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      The January 6 hearings aren’t acknowledging the elephant in the room | Thomas Zimmer

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      The January 6 hearings aren’t acknowledging the elephant in the roomThomas ZimmerThe attack on the US Capitol wasn’t the isolated doing of Trump and a few loyalists. Nearly the entire Republican party is now united behind it – and the attack on democracy hasn’t ended The January 6 hearings have been more impressive and more forceful than anyone could have reasonably expected – definitely worthy of the nation’s continued prime-time attention. Yet so far the hearings have been narrowly focused on Donald Trump and the past – rather than the continuing assault on the democratic system that the Republican party has fully embraced.The committee’s core task is to investigate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and what led to it, of course. But everyone who believes in democracy needs to recognize that, in a very concrete sense, there is a continuing insurrection that far surpasses Trump.Man who attacked Capitol was given tour of building by Republican day before riotRead moreThe committee’s strategy of building its case almost entirely on testimony from Trump people, Republicans, and conservatives, not Democrats, is certainly effective if the goal is to prove the nonpartisan nature of the proceedings. But it runs the risk of letting too many people besides Trump off the hook. The narrative is that there was a “Team Normal” in and around the White House that moved away from Trump as he went increasingly off the rails, isolating him and leaving him with only “Team Crazy” and the likes of an allegedly drunk Rudy Giuliani, a rather unhinged Sidney Powell, and a rightwing lawyer, John Eastman, who seemed entirely willing to invent pseudo-legal reasons to justify a coup attempt.It is important to get insight into these inner dynamics. But the group of people who were deeply complicit in Trump’s machinations is a lot bigger than Team Crazy. A tale that presents not only Mike Pence, but also former attorney general William Barr, Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, and even Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, undoubtedly members of Trump’s innermost circle, as part of Team Good Guys (or at least: Team Normal, Team Reasonable) is problematic. All of them stood with Trump almost to the bitter end and fought long and hard to keep him in charge; Pence undoubtedly played a crucial role in thwarting Trump’s scheme, but none of the others spoke out publicly until, in the case of Barr, they had a revelatory book to promote and were looking for redemption.Most worrisome, to me, is the fact that the “Team Crazy was isolated” narrative doesn’t really capture the danger of the moment. If that had been the case, we wouldn’t be where we are. If anything, Republicans have actually rallied around Team Trump. So far, the villains in the committee’s tale are Trump, a very small number of unhinged people around him, and fascistic militants like the Proud Boys. Even most of the people who stormed the Capitol are presented as deluded, deceived by Trump’s lies into believing the election was stolen and that it was their patriotic duty to fight back.These are all important parts of the puzzle. But the immediate danger to American democracy stems from the fact that the Republican party is justifying all this, remains united behind the man responsible, and, worst of all, actually wants to put him back in power. This is about Trump, but not just about Trump. This is what the Republican party is: the very few voices siding against Trumpism are being shunned and ostracized, and most Republicans are united in their quest to install authoritarian rule by a reactionary minority.And even if conservatives aren’t necessarily on board with all the specifics of Trump’s conspiracy claims, the right in general is united behind the idea that progressives are out to destroy “real” America and must be stopped by whatever means. White conservatives consider themselves the sole proponents of “real America” and therefore entitled to rule, as is the party that focuses almost solely on their interests and sensibilities.This is the basis on which 147 congressional Republicans voted to overturn the election results even after the assault on the Capitol. This is why the Republican party officially defended the violent attack of January 6 as “legitimate political discourse” and lashed out against the few Republicans who publicly dared to object. This is why Republicans are either explicitly running on the big lie or, at the very least, are lending legitimacy to the idea that there was something wrong with the 2020 election.This is, most importantly, the ideology that animates Republicans up and down the country to look at January 6 as what one of the witnesses in the third hearing, conservative Judge J Michael Luttig, rightfully called a “blueprint” in his closing statement: a trial run for the next presidential election in 2024. They are working hard at the state level to get themselves in a position to execute that blueprint more effectively. They have escalated their election subversion efforts into an all-out assault on state election systems. Republican-led state legislatures are re-writing the rules so that they will have more influence on future elections. Local officials who defended the democratic process are being harassed, purged from election commissions, and replaced with loyal Trumpists.And how are the people the hearings present as Team Normal, as standing up to Trump’s coup