The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol confirmed on Wednesday that Greg Jacob will appear at its hearing scheduled for Thursday afternoon.
Thursday’s hearing is expected to focus on former President Trump and his allies’ efforts to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject the will of the voters.
Jacob, Pence’s chief legal counsel, has become a central figure in that pressure campaign.
He was with Pence on Jan. 6 and participated in White House meetings about the former vice president’s role as Congress counted the Electoral College votes.
Jacob previously testified to the committee that Trump campaign attorney John Eastman outlined a number of scenarios to him and Pence during meetings on Jan. 4 and Jan. 5 regarding Pence’s participation in the joint session of Congress.
Those scenarios included having Pence declare Trump the winner of the 2020 election or kick the matter back to the states by having Pence reject state electors.
“I was surprised that we instead had a stark ask to just reject electors,” Jacob told the committee.
That remark and other parts of Jacob’s testimony was made public in court documents the panel filed in March.
On Saturday, Politico published a memo that Jacob reportedly sent to Pence on Jan. 5 challenging Eastman’s proposals.
Jacob noted that Eastman acknowledged his proposals would violate the Electoral Count Act, and Jacob outlined further violations of the law Pence would be committing if he went along with Eastman’s request.
Jacob concluded in the memo that Pence would lose in court or face a “standoff” with Congress and state legislatures under Eastman’s proposals.
Despite the pressure from Eastman and Trump, Jacob told the committee in his testimony that Pence never seriously considered those plans.
“From my very first conversation with the vice president on the subject, his immediate instinct was that there is no way that one person could be entrusted by the framers to exercise that authority,” Jacob said. “And never once did I see him budge from that view.”
But Jacob’s testimony on Thursday could extend to Jan. 6 itself, as Jacob was with Pence the day rioters stormed the Capitol.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the panel’s vice chair, said during the committee’s first prime-time hearing that they would detail email exchanges between Jacob and Eastman during the riot.
“And thanks to your bullshit, we are under siege,” Jacob wrote in one email to Eastman, according to Cheney.
Jacob was with Pence on the morning of Jan. 6 when he reportedly got a call in which Trump suggested Pence was a “p—-” for not bucking his duty to certify the election results. Trump has said he “wouldn’t dispute” those reports.
But Jacob told the committee that Pence’s rule was to never divulge the contents of his conversations with Trump.
Following the insurrection, Jacob advised Pence not to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, according to reporting by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa for their book, “Peril.”
Jacob now works at law firm O’Melveny & Meyers, where he also worked before joining the vice president’s team in March 2020.