[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                       COMPILATION OF HEARINGS ON 
                     THE JANUARY 6TH INVESTIGATION

=======================================================================

                                HEARINGS

                               BEFORE THE

                          SELECT COMMITTEE TO
                      INVESTIGATE THE JANUARY 6TH
                             ATTACK ON THE
                         UNITED STATES CAPITOL

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               ----------                              

                             JULY 27, 2021
                  JUNE 9, 13, 16, 21, 23, and 28, 2022
                          JULY 12 and 21, 2022

                               ----------                              

                           Serial No. 117-10

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Printed for the use of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th 
                Attack on the United States Capitol
                                     

[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
                                     

        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
        
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                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
50-139 PDF                   WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
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               SELECT COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE THE JANUARY 6TH 
                    ATTACK ON THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL

               Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi, Chairman
                    Liz Cheney, Wyoming, Vice Chair
                        Zoe Lofgren, California
                       Adam B. Schiff, California
                        Pete Aguilar, California
                      Stephanie N. Murphy, Florida
                         Jamie Raskin, Maryland
                       Elaine G. Luria, Virginia
                        Adam Kinzinger, Illinois
                            COMMITTEE STAFF

                    David B. Buckley, Staff Director
      Kristin L. Amerling, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel
               Hope Goins, Senior Counsel to the Chairman
           Joseph B. Maher, Senior Counsel to the Vice Chair
             Timothy J. Heaphy, Chief Investigative Counsel
                      Jamie Fleet, Senior Advisor
               Timothy R. Mulvey, Communications Director
           Candyce Phoenix, Senior Counsel and Senior Advisor
 John F. Wood, Senior Investigative Counsel and Of Counsel to the Vice 
                                 Chair
                                 
                                 
Katherine B. Abrams, Staff		Thomas E. Joscelyn, Senior Professional 	 
    Associate                             Staff Member
Temidayo Aganga-Williams, Senior	Rebecca L. Knooihuizen, Financial 	 
    Investigative Counsel		  Investigator
Alejandra Apecechea, Investigative	Casey E. Lucier, Investigative Counsel 
    Counsel				Damon M. Marx, Professional Staff Member	
Lisa A. Bianco, Director of Member 	Evan B. Mauldin, Chief Clerk
    Services and Security Manager	Yonatan L. Moskowitz, Senior Counsel
Jerome P. Bjelopera, Investigator	Hannah G. Muldavin, Deputy 
Bryan Bonner, Investigative Counsel	  Communications Director
Richard R. Bruno, Senior 		Jonathan D. Murray, Professional Staff
    Administrative Assistant		  Member
Marcus Childress, Investigative 	Jacob A. Nelson, Professional Staff Member
    Counsel				Elizabeth Obrand, Staff Associate
John Marcus Clark, Security		Raymond O'Mara, Director of External
    Director				  Affairs
Jacqueline N. Colvett, Digital		Elyes Ouechtati, Technology Partner 
    Director				Robin M. Peguero, Investigative Counsel	
Heather I. Connelly, Professional	Sandeep A. Prasanna, Investigative Counsel
    Staff Member			Barry Pump, Parliamentarian
Meghan E. Conroy, Investigator		Sean M. Quinn, Investigative Counsel
Heather L. Crowell, Printer 		Brittany M. J. Record, Senior Counsel
    Proofreader				Denver Riggleman, Senior Technical Advisor
William C. Danvers, Senior 		Joshua D. Roselman, Investigative Counsel
    Researcher				James N. Sasso, Senior Investigative Counsel
Soumyalatha Dayananda, Senior 		Grant H. Saunders, Professional Staff 
    Investigative Counsel		  Member
Stephen W. DeVine, Senior Counsel	Samantha O. Stiles, Chief Administrative 
Lawrence J. Eagleburger, 		  Officer
    Professional Staff Member		Sean P. Tonolli, Senior Investigative 
Kevin S. Elliker, Investigative           Counsel
    Counsel				David A. Weinberg, Senior Professional Staff 
Margaret E. Emamzadeh, Staff 		  Member
    Associate				Amanda S. Wick, Senior Investigative 
Sadallah A. Farah, Professional 	  Counsel
    Staff Member			Darrin L. Williams, Jr., Staff Assistant
Daniel A. George, Senior 		Zachary S. Wood, Clerk
    Investigative Counsel
Jacob H. Glick, Investigative 
    Counsel
Aaron S. Greene, Clerk
Marc S. Harris, Senior 
    Investigative Counsel
Alice K. Hayes, Clerk
Quincy T. Henderson, Staff 
    Assistant
Jenna Hopkins, Professional Staff 
    Member
Camisha L. Johnson, Professional 
    Staff Member                                                            
                                    
