Donald Trump unleashed mob after VP Mike Pence rejected election plot, Capitol riot panel hears
- The vice-president’s life ‘was in danger’, with the mob storming the building coming within 12 metres of him
- Trump supporters threatened to hang Pence for failing to cooperate, even erecting a gallows in front of the Capitol
Donald Trump pressured his vice-president to go along with an illegal plot to overturn the 2020 US election and whipped up a mob that put his deputy’s life in danger when he refused, congressional investigators and former administration aides said Thursday.
The House committee probing last year’s attack on the US Capitol detailed how the former US president berated Mike Pence for not going along with the scheme both knew to be unlawful – even after being told violence had erupted as Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s victory.
At its third public hearing into the January 6, 2021 insurrection, the panel detailed a “relentless” pressure campaign by Trump on Pence – as cornerstone of a criminal conspiracy to keep the defeated president in power.
“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.
“Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong.”
Trump’s lawyer John Eastman was the architect of the “nonsensical” plot, said committee vice-chair Liz Cheney, pushing the scheme aggressively despite knowing it to be unlawful.