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THE MAGA PARTY!,,, the GOP is dead, republicans are going down with the dems,, get ready for THE MAGA PARTY lefty's
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2022-06-16 at 8:29 PM UTC
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2022-06-16 at 8:31 PM UTCLANNY IS A CUCK
ORANGE MAN BAD
SHLOMO IS A MORON
Trump lawyer who pressured Pence to reject electors asked for pardon after Jan. 6
Bart Jansen, Chelsey Cox, Erin Mansfield, David Jackson, Kenneth Tran, Katherine Swartz, Dylan Wells and Joey Garrison, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Mike Pence's refusal to single-handedly reject electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, as former President Donald Trump pressured him to do, will be the subject of the Thursday House hearing investigating the Capitol attack.
The latest:
Federal judge: Trump's order would have been 'tantamount to revolution': Federal Judge J. Michael Luttig told the Jan. 6 Committee that had Pence obeyed orders from Trump on Jan. 6, declaring Trump the presidential election winner, it would have "plunged America" into what he says would've been "tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis."
The vice president 'cannot possibly' choose the president: Greg Jacob, counsel to Pence, said that while the Electoral Count Act includes "ambiguous" text, "common sense and structure would tell you" that it "cannot possibly be" that a vice president would have the authority to choose the U.S. president under the Constitution.
Hannity 'very worried: 'Fox News' Sean Hannity told White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in text messages of his concerns around Jan. 6. On Dec. 31, he wrote, "I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is being told." And on Jan. 5, he texted that he was "very worried about the next 48 hours."
An intense effort to lean on Pence: Rep. Pete Aguilar said the Jan. 6 committee found that by Jan. 4, Trump had "engaged in a quote multi-week campaign to pressure the Vice President to decide the outcome of the election." It involved private conversations, a meeting with Congress and tweets from the president.
Trump lawyer John Eastman's strategy: Eastman "acknowledged" that his proposals would violate provisions of the Electoral Count Act, Pence's former legal counsel Greg Jacob said, adding that Eastman thought this was OK because he viewed the act as unconstitutional.
'Jump-ball situation': Jacob, in describing the standoff that could arise under Eastman's plans for rejecting electors - assuming courts did not get involved - said result could been an "unprecedented constitutional jump-ball situation" that "might well then have to be decided in the streets."
Pence refused to be seen fleeing Capitol: After being taken to a secure location, Secret Service asked Pence to get in a car. The vice president refused. Jacob said Pence did not want to take any chance that "the world would see the vice president of the United States fleeing the United States Capitol. He was determined that we would complete the work" of certifying the election.
Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.
Eastman sought presidential pardon
A few days after White House lawyer Eric Herschman advised Trump lawyer John Eastman to “get a great f— criminal defense lawyer” because “you’re going to need it,” Eastman appealed to the president for a pardon.
“I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” Eastman wrote in an email the committee shared. Trump did not pardon Eastman.
- Erin Mansfield
In deposition to the Jan. 6 Committee, Eastman “plead the fifth 100 times.”
Ater Trump did not fulfill Eastman’s request of being on the presidential pardon list, Eastman “plead the fifth 100 times,” while being deposed by the Jan. 6 Committee.
In response to numerous questions about Eastman’s actions surrounding his plan to have Pence overturn the election, he constantly replied “fifth.”
Questions included whether or not he advised Trump that Pence could reject electors, if it was true seven states sent dual slates of electors, and if he could discuss his direct conversations with Trump to the committee. All of which Eastman replied “fifth.”
- Kenneth Tran
One Trump lawyer to another: Get a great criminal defense lawyer
In a promotional tweet Tuesday for the hearing, the committee released video of Eric Hershmann, one of Trump’s lawyers, who described warning Eastman the day after the riot he should find a "great" defense lawyer.
Eastman had contacted Hershmann to chat about Georgia election results because he couldn’t reach other Trump aides. Hershmann questioned Eastman's sanity and told him the only phrase he wanted to hear from Eastman from then on was "orderly transition" to the Biden administration.
