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In the opening public hearings of the select committee investigating the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, the most damning evidence that former President Donald Trump conspired to overturn a lawful election has come from the people Trump himself appointed or hired.

Former Trump Attorney General William Barr, for instance, told the committee that his former boss had "become detached from reality" on the subject of his election loss, adding that Trump had no "interest in what the actual facts were. Barr described as "bulls***" and "complete nonsense" what he called Trump's "crazy" assertions that fraud had cost him the election, and said he had let the president know it.

In response to Barr's testimony to the committee, Trump predictably lashed out at the man he chose to be his attorney general, saying in a statement last week that "he sucked!"

A video of former Attorney General William Barr plays at a hearing on Capitol Hill on June 13. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

It's well-knownthat many of the people who were willing to go to work for the former president have since revised their opinion of him. Trump's four years in the White House saw the highest turnover rate of any administration in U.S. history, and many of those who moved on appear to have left with a bitter taste in their mouth.

As Trump eyes another presidential bid, it is worth considering the people whose opinions of Trump deteriorated as a result of having worked for him. The following is a list of Trump aides and administration officials who have spoken out against their old boss.

Video of former Vice President Mike Pence plays at a hearing June 9 of the Jan. 6 select committee. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Trump's pressure on his vice president, Mike Pence, to send the Electoral College results back to the states is at the center of the Jan. 6 select committee hearings. Pence's refusal to do so earned him the wrath of Trump and his supporters, who chanted "Hang Mike Pence!" as they ransacked the Capitol.

In a speech to the Federalist Society in February, Pence publicly disclosed his thinking about Trump's request.

President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election, Pence said, adding, The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.

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A screen on June 13 plays the testimony of Bill Stepien, former campaign manager for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign, to the Jan. 6 select committee. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

In his testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, Bill Stepien, Trump's 2020 campaign manager, said that the dishonest campaign by Trump and his underlings to convince the American people that the election had been "stolen" inspired him to resign.

I didnt think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time, so that led to me stepping away, Stepien told lawmakers.

Former U.S. Attorney for Georgia, B.J. Pak, testifies at a select committee hearing on June 13. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump's former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, B.J. Pak, told the Jan. 6 committee that he had investigated claims of voter fraud in Georgia, including ones made by Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani about voting improprieties in Fulton County, and found them all to be "false." After learning that Trump planned to fire him over that finding, Pak resigned as U.S. attorney.

Eric Herschmann, former White House attorney, in a video deposition played on June 13 on Capitol Hill. (House Select Committee via AP)

In his testimony to the committee, former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann described conversations he had with right-wing attorney John Eastman, the author of an infamous memo imploring Pence to try to reverse the 2020 election results. Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, has said Eastman plotted with Trump to try to overturn the election results.

When Eastman pressed Herschmann to pursue a challenge to the results in Georgia, the White House lawyer said he replied, "Are you out of your f***ing mind?" Herschmann, who had no patience with Trump's claims that the election had been rigged against him, said he then offered Eastman some free legal advice: "Get a great f***ing criminal defense lawyer. You're going to need it."

Education Secretary Betsy Devos listens during a briefing on the COVID-19 pandemic at the White House on Aug. 12, 2020. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

One of Trump's most loyal Cabinet members, former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, said she lost faith in her former boss the day his supporters stormed the Capitol to try to block the certification of Joe Biden's victory.

"When I saw what was happening on Jan. 6 and didn't see the president step in and do what he could have done to turn it back or slow it down or really address the situation, it was just obvious to me that I couldn't continue," DeVos said in an interview published June 9 in USA Today.

DeVos said she also spoke to other Cabinet members and Pence about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.

Former national security adviser John Bolton speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Sept. 30, 2019. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Throughout his 17-month tenure as national security adviser, John Bolton clashed with Trump over how to handle U.S. policy toward North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and Ukraine. A year after Trump fired him, Bolton made clear that he would not be casting a vote for Trump in the 2020 election.

I hope [history] will remember him as a one-term president who didnt plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral, Bolton said in an interview with ABC News.We can get over one term. I have absolute confidence. Two terms, Im more troubled about.

