According to an email released by the Jan. 6 select committee on Thursday, attorney John Eastman urged Rudy Giuliani to assist him to get on Donald Trump's list for a presidential pardon days after a failed attempt to push Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election.
In an email to Giuliani, Eastman said, "I've concluded that I should be on the pardon list, assuming it is still in the works."
Despite the fact that Eastman was never pardoned, the select committee used the email to emphasize evidence that implies Trump and Eastman engaged in a criminal conspiracy to keep Trump in office despite losing the election to Vice President Joe Biden. Eastman's month-long effort to persuade Pence to single-handedly reject Biden's electoral votes culminated in the pardon request. The endeavor has been dubbed "a coup in search of a legal theory" by a federal court.
The email came at the end of a session in which Trump and Eastman employed misleading methods to promote their fringe legal argument that Pence had the right to overturn state election results, allowing Republican-controlled state legislatures time to pick new, pro-Trump electors. The committee also discovered that on January 5, 2021, Trump directed his campaign to publish a false statement claiming that Pence had agreed to give him the ability to reverse the election.
In the statement, Trump stated, "The vice president and I are completely in agreement that the vice president has the right to act."
It was a fabrication. For days, Pence and his team had stressed — including in a direct meeting with Trump on Jan. 4 — that such an endeavor would be unlawful and that Pence would have no involvement in it. Additional witness evidence from Pence's chief of staff Marc Short was provided by the select committee, in which he expressed displeasure that the Trump campaign would issue a statement that clearly contradicted their private discussions.
The evidence highlighted how hard Trump pushed his desperate campaign to stay in power, an effort that had persuaded thousands of Trump supporters who flocked to Washington on Jan. 6 that Pence would move to overturn the election. The select committee discovered that, while not being included in early draughts of Trump's address, he incorporated wording to publicly push Pence in his speech to supporters that morning.
When Pence refused to give in to Trump and Eastman's demands, a crowd that had already encircled and stormed into the Capitol became even more threatening, with some yelling "hang Mike Pence" as he escaped to a safe subterranean loading dock under the building. While he was there, the select committee suggested that he was attempting to settle the unrest by phoning congressional leaders and security personnel, while Trump remained ensconced in the West Wing, plotting his strategy to stay in power. Pence was within 40 feet of members of the crowd during his escape to the loading dock, according to the select committee.
Jason Miller, a Trump campaign aide who told the select committee he was on the phone with Trump as the statement was drafted, provided proof supporting Trump's participation in the Jan. 5 statement.
"He dictated the most of it... "On this one, it was just me and him on the phone talking it through," Miller explained.
The newly discovered data emerged during a hearing centered on Trump's anti-Pence lobbying campaign. It contained testimony from Pence's senior adviser, attorney Greg Jacob, who warned Americans, "The law is not a toy for presidents or judges."
Jacob described the fundamental principles that drove Pence to resist Trump's demand to declare President Joe Biden's victory illegal in a three-page statement to the select committee on Jan. 6.
"The Vice President's immediate impression was that the Framers of our Constitution, who despised concentrated power, would never have entrusted any single person with the unilateral right to change the outcome of a presidential election — especially not someone on the ticket," Jacob wrote. He went on to say that Pence "never wavered from that perspective."
Jacob's testimony ushered in a new phase in Trump's fight to save his job, one that a federal court has previously concluded may have amounted to a criminal conspiracy involving Trump, attorney John Eastman, who helped devise the fringe legal strategy focusing on Pence, and maybe others. Even as a violent crowd drove Pence, Jacob, and lawmakers to evacuate the Capitol for safety, Eastman continued to press on Jacob to urge Pence to reject state electors and assist Trump to win the presidency.
Jacob outlined Penceworld's opposition to the attempt from December 7, 2020, to January 6, 2021, on Thursday. The select committee has long claimed that Trump's pressure turned into a criminal conspiracy to obstruct Congress, a major aspect of the investigation that investigators will have to establish to the public — and the Department of Justice — on Thursday.
In his opening comments, Jacob mentioned how the Justice Department assisted Pence in fending off two lawsuits that sought to vindicate Eastman's tactics. Jacob also worked with House and Senate MPs to update the script that the former vice president read during the Jan. 6 session, adding and altering words to show his opposition to Trump and Eastman's proposal. The panel also played video clips from Pence's former chief of staff, Marc Short, who testified to the panel earlier this year.
Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) presided over the meeting, which included questioning from former US Attorney John Wood, one of the committee's top investigative attorneys.
When a pro-Trump crowd stormed the Capitol, many were incensed and perplexed that Pence had refused to agree to Eastman's proposal. In the midst of the riot, Trump's angry tweet at Pence appeared to inflame the audience even more, with rioters reading the tweet to the throng as the violence worsened.
Jacob was the brains behind Pence's unwillingness to give in to Trump's pressuring tactics. After a month of rigorous investigation, he came to the conclusion that Pence was banned from acting alone under the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act, which has controlled every change of power since 1887. Eastman's suggestion, he claimed, would have forced him to violate four distinct prohibitions of the Electoral Count Act.
Jacob, who has counseled lawmakers contemplating ECA amendments, specifically stated that the existing regulations were sufficient to prevent Eastman's planned tactic.
"Our adopted laws already made it plain that the Vice President lacked the enormous powers pressed upon him by others," Jacob wrote. "New legislation will make little difference unless we first instill in our citizenry and demand unwavering adherence to our Constitution and the rule of law from our leaders."
Eastman has emerged as a type of man-behind-the-curtain for Trump, the lawyer who defended his most extreme attempts, for the select committee. Even as the crowd stormed the Capitol, forcing Pence and senators to escape for their lives, Eastman persisted in his attempts. The select committee revealed emails between Jacob and Eastman during the violence in court documents, with Eastman urging him to ignore the Electoral Count Act's constraints and postpone the session. "Thanks to your nonsense, we are now under attack," Jacob said several times.
Former appeals court Judge Michael Luttig, a conservative for whom Eastman formerly clerked, accompanied Jacob. Pence highlighted Luttig's reasoning in a Jan. 6 statement expressing his refusal to go along with Trump. Jacob deputized Luttig to assist Pence to prepare his last reaction to Trump's pressure campaign. Since then, Luttig has cautioned that the forces underlying Trump's attempt to rig the 2020 election are still a threat to future elections.
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