WASHINGTON: Donald Trump pressured his vice president to go along with an illegal plot to overturn the 2020 US election and whipped up a mob that put his deputy’s life in danger when he refused, congressional investigators and former administration aides said.
The House committee probing last year’s attack on the US Capitol detailed how the former president berated Mike Pence for not going along with the scheme both knew to be unlawful, even after being told violence had erupted as Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s victory.
At its third public hearing into the January 6, 2021 insurrection, the panel detailed a “relentless” pressure campaign by Trump on Pence as cornerstone of a criminal conspiracy to keep the defeated president in power.
“Donald Trump wanted Mike Pence to do something no other vice president has ever done: the former president wanted Pence to reject the votes and either declare Trump the winner or send the votes back to the states to be counted again,” panel chairman Bennie Thompson said.
“Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong.”
Trump’s lawyer John Eastman was the architect of the “nonsensical” plot, said committee vice-chair Liz Cheney, pushing the scheme aggressively despite knowing it to be unlawful.
The committee showed testimony from Pence’s general counsel Greg Jacob saying Eastman admitted in front of Trump two days before the riot that his plan would violate federal law.
A desperate Trump had turned to Pence for help after dozens of legal challenges against the election were dismissed in courts across the land.
The defeated president used rally speeches and Twitter to exert intense pressure on his deputy to abuse his position as president of the Senate and reject the election results.
Members of Trump’s family were in the Oval Office on January 6 when Trump had a “heated” phone call with Pence, according to first daughter Ivanka Trump’s deposition, aired at the hearing.