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis listens to President Donald Trump at the White House on Oct. 23, 2018. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

In his 2018 resignation letter to Trump, former Defense Secretary James Mattis made clear that he strongly opposed the foreign policy decisions of his boss. "Our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships," Mattis wrote.

While remaining mostly silent about his issues with Trump, Mattis issued a stinging rebuke in 2020 of the president's approach to handling civil unrest stemming from police misconduct against African Americans.

"Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people does not even pretend to try," Mattis wrote in the Atlantic. "Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership."

Then-White House chief of staff John Kelly listens as President Donald Trump speaks at a lunch with governors in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on June 21, 2018. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who left the White House in 2019 after repeated clashes with Trump, reportedly called him "the most flawed person" he had ever met.

Kelly shared Mattis's assessment of Trump published in the Atlantic, and essentially told his interviewer, Trump's short-lived communications director Anthony Scaramucci, that the country had made a mistake in electing him.

I think we really need to step back," Kelly said. I think we need to look harder at who we elect.

Then-Acting Defense Secretary Richard Spencer listens during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on July 16, 2019, in Washington. (Alex Brandon/AP)

Trump fired Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer in 2019 over his objections to Trump's insistence that a member of the Navy SEALs charged with war crimes and murder be allowed to retire with full benefits and with his military rank restored. In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Spencer said Trump's intervention was "a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices."

Gary Cohn, former director of the U.S. National Economic Council, speaks at a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York on Sept. 17, 2018. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters)

Picked by Trump to serve as a senior adviser and director of the National Economics Council, Gary Cohn left after little more than a year in those roles after a dispute over the president's plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum. Months after leaving his job, Cohn was quoted in Bob Woodward's book "Fear: Trump in the White House," calling Trump "a professional liar."

Tom Bossert, homeland security adviser to President Donald Trump at the time, holds a press briefing at the White House on Dec. 19, 2017, to blame North Korea for unleashing the so-called WannaCry cyberattack. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Trump's homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said that in early 2018 he informed the president that the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered with the 2016 presidential election had been "completely debunked." That didn't stop Trump from embarking on a pressure campaign to convince the government in Kyiv to come up with damaging information on his political rival, Joe Biden. Bossert resigned in April of 2018 and vented months later in an interview with ABC News.

I am deeply frustrated with what he and the legal team is doing and repeating that debunked theory to the president. It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again, and for clarity here. ... Let me just again repeat that it has no validity.

Omarosa Manigault Newman, former assistant to President Donald Trump and director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison, appears on "Meet the Press" in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 12, 2018. (William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC Newswire/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

The former "Apprentice" contestant hired by Trump as a political aide fell out with her boss after serving nearly a year in his administration. After she was fired, she published one of the first tell-all books about working in the Trump White House.

"Donald Trump, who would attack civil rights icons and professional athletes, who would go after grieving black widows, who would say there were good people on both sides, who endorsed an accused child molester; Donald Trump, and his decisions and his behavior, was harming the country. I could no longer be a part of this madness," she wrote in her book.

Trump fired back at the reality TV star turned politico, calling her "wacky" and "vicious."

Stephanie Grisham, former spokesperson for first lady Melania Trump, arrives for a campaign rally with President Donald Trump in Orlando, Fla., on June 18, 2019. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Stephanie Grisham, former White House press secretary and communications director, says she began to sour on Trump before she resigned on Jan. 6, 2021.

In her tell-all book "I'll Take Your Questions Now," she detailed Trump's regular verbal abuse and compromising requests.

I knew that sooner or later, the president would want me to tell the public something that was not true or that would make me sound like a lunatic, Grisham wrote.

Grisham has predicted that if Trump were to win a second term, "He will be about revenge."

Alyssa Farah, then White House director of strategic communications, speaks to the media at the White House on Oct. 9, 2020. (Erin Scott/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farrah Griffin left her post in the Trump administration shortly before the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, because she said the president knew full well that he had lost the election but continued to peddle false claims about voter fraud.

He knew, Farrah said in an interview with CNN's Pamela Brown. He told me shortly after that he knew he lost, but then folks got around him. They got information in front of him, and I think his mind genuinely might have been changed about that, and thats scary, because he did lose, and the facts are out there.

