Trump lawyer blamed Pence for violence as rioters stormed Capitol

WASHINGTON >> As a mob was attacking the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” a lawyer who plotted with former President Donald Trump and his allies to try to overturn the 2020 election sent a hostile message to the vice president’s top lawyer, blaming Pence for the violence.

The email, reported by The Washington Post and confirmed by a person briefed on its contents, shows the extent to which Trump and his advisers sought to pressure the vice president, who was presiding over the certification of the election, to defy the will of the voters and keep Trump in office.

“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” the lawyer, John Eastman, wrote to Greg Jacob, Pence’s chief counsel.

Pence and Jacob were in a secure room at the Capitol when Eastman sent the message, the Post said. Outside, rioters were storming the building where Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s election, erecting a gallows, hunting for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and forcing lawmakers to evacuate in a scene of violence and mayhem. Police officers recovered guns, knives, Tasers, Molotov cocktails, explosive devices and zip ties in the area.

Eastman rose within Trump’s legal circle in 2020 from a little-known conservative academic to one of the most influential voices in the president’s ear, writing a memo laying out steps he argued Pence could take to keep Trump in power, which are measures Democrats and antiTrump Republicans have likened to a blueprint for a coup.

The two-page memo written by Eastman and circulated to the White House in the days before the certification was revealed in the book “Peril” by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. In the memo, Eastman argued that as vice president, Pence was “the ultimate arbiter” of the election, essentially saying he had the power to determine who won and that “we should take all of our actions with that in mind.”

That view was rejected by Pence and his lawyers as illegal and unethical.