The House committee investigating the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, focused at a public hearing Thursday on the pressure that then-President Donald Trump put on his vice president, Mike Pence, to delay or reject the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. The committee tried to show how that pressure incited an angry mob to lay siege to the Capitol.
Pence, presiding over the certification in the vice president’s traditional ceremonial role, did not give in. He declared Biden the next president early the next morning, after the congressional session resumed and the rioters were cleared. Lawmakers on the nine-member panel, and the witnesses who testified at the hearing, all described Pence’s decision as having averted a constitutional crisis.
