Pompeo and Mnuchin Considered Invoking the 25th Amendment on Evening of January 6th

It seems that every day we get a new revelation from Jonathan Karl’s new book Betrayal concerning the last months of the Trump administration and the especially dangerous period between December 15th and January 6th. Today is no different.

The latest leak reveals that an evening conversation between Mnuchin and Pompeo on January 6th specifically contemplated invoking the 25th Amendment. According to Karl, ultimately, mass resignations within the cabinet began before it could gather to consider replacing Trump by way of the 25th Amendment and the entire endeavor never obtained the needed momentum.

More interestingly, is that in confirming the story, both Mnuchin and Pompeo continue to fear Trump to the point it was difficult for Karl to get confirmation. As Mediaite states:

Karl noted that Mnuchin and Pompeo repeatedly refused to comment on the subject, until the ABC News correspondent interviewed Trump one last time just ahead of the book’s publication and relayed his reporting to the president. Hours later, Karl received a phone call from a Pompeo spokesperson who denied the reporting. Yet this spokesperson refused to even be quoted by name, according to the ABC News correspondent.

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“It was a lie, they knew it was a lie,” Karl said. “And Mnuchin hasn’t denied anything, but Pompeo denied simply because he got a call from Mar-a-Lago.”

The difficulty in getting the story confirmed perfectly demonstrates the fascinating and yet horrific Trump dynamic, in which one can be certain that he has gone too far, even for him (as he has on a number of occasions, and certainly on January 6th) to the point where people are ready to publicly turn on him, only to later find that somehow, Trump has rehabilitated him such that it is once again dangerous to cross him and one faces denials about the undeniable – a phone call regarding the 25th Amendment.

That dynamic is why Trump’s would-be foes are so fearful of fully engaging him. Trump has a feral survival instinct that seems to allow him to keep his power to hold his base and ruin people. Nowhere is it better demonstrated than the difficulty in simply trying to confirm whether the 25th Amendment was discussed on the night of January 6th.

Jason Miciak

@JasonMiciak believes a day without learning is a day not lived. He is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is a Canadian-born dual citizen who spent his teen and college years in the Pacific Northwest and has since lived in seven states. He now enjoys life as a single dad of a young girl, writing from the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He loves crafting his flower pots, cooking, and currently studies philosophy of science, religion, and non-math principles behind quantum mechanics and cosmology. Please feel free to contact with any concerns.