Former Vice President Mike Pence’s 2024 GOP presidential campaign has gone from bad to worse, according to the most recent federal election filings.
According to data seen by NBC News, Pence’s campaign debt is rising sharply in the third quarter after raising $3.3 million during the period. The campaign currently has $1.2 million in cash on hand, with $620,000 in debt, according to campaign finance data made public on Sunday. Also, NBC said that Pence has contributed $150,000 of his personal funds to his campaign, officials added.
NBC News notes further: “Pence’s numbers reveal a campaign under serious strain, operating on completely different financial terrain from that of his rivals, and they raise questions about his ability to continue to compete in the GOP primaries. Racking up debt, in particular, has long been a sign of presidential campaigns in trouble — and potentially on the verge of ending. The last GOP presidential primary season offers an ominous parallel from this moment eight years ago: Then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign reported just under $1 million in the bank and $161,000 in debt at the end of the third quarter of 2015, the equivalent moment in that election cycle. That’s when he dropped out of the race.”
The outlet went on to report that the following campaign finance report after Walker suspended his 2016 bid showed that, during the final three months of 2015, his campaign racked up $1.2 million in debt, which took him a full year to raise the money so he could retire it.
Pence’s campaign finance figures also do not stack up against his GOP rivals. For instance, former UN ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s campaign closed out the third quarter with $9.1 million in cash, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign announced it has $5 million in the bank. And while Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) has been blowing through cash, he also entered the race “with a well-stocked federal campaign account built up over years in the Senate,” NBC News noted.
“Former President Donald Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, said it had nearly $36 million available to spend on the 2024 primaries,” the outlet reported. “All of those figures are based on campaign announcements and cannot be independently verified until the campaigns file reports with the Federal Election Commission,” which were due by the end of Sunday.
Meanwhile, in the days leading up to the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, then-Vice President Pence made “contemporaneous notes” of conversations he had with then-President Trump, notes that were revealed in August in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of the former president.
Trump is accused of four federal crimes related to his actions following the 2020 presidential election, as well as unsubstantiated claims that the election was rigged. Pence’s previously unreported notes are used as evidence against Trump, who has been accused of conspiring to defraud the United States, obstructing an official investigation, attempting to obstruct an investigation, and conspiring against rights.
“As the January 6 congressional certification proceeding approached and other efforts to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function failed, [Trump] sought to enlist the Vice President to use his ceremonial role at the certification to fraudulently alter the election results,” the 45-page indictment alleges.
“The Defendant did this first by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to convince the Vice President to accept the Defendant’s fraudulent electors, reject legitimate electoral votes, or send legitimate electoral votes to state legislatures for review rather than count them. When that failed, the Defendant attempted to use a crowd of supporters that he had gathered in Washington, D.C., to pressure the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results,” the indictment added.
Fox News added:
The indictment cites several phone calls between Trump and Pence in late December and early January in which Trump allegedly made “knowingly false” claims about the election and pressured his vice president to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. Pence recounted some of these conversations in his memoir, “So Help Me God.”
According to Smith, Pence called Trump on Dec. 25, 2020, to wish him a Merry Christmas but Trump “quickly turned the conversation to January 6 and his request that the Vice President reject electoral votes that day.” Pence pushed back, asserting that he lacked the authority to change the election outcome.
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