Trump is selling a book of letters celebrities wrote him. You can get a ...

Former President Donald Trump is releasing a new book that is a compilation of letters from other famous people.

His second book since his presidency, "Letters to Trump" will arrive April 25 and promises 320 pages of more than 150 letters from celebrities and politicians, including Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jackson, Queen Elizabeth II and Richard Nixon.

According to a press release, Trump "hand picked" each letter sent within a 40-year time span and will provide his own commentary for each entry.

"What do presidents, royals, celebrities, and business titans have in common? They all love Donald Trump. Long before entering politics, Donald Trump lived an extraordinary life," founder of Winning Team Publishing Sergio Gor said in a statement. "No book highlights his iconic relationships like 'Letters to Trump,' and we are thrilled to be able to share it with our readers."

Mary Trump’s book:A bizarre White House dinner with Donald Trump and more cringeworthy moments

Trump's first book post-presidency, "Our Journey Together," was a 320-page photo book released December 2021 and included his commentary alongside pictures taken of him during his time in the White House.

Winning Team Publishing is a conservative publishing house founded in 2021 by Gor and Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr.

"Letters" is priced at $99 with an option for readers to pay $399 for a signed copy.

Other books Winning Team has published include Donald Trump Jr.'s "Liberal Privilege" and Charlie Kirk's "The College Scam."

Trump has put his hat in the 2024 presidential race and remains the Republican front-runner, despite the prospect of indictments.

'I won't even think about leaving':Trump at CPAC says indictment wouldn't push him out of 2024 race

During his visit to this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump made clear he would stay in the 2024 race even if prosecutors in Atlanta and/or Washington, D.C., bring charges against him over efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss.

"I won’t even think about leaving,” Trump told reporters before a CPAC speech.

Contributing: David Jackson

Donald Trump quietly making millions from coffee table book | CNN ...

CNN —

A few months ago, former President Donald Trump signed a book deal.

There wasn’t the huge fanfare most former presidents receive when they ink deals for a memoir; news of the book, a coffee table tome with pictures detailing Trump’s presidency – retailing about $75 and $230 if signed – made barely a blip in the media. But the deal, which CNN can confirm included a multimillion dollar advance for Trump, has quickly and significantly plumped the pockets of the former President.

Sales of the book, “Our Journey Together,” grossed $20 million in less than two months since it went on sale in late November, two people familiar with the publishing of the book told CNN. Part of the book’s popularity among Trump’s base is the captions, all of which he wrote himself, and most of which feature unbridled hot takes on his political enemies.

“We did an initial print run of 200,000 copies,” said Sergio Gor, a longtime Republican operative who founded Winning Team Publishing to publish the book last fall. Gor’s partner in the company is Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s oldest son. To date, this is the only book they have published, but Gor says he has signed two more conservative authors, whom he declined to name.

The idea behind “Our Journey Together” was simple: Trump’s fan base was hungry for more of the signature firebrand former President. So, give them what they want, said Gor. In less than two days on sale, via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and 45books.com, operated by Winning Team Publishing, the autographed copies of the book were selling into the thousands. Unsigned copies were selling quickly as well.

Trump's coffee table book is called "Our Journey Together." Winning Team Publishing

“We still can’t keep up with the customers,” said Gor, who says they are now out of books and have issued requests for 300,000 more copies to be printed in three locations in the United States. Those printings are in the works, but people ordering “Our Journey Together” now likely won’t see copies arrive until late February or early March, said Gor. A current search for available books on the internet turns up nothing, save for copies being peddled by third parties. A signed copy on Amazon being sold as a “collectible” is listed at $1,749. Other signed copies on the auction website eBay range between $950 and $1,300.

Swear words and memories

While hardly a traditional memoir, “Our Journey Together,” is, as Gor said, “pure Trump.” The revelations Trump extends in the book are not deep analysis of his time in the White House, but rather his unedited interpretations of events or people, with zero in the way of different perspectives or the opportunity for comment from his hit parade of targets.

Without a Twitter feed (Trump remains banned by the social media platform), the former President seems to be using the coffee table book to extend his post-White House kiss-offs. Next to or below each of the 300 or so photographs is a Trump-authored caption, some even written in his tell-tale handwriting – a thick, black scrawl of marker, mostly uppercase but with dotted lowercase i’s and lots of exclamation points.

“Attempting to listen to crazy Nancy Pelosi in the Oval Office – such natural disagreement,” writes Trump next to one photo. For another image of the House speaker, Trump drops a hand-scrawled, semi f-bomb: “She was screaming and shaking like a leaf, she’s f***ing crazy, hence the name ‘Crazy Nancy.’”

The book includes captions written by Trump, including this one about his meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Winning Team Publishing

Adjacent to a picture of the late GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of his noted adversaries, Trump notes, “Asking for a job for his wife and I am smiling but I didn’t like him even a little bit.”

Not all in Trump’s crosshairs are political. Of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Trump writes, “Mark Zuckerberg would come to the White House and kiss my ass. His censorship is terrible for America. His ‘campaign contributions’ even worse.”

Some photos are of Cabinet members Trump appointed himself, like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. “General Mark Milley looks like he’s praying, and ‘Yesper’ (who said ‘yes’ to everything,) doesn’t know if he’s alive,” Trump wrote.

“I’ve never seen a presidential book that’s really a hatchet job of other people,” said John Reznikoff, founder of University Archives, who has dealt with the buying and selling of hundreds of presidential collectibles over his more than four decades in the auction business. After learning of the book’s popularity among collectors late last fall, Reznikoff said he purchased several copies of “Our Journey Together,” as he has with every other presidential memoir or book.

‘The closest thing to printing money’

The reason a presidential book can range into the high hundreds and thousands of dollars is the autograph.

Reznikoff said books, especially those that are signed, will undoubtedly increase in value exponentially over time. He pointed to former President Barack Obama’s 2020 presidential memoir, “A Promised Land,” signed copies of which are selling on auction sites for around $600. “It’s hard to find a presidential signature at all on anything that goes for less than $100,” said Reznikoff.

He said if Trump is a fast signer, using a bookplate of his signature – a common practice for authors that Gor confirmed Trump did – then he could get through several hundred books a day. “It’s the closest thing to printing money I can come up with,” said Reznikoff of the lucrativeness of Trump’s signature.

Trump’s fan base is big into merchandise, and Trump himself has used his name on everything from steaks and bottled water to ties, perfume, alcohol and mattresses. “Sometimes a book with a signature can become de-valued if that signature is easy to find,” said Reznikoff, who cited the ubiquity of books from former President Jimmy Carter, who wrote more than 20.

Another photo from the book shows Ivanka Trump, the former President's daughter who also served as an adviser. Winning Team Publishing

But for Trump, who has never had a high bar for what, when and why he signs his name to something, a coffee table book with fiery captions tracks with the size of the lift the former President was willing to undertake. Whereas most presidential memoirs would devote a chapter or two to describing a meeting with a world leader, Trump doles out the experience in a few sentences.