attempt, dealing with all this? Take Bill Barr: he’s on record saying he would vote for Trump in 2024. In his testimony for the committee as well as in his book, Barr has left no doubt that he believes Trump is either willfully pushing treasonous conspiracy theories or is completely detached from reality – yet Barr is still willing to help put him back in the White House.Barr’s ability to rationalize this astonishing balancing act is the main reason I am skeptical that the hearings, by focusing narrowly on Trump, could succeed at turning Republicans away from him. When confronted with how he could possibly still support another Trump presidency during his book promotion tour earlier this year, Barr replied: “Because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic party.” There it is: after everything we have been through, conservatives still see the Democrats (or progressives, or liberals, or the left – they see them as interchangeable) as the biggest threat.This is the perfect encapsulation of the permission structure that governs conservative politics: anything is justified in defense against what they constantly play up as a radically “un-American,” extremist “left” that has supposedly taken over the Democratic party. What could the hearings possibly deliver – considering that much of Trump’s involvement in the insurrection happened out in the open, in plain sight – that the right hasn’t either already mythologized as part of a fully justified struggle to protect “real America” against a fundamentally illegitimate “left,” or, at the very least, is willing to endorse as the lesser evil? If someone is still on Team Trump in June 2022 – and that includes all those who would love to present themselves as “Team Normal” but are willing to put Trump back in power – we should assume they have found an effective way of giving themselves permission to stay on Team Trump no matter what, Bill Barr style, and to side with the radicalizing Republican party against democracy.We need to acknowledge that that’s where Republicans are: they either subscribe to the big lie outright; or they feel queasy about the specifics of the big lie, but consider Democratic governance illegitimate nonetheless; or, at the very least, they think anything is justified to defeat “the left”. The committee needs to communicate this unsettling reality to the American people, because that, in Judge Luttig’s words, is the “clear and present danger to American democracy.” Even if it initially failed, that’s how Trump’s coup attempt might still succeed. In 2020, the historian Heather Cox Richardson published a book on How the South Won the Civil War. It should be required reading for this particular moment in American politics. Richardson argues that while the Confederacy obviously lost the military confrontation, the broader ideology it was built on, the idea that the world works best when it is dominated by wealthy white men, and that only those wealthy white men are therefore entitled to rule, continued to shape the American project, and is still the leading threat to true democracy in this country today. I worry, to build on the title of Richardson’s book, that future historians might have to write about How the Insurrectionists Won the Presidency.
      Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer
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      Did ‘good’ Republicans save us from the ‘bad’ ones on January 6? I don’t buy it | Moira Donegan

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      Did ‘good’ Republicans save us from the ‘bad’ ones on January 6? I don’t buy itMoira DoneganA person of integrity wouldn’t have found himself in the position that Mike Pence was in on the day of the Capitol attack, because he would have stood up to Trump sooner – or never worked for him in the first place Who is the January 6 committee talking to? Over the past week, the committee has held three public hearings that offer a lucid, convincing and thorough account of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the events leading up to the violent insurrection at the Capitol. The hearings have been choreographed and precise, scripted down to the word, building a clear case that Trump intentionally broke the law in the pursuit of perpetual power. The hearings, compelling as argument and surprisingly successful as television, betray a vision and discipline that is rare in congressional proceedings, and which would have been impossible if it were not for the absence of nearly all Republicans on the panel.Trump brought US ‘dangerously close to catastrophe’, January 6 panel saysRead moreAnd yet, over the course of the committee’s three hearings to date, viewers have heard almost exclusively from Republicans. The public presentation of the committee’s findings relies heavily on videotaped depositions from members of the Trump campaign and the Trump administration. During the hearings’ opening night, last week, we heard from a montage of Trump-world figures, who testified under oath that they knew the 2020 election had been fairly conducted even as Trump told the public that it was stolen. It was two on-the-ground witnesses to the violence, a Capitol police officer and a British documentarian, who spoke about how brutal and chaotic the scene at the Capitol was. When it was the committee’s turn to characterize their findings, it was Liz Cheney – a rightwing ideologue from Wyoming – who did most of the talking.On Tuesday, the committee’s presentation focused on how Trump loyalists searched for evidence of election fraud, with campaign attorneys and justice department staff investigating every