                      
                      CONTRACTORS & CONSULTANTS

                             Rawaa Alobaidi
                             Melinda Arons
                              Steve Baker
                            Elizabeth Bisbee
                              David Canady
                             John Coughlin
                             Aaron Dietzen
                              Gina Ferrise
                           Angel Goldsborough
                             James Goldston
                              Polly Grube
                          L. Christine Healey
                             Danny Holladay
                              Percy Howard
                              Dean Jackson
                           Stephanie J. Jones
                              Hyatt Mamoun
                               Mary Marsh
                               Todd Mason
                              Ryan Mayers
                              Jeff McBride
                               Fred Muram
                             Alex Newhouse
                              John Norton
                             Orlando Pinder
                               Owen Pratt
                              Dan Pryzgoda
                              Brian Sasser
                            William Scherer
                              Driss Sekkat
                              Chris Stuart
                            Preston Sullivan
                              Brian Young

                           Innovative Driven
                            
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

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                                                                   Page

                         TUESDAY, JULY 27, 2021
                               Statements

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Select Committee 
  to Investigate the January 6th Attack On the United States 
  Capitol........................................................     1
The Honorable Liz Cheney, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Wyoming...............................................     4

                               Witnesses

Mr. Aquilino A. Gonell, Sergeant, U.S. Capitol Police............     6
Mr. Michael Fanone, Officer, Metropolitan Police Department......    10
Mr. Daniel Hodges, Officer, Metropolitan Police Department.......    14
Mr. Harry A. Dunn, Private First Class, U.S. Capitol Police......    20

                                Appendix

The Honorable Liz Cheney, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Wyoming:
  Text...........................................................    29
Prepared Statement of Aquilino A. Gonell, Sergeant, U.S. Capitol 
  Police.........................................................    55
Prepared Statement of Michael Fanone, Officer, Metropolitan 
  Police Department..............................................    57
Prepared Statement of Daniel Hodges, Officer, Metropolitan Police 
  Department.....................................................    59
Prepared Statement of Harry A. Dunn, Private First Class, U.S. 
  Capitol Police.................................................    63

                         THURSDAY, JUNE 9, 2022
                               Statements

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Select Committee 
  to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States 
  Capitol........................................................    67
The Honorable Liz Cheney, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Wyoming, and Vice Chair, Select Committee to 
  Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol    70

                               Witnesses

Officer Caroline Edwards, U.S. Capitol Police, Washington, DC....    82
Mr. Nick Quested, Documentary Filmmaker, New York, NY............    83

                                Appendix

Prepared Statement of Officer Caroline Edwards, U.S. Capitol 
  Police, Washington, DC.........................................    93
Prepared Statement of Nick Quested, Documentary Filmmaker, New 
  York, NY.......................................................    93

                         MONDAY, JUNE 13, 2022
                               Statements

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Select Committee 
  to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States 
  Capitol........................................................    95
The Honorable Liz Cheney, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Wyoming, and Vice Chair, Select Committee to 
  Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol    96
The Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of California............................................    98

                               Witnesses
                                Panel I

Mr. Chris Stirewalt, Former Fox News Political Editor............   101

                                Panel II

Mr. Byung Jin ``BJay'' Pak, Former U.S. Attorney for the Northern 
  District of Georgia............................................   113
Mr. Al Schmidt, Former City Commissioner of Philadelphia.........   115
Mr. Benjamin Ginsberg, Election Attorney.........................   116

