() LIVE THREAD: I’m live-tweeting today’s (Thursday’s) 1PM ET House January 6 Committee hearing. I’m a lawyer, journalist and historian who’s been contacted by the Committee and whose J6-focused substack, PROOF, the Committee has cited. I hope you will RETWEET and follow along.

1/ At times I may make reference in this thread to evidence previously published in the nearly 200 reports on January 6 that appear at PROOF (link below). About half of these reports are free at PROOF, while the other half are for subscribers ($5/month). http://sethabramson.substack.com 

2/ This live thread is of course free. If, as you follow along between now and 3:30PM today, you feel moved to use the tip jar in my bio (see image below for location) I appreciate it, even as I add that it is—as ever—100% optional. I’ll do the best work I can today either way.

3/ I’ll be offering logistical, legal, and historical framing for today’s hearing, and outlining what to expect from the hearing (and how it fits into the larger work of the House January 6 Committee and future work by the Department of Justice). Today’s hearing focuses on Pence.

4/ The two known live witnesses for today:

Greg Jacob, former legal counsel for former Vice President Mike Pence
J. Michael Luttig, conservative former federal judge from the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit

As noted above, Luttig is a respected *conservative*.

5/ The Committee is also expected to air a big portion of the recorded deposition of Marc Short, former chief of staff to Pence. Short is considered one of the key HJ6C witnesses. The questioning today will be by Rep. Aguilar, a Democrat.

Stand by for mid-thread breaking news...

6/ BREAKING NEWS: Chair of the House January 6 Committee Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) Announces That the House Select Committee Now Wants to Interview Ginni Thomas, Wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Committee Had Previously Been Split on This Critical Issue

7/ BREAKING NEWS 2: This announcement by the House January 6 Committee follows by a few hours a report by the NYT revealing that Trump attorney John Eastman was (a) in private email contact with Ginni Thomas pre-J6, and (b) had non-public knowledge of internal SCOTUS discussions.

8/ CNN has previewed J. Michael Luttig’s opening statement (which may or may not be read in full live, we don’t know).

Given that Luttig is a giant in conservative circles, the language of his opening statement—a *full-throated* indictment of Donald Trump—is considered stunning.

9/ The topic of today’s hearing—Pence—is one of the most complex ones in the January 6 timeline. I’d like to go through a few of the reasons for that:

Pence is himself unwilling to be a witness.
Pence—unlike any other January 6 witness but Trump—has presidential ambitions.

10/

Pence is one of the two people (with Speaker Nancy Pelosi) we *know* the January 6 rioters writ large wanted to kidnap, torture, and/or kill, and unlike with Pelosi we have eyewitnesses saying Trump *supported* violence toward—possibly assassination of—the Vice President.

11/

As PROOF has reported, Trump knew *days* before January 6 that Pence wasn’t going to join in his criminal conspiracy—so we have days of statements by Trump and the Trump campaign that are known lies on this subject that must now be fully revealed as such through evidence.

12/

Pence is the epicenter of many January 6 mysteries he won’t resolve—like why he was unwilling to get in a Secret Service vehicle on January 6 due to mistrust of the USSS and how his friend/donor Bubba Saulsbury knew to flee D.C. after meeting with him on Insurrection Eve.

13/

The Pence narrative is adjacent to *most* big January 6 narratives: Eastman’s coup scheme (repeatedly pitched to Pence); pro-Trump corruption in the USSS; Trump hiding his foreknowledge of January 6 violence from Pence; Pence acting as POTUS with CJCS Milley on January 6.

14/

Tracking Pence’s movements in the Capitol on January 6 may be the *best* way of underscoring how *dangerous* the movements of the mob were, in terms of how close they came to him and the nuclear football and actually capturing one of the highest value hostages in America.

15/ But for all this, at the heart of *most* conversations and Pence and January 6 is—unfortunately—a rather boring and stupid and open-and-shut conversation about whether Pence had the legal authority to overturn the election. He did not, and he knew that *from the jump*, folks.

