The Thursday afternoon public hearing of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot was orchestrated around revelations regarding the pressure then-President Trump exerted on then-VP Mike Pence in the lead-up to January 6 last year. Committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) tore into Trump for his misconduct — accusing him of encouraging criminal activity — in her opening statement.
In short, Trump and allies of the then-president wanted Pence, in his ceremonial role overseeing the certification in Congress of the presidential election outcome, to somehow block certain electoral votes Biden won. Pence didn’t actually possess the legally recognized power to take that move. Cheney commented as follows:
‘What the president wanted the vice president to do was not just wrong. It was illegal and unconstitutional. We will hear many details in today’s hearing, but please consider these two points. First, President Trump was told repeatedly that Mike Pence lacked the constitutional and legal authority to do what President Trump was demanding he do… A second point: please listen to testimony today about all of the ways that President Trump attempted to pressure Vice President Pence… Vice President Pence understood that his oath of office was more important than his loyalty to Donald Trump. He did his duty. President Trump unequivocally did not.’
Check out Cheney’s remarks below:
One of the startling revelations from the Thursday hearing is just how off-the-rails John Eastman — an attorney for the then-president — really was. Former Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann told the riot panel in private testimony shared via video footage at Thursday’s hearing that Eastman indicated to him ahead of January 6 he was willing to accept violence to change the outcome of the presidential election. The former White House lawyer indicated his then-belief to Eastman that the Trump lawyer’s schemes by which Pence could supposedly upend the certification of the election outcome would lead to violence. “And [Eastman] said words to the effect of, ‘There’s been violence in the history of our country in order to protect the democracy, or to protect the republic,'” according to Herschmann’s testimony. In addition, Eastman apparently admitted before then-President Trump that the Pence-dependent plot would violate federal law — and yet, they all kept going.
That last revelation came from prior private testimony to the riot panel from Greg Jacob, who served as general counsel to then-Vice President Mike Pence at the time of the Capitol riot and advocated ahead of January 6 against the idea of Pence intervening in the election outcome certification. Jacob indicated, as best he recalled, Eastman admitted his plans were in violation of the Electoral Count Act on January 4 last year. Jacob was also one of the witnesses who appeared at the January 6 committee’s hearing this Thursday, where he was set to cast the whole thing in existential terms. And Jacob has also revealed that Eastman apparently admitted the day before the riot that “the Supreme Court would reject his plan to have Pence reject electoral votes,” as summarized Thursday by NPR — but Eastman nevertheless forged ahead. Pence, of course, ended up rejecting all this pressure.