“Boris is one of a kind!” Trump wrote in a caption with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, letting the big color pictures tell the story. A cerebral diagnosis of the moment – a picture of the two men greeting each other at a global summit – and its effect on modern history it is not.

The photos in the book are images taken during his presidency, culled from several hundred thousand, said Gor. About 90% of the images were taken by official White House photographers, which are archived and considered public domain, as they were taken on behalf of the government to document Trump’s tenure. Trump’s chief official White House photographer, Shealah Craighead, shot most of the book’s images. A person with knowledge of Craighead’s interest in striking a deal in recent months to create her own book of Trump images – similar to the one Obama’s former chief official photographer Pete Souza published – said Craighead’s idea couldn’t find traction via traditional publishers.

“The appetite for Trump-related books these days is pretty low,” said the person, who has worked with several politically connected authors. “The market has been saturated.” Still, the person noted it’s not a surprise Trump fans would be drawn to this book, which is basically Trump personified in glossy, oversized photos.

It’s a sentiment echoed by Gor, whose impetus was to start a conservative publishing house solely to sign the former President and capitalize off of his base – then add other Trump-friendly authors in time. “(Trump) wants to do another book after seeing the success of this one,” said Gor, who added that Trump spent several evenings at Mar-a-Lago going through the 8,000-9,000 photos Gor and his assistants had narrowed down for him, and even more nights signing the book when it came out.

The only thing preventing Trump right now from adding his signature to tens of thousands more copies of “Our Journey Together” is, ironically, the supply chain issues for which Republicans have tried to blame his successor. There isn’t enough paper available.

Trump to release 'book of letters' next year amid 2024 campaign ...

CNN —

Former President Donald Trump is planning to release a book next year showcasing his private correspondence with past and present celebrities and international icons, CNN has learned.

Sources familiar with the matter said the project will mirror Trump’s first post-White House book, a collection of 300-plus photographs from Trump’s time in office that were accompanied by captions he wrote himself. His newest book will contain reproductions of letters written to, or by, Trump over the last few decades, providing readers with a more intimate view into his private life and past social circles.

Trump’s correspondence with singer-songwriter Elton John, the late entertainer Michael Jackson and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, are expected to be included, sources said. In a lewd 1997 interview with shock jock Howard Stern that was unearthed during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Trump claimed that he received a “really nice” letter from the late Princess of Wales thanking him for an undisclosed favor.

“She wrote me a letter about a couple of months before she died thanking me ‘cause I did her a favor for something,” Trump told Stern. “She wrote me a really nice letter.”

It is unclear if the “book of letters,” as multiple sources described it, will feature any of the letters Trump exchanged with Kim Jong Un during his pursuit of North Korea’s denuclearization. Trump has previously boasted of his “love letters” with the foreign dictator, once declaring at a campaign rally that he and Kim Jong Un “fell in love” through their written correspondence.

The letters were among a trove of government documents, including ones that contained classified markings, kept at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office, prompting the National Archives and Records Administration to seek their return. A special counsel appointed by the Justice Department is currently investigating Trump for his possible mishandling of classified documents and presidential records.

Trump’s second book since leaving office is due to be published by Winning Team Publishing, an imprint launched by his eldest son Don Jr. and former campaign adviser Sergio Gor, who declined to comment on the project.

“We don’t have anything to announce yet,” Gor said.

The same publishing house was behind “Our Journey Together,” the $75 hardcover collection of photographs that Trump released last December. CNN previously reported that the book grossed $20 million in less than two months after it went on sale.

Trump aides said they expect his next book to be just as lucrative, particularly due to its overlap with his third presidential campaign.

“Sounds like a money-maker for sure,” said one person close to Trump.

A second person close to the former president said he is unlikely to publish a memoir about his presidency in the near future, particularly because he wants to wait for the 2024 cycle to play out. In May, however, Winning Team Publishing appeared to suggest that Trump was working on a book about the 2020 election, which the former president has falsely insisted was stolen.

“NEW BOOK ALERT: CRIME OF THE CENTURY by President Donald J. Trump! More details coming soon,” the publishing house wrote in a tweet.

Numerous other rumored 2024 Republican hopefuls have recently released books or plan to publish in the coming months. Among them are Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has an autobiography coming in late February; Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, whose third book, “Decades of Decadence” is due out in June 2023; and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who will release a book in January and has publicly acknowledge he is mulling a primary challenge against Trump.

Pence details fracture with Trump over his refusal to overturn 2020 ...

CNN —

Former Vice President Mike Pence wrote in his new memoir that former President Donald Trump warned him days before the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol that he would inspire the hatred of hundreds of thousands of people because he was “too honest” to attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The comments are part of the vivid ending of Pence’s new memoir, “So Help Me God.” It’s being released as Trump prepares what an aide has said will be the launch of his 2024 presidential campaign Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago.

Pence has also hinted at his own potential 2024 run, recently telling ABC News he thinks “we’ll have better choices in the future” than Trump. But in his memoir, he largely defends Trump – touting the former president’s achievements, downplaying controversies and excusing Trump’s personal vendettas, including against the late Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Still, Pence – who said Trump was “reckless” with his tweet attacking his vice president that day – was critical of Trump over the events surrounding the insurrection, writing that he told Trump directly afterward that he was angry and that what he’d seen that day infuriated him.

“The truth was, as reckless as the president’s tweet was, I really didn’t have time for it. Rioters were ransacking the Capitol,” Pence wrote. “Some of them, I was later told, were chanting, ‘Hang Mike Pence!’ The president had decided to be part of the problem. I was determined to be part of the solution. I ignored the tweet and got back to work.”

The conversations between Trump and Pence have been one of the key themes of the House’s January 6 committee hearings, and the book gives Pence, who has not testified before the committee, the chance to weigh in on his exchanges with Trump.

Pence said that he’d begun election night in 2020 confident, but things changed later in the evening, he wrote, when results in states with large shares of mail-in ballots “began to shift” and the Trump-Pence ticket’s lead “started to vanish.”

“The mood in the White House, initially ebullient, began to sour,” Pence wrote.

He described watching Trump claim in an early Wednesday morning speech that the election process had been “a fraud on the American public” and said the days that followed the election were “a little like the twilight zone,” as Trump’s team challenged states’ results.

The Saturday after the election, Pence wrote, Trump’s son-in-law and top aide Jared Kushner called him to ask whether he thought there had been fraud in the election. He told Kushner there likely was some fraud, but he doubted it was why they’d lost, according to the book.

Here are other key moments Pence described in his memoir:

‘What if we hadn’t had the rally?’

While Pence acknowledges the reality of the electoral vote count, he does not describe Joe Biden as having won the 2020 race fairly, or take issue with the Trump campaign’s strategy of fighting swing states’ results in court. He discusses turning the Texas effort to challenge some states’ electoral votes into an applause line while campaigning in Georgia for two Republican senators in runoff elections.

