In a Wednesday court filing, the special House committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack said for the first time that it had gathered evidence indicating that former President Donald Trump and others "engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States" by pushing false theories of election fraud and pressuring former Vice President Mike Pence to invalidate the 2020 election.
"The evidence supports an inference that President Trump and members of his campaign knew he had not won enough legitimate state electoral votes to be declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential election during the January 6 Joint Session of Congress," the committee disclosed in court documents. "But the President nevertheless sought to use the Vice President to manipulate the results in his favor."
The committee's extraordinary filing was part of its continuing legal effort to force former Trump legal adviser John Eastman to disclose documents that the committee says outline a scheme to overturn the election.
As part of Eastman's plan, according to the documents, Trump repeatedly pushed Pence to "exercise unilateral authority illegally, as presiding officer of the Joint Session of Congress, to refuse to count electoral votes."
"In service of this effort, he and Plaintiff met with the Vice President and his staff several times to advocate that he unilaterally reject and refuse to count or prevent the counting of certified electoral votes, and both also engaged in a public campaign to pressure the Vice President," the committee documents state.
This is a developing story that will be updated...
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