More details have shockingly come out.
New details regarding the extent Trump’s team pressured former Vice President Mike Pence to renege his duty to certify the 2020 election results have emerged. The latest information comes in hundreds of pages of court documents filed by the House Jan. 6 committee.
Filed late on Wednesday, the evidence is part of a broader strategy to substantiate claims former President Donald Trump and his attorney, John Eastman, were engaged in a criminal conspiracy attempting to deny President Biden’s 2020 Presidential election victory. The evidence forms part of the course case to compel Eastman to hand over communication between himself and Trump.
The filing, however, also shines a spotlight on the aggravation experienced by Pence’s team as they tried to ignore the pleas by Trump and his supporters as he became more desperate as Jan. 6, 2021, approached.
According to the deposition of Pence’s counsel Greg Jacob, Eastman “came in and said, ‘I’m here asking you to reject the electors.’” The recollection details the opening of a meeting held on Jan. 5.
Much of Jacob’s frustration over Eastman’s handling of the 2020 Presidential elections has been reported. This includes a copy of an unpublished op-ed Jacob wrote, where he said, “not a single member of the Supreme Court would support his position.”
However, these documents go into greater detail, showing how Eastman, the author of two memos detailing how Trump’s campaign should oppose the certification of the election results, tried to court Pence and the pushback his attempts garnered.
Wednesday’s filing also reveals that Eastman and Jacob held two meetings in the run-up to the Jan. 6 riots 一 the meetings took place on Jan. 4 and the other on Jan. 5. Jacob claims that during these meetings, Eastman outlined several scenarios. The scenarios either declared Trump the winner or rejected state electors, returning the matter to the states.
In the filing, it’s revealed that Eastman asked Jacob directly if he would consider moving forward with the plan to reject electors, something Jacob believed Eastman thought would be a preferred option when considering public blowback.
Jacob relays that he thinks Eastman “thought it was more politically palatable” even if he didn’t use the term.
However, Jacob resisted Eastman’s logic, in an attempt to convince him that it was impossible “a small-government conservative would ever adopt the position that he was taking.”
Something Jacob brought up when he asked Eastman if he would have supported the concept of former Vice President Al Gore certifying himself the winner when elections were disputed in 2000.
Jacob also revealed he brought up the possibility of the case making it to the Supreme Court, where he was adamant they would “lose 9-0.”
However, in his deposition, Jacob claims Eastman “started out at 7 to 2,” but after Jacob asked him, “who are the two?” Eastman relented, conceding that the case would not receive any votes.
According to Jacob’s recounting, the meeting ended with Eastman saying, “They’re going to be really disappointed that I wasn’t able to persuade you.”