Pence wrote that he asked his general counsel for a briefing on the procedures of the Electoral Count Act after Trump in a December 5 phone call “mentioned challenging the election results in the House of Representatives for the first time.”

Over lunch on December 21, Pence wrote, he tried to steer Trump to listen to the White House counsel’s team’s advice, rather than outside lawyers.

“I said, ‘You’ve got a good team at the White House,’ to which he grumbled, ‘No, I don’t,’” Pence wrote. “If the president had chosen to listen to those good men and not the gaggle of outside lawyers who took over the election challenges from the campaign, things would have been very different.”

Pence wrote that Trump told him in a New Year’s Day phone call: “You’re too honest,” he chided, predicting that “hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts” and “people are gonna think you’re stupid.”

“Mr. President, I don’t question there were irregularities and fraud,” Pence wrote that he told Trump. “It’s just a question of who decides, and under the law that is Congress.”

“With that, the president said that he guessed it probably just ‘takes courage,’ implying that was what I lacked,” Pence continued. “I paused before replying and, facing him from my seat in front of the Resolute Desk, said firmly, ‘Mr. President, I have courage, and you know that.’”

Pence wrote that Trump relented and “said with more than a little sadness, ‘Well, I’m gonna have to say you did a great disservice.’”

Pence, who said he refused to leave the Capitol on January 6, also wrote about his meeting with Trump in the days after January 6. Trump asked Pence, “Were you scared?” the former vice president wrote. “‘No,’ I replied, ‘I was angry. You and I had our differences that day, Mr. President, and seeing those people tearing up the Capitol infuriated me.’”

Pence wrote that he told Trump he was praying for him and encouraged him to pray. Trump didn’t say anything initially, Pence said, and then responded with “genuine sadness” in his voice: “What if we hadn’t had the rally? What if they hadn’t gone to the Capitol?”

A personal warning to Putin

Pence wrote that in 2018, when he was representing the United States at the ASEAN conference in Singapore – the type of meeting he says Trump “was never big on” – he was approached at a plenary session with a tap on the shoulder by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I noticed that Putin projected a familiarity toward me. It came, I concluded, from his friendly meeting with Trump earlier in the year. It was as if we were old acquaintances,” Pence wrote. “I didn’t return the favor. I kept my expression firm and fixed, and the photo of me looking down at him with a furrowed brow and a grim expression was published around the world, just as I’d hoped it would be.”

At the end of the session, during a brief meeting requested by the Russians, Pence said Putin “was just inches from me, expecting a friendly chat.”

When Putin wrapped up his comments about restarting nuclear nonproliferation negotiations, Pence said he told the Russian leader: “Mr. President, we know what happened in 2016, and it can’t happen again.”

“Though Putin speaks English, he listened as his translator leaned in, relaying my message. His expression grew incredulous. He turned with a question to his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, presumably asking what I was talking about. The only word I recognized was ‘elections,’” Pence wrote. “Then he spoke through his translator, saying Russia had nothing to do with the election. To which I responded, ‘Mr. President, I’m very aware of what you’ve said about that, but I’m telling you we know what happened in 2016, and it can’t happen again.’ Putin seemed taken aback. Then he shrugged and changed the subject back to his upcoming summit in Argentina.”

Pence wrote that it was “absolutely right” for the FBI to investigate claims of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, but pushed back on the idea “the investigation was into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia and into Trump himself.”

Pence acknowledged that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election but insisted “its mischief had not elected Trump president” and called it an “attempt to sow discord, to destabilize US democracy, to spread false information across both left-wing and right-wing platforms so as to turn Americans against one another.”

“I always had the impression that the president felt that acknowledging Russian meddling would somehow cheapen our victory,” he wrote. “But in my view, there was no reason for Trump not to call out Russia’s bad behavior; it wasn’t an admission of collusion but a declaration that our intelligence services knew what Putin’s regime had been up to. I had no problem calling Russia out.”

Meeting with North Koreans at 2018 Olympics scrapped

Pence confirmed that he had been set to meet with North Korean officials during the 2018 Olympic Games, but the meeting was pulled down hours beforehand by Pyongyang.

The North Koreans had been the ones pushing for engagement in Pyeongchang, Pence said, also noting that former South Korean President Moon Jae-in had “wanted to politely force a meeting.”

The former vice president said that while the Olympics began, “the North Korean government was making back-channel overtures to me about having a meeting.”

“I relayed the information to Trump. See what they have to say, he told me. If the meeting can be arranged, take it,” Pence recounted.

The meeting “appeared to be a go” and was arranged to take place on Pence’s last day in South Korea, at the Blue House. However, “two hours before the meeting was set to begin, we got word that the North Koreans were no longer willing to participate and we were told that the order ‘came from Pyongyang,’ leading to speculation that Kim Jong Un was irritated by my refusal to engage with his sister while the cameras clicked and the world watched.”

Pence had been seated in the same box with Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, at the Olympic Stadium, but as Pence put it: “I ignored her.”

The former vice president also described what he said were efforts by the former South Korean leader to get him to engage with the North Korean leaders.

“Before the opening ceremony, there was a large reception and dinner for the two hundred national leaders in attendance,” he recalled, noting that Moon had arranged for he and the North Koreans to be seated at the head table, and that “a group photograph was arranged at the outset of the banquet.” Pence and former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe intentionally arrived late to the banquet and did not participate in the group photo.

“That would have been a huge symbolic victory for North Korea. No chance,” Pence said.

Trump’s relationship with Fauci

Pence delves into his role in the Trump administration’s battle against the coronavirus pandemic, and details the relationship between Trump and Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert.

Pence praised Fauci, writing, “I was glad he was there. He was a reassuring voice to the public; Mitch McConnell had advised me, correctly, that Fauci would be a valuable member of the team because of his stature.”

However, Pence expressed how he didn’t understand why Fauci “was so insistent that Covid-19 had not emerged from a Chinese lab,” adding that he believed Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during most of the Trump administration, held a correct assessment in the lab leak theory.

“Dr. Robert Redfield of the CDC always held that it had, and the more we have learned, the more I believe that Bob was right,” Pence wrote.

Pence commented on Trump and Fauci’s relationship, writing that it was “very good” initially.

“Trump is from Queens, Fauci from Brooklyn, and Fauci was not put off by Trump’s New York brashness. He had grown up around it. He is a brash New Yorker, too,” Pence wrote.

Frustration with McCain over Obamacare vote

Pence detailed the personal angst between Trump and McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee who died in 2018. Trump had attacked McCain during the 2016 presidential campaign, saying he didn’t consider the man who had been a prisoner of war in Vietnam to be a hero.

“They were both sharp-elbowed men who punched back hard when attacked. But I always believed that had McCain lived, they would eventually have become friends,” Pence wrote.

He also made clear that he still resents the terminally ill McCain’s return to the Senate floor to cast the vote that would doom the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Pence wrote that he had put Trump and McCain on the phone together. McCain, in Pence’s retelling of the call, told Trump he was honored by the call, and gave no indication he would vote against the GOP bill.

