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      ‘System nearly failed’: US democracy was left hanging by the thread of Pence’s defiance

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      ‘System nearly failed’: US democracy was left hanging by the thread of Pence’s defianceIf the vice-president had acquiesced to Trump’s demand, the country could have plunged into an unprecedented crisis The January 6 select committee showed on Thursday that Mike Pence withstood an intense pressure campaign from Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.Trump’s advisers repeatedly tried to convince Pence to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory on January 6, even after they themselves acknowledged that there was no constitutional basis for the vice-president to do so.Pence was 40ft from mob on January 6: ‘Vice-president’s life was in danger’Read morePence ultimately refused to interfere with the certification process, despite facing threats to his personal safety from Trump’s supporters who stormed the Capitol. But if Pence had acquiesced to Trump’s demands, the US could have faced an unprecedented constitutional crisis, the committee warned on Thursday.“We’re fortunate for Mr Pence’s courage on January 6,” said Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chair of the committee. “Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe.”Thompson’s warning was echoed by Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge who served as an advisor to Pence in the weeks after the 2020 election. Luttig argued that, if Pence had tried to overturn the results of the election, that effort would have threatened the very foundation of American democracy.“That declaration of Donald Trump as the next president would have plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis,” Luttig said.The Trump team’s legal efforts to overturn the election results were spearheaded by conservative lawyer John Eastman, the committee heard Thursday. Eastman tried to convince Pence and his advisors that the vice-president had the authority, under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, to reject the results. Luttig summarily rejected that theory on Thursday, joining a loud chorus of constitutional experts who had already dismissed Eastman’s idea.“There was no basis in the Constitution or laws of the United States, at all, for the theory espoused by Mr Eastman. At all. None,” Luttig said. He added, “I would have laid my body across the road before I would have let the vice-president overturn the 2020 presidential election on the basis of that historical precedent.”According to Pence’s former counsel, Greg Jacob, even Eastman himself acknowledged that such a strategy would not withstand legal scrutiny. Eastman told Jacob that he believed the supreme court would reject the theory in a unanimous vote of 9 to 0.And yet, Trump and his allies continued to pursue their unconstitutional strategy. The committee shared new footage Thursday showing January 6 insurrectionists threatening the vice-president for refusing to block the certification, as rioters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”Instead of offering support to his endangered vice-president, Trump escalated his pressure on Pence. At 2.24pm, Trump tweeted, “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!”Committee member Pete Aguilar, who took a lead role in questioning Jacob and Luttig at the Thursday hearing, said that immediately after Trump sent his tweet, the crowds in and around the Capitol surged, and Pence was evacuated.“Make no mistake about the fact that the vice-president’s life was in danger,” Aguilar said.In light of the serious threats Pence faced on January 6, many viewers of the hearing marveled at the fact that he ultimately followed through with certifying the election, ensuring the transfer of presidential power.“Had Pence not certified the election, there’d likely be violent protests in the streets,” Alyssa Farah Griffin, Trump’s former communications director, said on Twitter. “Lame duck Trump would undoubtedly try to use the military to quell unrest. You’d have general officers refusing orders. The republic would be in crisis.”Instead, Congress stayed in session until the early hours of 7 January to oversee the counting of electoral college votes and make Biden’s victory official.In the year and a half since the insurrection, lawmakers have taken steps to guarantee that a future vice-president cannot ignore the will of the people. A bipartisan group of senators is working to reform the Electoral Count Act, and they announced last week that they had reached a general agreement on language clarifying the vice-president’s role to be entirely ministerial during the counting of electoral college votes.The alarming testimony from members of Pence’s inner circle underscored the immense importance of those senators’ work, while revealing just how close the US came to an even larger disaster on January 6.Thompson chose to close out the Thursday hearing with a stark warning to the entire country: although the system of American democracy held this time, that does not guarantee it will survive the next threat.“There are some who think the danger has passed, that even though there was violence and a corrupt attempt to overturn the presidential election, the system worked,” Thompson said.“I look at it another way. Our system nearly failed and our democratic foundation destroyed but for people like you.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackMike PenceDonald TrumpUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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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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      January 6 panel says Trump brought US ‘dangerously close to catastrophe’ – video

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      The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol presented evidence on Thursday that Donald Trump was told his last-gasp attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election was unlawful but forged ahead anyway. ‘Donald Trump wanted Mike Pence to do something no other vice president has ever done. The former president wanted Pence to reject the votes and either declare Trump the winner or send the votes back to the states to be counted again,’ congressman Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee said. ‘We were fortunate for Mr. Pence’s courage. On January 6, our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe’

      Trump brought US ‘dangerously close to catastrophe’, January 6 panel says More

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      Trumpists stitched a legal theory from whole cloth. The hearings tore it apart | Lloyd Green