16/ This is so important to underscore: there was *no valid legal argument* for Pence having *anything* but a ceremonial role on January 6, and *Pence knew it* and *his legal counsel knew it* and *Trump’s lawyers privately knew it*.

That whole rigamarole was for Trump’s benefit.

17/ While Pence had Jacob write a three-page memo formally ditching the idea he could overturn the election, it is really important to understand that neither Pence nor Jacob ever *seriously* considered doing as Trump asked. They were just trying to stay in Trump’s good graces.

18/ We’ll hear today that Pence asked for advice from Judge Luttig and Luttig told him he couldn’t do as Trump asked—just as Jacob had told Pence. But this may obscure the simple fact that no one serious *ever* implied to Pence he could do this and Pence *never* thought he could.

19/ For these reasons, the Pence issue is like a nautilus shell that keeps turning in on itself. Why did Pence have to pretend—for any duration—he might do as asked? Well, go back to the start of this thread: Pence wants to be POTUS and feared a *security situation* on January 6.

20/ It’s for this reason that I find myself ambivalent—in the sense of being of two minds—about the Pence topic. As often as not, it pulls us from more critical topics: e.g., what was going on in the U.S. Secret Service and Trump’s lies about what he knew of January 6 in advance.

21/ On the other hand (and here’s why I say I’m of two minds) because everything about Pence is so high stakes—his ambitions; his value as a hostage; his centrality in Trump’s lies; and now, with Milley’s depo, his role as unofficial POTUS on January 6—there’s a *lot* to chew on.

22/ Indeed, and this can’t be overstated, the big takeaway from the first House January 6 Committee meeting—this is the third—is that Pence made all the decisions and calls on January 6 (to DOJ, DHS and the National Guard) that Trump would *not* because he was 100% AWOL as POTUS.

23/ Just so, one of the biggest pieces of breaking news on the *eve* of the House January 6 Committee hearings was that Marc Short had expressed concern to the US Secret Service on the eve of January 6 that Pence was in danger from—in ways Short somehow still left hazy—*inside*.

24/ All of which leaves us a clear way to evaluate the success of today’s hearing: if the takeaway is something banal (if true) such as that Pence acted semi-heroically on January 6, or got good advice from honorable lawyers, the hearing will be boring, pointless, and a failure.

25/ Why? Because Pence’s heroism—and the advice of the lawyers near Pence—was just the workaday function of public officials and lawyers that *in any other era but the Trump era* wouldn’t even have to be remarked upon. The “story”—that is—is wholly created by Trump’s criminality.

26/ In writing and publishing on Trump, as I’ve now done for seven years and across the equivalent of *seven* 500-page nonfiction works (three in print, and four at PROOF), I have learned that the key is not to go *too far* down a delusional rabbit-hole dug by Trump’s sociopathy.

27/ Trump—and Trump alone, if at times aided by his legal agents (at Trump’s demand)—created the farcical notion that Pence had a special role on January 6. To be clear, he didn’t and never did and no one serious ever told him he did. So how much do we indulge that Trump fantasy?

28/ My answer is simple: we can spin our wheels discussing Pence’s heroism and the advice given to him *only* up until the moment—and it comes *pretty quick*—that it starts to obscure the many, many, *many* fascinating and deeply fraught narratives that are *adjacent* to Pence’s.

29/ In other words, to anyone who’s been researching January 6 for the last 18 months, Pence is a *jumping-off point* rather than an endpoint in himself. He *enables* some critical January 6 conversations despite his camp’s internal legal debate not being very interesting at all.

30/ So I am worried. Watching CNN now and hearing the focus on Judge Luttig we are about to see, I worry the focus of this hearing will be Trump’s ludicrous legal theories *in and of themselves* rather than what Trump and his agents’ actions *meant* as a national security matter.

31/ Consider for instance the news about John Eastman having privileged access—apparently—to internal SCOTUS data via (it certainly appears) Ginni Thomas. It’s an example of Pence-adjacent Eastman drama being *more* important than Eastman’s lame and doomed attempts to sway Pence.