                                Appendix

Prepared Statement of Byung Jin ``BJay'' Pak, Former U.S. 
  Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia..................   123
The Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of California:
  Joint Statement of Elections Infrastructure Government 
    Coordinating Council & The Election Infrastructure Sector 
    Coordinating Executive Committees............................   126
  Report by the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee..............   127
  Joint Expert Report............................................   181
  Statement of Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel, 
    NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc................   183
  Statement of Trevor Potter, Founder and President, Campaign 
    Legal Center.................................................   206
  Statement of Wendy R. Weiser, Vice President for Democracy, 
    Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law..............   228
  Joint Statement of States United Democracy Center..............   242
  Joint Statement of Renee DiResta, Technical Research Manager, 
    Stanford Internet Observator, Stanford University and Kate 
    Starbird, PhD, Associate Professor, Human-Centered Design & 
    Engineering, and Co-Founder and Director, Center for an 
    Informed Public, University of Washington....................   267

                        THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 2022
                               Statements

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Select Committee 
  to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States 
  Capitol........................................................   615
The Honorable Liz Cheney, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Wyoming, and Vice Chair, Select Committee to 
  Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol   616
The Honorable Pete Aguilar, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of California............................................   617

                               Witnesses

Mr. Gregory F. Jacob, Former Counsel to Vice President Mike Pence   620
The Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Retired Judge for the U.S. Court 
  of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Informal Advisor to Mike 
  Pence..........................................................   621

                               Appendix*

Prepared Statement of Gregory F. Jacob, Former Counsel to Vice 
  President Mike Pence...........................................   653
Prepared Statement of Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Retired Judge 
  for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and 
  Informal Advisor to Mike Pence.................................   655

                         TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2022
                               Statements

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Select Committee 
  to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States 
  Capitol........................................................   661
The Honorable Liz Cheney, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Wyoming, and Vice Chair, Select Committee to 
  Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol   662
The Honorable Adam B. Schiff, a Representative in Congress From 
  the State of California........................................   664

                               Witnesses
                                Panel I

Honorable Rusty Bowers, Speaker, Arizona House of Representatives   668
Mr. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State...............   679
Mr. Gabriel Sterling, Chief Operating Officer, Office of the 
  Georgia Secretary of State.....................................   680

                                Panel II

Ms. Wandrea ArShaye ``Shaye'' Moss, Former Registration Officer, 
  Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections, Fulton 
  County, Georgia................................................   691

                               Appendix*

Prepared Statement of Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of 
  State..........................................................   701
Prepared Statement of Wandrea ArShaye ``Shaye'' Moss, Former 
  Registration Officer, Fulton County Department of Registration 
  and Elections, Fulton County, Georgia..........................   702

                        THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2022
                               Statements

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Select Committee 
  to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States 
  Capitol........................................................   705
The Honorable Liz Cheney, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Wyoming, and Vice Chair, Select Committee to 
  Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol   706
The Honorable Adam Kinzinger, a Representative in Congress From 
  the State of Illinois..........................................   708

                               Witnesses

Mr. Jeffrey Rosen, Former Acting Attorney General................   712
Mr. Richard Donoghue, Former Acting Deputy Attorney General......   713
Mr. Steven A. Engel, Former Assistant Attorney General, Office of 
  Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice......................   713

* Prepared statements included after initial publication.

                                Appendix

Prepared Statement of Jeffrey Rosen, Former Acting Attorney 
  General........................................................   747
Prepared Statement of Steven A. Engel, Former Assistant Attorney 
  General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice...   764

                         TUESDAY, JUNE 28, 2022
                               Statements

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Select Committee 
  to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States 
  Capitol........................................................   765
The Honorable Liz Cheney, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Wyoming, and Vice Chair, Select Committee to 
  Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol   766

                                Witness

Ms. Cassidy Hutchinson, Former Special Assistant to the President 
  and Aide to the Chief of Staff.................................   767

                         TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2022
                               Statements

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Select Committee 
  to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States 
  Capitol........................................................   793
The Honorable Liz Cheney, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Wyoming, and Vice Chair, Select Committee to 
  Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol   794
The Honorable Stephanie N. Murphy, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Florida......................................   795
The Honorable Jamie Raskin, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Maryland..............................................   796

                               Witnesses

Mr. Jason Van Tatenhove, Former National Media Director for the 
  Oath Keepers...................................................   823
Mr. Stephen Ayres, January 6th Defendant.........................   824

