Jan 6 hearings today: Trump pressured Pence and brought US ‘dangerously close to catastrophe’, committee hears

The January 6 committee shared a video clip of Marc Short’s testimony in Thursday’s hearing.

Mr Short was the former vice president Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff who served in the Trump administration in multiple positions over four years.

In his testimony, Mr Short said Mr Trump was told repeatedly that Mr Pence lacked the Constitutional and legal authority to do what Trump demanded he do.

Committee member Pete Aguilar has said former vice president Mike Pence, who was allegedly pressured by then president Donald Trump to overturn the election results, did his job that day and “acted presidential”.

In an interview with ABC News’s Linsey Davis, Mr

said: “I think Mike Pence stood behind Donald Trump during a lot of times when I would oppose the policies that they advocated.

“I think its important and we need to remind folks that he did his job that day. He acted presidential. He was down in an undisclosed location but he was acting presidential- calling the acting secretary of defence, calling congressional leaders, he was doing the job. While I am frustrated with policies of the Trump-Pence administration, I think it is important to be honest about his role that day.”

In Thursday’s hearing the committee revealed Mr Trump knew he lost the election but “oversaw a scheme” to overturn the result “when the vice president refused to go along with it” and that “he [Mr Trump] unleashed a violent mob against Pence at the Capitol”.

The third public hearing into the Capitol riot heard evidence that Donald Trump was repeatedly told his plan to overturn the election result was illegal, even by the lawyer urging him to do so.

The Independent’s Washington team was on Capitol Hill today for the shocking testimony.

YouTube has allegedly deleted a video of former Attorney General William P Barr’s testimony to the January 6 Committee hearing on the grounds that it included a clip of former president Donald Trump sharing lies about the 2020 elections, reported The New York Times.

“The excerpt, which was uploaded June 14, included recorded testimony from former Attorney General William P Barr. But the problem for YouTube was that the video also included a clip of former President Donald J Trump sharing lies about the election on the Fox Business channel,” the report said.

In a statement, YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said: “Our election integrity policy prohibits content advancing false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches changed the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election, if it does not provide sufficient context.”

The video of the committee’s Thursday hearing is still available on YouTube.

They knew. They all knew.

Today’s hearing focused on Donald Trump, John Eastman, and his allies’ effort to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 election on January 6. According to testimony, key players in Trump’s inner circle — including Trump and Eastman themselves — knew that Pence overturning the election would be illegal, but pushed him to do it anyway. In other words, they knowingly launched an illegal attempted coup.

Simone Gold, a leading anti-vaccine California doctor, was sentenced to two months of imprisonment for storming the US Capitol and delivering a speech to the rioters during the January 6 insurrection.

Gold told the court that she regretted entering the Capitol and didn’t intend to get involved in an event that was “so destructive to our nation”.

“It’s the opposite of who I am,” she told US district judge Christopher Cooper.

Donald Trump has been accused of using the “Constanza Defence,” a reference to an episode of the classic sitcom Seinfeld, to justify his false claims about the 2020 presidential election.

In a Tuesday episode of MSNBC’s The Beathost Ari Melber said the former president seemed to be copying a line of logic from Seinfeld character George Constanza, who says in one episode, “Remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it.”

Video depositions made public by the House select committee revealed on Thursday that Donald Trump knew the plan to have his vice president commandeer the 6 January session of Congress and declare Republicans the winners of the election was illegal.

Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter-turned-senior-adviser, recalled how she heard Mr Trump on the phone telling Mr Pence: “You are a wimp, you’ll be a wimp.”

Shortly after the call, Mr Trump posted a tweet in which he said Mr Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify”.

A former White House aide told the January 6 committee that the tweet was like “pouring gasoline on the fire” as rioters starting chants of “hang Mike Pence” and calling for Mr Pence to be brought out from the Capitol.

Below is the full statement from retired conservative federal judge J Michael Luttig submitted to the January 6 committee ahead of his testimony. The statement was obtained and published by CNN.

Conservative attorney John Eastman has been at the centre of this week’s House Select Committee on the January 6 hearing.

The hearing has heard lots about Mr Eastman and his opinions, and how he and then president Donald Trump had tried to persuade vice president Mike Pence on 5 Jan in an Oval Office meeting, that he had the constitutional power to block Biden’s ascent.

Andrew Buncombe explains the role Mr Eastman played in pushing Mr Trump’s plan to derail democracy: