Is Mike Pence going to be the reason Donald Trump goes to jail?

When it came to Donald Trump, Mike Pence was the personification of obsequiousness. Knowing his future as governor of Indiana was imperiled by his anti-LGBTQ+ fervor, Pence actively campaigned for the VP spot on Trump’s ticket by stoking Trump’s ego. When Pence met with Trump on a golf course as a potential nominee, the governor lost (of course).

“He beat me like a drum,” Pence boasted. He knew how to get the job. And Pence kept sucking up to Trump throughout the campaign, giving Trump much-needed credibility with conservative evangelicals.

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Wearing a Trump/Pence sticker and brown face paint, the woman shouted about how LGBTQ+ people “took our flag forever.”

In office, Pence backed Trump up no matter what. When Trump talked about “very fine people” at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Pence talked about the “unity” we were seeing under Trump’s leadership.

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So it is incredibly ironic that Trump finds himself in his greatest legal jeopardy from the man who sacrificed his dignity and his career in service of Trump. The charges against Trump depend heavily upon Pence’s contemporaneous notes of what Trump was telling him to do. They also show just how much Pence cooperated with special prosecutor Jack Smith.

Pence’s refusal to follow Trump’s demand not to certify the election results on January 6, 2021 dealt the crippling blow to Trump’s scheme to overturn the election. Not even the insurrection that day, during which rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” changed the vice president’s mind.

Pence’s loyalty to the Constitution cost him dearly. His current presidential campaign is a pathetic shadow of what you’d expect for a former vice president. He is a dead man walking in today’s MAGA-led GOP.

Yet other than that moment of standing up to Trump, Pence has been weirdly deferential to the man who stood by while his followers were trying to hunt Pence down. For example, Pence has called Trump’s indictment on withholding classified documents political, although he wouldn’t defend Trump. It is only on the issue of the election results that Pence fully parts company with Trump.

The problem with Pence’s view of Trump is that it simply doesn’t comport with reality. Pence would have you believe that everything was fine except for that one moment when Trump asked him to violate the Constitution. That was the red line Pence couldn’t cross. Everything else was okay. The request to challege the vote was the anomaly.

But, of course, that wasn’t an anomaly. It was entirely in character for Trump. He has always been immoral.

He had already been impeached on charges of trying to hold aid to Ukraine hostage in exchange for a bogus investigation into Hunter Biden. He was caught on tape talking about his right to sexually assault women. There have been stories about Trump’s shady, if not downright fraudulent, business practices and questionable tax filings. There was the affair with and payoff to Stormy Daniels.

And through it all, Pence talked glowingly about Trump’s “broad shoulders.” True, Pence was reportedly so upset at the Access Hollywood tape that he considered leaving the ticket, but his ambition got the better of him. But infidelity, lies, corruption, white supremacy – none of that ever gave Pence pause previously.

So it’s a little shocking that Pence somehow found a place to draw the line. Even then, he did his best to avoid doing so, struggling to find a way to placate Trump and his demand that Pence not certify the election results.

Ultimately, Pence turned to former Vice President Dan Quayle, who shut the conversation down. “Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,” Quayle told him. When Pence responded that there was some indication of voter problems in Arizona, Quayle told him, “Mike, I live in Arizona. There’s nothing out here.”

Hardly a profile in courage.

Yet at the same time, Pence was taking notes of his conversations with Trump, and it’s clear they inform the indictment. “You’re too honest,” Trump told Pence when the vice president said he couldn’t stop the certification. There are only two people who could recount that conversation, and you know Trump didn’t offer up that quote.

Pence was in real danger of being assassinated by the angry mob on January 6, but to this day Pence pulls his punches about Trump’s responsibility for endangering his life. Whether it’s out of some misplaced sense of stoicism or a belief that somehow he still has a future as a Republican, Pence can’t bring himself to be absolutely truthful about what he endured.

Instead, Pence chooses to visit the truth from time to time, just enough to maintain a veneer of dignity. He’s been bold enough to say,  “Anyone who asks someone else to put them over their oath to the Constitution should never be president again.” The anyone just happens to remain nameless.

Pence has also said he’d be willing to testify at Trump’s trial. But he adds, “I have no plans to testify.”

Perhaps Pence is embarrassed by the deal he made with Trump. Perhaps he is trying to minimize the damage to his future financial prospects in a GOP dominated by MAGA. Or perhaps Pence is just tired of it all.

Whatever the case, after spending years of enabling all of Trump’s worst impulses, Pence had one moment where he finally found the courage to say no. It was the exception to his relationship with Trump, and it’s going to be the moment that could, in the event of a conviction, bond them together in history forever.