"Eventually he said, ‘Orderly transition,'" Hershmann said. "I said, ‘Good, John. Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life. Get a great f-ing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.’ Then I hung up on him.” -
2022-06-16 at 8:32 PM UTC
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2022-06-16 at 8:37 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 LANNY IS A CUCK
ORANGE MAN BAD
SHLOMO IS A MORON
Trump lawyer who pressured Pence to reject electors asked for pardon after Jan. 6
Bart Jansen, Chelsey Cox, Erin Mansfield, David Jackson, Kenneth Tran, Katherine Swartz, Dylan Wells and Joey Garrison, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Mike Pence's refusal to single-handedly reject electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, as former President Donald Trump pressured him to do, will be the subject of the Thursday House hearing investigating the Capitol attack.
The latest:
Federal judge: Trump's order would have been 'tantamount to revolution': Federal Judge J. Michael Luttig told the Jan. 6 Committee that had Pence obeyed orders from Trump on Jan. 6, declaring Trump the presidential election winner, it would have "plunged America" into what he says would've been "tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis."
The vice president 'cannot possibly' choose the president: Greg Jacob, counsel to Pence, said that while the Electoral Count Act includes "ambiguous" text, "common sense and structure would tell you" that it "cannot possibly be" that a vice president would have the authority to choose the U.S. president under the Constitution.
Hannity 'very worried: 'Fox News' Sean Hannity told White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in text messages of his concerns around Jan. 6. On Dec. 31, he wrote, "I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is being told." And on Jan. 5, he texted that he was "very worried about the next 48 hours."
An intense effort to lean on Pence: Rep. Pete Aguilar said the Jan. 6 committee found that by Jan. 4, Trump had "engaged in a quote multi-week campaign to pressure the Vice President to decide the outcome of the election." It involved private conversations, a meeting with Congress and tweets from the president.
Trump lawyer John Eastman's strategy: Eastman "acknowledged" that his proposals would violate provisions of the Electoral Count Act, Pence's former legal counsel Greg Jacob said, adding that Eastman thought this was OK because he viewed the act as unconstitutional.
'Jump-ball situation': Jacob, in describing the standoff that could arise under Eastman's plans for rejecting electors - assuming courts did not get involved - said result could been an "unprecedented constitutional jump-ball situation" that "might well then have to be decided in the streets."
Pence refused to be seen fleeing Capitol: After being taken to a secure location, Secret Service asked Pence to get in a car. The vice president refused. Jacob said Pence did not want to take any chance that "the world would see the vice president of the United States fleeing the United States Capitol. He was determined that we would complete the work" of certifying the election.
Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.
Eastman sought presidential pardon
A few days after White House lawyer Eric Herschman advised Trump lawyer John Eastman to “get a great f— criminal defense lawyer” because “you’re going to need it,” Eastman appealed to the president for a pardon.
“I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” Eastman wrote in an email the committee shared. Trump did not pardon Eastman.
- Erin Mansfield
In deposition to the Jan. 6 Committee, Eastman “plead the fifth 100 times.”
Ater Trump did not fulfill Eastman’s request of being on the presidential pardon list, Eastman “plead the fifth 100 times,” while being deposed by the Jan. 6 Committee.
In response to numerous questions about Eastman’s actions surrounding his plan to have Pence overturn the election, he constantly replied “fifth.”
Questions included whether or not he advised Trump that Pence could reject electors, if it was true seven states sent dual slates of electors, and if he could discuss his direct conversations with Trump to the committee. All of which Eastman replied “fifth.”
- Kenneth Tran
One Trump lawyer to another: Get a great criminal defense lawyer
In a promotional tweet Tuesday for the hearing, the committee released video of Eric Hershmann, one of Trump’s lawyers, who described warning Eastman the day after the riot he should find a "great" defense lawyer.
Eastman had contacted Hershmann to chat about Georgia election results because he couldn’t reach other Trump aides. Hershmann questioned Eastman's sanity and told him the only phrase he wanted to hear from Eastman from then on was "orderly transition" to the Biden administration.
"Eventually he said, ‘Orderly transition,'" Hershmann said. "I said, ‘Good, John. Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life. Get a great f-ing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.’ Then I hung up on him.”
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2022-06-16 at 9:07 PM UTC
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2022-06-16 at 9:14 PM UTCjust heard a negro say the DNC is the dead negro's confederacy, cuz they love dead negro's
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2022-06-16 at 11:06 PM UTCLANNY IS A CUCK
Five key takeaways from third January 6 US Capitol riot hearing
Al Jazeera
The United States House committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol last year has turned its attention to former President Donald Trump’s pressure on his vice president to overturn the 2020 elections result.
As the tiebreaker and president of the Senate, Mike Pence ceremoniously presided over the certification of the vote on January 6, 2021.
