1/ Trump was told that his plan to overturn the 2020 election was illegal, but pressured Pence to go along with it anyway, according to testimony from the Jan. 6 committee’s third hearing. Conservative lawyer John Eastman, the architect of the plan for Pence to use his authority to unilaterally reject the Electoral College results and overturn the 2020 election, admitted in front of Trump two days before the Capitol riot that his scheme was illegal and would lose at the Supreme Court “nine to nothing.” Even after the attack on the Capitol, Eastman continued to push for overturning the election. According to Pence lawyer Greg Jacob, Pence’s initial reaction to the scheme for him to stop the process of transferring presidential power was that there was “no way” this was “justifiable.” (New York Times / Washington Post / Wall Street Journal / Associated Press)

2/ Shortly after the Capitol riot, John Eastman asked Rudy Giuliani if he could be on Trump’s “pardon list” despite pushing a plan to overturn the 2020 election that he knew was illegal. “I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” Eastman wrote to Giuliani in an email. While Trump issued 143 pardons and commutations on his last night as president, Eastman did not receive a pardon. Meanwhile, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann testified that Eastman continued to press his scheme after the Capitol riot. “Get a great f-ing criminal defense lawyer,” Herschmann said he told Eastman. “You’re going to need it. And I hung up on him.” (New York Times / Washington Post / Politico)

3/ John Eastman claimed to have insight into a “heated fight” among the Supreme Court justices over whether to hear arguments about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Eastman, who once clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, sent an email on Dec. 24, 2020, saying “the odds are not based on the legal merits but an assessment of the justices’ spines […] For those willing to do their duty, we should help them by giving them a Wisconsin cert petition to add into the mix.” Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer advising the Trump campaign, replied that the prospect of “‘wild’ chaos” on Jan. 6 could lead the Supreme Court to take up the case before Congress certified the electoral vote count. Five days earlier, on Dec. 19, Trump issued a call for his supporters to attend a Jan. 6 “protest” in Washington by tweeting: “Be there. Will be wild!” (New York Times / Washington Post)

4/ The Jan. 6 committee has obtained emails between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and John Eastman. The committee said it plans to invite Thomas to testify about the emails and her involvement in Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. “I ...