“Once we found out Pence turned on us and that they had stolen the election, like, officially, the crowd went crazy,” one defendant said. “I mean, it became a mob. We crossed the gate.”
Another testified, “We heard the news on Pence,” adding, “So we stormed.”
The Justice Department has also been examining the ways in which Mr. Trump’s attacks on Mr. Pence influenced the mob. In recent plea negotiations in some Jan. 6 cases, prosecutors have asked defense lawyers whether their clients would admit in sworn statements that they stormed the Capitol believing that Mr. Trump wanted them to stop Mr. Pence from certifying the election.
Key Figures in the Jan. 6 Inquiry
Ivanka Trump. The daughter of the former president, who served as one of his senior advisers, has been asked to cooperate after the panel said it had gathered evidence that she had implored her father to call off the violence as his supporters stormed the Capitol.
Rudolph Giuliani. The panel has subpoenaed Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and three members of the legal team — Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Boris Epshteyn — who pursued conspiracy-filled lawsuits that made claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Big Tech firms. The panel has criticized Alphabet, Meta, Reddit and Twitter for allowing extremism to spread on their platforms and saying they have failed to cooperate adequately with the inquiry. The committee has issued subpoenas to all four companies.
Roger Stone and Alex Jones. The panel’s interest in the political operative and the conspiracy theorist indicate that investigators are intent on learning the details of the planning and financing of rallies that drew Mr. Trump’s supporters to Washington based on his lies of a stolen election.
Michael Flynn. Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser attended an Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18 in which participants discussed seizing voting machines and invoking certain national security emergency powers. Mr. Flynn has filed a lawsuit to block the panel’s subpoenas.
In theory, such statements could help connect the violence at the Capitol directly to Mr. Trump’s demand that Mr. Pence help him stave off defeat.
At a court hearing in November for a Jan. 6 defendant, a federal prosecutor, James Pearce, suggested — without specifically naming Mr. Trump — that it would be a crime for someone to reach out to Mr. Pence and seek to steer him away from performing his constitutional responsibilities.
“Asking the vice president to do something the individual knows is wrongful,” Mr. Pearce said, would be “trying to get someone to violate a legal duty.”
The letter also revealed text messages from allies of Mr. Trump who believed he was going too far in his attempts to overturn the election. One message, from an unidentified member of the House Freedom Caucus who was aware of the president’s plans, warned Mr. Meadows that “if POTUS allows this to occur … we’re driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic.”
After Jan. 6, Mr. Meadows and Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who has refused to cooperate with the committee, received a text message from Sean Hannity, a Fox News host, laying out recommendations for how Mr. Trump should behave.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/us/politics/jan-6-committee-ivanka-trump.html
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