It wasn't Mike Pence's first appearance in New Hampshire.

The former Vice President has appeared several times since the end of his term in the New England state, in which – right after Iowa – the primaries begin in 2024.

In this way, the Republican is signaling that he is preparing for the presidential election without officially announcing his candidacy.

Pence always finds himself in a difficult balancing act between respect and distance when dealing with Donald Trump.

Majid Sattar

Political correspondent for North America based in Washington.

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On Wednesday he indicated at Saint Anselm College, a Catholic college near Manchester, that he is ready to take a more confrontational course.

The search of the former President's Mar-a-Lago home had provoked angry reactions not only within the Trump base but also among Republicans in Congress.

Trump himself suggested that the FBI could have planted incriminating material on him.

Pence now opposed it: Republicans should hold the Justice Department and the federal police to account without attacking the FBI's emergency services.

"These attacks on the FBI must stop." Demands to cut the federal police's budget are just as wrong as the "defund the police" appeals from the left spectrum.

The Republicans are the "law and order" party, Pence said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, however, called for transparency with regard to the search in Mar-a-Lago.

Since the operation in Florida ten days ago, the authorities have reported an unprecedented number of threats against federal police officers.

During the search, the FBI found and confiscated documents classified as top secret.

The storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 led to the break between Trump and Pence.

To this day, the former president accuses his longtime loyal deputy of not having the courage to do the right thing at the time - namely to refuse to certify Joe Biden's election victory.

In the committee of inquiry, a former White House staffer testified that Trump responded to the violent mob's "Hang Mike Pence" calls at the time by saying that he deserved it.

Another "Insidious Lie"

Pence has so far publicly commented that he and Trump would probably never agree on January 6, 2021.

On Wednesday, referring to testimony to the committee of inquiry, Pence said if he received an invitation to attend, he would consider it.

He added, however, that such an event would be unprecedented in history.

A subpoena would not be entirely unprecedented: in 1974, then-President Gerald Ford was asked in Congress about his decision to pardon his resigning predecessor, Richard Nixon.

Even vice presidents had to answer questions in Congress.

Committee chairman Bennie Thompson has so far ruled out subpoenaing the former vice president, after all, two of Pence's former employees testified extensively.

They described how the then vice president was put under pressure to keep the ousted president in power.

Liz Cheney, deputy chair of the investigative committee, made it clear recently that Trump is still provoking violence by spreading conspiracy theories.

The Republican said after losing the Wyoming primary that to believe Trump's lies about voter fraud, one had to assume that dozens of judges who dismissed his lawsuits were corrupt.

And now, after the Mar-a-Lago investigation, one has to believe that 30 FBI agents, who had served their country all their lives, did not conduct a legitimate search, but broke their oath and pursued a secret plan stuffing incriminating material into the boxes, which they would then have confiscated.

This is another "insidious lie," Cheney said.

Trump knows

spreading these conspiracy theories will provoke violence.

That's how it was on January 6, 2021.

And now it's happening again.