The committee said the mob attacking the Capitol got within 40 feet of Pence.
The House's Jan. 6 committee held its third public hearing of the month, on Thursday, with the focus on the pressure campaign on then-Vice President Mike Pence.
The committee detailed the efforts of then-President Donald Trump and his allies before and on Jan. 6, 2021, to get Pence to reject electoral votes Congress was certifying -- as part of what it says was a plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Trump-allied attorney John Eastman, in the days after Jan. 6, emailed Rudy Giuliani about a possible pardon.
"I've decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works," Eastman wrote to Giuliani, the committee showed.
Eastman wasn't pardoned and when he was was deposed by the House panel, he pleaded the fifth 100 times, Rep. Pete Aguilar noted.
Showing video footage of Secret Service agents rushing Pence down stairs in the Capitol, the committee said Pence was in hiding for four and a half hours, while, at times, rioters were just 40 feet away.
Greg Jacob, a former adviser to Pence who was with the vice president on Jan. 6 told the hearing room, "I could hear the din of the mob as we moved, but I don't think I was aware," when told how close they got.
"Approximately 40 feet, that's all there was, 40 feet between the vice president and the mob," said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., telling Jacob, "Forty feet is the distance from me to you roughly."
"Make no mistake about the fact that the vice president's life was in danger," Aguilar said, arguing the "big lie" directly contributed to the Capitol attack and put Pence's life at serious risk. "A recent court filing by the Department of Justice explains that a confidential informant from the Proud Boys told the FBI that the Proud Boys would've killed Mike Pence, if given the chance."
John Eastman, an attorney advising the Trump campaign, sent an email after the riot at the U.S. Capitol to once again pressure Pence to violate the Electoral Count Act, according to the committee's presentation Thursday.
“I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation and adjourn for ten days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations,” Eastman wrote to Pence adviser Greg Jacob at 11:44 p.m. that day.
Jacob said he relayed Eastman’s message to Pence, who responded that the email was “rubber room stuff.”
“What did you interpret that to mean?” Rep. Pete Aguilar asked Jacob.
Jacob replied he translated that to mean Pence was calling it “certifiably crazy.”
Former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told the committee that on Jan. 7, 2021, after Pence certified Joe Biden's victory, Eastman called him to talk about a possible appeal in Georgia.
"I said to him, 'Are you out of your f------ mind?' I said, 'I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth for now: orderly transition," Herschmann recalled.
The committee displayed a slate of video testimony from those inside the White House and close to Trump to argue he was well aware of the violence underway on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 when he tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what was necessary" at 2:24 p.m.
Trump White House aide Sarah Matthews, in video testimony with the committee, recalled, "It felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that."
"It was clear that it is escalating, and escalating quickly," she said. "When the Mike Pence tweet was sent out, I remember us saying that that was the last thing that needed to be tweeted out. The situation was already bad."
Earlier, Rep. Pete Aguilar noted that the Capitol building itself was breached at 2:13 p.m. As the attack continued, Trump tweeted to "stay peaceful" at 2:38 p.m., said "no violence" at 3:13 p.m., and finally, at 4:17, he tweeted a video that telling people to go home while also saying, "We love you," and repeating the false claim the election was stolen.
