A text message from Fox News’ Sean Hannity to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows about the plan in the run-up to Jan. 6 read: “I’m very worried about the next 48 hours.”
Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said those around Trump called it “crazy.”
The panel opened its third hearing this month demonstrating that Trump’s false claims of a fraudulent election left him grasping for alternatives as courts turned back dozens of lawsuits challenging the vote.
Trump latched onto Eastman’s highly unusual plan to defy historical precedent of the Electoral Count Act, and started pressuring Pence in public and private as the vice president was to preside over the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to certify Biden’s election.
The committee has said the plan was illegal, and a federal judge has said it is “more likely than not” Trump committed crimes in his attempt to stop the certification
Panel Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., opened the latest hearing citing Pence’s own words that there was “almost no idea more un-American” than the one he was being asked to perform — reject the vote.
By refusing Trump’s demands, Pence “did his duty,” said the panel’s vice-chair, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Thompson said, “Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe.”
The committee portrayed the gripping, if complicated, final days before the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection as the defeated Trump pursued the theory that Pence could swing the election, putting his own vice president in danger as the mob headed toward the Capitol.
The panel heard from Greg Jacob, the vice president’s counsel who fended off Eastman’s ideas for Pence to carry out the plan, and retired federal judge Michael Luttig, who called the plan from Eastman, his former law clerk, “incorrect at every turn.”
Jacob said that Pence summoned him to his West Wing office in early December 2020 to seek clarity about the vice president’s role in the certification of election results. He said it became clear to Pence that the founding fathers did not intend to empower any one person, including someone running for office, to affect the election result.
Pence “never budged,” from that initial view, Jacob said.
Luttig, a highly-respected conservative scholar who had been a leading contender more than a decade ago for the Supreme Court, said that had Pence obeyed Trump’s orders, obviously contrary to the law, the declaring “of Donald Trump as the next president would have plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis in America.”
Thursday’s session also presented new evidence about the danger Pence faced as rioters outside the Capitol were chanting “Hang Mike Pence” with a makeshift gallows as the vice president fled with senators into hiding. Video was shown of the rioters spewing vulgarities about Pence as they headed toward the Capitol. Nine people died in the insurrection and its aftermath.
In another development Thursday, Thompson said the panel will ask Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for an interview amid disclosures of the conservative activist’s communications with people in Trump’s orbit ahead of the attack. He did not specify a schedule for that.
“It’s time for her to come talk,” Thompson told reporters ahead of the hearing.