Everyone But Mike Pence Seems To Be Talking About Mike Pence

“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! —tear up the planks! here, here! —It is the beating of his hideous heart!”
— “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe

The heartbeat should be getting louder in the ears of the as-yet-unindicted kingpins of the attempt to hijack the 2020 presidential election. Now, two former aides of former Vice President Mike Pence have testified before a federal grand jury in Washington. This development puts the DOJ investigation solidly into the former administration*’s White House. From CNN:

[Former Pence chief of staff Marc] Short and [aide Greg] Jacob both were present in key meetings in the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection that were part of a pressure campaign to convince Pence to disrupt Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral win. Jacob, a former legal adviser to Pence, has participated in the House January 6 select committee investigation, even testifying publicly at a hearing last month […] Short’s and Jacob’s accounts were among the evidence that a federal judge in California cited in concluding that Trump and his allies may have been planning a crime in their plot to disrupt the transfer of presidential power.

Meanwhile, out in Arizona, the long arm of the law has done its Inspector Gadget thing and laid paper on some of the eager ratfckers out there in the desert. From the Washington Post:

Copies of two subpoenas issued to Republican state senators from Arizona were released Monday via a public-records request, confirming what has been previously reported about the June demands for records related “to the signing or mailing of any document purporting to be a Certificate certifying Elector votes in favor of Donald J. Trump and/or Michael R. Pence.” The subpoenas issued to Karen Fann, president of the Arizona Senate, and Sen. Kelly Townsend also seek communications “relating to any effort, plan, or attempt to serve as an Elector” in favor of the then-president and then-vice president.

The obvious missing link in all of this is Pence himself, who has mysteriously absented himself from a number of opportunities to speak on the subject of why his former boss may have wanted his blood. His closest aides have done everything but draw a map for various investigators, and all that testimony positions Pence as having done his constitutional duty in the face of physical violence.

I would also hasten to add that Pence has less chance of winning the 2024 Republican presidential nomination than I do. His reluctance to testify is mystifying for a number of reasons, least of all because this is the first time in his recorded public history that Pence has refused a chance to put his hands on a Bible.