Jan 6 committee: What to watch for during Thursday’s hearing focused on pressure campaign against Pence

Panel’s third hearing will focus on efforts to pressure vice president into unilaterally rejecting electoral votes from swing states won by Joe Biden

The third public hearing of the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 2021 will focus on the pressure campaign mounted against then-vice president Mike Pence by former president Donald Trump and his allies in the lead-up to the Capitol riot.

“We're going to focus on the pressure campaign on former Vice President Pence driven by the former president, even as advice was swirling around the White House saying that the scheme was illegal, it was totally baseless,” said a select committee aide who briefed reporters on plans for the hearing late on Wednesday.

“We're going to show that that pressure campaign directly contributed to the attack on the Capitol, and it put the vice president's life in danger,” the aide continued, adding that the panel plans to present “new material that documented that day,” as well as evidence documenting Mr Pence’s movements before and during the riot.

The aide said the panel expects Thursday’s hearing to echo the format used at Monday’s session, in which previously recorded depositions and live testimony will demonstrate that there was a “group of committed public servants who upheld their oaths and were committed to the rule of law” working in the White House in the days before the attack on the Capitol, each of whom gave Mr Trump and Mr Pence “sound advice saying: ‘no, you can't go down this path. This is unlawful, unconstitutional’”.

Additionally, the select committee aide said Thursday’s hearing will be used to present evidence of an “ongoing threat” to democracy from those who are still attempting to advance discredited views such as those being pushed on Mr Pence by Mr Trump and his allies.

The hearing is expected to be shown across the major TV networks, including CNN and MSNBC, as well as on numerous news websites and YouTube channels, including The Independent and on C-SPAN.

Committee aides said the majority of questioning and presentation of evidence at Thursday’s hearing will be the responsibility of California representative Pete Aguilar, a former mayor of Redlands, California, who has served in the House since 2015.

In addition to the pre-taped depositions, which the panel has been using as part of multimedia presentations throughout the hearings, the select committee will take live testimony from two witnesses: J Michael Luttig, a renowned conservative legal scholar and retired federal appellate judge who advised Mr Pence that he was unauthorised to unilaterally overturn the results of the election, and Greg Jacob, who served as the latter’s White House lawyer at the time of the attack.

While Mr Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, will not be testifying in person on Thursday, committee aides said viewers can “expect” to “hear from” Mr Short in the form of excerpts from multiple videotaped depositions he has sat for over the last year.

The aide did not say whether Mr Luttig or Mr Jacob were appearing under subpeona, but thus far all the witnesses who have offered testimony in person have done so, as have most of those who have given evidence in depositions.