Ex-President Donald Trump put his Vice-President Mike Pence in danger during the Capitol riot as he illegally pressured him to quash the 2020 election, says a congressional panel.
(File image) Former US president Donald Trump and ex-vice president Mike Pence pictured in the White House in March 2017. Photo: AFP / Getty Images
Lawmakers have heard from Pence aides who described White House efforts to reject President Joe Biden's victory.
US democracy "withstood Trump's scheme" because Mr Pence refused to bow to Mr Trump, said chairman Bennie Thompson.
The committee has accused Trump of an attempted coup to remain in power.
Supporters of then-President Trump, a Republican, stormed Congress on 6 January 2021 in a bid to thwart certification of Joe Biden's White House election victory.
Trump has slammed the panel as a "kangaroo court" conceived to distract Americans from the "disaster" of Democratic governance ahead of November's mid-term elections.
On Thursday, the Democratic-led committee focused in their third public hearing on the constitutional process by which presidents are elected.
Trump had publicly made the claim - deemed bogus by legal scholars and Pence's aides - that vice-presidents have the power to halt the congressional certification of the election.
Greg Jacob, then-counsel to Pence, testified to the committee that "our review of text, history and frankly just common sense" confirmed that his boss did not have the authority to overturn the election results.
He added that there was no way America's Founding Fathers back in the 18th Century "would ever have put one person - particularly not a person who had a direct interest in the outcome - in a role to have a decisive impact on the outcome of the election".
Michael Luttig, a former conservative judge and informal aide to Mr Pence, said that if the vice-president had followed Mr Trump's orders "it would have plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis in America".
The hearing opened with footage of protesters at the Capitol chanting "hang Mike Pence" moments after Trump called on his deputy in a speech outside the White House to do "the right thing".
In earlier hearings, the panel said that aides who were with Mr Trump during the riot had heard Trump reacting approvingly - saying "he deserves it" - after he saw TV footage of his supporters chanting threats directed at Pence.
Lawmakers on the panel argued that Trump continued his pressure campaign - by tweeting that Pence did not have the "courage" to intervene - even after he knew that rioters had broken into the Capitol.
"Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong," said Chairman Thompson, a Democratic congressman from Mississippi.
"That courage put him in tremendous danger."
Pence was inside the halls of Congress as the rioters stormed the building. On Wednesday, photos emerged of him and his family sheltering with Secret Service agents as the mob raided the complex.
At one point only about 40ft (12m) separated Pence from the rioters, said Democrat Pete Aguilar during Thursday's hearing.
"I don't think I was aware that they were as close as that," responded Jacob, who was in hiding with Pence at the time.
Multiple aides to Trump were shown in video testimony saying they heard the president hold a heated call with Pence on the morning of the riot.
One aide said he heard Trump call him a "wimp", while another said he heard Trump tell Pence that he had made the wrong choice picking him as his running mate in 2016.
Julie Radford, who served as chief of staff to Ivanka Trump, said the president's daughter told her that she heard Trump call Pence "the p-word".
The committee also heard evidence that John Eastman, a conservative scholar central to Trump's claim about vice-presidential power, requested a pardon from Trump before he left office.
- BBC
