DEPOSITION OF: GREG JACOB
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A So I don’t recall the timing of this conversation with Matt. This may have 12 been around January 2nd, and Matt was just explaining, because you saw that email 13 where we’re hurriedly gathering the information that we had about the alternate 14 certificates. Matt had been meeting with me and Marc Short and the Vice President on 15 January 2nd. I can’t remember if anybody else was there as well. 16 But he had mentioned — I think in the context of my saying I don’t think there is an 17 imprimatur State authority here, I think that he had said: Well, yeah, the reason that 18 they did that was not to be mooted so that — that makes sense. So -
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A So on the — in one of my conversations with him on the 5th, the afternoon of 5 the 5th, or maybe early evening, he acknowledged that the legal basis for the two 6 positions was the same. You couldn’t get there either way unless you — because to get 7 to the procedural position, you had to set aside a number of the positions of the Electoral 8 Count Act, which you couldn’t do unless the President basically had plenary constitutional 9 authority to resolve these things.
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A So, yes. I mean, there was — before the meeting on the 4th, there was 5 nothing for him to pivot from. 6 7 Q A Okay. That was the first time that I saw Mr. Eastman or heard anything from him 8 with respect to the whole thing.
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I will say the one other thing that we had a lot of discussion on was the political 12 question doctrine and — because once he acknowledged that they would lose in the 13 Court, he said, “Well, but I think that, you know, it’s a political question and they 14 shouldn’t get involved at all.”
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And that even if they did ultimately invoke political question, where does that 8 leave us? And that was a big question that Mr. Eastman never had an answer to: 9 What happens then? 10 Q Meaning Vice President Pence would pound the gavel and say, “Trump 11 wins,” and then the question of whether it would be accepted by the American people or 12 what would be left? 13 A Yes. So you’ll have an enraged House of Representatives at least and 14 probably an enraged Senate, because they had expressed no interest in not following the 15 Electoral Count Act. I mean, among other things, we had all of these Senators who said 16 that they wanted to follow the Electoral Count Act and make objections. That’s not 17 provided for in the Constitution either.
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So he certainly knew we weren’t going to do that and that we thought that the 15 position was — wouldn’t be accepted by any member of the Supreme Court, by any judge, 16 by any of the Framers, et cetera. 17 He had acknowledged that he would lose 9-0 at the Supreme Court. He didn’t 18 quite get to saying yes when I had asked him, “John, isn’t this just a terrible idea?” But it 19 was a near concession on that.
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And his other argument was — he invoked Lincoln and Lincoln’s suspension of the 11 writ of habeas corpus and Lincoln’s explanation thereafter that: What was I supposed 12 to do? Let every law in the Union go into, you know, disrepair and disregard in order to 13 uphold — you know, that this one — all the laws but one, right, that this one law be 14 upheld?
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I think the last — I think he also mentioned that they were trying to get letters 25 from State legislators saying that they would — this was to address this sort of — one of 124 1 the practical objections I raised, which was that none of the legislatures were actually 2 interested in doing what he was hoping they would do anyway.
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Q Okay. I’m going to — one more question, actually, before I ask others. 16 Did John Eastman ever admit, as far as you know, in front of the President that his 17 proposal would violate the Electoral Count Act? 18 19 20 21 22 23 A Q A Q Q I believe he did on the 4th. Okay. And can you tell us what the President’s reaction was? I can’t.
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A So I viewed it as counterproductive to try to debate Mr. Eastman about what 8 was going on in individual States. He had views about the voting machines and 9 mathematical tabulations. He injected some of those into our conversation on the 5th, 10 and I frankly didn’t have sufficient in-depth knowledge of any one of those individual 11 cases to explain to him all the reasons he was wrong about -
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A Uh-huh. And all I was trying to get locked down with Mr. Eastman was that the Vice 13 President did not have that authority, and we’re going to be following the Electoral Count 14 Act and that there was not a credible case, that the procedures that were at issue on our 15 end — again, I think that there are — I’ve mentioned all these Law Review articles. The 16 Law Review articles raised questions about the constitutionality of different aspects of 17 the Electoral Count Act.
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At approximately 2:13, rioters broke into the Capitol and proceedings ceased 7 immediately on the Senate floor.
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We understand it was about 2:22 that the Vice President was evacuated to a 9 secure location, as you call it.
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I was offended for the Vice President because I thought the Vice President 22 was, in fact, showing incredible courage with the way that he was responding to what had 23 happened by making sure that we stayed. 24 I mean, by the time — I’m sure I didn’t see this at 2:24. So by that point the Vice 25 President had already made it clear we were staying unless, again, imminent threat to 178 1 life, and that he was going to do whatever he could to make sure that we completed the 2 vote count that day.