WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump knew asking Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally overturn the 2020 presidential election was illegal but pressured him to do it anyway, the House committee investigating Jan. 6, 2021, argued at its Thursday hearing, where it also made the case that Trump put Pence’s life in danger during the Capitol insurrection.
The committee outlined a multiweek effort by Trump and California attorney John Eastman that included private meetings and tweets aimed at pressuring Pence to help keep Trump in office. Eastman’s theory was that Pence could either reject electoral votes outright or could suspend the proceedings and declare a 10-day recess in which state legislatures would be ordered to reexamine election results. Neither plan is allowed under the Constitution’s 12th Amendment or the Electoral Count Act of 1887, witnesses testified at the hearing.
“This is constitutional mischief,” retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig, who advised Pence about what authority he had on Jan. 6, told the committee. “I believe that if Vice President Pence had obeyed the orders from his president and the president of the United States of America ... that declaration 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.”
