US Business

Donald Trump pressured his vice president to go along with an illegal plot to overturn the 2020 US election and whipped up a mob that put his deputy’s life in danger when he refused, congressional investigators and former administration aides said Thursday.

The House committee probing last year’s attack on the US Capitol detailed how the former president berated Mike Pence for not going along with the scheme both knew to be unlawful — even after being told violence had erupted as Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s victory.

At its third public hearing into the January 6, 2021 insurrection, the panel detailed a “relentless” pressure campaign by Trump on Pence — as cornerstone of a criminal conspiracy to keep the defeated president in power.

“Donald Trump wanted Mike Pence to do something no other vice president has ever done: the former president wanted Pence to reject the votes and either declare Trump the winner or send the votes back to the states to be counted again,” panel chairman Bennie Thompson said.

“Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong.”

Trump’s lawyer John Eastman was the architect of the “nonsensical” plot, said committee vice-chair Liz Cheney, pushing the scheme aggressively despite knowing it to be unlawful.

The committee showed testimony from Pence’s general counsel Greg Jacob saying Eastman admitted in front of Trump two days before the riot that his plan would violate federal law.

– ‘In danger’ –

A desperate Trump had turned to Pence for help after dozens of legal challenges against the election were dismissed in courts across the land.

The defeated president used rally speeches and Twitter to exert intense pressure on his deputy to abuse his position as president of the Senate and reject the election results.

Members of Trump’s family were in the Oval Office on January 6 when Trump had a “heated” phone call with Pence, according to first daughter Ivanka Trump’s deposition, aired at the hearing.

She said Trump took “a different tone” than she’d heard him use before.

Nicholas Luna, a former assistant to Trump, recalled in his own deposition: “I remember hearing the word ‘wimp.'”

During his “Stop the Steal” rally later that day, Trump referenced Pence numerous times as he told his supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.”

Trump’s original speech didn’t mention Pence but he ad-libbed to berate his vice president in a move Democratic committee member Pete Aguilar said helped incite the insurrection and the threats against Pence.

But Pence resisted, releasing a letter to Congress saying the vice president had no “unilateral authority” to overturn election counts.

Aguilar said an informant from the neofascist Proud Boys told the FBI the group would have killed Pence given the opportunity.

The California congressman said the mob storming the Capitol came within 40 feet (12 meters) of Pence and to “make no mistake about the fact that the vice president’s life was in danger.”

– ‘Pretty jarring’ –

Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows told him about the violence erupting at the Capitol but the president tweeted anyway that Pence did not have the “courage” to overturn the election, aides told investigators in videotaped depositions.

Immediately after the tweet, the crowds at the Capitol surged forward, the committee said.

The mob threatened to hang Pence for failing to cooperate as they stormed the Capitol, even erecting a gallows in front of the building.

“What the former president was willing to sacrifice — potentially the vice president — in order to stay in power is pretty jarring,” Aguilar said.

The panel aired a video clip of a rioter saying he would “drag people through the streets” if Pence refused to overturn the election.

The committee also heard from retired federal judge J Michael Luttig, who testified that the United States would have been plunged into “a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis” had Pence folded under Trump’s pressure. 

Luttig, a renowned conservative legal scholar, had advised Pence at the time that his role in overseeing the ratification of the election was purely ceremonial — and that he had no power to oppose the result.

“There was no basis in the constitution or the laws of the United States at all for the theory espoused by Mr Eastman. At all. None,” Luttig said.

Trump reacted to the hearing by demanding that he receive “equal time” on the airwaves to lay out his bogus theory that the election was stolen — but opponents pointed out that he has not taken up the committee’s invitation to testify.

Disgraced US celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti, who represented porn actress Stormy Daniels over her alleged affair with Donald Trump, faces up to 83 years in prison after pleading guilty Thursday to defrauding his clients.

Avenatti, who acted for Daniels in her lawsuit against the now former president, is already serving time after being convicted of wire fraud in Manhattan and for trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike.