32/ By the same token, PROOF and other reporting on how pro-Trump elements in the Secret Service helped create a national security emergency on January 6—and may have discoursed with far-right paramilitaries—is far *more* important than Trump’s lies about Mike Pence on January 6.

33/ While Trump’s lies about Pence on January 6 help reveal (a) his actual foreknowledge—from a Secret Service report given to him days earlier—that there would be violence on January 6 and (b) the national security situation he’d created, the *lies themselves* aren’t the focus.

34/ This is the danger Trump *always* poses and *will* pose to historians: Trump digs countless meaningless rabbit-holes that usually *obscure* what really matters in any fact-pattern he is involved with. So there are pitfalls here that the House January 6 Committee *must* avoid.

35/ Because the topics adjacent to Pence—see above—are historically grave but also historically *complex*, the Committee, which is loathe to touch on topics it deems too confusing for Americans, is likely temperamentally inclined to *avoid* some of the really critical stuff here.

36/ Okay, the hearing has just been gavelled in by Chair Bennie Thompson.

37/ Thompson is reviewing the basic facts: what Trump wanted Pence to do on January 6; what Pence’s actual role was; and how Pence resisted Trump’s (truly deranged) pressure to do something Pence could not do and knew he could not do and no VP of the United States has ever done.

38/ Thompson is noting the danger Pence was in and lauding Pence’s actions. All expected starting material.

39/ Now Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) is recapping how this fits into prior hearings. She notes that Trump had been repeatedly told his supposed legal theories were absolute nonsense, as were his claims of fraud. She is noting that Trump pressured Pence on all of this anyway.

40/ First clip of Pence speaking—probably first of many today—underscoring that he knew, and has since said he knew, that he could not do as Trump asked because it was illegal. The next clip is of Pence chief of staff Marc Short saying Pence *told* Trump he could not do as asked.

41/ Per Short, Pence told Trump he couldn’t/wouldn’t do as asked *many* times. Cheney quotes a federal judge saying Trump and Eastman likely violated criminal laws in their pressure campaign on Pence/others. Cheney shows a Jacob depo saying Trump knew Eastman’s plan was illegal.

42/ Greg Jacob (Mike Pence’s former legal counsel) says that on January 4, 2021 John Eastman *told* Donald Trump that the plan they were pushing was illegal—as it would violate the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

43/ Rep. Pete Aguilar (D) is going to do the questioning today, and he is now giving his opening statement.

44/ Aguilar plays a short video of the violent January 6 mob establishing that Trump’s lies on January 6 about Pence’s powers—and his false claim that what Pence would do on January 6 was still an open question on January 6—created real dangers for Pence at the Capitol that day.

45/ It appears—as Thompson introduces today’s witnesses—that the Committee is again going to try to focus as much as possible on *Trump* even as this hearing talks a lot of Pence: specifically, that Trump knowingly put Pence in grave danger by spreading lies Trump knew were lies.

46/ Correcting a prior tweet, it now appears Rep. Thompson may ask a *few* of today’s questions himself. He has recognized himself for questions, and is giving a brief pre-testimony statement again summarizing what Trump did to try to pressure DOJ and the Vice President’s Office.

47/ Greg Jacob is giving a timeline of his legal advice to Pence. He says Pence first knew his supposed role in the joint session of Congress on January 6 could become an issue (a political and/or legal issue) in early December 2020.

48/ Jacob says Pence realized from the jump—in early December of 2020—that there was no way whatsoever the Constitution authorized him to pick the next U.S. president (his own obvious conflict of interest being one of many reasons for this).

This was *5 weeks* before January 6.

49/ Apparently Cheney will ask questions also. She is now questioning Judge Luttig.

50/ Cheney asks Luttig to elaborate on his legal judgment that the course of action Trump proposed would launch the entire United States into chaos and revolution. This judgment was summarized in Luttig’s opening statement, which is in the record but won’t be read in full live.

51/ Judge Luttig is the slowest speaker who has ever appeared before Congress in its history, I suspect.

