A stunning passage from Jon Karl’s new book reveals that two of former President Donald Trump’s most prominent allies considered removing him from office in the wake of the Capitol riot.
In an excerpt of Betrayal discussed on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Karl detailed how former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the night of Jan. 6 about potentially invoking the 25th amendment on Trump and ousting him from the presidency. Karl reports that the conversation with Pompeo about invoking the 25th amendment was one of several Mnuchin had in the wake of the attack on the Capitol.
According to Karl, the mass resignations among Cabinet members in the aftermath of the riot ultimately thwarted the plan’s momentum.
“It quickly became apparent that the 25th amendment was not going to work,” Karl said on MSNBC. “It would not be quick enough. It would be subject to legal challenges, et cetera.”
Karl noted that Mnuchin and Pompeo repeatedly refused to comment on the subject, until the ABC News correspondent interviewed Trump one last time just ahead of the book’s publication and relayed his reporting to the president. Hours later, Karl received a phone call from a Pompeo spokesperson who denied the reporting. Yet this spokesperson refused to even be quoted by name, according to the ABC News correspondent.
“It was a lie, they knew it was a lie,” Karl said. “And Mnuchin hasn’t denied anything, but Pompeo denied simply because he got a call from Mar-a-Lago.”
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