                                Appendix

Prepared Statement of Jason Van Tatenhove, Former National Media 
  Director for the Oath Keepers..................................   835

                        THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2022
                               Statements

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Select Committee 
  to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States 
  Capitol........................................................   837
The Honorable Liz Cheney, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Wyoming, and Vice Chair, Select Committee to 
  Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol   838
The Honorable Elaine G. Luria, a Representative in Congress From 
  the State of Virginia..........................................   840
The Honorable Adam Kinzinger, a Representative in Congress From 
  the State of Illinois..........................................   841

                               Witnesses

Mr. Matthew Pottinger, Former Deputy National Security Advisor...   842
Ms. Sarah Matthews, Former Deputy Press Secretary and Special 
  Assistant to the President.....................................   843

 
             THE LAW ENFORCEMENT EXPERIENCE ON JANUARY 6TH

                              ----------                              


                         Tuesday, July 27, 2021

                     U.S. House of Representatives,
 Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on 
                                 the United States Capitol,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:31 a.m., in 
Room 310, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Bennie G. Thompson 
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Thompson, Lofgren, Schiff, 
Aguilar, Cheney, Murphy, Raskin, Luria, and Kinzinger.
    Chairman Thompson. A quorum being present, the Select 
Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United 
States Capitol will be in order.
    The Select Committee is meeting today to receive testimony 
on ``The Law Enforcement Experience on January 6th.''
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare the 
Committee in recess at any time.
    I now recognize myself for an opening statement.
    Let me say a few words at the outset about this Committee's 
work and how, as Chairman, I plan to run things. We're going to 
be guided solely by the facts: the facts of what happened on 
January 6th, the run-up to that tragic day, and what has taken 
place since. That's what we're charged to do by House 
Resolution 503.
    There is no place for politics or partisanship in this 
investigation. Our only charge is to follow the facts where 
they lead us. While we have a lot to uncover, there are a few 
things we already know.
    We know that the insurrection on January 6th was a violent 
attack that involved vicious assaults on law enforcement. We 
know there is evidence of a coordinated, planned attack. We 
know that men and women who stormed the Capitol wanted to 
derail the peaceful transfer of power in this country. We know 
that 7 people lost their lives; that more than 140 police 
officers suffered injuries. We know that efforts to subvert our 
democracy are on-going. A major part of the Select Committee's 
work will be to find ways to eliminate that threat.
    We also know that the rioters came dangerously close to 
succeeding. If not for the heroism of the United States Capitol 
Police and the Metropolitan Police Department, many more lives 
might have been lost and the rioters could have accomplished 
what they set out to do: Upend American democracy.
    It's an honor to have four of these heroes sitting before 
us today. We welcome them for appearing here and, more 
importantly, for your heroism on January 6th. You have the 
gratitude of this Committee and this country.
    You held the line that day. I can't overstate what was on 
the line: our democracy. You held the line.
    We're going to revisit some of those moments today, and it 
won't be easy, but history will remember your names and your 
actions.
    It's important to think about history as this Committee 
starts its work and as we hear from these courageous men and to 
get answers for the American people; because we need to 
understand our history if we want to understand the 
significance of what happened on January 6th and our role as 
Members of the people's House.
    I'm talking about the peaceful transfer of power. Two 
hundred twenty years ago, in 1801, the House of Representatives 
did one of its jobs laid out in the Constitution. After a 
deadlock in the electoral college, this body cast 36 ballots 
and ultimately settled the contest for President of the United 
States. What followed was the first peaceful transfer of power 
in our country's history.
    We know that, since then, our history has been far from 
perfect. We've been torn apart and brought back together. We've 
struggled across generations to make our country's great vision 
a reality for all Americans. We've won victories, and we've 
suffered failures, but the peaceful transfer of power has stood 
as the pillar of our democracy.
    It's one of those things we rely on, a safeguard that we 
hold close, because, as heated and angry and divided as we may 
be, whatever victories we celebrate or upheavals we endure, we 
can rest easy knowing that, when the moment comes, our system 
guarantees that one party will hand the reins to another if 
that's the will of the people.
    While our institution's endured and while Joe Biden is the 
legitimately elected President of the United States, a peaceful 
transfer of power didn't happen this year. It did not happen.
    Let that sink in. Think about it.
    A violent mob was pointed toward the Capitol and told to 
win a ``trial by combat''. Some descended on this city with 
clear plans to disrupt our democracy. One rioter said that they 
weren't there to commit violence but that--I'm quoting--``We're 
just there to overthrow the Government.''
    I want to repeat that. I urge everyone to listen to those 
words and think about what they mean. ``We were just there to 
overthrow the Government.''
    They marched on the Capitol with the clear intentions of 
stopping the certification of the election. When they 
encountered the police sworn to keep us safe, they went on 
their attack with bear spray, knives, tasers, hockey sticks, 
even flagpoles fashioned into clubs with the American flag 
still attached.
    Those rioters breached the Capitol. They smashed windows, 
scaled walls, broke down doors, and invaded the Halls of 
Congress. It was a scene of violence in the citadel of our 
democracy not seen since 1814 when British soldiers sacked the 
building.
    They raced through the hallways chanting, ``Hang Mike 
Pence!'' ``Where is Nancy?''
    They stormed onto the Senate floor because they wanted to 
stop the Senate from certifying the election. The rioters tried 
to take over the House floor for the same reason.
    Thankfully, some astute, young staff members had the 
presence of mind to grab the physical electoral ballots for 
safekeeping.
    These rioters were organized. They were ready for a fight, 
and they came close to succeeding. It's frightening to think 
about how close we were: a few inches of wood and glass, an 
officer turning left instead of turning right. But just 
describing that attack doesn't come close to capturing what 
actually took place that day.
    So, we're going to see some of what our witnesses saw on 
January 6th. Let's see the video, please, but please be advised 
that it contains graphic images and strong language, which many 
may find disturbing.