52/ Luttig says Trump was about to plunge the United States into the first constitutional crisis in its history.

To repeat: Luttig says this would have been the *first such crisis* in the *entire history* of our Republic.

He is including (incredibly) the American Civil War.

53/ Cheney discusses a Team Trump adjunct attorney, Kenneth Chesebro, who early on said Trump’s fake-elector scheme could have led (if Pence had gone along with Eastman and Trump) to slates of electors being rejected on January 6. Chesebro is also part of the Ginni Thomas news.

54/ Chesebro and Eastman falsely claimed there were 7 slates of alternate Trump electors; Jacob says there were no legally valid alternate slates of electors.

Chesebro and Eastman’s emails—which Cheney *chose* to bring up—lead us to Eastman’s knowledge of non-public SCOTUS info.

55/ It appears that Eastman knew there were no real alternate electors. Cheney questions Luttig on this and Luttig confirms there was *never* any basis for *anyone* to acknowledge non-certified so-called alternate electors for Trump from any of the seven key battleground states.

56/ Luttig is taking a *very* long time to simply say—I will summarize—that everything Eastman said to Chesebro and then to Trump and later to Pence was a pile of s*** both legally and historically.

57/ Staff Counsel John Wood and Rep. Aguilar (D-CA) will be conducting questioning of the witnesses now.

58/ Wood is a former law clerk of the very conservative Judge Luttig.

Luttig is now explaining why Eastman’s legal judgments—Eastman is also a former Luttig clerk—were “incorrect at every turn.”

To me, this should have been summarized rather than being the subject of testimony.

59/ Candidly, Luttig is a terrible witness. He speaks slowly; is saying he needs notes he didn’t bring with him; is making simple legal judgments sound complex. This is what I’d feared (above): that we’d get bogged down in Trump and Eastman’s universally acknowledged *nonsense*.

60/ The Constitution and historical precedent never offered *any* basis, cover, or support for anything Eastman ever said about January 6. There. I said it. That is how long it takes to say it. We do not need live witnesses for *this*; this can be said by any attorney in seconds.

61/ I’ll summarize what Luttig is trying to say: the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—including as clarified by the Electoral Count Act of 1887—never gave or purported to give the Vice President of the United States *anything* beyond ceremonial duties during certification.

62/ While many say the Electoral Count Act of 1887 is flawed (and it is), and while Trumpists claim that it contains vagaries that allowed Eastman to deliberately misinterpret it, none of those issues actually warranted anything Eastman *ever* said about it. Period.

63/ Mssrs. Wood and Aguilar must urgently pivot due to Luttig’s horrific manner of testimony: ONLY ASK HIM YES OR NO QUESTIONS. I do not mean cross-examine him, I mean *lead* him so he cannot and need not say more than one or two words at a time (and pray Luttig will play along).

64/ Jacob is now, much more fluidly, talking through the 12th Amendment and whether it allows a VP to reject electors.

Easy summary: no, absolutely not, it never did and no one serious ever thought it did.

65/ I want to expand on what Jacob is saying about the Trump/Eastman *lie* that the Constitution allowed one man to choose a President.

You have to *hate* America—more than misunderstand it, but *hate* our democracy itself—to think the Founders would *ever* have supported this.

66/ Merely in *uttering* the notion that we’re actually an autocracy in which a sitting VP can choose the next President of the United States, Eastman and Trump were marking themselves as domestic enemies of the U.S. and un-American *villains* contesting against our democracy.

67/ Marc Short (via depo) testifies that even Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows agreed that Pence did not have the power Eastman and Trump claimed. But Short *also* allows that Meadows may have spoken out of both sides of his mouth and chosen to tell Trump something different.

68/ Jason Miller (via depo), Short (depo), and Hershmann (depo) say that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone never agreed with Eastman and told him so. This is establishing that *not a single person in Trump’s orbit* thought Eastman was right. Miller says people thought it "crazy."

