You can watch the live audience here on CBCNews.ca on Thursday afternoon
The January 6 congressional committee is expected to delve into Donald Trump’s latest effort to save the 2020 election on Thursday afternoon by pressuring his vice president Mike Pence to reject the election count, a very unusual and potentially strategy. illegal that was launched. in the period leading up to the United States Capitol riot.
With two live witnesses on Thursday, the House panel intends to show how Trump’s false allegations of a fraudulent election led him to look for alternatives while the courts overturned dozens of lawsuits challenging the vote.
Trump, after weeks of publicly refusing to accept the outcome, clung to Conservative law professor John Eastman’s obscure plan and launched a public and private lobbying campaign in the Pence days before the vice president chaired the session. January 6 Congress to certify Joe Biden’s election victory. A federal judge has said it is “more likely than not” that Trump has committed crimes under the scheme.
The committee will hear Greg Jacob, the vice president’s attorney who defended Eastman’s ideas for Pence to carry out the plan; and retired federal judge Michael Luttig, who called the plan of Eastman, his former legal secretary, “wrong at every step.”
The panel could present parts of the testimony of former Pence chief of staff Marc Short, who testified under summons for eight hours.
Thursday’s session is expected to reveal new evidence of the danger Pence faced that day when the crowd stormed the Capitol shouting “Hang Mike Pence!” with a gallows.
Trump, the allies proposed alternative voters
Along with hundreds of members of Congress that day, Pence was forced to seek security in the uncertain hours after the attack began, although he is said to have rejected the option of being expelled from the compound by the Service. Secret.
As the committee joked in recorded interviews last week, Pence, not Trump, contacted the Pentagon to send reinforcements to quell the insurgency. After the chaos subsided, Pence hours later reconvened the ceremonial countdown process and officially certified Biden’s victory and Trump’s defeat shortly after 3:40 a.m. on Jan. 7.
Attorney John Eastman gestures as he speaks alongside Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, at a rally in Washington on January 6, 2021, which preceded the Capitol riot. (Jim Bourg / Reuters)
Thursday’s session will also unpack Eastman’s plan to send alternative voter lists from five or seven Trump-contested states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. With the blackboards competing for Trump or Biden, Pence was expected to be forced to reject them, returning them to the states to resolve, according to the plan.
Pence rejected the plan.
With 1,000 interviews and 140,000 documents, the committee is illustrating how Trump’s false allegations of election fraud turned into a battle cry for thousands of Americans to flock to Washington to attend a May 6 rally. January and then go down to Capitol Hill to “fight like hell.” “For his presidency. Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter, was shot dead by Capitol police while being part of a crowd trying to gain access to a corridor.
TARGET | Trump’s attorney general rejects other highlights from the last session:
The Jan. 6 committee shatters Trump’s stolen election theory
The U.S. Congress committee investigating the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot used its second hearing to try to dismantle former President Donald Trump’s theory that the 2020 election was stolen.
More than 800 people have been arrested in connection with the siege of the Capitol, while members of extremist groups the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers are facing infrequent allegations of sedition.
Two former White House aides under Trump, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, are facing criminal proceedings to defy the January 6 committee summonses.
Report scheduled for the end of the year
The House committee is expected to issue a report on its overall findings before the end of the year. The November midterm elections could see the chamber fall under Republican control, in which case investigations into January 6 would be almost certain to cease.
Trump’s actions in the election and its aftermath are also being scrutinized elsewhere.
Georgia officials are currently organizing a special grand jury to study attempts by Trump and his White House to pressure state officials to overturn Biden’s victory in that state, while Navarro also said recently that he received a U.S. Justice Department subpoena to appear before a grand federal jury, though the reasons are not entirely clear.
Trump, who was also charged in 2021 with inciting the January 6 uprising, remains a powerful force for the Republican Party. Several U.S. candidates for the primaries held this spring, including earlier this week, have echoed their claims about the 2020 election fraud.