WATCH: Trump called Pence 'wimp' during heated phone call on Jan. 6, aide recalled

President Donald Trump placed mounting pressure on his then-vice president, Mike Pence, to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection revealed during their June 16 hearing-- the third such public hearing they have held.
“Trump continued to pressure the vice president both publicly and privately,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said during the hearing. “Things reached a boiling point on Jan. 6, and the consequences were disastrous.”
The committee also played out testimony from several people who were around Trump when he called Pence on Jan. 6, who said that the tone was much different than usual and much more heated.
Nicholas Luna, former assistant to President Trump remembered Trump calling Pence a “wimp” during that conversation. The committee also played out video testimony by Ivanka Trump, who said, “It was a different tone than I had heard him take with the vice president before.”
Aguilar and the panel want to show Trumps pressure directly contributed to the riot against the Capitol that day, and that those who breached the Capitol believed they were acting at Trump’s direction which Aguilar said put the life of his own vice president in danger.
“Our investigation found that early drafts of the Jan. 6 speech prepared for the president included no mention of the vice president, but the president revised it and then further ad-libbed.”
Aguilar said after the Vice President issued his public letter, the crowd at the capitol building erupted in anger and rioters began chanting, "Hang Mike pence.”
The hearing was the third of several planned by the Jan. 6 committee that focused on Trump’s efforts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to reject Congress' official count of Electoral College votes on the day of the attack. In the year since its creation, the committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, seeking critical information and documents from people witness to, or involved in, the violence that day. The committee postponed a hearing scheduled for June 15 that was meant to focus on Trump's efforts to replace Attorney General Bill Barr, who did not support his claims of voter fraud after the election.

Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6

Follow us:
Facebook: http://www.pbs.org/newshour
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/newshour
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/newshour