69/ Apparently Hershmann called Eastman "crazy" to his face and asked him, "Are you out of your fucking mind?" Hershmann even told Eastman before January 6 that his words "would cause riots in the streets." To which Eastman replied, "there's been violence before in this country."

70/ To me, Eastman’s reply to Hershmann is the *big breaking news* of this hearing so far. That Eastman quote—accepting and *embracing* the possibility of violence—is something we haven’t heard before and is absolutely stunning. A game-changer. This was Trump’s top legal counsel.

71/ Aguilar reveals that Hershmann spoke to Guiliani on January 6; Hershmann says Giuliani *conceded* to him on the morning of January 6 that Eastman’s theory (which Eastman had been told would cause violence) was wrong and that Eastman’s critics were "probably right."

72/ The second *big breaking news*: Rudy Giuliani admitted to Trump lawyer Hershmann on the morning of January 6 that Eastman was probably wrong in his analysis, and despite Eastman knowing him being wrong would cause violence *both men maintained their position* before the mob.

73/ The third *big breaking news*: on Insurrection Eve Jacob pressed Eastman about how he was wrong and told him Trump would lose 9-0 in SCOTUS. At first Eastman said he thought it would be 7-2—suggesting he knew how Thomas would vote—but then he *conceded* Trump would lose 9-0.

74/ The fourth *big breaking news*: a document has been revealed showing Eastman *knew* his legal advice was wrong. He knew it before January 6. He knew his words would cause violence. He told Trump his recommendations would constitute a violation of law. Trump went ahead anyway.

75/ Rep. Aguilar tried to ask Luttig a yes or no question—and it *was* a yes or no question—but Luttig has treated it as an opportunity to go on the longest, *slowest* legal rant ever.

I cannot believe any federal witness is *this tone-deaf* to his own deficiencies as a witness.

76/ Luttig is giving Eastman *more* credit than he deserves by saying Eastman got "wrapped around the axle" by focusing on "historical precedent" rather than legal precedent.

Luttig *needs* to make clear that *no attorney* would’ve read the "historical precedent" as Eastman did.

77/ By using the phrase "historical precedent" over and over and over again, Luttig is inadvertently lending credence to an absolute fantasy that Eastman *knew* was a fantasy. Why are we still indulging Eastman’s fantasy when we already have heard that *he* knew it was a fantasy?

78/ Aguilar cuts off Luttig at the moment Luttig actually utters something useful, i.e. Luttig calling Eastman’s actions "constitutional mischief." Good move by Aguilar! He is doing his very best with a problematic witness.

79/ Now a brief video of ex-VP Al Gore speaking on the day of Biden’s inauguration, noting that (for him, Gore) it was an "easy choice" to choose the country over his own political career back in 2000. It is so important to underscore how un-American Trump’s alternative view was.

80/ Former VP Dan Quayle and former Speaker Paul Ryan also told Pence he couldn’t do as Trump asked. But to be candid, far less interesting than the fact that *everyone* told Pence the obvious—he couldn’t do as asked—is Eastman *knew* his analysis was *fraudulent*. *That* is key.

81/ Now we get a video on how much pressure Pence was put under to do the wrong thing, including audio from a Trump speech. Short confirms (via depo), yet again, that "many times" and "consistent[ly]" Pence told Trump he could not and would not do as asked. Eastman pretended...

82/ ...and Jason Miller pretended, and Bannon pretended, that Pence’s decision was an open question long after Pence had made crystal clear to Trump that he wouldn’t do as asked. The Committee should *emphasize* that these Trump (and others’) lies were intended to *incite a mob*.

83/ This is all unfolding as predicted early in this thread: the important thing here isn’t the good advice Pence got—as he knew from the start what the right thing was to do—but the *lies* told by Eastman and Trump and Miller and Bannon *to the mob* to incite them on January 6.

84/ Greg Jacob is now walking through John Eastman’s last-ditch pitch to Pence, in Trump’s presence, on January 4. Eastman gave Pence two equally illegal and absurd options I will not detail here because they were deranged fantasies Eastman knew had no basis in law or in fact.

