Two of former President Donald Trump’s top allies, then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, spoke with other Cabinet members about using the 25th Amendment against Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol protest, according to ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl’s new book.
Karl alleges in Betrayal that Mnuchin and Pompeo were a part of the conversation to remove Trump from office before his term ended, according to excerpts published by MSNBC.
Pompeo “asked for a legal analysis of the 25th Amendment and how it would work,” Karl said, but the idea was “quickly jettisoned” after other administration officials, such as then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and then-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, began to resign.
“It would not be quick enough and it would be subject to legal challenges,” Karl said. “But in the hours after the riot, there were high-level conversations about this.”
Karl insisted this report was “rock solid” and came from “a source familiar with the conversations.”
However, Pompeo denied the allegation and said through a spokesperson that there were never conversations about invoking the 25th Amendment against Trump.
Mnuchin did not respond to the allegations but has refused to disavow Trump’s concerns about the 2020 presidential election.
Trump has dismissed Karl as a “third-rate reporter” and disputed several other claims he made in the book, including one that alleged Trump decided not to attend President Joe Biden’s inauguration after learning he might be disinvited from the ceremony by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other congressional leaders.
“From Election Day, November 3rd, the day I realized that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged, I would never have agreed to go to Joe Biden’s Inauguration. This decision was mine, and mine alone,” Trump said in a statement.
“The old broken-down Crow, Mitch McConnell, had nothing to do with it,” he continued. “The Election was rigged, the facts are clear, and Mitch McConnell did nothing. He was probably too busy working on deals with China for his wife and family!”