    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Stop the Steal Zello Channel. Hey brother, we're boots on the 
ground here. We're moving on the Capitol now. I'll give you a boots-on-
the-ground update here in a few.
    Police Radio Transmission. Multiple Capitol injuries. Multiple 
Capitol injuries.
    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Take the building! Take the building!
    Voice. Fuck you, police!
    Police Radio Transmission. 50 to JOCC, we're still taking metal, 
sharpened objects, missiles, to include bottles and rocks and hand-
thrown chemical-grade fireworks.
    Voice. There's an officer in the crowd.
    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Police Radio Transmission.  . . . this is now effectively a riot.
    Police Radio Transmission. 1349 hours, declaring it a riot.
    Stop the Steal Zello Channel. OK, guys, apparently the tip of the 
spear has entered the Capitol Building.
    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Police Radio Transmission. [redacted], if I give this up, they're 
going to have direct access. At least the scaffold we can defend. We've 
got to hold what we have.
    Voice. Take your pins off.
    Voice. What the fuck?
    Voice. Take your pins off.
    Crowd. [redacted] This is our house! [redacted]
    Voice. This is a corrupt government. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Is this the Senate? Where the fuck are they?
    Police Radio Transmission. Cruiser 50, we're flanked. 10-33. I 
repeat, 10-33, West Front of the Capitol. We have been flanked, and 
we've lost the line.
    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Voice. They're coming, baby! They're coming, baby!
    Voice. Motherfuckers!
    Voice. They're spraying gas.
    Voice. Lock the shields. Lock them together. Lock them together.
    Voice. We need fresh patriots to the front!
    Voice. Back up if you need a break. Come on.
    Voice. He needs a break.
    Voice. Jimmy, get them to the back. Get them to the back. Get them 
to the back. Let's get some fresh faces up front.
    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Push!
    Voice. All right. Let me out!
    Voice. Pull them out! Pull them out! Pull them out!
    Voice. Can I speak to Pelosi? Yeah? We're coming, bitch! Oh, Mike 
Pence? We're coming for you too, you fucking traitor!
    Crowd. Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!
    Stop the Steal Zello Channel. They've got the gallows set up 
outside the Capitol Building. It's time to start fucking using them.
    Voice. Start making a list, put all those names down, and we start 
hunting them down one-by-one.
    Voice. Traitors get guillotine!
    Voice. Mobilize in your own cities, in your own counties, storm 
your own capitol buildings, and take down every one of these corrupt 
motherfuckers!
    Voice. That's what we fucking need to have: 30,000 guns up here.
    Voice. Next trip.

