Jan. 6 panel to focus on Trump pressure campaign on Pence

The relationship between former President Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence will take center stage at the Jan. 6 committee’s third hearing as it examines the “pressure campaign on Vice President Pence driven by the former president.”

“Tomorrow’s hearing is going to focus on former President Trump’s attempts to pressure former Vice President Pence to unilaterally change the results of the election in the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6,” a select committee aide told reporters.

“Even as advice was swirling around the White House saying that this scheme was illegal, it was totally baseless, the president nevertheless continued publicly to apply pressure on Mike Pence,” the aide added, something that “directly contributed to the attack on the Capitol. And it put the vice president’s life in danger.” 

The committee has already shown video of a noose brought to the Capitol that day, and relayed that when Trump was informed about chants to ‘hang Mike Pence,” he reportedly responded, “maybe our supporters have the right idea.”

The committee has pledged to highlight not just the way Trump both privately and publicly put pressure on Pence to reject the election results, but also the fallout that occurred afterwards, something that has resulted in a fractured relationship as both have eyed runs in 2024.

In Thursday’s public hearing, the third by the Jan. 6 panel, viewers will hear from Greg Jacob, then senior counsel to Pence, as well as Michael Luttig, a former judge on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and conservative legal figure who was an informal adviser to Pence. 

Clips of the committee’s deposition with Pence chief of staff Marc Short are also likely to be played.

Luttig wrote ahead of the attack that the vice president’s role in certifying the election is only “to faithfully count the electoral college votes as they have been cast.” 

Both men will be questioned by Luttig’s former clerk, John Wood, a former U.S. attorney appointed by former President George W. Bush who now serves as senior investigative counsel for the committee. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) will also play an elevated role in the hearing.

Much of the hearing is likely to focus on Trump campaign attorney John Eastman, a conservative law professor who wrote two memos for the Trump campaign, including one that encouraged Pence to buck his ceremonial duty to certify the election results.

The committee’s battle with Eastman has already provided a win for the panel. The federal judge in the case denied Eastman’s attempt to shield some of his emails due to attorney-client privilege — a protection that can be invalidated by criminal activity.

The judge called Eastman’s advice “a coup in search of a legal theory.”

Through that battle, the committee has already detailed the extent that Eastman’s plans upset lawyers both for Pence specifically and White House counsel in general.

“He came in and said, ‘I’m here asking you to reject the electors.’ That’s how he opened at the meeting” on Jan. 5, Jacob said of Eastman, according to his deposition before investigators for the House select committee shared in court filings released in March.

Jacob recounts two meetings with Eastman, one on Jan. 4 and another on Jan. 5, where the Trump attorney outlined a number of scenarios, including having Pence declare Trump the winner or reject state electors as a way to kick the matter back to the states.

“I was surprised that we instead had a stark ask to just reject electors,” Jacobs said. 

After the riot, White House staff were furious at Eastman.

“I said to him, ‘Are you out of your effing mind? Because I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: ‘orderly transition,’” White House counsel Eric Herschmann said he told Eastman when he called Jan. 7.

Herschmann pushed the phrase until Eastman himself repeated it and then told him: “Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life. Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.”

Jacobs and Eastman would also go on to have a heated email exchange amid the riot at the Capitol, with Jacobs criticizing him for forwarding legal advice that “functioned as a serpent in the ear of the President of the United States.”

“Thanks to your bullshit we are now under siege,” Jacobs said at one point in the exchange.

“Respectfully it was gravely, gravely irresponsible for you to entice the President with an academic theory that had no legal viability, and that you well know would lose before any judge who decided the case,” Jacob wrote.