Witnesses, including many Pence aides and advisers, testified in detail before the panel on Thursday about Trump’s push to convince the then-vice president to overturn the election results.
Here is a look at five key takeaways from the third public hearing this month:
Pence had no constitutional authority to overturn election: Witnesses
Several witnesses testified on Thursday that Pence had no legal power to interfere with the election results, stressing that there is no precedent in US history for what Trump was asking his vice president to do.
J Michael Luttig, a retired federal appeals judge, who also previously served as an informal adviser to Pence, drove that point home in his opening remarks. Luttig said if the ex-vice president had obeyed Trump’s orders, it would have caused the first constitutional crisis in US history.
Declaring that Trump won the 2020 election over Joe Biden “would have plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis in America”, he told the panel.
Luttig later added that the notion that the vice president had a substantive – not merely ceremonial – role in the counting of electoral votes is “constitutional mischief”.
“I would have laid my body across the road before I would have let the vice president overturn the 2020 election,” Luttig said.
Trump’s team knew campaign was illegal: Panel
Witnesses suggested on Thursday that Trump and his aides, who were pushing for Pence to overturn the vote, knew that their plan would violate the US Constitution.
“Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, but he could not bring himself to participate in the peaceful transfer of power, so he latched on to a scheme that – once again – he knew was illegal,” said Democratic Congressman Pete Aguilar, who played a leading role at Thursday’s hearing.
Greg Jacob, former counsel to Pence, testified that John Eastman, a Trump lawyer who was pushing for the vice president to overturn election results, acknowledged that the Supreme Court would unanimously rule against such interference.
“Wouldn’t we lose nine to nothing in the Supreme Court?” Jacob recalled asking Eastman.
“And again, he initially started: ‘Well, maybe we’d only lose seven to two.’ But ultimately [Eastman] acknowledged that no, we would lose nine-zero. No judge would support his argument.”
Pence’s life was in danger, panel says
The panel said the Capitol rioters came within 12m (40 feet) from where Pence was sheltering inside the building on January 6.
“Make no mistake about the fact that the vice president’s life was in danger,” Aguilar said. “A recent court filing by the Department of Justice explains that a confidential informant from the Proud Boys told the FBI the Proud Boys would have killed Mike Pence if given a chance.”
For his part, Jacob said Pence refused to leave the Capitol building even as it became apparent that rioters were inside.
“The vice president did not want to take any chance that the world would see the vice president of the United States fleeing the United States Capitol,” Jacob testified.
He said Pence “was determined” to finish his constitutional duty of presiding over the electoral count.
Jacob added that the former vice president wanted to ensure that rioters “would not have the satisfaction of disrupting proceedings beyond the day on which they were supposed to be held”.
In tense call before riots, Trump hurled insults at Pence
Witnesses described a tense call between Trump and Pence on the morning of January 6, before the riots broke out. The then-president hurled insults at his vice president for refusing to overturn election results, according to the testimonies.
Nicholas Luna, a former Trump aide, said in a recording that he remembered Trump calling Pence a “wimp”.
Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, recalled that the conversation was “heated”.
“It was a different tone than I’d heard him take with the vice president before,” she said in a video.
Julie Radford, Ivanka Trump’s former chief of staff, said the former presidential adviser told her that Trump had called Pence “the P-word”.
The committee highlighted how Trump focused his ire on his vice president once Pence refused to disrupt the certification of Biden’s presidential victory.
“We are fortunate for Mr Pence’s courage,” panel chair Bennie Thompson said in his opening testimony.
“On January 6, our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe. That courage put him in tremendous danger. When Mike Pence made it clear that he wouldn’t give in to Donald Trump’s scheme, Donald Trump turned the mob on him.”
Ex-judge says Trump still ‘clear’ danger to US democracy
Luttig, the retired federal judge, said Trump and his allies remain a “clear and present danger to American democracy”.
A conservative legal scholar who was appointed to the federal judiciary by former Republican President George W Bush, Luttig said Trump and his allies are already pledging that they “would attempt to overturn” the 2024 elections if the results do not go their way.
