Mike Pence - So Help Me God

So Help Me God

Mike Pence

Simon & Schuster

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Copyright 2022 by Hoosier Heartland LLC

Endpapers courtesy of the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites

Photo inserts: Unless otherwise credited, all photos courtesy of the author

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition November 2022

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-9821-9033-0

ISBN 978-1-9821-9035-4 (ebook)

For the love of my life, Karen

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Jeremiah 29:11

January 6, 2021, United States Capitol, Washington, DC

Shortly after 2:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

I had always been loyal to President Donald Trump. He was my president, and he was my friend. Over the past four years we had forged a close working relationship, spending hours together nearly every day in the Oval Office. In those times when we had disagreements, I had always shared my opinion in private. But today things had to be different.

For my first loyalty was to the Constitution of the United States. I had taken an oath here at the Capitol nearly four years ago to support and defend the Constitution, which ended with a prayer, so help me God. This morning, I told the president one final time that I believed my oath required me to preside over this joint session of Congress and certify the results of the 2020 presidential electionthe election we had lost. It had been a difficult conversation.

And now here I was, sitting quietly at the head of the Senate Chamber, with all one hundred of Americas senators seated at their desks. We had come to open and count the electoral votes submitted by the states. We had convened as a joint session in the House Chamber earlier that afternoon but had quickly adjourned to the Senate Chamber to hear the debate over objections raised under the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

Republican senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, easily recognizable by his red hair and white temples, had the floor. As he spoke solemnly about vote counts, the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, seated just a few feet in front of me, leaned back in her chair and whispered through her face mask, Mr. Vice President, protestors have breached the buildings doors on the first floor. Just informing you.

I glanced across the room where we were gathered. The rich blue carpet covering the floor, the ivory plaster ceiling overhead, the rows of historic mahogany desks arranged neatly in a semicircle. A number of those same desks were replacements for ones burned by the British during their invasion of Washington, DC, in 1814.

This is democracys sacred groundnot because of its occupants, current or past, but because whenever the American people demanded that we live up to the ideals of the Constitution, whenever we set out to accomplish the seemingly impossible, it ultimately happened here, under this dome.

From here we sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their journey west. Here we ended slavery. From here we launched the United States into victories for freedom in two world wars. Here we fostered the worlds largest economy and mustered a national defense that has been the greatest force for good the world has ever known.

For two centuries, it was here that the peoples will was honored, that their choice of one fellow citizen to temporarily lead the American government was formally accepted. I was here on January 6 because, for the fifty-ninth time in our nations history, we would certify the election of the president of the United States.

As Lankfords speech headed toward its conclusion, I could see his colleagues anxiously glancing at their cell phones. Max Millian, one of the men on my Secret Service detail, walked onto the Senate floor and straight to my chair. Mr. Vice President, he said, we gotta go.

He told me that protestors were on the move in the Capitol, that we needed to leave the building. I was confident that the US Capitol Police would soon have the situation in hand, so I told him we would just wait in the ceremonial office reserved for my use as president of the Senate.

Since the 1850s, the small, elegantly appointed space a few steps from the Senate Chamber has served as an office of sorts for the vice president. The room is full of history: One vice president, Henry Wilson, died here after suffering a stroke. Another, Harry Truman, became president here. The womens suffrage movement ended triumphantly in this same room when another Hoosier second-in-command, Thomas Marshall, signed the Nineteenth Amendment into law.

The only addition I had made to the decor during my time as vice president was a quiet Hoosier autumn landscape by T. C. Steele titled Road Through the Woods. No artist better captured the calm beauty of southern Indiana, a place that had brought our family great comfort through the years.

My senior staff was waiting in the office. My wife, Karen, and daughter Charlotte joined us shortly after. Family has always been among my greatest sources of strength, and it would prove so in that moment. Along with my brother Gregory, an Indiana congressman, we stood together in that cramped room and watched the mayhem unfolding inside and around the Capitol on a small television set.

Soon my lead Secret Service agent, Timothy Giebels, walked through the doors of the office and said, Sir, weve got to get you out of the building. A large, confident man, Tim informed me that protestors who had smashed their way into the House side of the Capitol were now heading for the Senate Chamber. They had come to protest the result of the election and to prevent Congress from fulfilling its responsibility to open and count the Electoral College votes. And, as I later learned, many had come looking for me.

I have often told our three children that the safest place in the world to be is in the center of Gods will. I knew in my heart that we were where we were supposed to be, doing what we were supposed to be doing. I felt resolve and a peace informed by my upbringing in Indiana, my faith, my family, a lifetime of service, and a lifelong love of the Constitution. I felt no fear. I told my detail that we would hold there until the Capitol was secured. I was not leaving my post.