John Eastman, the controversial lawyer who unsuccessfully pressured Mike Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential race, took center stage in Thursday’s Thursday (January 6th) committee hearing, which focused on a campaign to pressure the former vice president.
Eastman emerged in the weeks between the 2020 election and the January 6 riots as one of the most influential voices in Trump’s entourage, making the dubious claim that the vice president had the power to reject voters and determine the winner of the election independently. He appeared at the January 6 rally at Ellipse, which preceded the uprising on the other side of the National Mall.
But Thursday’s debate showed there were legions of skeptics among the Trump team and the Pence team, while Eastman insisted.
Jason Miller, a former senior adviser to Trump’s campaign, told the commission in a statement Thursday that election lawyers Justin Clark and Matt Morgan thought Eastman was “crazy” and told “anyone who wants to listen.”
Mark Meadows, who was President Trump’s chief of staff at the time, acknowledged that Eastman’s plan was illegal, according to Mark Short, who was Pence’s chief of staff.
Tensions between the Trump team and Pence’s team were high at the time, but testimony on Thursday made it clear that members of both groups believed Eastman’s arguments were baseless and could lead to violence.
The panel on January 6 claims that this is exactly what happened. He showed a video Thursday of Trump pressuring Pence to take action during a rally near the White House ahead of the Capitol attack. Another video was shown of participants marching to the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and discussing dragging politicians into the streets.
Eric Hershman, who worked in the White House adviser’s office at Trump’s White House after defending Trump in his first impeachment trial, seemed particularly annoyed by Eastman’s antics.
Are you crazy? Hershman remembered telling Eastman.
Judge J. Michael Lutig, a conservative lawyer whose views shaped Pence’s argument against interfering with electoral credentials, called Eastman’s theory “constitutional mischief.”
“I would put my body on the other side of the road before allowing the vice president to cancel the 2020 election based on this historic precedent,” Lutig told the commission as one of her personal witnesses at Thursday’s hearing.
Lutig cites Eastman’s assertion that the 12th Amendment could be interpreted as allowing the vice president to determine the winner of the election and reject state voters. Pence and his team eventually decided that the vice president did not have such powers.
Greg Jacob, who serves as Pence’s chief adviser and also appeared in person on Thursday, told the committee that Eastman had explicitly asked Pence to reject U.S. voters on January 5, 2021, although he seemed to admit a day earlier that this will violate the Law on Counting Elections.
Witness testimony also made it clear that Eastman was unperturbed, despite numerous warnings that his idea could lead to violence.
“You will provoke riots in the streets,” Hershman told Eastman, to which he said the lawyer replied that there had been “violence in our country’s history to defend democracy or defend the republic.”
“I told him that if the courts did not intervene, there was no one else to allow it,” Jacob said of his talks with Eastman. “This can be resolved through street violence.
Lutig, who was not part of the Trump administration on Jan. 6, appears to have agreed to the stakes, telling the commission he would throw the country into a “revolution” if Pence agreed to Eastman’s plan.
Eastman has joined former New York mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani as a former ally of Trump, who was singled out by the commission as a potentially dangerous influence on Trump before Jan. 6.
The commission presented the case in its first three public hearings that Trump and his team laid the groundwork for violence on Jan. 6, calling for refuted allegations of voter fraud and unconstitutional theories of election cancellation.
Commissioner Pete Aguilar (D-Texas) said on Thursday that Eastman was advocating for the 5th Amendment to avoid incriminating himself dozens of times while appearing before the commission behind closed doors.
Hershman told the committee he was honest with Eastman after the events of January 6, saying he only wanted to hear “two words” from Eastman to move on: “Another transition.”
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The committee learned that Eastman, perhaps feeling the difficulty he found himself in when the violence erupted on January 6, turned to Giuliani for legal protection.
“I have decided that I should be on the pardon list if it is still in the works,” he wrote in an email shared by the commission on Thursday.
Trump did not pardon Eastman before he left office.
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