Griffin has emerged as a persistent critic of the former president, telling Vanity Fair in May that she is trying to reach those who, like her, "drank the Kool-Aid" and once supported him.

The people Im most hoping to reach and convince that Trump is terrible for our country, are people who, like I once did, support him," she said.

Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster listens as U.S. President Donald Trump announces his appointment as national security adviser on Feb. 20, 2017. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Reported to have mocked Trump at a private dinner party as having the intelligence of a "kindergartener," former national security adviser H.R. McMaster left his White House post in 2018, little more than a year after he accepted the post. The two men had often clashed on subjects such as how to end the war in Afghanistan, but McMaster kept his criticism of the president mostly hidden until a month before the 2020 election.

Asked if Trump was as big a threat to election integrity in the U.S. as Russia, McMaster was unequivocal.

He is aiding and abetting Putins efforts by not being direct about this, McMaster said of Trump in an interview on MSNBC.

McMaster theorized that if Trump did not confront Russian President Vladimir Putin over his 2016 election meddling directly, "he'll inadvertently draw his own election into question."

Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director, appears on "Meet the Press" in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 21, 2018. (William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC Newswire/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

Anthony Scaramucci served in the Trump administration as White House communications director for all of 11 days, but that apparently was enough to dramatically change his view of Donald Trump.

Amid criticism of Trump's response to mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, and Trump's responses to it, Scaramucci diagnosed the fate of all Trump critics.

For the last 3 years I have fully supported this President, Scaramucci tweeted in 2019. Recently he has said things that divide the country in a way that is unacceptable. So I didnt pass the 100% litmus test. Eventually he turns on everyone, and soon it will be you and then the entire country.

Nikki Haley, former U.S. envoy to the United Nations, addresses the Republican National Convention from the Mellon auditorium on Aug. 24, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump's former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, took aim at the former president a week after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"We need to acknowledge he let us down," Haley, once a steadfast Trump loyalist, told Politico. "He went down a path he shouldn't have, and we shouldn't have followed him, and we shouldn't have listened to him. And we can't let that ever happen again."

Especially galling to Haley was Trump's tweet attacking Pence, as a mob of his supporters roamed the Capitol chanting that he should be hanged.

"When I tell you I'm angry, it's an understatement," Haley said. "Mike has been nothing but loyal to that man. He's been nothing but a good friend of that man. ... I am so disappointed in the fact that [despite] the loyalty and friendship he had with Mike Pence, that he would do that to him. Like, I'm disgusted by it."

Haley softened that criticism in the months that followed, however.

Michael Cohen, former trusted aide and lawyer to President Donald Trump, testifies before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 27, 2019. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

The longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who also served as the vice president of the Trump Organization, pleaded guilty in 2018 to criminal counts that included campaign finance violations, tax fraud and bank fraud. Known as Trump's "fixer," Cohen quickly turned on his former boss, arguing in court that he had broken laws at Trump's direction.

Since his conviction, Cohen has spoken out regularly about his relationship with Trump, and has helped federal and state investigators in their probes of the former president. In a YouTube series posted following the second public hearing of the Jan. 6 select committee, Cohen summarized his attitude toward Trump.

"You may all remember when I testified before the House Oversight Committee and I stated emphatically that Donald Trump is a racist, he's a liar, he's a con man, he's a cheat," Cohen said.

"And over the course of the years, I've called Donald Trump what? The grifter-in-chief. And today what did we learn? That right after they lost the election, the campaign with, of course, Donald's approval puts out this massive request for people to donate to the legal fund to challenge the big lie, to challenge the electoral vote and the theft that he keeps claiming took place. Well, they raised a ton of money. None of that money ended up getting spent, so where did that money go?"

Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives to deliver farewell remarks at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., on March 22, 2018. (Yuri Gripas/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Trump fired his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in March 2018 in a tweet after a year that the two men had spent disagreeing on the role of U.S. allies and whether to pursue another nuclear deal with Iran. In the months that followed, Tillerson, the former chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, let it be known that he did not have an elevated opinion of Trump's intelligence or attention span.

