Jan. 6 hearings: What we've learned, and what's next

WASHINGTON >> In its first three hearings, the House panel investigating the Capitol insurrection has laid out the beginnings of its case against former President Donald Trump — that his lies about the 2020 election, and his pressure on his vice president to overturn it, directly led to the violence on Jan. 6, 2021.

The committee's June hearings — at least two more are scheduled — come after a yearlong probe and more than 1,000 interviews. The panel has featured both live witnesses and video, including from interviews with many of Trump's closest advisers who tried to dissuade him from his efforts to stay in power. The committee has also showed video from the violent attack that day, some of which had never been seen before.

In methodically laying out their initial findings, members of the nine-member panel say they are trying to remind a weary public of what was at stake that day, and what could have happened if Vice President Mike Pence and others had not rebuffed Trump's efforts to overturn his defeat. They are also compiling a huge trove of evidence that the Justice Department wants to use in its own investigations.

The committee's Thursday hearing focused on Trump's pressure on his vice president after all 50 states certified President Joe Biden's win and courts across the country had rejected his campaign's attempts to legally challenge the results. As the president ran out of options, he and a small group of allies turned toward the final congressional certification on Jan. 6.

The vice president presides over that session every four years in a ceremonial role. Prodded by a constitutional law professor named John Eastman, Trump pressured Pence to defy the law, and hundreds of years of precedent, by stepping in to object to or delay the count.

Greg Jacob, a counsel to Pence, said the vice president was resolute from the beginning that he would not carry out the plan. “Our review of text, history — and frankly, just common sense — all confirm the vice president's first instinct on that point, there is no justifiable basis to conclude that the vice president has that kind of authority,” Jacob told the committee in live testimony on Thursday.

But Trump ramped up his pressure in the days before the certification, culminating with a call that aides described as “heated” between the two men on the morning of Jan. 6, a shout out for Pence to “do the right thing” at a huge rally of his supporters that morning and finally with a tweet saying that Pence did not have “courage” as a violent mob was already breaking into the building. The committee chronicled that timeline with video interviews from White House aides, clips from Trump's speech and footage of the angry crowd calling for Pence's assassination.

In one video played by the committee, a Trump supporter said he had heard reports that Pence had “caved,” and if he did they were going to drag “politicians through the streets.” The crowd called for Pence's hanging as they broke into the building.