No testimony was more powerful than that of Greg Jacob, who was Pence’s top White House lawyer at the time of the attack. In both live and prerecorded testimony, those close to Pence and Trump described Eastman’s plot as an un-American, illegal, unconstitutional, immoral coup attempt that failed only because Pence refused to participate. The defense is also at odds with testimony that Americans heard on Thursday from members of Vice President Mike Pence’s team who detailed the intense pressure Eastman placed on them to hand Trump the election via a plot to subvert the Constitution’s provisions for counting electoral votes and the federal Electoral Count Act of 1887. 6, 2021, when he told the crowd, moments before hundreds of them stormed the Capitol, that secret trays of ballots for Biden had been hidden inside election counting machines. That defense is at odds with Eastman’s public speech on Jan. He has said his work is protected by the First Amendment. And yet here was Eastman, the visiting scholar of conservative thought for the Benson Center, pushing to disrupt and dismantle the democratic transition of power so Trump would remain in office despite his 2020 election loss.Įastman denies these accusations and has said he was only urging Biden’s victory be delayed until there had been more of an investigation into suspected fraud.