implausible account of irregularity that crossed the president’s desk – from fairy tales of a leaking pipe and mysterious suitcases in Atlanta – to darker conspiracies about nefarious functionaries in Philadelphia. These allegations were all investigated with surprising seriousness, and they were all found to be baseless, even by inquisitors who were sympathetic to Trump’s authoritarian cause. Trump and his allies pressed the false fraud claims anyway. Here, too, the committee used only Republicans’ testimony, giving Trump and his insurrectionist faction just enough rope to hang themselves.In the story the January 6 committee is telling about the attempted coup and its violent climax, Republicans are the bad guys and Republicans are also the good guys. The Republicans are the ones who plotted a coup, searched for a legal rationale, invented lies about fraud and wasted taxpayer money investigating them, and then descended on the Capitol in a mob. But it was also Republicans who privately said the election was fair, who told the president the election fraud claims were lies, and who frantically texted the White House as violence erupted and people started getting killed, asking Trump to call the whole thing off.It’s not a plausible story: the idea that the Republican party are both the heroes and the villains of January 6; that their private, whispered discomfort and hasty condemnations of violence should excuse their cooperation and complicity all the way up to 5 January. It’s particularly implausible now, a year and a half after the attack, as Republicans who once distanced themselves from the January 6 mob have moved to embrace it. But that’s the story that the committee is telling.They kept on telling it on Thursday, as they presented extensive and disturbing evidence about the increasingly threatening attempts by Trump and his fringe campaign lawyer, John Eastman, to persuade Pence to refuse to certify the election results. The Committee heard from two rightwing legal experts: Pence’s in-house legal advisor, Greg Jacob, who was with the vice-president at the Capitol on January 6 and counseled him in the weeks proceeding; and the former federal judge John Michael Luttig, a jurist with considerable respect in rightwing legal circles, for whom John Eastman once worked as a clerk.The two men clearly enjoyed hearing themselves talk, and their testimony featured some tedious and indulgent bickering over the supposed “inartfulness” or “perfection” of the 12th amendment’s language. But together, they told a story of an alarming campaign of pressure on the vice-president to either reject electoral votes for Biden outright, or to suspend Congress’ joint session in order to allow time for the votes to be “re-certified” (ie, changed) by state legislatures.It was Eastman who invented this cockamamie scheme, claiming without precedent or any legal support that the vice-president had the authority to change the results of an election unilaterally. The Pence camp searched desperately for some way that the plan could be legal, only to find none. For weeks, Pence and his advisors were caught in a pickle – not wanting to concede the election or disappoint Trump, but also too scared to get implicated in a treasonously hairbrained scheme. The Pence camp told Trump and Eastman that the plan was illegal. According to testimony, so did the White House counsel. So did everyone. At certain points, according to Jacob, both Eastman and Giuliani admitted that the scheme had no legal basis. They kept pushing it anyway.Things escalated. Trump began to make public attacks on Pence on Twitter. The vice-president’s office talked to the Secret Service before January 6, concerned that Trump’s hostility would mean that Pence would need more security. On a phone call the morning of the attack, Trump called Pence a “wimp” and a “pussy.” Members of the White House staff testified that even after Trump had been made aware of violence at the Capitol, he sent out another tweet attacking Pence. This prompted a surge of intensity and passion among the angry crowd, who pushed through into the Capitol building chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” After the crowds had been cleared, as members of Congress filed back into the ransacked Capitol to complete their work, Eastman sent another email: would Pence consider overturning the election now?A person of conscience and integrity would never have found himself in the position that Mike Pence was in on January 6. A man with courage would have stood up to Trump sooner; a man of moral commitment would never have worked for him in the first place. Still, the committee’s argument that Pence did something honorable when he refused to carry through the illegal plan put forth by Eastman might carry some weight, in the sense that Pence was under enormous, life-threatening pressure to do the wrong thing, and he did not. But perhaps this is the real indictment of the American system of government: if we were a functioning democracy, the rule of law wouldn’t be dependent on something so flimsy as Mike Pence’s honor.But as a symbol for a good Republican, Pence hardly seems to fit the image of uprightness and dignity that the committee is trying to assign him. The members of the January 6 committee clearly want to address these “good” Republicans, to show them that their party need not be defined by Trump, to bring them back to the light. But the people they are talking to don’t exist anymore.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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      Pence the ‘hero’ who foiled Trump’s plot – could it lead to a 2024 run?

