Karoline Leavitt, the longtime Donald Trump aide who will become his White House press secretary when his second term begins in January, removed a pair of social media posts in which she reposted praise of former Vice President Mike Pence for certifying the 2020 election.
The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine shows that Leavitt — who was then an aide to New York Representative Elise Stefanik — retweeted a January 7, 2021, tweet from Tim Scott spokesperson Ken Farnaso in which he called Pence “a steady hand through the chaos” at the U.S. Capitol the previous day, when a riotous mob of Trump supporters tried to prevent certification of the 2020 election.
“Love him or hate him, he kept the wheels of democracy moving & pushed forward to certify his own loss,” said Farnaso, who added that it had been “an honor” to serve Pence.
Three days later, Leavitt retweeted a post from a CNN producer, who shared a screengrab of now-famous video footage of Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman.
In the widely-viewed video, Goodman is seen goading a pack of rioters and leading them away from the unsecured Senate chamber door, giving senators and staff time to lock the doors as the mob approached the second floor of the Capitol.
Leavitt quoted the post and added a note of her own calling Goodman “a hero.”
Yet, according to CNN, Leavitt subsequently removed both posts as she was attempting to reinvent herself as a pro-Trump congressional candidate ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
As she ran for a New Hampshire congressional seat, Leavitt routinely denied that President Joe Biden had won the 2020 presidential election. In one interview, she said there was “absolutely no way” that Biden had “legitimately” earned 81 million votes against Trump two years earlier.
“I fundamentally do not believe that, and I will tell you the majority of voters on the Republican side do not believe that either. We feel as though this election was taken away from us,” she said.
Last month, Trump said Leavitt — who served as a press aide during the first Trump administration — would return to the White House as his press secretary after she worked on his 2024 campaign.
In a statement announcing her appointment, the president-elect said Levitt was “smart,” “tough” and “effective.”
