An attorney who served as Mike Pence’s chief legal counsel in the days leading up to January 6 rebuked Donald Trump and said that a statement the president put out claiming that the vice president agreed he had the power to overturn the election was “categorically false”.
Greg Jacob made the declaration on Thursday just before the House January 6 committee.
Asked about a statement Mr Trump put out on the day before the riot claiming that he and Pence were in “total agreement” about the vice president’s authority to interfere in the electoral vote count, Mr Jacob said that the vice president’s team was “shocked and disappointed”.
“[W]e were shocked and disappointed, because whoever had written and put that statement out, it was categorically untrue,” said Mr Jacob.
The episode underscores how Mr Trump pursued the seemingly hopeless effort to convince his vice president to interfere in the election and attempt to overturn the results up until the very hours of the Senate’s meeting to certify his loss, despite all indications that Mr Pence had no intention of doing so.
The statement he released claiming that he and Mr Pence were in “total agreement” came on the evening of 5 January, less than 24 hours before rioters would attack the US Capitol in his name.
Several witnesses close to Mr Pence testified or had their testimony played by the committee on Thursday, including Marc Short, Mr Pence’s ex-chief of staff and a current aide to the Republican politician as he continues to maintain his political brand and pursue further ambitions.
Mr Short testified that Mr Pence had personally made clear to Mr Trump in the days leading up to January 6 that he did not believe he had the authority to interfere in the process, which would directly contradict Mr Trump’s 5 January claim. The contradiction is just another drop in the bucket of outright falsehoods and conspiracy theories that Mr Trump has personally spread or latched on to in relation to the 2020 election.
