WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence says he’d agree to take a lie detector test “in a heartbeat” to prove he isn’t the author of an anti-Trump New York Times opinion piece.
A top Pence aide has already said the vice president didn’t write the anonymous piece criticizing President Donald Trump’s leadership. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has said Trump would be justified in using lie detectors to ferret out the anonymous essay writer. Trump hasn’t said whether he’d go that far, but Pence says he’s willing.
Pence says during a taped “Fox News Sunday” interview: “I would agree to take it in a heartbeat and would submit to any review the administration wanted to do.”
Pence adds that he doesn’t know the author’s identity but repeats that the individual should resign.
Pence says he’s “100 percent confident” that no one on his staff was involved with the anonymous New York Times column criticizing President Donald Trump’s leadership.
Pence told CBS “Face the Nation” that he knows them and knows their character.
Some pundits had speculated that Pence could be the “senior administration official” who wrote the opinion piece because it included language Pence has been known to use, like the unusual word “lodestar.”
The op-ed writer claimed to be part of a “resistance” movement within the Trump administration that was working quietly behind the scenes to thwart the president’s most dangerous impulses.
