A day before the deadly attack on the US Capitol, Mike Pence's Chief of Staff warned the head of Pence's Secret Service detail that Donald Trump was about to turn on his own vice-president, endangering his security.
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported on Friday that she discovered it during research for a book on Trump due in October.
On January 5, Haberman wrote that Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, did not know how his boss's security might be threatened if Trump turned on him. Trump and his advisers had been working on a plan under which Pence would stop the certification of electoral college results in Trump's defeat by Joe Biden.
Under pressure from the Times, Pence looked at the plan, before concluding he did not have the authority to reject electoral college results because he did not have the authority to deny the vice-president's transition out of power.
When the mob attacked the Capitol on January 6, rioters were heard to shout Hang Mike Pence on the Capitol while a gallows was set up outside.
The Times recently reported that two witnesses who spoke to the January 6 committee said Trump told Mark Meadows, his own chief of staff, something that could be the effect of Pence being hung. The Times said it was not clear if Trump was serious.
Trump told another reporter and author Jon Karl that his supporters were very angry with Pence and that it was common sense to be so because Pence was not helping overturn Trump's election defeat.
The Times said it was not clear what Tim Giebels, head of Pence's Secret Service detail, did with the warning from Short.
The next day, with the Capitol under attack, Pence's protectors rushed him from the Senate chamber to an underground parking bay. Multiple accounts said the vice-president refused to leave the building.
According to Short, Pence said, I m not going to let the free world see us fleeing the Capitol, and I am staying. The authors of books on the Trump presidency have been criticised for withholding news until publication. Haberman was known for having strong sources in the Trump White House, and was filmed taking calls from Trump himself.
She published her nugget about Trump's threat to Pence in the run-up to public hearings that will be staged by the House committee investigating the events of January 6th, 2021, in the run-up to public hearings.
Pence and the Secret Service didn't make a statement about the new Times report.