Tillerson said he found it challenging "to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesnt like to read, doesnt read briefing reports, doesnt like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says, This is what I believe, he told CBS News in December 2018.

By 2021, his view of Trump had further dimmed.

"His understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of U.S. history was really limited. It's really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn't even understand the concept for why we're talking about this," Tillerson told Foreign Policy.

President Donald Trump listens on April 22, 2020, as Dr. Deborah Birx, then White House coronavirus response coordinator, speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Alex Brandon/AP)

in her memoir, Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before Its Too Late, former Trump White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx describes the former president's efforts on COVID-19 a "tragedy, on many levels."

Recounting the famous April 2020 briefing during which Trump suggested treating COVID-19 by injecting disinfectant, Birx wrote,I looked down at my feet and wished for two things: something to kick and for the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

Birx said she demanded that guidance be immediately reversed, and Trump quickly pivoted to saying he had only been joking.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addresses a press briefing at the White House on April 13, 2021. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

Like Birx, Dr. Anthony Fauci also quickly ran afoul of Trump in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic for questioning his judgment on how to deal with rising infections and deaths and publicly correcting him at news conferences.

Fauci, who had declared prior to the 2020 election that he would not stay in his job if Trump were to win, has described the "liberating feeling" of working for Biden. That's not surprising given that Trump and his allies have often attempted to blame the pandemic on Fauci.

In an interview with the New York Times, Fauci said he realized that his relationship with Trump was likely to go south as he continued to appear at daily coronavirus briefings with the president.

"He would say something that clearly was not correct, and then a reporter would say, 'Well, lets hear from Dr. Fauci.' I would have to get up and say, 'No, Im sorry, I do not think that is the case.' It isnt like I took any pleasure in contradicting the president of the United States. I have a great deal of respect for the office. But I made a decision that I just had to. Otherwise I would be compromising my own integrity, and be giving a false message to the world. If I didnt speak up, it would be almost tacit approval that what he was saying was OK," Fauci said.

"Thats when I started to get into some trouble."

Cover photo: Peter Casey/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters

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The growing list of people Donald Trump hired who eventually soured on him - Yahoo News

The lawyer who advised former President Donald Trump on how to overturn the 2020 election requested a pardon from him in the days after Jan. 6, the committee investigating the Capitol attack revealed on Thursday.

At the committees third public hearing on June 16, law professor John Eastman emailed Trumps personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, asking for executive clemency. Ive decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works, he wrote, according to an email obtained by the House panel.

The revelation came a week after Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the panel, alleged that multiple Republicans in Congress had also requested pardons from Trump before he left office for their roles in trying to block the transfer of power to Joe Biden. She only mentioned one lawmaker by name: Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

As you will see, Rep. Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after Jan. 6 to seek a presidential pardon, said Cheney, a Wyoming Republican. Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election. (Perry quickly denied ever seeking a pardon, calling it an absolute, shameful, and soulless lie.)

The mentions of presidential pardons have set off a whirlwind of speculation on Capitol Hill about which members of Congress might have sought pardons and why. Committee members plan to flesh out what they have learned about the pardon requests in an upcoming hearing. Legal experts say such pardon requests could be construed as demonstrating a consciousness of guilt or recognition that they might have committed a crime by the members who sought them. Less damningly, their entreaties could also reflect concern that they feared unfairly becoming targets of investigation or prosecution.

The disclosure of multiple Trump allies seeking pardons in the wake of the attack on the Capitol has also raised questions about the extent of a presidents pardoning authority, including whether Trump may have issued secret presidential pardons that have yet to come to light. (Answer: maybe.)

Here is what you need to know.

According to one former prosecutor, the reason is simple. It tells us that they fear theyre going to be charged, or more generally, that theyve engaged in conduct thats a federal crime, Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney, tells TIME.

Since Jan. 6, 2021, the Department of Justice has been conducting its own investigation of the attack. Thus far, more than 800 people have been charged for storming the Capitol, and nearly 300 have entered guilty pleas on charges ranging from civil disorder and theft of government property to obstruction of an official congressional proceeding and seditious conspiracy.

President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani speaks to supporters from The Ellipse near the White House, in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021.

