Former US president Donald Trump pressured his vice president Mike Pence to overturn his 2020 election defeat, aides to Pence told the Congressional panel investigating the Capitol attack.
Members of the Democratic-led House of Representatives select committee said Trump continued his pressure campaign even though he knew a violent mob of his supporters was threatening the Capitol as Pence and lawmakers met to formally certify President Joe Biden's victory in the November 2020 election, Reuters reported. Marc Short, who was Pence's chief of staff, said in videotaped testimony that Pence told Trump "many times" that he did not have the authority to stop the vote certification.
"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.
Trump's lawyer John Eastman is said to have been the architect of the plot, and pushed it aggressively despite knowing it was illegal, the panel said. Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows told him about the violence erupting at the Capitol but the president tweeted that 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 panel opened its third hearing this month demonstrating that Trump's false claims of a fraudulent election left him grasping for alternatives as courts turned back dozens of lawsuits challenging the vote.
With 1,000 interviews and 140,000 documents, the committee is connecting the dots, showing how Trump's false claims of election fraud became a battle cry as he summoned thousands of Americans to Washington for a rally and then sent them to Capitol Hill to fight for his presidency. The panel is considering whether to send a referral for criminal charges against Trump to the Justice Department.
-with agency inputs