Mr. Eastman, the conservative lawyer who told Mr. Trump that Vice President Mike Pence could annul the state electoral votes he lost, admitted to Mr. Pence’s chief attorney, Greg Jacob, that his arguments were not have legal force and fail before the Supreme Court.
Rejecting electors by the vice president would be a “relatively minor violation” of federal law, Mr. Eastman admitted, agreeing with Mr. Jacob’s assessment that even the most conservative judges would have rejected it.
“If this case had gone to the Supreme Court, we would have lost 9-0, right?” Mr. Jacob recalled telling Mr. Eastman, according to his interview with the committee. “And he started from 7 to 2. And I said, ‘Who are these two?’ And he said, “Well, I think maybe Clarence Thomas.” And I said, “Really? Clarence Thomas? So we looked at a few of Thomas’s opinions and finally he admitted, “Yeah, okay, it’s going to be 9-0.”
The committee recently received documents from the National Archives that reveal some of Trump’s actions on January 6th. Among them was a morning meeting attended by his eldest son’s fiancée, Kimberly Gilfoyle, who handed over 110 pages of documents to the committee and a subpoena was issued Thursday – a call to former Senator Kelly Leffler, a Georgia Republican, and a call to Mr. Pence as he tried to convince the vice president to go along with his plans.
When the mob attacked the Capitol, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Jacob exchanged a series of emails.
“Thanks to your nonsense, we are now under siege,” Mr. Jacob wrote at 12:14 p.m., shortly after Trump supporters began attacking the compound, chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”
“It was serious, very irresponsible of you to seduce the President with an academic theory that is not legally binding,” Mr. Jacob wrote in a follow-up email.
More than 150 police officers will be injured during the riots, which will cost the lives of several people.
At 4:45 pm, with the Capitol still under attack, Mr. Eastman wrote to Mr. Jacob, “When all this is over, we should have a bottle of good wine with a good dinner somewhere.”
Michael S. Schmidt and Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.