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President Donald Trump and his aides knew it was not legal for their vice president, Mike Pence, to try to thwart Joe Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021, but they did run a relentless lobbying campaign. even after the assault of the mutineers. at the Capitol and threatened Pence’s life, according to new evidence presented Thursday by the House committee investigating the attack.
Leading the campaign was Trump’s attorney, John Eastman, who repeatedly spoke with Pence’s top members over the two days before January 6 about whether the vice president would reject the count of the winning polling station. of Biden or would suspend the day’s proceedings to allow seven challenged states to re-examine. their popular votes, witnesses said.
Pence never raised it, said former Vice President Greg Jacob’s attorney, and even Eastman acknowledged that gambling was not legal, Jacob said. Plus Apparently, several former White House aides said they – and Pence – told Trump the same thing.
“I said, ‘John, if the vice president did what you asked him to do, we would lose nothing to the Supreme Court, would we?’ Jacob recalled. ”
The committee also sent an January 11, 2021 email from Eastman to Trump’s top campaign lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, apologizing to the outgoing president, although Eastman did not receive any. . A member of the committee, Deputy Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) Said that in his statement to the committee, the lawyer asserted his right to the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination “a hundred times.”
The House committee, which has spent a year investigating the Jan. 6 attack, went on to argue in the three-hour hearing on Thursday afternoon that the aggression was the violent culmination of a coup attempt. led by Trump.
With new details and unpublished videos and photos, the proceedings focused on Pence and his mostly ceremonial role presiding over the final step in the four-year process of declaring the winner of a presidential election: counting the polling station vote in one session joint. of Congress.
Committee members argued not only that Trump and his advisers knew Pence did not have the power to block Biden’s victory, but his public statements against him incited the rioters who invaded the Capitol that day. they chanted “Hang Mike.” Think! ” as they passed a mock fork erected outside the building.
“Donald Trump wanted Mike Pence to do something that no other vice president has ever done,” said Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), The committee’s chairman. “The former president wanted Pence to reject the votes and declare Trump the winner or send the votes to the states to count them again. Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew he was bad”.
The committee presented new evidence of how closely the mutineers were facing Pence, 40 feet away, while his secret service escorted him to a safe place inside the Capitol complex.
“Are you surprised to see how close the turf was to the evacuation route you took?” Aguilar asked Jacob, who was with Pence that day. “The distance between me and you is about forty feet.”
Jacob replied, “I heard the noise of the rioters in the building as we moved, but I don’t think I knew they were that close.”
The diagrams show, for the first time, how Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber and how the rioters approached on January 6, 2021. (Video: The Washington Post)
The attack: The siege of the United States Capitol on January 6 was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event
Several witnesses said there was never any doubt that Pence would not interfere with the count that day. The Constitution requires states to establish how their presidential voters are elected; all states follow the popular vote. With regard to the counting of these electoral votes, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution only states that the President of the Senate, Pence at the time, “opens all certificates” and that “the votes will be counted.”
Jacob said Pence began asking about his powers and duties to oversee the count in early December.
“There was no way that our editors, who hated concentrated power, who had broken with the tyranny of George III, would never have put a person, especially not a person who had a direct interest in the outcome because they were in the for the election, with the role of having a decisive impact on the outcome of the election, “said Jacob.
Former Vice President Pence’s lawyer George Jacob noted on June 16 that Vice Presidents do not have the authority to reject the voter list. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post)
J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal appellate judge and recognized Conservative who advised Pence during the crisis, said that what Trump was asking of Pence was a “constitutional wrongdoing” and posed a serious threat to democracy. American.
“I would have put my body on the other side of the road before I let the vice president cancel the 2020 election,” Luttig said.
None of this prevented Trump from stepping up pressure as the January 6 congressional proceedings approached. That day, the The effort began in the morning, when Trump called Pence to his official residence. Both Jacob and former Pence chief of staff Marc Short remembered being with the vice president when the call came in and watching Pence leave the room.
Several Trump aides, including his daughter, Ivanka, were in the oval office at the time and were able to hear the president’s part of the conversation. In the video testimony that was played at the hearing, Ivanka Trump described her father taking on a “different tone” than he had heard before with the vice president.
Ivanka Trump also told other people on the west wing that her father had called the vice president “the word p” and spoke of Pence’s lack of courage, her former chief of staff, Julie Radford, said Thursday. During the conversation, Pence made it clear to Trump that he did not have the authority to do what Trump asked.
The committee also detailed how Trump’s pressure on Pence during his appearance at the Ellipse demonstration that day was not part of his original speech, but was accidental.
Trump told rallies he spoke with Pence before the rally about the need to have the “courage” to help him stay in office for another four years.
“I hope Mike does the right thing, “Trump told his supporters.” I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we will win the election. “
Later, with the attack on the Capitol underway, Trump “spilled gasoline on fire” by tweeting an angry message to Pence, said Sarah Matthews, a former Trump aide to the press, in a videotaped interview with investigators aired Thursday.
“Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states the opportunity to certify a set of corrected facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones that are He asked them to certify in advance. Trump tweeted at 2:24 p.m., “The US is demanding the truth!”
The committee showed images of rioters reading the tweet aloud and others angrily demanding Pence’s head. Moments later, the mutineers inside the Capitol arrived on the east side of the roundabout.
Several Pence associates said they were shocked and disappointed when Trump issued a statement the day before the riot in which Pence and Trump “fully agree that the vice president has the power to act” to overturn the results of the 2020 elections.
Short, Pence’s chief of staff, said the statement’s information was “incorrect” and recalled an angry conversation with Trump aide Jason Miller, who stated separately that he wrote the statement with the contribution. of Trump.
“It irritated me and I expressed the opposite so that a statement could have come out that distorted the vice president’s point of view without consulting,” Short told Miller.
More than any other figure in the previous days and including January 6, Thursday’s hearing showed Eastman, a Trump lawyer who described scenarios for denying the presidency to Biden in legal notes and at a Board meeting Oval on Jan. 4 with Pence and Trump.
Eastman repeatedly tried to convince Pence and his lawyers that the vice president could unilaterally annul the election results. Eastman, a prolific email sender, struggled for months to withhold the emails requested by the committee, and just last week a federal judge ordered Eastman to hand over 400 additional documents to the committee.
Thursday was probably only the first hearing Eastman had, as the committee continues its closed-door investigation, setting up the procedure as new information is introduced.
Thompson said the panel plans to invite Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, to be interviewed. The Post reported Wednesday that the committee has obtained email correspondence between Thomas and Eastman. The emails show that Thomas’ efforts to cancel the election were broader than previously known, according to two correspondents who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
Jacob, along with former Trump White House attorney Eric Hershmann, made it clear Thursday in his testimony that they believe Eastman’s plan was ridiculous and illegal. Jacob recalled sending an email to Eastman after Pence was evacuated to a safe place: “Thanks for your bull, we’re under siege now.”
Eastman did not regret the answer, blaming Pence for not …