Brendan SmialowskiAPF/Getty Images

So far, no lawmakers or government officials have been charged, nor is there evidence that any are targets of the DOJ investigation.

One of the challenges prosecutors face is untangling criminal behavior from constitutionally protected political protests.

If the speech is likely and intended to incite imminent criminal action, then its not protected, says Elie Honig, a former federal and New Jersey state prosecutor. But, he notes, theres a difference between someone saying We need to throw these bums out and Lets go in there, smash up the windows, and beat the crap out of the first representative we see.

So its a spectrum between those two poles, he adds. Theres no automatic formula for that. It ultimately comes down to the prosecutors judgment and what the prosecutor believes would be convincing to the jury.

Several right-wing Republican lawmakers were reportedly involved in the planning of Jan. 6 protests. Several also vociferously challenged the certification of Biden as president on the House floor. Others cheered the crowd that day. On Wednesday, the Jan. 6 committee released surveillance footage of Rep. Barry Loudermilk, Republican of Georgia, giving a tour of the building to people later spotted in videos breaching the Capitol. None of those actions is a crime. (Loudermillk criticized the committee for what he called a smear campaign, adding that the Capitol Police already put this false accusation to bed.)

If a member of Congress did knowingly commit a crime like those the Justice Department is prosecuting related to the Capitol attack, they would of course have a reason to ask for a pardon. But from a practical standpoint, if any lawmakers thought they could be at risk of criminal prosecution, requesting a pardon from a sympathetic president is not necessarily unreasonable, says Margaret Love, former U.S. Pardon Attorney from 1990 to 1997 under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Why not? Love says of members of Congress seeking clemency. A little insurance policy? Theres no reason why they shouldnt have asked.

In his final days in office, Trump did pardon many people close to him, such as Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law and special adviser Jared Kushner. But in all of those cases, Trump pardoned individuals who had already been charged with or convicted of crimes. If any members of Congress asked Trump for a presidential pardon, they were presumably asking for a preemptive one.

The short answer is yes. Generally speaking, the president can pardon federal crimes and people can request clemency, Jeffrey Crouch, a government professor at American University and an expert on presidential pardon power, wrote in an email to TIME. Even though a pardon usually comes at the end of the legal process, the president can short-circuit that process if he wants.

Past presidents have issued blanket pardons, such as Jimmy Carter who exonerated everyone who dodged the Vietnam draft. Its much rarer, though, for presidents to pardon individuals who have not yet been charged with a crime or not knowing the precise charge, if any, they were expected to face. A rare exception was when former President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, in 1974 for whatever crimes he may have committed against the United States as president.

Trump himself waded into similar territory with his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, whom he pardoned in 2020 for lying to federal investigators but also for any and all possible offenses he may have committed related to Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation.

For the most part, however, pardons are issued for specific offenses, Litman argues. In theory, its well understood that a pardon is for specified conduct, he said. Its not just a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Nonetheless, Trump had the authority to issue very broad pardons to some of his allies in Congress, Crouch says. President Trump could have pardoned people without spelling out exactly what offenses he was pardoning, he says. The president has leeway to fashion the type of mercy he is offering and how broad it can be, but recent presidents are usually specific about pardons.

There are two glaring exceptions, though, to that power: if the pardon itself was part of a criminal act or the cover up of one. Most scholars would agree that even though the presidents pardon power is broad, it cant be used as part of a crime, Litman says. So its possible to grant a pardon in a way that is an obstruction of justice, for example.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, from right, Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, and chairman Representative Bernie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, exit following a hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., US, on Thursday, June 16, 2022.

Tom BrennerBloomberg/Getty Images

In the June 9 primetime hearing, Cheney suggested that the committee had evidence that GOP members of Congress requested pardons from Trump. Yet some veteran prosecutors and pardon lawyers say that has left them wondering whether the president might have issued any in secret.

The Justice Department has a page on its website listing every pardon it knows of that was issued by Trump. When asked by TIME whether Trump may have issued pardons not on the list, Dena Iverson, a DOJ spokesperson responded, All of the pardons are on the website.

Love, however, says Trump still could have granted additional pardons and never informed the Justice Department about them.

