New ‘Anonymous’ Book Claims Mike Pence Would Have Backed Donald Trump Removal Due To ‘Mental Incapacity’
A new book claiming to be written by a “senior Trump administration official” identified only as “Anonymous” makes the shocking claim that top Donald Trump aides once seriously considered invoking the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution to remove the president from office. But in a perhaps even more unbelievable claim, Anonymous writes that the aides believed Vice President Mike Pence was “certain” to support removing Trump due to “mental incapacity,” according to details from the upcoming book published by HuffPost on Wednesday evening.
The book, titled A Warning, is set to be published on November 19. The author is said to be the same “Anonymous” who penned a New York Times op-ed in September 2018. That essay was titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.”
In the essay, the author claimed to be a high-ranking Trump administration official who was secretly working against the president from within. The alleged official claimed that other top Trump aides also believed that his presidency was “detrimental to the health of our republic,” and were working to thwart his policies behind the scenes.
The 25th Amendment, which was ratified following the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, allows a majority of the cabinet to report to the president pro tempore of the Senate — as well as the speaker of the House — that they believe the president is mentally or physically unfit to perform the duties of his office.
Once the “unfit” declaration is made in writing, the vice president assumes the office of president.
Pence has never expressed public differences with Trump, and HuffPost reporter Yashar Ali said that he did not confirm with the vice president whether he would have supported using the 25th amendment to push Trump out of office.
According to Ali, posting on his Twitter account, “discussions about the 25th Amendment came about when [special counsel] Bob Mueller was appointed by [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein and Trump was behaving erratically.”
Rosenstein appointed Mueller on May 17, 2017, eight days after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who was then leading an investigation into possible collusion between the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government. Mueller took over the investigation from the FBI following Comey’s firing.
In February of this year, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe claimed that officials in the Justice Department had contemplated how to remove Trump using the 25th Amendment shortly after Comey’s firing. But according to Time, Pence called the claim “absurd.”
“I’ve never heard any discussion of the 25th amendment by any members of this government and I would never expect to,” Pence said at the time, as quoted by Time.com.