“I don’t speak those words lightly,” Luttig told the committee, delivering his remarks slowly. “I would have never spoken those words ever in my life – except that that’s what the former president and his allies are telling us.” -
2022-06-17 at 12:13 AM UTC
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2022-06-17 at 12:58 AM UTC
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2022-06-17 at 5:10 AM UTC
Originally posted by POLECAT
There is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this
group on January 5, 2021 . We train our officers on being alert for people conducting
surveillance or reconnaissance, and we do not consider any ofthe activities we observed as
suspicious.
https://mcusercontent.com/67fba463240fdd948eb636b35/files/9c9ae731-1206-be0d-9b80-a32df612e029/220807_U._S._Capitol_Police_Response_to_RM_Davis_re_Jan_5_2021_Tour_21_.pdf -
2022-06-17 at 5:20 AM UTCLANNY'S A CUCK
The Washington Post
Trump aides told him that using Pence to overturn election was illegal
Amy Gardner, Jacqueline Alemany
President Donald Trump and his aides knew that it was not legal for his vice president, Mike Pence, to attempt to thwart Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021, but they nonetheless mounted an unrelenting pressure campaign that did not abate even after rioters stormed the Capitol and threatened Pence’s life, according to new evidence presented Thursday by the House committee investigating the attack.
Leading the campaign was Trump lawyer John Eastman, who over the two days before Jan. 6 spoke repeatedly with top Pence aides about whether the vice president would either reject outright Biden’s winning electoral college count or suspend the day’s proceedings to allow seven contested states to reexamine their popular votes, witnesses said.
Pence never considered it, former vice-presidential counsel Greg Jacob testified — and even Eastman acknowledged that the gambit was not legal, Jacob said. In addition to that apparent admission, several former White House aides testified that they — and Pence — told Trump the same.
“I said, ‘John, if the vice president did what you were asking him to do, we would lose nine to nothing in the Supreme Court, wouldn’t we?' " Jacob recalled. “And after some further discussion, he acknowledged, ‘Well, yeah, you’re right, we would lose nine to nothing.’ ”
The committee also displayed a Jan. 11, 2021, email from Eastman to Trump’s lead campaign lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, seeking a pardon from the outgoing president, though Eastman did not ultimately receive one. A member of the committee, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), said that in his deposition with the committee, the lawyer asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination “a hundred times.”
The House committee, which has spent a year investigating the Jan. 6 attack, continued making its case at Thursday’s three-hour afternoon hearing that the assault was the violent culmination of an attempted coup led by Trump.
With new details and never-before-seen video and photos, the proceeding focused on Pence and his largely ceremonial role presiding over the final step in the quadrennial process of declaring the winner of a presidential election: counting the electoral college vote in a joint session of Congress.
Committee members made the case not only that Trump and his advisers knew that Pence did not have the power to block Biden’s victory, but that their public statements to the contrary incited the rioters who invaded the Capitol that day, some of them chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” as they walked past a mock gallows erected outside the building.
“Donald Trump wanted Mike Pence to do something no other vice president has ever done,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee chairman. “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. Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong.”
The committee presented new evidence of how close the rioters came to confronting Pence — within 40 feet — as his Secret Service detail escorted him to a secure location within the Capitol complex.
“Does it surprise you to see how close the mob was to the evacuation route that you took?” Aguilar asked Jacob, who was with Pence that day. “Forty feet is the distance from me to you, roughly.”
Jacob replied: “I could hear the din of the rioters in the building while we moved, but I don’t think I was aware that they were as close as that.”
The attack: The Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event
Several witnesses said there was never any question that Pence would not interfere with the count that day. The Constitution calls for states to establish how their presidential electors are chosen; all states follow the popular vote. As far as the counting of those electoral votes, the Constitution’s 12th Amendment instructs only that the president of the Senate — Pence at the time — “open all the certificates” and that “the votes will be counted.”
Jacob said Pence began inquiring about his powers and duties to oversee the count in early December.
“There was no way that our framers, who abhorred concentrated power, who had broken away from the tyranny of George III, would ever have put one person, particularly not a person who had a direct interest in the outcome because they were on the ticket for the election, in a role to have a decisive impact on the outcome of the election,” Jacob said.
J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal appeals judge and renowned conservative who advised Pence during the crisis, testified that what Trump was asking Pence to do amounted to “constitutional mischief” and posed a grave threat to American democracy.
“I would have laid my body across the road before I would have let the vice president overturn the 2020 election,” Luttig testified.
None of that stopped Trump from ratcheting up the pressure as the Jan. 6 congressional proceedings approached. On that day, the effort began in the morning, when Trump called Pence at his official residence. Both Jacob and Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, recalled being with the vice president when the call came in, and watching Pence step out of the room.