The president could have signed a cocktail napkin and put it away in a bottom drawer only to be revealed after he left office, Love says. Its just that this has never before happened, at least since the Civil War. And after January 20, he could have called up and said, Oh, by the way, Joe, look in the bottom drawer there. Youll find a bunch of paper there. He could have given them to the beneficiaries of these acts of grace. A pardon doesnt have to be published right away to be valid, or even published at all.

Its not the first time the prospect of Trump issuing secret pardons has come up. In September 2017, a Democratic congressman introduced a bill that would have forced the White House to publicly announce any presidential pardons within three days of their being granted. With Republicans then in control of both houses of Congress, the legislation went nowhere. But it underscored the reality that theres nothing forcing a president to publicly disclose every pardon they issue.

The Jan. 6 committee appears to be preparing to show the public how Perry and other members of Congress at the very least sought pardons from Trump. Everything were doing is documented by evidence, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, recently told CNN regarding the pardon requests. Everything that we are doing is based on facts.

When asked by TIME on Thursday about the possibility that Trump may have issued pardons in secret, Raskin said the committee had not considered it.

The question prompted Raskin to think back to when the committee deposed Eastman. He was not particularly forthcoming, pleading his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 100 times. But the committee had focused on the paper trail showing Eastman seeking a pardon, and not the possibility that Trump may have agreed to the request without ever formally announcing it.

We should have asked him, Raskin says, Do you have a pardon?

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Could Donald Trump Have Issued Jan. 6 Pardons to Allies? - TIME

The House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, has begun to hold public hearings, laying out, in explicit detail, how Donald Trump was repeatedly told by key advisers that he fairly lost the 2020 election, among other revelations. Nevertheless, Trump continued to encourage protests against the elections certification, and expressed sympathy for the view that Vice-President Mike Pence deserved to be killed. The biggest question hanging over the hearings is whether they will contribute to a criminal case against the former President. The Justice Department is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into January 6th, but this is not the first time that Trump has appeared to be in the crosshairs of prosecutors.

If the former President is charged, what exactly would the charges be, and how tough would the case be to prosecute? To talk about this, I recently spoke by phone with Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and a former United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. (She resigned from her position, which shed held since 2010, in the early days of the Trump Administration.) During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Trumps mind-set is so important to any criminal case, the arguments he might make to defend himself, and whether the Justice Department is too concerned about the optics of charging a former President.

If a case is made against Trump, what precisely would it be for?

It would require a full investigation to see if you can mount sufficient evidence. And the Justice Department will be the first to tell you that it investigates crimes and not people. But, with that in mind, it seems to me that some potential crimes here are: first, conspiracy to defraud the United States; and, second, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. The first one is more broad. The second one is more specific.

What does that mean, conspiracy to defraud the United States?

The statutory citation is Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 371. It is sometimes referred to as the Klein Conspiracy, after a case named United States v. Klein. It is frequently used in cases of tax violations, but what it means is that someone with a fraudulent intent did something to obstruct or impede the official functioning of government. And so, in this instance, it would be something like, Trump and others conspired to defraud the American people and interfere with the proper transfer of Presidential power. And it could be as simple as getting Mike Pence to refuse to certify the vote when he had a duty to do so. Sometimes people think about the big picture, that you have to tie Trump to the physical attack on the Capitol. And that could do it, because that was one way that the certification was obstructed. But it could also simply be his efforts to pressure Mike Pence to refuse to certify the vote. And that would be an obstruction of an official proceeding.

Liz Cheney said there are seven different schemes that theyre going to try to prove in the next few weeks. It could be that theyve got seven different ways that theyre going to try to show conspiracy to defraud the United States, but any one of them is enough to obtain a conviction. Alternate slates of electors, or trying to persuade Georgia to change the outcome in that one state. Any of those things could suffice for conspiracy to defraud the United States.

And what about a conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding?

That would relate specifically to the certification effort on January 6th. Again, it could be proved by a number of different methods. It could be proved by inciting the mob. That would be one way, but I think thats much harder than you need. It could be proved, again, just by pressuring Mike Pence to refuse to certify. That could be an obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress. And, by interfering with that in a way that is fraudulent, that could be a violation of that obstruction statute.

