October 27, 2019

Pence Still Won’t Say What He Knew About Trump’s Ukraine Deal

Dodging questions, the vice president insists Trump “did nothing wrong.”

Vice President Mike Pence speaks during a news conference in Ankara, Turkey, on October 17, 2019.Burhan Ozbilici/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

This morning, Vice President Mike Pence refused to answer whether he knew about President Donald Trump’s efforts to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless President Volodymyr Zelensky authorized an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, a quid pro quo that has been corroborated by several top diplomats in their testimonies in the House impeachment inquiry.

During his appearance on Face the Nation, CBS News’ Margaret Brennan pressed Pence four times whether he had “knowledge of the deal that these US officials have described under oath.” The vice president avoided directly answering the question, instead pointing to his own interactions with Zelensky, in which said he “focused entirely on President Zelensky’s agenda to bring about reforms to end corruption in Ukraine and to bring together the European community to provide greater support for Ukraine.” 

“I can only tell you what I know,” Pence said. “And what I know is that the transcript of the president’s call with President Zelensky shows that there was no quid pro quo. He did nothing wrong.”

“As the facts continue to come out the American people again will see there in the President’s transcript, my interactions, there was no quid pro quo,” Pence said when asked asked a third time. “There was no pressure. It was entirely focused on issues.”

“I haven’t gotten a clear answer from you on that though, sir,” Brennan replied. “Are you saying that you did not ever hear of such a deal? Is that what I understand you’re describing?”

“I’m telling you that all of my interactions with the president, all of my conversations with President Zelensky, were entirely focused on issues of importance to the American people, ending corruption, enlisting more European support and supporting Ukraine in a way that would restore its territorial integrity and stand by Ukraine for its sovereignty,” Pence concluded.

It was an encore of a similar exchange the vice president had during a press event in Iowa earlier this month. There, NBC News reporter Vaughn Hillyard asked Pence whether he had direct knowledge that the president had held up military aid to Ukraine in exchange for investigating the Bidens. Pence also ducked answering questions on that occasion.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate