Another High-Profile Mike Pence Aide Cooperates With Jan. 6 Committee

By
Carissa House-Dunphy
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Although many Trump aides and advisors have refused to willingly offer testimony to the January 6 Select Committee about that fateful day when Trump sicced his supporters on the U.S. Congress and his own vice president, Vice President Mike Pence’s aides have not been so reluctant to talk. On Tuesday, top Pence aide Greg Jacobs was seen entering the meeting room where witnesses go to sit for interviews with the committee.

Jacob was with the vice president as they hid out from Trump’s mob of attackers. In an email to Trump lawyer John Eastman, Jacob referred to the attack on the Capitol Building as a “siege” as Jacob and Pence were under guard during the attack, prompting Eastman to email him back blaming him and Pence for the attempts on Pence’s life, saying “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.”

‘CNN spotted Jacob leaving a meeting room on Capitol Hill used by the committee to conduct witness interviews, and a source familiar with the matter confirmed he was scheduled to appear before the panel on Tuesday…As Pence’s general counsel, Jacob played a critical role in countering efforts to persuade the former vice president not to certify the electoral results. Jacob was part of Pence’s team who pushed back against John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who embraced fringe legal theories about the vice president’s ability to overturn the election.’

Jacob previously wrote about his ire over the attack and who he blamed for it, which he cited as Trump’s lawyers and not the president himself. Jacob decried “cancel culture” without “due process” and said that he didn’t want to rush to judgment and hoped no one else would, but believed that Trump’s lawyers sold the president “snake oil” in the form of legal advice saying that the election could be overturned. However, Trump was more than willing to buy that snake oil.

In that draft op-ed written by Jacob, he said:

‘In the days and hours leading up to the counting of the electoral votes in Congress, a cadre of outside lawyers to the President spun a web of lies and disinformation, to him and to the public, for the purpose of pressuring the Vice President to betray his oath to uphold our laws and the Constitution of the United States. That was a fool’s errand.’

 

Jacob laid out the plan by Trump’s lawyers, which was written before more of Trump’s involvement was learned, including his attempts to have the Department of Homeland Security seize voting machines because he believed they had been tampered with to change votes. Even Rudy Giuliani warned Trump against that move. Jacob laid blame on the lawyers, but what they were telling Trump was the only thing he wanted to hear.

‘The outside lawyers pushed a fallback plan positing that the Vice President could instead stop the electoral vote count Congress and refer it out to the states. That suggestion violated several provisions of the Electoral Count Act, had no historical analog, and would deprive Congress of its historical and statutory role in vote counting decisions. Neither the House nor the Senate would agree, and a lawsuit would be filed within the hour. The lawyers hypothesized the courts might invoke the “political question” doctrine and refuse to intervene. But if the courts stayed out of a standoff between the Vice President and Congress over the fate of the Presidency, then where would the issue be decided? In the streets?’

 



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