At a hearing in California on Thursday, he admitted to four more counts of wire fraud — each related to money that should have been paid to clients, but which he embezzled — and one count of endeavoring to obstruct the administration of the Internal Revenue Code, the Department of Justice said.

United States District Judge James V Selna set sentencing for September 19. Avenatti, 51, faces a statutory maximum sentence of 83 years in federal prison after his guilty pleas.

Avenatti’s current predicament is a far cry from the dizzying heights of February 2018 to March 2019 when he was the lawyer for Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

He became a household name during her legal battles with Trump over hush money she received for an alleged affair with the then-real estate developer in 2006.

Reveling in his role as an outspoken critic of the president and darling of America’s left, Avenatti appeared frequently on camera and on social media, raising suspicions that he harbored ambitions for a run for the White House.

But while representing Daniels, Avenatti was also defrauding her.

He tricked literary agents into sending $300,000 of an $800,000 advance she received for a book called “Full Disclosure” into a bank account that he controlled, without her knowledge. 

Avenatti then spent the money on personal and professional expenses including plane tickets, restaurant meals and the lease of a Ferrari, prosecutors said.

He later paid back about half the money, or $150,000. Avenatti, representing himself during the Manhattan trial, unsuccessfully argued that he was owed the payments.

The United States on Thursday condemned remarks by Indian ruling party officials about the Prophet Mohammed that have sparked an uproar in Muslim countries.

“We condemn the offensive comments made by two BJP officials and we were glad to see that the party publicly condemns those comments,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

“We regularly engage with the Indian government at senior levels on human rights concerns including freedom of religion or belief and we encourage India to promote respect for human rights,” he said.

Nupur Sharma, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, on May 26 made televised remarks about the youngest wife of the prophet of Islam that have triggered demonstrations across the Islamic world.

The remarks set off diplomatic protests not only in rival Pakistan but in wealthy Arab states that usually enjoy close relations with India. In Bangladesh, protesters have demanded a formal condemnation from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, a close ally of India.

In damage-control mode, the BJP suspended Sharma as well as Naveen Kumar Jindal, another figure in the party who was accused of inflammatory tweets about the Prophet Mohammed.

The United States since the late 1990s has sought to deepen ties with India, believing the world’s two largest democracies have common interests especially in the face of a rising China.

The United States, however, has several times carefully voiced concern about human rights in India as Modi faces accusations of pursuing policies that target the Muslim minority.

An African-American teen executed in 1931 for the murder of a white woman was exonerated by a Pennsylvania court this week, after decades of lobbying by his only surviving sister.

Alexander McClay Williams, age 16, was convicted by a white jury in just four hours, and remains the youngest person ever put to death in the eastern US state.

But 91 years later, a county judge dismissed the case and declared Williams was innocent.

“I’m just happy that it finally turned out the way it should have in the beginning,” Williams’ sister, Susie Williams-Carter, was quoted by the Philadelphia Inquirer as saying on Thursday.

“We just wanted it overturned, because we knew he was innocent, and now we want everyone else to know it, too,” the 92-year-old said.

Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said in a statement that the case was dismissed on Monday, after years of litigation.

The decision “is an acknowledgement that the charges against him should never have been brought,” the statement said.

The case is the latest recognition of historic racial injustices in the US legal system, which convicted and in several cases executed innocent Americans, many of them Black, in the century following the 1861-1865 Civil War.

On October 3, 1930, the estranged ex-husband of Vida Robare, a white matron at the Glen Mills School for Boys, a detention center for young offenders, found Robare’s body.

She had been “brutally murdered” in her cottage, which was on the school’s grounds, the district attorney’s statement said. The ex-husband, Fred Robare, also worked at the school.

Williams, who was serving an indefinite term at Glenn Mills, was charged with the crime.

Interrogated five times without the presence of a lawyer or a parent, he signed three confessions — “despite the lack of eyewitnesses or direct evidence implicating him,” the statement continued.

When he was finally appointed a lawyer, it was William H. Ridley, the first African-American member of the county bar.

“Ridley was given $10 by the Court for expenses (approximately $173 today), and had only 74 days to establish a defense, without the assistance of investigators, experts, or resources,” the statement said.

