For Mike Pence, Jan. 6 Began Like Many Days. It Ended Like No Other.

WASHINGTON — He began the day with a prayer.

Vice President Mike Pence, making ready to resist the ultimate stage of a relentless marketing campaign by President Donald J. Trump to drive him to illegally attempt to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 election, started Jan. 6, 2021, surrounded by aides at his official residence on the Naval Observatory, asking God for steerage.

The group was anticipating a troublesome day. But what adopted over the subsequent 12 hours was extra harrowing than they imagined.

An indignant mob with baseball bats and pepper spray chanting “hang Mike Pence” got here inside 40 toes of the vp. Mr. Pence’s Secret Service element needed to hustle him to security and maintain him for almost 5 hours within the bowels of the Capitol. Mr. Trump known as Mr. Pence a “wimp” and worse in a rough and abusive name that morning from the Oval Office, Mr. Trump’s daughter and former White House aides testified.

And a confidential witness who traveled to Washington with the Proud Boys, probably the most outstanding of the far-right teams that helped lead the assault on the Capitol, later informed investigators the group would have killed Mr. Pence — and Speaker Nancy Pelosi — in the event that they bought the possibility.

Those had been among the many extraordinary new particulars that emerged throughout the third public listening to held Thursday by the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol.

Mr. Pence’s day dawned because it usually did. The vp, whose evangelical religion was a selling point for including him to the presidential ticket in 2016 however usually a supply of skepticism for Mr. Trump, was joined by three individuals in prayer: his chief counsel, Greg Jacob; his chief of employees, Marc Short; and his director of legislative affairs, Chris Hodgson.

Mr. Pence and the workforce had been subjected to a barrage of calls for from Mr. Trump that the vp refuse to certify Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory in a joint session of Congress — an unconstitutional motion by no means earlier than taken within the two and a half centuries for the reason that nation’s founding.

“We just asked for guidance and wisdom, knowing the day was going to be a challenging one,” Mr. Short mentioned in videotaped testimony performed by the committee.

While Mr. Pence was on the Naval Observatory, Mr. Trump was within the Oval Office with aides and members of the family trickling out and in, together with Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Ivanka Trump. He had already despatched two Twitter posts additional pressuring Mr. Pence, the primary at 1 a.m. The second, at 8 a.m., concluded, “Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”

At 11:20 a.m., Mr. Trump known as Mr. Pence, who stepped away from his aides to take the decision.

The group within the Oval Office might hear Mr. Trump’s facet of the decision however paid little consideration to what appeared to begin as a routine dialog. But as Mr. Trump grew to become more and more heated that Mr. Pence was holding agency in his refusal to offer in, the decision grew to become laborious to disregard.

“I remember hearing the word ‘wimp,’” Nick Luna, an aide to Mr. Trump, mentioned in videotaped testimony. “‘Wimp’ is the word I remember.”

Ivanka Trump, the president’s older daughter and a former high White House adviser, mentioned in her videotaped testimony that “it was a different tone than I heard him take with the vice president before.”

Ms. Trump’s chief of employees, Julie Radford, appeared in videotaped testimony to say that Ms. Trump informed her shortly after the decision that Mr. Trump had an “upsetting” dialog with Mr. Pence. The president, Ms. Radford mentioned, used “the P word.” (The New York Times (*6*) that Mr. Trump had informed Mr. Pence, “You can either go down in history as a patriot or you can go down in history as a pussy,” in response to two individuals briefed on the dialog.)

Over on the Naval Observatory, Mr. Pence returned to the room after taking the decision trying “steely,” “determined” and “grim,” Mr. Jacob informed the committee.

Mr. Trump within the meantime revised a speech that he delivered later that day to throngs of supporters on the Ellipse. An early draft of the speech, the committee mentioned, included no point out of Mr. Pence. But after the decision, the president included language that video footage confirmed riled up the mob.

“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing,” Mr. Trump mentioned in his speech. “I hope so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win.”

“All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people,” Mr. Trump continued, referring to one among his calls for that Mr. Pence ship the election outcomes again to the states, a delaying tactic that he hoped would in the end preserve him in workplace. If Mr. Pence did not comply, Mr. Trump informed the group, “that will be a sad day for our country.’’

He added, “So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to,” utilizing the time period for “Republicans in name only.”

Mr. Trump directed his supporters to march to the Capitol and make themselves heard.

By the time Mr. Pence arrived on the Capitol together with his spouse, Karen Pence, and their daughter Charlotte, an indignant mob was already massing outdoors.

Inside, because the joint session started, Mr. Pence’s aides launched a memo to the general public laying out the vp’s view that he didn’t have the facility over the certification that Mr. Trump and his lawyer, John Eastman, insisted he did.

Shortly after 2:10 p.m., the proceedings had been interrupted by loud noises. The mob was swarming into the constructing. At 2:24 p.m. — when Democrats on the committee mentioned Mr. Trump was conscious that the Capitol had been breached — the president posted to Twitter that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what was necessary.”

At that time, the Secret Service had moved Mr. Pence from the Senate chamber to his workplace throughout the corridor. His advisers mentioned the noise from the rioters had turn into audible, main them to imagine they’d entered the constructing. Yet there was not but a pervasive sense of alarm.

Once in his workplace, Mr. Pence sat together with his household, together with his brother, Representative Greg Pence and high aides as Mr. Short ducked downstairs to seize some meals. Mrs. Pence drew the curtains to maintain the rioters from trying in.

Mr. Short made his manner again to the workplace. By then, Tim Giebels, the lead Secret Service agent for Mr. Pence, had made just a few makes an attempt to nudge Mr. Pence and his household to maneuver to a special location. But quickly he was not making a suggestion. Mr. Pence, he mentioned, needed to get to security.

The entourage started to make its manner down a stairway towards an underground loading dock — the purpose at which they got here inside 40 toes of the rioters. Mr. Pence and his aides didn’t know on the time simply how shut they had been to the mob, a few of whom had been threatening to kill him.

“I could hear the din of the rioters in the building,” Mr. Jacob mentioned Thursday on the listening to. “I don’t think I was aware they were as close as that.”

From the loading dock, Mr. Pence dealt with calls to congressional leaders who had been evacuated from the Capitol advanced and ordered the Pentagon to ship within the National Guard. The Secret Service directed him to get right into a automotive and evacuate, however he refused to go away the constructing.

“The vice president did not want to take any chance that the world would see the vice president of the United States fleeing the United States Capitol,” Mr. Jacob mentioned Thursday, noting that Mr. Pence didn’t need to give the rioters the satisfaction of disrupting the proceedings greater than they’d already finished. “He was determined that we would complete the work that we had set out to do that day.”

One particular person he by no means spoke with once more that day was Mr. Trump, who didn’t name to verify on Mr. Pence’s security. Neither did the White House chief of employees, Mark Meadows.

Just after 8 p.m., the Senate chamber opened once more, after the rioters had been cleared from the advanced.

“Today was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol,” Mr. Pence mentioned because the proceedings started once more. He was greeted with applause when he mentioned, “Let’s get back to work.”

Back on the White House, egged on by a few of his advisers, Mr. Trump informed aides he needed to bar Mr. Short from coming into the West Wing from then on.

At 3:42 within the morning, it was throughout. Mr. Biden’s victory had been licensed.

At 3:50 a.m., as Mr. Pence and Mr. Short went their separate methods, Mr. Short texted his boss a passage from the Bible.

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith,” the message learn.