The plan was conceived by outside legal counsel John Eastman
The Commission’s third landmark hearing on Jan. 6 focused on Trump’s campaign to pressure his Vice President Mike Pence in the weeks leading up to the Capitol Hill attack to halt the Electoral College certification of Biden’s victory.
The plan, conceived by John Eastman, Trump’s outside legal counsel, the architect of the theory that Trump could nullify the election, instructed the vice president to turn down certified delegates in states where Trump had lost, and paved the way for a second presidential term.
Eastman was the author of the ominous “coup memorandum,” detailing the plan’s implementation step-by-step, according to which Pence would refuse to certify the lists of Biden delegates in 7 states, on the pretext that they had been contested. Instead, the vice president would admit to lists of fake “alternative delegates,” Trump supporters who cast their votes for the former president.
A conspiracy, unconstitutional and illegal, described by a federal judge last March as a “coup in search of a legal theory”.
The plan appealed to alleged “constitutional power” of the vice president, and was flatly rejected by Pence, his attorneys and the White House attorney, making Trump responsible for crimes of obstruction of constitutional process and conspiracy. to defraud the state.
Ultimately, no state legislator has ever certified an alternate list of pro-Trump voters. The former president’s White House sent false lists of pro-Trump delegates to Congress, though they were never presented at the certification session the day of the attack.
Greg Jacob, Pence’s former attorney, who attended all Trump and his allies press conferences, who was with the vice president on the day of the uprising, testified personally about his conversations with Eastman before the hearing.
Jacob described a meeting with Trump, his chief of staff Mark Meadows, Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short and Pence, in which Eastman presented the vice president with two impossible options: reject election votes outright; or, in his capacity as Senate President, suspend proceedings and declare a 10-day recess to buy time.
Advised by his legal advisers, Pence flatly refused to participate in the plot, claiming that the Constitution did not empower him to take such a step.
The second witness, the prestigious retired conservative federal Court of Appeals judge Michael Luttig, an informal adviser to Pence, presented the legal argument he developed in defense of the former vice president against pressure from Trump.
Luttig pointed out that, while the wording of the sentence in the Constitution may be somewhat imprecise, its authors, who abhorred the concentration of power and fought for independence against the tyranny of George III, would in no way have relinquished such power to a one person, especially one involved in election results.
The pressure of an increasingly desperate Trump on Vice President Pence lasted until the day of the attack with veiled threats in his Plaza de la Ellipse speech.
When Trump learned that Pence would not cooperate, he turned the violent mob against the vice president. Video footage showed the guillotine lined up in front of the Capitol and the violent yelling, “Let’s hang Pence.”
Source: La Verdad
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