Jan. 6 committee details Trump’s effort to bully Pence into overturning the election — and VP’s brave resistance
The Jan. 6 committee’s third public hearing on Thursday revealed shocking new details about former President Donald Trump’s effort to bully Vice President Mike Pence into illegally rejecting the electoral count and overturning the 2020 election.
“Trump wanted [Mike] Pence to do something no other vice president has ever done,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee chairman. “Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe.”
A video exhibit plays as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol holds a hearing at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, June 16, 2022. (J. Scott Applewhite/)
The panel heard evidence about Trump’s derogatory rant against Pence on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, before the president took the stage at a rally near the White House. From there, he sent his supporters to the Capitol to “fight like hell” as the vice president was to preside over a joint session.
The panel’s witnesses said Trump called Pence a “coward” and worse for refusing to go along with his scheme and “poured fuel on the fire” by attacking his onetime loyal lieutenant as a traitor while the mob hunted him down.
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Pence escaped rioters baying for his head by a mere 40 feet as Secret Service agents whisked him to safety, and stark, never-before-seen photos showed the ex-veep waiting for hours in an undisclosed secure location.
“Pence betrayed us,” says another rioter, wearing a Make America Great Again hat in a selfie video inside the Capitol.
Pence’s counsel Greg Jacob testified that he could “hear the din” of the rioters nearby. Asked if Trump ever checked on Pence during the siege, Jacob said: “He did not.”
Greg Jacob, who was counsel to former Vice President Mike Pence, lefty and Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge, listen as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol holds a hearing at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, June 16, 2022. (Susan Walsh/)
The vice president pointedly refused to get into a vehicle for fear he would be driven away and the American people would see him “fleeing the United States Capitol” in fear, recalled Greg Jacob, Pence’s chief legal counsel.
The House panel’s goal was to show that Trump’s false claims of a fraudulent election left him grasping for alternatives as courts turned back 62 lawsuits challenging the vote.
“What the president wanted the vice president to do was not just wrong,” added Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). It was illegal and unconstitutional.”
From left, Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., listen as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol holds a hearing at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, June 16, 2022. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (J. Scott Applewhite/)
In lieu of an orderly transition of power, Trump listened to conservative law professor John Eastman and his flawed premise that Pence could simply refuse to certify President Joe Biden’s electoral college win or delay the proceeding until pro-Trump slates of electors could be seated.
The plan was to have the states send alternative slates of electors from states Trump was disputing, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. With competing slates for Trump or Biden, Pence would be forced to reject them, returning them to the states to sort it out, under the plan.
“Are you out of your effing mind?” Eric Herschmann, a lawyer advising Trump, told Eastman in recorded testimony shown at the hearing.
“You’re going to turn around and tell 78-plus million people in this country that your theory is this is how you’re going to invalidate their votes?” Herschmann said. He warned: “You’re going to cause riots in the streets.”
Retired federal judge Michael Luttig derided Eastman’s premise, his former law clerk, as “incorrect at every turn.”
Luttig called the Jan. 6 attack a “war on America’s democracy” and warned that Trump’s loyal followers may try the same thing if they lose again in 2024.
Eastman eventually admitted his theory was illegal but continued to plead with Jacob to convince Pence to overturn the election. Pence called it “rubber room stuff,” Jacob recalled.
The law professor wound up pleading the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times to the committee and unsuccessfully begged Trump for a pardon to cover his tracks. A federal judge has said he and Trump likely committed a conspiracy to obstruct Congress from doing its job.
Minutes after the hearing began, the twice-impeached president lashed out again at the panel, and derided the investigation as a “partisan witch hunt.”
“I am hereby demanding EQUAL TIME to spell out the massive Voter Fraud,” Trump wrote on his new social media site.
Thompson closed the hearing by praising Pence for his bravery in the face of Trump’s bullying and physical threats.
“We are fortunate for Mike Pence’s courage,” the Democratic chair intoned.
In another development Thursday, Thompson said the panel wants to hear from Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
“We have sent Ms. Thomas a letter, asking her to come and talk to the committee,” the Democratic chairman of the panel, told reporters after a three-hour public hearing Thursday.
“I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them,” Thomas told the Daily Caller, a conservative news site, suggesting she would voluntarily testify.
With 1,000 interviews and some 140,000 documents, the committee is showing how Trump’s false claims of election fraud became a battle cry as he summoned thousands of Americans to Washington and then Capitol Hill.
More than 800 people have been arrested in the Capitol siege, including members of extremist groups facing rare sedition charges over their roles in the Capitol attack.
Several members of Congress are also under scrutiny, and the panel is also probing several candidates for elected office who were among the rioters.
The panel, which is expected to deliver a final report on its findings later this year, intends for its work to be a record for history of the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812.
With News Wire Services