“Then he walked out of the office, onto the Senate floor, caught the eye of the Senate clerk, gave a thumbs-down, walked over to his desk, and sat down,” Pence wrote. “There was an audible gasp. The effort to repeal and replace Obamacare was dead. The Trump administration had just been knocked back on its heels. Trump was irate. I was, too.”

Pence wrote that South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close friend of McCain, “deserved better” on the Obamacare repeal effort from his friend.

“In a fitting twist, immediately after McCain voted down Obamacare repeal, Rand Paul blocked consideration of the fiscal-year spending for the Departments of Defense, Energy, and State, which was nicknamed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act,” Pence wrote. “Trump was delighted. McCain was incensed. He actually said, ‘It is unfortunate that one senator chose to block consideration of a bill our nation needs right now.’ Takes one to know one.”

Eric Bradner Jeremy Herb Jennifer Hansler Maegan Vazquez Nikki Carvajal Veronica Stracqualursi Kit Maher

6 takeaways from former Vice President Mike Pence's CNN town hall

CNN —

Former Vice President Mike Pence in a CNN town hall on Wednesday refused to commit his support to former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and left the door open to seeking the Republican nomination himself.

Speaking a day after the release of his memoir, “So Help Me God,” Pence was mostly coy when discussing his own plans while touting the Trump administration’s policy agenda.

But Pence was more direct when asked about the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. The former vice president called it “the most difficult day of my public life.”

Pence also revealed more about his personal feelings about that day and his views on the state of American politics in the aftermath of a presidency that he said did not end well.

Here are takeaways from the town hall:

‘Better choices’: Pence reacts to Trump’s 2024 announcement

Asked about Trump’s new campaign for president, which he announced Tuesday, Pence said he believed that there would be “better choices” on the ballot in two years.

Pence left open the possibility that one of those preferable options, as he saw it, might be him.

“I’ll keep you posted,” Pence told CNN’s Jake Tapper, who moderated the event.

Moments earlier, as he grappled with the Trump question, Pence said, “I think it’s time for new leadership in this country that will bring us together around our highest ideals.”

Pressed by Tapper about his future, Pence replied, “There may be someone else in that contest I’d prefer more.”

Watch Pence's response when asked if he'll support Trump in 2024 03:30 - Source: CNN

Pence calls January 6 ‘most difficult day’ but won’t testify to House panel

It was, Pence said, the “most difficult day of my public life.”

“I thought it was important, as vice president, that I offer my advice and my counsel to the president confidentially. And we did,” Pence said of his role that day, when Trump and others allied with the then-president tried to convince him to launch an unconstitutional bid to block or overturn the election results.

Pence said his decision to ignore Trump’s entreaties was rooted in something deeper than their relationship.

“I had one higher loyalty, and that was to God and the Constitution. And that’s what set in motion the confrontation that would come to pass on January 6 because I had taken an oath to the Constitution of the United States,” Pence said.

Breaking with the man who selected him as a runningmate ahead of the 2016 election and elevated him to within a whisper of the Oval Office “was difficult,” Pence said.

“But I’ll always believe,” he added, “that we did our duty that day upholding the Constitution of the United States and the laws of this country and the peaceful transfer of power.”

In the days that followed, Pence said, he was upset with Trump over the then-president’s role in the deadly insurrection.

“The president’s words and tweet that day were reckless,” Pence said. “They endangered my family and all the people at the Capitol.”

But Pence also shut down any speculation as to whether he would testify before the House select committee investigating January 6, saying that “Congress has no right to my testimony.” He said it would set a “terrible precedent” for a congressional committee to summon a vice president to discuss deliberations held at the White House, arguing that it would violate the separation of powers and “erode the dynamic” between a president and vice president.

Mike Pence reacts to video showing his family fleeing to safety 02:50 - Source: CNN

Deciding to break with Trump

After CNN played footage of January 6 rioters chanting, “Hang Mike Pence,” the former vice president said he was saddened to see the images again, but that in the moment, “it angered me.”

Pence, who moved to a secure location as the Capitol was breached, said he told Secret Service that he would not leave, insisting he remain at his post, in part because he did not want the mob to see his motorcade speeding away.

“But frankly, when I saw those images, and when I read a tweet that President Trump issued, saying that I lacked courage in that moment, It angered me greatly,” Pence said. But, he added, “I didn’t have time for it.”

After years standing by Trump’s side through assorted scandals and crises – and also benefiting from the former president’s political rise – Pence said he had decided that, in this fight, they would take opposite sides.

“The President had decided in that moment to be a part of the problem,” said Pence, who told Tapper he “was determined to be part of the solution.”

Pence then discussed gathering the Republican and Democratic leadership of the House and Senate on a conference call, reaching out to Pentagon brass and Justice Department officials “to surge additional resources” to assist Capitol Hill police officers.

Congress ultimately reconvened on the same day and, after Republican challenges to the count, finally confirmed Biden as the next president.

“We demonstrated to the American people and the world the strength of our institutions (and) the resilience of our democracy,” Pence said. “But those memories, those images will always be with me.”

‘Don’t ever change’: Pence recalls difficult meetings with Trump in the aftermath

Pence described in vivid detail his meetings with Trump in the days after the riot at the Capitol. When he first saw Trump at the White House days after January 6, he said the then-president immediately asked about his family and whether they were OK.

Though it was at odds with the public perceptions of Trump, Pence said, he believed that Trump was “deeply remorseful in that moment.”

“I could tell he was saddened by what had happened,” Pence said. “I encouraged him to pray. He told me many times that he was a believer, and I told him to turn to Jesus hoping that he would find the comfort there – and that I was finding in that moment.”

In the days that followed, Pence said he saw Trump for another meeting and that the president was still “downcast.” After they finished talking through administration business, Pence said, “I reminded him that I was praying for him” and Trump was “dismissive about it.”

“As our meeting came to a close, I stood up,” Pence said. “I looked at him and I said, I guess there’s just two things we’ll probably never agree on. And he looked up and said, ‘What?’”

“I referred to my role on January 6,” Pence said. “And then I said, ‘Never gonna stop praying for you.’”

“He smiled faintly and said, ‘That’s right. Don’t ever change.’ And we parted amicably as much as we could in the aftermath of those events.”

Pence suggests 2020 election denial is a political loser, but campaigned with deniers anyway

In lamenting Republicans’ underwhelming performance in the 2022 midterms, Pence observed that candidates who talked about the future outshone those who focused more on “relitigating the past.”

“And I expect that’s going to be taken to heart by Republicans,” Pence said.

Asked why, then, he chose to campaign alongside election deniers – including GOP Senate nominees Don Bolduc in New Hampshire and Blake Masters in Arizona, both of whom lost last week – Pence said party loyalty trumped other concerns.

