As it turns out, Mike Pence's notes were very useful to Jack Smith in forming the timeline leading all the way from the election to Jan. 6. Via the Washington Post:
Pence took “contemporaneous notes” about Trump and his allies’ efforts to overturn the 45th president’s electoral defeat in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, according to the indictment, which includes some new specific allegations about a defining chapter of Pence’s career and a key point of contention in his long-shot 2024 presidential campaign against his former boss. Pence rejected Trump’s pressure to try to reverse the election results in his role certifying the outcome, leading to a fracture that has persisted to this day.
The notes are explicitly cited twice in the document. The first reference highlights that Trump, on Dec. 29, 2020, allegedly told Pence that the Justice Department was “finding major infractions,” according to the notes. The second details a Jan. 4, 2021, meeting, where Trump allegedly repeated his false claims of widespread election fraud. During that meeting, according to the document, Pence questioned Trump lawyer John Eastman’s proposal to send the election results back to the states, asking if it was “defensible.”
After Eastman — identified from descriptions as “Co-Conspirator 2” — suggested that “nobody’s tested it before,” Pence allegedly told Trump, “Even your own counsel is not saying I have that authority.”
All Trump wanted for Christmas that year was for Pence to obstruct the election certification -- and Pence was a Grinch about the whole thing:
The document references an alleged Christmas Day exchange between Trump and Pence. “On December 25, when the Vice President called the Defendant to wish him a Merry Christmas, the Defendant quickly turned the conversation to January 6 and his request that the Vice President reject electoral votes that day,” the document says. “The Vice President pushed back, telling the Defendant, as the Vice President already had in previous conversations, ‘You know I don’t think | have the authority to change the outcome.’”
On Jan. 1, Trump eviscerated Pence for opposing a lawsuit that suggested he had the authority to reject the state election results, the indictment alleges. When Pence told him he did not have the constitutional authority to do so, Trump told him, “You’re too honest,” according to the document.
