在其周四第三次听证会调查国会大厦袭击事件的众议院特别委员会概述了前总统唐纳德·特朗普对时任副总统迈克·彭斯的压力活动，并展示了1月6日他在国会大厦多么接近危险。
该委员会详细介绍了当时的总统唐纳德·特朗普及其盟友非法推翻2020年大选的“复杂的七部分计划”中的一部分，周四的重点是特朗普试图胁迫彭斯，作为实现他们目标的最后一次绝望努力。成员们专注于特朗普的白宫律师约翰·伊士曼(John Eastman)支持的一种理论——尽管他们说伊士曼本人从不认为这种理论是合法的——即彭斯可以在1月6日国会开会认证2020年选举结果时单方面拒绝选举人，以及特朗普私下和公开对彭斯进行的“无情的压力运动”——即使白宫助手告诉特朗普该计划是非法的。
该委员会认为，“这一压力运动直接导致了对国会大厦的袭击”，并使彭斯的生命面临严重风险，一名前联邦法官、受人尊敬的保守派证人警告说，特朗普的盟友正在“执行一份蓝图”，以推翻2024年的选举。以下是委员会周四听证会的一些关键论点:
离暴徒40英尺
该委员会在1月6日发布了从未见过的彭斯照片，显示副总统和他的家人距离愤怒的暴徒仅几步之遥，这些暴徒进入国会大厦扰乱选举计票。
“副总统彭斯和他的团队最终被带到一个安全的地方，他们在那里呆了四个半小时，”领导听证会的加州民主党众议员皮特·阿吉拉尔说。
“大约40英尺，副总统和暴徒之间只有40英尺，”他说。
副总统的律师格雷格·雅各布(Greg Jacob)当天和他在一起，他告诉委员会，他可以“听到大楼里暴徒的喧嚣”，但“不知道他们离得那么近。”
在美国广播公司新闻周三晚上报道的一张照片中，彭斯和他的家人在他的礼仪参议院办公室躲避暴徒，距离参议院会议厅仅几步之遥。第二夫人凯伦·彭斯被拍到关闭窗帘——大概是害怕大楼外的暴徒会看到她和她的家人。
“当迈克·彭斯明确表示他不会屈服于唐纳德·特朗普的计划时，唐纳德·特朗普让暴徒们转向他，”主席本尼·汤普森说。，周四说。“一群暴徒高呼‘绞死迈克·彭斯’一群暴徒在国会大厦外面建了一个绞刑架。"
彭斯一再告诉特朗普，该计划是非法的
该委员会披露的证据显示，特朗普一再被告知，他要求彭斯拒绝拜登赢得的关键州的选举人认证名单以阻止他的胜利是非法的，但他和他的盟友在1月6日继续向彭斯施压。
彭斯的幕僚长马克·肖特(Marc Short)告诉该小组，彭斯曾“多次”告诉特朗普，他一直“非常一致”。
肖特还在一次视频采访中告诉该委员会，他认为特朗普的幕僚长马克·梅多斯(Mark Meadows)也明白彭斯缺乏推翻选举结果的权力。
“我相信马克确实同意，”肖特说。“我相信那是他告诉我的。但正如我提到的，我认为马克告诉了这么多人这么多不同的事情，这不是我必须接受的事情……解决。”
特朗普身边的其他人物-包括白宫律师埃里克·赫希曼和竞选顾问杰森·米勒-告诉委员会，当时总统周围的人认为停止计算拜登选举人的计划是“疯狂的”
“你要转身告诉这个国家的7800多万人，你的理论是这就是你如何使他们的投票无效?”赫希曼在录像证词中说，回忆起他与特朗普律师伊士曼的对话。
赫希曼说，他告诉伊士曼，“你会在街上引起骚乱。”
当被问及特朗普的律师对伊士曼的想法有何看法时，米勒告诉委员会，“他们认为他疯了”。
雅各布告诉委员会,“不可能”彭斯有权决定谁将成为美国总统，列出了他的团队如何检查230年的历史，并发现“自该国成立以来”没有发生这种情况。
我记得懦弱这个词
在周四的听证会上，该委员会播放了一段特朗普助手的视频，讲述了他们在椭圆形办公室听到的特朗普1月6日在国家广场集会前与彭斯的电话，这是他向彭斯施压阻止选举结果的最后一搏。
这些回忆证实了当时关于激烈电话的基调和特朗普对彭斯的愤怒的报道。
“我记得‘懦夫’这个词，”特朗普的助手尼克·卢纳向委员会作证。“Wimp是我记得的词。”
“对话相当激烈，”伊万卡·特朗普在采访中告诉委员会。"这和我以前听到他对副总统说话时的语气不同。"
“这有点像...彭斯的国家安全顾问基思·凯洛格(Keith Kellogg)作证说。
伊万卡·特朗普的幕僚长朱莉·拉德福德告诉委员会，总统的大女儿告诉她，特朗普称彭斯为“p字”
伊斯曼知道法律努力会失败
在与委员会的一次交流中，彭斯的律师雅各布说，伊士曼承认“用阿吉拉尔的话说，他的理论(关于彭斯的权力)站不住脚”。
“1月5日，我们进行了一个半小时到两个小时的长时间讨论...当我就这出戏向他施压时，我说，“约翰，如果副总统按照你的要求去做，他会在最高法院以九比零落败。”"
“最初，他开始说，‘嗯，我认为他只会以7比2输掉。’经过进一步的讨论，他承认，“嗯，是的，你是对的，我们会以9比0输掉比赛，”雅各布周四回忆道。
雅各布还说，他告诉伊士曼，他的理论是“错误的”，如果情况正好相反，他不希望戈尔或副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯有权拒绝选举人名单。
雅各布说，伊士曼回答说:“当然-戈尔在2000年没有这样做的基础，卡玛拉·哈里斯在2024年也不应该这样做，但我认为你今天应该这样做。”
伊斯曼请求赦免
该委员会周四透露，即使在暴徒被清除出国会大厦后，伊士曼仍在推动彭斯的团队推迟选举人票的计票。