“I’ve often said, ‘I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican – in that order. But I am a Republican,” Pence said, “and once Republican primary voters had chosen their nominees I went out and traveled to 35 states over the last year and a half to see if we could elect a Republican majority in the House, Senate, elect Republican governors all across the country.”

Pence added that his appearance on the stump with a candidate “didn’t mean, as it hasn’t meant in the past, that I agreed with every statement or every position candidates that I’m supporting in the Republican Party have taken.”

He also tried to make a false equivalence between Trump’s lies about election fraud in 2020 and Hillary Clinton’s comments after 2016, noting that she said “Donald Trump was not a legitimate president, for years.”

“I think there’s been far too much questioning of elections, not just in 2020 but in 2016,” he said.

Sticking to a carefully crafted message

Pence has very carefully crafted his explanation of the events leading up to January 6, during that day’s attack on the Capitol and in his conversations with Trump afterward – and isn’t deviating from that explanation.

As he has unspooled those events, Pence’s comments have been virtually identical in his book, in CNN’s town hall and in interviews with other news networks in recent days.

He’d made clear what he is willing to say. Among the key points: That Trump listened to the wrong lawyers in the lead-up to January 6; that he was “angry” watching the attack on the Capitol; that he left Trump with a commitment to continue to pray for him; and that the two no longer talk.

But it’s just as clear where Pence won’t go: He won’t reveal any simmering resentment with Trump, saying his faith commands forgiveness. He won’t place blame fully on Republicans for agitating the party’s base with falsehoods about election fraud. He won’t legitimize the work of the House committee investigating the events surrounding that day.

Pence’s slow, measured delivery of a consistent message is a characteristic that traces back to his days as a self-styled “Rush Limbaugh on decaf” conservative talk radio host in Indiana.

It’s an approach that has remained consistent through his entire political career, including 12 years in the House and four years as Indiana governor. Pence often repeats virtually the same message – line by line, paragraph by paragraph – even when that message doesn’t directly answer the question he was asked.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

Gregory Krieg Eric Bradner Maeve Reston
Gregory Krieg
Eric Bradner
Maeve Reston

Donald Trump's risk if he mishandled White House documents ...

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in February and has been updated following the FBI’s search of Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022.

CNN —

Reports of former President Donald Trump’s possible mishandling of federal documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort have prompted legal experts to handicap: Could Trump be charged with a crime?

Some were quick to speculate yes, though it’s not clear a former president could be charged by the Justice Department for mishandling documents, even classified information.

One former Trump adviser said it was highly possible that no criminal case would ever materialize, but added, “If I was Trump, I would be taking it seriously.”

The FBI searched Mar-a-Lago on August 8.

There are clear laws that protect federal records – with varying degrees of likelihood in their application.

Here’s what legal experts tell CNN:

Can Trump keep or destroy government records after leaving the White House?

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 outlines the ways official records should be maintained during a presidency and turned over at the end of an administration.

Based on CNN’s and others’ reporting, it appears some of the requirements of the act may not have been followed during the Trump presidency. Instead, official White House records were ripped apart or flushed down toilets, and at least 15 boxes of records made their way to Mar-a-Lago. Some of the documents recovered in February from Mar-a-Lago contained records the National Archives believed were classified, according to The New York Times.

RELATED: Outgoing chief archivist at center of ERA fight and Trump documents controversy

Legal experts tell CNN that any unauthorized retention or destruction of White House documents raises a red flag under a criminal law that prohibits the removal or destruction of official government records.

But for a charge like this to fly, prosecutors would need to show that Trump had “willfully” violated the law – a high bar, though one that prosecutors could potentially meet given the frequent efforts within the White House to try to preserve records Trump would habitually mutilate.

Furthermore, other criminal laws could come into play as well, if an investigation by the Justice Department progresses.

“If the intent was ‘Let me get these documents taken out of the way because they could look bad, they could be damning for me in an investigation, in a lawsuit,’ then you’re talking about potential obstruction of justice. So the devil will be in the details here,” said CNN legal analyst Elie Honig.

Are there other laws with teeth?

Maybe.

One criminal law prohibits destroying government property – provided the person charged intentionally violated the law.

As a former officer of the United States, Trump also has an ongoing obligation to protect classified information he received as president.

While in office, he had the ability to declassify, making his own decisions. But that power ended when he left the presidency, and it’s unclear whether he declassified any records held at Mar-a-Lago while he was still in office.

“If there was intentional, knowing destruction of classified documents, that’s a federal crime,” Honig said on CNN.

A national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, was prosecuted for removing classified documents from the National Archives by stuffing them into his pants during the 9/11 Commission investigation.

Even so, a case over the mishandling of national security secrets can get complicated quickly. That’s because there’s no central system in the federal government that standardizes what’s classified, and different agencies may have different views and make judgment calls on classification.

A Justice Department investigation would likely look into various agencies’ determinations on the records. Trump’s defense would be that he’s president, and governed them all, according to one legal expert who previously handled classification issues in the government.

What would Trump have to do to declassify documents?

This issue arose in court during Trump’s presidency, when news organizations pursued classified records related to the Russia investigation after the White House or Trump had publicly talked about declassifying them.

In one of the cases, Justice Department official Brad Weinsheimer said no order had materialized to declassify the Carter Page Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications, which were the sought-after documents, even after official statements had suggested they could be released.

In another, then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Trump’s tweets about declassifying documents weren’t “self-executing declassification orders,” and instead the decision-making stayed with a federal agency under Trump, according to a court filing.

Brad Moss, a lawyer who unsuccessfully sought declassification of the Page FISA warrant in court, said the President declassifying information requires his decision in writing. That could be as simple as crossing out the “classified” markings at the tops of pages or as formal as submitting documents to the White House Counsel’s Office, Moss said.

The questions that remain about classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Moss says, are “Did he know? When did he decide to put those documents there? And did he take any action to declassify them before he left office?”

Could the Presidential Records Act prompt charges?

No.

The law has no criminal enforcement mechanism, so in effect the act is “toothless,” said George Clarke, a Washington-based attorney who brought two lawsuits over the Trump White House’s records retention practices in recent years.

In his lawsuits, which were jointly pursued by the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, historians and archivists complained that notes and translations of Trump meetings with foreign powers, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, didn’t exist or hadn’t been preserved, and that White House staff used encrypted messaging systems for official business. But the courts threw out the cases, finding that judges had no authority to micromanage the presidency.

“It’s so frustrating,” Clarke said, looking back at his lawsuits. “All the cases we brought were pointing out how bad the record-keeping was and how many times they violated it. The courts didn’t bite.”

Katelyn Polantz Laura Jarrett
Katelyn Polantz
Laura Jarrett

New book reveals Melania Trump criticized her husband's handling ...

CNN —

Former President Donald Trump’s top general feared he would authorize a strike on Iran as his presidency ended. His intelligence chief wondered what Russia had on him. A billionaire friend convinced him to try buying Greenland. A half-dozen top officials considered resigning en masse.

