Former US President Donald Trump pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, into contesting Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, according to Pence’s aides. The complaint was made this Thursday (16), at the US Congressional committee investigating the Capitol Hill invasion.
Trump’s imposition came even after he was told that the then vice president had no authority to formally oppose his defeat. The episode refers to January 6 of last year, when Pence and US lawmakers gathered on Capitol Hill to certify Biden’s victory in the presidential election.
At the time, Trump organized a rally in Washington to condemn alleged fraud in the elections. The then president wanted Pence to refuse to recognize the result of the vote. As the signal was not followed, Republican supporters invaded the headquarters of the American Legislature, in one of the biggest attacks on democracy in the country.
According to the investigative committee, led by Democratic lawmakers, Trump pressured Pence, even knowing that a violent mob of his supporters was heading to Capitol Hill.
A video recorded at the time of the invasion and shown on Thursday by the commission showed thousands of supporters of the former president screaming for Pence to be removed from the Capitol or hanged. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, said last week that Trump responded to the cries by saying “maybe our supporters are right.”
The same day, Pence, on the other hand, wrote to Congress that the US Founding Fathers never intended the Vice President to have “unilateral authority” to overturn election recounts. He also added that “no vice president in the history of the United States has wielded such authority.”
“Mike Pence said no. He resisted pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong,” said Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee. “That courage put him in tremendous danger,” he added.
Marc Short, then the former vice president’s chief of staff, said in recorded testimony to the committee that Pence had warned Trump “many times” that he had no authority to prevent Congress from certifying votes.
Along the same lines, Pence’s lawyer said on Thursday that law professor John Eastman – one of the articulators of the thesis that the American election was rigged – warned Trump that the plan to have Pence stop the procedure would violate the country’s Constitution. .
The jurist would have been responsible for raising the hypothesis that the then vice president would reject the results of the election.
This Thursday’s session is yet another one scheduled by Democrats to try to show that Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat were illegal. On Monday (13), for example, the agency disclosed that the former president’s top advisers warned him that his allegations of fraud in the 2020 elections were unfounded.
At the end of the process, the committee investigating the episode may recommend opening criminal investigations. More than a thousand witnesses were heard. Since the attack, nearly 800 people have been arrested and charged in court — most for unauthorized entry into a federal building.
Trump and allies, in turn, consider the body a political strategy of the Democratic party. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said last week that the commission is “the most political and least legitimate in US history.” The Republican Party has already promised to bury the group’s work if it takes control of Congress in the so-called “midterms”, elections that in November will renew part of the House.
Also on Thursday, Bennie Thompson called for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to testify to the committee. The deputy’s request refers to suspicions that the magistrate has involvement with articulators of the thesis of fraud in the elections – which could lead to Thomas’ removal in future decisions related to the subject.
The Washington Post reported earlier this week that the committee obtained emails between the judge and John Eastman. Furthermore, Thomas’ wife Virginia is active in conservative political circles and was said to have attended the rally that Trump held prior to the Capitol invasion.
In January, Clarence Thomas was the only one of nine Supreme Court justices to vote in favor of Trump’s request to block the release of White House records requested by the committee.
After Thompson’s speech, Virginia told the American press that she would agree to testify for the agency.
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