There are two connected but separate things. The first is Trump trying to obstruct the certification of Biden as the next President. And the second is the law-breaking that occurred from the mob on January 6th. The mob may have been a tool to put the first scheme into effect, but there were also laws broken by the mob itself, such as invading the Capitol and assaulting police officers. Is your sense that the crimes we would likely see regarding Trump would be more related to the certification than the actual physical destruction of property and assault of police?

Yes. I suppose the committee has dangled the latter a little bit. I still havent seen any evidence of it, but if they could prove that someone close to Trump met with the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys on January 5th and said, Tomorrow, I want you to breach that Capital and whatever happens, come hell or high water. You must make sure that their proceeding does not continue, then you could link up the two as a conspiracy. It would still be to obstruct an official proceeding, not for the actual violence, unless you had a specific agreement: I want you to beat up cops. Youd have to show an agreement between those specific groups. And I dont think weve seen that yet. We may never get there, but I dont think we need to, because you can just show that he was trying to get alternate slates of electors, or that he was pressuring Pence to refuse to certify, or that he was pressuring Georgias secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to find him eleven thousand votes.

Is there any precedent for going after politicians or officeholders for these types of acts?

Im not familiar with any. The one thing that comes closest, but is probably not even the same, is a guy who was a county auditor in Cleveland who paid his opponent to run against him and deliberately lose. Thats corruption in an election, but a little different from what were talking about here.

That makes me wonder whether it is actually hard to prove that these laws were broken.

Well, I dont know that we have anybody whos ever tried who has this much power, the way a President does. Maybe it has been attempted at lower levels and Im just not aware of it. I think part of it is that this is an incredibly audacious scheme, if it is proven. And it requires someone who can marshal the resources and control the levers of government to be able to pull it off the way Trump may have.

But a prosecution would be for violating these broader laws rather than laws related to the functioning of elections specifically?

Yes. The problem is that we get statutes on the books based on what Congress can envision. And I dont think Congress ever imagined that a President would try to do what Trump is accused of doing. And so we dont have a specific statute on the books that says, You cant pressure the Vice-President to abuse his authority to throw out the electors and substitute false ones, because I think no one ever imagined that would happen. So, instead, you have things like obstructing an official proceeding or defrauding the United States out of the proper functioning of government. Those would be the closest things that would fit here. And they get used for lots of different things, but nothing like this that Ive ever heard of.

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The Two-Pronged Test That Could Put Trump in Prison - The New Yorker

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This year, Pence has taken on a new persona among the crowda Trump era castoff who is probably better off not showing his face. And he seems to know it. The former veep was invited to the conference but decided not to attend. It was the first time Pence had missed the conference in five years.

I was such a big fan of his but that part of the Republican Party is the educational elites the old horses are on their way out, said Mary Obersteadt, the immediate past president of Nashville Republican Women. She wore rhinestone Trump and DeSantis pins on her conference lanyard. I respect him for what he did and how he served this nation but hes so disappointing when he - he should have communicated and stayed with Trump with Jan. 6, they should have been on the same level.

Pences absence from this years conference was due to a scheduling conflict, according to the conference organizers and Pences team. On Thursday, he attended a roundtable with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.

But while he still is rooted in the Christian conservative community, having attended an event with the Coalition in North Carolina to engage Chrisitan voters in the Charlotte area, his decision to skip the Faith & Freedom gathering underscores the crossroads he currently finds himself in politically.

I think hes seeking Gods direction for his decision on what to do next, said Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor at First Baptist Dallas, who is close to both Pence and Trump, and sits on the advisory board for Pences political group, Advancing American Freedom.

At a time when Pences main ideological causes are on the cusp of historic successwith the Supreme Court set to overturn the landmark abortion rights case, Roe v. Wade he finds himself in the thick of intra-party drama. This week, the House select committee investigating the riots on Capitol Hill zeroed in on Pences decision to resist Donald Trumps pressure for him to block certification of the Electoral College vote count.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump points to the crowd after giving the keynote address at the Faith & Freedom Coalition during their annual "Road To Majority Policy Conference" on June 17, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee.|Seth Herald/Getty Images

While Pence has, so far, dodged discussing the committees proceedings, Trump used his own appearance at the Faith & Freedom conference to attack his veep.

