Former Pence lawyer Greg Jacob testified June 16 that he had warned lawyer John Eastman the day before Jan. 6 that a plan for the vice president to reject electoral votes and send voting back to state legislatures would not survive a court challenge.
Jacob said during a hearing before the House Jan.6 committee that he told Eastman the plan he had given to former President Donald Trump in a memo violated the law.
“He acknowledged it would lose 9-0 in the Supreme Court, but kept trying to say, ‘I don’t think the courts will get involved’ because the issue was a ‘political question,'” Jacob said.
Jacob said he believed the courts would intervene and the result would be “disastrous.”
“You would have had just an unprecedented constitutional jump ball situation with that standoff, and as I expressed to him, that issue might well have to be decided in the streets,” Jacob said.
The hearing was the third of several planned by the Jan. 6 committee, this one focused on Trump’s efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject Congress’ official count of Electoral College votes on the day of the attack. In the year since its creation, the committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, seeking critical information and documents from people witness to, or involved in, the violence that day.
Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Follow us:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pbsnews
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/newshour
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/newshour
Facebook: https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe:
PBS NewsHour podcasts: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/podcasts
Newsletters: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/subscribe