Trump’s pressure campaign on Pence is focus of third hearing on Jan. 6 insurrection
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign urging Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally overturn the 2020 presidential election was the focus of a hearing Thursday by the House committee investigating Jan. 6, 2021, which presented evidence making the case that Trump put Pence’s life in danger during the Capitol insurrection.
The committee laid out a last-ditch plan pushed by Trump and California attorney John Eastman to persuade Pence to reject the votes of certain states or send results to state legislatures to determine whether fraud occurred.
“This is constitutional mischief,” retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig told the committee.
Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., led the hearing with the help of committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. The trio outlined a multiweek effort by Trump that included private meetings, tweets aimed at pressuring Pence to accept Eastman’s theory that Pence could either reject electoral votes outright or could suspend the proceedings and declare a 10-day recess in which state legislatures would be ordered to reexamine election results.
The panel heard testimony from Greg Jacob, who as Pence’s chief counsel was present for multiple meetings in which Eastman and Trump pushed the vice president to intervene. Jacob said that Pence never wavered from his initial reaction to the idea in early December.
“The vice president never budged,” Jacob said. “It just made no sense from everything that he knew and had studied about our Constitution that one person would have that kind of authority.”
The committee also highlighted video of depositions from Pence chief of staff Marc Short, who was also in the Eastman meetings, and from White House staff who told the committee about which members of Congress were involved in Trump’s efforts.
The panel showed testimony from White House officials and several lawyers who said that Eastman’s theory was wrong and that they told Trump and others many times before Jan. 6. And the committee highlighted a private acknowledgment by Eastman and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani that they knew the plan was illegal, though they had asserted publicly it was legal.
Jacob said that Eastman acknowledged in an Oval Office meeting with Trump and Pence that the plan would violate the Electoral Count Act of 1887, but Eastman said that he considered the statute unconstitutional and didn’t expect the courts would take up its legality. In a meeting the next day, Jacob said that Eastman acknowledged the Supreme Court would rule against them 9-0.
Other deposition footage will show how the plan evolved over several weeks to become more “politically palatable,” Aguilar said.