Trump Defends Those Who Shouted To "Hang Mike Pence" During Violent Supporters Attack On Capitol Hill

By Jesse Rodriguez and Rebecca Shabbad -

Former President Donald Trump defended the screams of the assailants on the Capitol on January 6 in which they demanded that "Mike Pence", his vice president at the time, be hanged, assuring that they were understandable because they were angry because the election in which he lost the White House had not been annulled, according to an audio of an interview conducted in March and released this Friday.

The audio is from an interview with Jonathan Karl of ABC News, conducted at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida complex for an unpublished book,

.

The excerpt was obtained this Friday by our sister network NBC News

from the ABC News program This Week.

When Trump was asked if he was concerned for Pence's safety during the January 6 attack, Trump said: "I thought he was well protected, and I had heard he was in good shape."

The journalist then reminded him that

Trump during a rally with his supporters in October.Scott Olson / Getty Images

“It's common sense, Jon.

It's common sense that you're supposed to protect, "Trump responded," how can you, if you know that a vote is fraudulent, right, how can you pass a fraudulent vote to Congress?

Joe Biden beat Trump in the 2020 presidential election without fraud and cleanly, but the former president has since been unable to acknowledge his defeat and has attempted to undermine the legitimacy of American democracy by spreading lies and hoaxes about alleged fraud that never it existed and that repeated vote counts, carried out even by the Republican Party alone, have never been able to prove.

The Constitution, the highest law of this country, required that on January 6, Pence, as president of the Senate for his position as Vice President of the Government, supervise the opening of the envelopes of the certified electoral votes of the 50 states and Washington , DC, while the tellers counted the votes.

During this process, Republican legislators tried to challenge the results of some states even though they were clean and democratic.

[Trump sues the committee investigating the attack on the Capitol not to access documents about what happened]

As that process unfolded on Capitol Hill, Trump was speaking to his supporters at a rally near the White House, where he said, "I hope Mike is going to do the right thing."

He added: "If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election."

Pence had no power to overturn the election results

, so he did the right thing: certify Biden's victory.

But that was not "the right thing" for Trump and for the criminals who stormed one of the seats of American democracy.

In June, at a political event in New Hampshire, Pence himself said that January 6 was a "dark day in the history of the United States Capitol."

[Federal judge denies Trump's request to keep secret documents related to the assault on Capitol Hill]

He added that he may "

" with Trump to discuss the event.

The audio was released as the House Select Committee investigating the attack has stepped up its actions in recent weeks, with a series of subpoenas issued to former Trump aides earlier this week.