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      Pence the ‘hero’ who foiled Trump’s plot – could it lead to a 2024 run? The former VP rejected the plot to overturn the election – the death knell for Trump and Pence’s marriage of convenienceMike Pence was described as the hero of the hour, the man who stood his ground to Donald Trump’s coup plot and saved America from a violent “revolution”.Pence was 40ft from mob on January 6: ‘vice-president’s life was in danger’Read moreYet among the rows of committee members, witnesses, reporters, congressmen and women and young citizens at Thursday’s January 6 hearing into the attack on the Capitol, the former vice-president was nowhere to be seen. Pence was 500 miles away in Ohio to promote “American energy dominance”.Both events could ultimately lead in the same direction: Pence 2024, a once unlikely presidential campaign illuminating the complexity of his relationship with his former boss, Trump.Pence has dropped numerous clues already, from founding an organisation, Advancing American Freedom, to touring Republican primary battlegrounds. Nothing that the 63-year-old says on the early campaign trail, however, might be as crucial as the near three hours that played out in his absence on Thursday before a TV audience of millions.But the panel came to praise Pence, not to bury him, or to hang him, for that matter – like some of Trump’s insurrectionists wanted. Even while he was taking part in a roundtable discussion in Cincinnati, the ex-vice-president’s ears might have been burning as the congressional committee investigating last year’s deadly assault on the US Capitol cast him as the savior of the republic.They spoke of a man who put his loyalty to country ahead of his loyalty to Trump, a potential selling point to Republican voters who may want to move on from the former president. But the session could also prove a serious liability for Pence with the Trump base, hardening its view of him as a traitor.The third public hearing was about Trump’s attempts to pressure Pence to overturn his 2020 election defeat. It heard how the president was told repeatedly that Pence lacked the constitutional and legal authority to meet his demands.Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee, began the hearing by observing: “Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong. We are fortunate for Mr Pence’s courage on January 6. Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe. That courage put him very close to tremendous danger.”The vice-chairwoman, Liz Cheney, a Republican who in theory could run against Pence in 2024, added: “Pence understood that his oath of office was more important than his loyalty to Donald Trump. He did his duty. President Trump unequivocally did not.”The committee heard how Trump latched on to a “nonsensical” plan from a conservative law professor, John Eastman, and launched a public and private pressure campaign on Pence days before he was to preside over the January 6 joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.Witness Greg Jacob, who was the vice-president’s counsel, testified that Pence refused to yield to it. The former Indiana governor understood the founding fathers did not intend to empower any one person to affect an election result and never wavered from that view.It was the death knell for the Trump and Pence’s marriage of political convenience. The president whined: “I don’t want to be your friend any more if you don’t do this.”And as a giant screen in the cavernous caucus room showed, it lit the fuse for a mob on January 6 to make bellicose declarations such as “Mike Pence has betrayed the United States of America!” The sound of chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” was juxtaposed with the image of a mock gallows against the backdrop of the US Capitol dome.Computer graphics demonstrated how Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber but was just 40 feet from the mob and in great peril. Jacob recalled: “I can hear the din of the rioters in the building while we moved. I don’t think I was aware they were as close as that.”The committee noted that a confidential informant told the FBI that the far-right group the Proud Boys would have killed Pence if they got the chance. Jacob recalled how Pence declined to leave, insisting that the world must not see the vice-president “fleeing the United States Capitol”.Yet Trump never called to check on his safety. Asked how Pence and his wife Karen reacted to that, Jacob replied simply: “With frustration.”The implication was that Pence bravely alone stood between America and catastrophe. But the praise singing was jarring to critics who wondered why he was far away in Ohio and not here to speak for himself.Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, tweeted: “Why won’t Pence testify before the January 6 House Committee and tell all of us what really happened?”Pence did, after all, act as Trump’s enabler for the previous four years. As vice-president he gave speech after speech lauding his boss and his policies, betraying no hint of dissent. In one strange example of sycophancy, he even seemed to imitate Trump’s actions in placing a water bottle on the floor.Asha Rangappa, a lawyer, CNN analyst and former FBI special agent, wrote on Twitter: “Pence is not a hero. Pence is a coward. It just so happens that on Jan 6, his fear of displeasing Trump was (fortunately) outweighed by a fear of something else – either being implicated in a failed coup and/or aiding and abetting criminal activity – but he’s still a coward.”Even now, while stating that Trump was “wrong” to seek to overturn the election, Pence also regularly trumpets the achievements of the Trump-Pence administration, pushes rightwing talking points and savages Biden and the “woke” left.A presidential run would presumably try to square the circle by offering