Several Trump aides — including his daughter, Ivanka — were in the Oval Office at the time and could hear the president’s side of the conversation. In video testimony played at the hearing, Ivanka Trump described her father taking a “different tone” than she had heard him take with the vice president before.
Ivanka Trump also told others in the West Wing that her father had called the vice president “the p-word” and talked about Pence’s lack of courage, her former chief of staff, Julie Radford, testified Thursday. During the conversation, Pence made it clear to Trump that he did not have the authority to do what Trump asked.
The committee also detailed how Trump’s pressuring of Pence during his rally appearance on the Ellipse that day was not part of his original speech, and was instead ad-libbed.
Trump told those gathered that he talked to Pence before the rally about needing to have the “courage” to help him stay in office for four more years.
“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing,” Trump told his supporters. “I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.”
Later, with the attack at the Capitol underway, Trump “poured gasoline on the fire” by tweeting an angry message directed at Pence, Sarah Matthews, a former Trump press aide, said in a videotaped interview with investigators that was aired Thursday.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump tweeted at 2:24 p.m. “USA demands truth!”
The committee showed footage of rioters reading the tweet aloud, and of others angrily demanding Pence’s head. Moments later, rioters inside the Capitol reached the eastern side of the Rotunda.
Several Pence aides testified that they were shocked and disappointed when Trump issued a statement the day before the riot that Pence and Trump were “in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act” in overturning the results of the 2020 election.
Short, Pence’s chief of staff, said the information in the statement was “incorrect” and he recalled an angry conversation with Trump aide Jason Miller, who separately testified that he wrote the statement with Trump’s input.
“I was irritated and expressed displeasure that a statement could have gone out that misrepresented the vice president’s viewpoint without consultation,” Short said he told Miller.
More than any other figure in the days leading to and including Jan. 6, Thursday’s hearing showcased Eastman, a Trump attorney who outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in legal memos and in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Pence and Trump.
Eastman repeatedly sought to convince Pence and his lawyers that the vice president could unilaterally overturn the results of the election. A prolific emailer, Eastman fought for months to withhold emails the committee requested and only last week did a federal judge order that Eastman hand over an additional 400 documents to the committee.
Thursday was likely only the first hearing to feature Eastman as the committee continues its investigation behind closed doors, shaping the proceedings as new information rolls in.
Thompson said the panel plans to invite Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to be interviewed. The Post reported Wednesday that the committee has obtained email correspondence between Thomas and Eastman. The emails show that Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election were more extensive than previously known, according to two people with knowledge of the correspondence who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Jacob, along with former Trump White House lawyer Eric Hershmann, made clear in testimony Thursday they believe Eastman’s plan was ridiculous and illegal. Jacob recalled emailing Eastman after Pence had been evacuated to a secure location: “Thanks to your bull---t, we are now under siege.”
Eastman was unrepentant in reply, blaming Pence for not having gone along with the plot, and encouraging Pence’s team to consider a “relatively minor violation” of the law, by adjourning Congress for 10 days so state legislatures could reconsider their electoral college votes. Jacob said Pence described Eastman’s response as “rubber room stuff.”
Hershmann recounted speaking to Eastman the next day, when Eastman brought up a new idea to contest the result in Georgia, “And I said to him, ‘Are you out of your effing mind?’ I said, ‘I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: Orderly transition,' " Herschmann said.
“Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life,'” Herschmann said he added. "'Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.”
Separately Thursday, tensions ratcheted up between the Jan. 6 committee and the Justice Department, with prosecutors complaining their lack of access to committee interview transcripts is hampering their ability to complete criminal cases, as evidence is aired in widely watched public hearings ahead of key trials.
In a letter to the committee Wednesday, the heads of the Justice Department’s national security and criminal divisions wrote that not granting the department access to transcripts complicates the “ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct.”
The letter is the strongest salvo in the months-long back-and-forth between the committee and the department, whose parallel investigations have generally tried to steer clear of each other but now seem to be on a collision course.
The committee has repeatedly turned to Trump’s own aides, and Republicans generally, to make its case against the former president. Thursday’s hearing at times had the feel of a meeting of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group.
Jacob and Luttig are conservative lawyers. One of Thursday’s questioners was John Wood, a Republican lawyer who noted that he and Eastman clerked for Luttig. Eastman, Jacob and the vice chairwoman of the committee, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), received their law degrees from the University of Chicago, which is known for producing conservative lawyers.