85/ I like that HJ6C is getting witnesses to say Pence *never wavered* in his views. But remember, it matters *not* because it makes Pence a hero, *not* because it underscores the *good* advice he was getting, but because Trump/Eastman *lied to the public* on this to *incite* it.

86/ Trump lied about his deranged legal fantasies being an open question; Eastman lied re: his deranged legal fantasies being an open question; and they did it because *the January 6 mob wouldn’t have rioted for Trump at the Capitol* if they knew there was *no chance* of winning.

87/ So the Committee keeps focusing on how Trump "pressured" Pence, when really his lies were *not* intended to "pressure" Pence—*as he already knew Pence had rejected that pressure*—but to *incite* a riot.

The House January 6 Committee *must* emphasize this and do so right now.

88/ Jacob is taking us through *another* White House meeting (now on January 5) in which Eastman tries to persuade Pence. Again this is much less interesting—Eastman kept hitting the same notes over and over—than the fact that Eastman *knew* he was recommending violating the law.

89/ See my point, now, from earlier in this thread?

This narrative isn’t really about Pence at all.

It’s about a Trump/Eastman criminal conspiracy to commit election fraud *and* incite violence. *That’s* the actual story here—not anything about Pence’s heroism or steadfastness.

90/ The HPJC must remember what it knew in its first hearings: this is all about Trump; it’s always about Trump. It’s not, finally, about Pence, or even—in a sense—about Eastman as anything beyond a criminal instrument/weapon wielded by Trump. The focus should never be off Trump.

91/ The fifth *big breaking news*: Eastman said to Jacob that he *knew* what the Supreme Court would do if Pence blocked Biden’s electors: invoke the "political question" doctrine to leave the matter to Congress.

*Who told Eastman what the Supreme Court would do*?

Ginni Thomas?

92/ The sixth *big breaking news*: Jacob told Eastman a *second* time, on January 5, that there’d be violence "in the streets" if Eastman/Trump proceeded as planned. But the next day—despite being told their words would lead to violence!—Trump and Eastman went forward as planned.

93/ This hearing is a very odd one: we are actually getting *major* breaking news but it is being oddly (I think only accidentally) soft-shoed. Journalists conducting an analysis of this hearing after the fact *mustn’t* make this mistake. We’re getting *major* breaking news here.

94/ Jacob is detailing a legal debate with Eastman that will lose most viewers. But I think the key point about this debate has been made already (in the hearing and in my tweets above).

95/ Jacob is now detailing a January 5, 2021 meeting between the President of the United States and the Vice President of the United States at the White House.

96/ This meeting is stunning. Trump, literally like Satan slithering down from his tree in the Bible, tries to entice Pence by emphasizing to him how much *power* he’d have—and how *cool* it would be—ruling the galaxy alongside his father Darth Vader by picking the next POTUS.

97/ We should really understand that in this last, Insurrection Eve conversation with Pence, Trump was (in American historical terms) embodying Pure Evil.

Chaos. Anarchy. Then autocracy. And tyranny. The end of America.

98/ That January 5 Oval Office meeting was like The Temptation of Mike Pence.

We *should* all be happy that Pence passed his Biblical "Trial."

99/ Short (via depo) is now testifying to a false statement put out by Trump and Jason Miller after the January 5 meeting saying Trump and Pence were in agreement.

Again this was Trump lying to incite a mob—it’s as simple as that. Trump lied so he could incite the January 6 mob.

100/ Miller confirms Trump dictated the lie to him.

This is the seventh *big breaking news*: Trump dictated a statement to Miller, intended for public consumption, which lied about what Pence planned to do on January 6 *so Trump could incite the mob* on January 6 (the next day).

101/ The Committee takes a 10-minute recess on one final stunning point: after this false statement came out from Trump, Short frantically called the Secret Service to say that he believed Vice President Pence was in physical danger from the words and conduct of...

Donald Trump.

102/ The best journalists will be able to explain to America how absolutely stunning this hearing has been—even as the hearing itself may have lost some viewers.