a resumption of the “America first” agenda but within recognised constitutional and democratic boundaries. “Look, I’m Donald Trump but without the violence,” as Michael D’Antonio, a Pence biographer, has put it.But Thursday’s hearing might just as easily be the breaking, not the making, of a Pence bid for the White House. His defiance of Trump has now been luminously displayed for a national audience and recorded for posterity. He will not be speaking at this week’s Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Nashville after being booed last year; Trump is the star turn on Friday.If the Republican party was still “team normal”, Pence would now be strongly placed to make the case that he was a loyal vice-president who showed his independence when it mattered. This week’s primary election results, however, suggest that the party remains “team Maga” and some still believe that Pence should hang.TopicsMike PenceJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      ‘I’m through talking’: top Republican negotiator walks out of Senate gun talks

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      ‘I’m through talking’: top Republican negotiator walks out of Senate gun talksJohn Cornyn says he is heading back to Texas, dimming hope of vote on bipartisan gun safety bill before July recess The lead Republican negotiator in US Senate dialogue toward a bipartisan gun safety bill walked out of the talks on Thursday, dimming the likelihood of a vote on the legislation before senators leave for a two-week July 4 recess.Trump a ‘clear and present danger to US democracy’, conservative judge warnsRead moreSenator John Cornyn told reporters that he had not abandoned the negotiations, but he was returning to Texas amid difficulty reaching agreement.“It’s fish or cut bait,” he said. “I don’t know what they have in mind, but I’m through talking.” Other senators in the huddle remained inside the room.The bipartisan group has been working on a deal to curb gun violence since a gunman killed 19 school children and two adults in the small city of Uvalde, south Texas, just 10 days after a separate gunman killed 10 people in an act of stated racist violence against Black people in Buffalo, New York.The group of lawmakers, gathered by Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, announced a framework on measures to curb gun violence on Sunday. It did not go as far as Democrats, including US president Joe Biden, had sought, but would still be the most significant federal action to combat gun violence to emerge from Congress in years if passed.But in the days since, the talks have become bogged down in disagreements over two main provisions: how to provide incentives to states to create so-called red flag laws, in which guns can be temporarily taken away from people deemed dangerous, and the “boyfriend loophole,” allowing authorities to block abusive spouses from buying firearms, but does not cover people who aren’t married.Cornyn, whose home state of Texas does not have a red-flag law and is considered unlikely to enact one, wants the funding for that provision to cover other efforts towards tackling mental illness issues, such as “crisis intervention programs.”Cornyn said earlier on Thursday negotiators would need to reach agreement that day to have legislation ready in time for a vote next week.Midterm elections that decide which party controls the congressional chambers are in November, making the time window to pass any new legislation ever narrower.TopicsUS gun controlUS politicsRepublicansUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      'Are you out of your mind?': White House lawyer testifies on exchange with Trump's attorney – video

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      During a hearing on last year’s assault on the US Capitol, former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann testified that he told attorney John Eastman, who represented former president Donald Trump in a long-shot bid to overturn the voting results, that challenging the certification of the 2020 presidential election was extremely problematic, telling him: ‘Are you out of your effing mind?’

      Jan 6 hearings live: Trump is ‘clear and present danger to American democracy’, conservative judge warns More

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      Trump a ‘clear and present danger to US democracy’, conservative judge warns

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      Trump a ‘clear and present danger to US democracy’, conservative judge warnsJ Michael Luttig testifies that ex-president and his supporters are preparing an ‘attempt to overturn 2024 election’ as they did in 202002:17In a chilling warning, a conservative judge closed the the third January 6 committee hearing on Thursday by saying Donald Trump, his allies and supporters were still “a clear and present danger to American democracy”.Ginni Thomas sought by panel over role in Trump’s bid to overturn electionRead moreJ Michael Luttig testified that the former US president and his Republican supporters are preparing in open sight an “attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but [to] succeed”.The retired federal judge, a Ronald Reagan appointee, testified in his capacity as an adviser to Mike Pence, who was vice-president to Trump between 2017 and 2021.In a statement before the hearing, Luttig said: “A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6 2021, and our democracy today is on a knife’s edge.“America was at war on that fateful day, but not against a foreign power. She was at war against herself. We Americans were at war with each other – over our democracy.”The hearing which followed focused on efforts by Trump and advisers to convince Pence to block certification of Joe Biden’s victory, Pence’s refusal to do so and the deadly attack on the US Capitol which put Pence in danger.Closing the hearing, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the Democratic committee chair, asked Luttig to say what he meant by calling Trump and his supporters a clear and present danger.Luttig said: “Almost two years after that fateful day … Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.”