‘Donald Trump unleashed mob on to Mike Pence,’ January 6 comittee told

Donald Trump whipped up a mob that put his vice-president’s life in danger when he refused to overturn the election, hearing told.

An image of Ivanka Trump giving evidence is displayed on screen during Friday’s hearing. Picture: AFP

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, the January 6 committee heard on Friday.

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 Mr Trump on Mr 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 Mr Pence’s general counsel, Greg Jacob, saying Mr Eastman admitted in front of Mr Trump two days before the riot that his plan would violate federal law.

A desperate Mr Trump had turned to Mr Pence for help after dozens of legal challenges against the election were dismissed in courts across the country.

The two Republican members of the January 6 committee, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, listen to evidence at Friday’s hearing. Picture: Getty Images

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 Mr Trump’s family were in the Oval Office on January 6 when Mr Trump had a “heated” phone call with Mr Pence, according to first daughter Ivanka Trump’s deposition, aired at the hearing.

She said Mr Trump took “a different tone” than she’d heard him use before.

Nicholas Luna, a former assistant to Mr Trump, recalled in his own deposition: “I remember hearing the word ‘wimp’.”

During his “Stop the Steal” rally later that day, Mr Trump referenced Mr Pence many times as he told his supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell”.

His original speech didn’t mention Mr Pence but he ad-libbed to berate his vice-president in a move Democratic committee member Pete Aguilar said helped incite the insurrection and the threats against Mr Pence.

But Mr Pence resisted, releasing a letter to congress saying the vice president had no “unilateral authority” to overturn election counts.

Mr Aguilar said an informant from the neofascist Proud Boys told the FBI the group would have killed Mr Pence given the opportunity.

The congressman said the mob storming the Capitol came within 12m of Mr Pence and to “make no mistake about the fact that the vice-president’s life was in danger”.

An image of former president Donald Trump is displayed during the third hearing of the January 6 committee. Picture: Getty Images

Mr Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows told him about the violence erupting at the Capitol but the president tweeted anyway that Mr Pence did not have the “courage” to overturn the election, aides told investigators in videotaped depositions.

Immediately after the tweet, the crowds at the Capitol surged forward, the committee said.

The mob threatened to hang Mr Pence for failing to co-operate as they stormed the Capitol, even erecting a gallows in front of the building.

“What the former president was willing to sacrifice – potentially the vice-president – in order to stay in power is pretty jarring,” Mr Aguilar said.

The panel aired a video clip of a rioter saying he would “drag people through the streets” if Mr Pence refused to overturn the election.

The committee also heard from retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, who testified that the US would have been plunged into “a revolution within a paralysing constitutional crisis” had Mr Pence folded under Mr Trump’s pressure.

Mr Luttig, a renowned conservative legal scholar, had ­advised Mr Pence at the time that his role in overseeing the ratification of the election was purely ceremonial – and that he had no power to oppose the result.

“There was no basis in the constitution or the laws of the United States at all for the theory ­espoused by Mr Eastman. At all. None,” Mr Luttig said.

AFP