“The Commonwealth had assembled a 15-member team to handle the trial, which lasted less than two days. The defendant faced an all-white jury, which found him guilty in less than four hours. No appeal was ever filed.”

Stollsteimer paid tribute to the Williams’ sister and Ridley’s great-grandson, who “worked tirelessly for years to demonstrate the inconsistencies in the evidence as well as the unscrupulous manner in which the case was handled.”

There was “substantial” evidence that was either ignored or unexamined, he said.

That included the bloody handprint of an adult male found near the door of the crime scene, photographed by police but never mentioned at trial — and the fact Vida Robare divorced her husband for “extreme cruelty,” but he was never examined as a suspect.

“We believe that this young man’s constitutional protections were violated in an irreparable way,” said Stollsteimer.

Kim Kardashian did not damage the Marilyn Monroe dress she wore to the Met Gala in New York, the museum that owns it said Thursday, after fans complained the gown had been torn.

Kardashian turned heads last month when she appeared at the event in the skin-tight dress the screen siren wore to serenade then-president John F. Kennedy on his birthday in 1962.

But a Monroe memorabilia collector complained this week the dress had been ripped, and published what he said were before-and-after pictures showing missing crystals and tears by its fasteners.

Los Angeles-based museum Ripley’s Believe It or Not! pushed back Thursday, saying the reality star-turned-entrepreneur had not left her mark on the gown.

“Kim Kardashian wearing the ‘Happy Birthday’ dress has been hotly contested, but the fact remains that she did not, in any way, damage the garment in the short amount of time it was worn at the Met Gala,” the museum said on its website.

“From the bottom of the Met steps, where Kim got into the dress, to the top where it was returned, the dress was in the same condition it started in,” said Amanda Joiner, Ripley’s Vice President of Publishing and Licensing, who looked after the dress on the day.

The museum bought the dress at auction in 2016 for $4.8 million. 

A report on its condition written in 2017 says: “a number of the seams are pulled and worn. This is not surprising given how delicate the material is.”

At that time there was already “puckering at the back by the hooks and eyes,” the museum’s website said.

Kardashian, who reportedly went on a diet to be able to squeeze into the dress, has made no public comment on the controversy.

Mexican trans social worker Brigitte Baltazar saw her dreams shattered when she was deported from the United States, where she had fought for 20 years for a better life.

Now she has found herself a new role — helping other migrants to legally cross the border.

Baltazar was a 14-year-old boy when she illegally entered the United States, where she labored on farms picking tomatoes, dreaming of studying medicine.

She also transitioned from male to female, but she says that in April 2021 her life “turned to waste” when she was expelled to Mexico for not being able to regularize her residence status.

Now 35, with her long hair dyed red, Baltazar, from the impoverished southern state of Guerrero, has often faced brutal discrimination and prejudice, but says she has put her experience to good use.

“I’ve been through super tough situations, so I had always said that when I had the opportunity to help other people, I would love that life,” she told AFP.

Like thousands of others who are expelled or seek asylum in the United States, she ended up in a shelter for migrants in Tijuana, just on the Mexico side of the border.

Seeing pregnant women or people overwhelmed by lack of resources and information, she started to assist in any way she could.

– Finding a role –

In a short time, the leading NGO “Al otro lado” — which provides legal and humanitarian support to migrants — asked her to join its staff.

She now works in a camp with people who seek to enter the United States on “humanitarian parole,” a status that covers emergency medical treatment or visiting a sick family member.

“We try to handle the medical cases, the most complicated ones first,” she said, explaining she draws on her empathy for others after years of suffering derogatory comments on the street, in job interviews and from officials.

She says she is moved by the plight of Haitian migrants, who are discriminated against because of the color of their skin and are often surprised that she is willing to help.

And she says she experiences a special connection with members of the LGBTI community who want to enter the United States fleeing intolerance in their countries.

She encourages them to “defend their identity tooth and nail” and to persevere, saying “we already have that warrior soul, you know, that soul that can handle anything.”

The number of people trying to reach the United States through Mexico has soared in recent years, with the surge becoming a fierce political issue across Latin America as well as in Washington.

