller's crosshairs. But the point may be moot, because...

5. Robert Mueller Appears to Be Protecting Mike Pence

I've always seen Robert Mueller as a political actor, a Republican political actor, the greatest evidence of which is his apparently deliberate mishandling, as head of the FBI, of the Bush era anthrax attack investigation, about which Marcy Wheeler has written a great deal.

As I read the evidence, the motive for sabotaging the investigation appears to be that it was veering in the wrong direction, beginning to point to domestic terrorists on the right. Evidence of domestic terrorism was not countenanced under President Bush, and Mueller was, among other things, a "loyal Bushie." The only other explanation for this obviously bungled investigation is incompetence, and I think Mueller is perfectly competent at what he considers his job. The question was, what did he consider the more important aspect of his job, finding the truth or supporting the Bush-Cheney agenda? (I may write more on the anthrax attack later, pulling all that evidence together, but it's too much to go into here.)

So I don't believe Robert Mueller's mission in the Trump-Russia investigation is to "find the truth." I think his mission is to "find enough truth to get rid of Donald Trump," and in that mission he's supported by the whole of the Democratic Party, the centrist media establishment, the national security establishment, and any elements of the Republican Party establishment not dependent on Trump supporters for power.

It's beyond obvious that anyone looking for crimes by Donald Trump will find them. He's been soaking in criminality his entire career. Mueller is very likely finding enough financial crime to blackmail Trump from office should he want to take that route.

As you read above, Mike Pence looks very much a part of that criminality by his behavior during the James Comey firing. So why isn't Pence being investigated by Robert Mueller along with the myriad others whose lives Mueller has pulled open?

From Allegra Kirkland at Talking Points Memo:

‘A Bit Of A Mystery’: Why Is Mueller Keeping His Distance From Pence?

...Pence was absent from many of the key incidents Mueller is reportedly investigating as part of his sprawling probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. But he was intimately involved with several, including the firing of former FBI director James Comey, and the subsequent efforts to settle on a rationale for that firing, which appear to be at the center of the Mueller investigation.

So it’s puzzling that Mueller appears to have made no attempt to talk to the administration’s second-highest-ranking official. Pence’s lawyer met with Mueller last year to offer Pence’s full cooperation.

“It’s a bit of a mystery to me that Pence’s name hasn’t really surfaced at all,” Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor who worked closely with Mueller in the Justice Department’s criminal division, told TPM. “There are things that Pence seems to be relevant to. So I’m surprised.”

Pence’s lawyer, Richard Cullen, declined to comment to TPM on the record, while the special counsel’s office declined comment. Pence press secretary Alyssa Farah did not respond to TPM’s request for comment, but in December [2017] forcefully denied to CNN that Pence’s office was preparing for a meeting with Mueller.

As of mid-January [2018], NBC reported that the special counsel had made no overtures to Pence about an interview.

Just a few things you should know as you wait the outcome of the Mueller-Trump cage match. The Koch-funded radical right accomplished one of its most-cherished goals when Brett Kavanaugh replaced Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. It now has "five Scalias" on the bench, and radical rule from the judicial branch is assured for the next generation, if not far longer.

An emotionally stable, ideologically reliable, radical rightwing president is the next goal. Meet Mike Pence.

GP