Even his wife, first lady Melania Trump, was “rattled by the coronavirus and convinced that Trump was screwing up,” according to a forthcoming book from New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker and New Yorker staff writer and CNN global affairs analyst Susan Glasser set to publish on Tuesday.

In a phone call with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who maintained ties to the White House despite occasional criticism of Trump, Melania Trump sought help convincing her husband to take the pandemic more seriously.

“‘You’re blowing this,” she recalled telling her husband,” the authors write. “’This is serious. It’s going to be really bad, and you need to take it more seriously than you’re taking it.’ He had just dismissed her. ‘You worry too much,’ she remembered him saying. ‘Forget it.’ “

The razor’s-edge instability clouding Trump’s four-year tenure in the White House led many of his senior-most advisers to worry about the fate of the country. The volatility is laid bare in new detail in “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021.” The reporting for the book included two interviews with the former President at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Baker and Glasser write that many of the well-known fears about Trump’s presidency were in fact closer to reality than previously reported, leading to widespread attempts among those who worked for him to head off disaster.

The revelations could also foretell the presidency Trump might oversee should he return to the White House in 2025. Trump’s associates have told CNN he could announce a presidential bid after November’s midterm elections. But, as Trump told Baker and Glasser, he won’t invite former Vice President Mike Pence to join his ticket after Pence refused to interfere in the certification of the 2020 election.

“It would be totally inappropriate,” Trump said. “Mike committed political suicide by not taking votes that he knew were wrong.”

The book describes deep concerns among Trump’s national security team, led by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and others, that the then-President would ignite a conflict with Iran in the waning days of his presidency or that he could stumble into nuclear war with North Korea.

One administration official told Trump before the 2020 election that if he lost, he should strike Iran’s nuclear program, the authors report. “Milley at the time told his staff it was a ‘What the f— are these guys talking about?’ moment,” they write. “Now, it seemed frighteningly possible.”

The tensions with Iran even permeated the walls of Mar-a-Lago. Trump told guests at a cocktail party over the holidays in 2020 that he was leaving early to return to Washington because of fears Iran may be trying to assassinate him to avenge the US killing of the country’s top general a year earlier.

Concerns over Trump’s behavior on the world stage began nearly as soon as he took office. More than simply a passing grudge, Trump’s desire to withdraw the United States from NATO was in fact a sustained effort that was “much more serious than people realized,” one senior White House official said – an outcome that could have dramatically altered the current war in Ukraine.

Following a 2018 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland – after which Trump sided with Putin over US intelligence agencies who had determined Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election – the top US intelligence official was left wondering what Trump’s real motives were.

“I never could come to a conclusion. It raised the question in everybody’s mind: What does Putin have on him that causes him to do something that undermines his credibility?” Dan Coats, the then-director of national intelligence, reflected to associates afterward, according to the book.

And a months-long fixation with purchasing Greenland from Denmark went far deeper than previously disclosed, inspired in the early days of Trump’s presidency by a wealthy friend from New York, the cosmetics heir Ron Lauder.

“I said, ‘Why don’t we have that?’ You take a look at a map. I’m a real estate developer, I look at a corner, I say, ‘I’ve got to get that store for the building that I’m building,’ etc. It’s not that different,” Trump told the reporters for their book.

Lauder proposed to Trump’s then-national security adviser John Bolton that he act as a “back channel” to the Danish government. Instead, top National Security Council aides engaged for months in secret talks with Denmark’s ambassador to the United States about Greenland.

Eventually, however, public revelations about Trump’s plans to buy the island prompted indignation in both Greenland and Denmark, scuttling any effort to enhance the US role in an increasingly strategic area. Trump called the Danish leader “nasty” for rejecting his idea and canceled a trip to Copenhagen.

Trump enjoyed friendlier relations with other world leaders, but often imposed his own brand of chaos.

Baker and Glasser report Trump once abruptly phoned Jordan’s King Abdullah II to inform him he was “going to give you the West Bank,” prompting the monarch to tell a friend he thought he was having a heart attack.

“I couldn’t breathe. I was bent doubled over,” he said.

And while Trump liked to frequently tout that then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – who was assassinated in July – had nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize, Trump had actually explicitly made the request to Abe during dinner in New York.

“The President asked Abe over dinner to nominate him,” a senior Trump national security official says in the book.

Baker and Glasser describe previously unreported plans by members of Trump’s Cabinet to collectively resign amid the chaos, only to remain in their posts out of concern for whohe might select to replace them.

In encrypted text messages, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told a top aide that five senior officials in the Trump administration – including the secretaries of Defense, Education and Interior – were on the verge of quitting amid a particularly chaotic period ahead of the 2018 midterms.

“Ok for the first time I am actually scared for the country. The insanity has been loosed,” she wrote in the messages.

Trump’s demands on his team included outlandish requests like abolishing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals after it blocked one of his immigration policies.

“Let’s just cancel it,” he told Nielsen, according to the book. He told Nielsen if such a move required legislation, “then draft a bill to ‘get rid of the f–king judges’ and have it sent to Congress as soon as possible.”

When it came to responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, however, it was his most trusted advisers who were encouraging him to do more, particularly in the early days when Trump appeared nonchalant about the severity of the crisis.

Exclusive: New book reveals Trump's business practices included ...

CNN —

Former President Donald Trump’s business practices included some eyebrow-raising moments, such as once being paid with gold bars that were wheeled into his Trump Tower apartment, according to reporting obtained by CNN from a forthcoming book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

Haberman reveals new details about Trump’s business dealings in the New York City real estate world and beyond, from a veiled threat to the owner of a magazine preparing to report on his inflated net worth to an acknowledgment that his businesses had to sometimes interact with the mob, according to the reporting obtained by CNN.

Separately, Trump’s other business practices are now under renewed and intense scrutiny in the wake of the New York attorney general’s sweeping lawsuit, announced Wednesday, against Trump, some of his children and his company alleging scores of fraudulent financial activities that the former President used to enrich himself.

In one striking episode, Haberman writes that Trump would occasionally receive portions of lease payments in cash, including when a leaseholder once sent Trump a box of dozens of gold bricks to cover the cash portion of the lease on the parking garage in the General Motors building in Manhattan, which Trump purchased in 1998.

Trump told aides he didn’t know what to do with the gold bars, according to Haberman. He ultimately directed Matt Calamari, a onetime security guard who became chief operating officer in the Trump Organization, to wheel the bars up to his apartment in Trump Tower. It’s not clear what happened to the gold bricks. A lawyer for Calamari declined to comment, and Haberman writes that Trump called it “a fantasy question.”

Haberman’s book, “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,” is being released on October 4. It includes an examination of Trump’s journey through the New York business world as well as his presidency and the aftermath of his 2020 loss to Joe Biden. Haberman, a CNN political analyst, is a longtime New York-based reporter who has worked for both of the city’s tabloid newspapers, and she covered Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns and the Trump White House for the New York Times.

Haberman writes that Trump’s financial situation at his company was often more precarious than people realized, according to former officials.

