PRESS RELEASE Contact: [email protected]
For Immediate Release
Date: June 16, 2022
What They Are Saying: Trump Knew Pressure Campaign On Pence Illegal
“Eastman telling Trump it was illegal is VERY new, and VERY big.” – Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post columnist
“The president knowingly tried to violate the law.” – Chuck Todd
“They knew they were violating the law.” – Wendy Weiser, The Brennan Center
“POTUS *knew* what he was doing was illegal.” – Victoria Nourse, Professor of Law at Georgetown
Washington, DC – Here’s what journalists, legal experts, and Committee members are saying about the third hearing of the January 6th Select Committee:
Victoria Nourse, Professor of Law at Georgetown, @vicnourse: “Casual observers will find much of this law talk arcane, but the point here is to show that POTUS *knew* what he was doing was illegal, it wasn’t a close case.”
Abby Phillip, Senior Political Correspondent and anchor, CNN: “Trump’s lawyer [Eastman] knew what they were doing would break the law. He was just hoping there wouldn’t be consequences.”
Wendy Weiser, The Brennan Center at NYU Law, @WendyRWeiser: “On January 4th, John Eastman admitted that rejecting the electoral votes would violate federal law, per chief counsel to VP Pence. Again, they knew they were violating the law.”
Wendy Weiser, The Brennan Center at NYU Law, @WendyRWeiser: “Jacob recorded notes that on Jan 5 John Eastman ‘requested’ that VP Pence ‘reject the electors in the disputed states.’ A formal request. Backed by paper. Very dramatic.”
Norm Eisen, former U.S. ambassador and Brookings Senior Fellow, @NormEisen: This Jacob testimony is amazing.
Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post columnist, @JRubinBlogger: “Eastman telling Trump it was illegal is VERY new, and VERY big.”
Chuck Todd, NBC News Political Director and host, MSNBC: ‘Donald Trump was told multiple times that this was not constitutional… At this point, this isn’t hard to conclude that the president knowingly tried to violate the law.”
John King, Chief National Correspondent and anchor, CNN: “There was no math behind this, there was no law behind this, so they lied.”
Hugo Lowell, Congressional Reporter at The Guardian, @hugolowell: “Wow — Former VP Pence chief of staff Marc Short testified to the Jan. 6 committee that Trump’s chief Mark Meadows AGREED with him that Pence did not have the power to return Trump to office, per video of his deposition.”
Julian Zelizer, Princeton University historian, @julianzelizer: “The hearings keep confirming how much agreement there was internally in the White House about the reality that Trump lost the election to Biden and how many high level advisors understood that there was a dangerous effort underway to overturn the 2020 election.”
Daniel Weiner, Director of Elections and Government Program, Brennan Center at NYU Law, @DanWeiner329: “One takeaway from the 3d of the #January6thHearings is that we should be deeply wary of radical, supposed ‘textualist’ theories of constitutional interpretation that ignore history, the clear intent of the Framers and, as VP Pence’s fmr counsel put it, basic ‘common sense’”
Harry Litman, former U.S. Attorney, @harrylitman: “This scheme, among the 7, may seem a little dry and lawyerly to many — although there is pretty high drama and dastardliness in Trump’s many-pronged pressure campaign–but for lawyers this is maybe the most breathtaking and offensive, b/c it’s a straight up constitutional coup.”
U.S. Representative and Select Committee member Pete Aguilar, in his concluding remarks: “People in power put their party above their country. It cannot be allowed to continue.”
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The Committee will continue to lay out real evidence gathered by non-partisan career prosecutors proving that Trump and his MAGA allies planned, promoted, and paid for a criminal conspiracy to overturn an election they lost.
This criminal conspiracy extends well beyond the violence perpetrated on January 6, 2021, that injured 140 police officers, including making it harder for people to vote, attempting to appoint bogus electors to overturn the will of voters, and intimidating state officials to change the results in contested states.
Getting to the truth during these hearings and then demanding accountability at the courts and the ballot box is how we stop the current MAGA campaign to sabotage future elections by changing state laws, threatening state officials, and packing election administration offices so that they can have the final say over election results – even when they lose.
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