Donald Trump’s closest advisers viewed his last-ditch efforts pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to halt congressional certification of his 2020 election defeat as “nuts,” “crazy” and even likely to incite riots if Pence followed through, witnesses revealed in stark testimony to the Jan. 6 committee on Thursday. Gripping new evidence disclosed Trump’s heated conversation deriding Pence with vulgar names on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, before the defeated president took the stage at a rally near the White House. From there, he sent his supporters to the Capitol to “fight like hell” as the vice president was to preside over a joint session. The panel highlighted the physical danger to Pence as rioters came within 40 feet of the place at the Capitol where he and others had been evacuated. Never-before-shown photos showed Pence and his team sheltering. “He deserves to be burned with the rest of them,” one rioter is heard saying on video as the mob prepares to storm the iconic building. “Pence betrayed us,” says another rioter, wearing a Make America Great Again hat in a selfie video inside the Capitol. Pence’s counsel Greg Jacob testified that he could “hear the din” of the rioters nearby. Asked if Trump ever checked on Pence during the siege, Jacob said: “He did not.” With live testimony and other evidence from its yearlong investigation, the panel opened its third hearing this month aiming to demonstrate that Trump’s repeated false claims of election fraud and desperate attempt to stay in power led directly to the Capitol insurrection. All told, the committee is pulling together a dark portrait of the end of Trump’s presidency as the defeated Republican was left grasping for alternatives as courts turned back dozens of lawsuits challenging the vote. Trump latched onto conservative law professor John Eastman’s obscure plan to defy historical precedent of the Electoral Count Act and reverse Joe Biden’s victory. In public and private, Trump waged a pressure campaign that put his vice president in danger as he was to preside over the joint session of Congress to certify the election. Trump aides and allies warned bluntly in private about his efforts, even as some publicly continued to stand by the president’s false claims of election fraud. Nine people died in the insurrection and its aftermath. “Are you out of your effing mind?” Eric Herschmann, a lawyer advising Trump, told Eastman in recorded testimony shown at the hearing. “You’re going to turn around and tell 78-plus million people in this country that your theory is this is how you’re going to invalidate their votes?” Herschmann said. He warned: “You’re going to cause riots in the streets.” A text message from Fox News’ Sean Hannity to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows about the plan in the run-up to Jan. 6 read: “I’m very worried about the next 48 hours.” Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said those around Trump called the plan “crazy.” The committee has said the plan was illegal, and a federal judge has said “more likely than not” Trump committed crimes in his attempt to stop the certification. In a social media post Thursday, Trump decried the hearings anew as a “witch hunt,” lambasted coverage by “the Fake News Networks” and exclaimed, “I DEMAND EQUAL TIME!!!” On Capitol Hill, panel Chairman Bennie […]

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