In the face of multiple official investigations into Trump campaign’s possible Russian contacts heating up and a key vote due in the Senate to repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) and trash Medicaid funding, Vice President Mike Pence Pence somehow found time to sneak off and have a private chat with Charles Koch.

According to The Hill.com the first instinct of the Veep’s office was to deny the meeting took place. But it turns out while at a conservative Christian celebration in Colorado, Pence had an unannounced meeting with Charles Koch and representatives from the Koch brothers’ political finance and policy arm, Americans for Prosperity.

Pence, in town to headline a banquet celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Christian conservative group Focus on the Family, sat down with the chairman and chief executive of Koch Industries, along with key members of the Koch team.

 The meeting was not on the vice president’s schedule released by the White House late Thursday.

A spokesman for the vice president’s office denied to The Hill earlier Friday that Pence would be meeting with the Koch brothers’ network. The spokesman did not respond to requests for comments late Friday.

 For anyone harboring happy dreams of a scandal-plagued Trump leaving office one way or another before his term expires, it’s sobering to consider the Vice President may be just as bad in his own unique way. He has expressed a desire to copy former VP Dick Cheney’s governing style. And Pence has enjoyed a long relationship with the Koch machine, even if he’s not just an outright puppet of the oligarch-wannabes.

 The Hill.com reminds readers: While President Trump had an almost non-existent relationship with the libertarian billionaire Koch brothers, Pence has a much longer history with both Charles and David Koch. 

 Americans for Prosperity touted Pence’s record as governor of Indiana. His former pollster Kellyanne Conway, now a senior adviser in the Trump White House, worked for a Koch network group. And [Marc] Short, the White House’s top lobbyist and former Pence chief of staff, once ran the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, a key wing of the Koch brothers network.

President Trump or President Pence: name your poison, America … bottoms up.