What we have learned so far is actually staggeringly explosive, but it does require some synthesizing by journalists.

103/ This hearing has also taken us a GIANT step closer to GINNI THOMAS.

I mean a giant step. Eastman appears to have claimed some sort of inside knowledge of what the Supreme Court would do if Pence broke the law. And he was secretly corresponding with Ginni Thomas at the time.

104/ I’m *not there yet*, but I’ll say that this evidence brings me closer than I have ever been as an attorney, journalist, academic, historian, author, and researcher to believing that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas himself may have participated in a criminal conspiracy.

105/ *If* Justice Thomas violated the sacred confidentiality of conversations inside the Supreme Court with the knowledge that his wife was passing intel to Trump’s legal team—which would use this info as justification to *incite an attack on Congress*—it’s a criminal conspiracy.

106/ Remember: in her private, secret, treacherous communications in support of the insurrection, Ginni Thomas made reference to speaking with her "best friend"—which friends of the Thomases say is a reference to Justice Thomas—about the pending Trump legal challenges.

Chilling.

107/ We are back. Aguilar is giving an opening statement about Trump’s pressure and the "boiling point" it created on January 6.

108/ Aguilar is looking at Trump’s tweets *on Insurrection Day* emphasizing that Pence could hand Trump a second term. These tweets, remember, were *not* for Pence—who’d long ago made clear to Trump what he’d and wouldn’t do—but for the *mob*.

Remember that—it was for the *mob*.

109/ On the morning of January 6, Pence spoke to Trump by phone. Jacob (testifying now) was at the VP’s residence with him at the time.

Pence took the call alone.

110/ But Trump was not alone.

He was in the Oval Office with Don Jr., Eric, Lara Trump, Ivanka, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Eric Hershmann.

Ivanka (via depo) and Eric Hershmann (via depo) and others testify to a "heated" call. Trump was very aggressive with Pence—calling him names.

111/ Trump apparently shouted at Pence that he was a "PUSSY."

Ivanka said the tone of the call was such that she was deeply uncomfortable.

112/ This is the other side of "Satan."

On January 5, Trump presented Pence his seductive snake side.

On January 6, Trump presented Pence with his demon side.

At first, Trump’s January 6 speech *never mentioned Pence*. *Trump* inserted many references to Pence into his speech.

113/ Remember, Trump made these unilateral edits at a time he *knew* violence was coming. Like the monster he is, he continued stoking the mob in person *and* on Twitter. We now know he openly supported the idea of Pence being assassinated.

So I use the word "monster" advisedly.

114/ Meadows aide Ben Williamson and White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews have testified—and we hear Williamson and Matthews in depo now—saying Meadows told Trump about the violence at the Capitol *before* (!) he tweeted his tweet that incited violence against Pence.

115/ Aguilar says the riot "surged" after Trump’s tweet about Pence. (The tweet was read out to the rioters via bullhorns.)

116/ White House aides openly agreed—at the time!—that Trump had (quote) "poured gasoline on the fire" by tweeting the literal "last thing" he should have said at that moment, knowing (as he and the whole White House did) about the violence *already unfolding* at the White House.

117/ The mob got to within 13.3 *yards* of the Vice President.

Wow. Wow.

118/ A Proud Boy informant told the FBI the Proud Boys would have "killed Mike Pence" if they got to him.

(The informant said the same was true of Pelosi.)

Wow. Wow.

119/ Jacob is testifying to Pence refusing to get into a car with the Secret Service. Pence’s detail chief told him the USSS would not take him from the Capitol without his permission. Pence replied that he trusted his chief but did not necessarily feel the same about the driver.

120/ Pence then effectively began running the U.S. government from his secure location, because Trump was 100% AWOL. Pence also checked in on the safety of others (which Trump never did with him, i.e. Pence) and spoke with Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy detailed speaking with Trump.

121/ Jacob emailed Eastman from his secure location at the Capitol blaming him for the Capitol attack; Eastman replied that the violence was *Pence’s* fault (and that of his team).