“That’s not because of what happened on January 6. It is because to this very day the former president and his allies and supporters pledge that in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican party presidential candidate were to lose that election, they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020.”According to the Washington Post, more than 100 Republicans who have won primaries for midterm elections this year back Trump’s lie about electoral fraud in 2020. Such candidates have targeted key state elections posts as well as governors’ mansions and seats in Congress.Ginni Thomas sought by panel over role in Trump’s bid to overturn electionRead moreTrump was impeached over the Capitol attack but acquitted of inciting an insurrection when only seven of 50 Republican senators found him guilty. He has strongly suggested he will run again.Luttig said: “I don’t speak those words lightly. I would have never spoken those words ever in my life. Except that’s what the former president and his allies are telling us … the former president and his allies are executing that blueprint for 2024 in the open, in plain view of the American public.”“I repeat, I would have never uttered one single one of those words unless the former president and his allies were candidly and proudly speaking those exact words to America.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump lawyer John Eastman sought presidential pardon after January 6

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      Trump lawyer John Eastman sought presidential pardon after January 6Disclosure from Capitol attack committee suggests consciousness of guilt in unlawful scheme to return Trump to White House Former Trump legal adviser John Eastman sought a presidential pardon in the days after January 6, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack revealed on Thursday – indicating he knew he acted illegally as he sought to return Donald Trump to the White House.The disclosure, which came at the end of the panel’s third hearing on Thursday, appears to show a degree of consciousness of guilt from Eastman over his role in attempting to execute the unlawful plan to have then-vice president Mike Pence overturn the 2020 election results.Trump brought US ‘dangerously close to catastrophe’, January 6 panel saysRead moreAccording to an email that Eastman sent to Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani, and obtained by the select committee, Eastman directly sought a pardon from the former president: “I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.”The revelation about Eastman’s pardon request was the most legally significant moment that came from the hearing, signalling consciousness of guilt that went beyond Eastman’s earlier admissions that his proposals to reverse Trump’s election defeat were all unlawful.Eastman proposed two strategies ahead of January 6: to have Pence declare a 10-day recess so supposedly “disputed” states – there were none – could re-certify their election results in favour of Trump; or have Pence just reject electoral college votes for Biden.The select committee showed Eastman knew the proposals were unlawful but pressed ahead anyway, which could form the basis of a case against him that he committed multiple felonies in seeking to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiring to defraud the United States.First, according to testimony from Jacob, Eastman admitted days before January 6 that having Pence declare a recess would violate the Electoral Count Act, the statute governing the process by which Congress certifies the results of the presidential election.The former Trump legal adviser nonetheless recommended the option to Trump and Pence in meetings at the White House, according to Jacob, rationalizing it as the more “palatable” route for the vice-president from a political standpoint.Second, according to emails Eastman sent to Jacob as the Capitol was being breached, Eastman established that he knew that having Pence simply reject slates of electors for Biden was also unlawful, but nevertheless urged Pence to adopt the plan.“The fact that he was looking into a pardon for himself as a lawyer suggests either consciousness of guilt or fear that he might be guilty,” said Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee.Eastman does not appear to have ever received a pardon and it was not clear what Giuliani made of the request. But, two sources familiar with the matter said, Giuliani received a pardon request from another person at the Trump war room at the Willard hotel on January 6.Eastman knew his Pence strategies were unlawful. So did Pence, who took the advice of Jacob and his former chief of staff, Marc Short. But did Trump, and his top advisers? The select committee appeared to make the case on Thursday that they did.The panel revealed in questioning led by Congressman Pete Aguilar that Giuliani conceded to the former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann on the morning of January 6 that Eastman’s theories were wrong and his critics were “probably right”.But even though Giuliani appeared to know that Eastman’s strategies were unlawful, Trump’s former personal attorney took to the stage at the Save America rally at the Ellipse hours later and told the Trump supporters there that Eastman’s plan was all legal.The panel then also raised the prospect that Trump should have known Eastman’s plan was unlawful – once again returning to the doctrine of “wilful blindness” – after being told that by Pence and Jacob, who shared the same opinion as Herschmann.Like Giuliani, Trump said repeatedly at the Ellipse rally that he hoped Pence would do the “right thing” and declare a recess so that states could recertify the election in his favor, falsely telling the crowd Pence had the power to delay the joint session of Congress.Their remarks at the Ellipse rally – as well as Trump’s tweets attacking Pence – directly contributed to the fixation on Pence as the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, the select committee argued, raising the spectre of legal exposure for Trump and Giuliani.According to an FBI informant identified as “W-1”, the crowd took Trump’s attacks on Pence for refusing to adopt Eastman’s plan literally: the far-right Proud Boys group “would have killed Mike Pence if given the chance”, the informant told the justice department.