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      Trumpists stitched a legal theory from whole cloth. The hearings tore it apartLloyd GreenOver the course of nearly three hours, the public repeatedly heard that Mike Pence lacked the authority to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election On Thursday, the House special committee again met. An hour earlier, Representative Bennie Thompson announced that the committee would invite Ginni Thomas, wife of US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, to testify. A day before, a federal court rejected Steve Bannon’s attempt to dismiss contempt of Congress charges.“The court cannot conclude that the committee was invalidly constituted such that the indictment should be dismissed,” Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, announced. If convicted at an upcoming trial, Bannon, a former Trump senior adviser, faces up to two years in prison.Trump lawyer John Eastman sought presidential pardon after January 6Read moreThe third committee session offered no fireworks. Rather, over the course of nearly three hours, the public repeatedly heard in the driest terms that Mike Pence lacked the authority to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.J Michael Luttig, a retired appellate judge appointed to the federal bench by George HW Bush, Greg Jacob, the vice president’s counsel, and Eric Herschmann, a Trump White House lawyer, all made that reality abundantly clear.The theory advanced by Donald Trump and concocted by John Eastman – a former clerk to Justice Thomas and Judge Luttig and a pen pal of Ginni Thomas – was a lie. It was stitched from whole cloth to sate the ambitions of the Oval Office’s desperate occupant and his minions.To quote Pence’s counsel, “there was no way” that a sitting vice president could unilaterally decide or alter the election’s outcome at a joint session of Congress. The witnesses stressed that to say otherwise would license Kamala Harris to do just that in early 2025 or have conferred upon Al Gore the power to commit constitutional “mischief” back in January 2001.Eastman’s name and theories received repeated mention throughout the hearing. In August 2020, Eastman penned an op-ed challenging Kamala Harris’s US citizenship and her eligibility to run for vice president. For the record, Harris was born in Oakland, which is very much part of America.The Eastman-Ginni Thomas alliance hovered over the hearing but received no mention before the cameras. Starting Monday night, a stream of stories emerged of communications between Ms Thomas and Eastman. Further, the New York Times reported that Eastman conveyed to Kenneth Chesebro, a pro-Trump lawyer, the state of play within the high court.“So the odds are not based on the legal merits but an assessment of the justices’ spines, and I understand that there is a heated fight underway,” Eastman wrote.From the sound of things, Eastman became privy to pillow-talk between the justice and his wife.It was only a few short weeks ago that the right exploded over the leak of a draft of a supreme court decision that stands to overturn Roe v Wade and undo constitutional protections for reproductive freedom. Now, only crickets.“We think it’s time that we, at some point, invite [Ginni Thomas] to come talk to the committee,” Bennie Thompson, the committee chair, told Axios on Thursday. “It’s time for us to invite her to come talk,” he relayed to CNN.Like Bannon, Eastman failed in his efforts to undercut the committee. In March, a federal court ruled that Eastman could not block the production of certain documents despite their possibly constituting “attorney-work product”. Instead, the crime-fraud exception attached, and the privilege did not apply.“Based on the evidence, the court finds that it is more likely than not that President Trump and Dr Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6 2021,” the court opined.During the Trump administration’s waning days, Eastman sought but failed to obtain a presidential pardon. Herschmann told Eastman to lawyer up. Fittingly, Eastman has invoked his right against self-incrimination before the committee 100 times.Despite all this, the hearings have not swayed broad swaths of the public. In Nevada, election-deniers ran the table in Tuesday’s Republican primaries. Further east, in Michigan, indicted Ryan Kelley is in the hunt for the party’s gubernatorial nomination.Instead, a recent poll shows half the country predicting that someday the US will “cease” to be a democracy. Beyond that, 49% of respondents answered that they were not following the hearings.Judge Luttig repeated that the 45th president and some of his followers were a “threat” to democracy – not simply for what happened on 6 January 2021, but on account on the 2024 presidential race and what may follow.At the moment, Trump is considering whether to announce his candidacy before November’s midterms. Beyond that, plans for a Trump-driven steal reportedly appear to be in the works. If Mike Pence prayed the morning of 6 January, he was right to.
      An attorney in New York, Lloyd Green is a regular contributor and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
      TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsOpinionUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpcommentReuse 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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      Trump brought US ‘dangerously close to catastrophe’, January 6 panel says

