Jan. 6 hearing told Trump knew plan to pressure Pence was illegal, went ahead anyway

As Attorney General Merrick Garland and his prosecutors are closely watching the hearings conducted by the committee this week, the Department of Justice sent a new letter telling the committee it was "critical" members "provide us with copies of the transcripts of all its witness interviews."

In a letter to the committee's chief investigator Wednesday, senior officials at the Justice Department said that the first two hearings this month showed the interviews conducted by the hearing "are not just potentially relevant to our overall criminal investigations but are likely relevant to specific prosecutions that have already commenced."

The request suggests there are matters beyond violence on the ground on Jan. 6 that the Justice Department is already investigating -- specifically alternate or fake electors as a part of the theory that Pence could unilaterally block the ceremony of Joe Biden as President.

The committee's chairman, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, told ABC News on Thursday hat his group didn't intend to provide the department with the transcripts of their witness depositions prior to the public hearings concluding -- but he added that that doesn't mean the committee won't cooperate, only that they don't want to stop their work to accommodate such a request.

Click here for more on potential federal crimes the committee has floated.

-ABC News' Katherine Faulders and Alexander Mallin

Trump White House attorney John Eastman, at the center of the alleged scheme to send a false slate of electors to Congress and have Pence refuse to certify votes, based his reasoning on a theory the committee argued he never believed.

According to the committee, Eastman sought to take advantage of an ambiguity in the Electoral Count Act and claim the vice president could has the constitutional authority to reject electoral votes outright and use his capacity as presiding officer to suspend the proceedings.

"He described for me what he thought the ambiguity was in the statute. And he was walking through it at that time. And I said, 'Hold on a second, I don't understand you're saying,'" said former Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann in taped testimony.

Showing past documents, the committee said that Eastman had dismissed the same power he later claimed Pence could have used.

"In this letter, an idea was proposed that the vice president could determine which electors to count -- but the person writing in blue negates that argument," said Rep. Pete Aguilar. "Judge Luttig, does it surprise you that the author of those comments in blue, are in fact, John Eastman?

Former federal judge Michael Luttig responded "yes" and called it "constitutional mischief."

The committee aired several clips featuring Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Jason Miller, Steve Bannon and others publicly pressuring Pence to refuse the Electoral College votes that were in favor of Joe Biden.

“I hope Mike Pence comes through for us,” Trump said in one video from his rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021. “He’s a great guy. If he doesn't come through, I won’t like him quite as much.”

Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff, told the committee in previously recorded testimony that Pence directly conveyed his view to Trump “many times” that he didn’t have the authority to do what they were asking of him.

“He'd been consistent in conveying his position to the president?” the committee asked Short.

“Very consistent,” Short replied.

Greg Jacob, a former adviser to Pence, said they analyzed history and constitutional text to map out the vice president’s role when it came to certifying elections.

The two then examined “every single electoral vote count that had happened in Congress” since the country’s founding, Jacob testified. They found no vice president ever claimed to have the kind of authority Trump and his attorney John Eastman claimed Pence had.

“The history was absolutely decisive and again, part of my discussion with Mr. Eastman was, ‘If you were right, don't you think Al Gore might have liked to have known in 2000 that he had authority to just declare himself president of the United States? Did you think that the Democrat lawyers just didn't think of this very obvious quirk that he could use to do that?'”