但在袭击发生几天后，他给特朗普的律师鲁迪·朱利安尼发了一封电子邮件，称他对赦免感兴趣——该委员会表示，这可能表明他认为自己的行为可能是非法的。
“我已经决定，我应该在赦免名单上，如果这仍在工作中，”伊士曼在他的电子邮件中说。
伊士曼还在与委员会的面谈中为第五次辩护了100次，为此他在一再拖延后被传唤出庭。
Trump's pressure on Pence: Key details you might have missed from Thursday's Jan. 6 hearing
In itsthird hearing Thursday, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack outlined former President Donald Trump's pressure campaign against then-Vice President Mike Pence -- and demonstrated just how close he came to danger in the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The committee detailed what it calls just one part in a "sophisticated seven-part plan" then-President Donald Trump and his allies to unlawfully overturn the 2020 election -- with Thursday's focus on Trump's attempted coercion of Pence as a desperate last effort to accomplish their goal.
Members focused on a theory espoused by Trump's White House attorney John Eastman -- though they said Eastman never believed the theory was lawful himself -- that Pence could unilaterally reject electors on Jan. 6 as Congress met to certify the 2020 election results, as well as the "relentless pressure campaign" against Pence by Trump in private and public -- even as White House aides were telling Trump the scheme was illegal.
The committee argued, "that pressure campaign directly contributed to the attack on the Capitol" and put Pence's life at serious risk, and one witness, a former federal judge and respected conservative, warned against the ongoing threat to democracy saying Trump allies are "executing a blueprint" to overturn 2024 election.
Here are some of the key arguments from the committee Thursday's hearing:
The committee released never-before-seen photos of Pence on Jan. 6 showing the vice president and his family just steps from angry rioters who entered the Capitol to disrupt the electoral vote count.
"Vice President Pence and his team ultimately were led to a secure location where they stayed for the next 4 1/2 hours," said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., who led the hearing.
"Approximately 40 feet, that's all there was, 40 feet between the vice president and the mob," he said.
