By waging an unprecedented campaign to force former US Vice President Mike Pence to reject the result of the vote cast in favor of Joe Biden in 2020 and declare Donald Trump the winner of this ballot, the former President of the States United and populist has “dangerously brought our democracy closer to disaster”.
Worse, “when Mike Pence made it clear that he would not give in to Donald Trump’s scheme, [celui-ci] turned the crowd against him”, thus endangering the life of the number 2 of the American executive, who on January 6, 2021 became the target of angry insurgents.
This was established Thursday by the parliamentary committee responsible for investigating the attack on the Capitol, on the third day of its public hearings, held in Washington.
“Trump wanted Mike Pence to do something that no other vice president has dared to do before,” summed up the chairman of this commission, Democrat Bennie Thompson in his opening speech. ” This […] was not only a mistake, it was illegal and unconstitutional, ”added Republican Liz Cheney, vice president of this group of elected officials leading the autopsy of the Capitol insurrection and the plans of the populist. that led to this coup attempt.
For nearly two hours, the members of the commission of inquiry thus placed the spotlight on Donald Trump’s attempts to find a legal framework for this reversal of the presidential election and then force the vice-president to do so.
“crazy” theory
As early as December 2020, the Republican’s entourage, helped by lawyer John Eastman, began to develop a theory based on an impressionistic interpretation of legal texts, a theory that dozens of advisers and jurists, however, described as “crazy” and “incorrect on all levels”, exposed several witnesses. Comments made several times in the presence of the former president, moreover.
“Common sense, alone, made it possible to understand that the vice-president did not have the authority” to question the result of the ballot boxes, summarized Greg Jacob, legal adviser to Mike Pence.
Last March, Federal Judge David O. Carter, called as a witness during the commission’s closed sessions, called the legal framework crafted for the authoritarian-leaning populist a theory with high criminal potential that could be described as “an attempt to obstruct the work of Congress and a conspiracy to defraud the United States”. For him, the mechanics looked above all like a “coup d’etat seeking a legal theory”.
For the commission of inquiry, John Eastman, like Donald Trump, knew that this theory did not “hold water”, recalled Eric Herschmann, lawyer at the White House under the presidency of Donald Trump. In an email sent by Eastman to Greg Jacob, as populist supporters stormed the Capitol, the former president’s legal adviser admitted that the scheme violated the law, but that Mike Pence could get to the point. According to Eastman, the interruption of the insurgents’ certification of the vote meant that the law surrounding this process was no longer respected and that Pence would then have had no problem committing “another minor violation” by adjourning this session “for 10 days,” he wrote. The idea was to use this time to return vote certification in Republican states that voted for Biden, hoping to have the results rewritten in favor of the populist.
A target
While the convergence of opinions confirmed the fragility and dangerousness of the scheme, Donald Trump, John Eastman and the former president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, nevertheless continued to promote it, particularly in the hours leading up to the attack on America’s Democracy Dome.
“Despite the Vice President constantly telling the President that he had no power to decide the outcome of the presidential election, Donald Trump continued to pressure the Vice President, both publicly and in private,” said Democrat Pete Aguilar, a member of the inquiry committee. The thing caused Mike Pence to become a target of rioters.
During the uprising, the crowd began to call for the assassination of the former vice-president, by hanging.
The threat was also anticipated by Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, who, the day before January 6, warned an American secret service agent that the president was going to “turn publicly against the vice-president” thus posing a risk to the security of the number 2 of the American executive power, indicated Mr. Short in a video testimony broadcast during these hearings.
In 230 years, no vice president of the United States has claimed the power to overturn the outcome of an election. If Mike Pence had taken this route, it “would have been the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the republic,” summed up Republican and retired judge J. Michael Luttig in strong testimony before the commission. Mr. Luttig is an icon of the American conservative current, considered by the right as a reference in terms of legal theory. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a follower of Donald Trump, once called him a “father figure” after working for him.
“The War on Democracy unleashed by the former President and his Republican Party allies on January 6 was the consistent and predictable culmination of the War for America” launched by Donald Trump and the Republican Party, warned Mr. Luttig in a 12-page text submitted to the commission. It was the fateful last day for the execution of a well-laid plan by the former president to overturn the 2020 presidential election at any cost, so that he could cling to the power that the people American had decided to confer on his successor”.
Overthrow plan theorist John Eastman appeared before the commission in recent months but did not answer questions from lawmakers, citing the 5e amendment to the United States Constitution, which allows a citizen to refuse to testify against himself in a criminal case.