A misinterpreted nugget addressed in the third Jan 6 hearing...

[Mister Ed]

35. Greg Jacob doesn't pretend to know what was on the minds of the Secret Service agents.

He can't know, and doesn't try to say, what the agents were thinking or why they might have driven Pence away. He can only tell us that he thinks Pence wouldn't get in the car because he felt that fleeing would be bad optics.

So, why might the agents have driven away with Pence if he'd gotten in the car? Three possibilities that I can see:

First, and by far and away the most likely in my view, would simply be to protect Pence. His protection is their mission, and they take that mission very, very seriously indeed.

The second possibility would be that some agents in the detail were loyal Trumpists who wanted to see the election certification postponed or prevented. That's entirely possible. There are many such gung-ho Trumpists in our general population. There's no reason to think that none of them could be Secret Service agents. If there were agents with such motivations, they'd get two birds with one stone by protecting the VP while helping to derail the certification. It's impossible for me to know or say.

The third theoretical possibility would be that they wanted to kidnap Pence and bring him to harm. I think that's unlikely in the extreme. After all, if they wanted Pence harmed, they could have just waited a few more minutes before rushing him from the office to the underground garage. He came within a hair's breadth of being harmed by the mob as it was.

So, why was Pence unwilling to get in the car? It could be no more than what Greg Jacob tells us: that Pence was concerned about how it would look to the world if he fled. But is Jacob really privy to Pence's thoughts?

Speaking for myself, I know that if I and my wife and my daughter were in mortal danger, I would have other things on my mind than appearances. I would be concerned with our survival. I think Pence knew that he and his family would never be safe while millions of rabid Trumpists believed he had the power to overturn the election. He had to stay and get that certification completed.

I'm also willing to believe that in that moment of crisis, Pence may have felt the call of duty, and responded honorably. I know, I know, he'd spent four years as Trump's cowardly toady, but a crisis can sometimes bring out the noblest in people. Again, it's impossible for me to know or say.

Of this I am certain, though: Jacob's testimony does not prove that Pence had no reason to mistrust his SS detail apart from his concerns about appearances. Jacob offers that explanation, and I don't doubt that he believes it. But he does not and cannot know the thoughts of the agents, or of Pence himself.