Greg Jacob, the vice president's lawyer who was with him that day, told the committee he could "hear the din of rioters in the building" but was not "aware that they were as close as that."
In a photo reported by ABC News Wednesday night, Pence and his family are seen hiding from rioters in his ceremonial Senate office just steps from the Senate chamber. Second lady Karen Pence was captured closing the window curtains -- presumably afraid rioters outside the building could see her and her family.
"When Mike pence made it clear that he wouldn't give in to Donald Trump's scheme, Donald Trump turned the mob on him," Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Thursday. "A mob that was chanting 'hang Mike pence.' A mob that had built a hanging gallows just outside the Capitol."
The committee revealed evidence that Trump was repeatedly told that his demand for Pence to reject the certified slates of electors from key states won by Biden to block his victory was illegal -- but that he and his allies continued to pressure Pence to do so on Jan. 6.
Pence's chief of staff Marc Short told the panel that Pence had told Trump that "many times" and that he had been "very consistent."
Short also told the committee in a videotaped interview that he believed Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, also understood that Pence lacked the power to overturn the election results.
"I believe that Mark did agree," Short said. "I believe that's what he told me. But as I mentioned, I think Mark told so many people so many different things that it was not something that I would necessarily accept as … resolved."
Other figures around Trump -- including White House lawyer Eric Herschmann and campaign adviser Jason Miller -- told the committee that people around the president at the time believed the plan to stop the counting of Biden electors was "nuts" and "crazy."
"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 in videotaped testimony, recalling his conversation with Trump lawyer Eastman.
Herschmann said he told Eastman, "You're going to cause riots in the streets."
"They thought he was crazy," Miller told the committee when asked what Trump's lawyers thought of Eastman's idea.
Jacob told the committee there was "no way" Pence had the authority to determine who would be the president of the United States, laying out how his team examined 230 years of history and found no such instance of this happening "since the beginning of the country."
During Thursday's hearing, the committee played a video of Trump aides recounting what they overheard in the Oval Office of Trump's Jan. 6 phone call with Pence ahead of his rally on the National Mall -- his last-ditch attempt to pressure Pence to block the electoral results.
The recollections confirmed contemporaneous reporting on the tenor of the heated phone call and of Trump's anger with Pence.
"I remember the word 'wimp,'" Trump aide Nick Luna testified to the committee. "Wimp is the word I remember."
"The conversation was pretty heated," Ivanka Trump told the committee in her interview. "It was a different tone than I'd heard him take with the vice president before."
"It was something like ... 'you're not tough enough to make that call,'" Pence national security adviser Keith Kellogg testified.
Ivanka Trump's chief of staff, Julie Radford, told the committee that the president's eldest daughter told her Trump called Pence "the p-word."
In one exchange with the committee, Pence counsel Jacob said Eastman acknowledged "his theory [about Pence's power] didn't hold water," in the words of Aguilar.
"We had an extended discussion an hour and a half to two hours on January 5 ... When I pressed him on the play, I said, 'John, if the vice president did what you're asking him to do, he would lose nine to nothing in the Supreme Court.'"
"Initially, he started, 'Well, I think he would lose only 7 to 2.' After some further discussion, he acknowledged, 'Well, yeah, you're right, we would lose nine to zero,'" Jacob recalled Thursday.
Jacob also said he told Eastman his theory was "just wrong," and that if the shoe was on the other foot, he would not want Al Gore or Vice President Kamala Harris to have the power to reject slates of electors.
Jacob said Eastman replied by saying "Absolutely -- Al Gore did not have a basis to do it in 2000, Kamala Harris shouldn't be able to do it in 2024, but I think you should do it today."
The committee revealed Thursday that Eastman was still pushing Pence's team to delay the counting of electoral votes even after rioters had been cleared from the Capitol.
But days after the attack, he emailed Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani saying he would be interested in a pardon -- which the committee has said could suggest he believed he may have acted illegally.
"I've decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works," Eastman said in his email.
Eastman also pleaded the Fifth 100 times in his interview with the committee, for which he appeared under subpoena after repeated delays.
