The third public Jan. 6 committee hearing will convene Thursday at 1 p.m. ET, and the committee will reveal "new materials that documented that day" and what former Vice President Mike Pence was doing as well as his whereabouts, according to committee aides.
Why it matters: The select committee is planning to zero in on the "relentless efforts" by former President Trump to pressure Pence into rejecting electors of the 2020 election — and the potential legal ramifications of his actions.
What to watch: Greg Jacob, Pence's former counsel, is set to testify on Thursday.
- Jacob the day before the Jan. 6 attack wrote in a memo obtained by Politico that the vice president would be breaking multiple provisions of the Electoral Count Act if he followed Trump's urging to block the certification of election results.
- "The Vice President would likely find himself in an isolated standoff against both houses of Congress … with no neutral arbiter available to break the impasse," Jacob warned, per the memo.
- Jacob also pushed back against Trump campaign attorney John Eastman's legal theory that Pence could unilaterally reject electors.
Former federal judge J. Michael Luttig, who advised Pence on the legal argument rejecting Eastman's theory, is also set to testify on Thursday.
- Luttig is expected to describe his view of the stakes of Jan. 6 and offer a strong rebuke of Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election — and the danger it posed to America's democracy, Axios' Sophia Cai reported earlier this month.
- "Had the Vice President of the United States obeyed the President of the United States, America would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis," Luttig is expected to say, per his statement obtained by CNN.
The committee is also expected to play closed-door testimony from Marc Short, Pence's chief of staff at the time of the insurrection. Short warned Secret Service on Jan 5 of a security threat to Pence, the New York Times previously reported.
- The committee has also previewed testimony from former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann in which he recounted warning Eastman the day after the insurrection to "get a great f---ing criminal defense lawyer."
- Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) will lead the hearing and the evidence will be laid out chronologically, committee aides said, Axios' Andrew Solender reports.
The big picture: The committee postponed its Wednesday hearing that was set to focus on the Department of Justice and Trump's intention to use the department to challenge the results of the election.
- After Thursday, two hearings are scheduled for next week, with more likely to come.
Go deeper... Jan. 6 committee plans four-part hearing on Mike Pence
