Jan. 6 panel praises Mike Pence's refusal to overturn the 2020 election

WASHINGTON — The House Jan. 6 committee turned its focus Wednesday to former President Donald Trump’s attempts to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence into refusing to certify the 2020 election results.

As its third public hearing opened, the bipartisan panel began to argue that effort was the central component of an illegal conspiracy to keep Trump in power — one that put the republic, and Pence, in mortal danger.

Presiding over the certification of the electoral vote is one of the few official duties of the vice president, but Trump had embraced a fringe theory that Pence could unilaterally overturn the result.

"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, D-Miss., said before casting Pence, his longtime political adversary, in the role of democracy's champion.