Vice President Mike Pence thought he was free and clear now that articles of impeachment have been drawn up against Donald Trump and are moving toward a vote in the House of Representatives. All the attention is on the president’s high crimes and misdemeanors, which means Pence was flying under the radar and waiting to see how things turned out.

But then something happened Wednesday evening that completely threw a monkey wrench into Pence’s plans.

When House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) sent over the final report to the House Judiciary Committee, he included a previously classified record of a conversation the Veep had with the president of Ukraine on September 18. Pence had previously refused to declassify the contents of the call.

As Rachel Maddow reported Wednesday evening on her show:

“There’s also the ongoing investigation specifically into the Ukraine scheme. An official working in Mike Pence’s office, she notified the impeachment investigation after her initial testimony that she had come to recall some additional information about Mike Pence’s communications with the Ukrainian government. And while she believed that that information about vice president Mike Pence and his interactions with Ukraine was relevant to the impeachment inquiry, Vice President Pence’s office has insisted that information she testified about is classified can’t be released to the public. And it went over to the Judiciary Committee tonight in classified form for them to answer this new information.”

Rachel Maddow drops an impeachment bombshell on Mike Pence. pic.twitter.com/JF3JhiHTDX

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) December 12, 2019

In other words, Mike Pence is now embroiled in the Ukraine scandal even further than he was before.

Pence has now all but guaranteed that he too will face an impeachment inquiry to determine just how much of a role he played in the whole Ukraine mess. And he’s also likely to be called as a witness in Trump’s impeachment trial which will be held in the Senate sometime early next year.

There was a time when it seemed possible that Pence might have a shot at being president one day. But those days are long gone, and now, much like his boss, he’s fighting for his political life.