In her opening statement, on Day 3 of the Jan. 6 committee’s series of hearings on the 2021 Capitol insurrection, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said the June 16 hearing will focus on former President Donald Trump’s “relentless efforts” to pressure his vice president into not counting electoral votes on Jan. 6.
“What the president wanted the vice president to do was not just wrong, it was illegal and unconstitutional,” Cheney said, adding that Trump was told repeatedly that Pence lacked the authority to carry out such a demand.
The committee showed a clip from Pence’s speech at a Feb. 4 Federalist Society event, showing the former vice president saying, “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.”
“And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president,” Pence added in those remarks.
The hearing was the third of several planned by the Jan. 6 committee that focused on Trump’s efforts to pressure former 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. The committee postponed a hearing scheduled for June 15 that was meant to focus on Trump’s efforts to replace Attorney General Bill Barr, who did not support his claims of voter fraud after the election.
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