Trump Pressures Pence to Overturn the Election — Then Sics a Mob on Him for Refusing

The Eastman Memo

In late December 2020 and early January 2021, attorney John Eastman — a conservative law professor recruited by the Trump legal team — produced a series of memos arguing that Vice President Mike Pence, in his ceremonial role presiding over the joint session of Congress on January 6, could either reject certified electoral votes from states Biden won or unilaterally delay the count to give Republican state legislatures time to replace those electors. The plan had six steps and ended with Trump as the declared winner of an election he had lost by seven million votes.

Every constitutional lawyer outside the Trump operation said the theory was nonsense. So did Eastman himself, in private — he conceded in court filings later that the unilateral rejection theory would lose 9-0 at the Supreme Court if anyone actually tried it. That did not stop him from selling it to Trump as a viable plan.

The Oval Office Meeting

On January 4, 2021, Trump summoned Pence to the Oval Office. Eastman was in the room. Trump told Pence, in words later documented by the House Select Committee and Pence’s own counsel Greg Jacob, that Pence needed to “listen to John” — “he’s a respected constitutional scholar.” Eastman laid out the two options: reject Biden electors outright, or delay the count and bounce it back to state legislatures.

Pence, who had spent days consulting his own counsel and outside constitutional lawyers including former federal judge J. Michael Luttig, refused. The Vice President’s role under the Twelfth Amendment and the Electoral Count Act, he concluded, was ministerial: he counted what the states had certified. He had no power to reject anything. Pence said no, repeatedly, in writing and in conversation, including in a public letter released the morning of January 6.

The “Wimp” Call

On the morning of January 6, 2021, Trump called Pence one last time. According to handwritten notes taken by Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short and others — released years later — Trump told Pence: “You’ll go down as a wimp.” Pence held the line. Trump ended the call furious.

Hours later, at the Ellipse, Trump delivered the speech that launched the march on the Capitol. He named Pence by name. “If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election,” he told the crowd. “I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do.” Then he sent tens of thousands of supporters down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the building where Pence was about to preside over the certification.

The 2:24 PM Tweet

By 2:13 PM, the Capitol had been breached. Pence had been hustled out of the Senate chamber by his Secret Service detail. Rioters were inside the building chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” A noose had been erected outside.

At 2:24 PM — after Trump had been informed of the breach, after he had been told Pence was in physical danger — he tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” Rioters inside the Capitol read the tweet aloud, according to the January 6 Committee’s evidence. The chants of “Hang Mike Pence” intensified.

It is difficult to find a cleaner documentary record of an American president directing a mob against his own vice president for the offense of refusing to participate in a coup.

The Pattern

The Eastman plot was not improvisation. It was the culmination of a months-long effort to overturn an election Trump had lost: the fake electors scheme, the calls to state officials demanding they “find” votes, the pressure on the Justice Department to declare the election “corrupt,” the lies about voting machines. The Pence pressure campaign was the final mechanism. When it failed, Trump’s response was not to concede. It was to escalate to violence.

Eastman was later indicted in Georgia alongside Trump and faced disbarment proceedings in California. Trump was impeached for the conduct but acquitted by the Senate. Most of the major participants in the pressure campaign — Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Rudy Giuliani — were named as unindicted co-conspirators in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal January 6 case, which was dismissed after Trump won the 2024 election. The man who summoned the mob and tweeted at it while it hunted his vice president was returned to the office from which he had launched the attack.