Mike Pence had a chance to be great, he had a chance to be frankly historic, Trump said. But Mike did not have the courage to act.

It was a remarkable moment for a conference that in past years served as a celebration for the former vice president as a top conservative Christian leader. But things have changed since Trump left office. Last year, in the shadow of Jan. 6, Pence was jeered by the crowd and called a traitor while on stage. Now, when asked about what they think of Pence or how they view his political future, attendees sighed or visibly shrugged.

Thats a good question, said Sandi McGuire, a Christian minister from Raleigh, North Carolina. I havent seen him much. I dont like speaking adverse toward anyone, he did great work. He came here last year and a percentage booed him. Im not sure in fairness where he is. I wish him the best but he hasnt been anywhere to be found.

Its kind of hard, its a hard one, said Emily Hinojos from Rutherford, N.C. when asked about Pences political future. I dont know where hes at since Jan 6. Its hard to tell youre not in their shoes but we would have liked him to support Trump better.

The mood of the crowd at Faith & Freedom reflected the degree to which Republican politicians are judged not so much by their ideologies but by their relationship to Trump. Ralph Reed, a Republican strategist and founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, is close with both Trump and Pence. But when asked if he was surprised by Trumps attacks, he would only say he consulted with Trumps speechwriters yesterday.

If Mike Pence wanted to come and wanted to offer a rejoinder to these folks, he could have done it. Im not saying he should have done it. I told him when I saw him a couple weeks ago, no harm no foul, but I said I want you here next year and hell be there, Reed said to a small group of reporters after Trumps speech.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump exits the stage after giving the keynote address at the Faith & Freedom Coalition during their annual "Road To Majority Policy Conference" on June 17, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee.|Seth Herald/Getty Images

Pences own relationship with Trump is deeply complicated. For a few months after leaving the White House, the two would occasionally speak. But they havent talked for a year now even though their paths have occasionally crossed, including when both men addressed top Republican donors at a retreat in New Orleans in March. Trump continues to admonish his former vice president in public, while Pence has remained firm in his decision to certify the election.

In recent months, Pence has turned his focus to the midterms. Hes offered endorsements in key midterm races like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and held a fundraiser for incumbent Rep. Steve Chabot on Thursday. On Monday, he is set to deliver a speech on the economy at the University Club of Chicago.

Our path is a little bit different than everybody else is at this point, said a person close to Pences political operation, who defended Pences decision to not go to the Nashville cattle call. And whether he decided to do this thing or not, he doesnt have to go there to get coverage.

But its unclear how Pence can build up a national profile if he were to lose the full support of his bedrock constituency: Evangelicals. Not everyone in his camp is worried. Aides to Pence say he holds appeal across the Republican party.

Vice President Pence checks the hawk lane. He checks the traditional GOP lane. And obviously probably the biggest one is the Evangelical lane, said the Pence ally.

And Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of The Family Leader, a conservative Christian parent organization for the Iowa Family Policy Center, said Pences support remains strong among social conservatives and Evangelicals in Iowa, especially as support of Trump wanes.

Not to play Bob Seger on you, but I think theyre looking to turn the page, Vander Plaats said of Iowa voters he talks to. Take the best of Trump, and lets see if Ron DeSantis can carry on that fightor Mike Pence or Mike Pompeo or Ted Cruz or whoever you throw into that match.

But among those in Nashville this weekend, Pence seemed more a relic of the past than an element of the future. None of the merchandise stalls that lined the entrance to the conference ballroom featured Pences name, while there were piles of red, white, and blue Trump and Trump 2024 t-shirts and hats for sale.

I feel like he was mistreated so long he wanted to give his soul a break and his family. I dont think its political, its personal he doesnt want to get attacked right now, said Krista Kiepke from Clarksville, Tenn. Jesus himself removed from the disciples to refresh so he could do his job so I look at it as that.

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Pence skips Faith & Freedom conference. Is attacked by Trump anyways. - POLITICO