Trump advisers: Plan ‘nuts,’ ‘crazy’
Jan. 6 testimony shows danger Pence faced from rioters
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s closest advisers viewed his lastditch efforts pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to halt congressional certification of his 2020 election defeat as “nuts,” “crazy” and even likely to incite riots if Pence followed through, witnesses revealed in testimony to the Jan. 6 committee Thursday.
New evidence disclosed Trump’s heated conversation deriding Pence with vulgar names on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, before the defeated president took the stage at a rally near the White House. From there, he sent his supporters to the U.S. Capitol to “fight like hell” as the vice president was to preside over a joint session.
The panel highlighted the danger to Pence as rioters came within 40 feet of the place at the Capitol where he and others had been evacuated.
Never-before-shown photos showed Pence and his team sheltering.
“He deserves to be burned with the rest of them,” one rioter said on video.
Pence’s counsel Greg Jacob testified he could “hear the din” of the rioters. Asked if Trump checked on Pence during the siege, Jacob said: “He did not.”
With live testimony and other evidence from its yearlong investigation, the panel opened its third hearing this month aiming to demonstrate that Trump’s repeated false claims of election fraud and desperate attempt to stay in power led directly to the Capitol insurrection.
All told, the committee is pulling together a dark portrait of the end of Trump’s presidency as he was left grasping for alternatives as courts turned back dozens of lawsuits challenging the vote.
Trump latched onto conservative law professor John Eastman’s obscure plan to defy historical precedent of the Electoral Count Act and reverse Joe Biden’s victory. In public and private, Trump waged a pressure campaign that put his vice president in danger as he was to preside over the joint session of Congress to certify the election.
Trump aides and allies warned bluntly in private about his efforts, even as some publicly continued to stand by the president’s false claims of election fraud. Nine people died in the insurrection and its aftermath.
“Are you out of your ... mind?” Eric Herschmann, a lawyer advising Trump, told Eastman in recorded testimony shown at the hearing.
“You’re going to turn around and tell 78-plus million people in this country that your theory is this is how you’re going to invalidate their votes?” Herschmann said. He warned: “You’re going to cause riots in the streets.”
A text message from Fox News’ Sean Hannity to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows about the plan in the run-up to Jan. 6 read: “I’m very worried about the next 48 hours.”
Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said those around Trump called the plan “crazy.”
The committee has said the plan was illegal, and a federal judge has said “more likely than not” Trump committed crimes in a bid to stop the certification.
In a social media post Thursday, Trump decried the hearings anew as a “witch hunt” and exclaimed, “I DEMAND EQUAL TIME!!!”
On Capitol Hill, panel Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., cited Pence’s own words that there was “almost no idea more un-American” than being asked to reject Americans’ votes. By refusing Trump’s demands, Pence “did his duty,” said the panel’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.
The panel also heard from Jacob, the vice president’s counsel who fended off Eastman’s ideas for Pence, and retired federal judge Michael Luttig, who called the plan from Eastman, his former law clerk, “incorrect at every turn.”
Jacob said it became clear to Pence from the start that the Founding Fathers did not intend to empower any one person, including someone running for office, to affect the election result.
Pence “never budged,” from that initial view, and was determined to stay at the Capitol that night and finish the job, Jacob said.
Luttig, a conservative scholar, said in a halting voice but firm terms that had Pence obeyed Trump’s orders, declaring “Trump as the next president would have plunged America into, what I believe, would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis in America.”
Thursday’s session presented new evidence about the danger Pence faced as rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” with a makeshift gallows outside the Capitol as the vice president fled with senators into hiding.
The president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, testified about the “heated” phone call Trump had with Pence that morning, as the family joined in the Oval Office. Another aide, Nicholas Luna, said he heard Trump call Pence a “wimp.”
In another development Thursday, Thompson said the panel will ask Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for an interview amid disclosures of the conservative activist’s communications with people in Trump’s orbit ahead of the attack. He did not specify a schedule for that.