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      A Just Ceasefire or Just a Ceasefire?

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. 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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      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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      ‘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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      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

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      John Hinckley gains full freedom 41 years after Ronald Reagan assassination attempt

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      John Hinckley gains full freedom 41 years after Ronald Reagan assassination attemptHinckley, who shot and wounded the president in 1981 but was acquitted by reason of insanity, had decades of mental health supervision John Hinckley, who shot and wounded US president Ronald Reagan in 1981, has been freed from court oversight, officially concluding decades of supervision by legal and mental health professionals.“After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!,” he wrote on Twitter shortly after noon on Wednesday.The lifting of all restrictions had been expected since late September. US district court judge Paul L Friedman in Washington had said he would free Hinckley on 15 June if he continued to remain mentally stable in the community in Virginia where he has lived since 2016.Hinckley, who was acquitted of trying to kill the then US president by reason of insanity, spent the decades before that in a Washington mental hospital.Close calls: when American presidents diced with deathRead more Hinckley has gained nearly 30,000 followers on Twitter and YouTube in recent months as the judge loosened Hinckley’s restrictions before fully lifting all of them.But the greying 67-year-old is far from being the household name that he became after shooting and wounding the 40th US president and several others outside a Washington hotel. Today, historians say Hinckley is at best a question on a quiz show and someone who unintentionally helped build the Reagan legend and inspire a push for stricter gun control.“If Hinckley had succeeded in killing Reagan, then he would have been a pivotal historical figure,” HW Brands, a historian and Reagan biographer, wrote in an email to the Associated Press. “As it is, he is a misguided soul whom history has already forgotten.”Barbara A Perry, a professor and director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said that Hinckley “would be maybe a Jeopardy question”. But his impact remains tangible in Reagan’s legacy.“For the president himself to have been so seriously wounded, and to come back from that that actually made Ronald Reagan the legend that he became … like the movie hero that he was,” Perry said.Reagan showed grace and humor in the face of death, Perry said. After being shot, the president told emergency room doctors that he hoped they were all Republicans. He later joked to his wife Nancy that he was sorry he “forgot to duck”.When the president first spoke to Congress after the shooting, he looked “just a little bit thinner, but he’s still the robust cowboy that is Ronald Reagan”, Perry said.‘Honey, I forgot to duck’: the attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan, 40 years onRead moreThe assassination attempt paralyzed Reagan press secretary James Brady, who died in 2014.In 1993, president Bill Clinton signed into law the Brady bill, which required a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases and background checks of prospective buyers. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence are named after Brady and his wife Sarah.The shooting also injured Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty.Hinckley was 25 and suffering from acute psychosis at the time of the attack. When jurors found him not guilty by reason of insanity, they said he needed treatment and not a lifetime in confinement. He was ordered to live at St Elizabeths hospital in Washington.In the 2000s, Hinckley began making visits to his parents’ home in a gated community in Williamsburg. A 2016 court order granted him permission to live with his mother full time, albeit under various restrictions, after experts said his mental illness had been in remission for decades.Hinckley’s mother died in July. He signed a lease on a one-bedroom apartment in the area last year and began living there with his cat, Theo, according to court filings.Over the years, the court restricted Hinckley from owning a gun or using drugs or alcohol. He also couldn’t contact the actor Jodie Foster, with whom he was obsessed at the time of the shooting, or any of his victims or their families.TopicsUS newsVirginiaRonald ReaganUS gun controlUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Third panel hearing will show Trump’s pressure on Pence to overturn election

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      Third panel hearing will show Trump’s pressure on Pence to overturn electionEx-president leaned on then vice-president to reject certified electors despite being told scheme was unlawful The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack intends to outline at its third hearing on Thursday how Donald Trump corruptly pressured then vice-president Mike Pence to reject the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election and directly contributed to the insurrection.The panel will first examine the genesis of Trump’s pressure campaign on Pence to adopt an unconstitutional and unlawful plan to reject certified electors from certain states at the congressional certification in an attempt to give Trump a second presidential term.The select committee then intends to show how that theory – advanced by external Trump legal adviser John Eastman – was rejected by Pence, his lawyers and the White House counsel’s office, who universally told the former president that the entire scheme was unlawful.Trump’s raising of $250m for fund that ‘did not exist’ suggests possible fraudRead moreBut Trump deliberately ignored his top White House advisers to go down that path, the panel will show. And, the panel contends, in escalating his campaign to obstruct Biden’s certification through the morning of 6 January 2021, Trump contributed to the violence of the Capitol attack.The select committee will additionally show that Trump’s false public remarks about Pence having the power to refuse to count votes for Biden – Pence had no such power – directly put the vice-president’s life in danger as the mob chanted “hang Mike Pence”.Trump’s involvement in the Pence strategy makes the former president liable for the crimes of obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring to defraud the United States, the panel has argued. A federal judge has agreed, calling it “a coup in search of a legal theory”.The select committee previewed details on the third hearing on a call with reporters. The panel said the hearing would be led by congressman Pete Aguilar, with witness questioning done by former US attorney John Wood, who was appointed senior investigative counsel by vice-chairperson Liz Cheney.The select committee will hear from Pence’s former counsel Greg Jacob as well as retired former US appellate court judge J Michael Luttig over the course of the hearing, which is expected to last around two hours, according to a source familiar with its planning.The select committee is likely to focus heavily on the role played by Eastman, who as early as 18 November 2020 was writing memos under the guise of the “Trump legal team” and proposing a brazen plan to send Trump slates of electors to Congress for certification.But Eastman’s plan to have Pence see that there were “duelling” slates of electors and therefore refuse to certify either Biden or Trump slates – which would result in Trump’s receiving more electoral college votes – relied on states certifying the Trump slates.On 13 December 2020, the so-called Trump legal team was circulating a “President of the Senate” strategy that referred to Pence taking such action on 6 January 2021, a clear violation of the law governing the certification, 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 2021, 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.But the select committee intends to reveal at the hearing that Pence’s counsel, Jacob, and others including Luttig, all informed the then-vice-president that even if the states had transmitted alternate slates of electors, the plan was unlawful from the start.The Trump White House counsel separately told Trump that Eastman’s plan violated the law, Cassidy Hutchinson, a top former aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, has also testified to the panel.Yet Trump and Eastman proceeded with the plan anyway. At the Save America rally on 6 January 2021, Trump told his supporters that he hoped Pence would do the “right thing” and just refuse to certify Biden’s election win, knowing full well by then that it was unlawful.The select committee is likely to show, finally, that Eastman himself knew the strategy was unlawful. In an email he sent to Jacob as the Trump mob stormed the Capitol, he admitted the scheme violated the law, but then he said Pence could surely violate the law a little more.Eastman said in the email that because Biden’s certification had been temporarily interrupted by the Capitol attack, Congress had violated the law governing the process. So Pence should have no problem committing “one more minor violation and adjourn for 10 days”, he said.TopicsJan 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpMike PenceTrump administrationUS elections 2020House of RepresentativesReuse this content More