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Washington — The Home committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol is holding the third in its collection of hearings on Thursday, with lawmakers turning their focus to former President Donald Trump’s marketing campaign to stress former Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes.
“Mike Pence mentioned no. He resisted the stress. He knew it was unlawful, he knew it was flawed,” Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson mentioned to open the listening to. “We’re lucky for Mr. Pence’s braveness on January 6. Our democracy got here dangerously near disaster.”
Two Pence aides are testifying at Thursday’s listening to: Greg Jacob, Pence’s former counsel, and J. Michael Luttig, a extremely revered conservative jurist and retired federal decide who suggested Pence within the aftermath of the 2020 election. The committee additionally confirmed taped footage of an interview with Marc Brief, Pence’s chief of employees.
The committee is searching for to determine that Pence and his closest aides rejected a concept pushed by conservative lawyer John Eastman, who wrote a memo laying out the scheme for the vice chairman to single-handedly reject or change slates of electors. Pence’s aides mentioned Eastman’s concepts had no foundation within the Structure or federal regulation.
Jacob advised the panel that he suggested Pence in December that he had “no justifiable foundation to conclude” that he might unilaterally reject Electoral School votes, confirming what he mentioned was Pence’s “first intuition.”
“There’s simply no method that the framers of the Structure — who divided energy and authority, who separated it out who had damaged away from George III and declared him to be a tyrant — there was no method that they’d have put within the palms of 1 individual the authority to find out who was going to be president of the USA,” Jacob mentioned.
Brief testified that Pence advised Trump he wouldn’t reject electors “many, many occasions.” However Trump continued to push the concept Pence might overturn the outcomes, together with on the morning of Jan. 6.
Luttig mentioned the concept Pence might reject Electoral School votes had no foundation within the Structure or federal regulation, and doing so “would have been tantamount to a revolution inside a constitutional disaster in America.”
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