At one point, Trump was said to have borrowed several million dollars from Trump Organization executive George Ross, according to Haberman. Ross acknowledged to the author that he loaned Trump money, but insisted it was to “cover a situation that was disposed of very quickly” and not for payroll expenses.

In another episode, Haberman writes that Trump was said to have threatened to go public with rumors that Malcolm Forbes, the deceased owner of Forbes magazine, was gay, when the magazine was preparing to report that Trump’s net worth was far less than what he was claiming publicly.

Haberman writes that officials at the Trump Organization operated in silos, and they often were unaware of what was happening elsewhere in the business.

When Trump’s hotel and casino company was rebuked by the Securities and Exchange Commission over a misleading earnings statement, Haberman writes that Trump was more involved than the company let on.

Trump’s lawyer at the time, Jay Goldberg, blamed company officials for the misleading projections in 1999 and insisted Trump was not involved, Haberman writes. News stories at the time of the SEC action three years later also stated that Trump did not have a role in the financial statement that overstated the company’s earnings.

But Haberman reports that a former company consultant, Alan Marcus, said that Trump personally marked up a draft of the release in question and made existing projections rosier.

Trump denied that account, according to Haberman.

In an interview with Haberman, Trump acknowledged that his business dealings in New York City meant he would sometimes have to interact with the mob, though he downplayed how aware he was of it.

“Well, anybody that built in New York City, whether you dealt with them indirectly, or didn’t even know they existed, they did exist,” Trump said. “Well, you dealt, you had contractors and you don’t know if they were mob or controlled or maybe not controlled, but I will tell you getting bids sometimes is very tough. You’d get one bid, it’d be a high end disappointing bid. And then there was nobody else to bid.”

Photos show handwritten notes that Trump apparently ripped up and ...

Washington CNN —

Newly revealed photographs reveal two occasions on which former President Donald Trump apparently flushed documents down the toilet.

Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter and CNN contributor, is publishing the new images in her forthcoming book, “Confidence Man,” and the images were earlier posted by Axios. CNN has previously reported how Trump flouted presidential record-keeping laws and would often tear up documents, drafts and memos after reading them.

He periodically flushed papers down the toilet in the White House residence – only to be discovered later on when repairmen were summoned to fix the clogged toilets. Trump has denied the allegations, and in a statement given to Axios on Monday, a spokesman claimed that reporting about the practice was fabricated.

This picture shows notes that former President Donald Trump apparently ripped up and attempted to flush down the toilet. Courtesy Maggie Haberman/White House

In the images revealed on Monday, it’s unclear what the documents are in reference to – and who authored them – but they appear to be written in Trump’s handwriting in black marker. Haberman said one image is from a White House toilet and the other one is from an overseas trip that was provided to her by a Trump White House source.

“Who knows what this paper was? Only he would know and presumably whoever was dealing with it, but the important point is about the records,” Haberman told CNN’s John Berman and Brianna Keilar on “New Day” Monday morning.

Trump had a pattern of disregarding normal record preservation procedures. In one occasion, Trump asked if anyone wanted to put a copy of a speech he just delivered up for auction on eBay, during a mid-flight visit to the press cabin Air Force One.

In other instances, Trump would task aides with carrying boxes of unread memos, articles and tweet drafts aboard the presidential aircraft for him to review and then tear to shreds.

A former senior Trump administration official said a deputy from the Office of Staff Secretary would usually come in to pull things out of the trash and take them off Trump’s desk after he left a room.

A former White House official recalled that while document preservation was a key responsibility of the staff secretary, the rest of Trump’s senior staffers lacked the sense of their obligation to maintain records of papers that moved through the West Wing.

Trump’s haphazard record-keeping was the subject of a drawn-out fight earlier this year between him and the National Archives, and the Justice Department has been investigating the matter.

Trump fields calls from Republican allies to speed up 2024 bid after ...

CNN —

Top Republicans who have spent months trying to dissuade Donald Trump from announcing another presidential campaign before the midterms are coming around to the idea, after an unprecedented search of the former President’s Mar-a-Lago property by federal investigators on Monday lit up the GOP base.

Trump has received a fresh wave of encouragement to jump start his next presidential campaign in the 24 hours since his primary residence became the target of an FBI search warrant, several sources familiar with the matter told CNN. The former President, who is widely expected to run again, had previously eyed Labor Day as his target launch date, but is now being advised to accelerate his timeline to capitalize on what Republicans have described as extraordinary overreach and political persecution by Justice Department officials, including by advisers who previously counseled him to take his time with a 2024 announcement.

“My advice that we should wait until after the midterms was based upon a rather standard landscape. [The Justice Department] set off a nuclear bomb on that landscape yesterday. This is no longer a business-as-usual campaign. Not even close,” said Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump confidant, who previously urged the former President to wait for the 2022 election outcome before diving into a presidential primary.

One senior House Republican personally encouraged Trump on Tuesday to launch a bid before November, a source familiar tells CNN, dismissing concerns among fellow GOP lawmakers that a pre-midterm announcement could galvanize Democratic voters in a political environment that is otherwise considered favorable for Republicans.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of Trump’s Capitol Hill allies, told reporters he spoke to the former President twice on Tuesday and “the one thing I can tell you is that I believed he was gonna run before [and] I am stronger in my belief now.”

“I think President Trump is determined now more than ever to straighten this country out,” Graham added.

The thinking inside Trump’s orbit and among some of his top allies on Capitol Hill has undergone a notable shift since the search was executed at his waterfront estate, said three well-placed sources. Advisers who initially worried Trump would steal the spotlight from vulnerable Democrats if he announced before November have largely abandoned those concerns, while those who fear the FBI search was prompted by compelling evidence against Trump – and he thus shouldn’t rush into another presidential campaign – become a minority in his orbit. The former President, who previously told aides he was concerned about not being able to tap into the $121 million war chest he’s amassed once he declares his candidacy, is now shrugging off those concerns in the last 12 hours, according to a person close to him.

“Where others see criminal jeopardy, Donald Trump sees dollar signs,” said one person close to the former President.

“Most of the downsides of announcing early are regulatory or financial but the Democrats just guaranteed that Trump will raise three times the money he was going to and probably in the immediate future,” Caputo added.

A second person close to Trump said the episode has injected unity into the GOP, whose leaders were welcoming a contested presidential primary just weeks ago amid frustrations with Trump. This person said they had not seen Republicans “this unified behind something in a long time,” pointing to comments by two of Trump’s potential 2024 rivals – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence – condemning the FBI search.

“When do you see DeSantis and Pence on the same page defending Trump?” said one of the people close to Trump.

‘On the phone since daybreak’

After revealing the FBI had conducted a “raid” of his Palm Beach residence in a statement Monday evening, Trump became inundated with calls from allies wanting him to dive into the 2024 race sooner rather than later, according to a person familiar with the matter. He spent most of Tuesday hopping “from one phone call to the next,” this person said, adding that the former President “has been on the phone since daybreak.”

