By Glynn Wilson –

Donald Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election and his big ripoff that continues remains a “clear and present danger to American democracy,” according to testimony before the House Select Committee investigating Trump’s insurrection by J. Michael Luttig, a retired conservative federal appeals court judge who advised Vice President Mike Pence prior to January 6, 2021.

Related: How Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ Became the ‘Big Ripoff’

If Pence had buckled to pressure from the president and done what Trump berated him to do, to halt the certification of the electoral college votes showing Joe Biden the winner and sending the count back to the states for another recount, it would have been “tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis,” Judge Luttig testified, explaining what he had written on Twitter at the time. It would have amounted to “the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the Republic.”

In the third public hearing Thursday continuing to put the case before the American people, the committee used witness testimony to show how Trump’s corrupt actions brought the nation to the brink of a constitutional crisis, continuing to raise questions suggesting Trump’s actions amounted to crimes.

Witnesses who were there in the room at the time testified how Trump continued pressuring Pence to go along with a plan to unilaterally overturn his election defeat on the night of Jan. 5 and the morning of Jan. 6, even after the president was told by several attorneys it would be illegal and unconstitutional.

Trump continued listening to the now discredited legal advice of Rudi Giuliani and little-known conservative lawyer John Eastman, who took the Fifth rather than incriminate himself when questioned by the committee in a deposition, after seeking a pardon from Trump that never came his way after the insurrection.

In the Thursday hearing, the committee showed how Trump’s illegal pressure campaign led his supporters to storm the Capitol, which sent Pence fleeing for his life as the insurrectionists demanded his public execution.

“Hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence,” they chanted, some bringing hangman’s nooses with them to the Capitol.

In videotaped testimony, Pence’s top White House lawyer, Greg Jacob, testified that Eastman admitted in front of Trump two days before the insurrection that his plan to have Pence obstruct the electoral certification violated the law.

To dramatize what Pence went through on Jan. 6, the committee showed how it began with one final heated phone call from Trump, who berated him as a “wimp” and a “pussy” and demanded that he go along with Eastman’s plan or else. While Trump’s supporters were attacking the Capitol with the vice president hiding inside, Trump tweeted a public condemnation of Pence, further whipping up a crowd chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” In videos, the committee showed the insurrectionists reading Trump’s tweets out loud on the Capitol steps.

Bennie Thompson, the Democrat from Mississippi who took on the responsibility to chair the committee at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s request, really seems to be willing to go all the way to get the truth out about Trump’s attempted coup, even willing to investigate other members of Congress and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

“We are fortunate for Mr. Pence’s courage on Jan. 6,” Thompson said at one point. “Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe.”

Before the hearing on Thursday, Thompson wrote to Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, Clarence Thomas’s wife, requesting an interview after obtaining an email exchange she had with Eastman pushing a claim that the Supreme Court was in a “heated argument” about whether to take up the case of the election to avoid violence on Jan. 6. She is known to have had multiple communications with Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows in the lead up to the “stop the steal” rally on Jan. 6 and may have even been involved in helping to fund it.

Bit by bit, the committee used the testimony of another conservative legal scholar, Jacob, other West Wing aides and Pence’s own words to dismantle the legal argument Eastman and Trump relied upon, showing that it had no Constitutional, legal basis or historical precedent since the founding of the United States. In fact it violated the very fundamental tenet of American democracy that no one person should ever have the power to decide the outcome of an election.

The testimony also showed that both men knew their plans were illegitimate, but insisted on pushing the “stop the steal” plan forward anyway.

In one of the most dramatic moments, the committee showed graphically how Pence fled the Senate chamber as insurrectionists stormed the building. The mob was just down the hall to his left, only 40 feet away, at 2:26 p.m. That’s how close they came to confronting the Vice President, which would have resulted in violence and perhaps murder. Video evidence showed how committed, ably armed and willing the mob was to heed Trump’s call to “hold him accountable” for not being loyal to Trump.

The committee also showed previously unseen photographs of Pence huddled in his ceremonial office off the Senate floor during the violence, as his wife pulled the curtains closed so they would hopefully not be seen.

Another photo showed the vice president in a loading dock somewhere in the Capitol complex. He refused to be evacuated from the premises and insisted on continuing the work of the electoral college vote certification.

The committee painted a picture of Pence as a man who risked his life to prevent a meltdown of democracy, a power grab “scheme” set in motion by the president himself.

“The vice president did not want the world to see the image of the vice president of the United States fleeing the Capitol,” Jacob testified.

“Make no mistake about the fact that the vice president’s life was in danger,” said Pete Aguilar, the Democrat from California who led much of the session on Thursday in which the committee pieced together the series of events that began in December 2020, when Trump and his allies realized that they had exhausted all legal avenues to overturn the election and turned their attention to trying to keeping Trump in office through Congress.

They sought to exploit ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law that lays out the process by which Congress finalizes a presidential election, to argue that the vice president, who presides over the ceremonial session, could unilaterally throw out electoral votes for the Democrat, Joe Biden.

Jacob testified that his boss knew early on that the plan was unlawful. Pence’s first reaction upon hearing of it, Jacob said, was that there was “no way” this was “justifiable.”

When it came time to stand up to Trump, Jacob testified, Pence told his staff, “This might be the most important thing I ever say.”

By Jan. 4, Pence and Jacob were sitting in the Oval Office with Trump and Eastman when Eastman admitted in front of the former president that his plan violated the Electoral Count Act.

Trump and Eastman pressed on, Jacob said, referring to notes he took at the time.

Eastman even admitted, Jacob testified, that his “theories” would fail 9 to 0 before even the conservative majority Supreme Court with Trump appointees on the court.

The pressure on Pence worried his chief of staff, Marc Short, who grew so concerned about Trump’s behavior that he presented a warning to a Secret Service agent: The president was going to publicly turn against the vice president, creating a life threatening security risk for Pence.

Other aides and advisers also implored Eastman to abandon the plan.

“You’re going to cause riots in the streets,” Eric Herschmann, a White House counsel, told Eastman, according to videotaped testimony.

Eastman responded: “There’s been violence in the history of our country (before) to protect the democracy or protect the Republic.”

Jacob said his faith sustained him through the ordeal, testifying that he pulled out his Bible in the secure location with Pence and read a passage from Daniel, when he is thrown in the lion’s den after he refuses a king’s order, but God protects him, according to the story.

Later that evening, with the Capitol secure, Eastman emailed Jacob again still seeking to overturn the election.

Jacob described what Eastman was doing as “certifiably crazy.”

A federal judge has already concluded in a civil case that Trump and Eastman “more likely than not” committed two felonies in their attempts to overturn the election.

Pence has not been subpoened to testify, but the committee played part of a speech he delivered to the conservative Federalist Society in February, when he rebuked Trump directly.

“President Trump is wrong,” Pence said in remarks. “I had no right to overturn the election.”

Future hearings, June 21 and June 23 at 1 p.m., are expected to focus on how Trump and his allies pressured state officials to overturn the election, to interfere with and politicize the Department of Justice, and show how Trump incited the insurrection by using the media and social media to amass a mob to come to Washington and storm the Capitol — while the president did nothing to stop the violence for 187 minutes.