Jan. 6 committee shifting focus to Trump’s role in the plan to replace electors

“We’ll show evidence of the president’s involvement in this scheme. We’ll also, again, show evidence about what his own lawyers came to think about this scheme,” Schiff stated on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And we’ll show courageous state officials who stood up and said they wouldn’t go along with this plan to either call legislatures back into session or decertify the results for Joe Biden. The system held because a lot of state and local elections officials upheld their oath to the Constitution. A lot of them are Republicans as well as Democrats.”

Ultimately, no electors had been changed, and Democratic candidate Biden was licensed the winner with 306 electoral votes.

Last week, the committee revealed proof that painted an image of the stress marketing campaign going through Pence to block Biden’s electoral votes, giving Republican-controlled state legislatures ample time to undertake a slate of pro-Trump electors. The committee wrapped up the hearing with the presentation of an e mail displaying lawyer John Eastman asking Rudy Giuliani to get him on Trump’s pardon checklist. While he by no means bought the pardon, the committee leaned into the change as a key a part of proof it stated suggests the former president and Eastman dedicated a felony conspiracy to maintain Trump in workplace.

Eastman’s pardon request adopted a monthlong try to get Pence on board with the efforts, which a federal choose has deemed “a coup in search of a legal theory.”

Schiff refused to say Sunday whether or not the committee will reveal proof that Trump directed the plan.

“I don’t want to get ahead of our hearing. We’ll show during the hearing what the president’s role was in trying to get states to name alternate slates of electors, how that scheme depended, initially, on hopes that the legislatures would reconvene and bless it. They don’t and they pressed forward with it anyway,” Schiff stated.

While the committee strikes ahead with the public facet of its work, it’s persevering with to search data from sources like Virginia Thomas, the spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The committee has obtained communications between Virginia Thomas, generally known as Ginni, and Eastman, and called her to testify last week.

“We want to know what she knows, what her involvement was in this plot to overturn the election. She has said she is willing to come in and testify voluntarily. We’re glad to hear that,” Schiff stated.

And whereas the committee has up to now resisted subpoenaing Pence, Schiff stated Sunday that no witnesses are “off the table.”