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      Trump brought US ‘dangerously close to catastrophe’, January 6 panel saysBennie Thompson says US ‘fortunate for Mike Pence’s courage’ in refusing to accept Trump’s scheme to reject electoral count The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol presented evidence on Thursday that Donald Trump was told his last-gasp attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election was unlawful but forged ahead anyway.Trump then pressured his vice-president, Mike Pence, to reject a tally of state electors as part of a plot that brought the country “dangerously close to catastrophe”, the panel heard.January 6 hearings live: ‘Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe,’ says panel chairRead moreWith live witnesses and recorded depositions from its yearlong investigation, the panel offered a dramatic accounting of the days and hours that preceded the assault. Chilling new evidence also detailed the frantic moments after rioters stormed the Capitol, as Pence was rushed from the Senate chamber to a secure underground location.“Approximately 40 feet – that’s all there was – 40 feet between the vice-president and the mob,” said the California congressman Pete Aguilar, a Democrat who led the panel’s third hearing. “Make no mistake about the fact that the vice-president’s life was in danger.”The committee spent the majority of the hearing dissecting the “completely nonsensical and antidemocratic” theory, devised by the conservative law professor John Eastman and embraced by Trump, that suggested Pence had the authority to reverse the results of the 2020 election. The vice-president has no such power.“Trump wanted Mike Pence to do something no other vice-president has ever done,” Congressman Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee and a Democrat of Mississippi, said opening the hearing. “We were fortunate for Mr Pence’s courage.”Trump was told repeatedly that the plan was unlawful, according to witnesses and testimony from his closest advisers. Yet in the final days before Congress was due to certify the election results Trump increased his public and private pressure campaign on his loyal lieutenant to do his bidding. “What the president wanted the vice-president to do was not just wrong, it was illegal and unconstitutional,” Congresswoman Liz Cheney, a Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice-chair, said on Thursday.Squeezed between a president who refused to accept defeat and a constitution that provided him no such power to change the course of the election, the vice-president chose the constitution, those who advised him testified on Thursday.Greg Jacob, who served as counsel to Pence when he was vice-president, told the panel that Eastman’s plot to nullify the results of the 2020 election was unlawful from its conception – and Eastman knew it. During a meeting with Eastman on 4 January, Jacob testified that Eastman “acknowledged” that the strategy would violate the Electoral Count Act, the 19th-century law that Trump pressured Pence to exploit. In an exchange the next day, Eastman conceded that if the supreme court heard a challenge to his interpretation of the act, it would have been rejected, 9-0.The second witness, retired judge and informal Pence adviser J Michael Luttig, said that if Trump had succeeded, it would have “plunged America into what I believed would have been tantamount to a revolution” and “the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the Republic”.02:17“I would have laid my body across the road before I would have let the vice-president overturn the 2020 presidential election on the basis of that historical precedent,” the staid former judge said.A federal judge ruled in March that Trump and Eastman “more likely than not” had committed felonies in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including obstructing the work of Congress and conspiring to defraud the American people. The committee showed a clip of Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann testifying that he told Eastman, “get a great effing criminal defense lawyer – you’re gonna need it.”The committee provided a cinematic accounting of a call between Trump and Pence on the morning of 6 January that turned “pretty heated”, according to Ivanka Trump who was in the Oval Office with her siblings during the exchange. “It was a different tone than I heard him take with the vice-president before.”A top aide to Ivanka testified that Trump called Pence “the p-word” during the call.Early drafts of the speech Trump delivered at a rally on the Ellipse before the riot, when he encouraged his supporters to “fight like hell” for his presidency, included no reference to the vice-president, Aguilar said. But Trump changed the remarks to sharply criticize Pence, imploring him to find the “courage” to overturn the election.The committee also played testimony showing that Trump was told of the violence breaking out in his name at the Capitol before he tweeted at 2.24pm that Pence did not have the “courage to do what should have been done”. In the moments after Trump sent the tweet, the crowds both inside and outside “surged” and overwhelmed law enforcement officers.A montage played during the hearing showed rioters threatening to drag Pence through the streets and chanting “bring out Pence” and “hang Mike Pence” near where a gallows had been erected outside the Capitol.The committee displayed an email from Eastman to Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, sent days after the Capitol riot asking to be put on a potential list to receive a presidential pardon. A pardon was never granted.Relying on emails written by Eastman, the committee argued that the law professor knew the scheme involving an alternative slate of electors from a handful of states Trump was disputing was unlawful. But he nevertheless presented it to the White House as a viable course of action as early as 13 December 20202, according to emails released in court filings.Crucially, however, the state legislatures had still not met by that date to certify an alternate Trump slate of electors, which Eastman showed in emails that he knew needed to happen in order for his delicate scheme to have any chance of success.Eastman also undermined the scheme when he admitted in emails on 19 December 2020, released in court filings, that “unless those electors get a certification from their State Legislators”, the Trump slates would be “dead on arrival in Congress”.The emails showed Eastman knew the plan rested on states certifying Trump slates. But when he presented a memo to Pence in January 2021 attesting to the existence of Trump slates – that did not actually exist – he revealed corrupt intent to obstruct proceedings on 6 January, the panel believes.No state legislatures ultimately certified an alternate slate of electors for Trump. The Trump White House appears to have participated in a related scheme to send fake Trump slates to Congress, though those were not introduced at the certification on the day of the attack.The opening primetime hearing last week, which drew more than 20 million viewers, focused on placing Trump at the heart of a sprawling “seven-part” plot to overturn an election the committee says he knew he lost. The second hearing traced the origins and spread of Trump’s stolen-election myth.Recorded testimony from Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, also played a prominent role in Thursday’s hearing. In his deposition to the committee, Short said Pence had informed the president “many” times that he would not go along with the scheme.Pence “never budged” from his initial view that the founding fathers would not have left it to one person to determine the outcome of a presidential election, and certainly not someone with such a significant stake in the outcome as a vice-president, Jacob testified.The hearing concluded ominously, with a warning from Luttig that the same forces continue to threaten American democracy.Trump and his allies remain “clear and present danger to American democracy,” Luttig told the panel, not because of what happened on January 6 but because of their determination to “succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020”.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpMike PencenewsReuse this content More