Pence campaign selling swag quoting Trump's 2020 election indictment

Former Vice President Mike Pence's presidential campaign is now selling new shirts and hats that play up Pence's decision to not go along with a plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election, quoting a piece of the indictment against former President Donald Trump.

The new merchandise, which hit the campaign's online store Thursday, plays up a section of the indictment in which he allegedly called Trump on New Year's Day 2021. The indictment claims Trump "berated [Pence] because he had learned that the Vice President had opposed a lawsuit seeking a judicial decision that, at the certification, the Vice President had the authority to reject or return votes to the states under the Constitution."

When Pence responded that "he thought there was no constitutional basis for such authority and that it was improper," the indictment claims Trump replied, "You're too honest."

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It's an episode that Pence wrote about in his 2022 book, "So Help Me God," where he described the conversation and included the same quote from Trump.

The Trump indictment has cast a new spotlight on Pence, who is mentioned repeatedly in the document, which also cites his “contemporaneous notes” leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, when pro-Trump protestors marched on, and in some cases, stormed the U.S. Capitol.

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“I can’t assess whether or not the government has the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt what they assert in the indictment, and the president is entitled to a presumption of innocence,” Pence said Wednesday to reporters at the Indiana state fair. “But for my part, I want people to know that I had no right to overturn the election.”

Pence and his campaign told donors on a Wednesday Zoom call that he had more than 30,000 unique donors and expected to clear the 40,000 unique donor threshold that would punch his ticket for the party's first debate sometime next week.

But the Pence campaign connected the launch of the new merchandise to a possible uptick in fundraising (purchasing gear counts as a campaign contribution if the campaign profits from it).

"Perhaps this new merch will be what puts us over the 40,000 donor threshold even earlier than we expected," the campaign said in a statement.