Those conversations were expected to continue well into Tuesday evening, with Trump huddling with Republican Study Committee members for a private dinner at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club. RSC Chairman Jim Banks of Indiana wrote in a tweet hours before the event that Republicans “have a moral duty to fight back” following the search of Trump’s home.

According to Banks, Trump used the Bedminster meeting to inform the group of 12 Republicans that he’s “made up his mind” about launching a 2024 presidential bid, it’s just a matter of “when” he announces it.

The group encouraged Trump to run “sooner than later,” Banks said, who described Trump as being “upbeat,” “fired up,” and “not fazed at all” by the FBI search on his Florida property.

“My sense is he is fired up and ready to go. And he received a lot of encouragement in the room to get out sooner than later,” Banks said.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have already initiated discussions about the party’s oversight response to the FBI search, according to GOP sources familiar with the situation, though these talks remain in the early stages. During a House GOP conference call on Tuesday morning, which had been previously scheduled, top Republicans – including Reps. Jim Jordan and Mike Turner of Ohio – made clear they intend to seek a full accounting from the DOJ about the FBI’s actions, according to sources on the call.

One of the more immediate steps likely to be taken is sending preservation letters to top DOJ officials – likely including Attorney General Merrick Garland. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy hinted at the party’s investigative plans Monday evening, tweeting: “Attorney General Garland: preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”

There’s also the possibility that Republicans create a select committee to investigate the agency if the GOP retakes the lower chamber in November. However, a source familiar with his thinking said McCarthy is more inclined to let existing committees take the lead, and the decision is not one House GOP leaders would need to make for several more months.

Across Trump world, Republicans’ widespread condemnation of the FBI search appeared to dismantle a divide among his advisers over the timing of his 2024 campaign launch that had long been simmering beneath the surface. While many of Trump’s political advisers have warned him to wait until after the midterms to announce his plans, fearing it would harm some GOP candidates on the ballot in November to launch a campaign early this fall, others believe an early announcement could help the former President sell the argument that a federal investigation into Trump – or even a potential indictment – is strictly motivated by politics.

“There are some people making arguments that an indictment is an endorsement” for Trump, said Caputo, suggesting that Trump wouldn’t “present himself as a victim but as the leader of the victims” if he ran in 2024, harkening back to Trump’s use of Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” gaffe as the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016 to cultivate an anti-elitist bond with his base.

It’s a message Trump has already leaned into. During a rally in Arizona last month, Trump told the audience, “If I renounced my beliefs and… agreed to stay silent, and if I stayed home and took it easy… the persecution of Donald Trump would immediately stop. They would go onto the next victim.”

“But that’s not what I do. I can’t do that,” Trump said.

Still, while many of Trump’s allies are publicly slamming the unprecedented FBI activity at his home, some of the former President’s most loyal supporters are concerned that the search could have only happened because it was provoked by real evidence – noting that federal investigators would be unlikely to take such a drastic step without something tangible to back up their actions.

“They better have the goods or they just went a long way in resurrecting [Trump],” said one former Trump adviser.

A longtime Republican operative who disagreed with that sentiment said the search warrant that was executed at Mar-a-Lago might prove to be politically detrimental for Trump if it becomes “just another reason to pick someone else” for Republican voters in a presidential primary.

“Trump may eventually become too heavy a lift for voters. Now we have better, less draining options,” this person said.

Meanwhile, one top Republican continued to urge Trump on Tuesday to pump the brakes on a presidential announcement until after the midterms, despite the growing outrage over the FBI search among grassroots activists and other potential 2024 candidates.

“You don’t talk about the Super Bowl until you win the playoffs,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told Fox News Tuesday morning.

Republican response

Nearly all of Trump’s potential rivals for the GOP nomination in 2024 have spoken up – a reflection of how the former President remains the central figure around which others in the Republican Party revolve.

Since the news of the search broke, possible White House hopefuls have expressed everything from measured skepticism of the Justice Department’s actions to full-blown accusations of a political witch hunt against Trump.

Several have adopted the language of Trump’s allies, accusing the Biden administration of “weaponizing” the Justice Department and targeting a political rival.

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich condemned the raid as “brazen” and “completely unnecessary” in a statement.

“These disgusting actions by Joe Biden’s administration would make a third-world dictator blush. However, in the Democrats’ desperate attempt to retain power, they have unified and grown the entire conservative movement,” Budowich said.

DeSantis – widely considered Trump’s chief competition in 2024 – responded quickly on Twitter Monday night, calling the search a “raid” and “another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves.”

Others who may run for president in 2024 echoed those sentiments with similarly strident language and proposals.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas wrote on Twitter that the Justice Department had been “weaponized” and called the search “corrupt & an abuse of power.” Also referring to a “weaponization” of the department was Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who vowed “consequences” against Garland for the search. And Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said the event was an “unprecedented assault on democratic norms and the rule of law,” calling on Garland to resign or be impeached, FBI Director Christopher Wray to be “removed” and for the FBI to be “reformed top to bottom.”

Others have responded less bombastically but with carefully worded outrage about the FBI’s search. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin called it a “stunning move” and suggested it was a “selective, politically motivated” search. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tempered his criticism by saying it demonstrated “apparent political weaponization” of federal law enforcement.

Still other Republicans are framing their response even more guardedly, expressing a desire for the Justice Department to answer questions about the search warrant.

On Twitter, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley called on the Justice Department and the FBI to comment, saying, “If they won’t comment, then Biden owes it to the American people to answer for his agencies.” Pence, who has spent months trying to find an independent political identity from Trump, tweeted a lengthy response to the search.

Pence said he has “deep concern” about what he called an “unprecedented search” of Trump’s home and said the event “undermines public confidence” in the justice system.

“Attorney General Garland must give a full accounting to the American people as to why this action was taken and he must do so immediately,” Pence concluded.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who has been talked about as a potential anti-Trump Republican contender in 2024, said the FBI search will “undermine faith in democracy and the rule of law” if the Justice Department “cannot ultimately provide overwhelming evidence that action was absolutely necessary.”

The Republicans’ collective defensive posture appears to reflect how the party’s leaders remain distrustful of federal law enforcement by default – a development borne out of Trump’s own attacks on the FBI ever since its investigation into his 2016 campaign.

During an appearance on CBS Tuesday morning to promote his new book, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said there have long been concerns among Republicans about whether the FBI is “doing their job apolitical[ly].” He also said the search will “raise more questions” and urged people to “let this play out and see what happens.”

And when pressed about whether Trump remains the best representative of the GOP, Scott provided a clue about why even those who may run against him in the 2024 primary may feel compelled to accept Trump’s narrative about the search.

“Certainly he is the largest voice in American politics, period,” said Scott. “The more focus you put on him, the more likely his supporters will rally around him.”

This story has been updated with additional developments Tuesday.

Gaborr Melanie Zanona Kristen Holmes Michael Warren