But in the camp, where faces of fatigue and uncertainty abound, Baltazar exudes warmth while she helps migrants fill out endless paperwork.

She even finds time to bump fists with little girls, bringing out a smile and lifting spirits.

“I have work that I love and I’m passionate about, and that’s why I’m happy. I’m living in a shelter and I’m happy, thank God I have the love of many people,” she says.

A retired federal judge testified Thursday that Donald Trump’s demand for Mike Pence to reject the results of the 2020 US election would have triggered a “revolution” had the vice president obeyed.

J Michael Luttig had advised Pence that his role in overseeing Congress’s ratification of the 2020 election on January 6 last year was purely ceremonial — rejecting Trump lawyer John Eastman’s theory that Pence had the power to unilaterally overturn Joe Biden’s victory.

Luttig, a renowned conservative legal scholar, told a hearing of the congressional committee investigating the 2021 US Capitol assault that had Pence gone along with the plot, it would have triggered a “what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis in America.”

The jurist outlined how close he believed democracy came to collapsing as he appeared at the committee’s third June hearing, which focused on the pressure campaign mounted by Trump against Pence to help the defeated Republican leader cling to power.

“There was no basis in the constitution or the laws of the United States at all for the theory espoused by Mr Eastman. At all. None,” Luttig said.

Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee, described Eastman as the architect of a “nonsensical theory” he knew was based on false claims. 

“Under several of the scenarios, the vice president could ultimately just declare Donald Trump the winner, regardless of the vote totals that had already been certified by the states,” Cheney said, describing Eastman’s plan. 

“However, this was false and Dr Eastman knew it was false. In other words, it was a lie.”

– Inept legal challenges –

The committee is in the middle of a run of televised hearings on the insurrection mounted by a pro-Trump mob to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and overturn the results of the 2020 election.

It has already revealed testimony from many of Trump’s closest allies who said he was told repeatedly he had lost a fair fight to Biden but declared victory and pushed his election fraud narrative anyway.

Eastman’s theory, essentially, was that Pence had the power to reject states’ results due to allegations of fraud.

This could have handed the presidency to Trump, according to Eastman’s plan, because deciding the outcome would then have fallen by an arcane procedure to the House of Representatives. 

House Republicans, who had a majority of state delegations even though they didn’t control the chamber, would have selected the next president.

The committee showed testimony from Pence’s general counsel Greg Jacob saying he believed Eastman admitted in front of Trump on January 4 that his plan would violate federal law.

The insurrection took place two days later, delaying Congress certifying the election results for several hours.

The committee also played testimony from Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann, who told Eastman the day after the insurrection: “Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.”

As dozens of legal challenges dismissed as inept and ethically suspect failed in courts across the land, a desperate Trump turned to Pence for illegal help, the committee heard.

Trump tried to persuade Pence to intervene in the presidential election in meetings at the White House on January 4 and 5 and in a call the morning of January 6. 

– ‘Hang Mike Pence’ –

He used rally speeches and Twitter to exert intense pressure on Pence to abuse his position as president of the Senate to reject the election results as they were being ratified.

During his “Stop the Steal” rally ahead of the joint session of the House and Senate to ratify the election, Trump mentioned Pence numerous times as he told his supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.”

But Pence wrote to Congress that the Founding Fathers never intended the vice president to have “unilateral authority” to overturn election counts, adding that “no vice president in American history has ever asserted such authority.”

The mob whipped up by Trump threatened to hang Pence for failing to cooperate as they stormed the Capitol, and even erected a gallows in front of the building.

Cheney said last week that when the subject of the “hang Mike Pence” chants came up at the White House, Trump responded: “Maybe our supporters have the right idea” and that Pence “deserves” it.

“What the former president was willing to sacrifice — potentially the vice president — in order to stay in power is pretty jarring,” Democratic panel member Pete Aguilar said.

The panel attempted to draw a line from Trump’s pressure on Pence to the violence with a video clip of a rioter saying that he would “drag people through the streets” if Pence “caved” to pressure not to overturn the election.