Luttig on Thursday was unsparing in describing the harm that his fellow conservatives who have cast their lot with Trump could have done to the U.S. government — and still could do.
“Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” Luttig said. -
2022-06-17 at 9:06 AM UTClol you lick cum
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2022-06-17 at 9:48 AM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 LANNY'S A CUCK
The Washington Post
Trump aides told him that using Pence to overturn election was illegal
Amy Gardner, Jacqueline Alemany
President Donald Trump and his aides knew that it was not legal for his vice president, Mike Pence, to attempt to thwart Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021, but they nonetheless mounted an unrelenting pressure campaign that did not abate even after rioters stormed the Capitol and threatened Pence’s life, according to new evidence presented Thursday by the House committee investigating the attack.
Leading the campaign was Trump lawyer John Eastman, who over the two days before Jan. 6 spoke repeatedly with top Pence aides about whether the vice president would either reject outright Biden’s winning electoral college count or suspend the day’s proceedings to allow seven contested states to reexamine their popular votes, witnesses said.
Pence never considered it, former vice-presidential counsel Greg Jacob testified — and even Eastman acknowledged that the gambit was not legal, Jacob said. In addition to that apparent admission, several former White House aides testified that they — and Pence — told Trump the same.
“I said, ‘John, if the vice president did what you were asking him to do, we would lose nine to nothing in the Supreme Court, wouldn’t we?' " Jacob recalled. “And after some further discussion, he acknowledged, ‘Well, yeah, you’re right, we would lose nine to nothing.’ ”
The committee also displayed a Jan. 11, 2021, email from Eastman to Trump’s lead campaign lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, seeking a pardon from the outgoing president, though Eastman did not ultimately receive one. A member of the committee, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), said that in his deposition with the committee, the lawyer asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination “a hundred times.”
The House committee, which has spent a year investigating the Jan. 6 attack, continued making its case at Thursday’s three-hour afternoon hearing that the assault was the violent culmination of an attempted coup led by Trump.
With new details and never-before-seen video and photos, the proceeding focused on Pence and his largely ceremonial role presiding over the final step in the quadrennial process of declaring the winner of a presidential election: counting the electoral college vote in a joint session of Congress.
Committee members made the case not only that Trump and his advisers knew that Pence did not have the power to block Biden’s victory, but that their public statements to the contrary incited the rioters who invaded the Capitol that day, some of them chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” as they walked past a mock gallows erected outside the building.
“Donald Trump wanted Mike Pence to do something no other vice president has ever done,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee chairman. “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. Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong.”
The committee presented new evidence of how close the rioters came to confronting Pence — within 40 feet — as his Secret Service detail escorted him to a secure location within the Capitol complex.
“Does it surprise you to see how close the mob was to the evacuation route that you took?” Aguilar asked Jacob, who was with Pence that day. “Forty feet is the distance from me to you, roughly.”
Jacob replied: “I could hear the din of the rioters in the building while we moved, but I don’t think I was aware that they were as close as that.”
The attack: The Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event
Several witnesses said there was never any question that Pence would not interfere with the count that day. The Constitution calls for states to establish how their presidential electors are chosen; all states follow the popular vote. As far as the counting of those electoral votes, the Constitution’s 12th Amendment instructs only that the president of the Senate — Pence at the time — “open all the certificates” and that “the votes will be counted.”
Jacob said Pence began inquiring about his powers and duties to oversee the count in early December.
“There was no way that our framers, who abhorred concentrated power, who had broken away from the tyranny of George III, would ever have put one person, particularly not a person who had a direct interest in the outcome because they were on the ticket for the election, in a role to have a decisive impact on the outcome of the election,” Jacob said.
J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal appeals judge and renowned conservative who advised Pence during the crisis, testified that what Trump was asking Pence to do amounted to “constitutional mischief” and posed a grave threat to American democracy.
“I would have laid my body across the road before I would have let the vice president overturn the 2020 election,” Luttig testified.
None of that stopped Trump from ratcheting up the pressure as the Jan. 6 congressional proceedings approached. On that day, the effort began in the morning, when Trump called Pence at his official residence. Both Jacob and Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, recalled being with the vice president when the call came in, and watching Pence step out of the room.
