Former Vice President Mike Pence called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to release additional information connected to the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago while also castigating some Republicans for criticisms of rank-and-file FBI agents.
“The Republican Party is the party of law and order,” Pence told a couple of hundred people gathered at the St. Anselm College Institute of Politics for a Politics & Eggs breakfast Wednesday. “Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.”
He also said Garland should release more information about the Mar-a-Lago raid, but was not specific about what. Garland has so far refused to release an affidavit used to justify the search warrant.
“This unprecedented action demands unprecedented transparency,” said Pence, a former congressman and governor of Indiana.
The appearance was the second for Pence at the Politics & Eggs event, which offers a high-profile stage for potential presidential contenders. The last time he appeared before the crowd, which slants toward business leaders and political operatives, was in 2019, when he was campaigning for the re-election of Donald Trump.
Pence has since had to walk a fine line of being the proud vice president to Trump while also refusing demands to reject electoral votes while presiding over Congress on Jan. 6.
“The Bible says ‘he keeps his oath even when it hurts,’ and I have some experience with that,” he said.
Pence would not commit to testifying before the select House committee looking into the Jan. 6 breach.
He said he would consider it, but also said it would be unprecedented for a vice president to do so.
The New England Council sponsors the popular breakfast meetings. Pence’s 29-minute speech was interrupted with polite applause about a half-dozen times, mostly when he mentioned political-oriented goals such as sending a Republican senator to Washington, D.C., to replace Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan and winning Republican control of Congress.
“He comes across very believable, very convicted in his beliefs. I definitely think he’s going to be a viable candidate,” said Joseph Bator, TD Bank regional vice president.
He said Pence connects with his audience in a disarming way, but he acknowledged that Pence walks a fine line between taking credit for achievements of the Trump/Pence administration while also acknowledging differences.
Pence touted energy independence, economic and job growth, jumps in military spending, and the appointment of three conservative judges to the U.S. Supreme Court and their recent decision to put Roe v. Wade on the ash heap of history.
“It’s fairly well known that President Trump and I have had our differences,” he said when discussing the Mar-a-Lago raid.
He called Jan. 6 a tragic day in the history of the country. It angered him, he said. But he said the violence was quelled and the day ended as a triumph of freedom.
“On the very same day … the American people and the world witnessed the elected representatives of this country reconvene and see to the orderly transition of power under the Constitution of the United States,” Pence said.
This is Pence’s fourth visit to the Granite State in a little more than a year’s time.
Manchester resident Nathan Shrader, a recently hired professor of political science at New England College, said Pence tried to separate himself from Trump but only slightly.
“He didn’t want to move too far away from Donald Trump,” Shrader said. He is clearly identifying himself as a partner in the Trump agenda, he said.
But that message would be difficult if Trump enters the Republican primary, which Shrader said he expects will happen.
“The branding is the same,” Shrader said.
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