Florida Republican Says Mike Pence’s Life ‘Wasn’t Really In Peril’ During Jan. 6 Riot

A Republican lawmaker claimed Thursday that Mike Pence’s life “wasn’t really in peril” on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of angry Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and chanted about hanging Trump’s vice president.

In a newly unsealed court filing, special counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump’s federal election interference case, revealed the former president appeared indifferent when his aides informed him that Pence had to be evacuated from the Senate after Trump had sent out a tweet accusing his No. 2 of lacking the “courage” to block the certification of the electoral votes from the 2020 election.

“So what?” Trump had asked upon hearing the news, according to Smith.

Still, the anecdote was not enough to convince Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), who spoke on CNN’s “Inside Politics” on Thursday, that Trump had really put Pence’s life in danger.

“I don’t think that that should be categorized as anything other than hyperbole,” Mast said, according to a clip of the interview shared by Mediaite.

Mast, one of the 147 Republicans who refused to certify the election result after the Jan. 6 riot, would not relent even when CNN’s Manu Raju reminded him that some of Trump’s supporters chanting to “hang Mike Pence” on Jan. 6 came within striking distance of the former vice president before he was evacuated.

“His life wasn’t really in peril,” Mast said. “He was protected by Secret Service. That is a fact.”

Smith’s court filing lays out Trump’s repeated efforts to convince Pence to carry out his scheme to overturn the 2020 election result. Pence, though, refused to go along with his plan, earning Trump’s wrath.

The now-defunct House select committee tasked with investigating the insurrection revealed that members of Pence’s security detail were so worried about the violence on Jan. 6 that they made calls over the radio to say goodbye to their loved ones.

“The VP detail thought that this was going to get very ugly,” a former White House national security official told the committee in testimony.