Former US Vice President Mike Pence said on Saturday that the story will bring his former boss, US President Donald Trump, to justice “for his role” in the storming of the Capitol in 2021, US media reported, News.ro reported.

“President Trump was wrong. He had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words put my family and everyone in the Capitol that day at risk, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable,” Mike Pence said in his remarks at the Gridiron Dinner , a gala organized by journalists and attended by high-ranking political figures.

“What happened that day was a disgrace,” he said on Saturday. “And it would be an insult to decency to present it any other way. As long as I live, I will never, ever downplay the suffering that occurred, the lives lost, or the heroism of the law enforcement officers on that tragic day,” he promised.

These words of Mike Pence represent his sharpest criticism of Donald Trump.

Some of the thousands of protesters who stormed the Capitol, the seat of the US Congress, on January 6, 2021, called for Pence to be hanged because he does not want to annul the presidential election, prompting Vice President Trump, who is in Congress at the moment, to scurry to safety .

The vice president has the constitutional role of president of the Senate, and Pence presided that day at a formal meeting where the Electoral College votes that confirmed the election of the president and vice president were to be approved. During the siege, Trump posted several tweets, including one urging Republicans to “fight back” and others making false claims about election fraud. He also criticized Pence for endorsing the election results won by Joe Biden.

Mike Pence, who is considering a 2024 Republican presidential bid, has rarely broached the subject of Jan. 6 in the months since the incident, but has since stepped up his criticism of the protesters and the behavior of his former boss.

Pence’s relationship with Trump has been rocky since they left the White House. He criticized the behavior of the former president, but refrained from making serious accusations. He also refused to cooperate with a committee in the House of Representatives investigating the attack on the Capitol, calling the activities carried out by the majority of the Democratic body partisan. But the former vice president’s comments on Saturday suggest he is willing to distance himself decisively from Donald Trump, especially ahead of the 2024 presidential bid.

Donald Trump has already announced his intention to run for a new term in the 2024 presidential election, and Mike Pence has indicated that he may also run for the Republican Party.