Trump attorney told Pence's team that they were responsible for the Capitol riot, as they hid from the mob, report says

John Eastman with Rudy — John Eastman appeared alongside Rudy Giuliani at a pro-Trump rally on January 6.
Jim Bourg

As the Capitol riot unfolded, Trump attorney John Eastman wrote to Mike Pence's aide to blame the VP's inaction for the riot.
An email exchange between Eastman and a Pence aide while the rioters entered the Capitol, The Washington Post says.
Pence was sheltering from the mob at the time, some of whom were calling for his execution.

As Vice President Mike Pence hid from the mob entering the Capitol on January 6, Trump attorney John Eastman told Pence's team that they were to blame for the riot, a new report from The Washington Post says.

Eastman made the comments in an email exchange with top Pence aide Greg Jacob, who described the riot as a "siege" while he sheltered with the vice-president in a secure area.

"Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege," Jacob wrote, according to the paper.

"The 'siege' is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened," Eastman replied, referring to Trump's false claims about the 2020 election being fraudulent.

In the days and weeks leading up to the election certification, conservative legal scholar John Eastman took an active role in urging Pence to overturn the election by concocting various legal theories.

The vice president reportedly repeatedly refused, arguing that he had no constitutional authority to do so.

As the Capitol riot unfolded, Trump himself tweeted, "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution."

Several rioters were heard calling for the vice president to be executed.

Mike Pence has since said about Trump, "I don't know if we'll ever see eye to eye on that day."

In interviews with The Post, Eastman confirmed the content of the emails to Jacobs but denied that he was blaming Mike Pence for the violence at the Capitol.

Eastman argued that Trump's team was right to exhaust "every legal means" to challenge the election results, which he claimed were plagued by fraud.

"Are you supposed to not do anything about that?" Eastman told the paper.

On January 6, as unrest began, Jacob emailed Eastman to memorialize his conversation with Eastman from the day before, two people with knowledge of the matter told The Post.

When Pence and his team were escorted out of the Senate and to a safe location, Jacob again emailed Eastman to criticize the legal advice he had given Pence about stopping certification.

An anonymous individual familiar with the emails told The Post that Jacob later apologized for his use of profanity in the email to Eastman, but stood behind his criticisms.

Greg Jacob included the email from Eastman in a draft opinion article that he wrote in January but ultimately chose not to publish, which The Post obtained and published on Friday.

In the article, Jacob said that by sending that email an hour into the assault on the Capitol, Eastman displayed a "shocking lack of awareness of how those practical implications were playing out in real time."

Jacob further accused outside Trump lawyers of spinning "a web of lies and disinformation, to him and to the public" to pressure Pence to contest the results of the election.

Jacob wrote that the legal profession should now consider whether the attorneys involved should be disciplined for "using their credentials to sell a stream of snake oil to the most powerful office in the world, wrapped in the guise of a lawyer's advice."

Read the original article on Business Insider