Vice-President Pence denies cabinet discussed invoking 25th Amendment to remove Trump
An anonymous New York Times op-ed by an alleged White House insider, claims of discussions of a never-invoked amendment to eject the US president and an explosive new book roil Washington
Vice-President Mike Pence might have the most to gain from a premature end to Donald Trump’s presidency, but in an interview aired on Sunday, he forcefully denied engaging in any discussion about invoking the 25th Amendment to eject Trump from office.
The vice-president, who made appearances on two major Sunday news-talk shows, also delivered a sweeping condemnation of Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s depiction of a capricious and incurious president, and again denied authorship of a stinging anonymous op-ed published last week in The New York Times that describes high-level officials discussing removing Trump.
Pence said he was willing to take a lie-detector test to back up his denial of personal authorship of the critique, but said he had not asked his staff whether any of them had penned the anonymous critique because he fully trusted none had done so.
Trump has vowed to root out the op-ed writer, described by The New York Times as a senior administration official whose identity the paper knows. The president has urged the Justice Department to ferret out the official’s identity, prompting a new wave of criticism over Trump’s seeming belief that he may utilise federal law enforcement as an instrument of political reward and retribution.
A never-invoked section of the 25th Amendment provides for a sitting president’s removal if the vice-president and a majority of Cabinet secretaries pronounce him or her unfit to discharge the duties of office. The anonymous op-ed describes cabinet-level officials talking about the possibility – discussions that would conceivably have been brought to Pence’s attention, since he would be both a prime mover and beneficiary of any such scenario.