Several Trump aides — including his daughter, Ivanka — were in the Oval Office at the time and could hear the president’s side of the conversation. In video testimony played at the hearing, Ivanka Trump described her father taking a “different tone” than she had heard him take with the vice president before.
Ivanka Trump also told others in the West Wing that her father had called the vice president “the p-word” and talked about Pence’s lack of courage, her former chief of staff, Julie Radford, testified Thursday. During the conversation, Pence made it clear to Trump that he did not have the authority to do what Trump asked.
The committee also detailed how Trump’s pressuring of Pence during his rally appearance on the Ellipse that day was not part of his original speech, and was instead ad-libbed.
Trump told those gathered that he talked to Pence before the rally about needing to have the “courage” to help him stay in office for four more years.
“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing,” Trump told his supporters. “I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.”
Later, with the attack at the Capitol underway, Trump “poured gasoline on the fire” by tweeting an angry message directed at Pence, Sarah Matthews, a former Trump press aide, said in a videotaped interview with investigators that was aired Thursday.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump tweeted at 2:24 p.m. “USA demands truth!”
The committee showed footage of rioters reading the tweet aloud, and of others angrily demanding Pence’s head. Moments later, rioters inside the Capitol reached the eastern side of the Rotunda.
Several Pence aides testified that they were shocked and disappointed when Trump issued a statement the day before the riot that Pence and Trump were “in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act” in overturning the results of the 2020 election.
Short, Pence’s chief of staff, said the information in the statement was “incorrect” and he recalled an angry conversation with Trump aide Jason Miller, who separately testified that he wrote the statement with Trump’s input.
“I was irritated and expressed displeasure that a statement could have gone out that misrepresented the vice president’s viewpoint without consultation,” Short said he told Miller.
More than any other figure in the days leading to and including Jan. 6, Thursday’s hearing showcased Eastman, a Trump attorney who outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in legal memos and in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Pence and Trump.
Eastman repeatedly sought to convince Pence and his lawyers that the vice president could unilaterally overturn the results of the election. A prolific emailer, Eastman fought for months to withhold emails the committee requested and only last week did a federal judge order that Eastman hand over an additional 400 documents to the committee.
Thursday was likely only the first hearing to feature Eastman as the committee continues its investigation behind closed doors, shaping the proceedings as new information rolls in.
Thompson said the panel plans to invite Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to be interviewed. The Post reported Wednesday that the committee has obtained email correspondence between Thomas and Eastman. The emails show that Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election were more extensive than previously known, according to two people with knowledge of the correspondence who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Jacob, along with former Trump White House lawyer Eric Hershmann, made clear in testimony Thursday they believe Eastman’s plan was ridiculous and illegal. Jacob recalled emailing Eastman after Pence had been evacuated to a secure location: “Thanks to your bull—t, we are now under siege.”
Eastman was unrepentant in reply, blaming Pence for not having gone along with the plot, and encouraging Pence’s team to consider a “relatively minor violation” of the law, by adjourning Congress for 10 days so state legislatures could reconsider their electoral college votes. Jacob said Pence described Eastman’s response as “rubber room stuff.”
Hershmann recounted speaking to Eastman the next day, when Eastman brought up a new idea to contest the result in Georgia, “And I said to him, ‘Are you out of your effing mind?’ I said, ‘I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: Orderly transition,' " Herschmann said.
“Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life,'” Herschmann said he added. "'Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.”
Separately Thursday, tensions ratcheted up between the Jan. 6 committee and the Justice Department, with prosecutors complaining their lack of access to committee interview transcripts is hampering their ability to complete criminal cases, as evidence is aired in widely watched public hearings ahead of key trials.
In a letter to the committee Wednesday, the heads of the Justice Department’s national security and criminal divisions wrote that not granting the department access to transcripts complicates the “ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct.”
The letter is the strongest salvo in the months-long back-and-forth between the committee and the department, whose parallel investigations have generally tried to steer clear of each other but now seem to be on a collision course.
The committee has repeatedly turned to Trump’s own aides, and Republicans generally, to make its case against the former president. Thursday’s hearing at times had the feel of a meeting of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group.
Jacob and Luttig are conservative lawyers. One of Thursday’s questioners was John Wood, a Republican lawyer who noted that he and Eastman clerked for Luttig. Eastman, Jacob and the vice chairwoman of the committee, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), received their law degrees from the University of Chicago, which is known for producing conservative lawyers.
Luttig on Thursday was unsparing in describing the harm that his fellow conservatives who have cast their lot with Trump could have done to the U.S. government — and still could do.
“Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” Luttig said. -
2022-06-17 at 2:54 PM UTCLANNY'S A CUCK
The Boston Globe
Trump lawyer who pushed plan to overturn election sought presidential pardon, committee shows
Martin Finucane
John Eastman, who pushed the theory that former vice president Mike Pence could block the electoral count, asked former president Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani days after the insurrection if he could receive a pardon, according to evidence obtained by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
“I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” he wrote in an e-mail displayed during the hearing by the committee.
The committee also played video of Eastman invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to testify multiple times during questioning. Eastman invoked the Fifth 100 times, Representative Pete Aguilar, a committee member, said.
Eastman made the request to be put on the list of potential pardon recipients a few days after a Jan. 7 conversation with White House lawyer Eric Herschmann.
In a video released in advance by the committee, Herschmann said that in the call Eastman appeared to still have overturning the election on his mind.
“I said to him, ‘Are you out of your effing mind?’” Herschmann recounts in the testimony, adding that he demanded Eastman say the words “orderly transition.”
Herschmann also said that he advised Eastman, “Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it,” before hanging up on him.
I HOPE TRUMP KEEPS THIS LEVEL OF LEGAL EXPERTISE WHEN THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT COMES FOR HIM! -
2022-06-17 at 3:14 PM UTCWhole LOTA cum getting licked ITT
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2022-06-17 at 7:50 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 LANNY'S A CUCK
The Boston Globe
Trump lawyer who pushed plan to overturn election sought presidential pardon, committee shows
Martin Finucane
John Eastman, who pushed the theory that former vice president Mike Pence could block the electoral count, asked former president Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani days after the insurrection if he could receive a pardon, according to evidence obtained by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
“I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” he wrote in an e-mail displayed during the hearing by the committee.
The committee also played video of Eastman invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to testify multiple times during questioning. Eastman invoked the Fifth 100 times, Representative Pete Aguilar, a committee member, said.
Eastman made the request to be put on the list of potential pardon recipients a few days after a Jan. 7 conversation with White House lawyer Eric Herschmann.
In a video released in advance by the committee, Herschmann said that in the call Eastman appeared to still have overturning the election on his mind.
“I said to him, ‘Are you out of your effing mind?’” Herschmann recounts in the testimony, adding that he demanded Eastman say the words “orderly transition.”
Herschmann also said that he advised Eastman, “Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it,” before hanging up on him.
I HOPE TRUMP KEEPS THIS LEVEL OF LEGAL EXPERTISE WHEN THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT COMES FOR HIM!
You're very proud of your mindless fascism, aren't you? -
2022-06-17 at 7:57 PM UTCrevenge of the cum licker
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2022-06-17 at 8:18 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 LANNY'S A CUCK
The Boston Globe
Trump lawyer who pushed plan to overturn election sought presidential pardon, committee shows
Martin Finucane
John Eastman, who pushed the theory that former vice president Mike Pence could block the electoral count, asked former president Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani days after the insurrection if he could receive a pardon, according to evidence obtained by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
“I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” he wrote in an e-mail displayed during the hearing by the committee.
The committee also played video of Eastman invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to testify multiple times during questioning. Eastman invoked the Fifth 100 times, Representative Pete Aguilar, a committee member, said.
Eastman made the request to be put on the list of potential pardon recipients a few days after a Jan. 7 conversation with White House lawyer Eric Herschmann.
In a video released in advance by the committee, Herschmann said that in the call Eastman appeared to still have overturning the election on his mind.
“I said to him, ‘Are you out of your effing mind?’” Herschmann recounts in the testimony, adding that he demanded Eastman say the words “orderly transition.”
Herschmann also said that he advised Eastman, “Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it,” before hanging up on him.
I HOPE TRUMP KEEPS THIS LEVEL OF LEGAL EXPERTISE WHEN THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT COMES FOR HIM!
Hey grandpa, how's ur granddaughter's pussy taste? I bet it's sweet -
2022-06-17 at 10:29 PM UTC
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2022-06-17 at 10:40 PM UTCMore than half of the liberals have now bailed on Biden. They want to dump him for 2024, but Kamala couldn't even get a single delegate, so they don't want her either. Supposedly, they're mulling over the prospect of Peter Buttplug. In any event, they're in a huge panic right now, because their primary election minions have to get into gear shortly.