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS politicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Pence was 40ft from mob on January 6: ‘Vice-president’s life was in danger’

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      Pence was 40ft from mob on January 6: ‘Vice-president’s life was in danger’Committee hearing details how Trump whipped up hostility towards Pence for refusing to overturn election Marching on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, a supporter of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election recorded himself on his phone.Ginni Thomas sought by panel over role in Trump’s bid to overturn electionRead moreHe said: “I’m telling you, if Pence caved, we’re gonna drag motherfuckers through the streets. You fucking politicians are gonna get fucking took to the streets.”Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, refused to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory. In the eyes of Trump and the mob, he did indeed “cave”.On Thursday, in their third hearing, the seven Democrats and two Republicans on the House January 6 committee also displayed a court filing from the Department of Justice revealing the shocking scope of the threat to Pence during the attack on the Capitol.The document, the California Democrat Pete Aguilar said, “explains that a confidential informant in the Proud Boys [extremist group] told the FBI the Proud Boys would have killed Mike Pence if given a chance.“The witness whom the FBI affidavit refers to stated that other members of the group … said that anyone they got their hands on would have been killed, including Nancy Pelosi”, the House speaker.Politicians were not killed, or dragged through the streets of Washington. But the mob that smashed its way into Congress gave every indication of trying. Some chanted “Hang Mike Pence”. A gallows was erected outside.In its Thursday hearing, the January 6 committee examined Trump’s pressure campaign against Pence and shone a harsh spotlight on the peril in which it placed the vice-president.Bennie Thompson, the panel chair, said: “Mike Pence’s courage put him in tremendous danger. When Mike Pence made it clear that he wouldn’t give in to Donald Trump’s scheme, Donald Trump turned the mob on him.”The committee focused on a tweet sent by Trump at 2.24pm, when he knew the Capitol had been breached and when Pence had been hustled from the Senate chamber.Trump wrote: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”The committee’s first hearing was watched by 20 million in primetime. That session revealed Trump’s chilling response when told rioters chanted that Pence should hang.Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican and deputy committee chair, said then: “Aware of the rioters’ chants to ‘hang Mike Pence,’ the president responded with this sentiment: ‘Maybe our supporters have the right idea.’ Mike Pence ‘deserves it’.”That bombshell came at the very start of televised hearings. In the second half of the third hearing, the committee came back to the very real threats to Pence’s safety.In recorded testimony about a conversation on 5 January 2021, Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, said: “The concern was for the vice-president’s security so I wanted to make sure the head of the vice-president’s Secret Service was aware it was likely, as these disagreements became more public, that the president would lash out.”Aguilar read tweets sent by Trump on 6 January in which he claimed Pence had the authority to reject electoral college results. Witnesses including Ivanka Trump discussed a call Trump placed to Pence. Nick Luna, Trump’s former body man, said: “I remember hearing the word ‘wimp’.” Ivanka Trump’s former chief of staff, Julie Radford, said Donald Trump used “the p word”, presumably a reference to “pussy”.The committee played footage of Trump telling a rally near the White House Pence could stop certification and should “come through”.Pence issued a letter saying he would not.Aguilar said: “We all know what happened next. The president’s words had an effect. President Trump’s supporters became angry. When the vice-president issued his public letter, the crowd at the Capitol erupted in anger. Rioters who had erected makeshift gallows began chanting, ‘Hang Mike Pence.’”The committee played more footage of Trump supporters.One said: “Pence is nothing but a traitor and he deserves to burn with the rest of them. Pence didn’t do what we wanted. Pence voted against Trump. That’s when we marched on the Capitol.”In the Senate chamber, a Trump supporter said: “Justice is coming.”At 2.26pm, Pence had been rushed to a secure location, an underground parking bay, where he stayed for four and a half hours.“Approximately 40ft,” Aguilar said. “That’s all there was: 40ft between the vice-president and the mob. Make no mistake, the vice-president’s life was in danger.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackMike PenceDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More