122/ Eastman later said to Jacob via email—on January 6—that Congress violated the Electoral Count Act by its procedural actions *after* the riot, and again asking Pence to break the law.

Understand: Eastman was now trying to *benefit* from the *very riot he incited*.

The gall.

123/ When Pence later learned of this Eastman email, he called it "rubber room stuff"—which Jacob said he interpreted as meaning "certifiably crazy."

124/ On January 7 Eastman called Hershmann—still trying to keep Trump in office. Hershmann said, "Are you out of your fucking mind?", told him to keep saying "orderly transition" publicly, then added, "get a great fucking criminal defense lawyer, because you're going to need it."

125/ When questioned by the House January 6 Committee, John Eastman, having tried and failed to get a presidential pardon from Trump, pleaded the Fifth over 100 times.

A federal judge has now said it is *more likely than not* that Trump and Eastman committed Criminal Conspiracy.

126/ Greg Jacob now testifies that if Donald Trump and John Eastman had succeeded, it would have caused "chaos" in the United States and a situation "antithetical" to "our democracy and rule of law." He says the consequences for the nation would have been "significant."

127/ Redemption story! Luttig makes a powerful statement by responding "Exactly what I said, congressman"—and no more—when Aguilar asks "what he meant" by the most damning sentence by far in his entire opening statement (I won’t quote it—but it was a doozy). Great move by Luttig!

128/ Cheney’s now making a closing statement that summarizes what we heard and lets us know the next hearing will be about the pressure Trump and Eastman applied to state GOP legislators *and* state GOP executive-branch officials. Cheney implies evidence of more crimes is coming.

129/ Thompson is now commending Jacob and Pence for their courage and heroism in "putting our democracy first." He is lauding, too, federal judges, state officials, and federal employees at the DOJ for doing their duty.

He emphasizes that the danger to America *has not passed*.

130/ Oddly, Rep. Thompson is giving Luttig the last word. Luttig is saying he was honored to aid Pence on January 6; that he prayed to God on January 6; and then he says, "still [today], Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear present danger to American democracy."

131/ "To this very day, the former president and his allies and supporters pledge that—in the presidential election of 2024—if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican Party candidate were to lose that election, they’d attempt to overturn that election."

132/ LUTTIG (continued): "[Trump is] executing a blueprint [for a stolen 2024 election] in open view of the American public." He notes that he would never have uttered such words if Trump and his allies were not "openly and candidly" confessing their intentions to all of America.

133/ Thompson is now openly asking anyone "on the fence" about aiding the Committee to consider the "shocking" evidence it has disclosed to America in its three hearings so far to contact Congress. He asks them to agree to assist its investigation.
The Committee stands adjourned.

PS/ If you found this live J6 thread helpful and want to leave a tip for the feed, click on the icon in my bio above (see its location in the image below) to donate in any amount via Venmo, or (if you would like to donate via PayPal) you can use this link: https://www.sethabramson.net/pp 

PS2/ This hearing was as explosive as the first two—but for various reasons slightly harder for news-watchers to follow. I’ll try to publish an After Action Report (AAR) at PROOF in the next 24 hours to clearly break down the biggest takeaways from today. http://sethabramson.substack.com 

PS3/ By the way, John Eastman’s January 7 statement to Giuliani, “I've decided I should be on the pardon list”, is perhaps the most *unintentionally hilarious understatement* of the entire January 6 timeline so far.

It’s *very* hard to see how Eastman escapes federal indictment.

PS4/ George Conway is on CNN outlining the “willful ignorance” legal doctrine this feed and PROOF have been harping on for many months.

I’m so appreciative to George for saying this. Americans *need* to understand this doctrine to understand exactly why Trump *must* be indicted.

PS5/ We are getting to the point—are quite possibly *at* the point—where it would not just be legally and morally incomprehensible if the Department of Justice *doesn’t* indict former president Donald Trump, but would in fact be the biggest scandal in the long history of the DOJ.