    Chairman Thompson. He'll be back, he warns us. It's just 
chilling.
    I thank God our democracy and our Republic withstood this 
assault, but that man's warning reminds us that this threat 
hasn't gone away. It looms over our democracy like a dark 
cloud.
    Some people are trying to deny what happened, to whitewash 
it, to turn the insurrectionists into martyrs. But the whole 
world saw the reality of what happened on January 6th: the 
hangman's gallows sitting out there on our Nation's Mall, the 
flag of that first failed and disgraced rebellion against our 
Union being paraded through the Capitol, the hatred, the 
bigotry, the violence, and all of it for a vile, vile lie.
    Let's be clear. The rioters who tried to rob us of our 
democracy were propelled here by a lie.
    As Chairman of this Committee, I will not give that lie any 
fertile ground. We need to understand how and why the Big Lie 
festered. We need to know minute-by-minute how January 6th 
unfolded. We need to understand how the rotten lie behind 
January 6th has continued to spread and feed the forces that 
would undermine American democracy.
    We need to figure out how to fix the damage. It won't be 
easy, but I have tremendous confidence in the colleagues 
sitting to my left and right. These are men and women of 
courage and character.
    We did not ask for this, but the House of Representatives 
did its job to give this country its first peaceful transfer of 
power, and we'll do our job now to make sure the peaceful 
transfer of power remains a pillar of our democracy. We cannot 
allow ourselves to be undone by liars and cheaters. This is the 
United States of America.
    My distinguished colleague from Wyoming, Ms. Cheney, is not 
the Ranking Member of the Select Committee, but because this 
investigation is bipartisan, it's important that we hear 
Republican voices as well.
    I now recognize Representative Cheney for an opening 
statement.
    Ms. Cheney. Thank you very much, Chairman Thompson. Thank 
you to all my colleagues on this Committee, and thank you to 
each of the witnesses appearing before us today.
    It is because of you: You held the line. You defended all 
of us. You defended the Capitol, and you defended the 
Constitution and our Republic, and every American owes you our 
undying gratitude.
    Every American, I hope, will be able to hear your testimony 
today and will watch the videos. The videos show the 
unbelievable violence and the inexcusable and intolerable 
cruelty that you all faced, and people need to know the truth.
    I want to begin by reflecting briefly on the investigation 
that we're launching today. Every one of us here on the dais 
voted for and would have preferred that these matters be 
investigated by an independent, nonpartisan commission composed 
of 5 prominent Americans selected by each party and modeled on 
the 9/11 Commission.
    Although such a commission was opposed by my own leadership 
in the House, it overwhelmingly passed with the support of 35 
Republican Members. It was defeated by Republicans in the 
Senate. That leaves us where we are today.
    We cannot leave the violence of January 6th and its causes 
uninvestigated. The American people deserve the full and open 
testimony of every person with knowledge of the planning and 
preparation for January 6th. We must know what happened here at 
the Capitol.
    We must also know what happened every minute of that day in 
the White House: every phone call, every conversation, every 
meeting leading up to, during, and after the attack. Honorable 
men and women have an obligation to step forward.
    If those responsible are not held accountable, and if 
Congress does not act responsibly, this will remain a cancer on 
our Constitutional Republic, undermining the peaceful transfer 
of power at the heart of our democratic system. We will face 
the threat of more violence in the months to come and another 
January 6th every 4 years.
    I have been a conservative Republican since 1984 when I 
first voted for Ronald Reagan. I have disagreed sharply on 
policy and politics with almost every Democratic Member of this 
Committee. But, in the end, we are one Nation under God.
    The Framers of our Constitution recognized the danger of 
the vicious factionalism of partisan politics, and they knew 
that our daily arguments could become so fierce that we might 
lose track of our most important obligation: to defend the rule 
of law and the freedom of all Americans.
    That is why our Framers compelled each of us to swear a 
solemn oath to preserve and protect the Constitution. When a 
threat to our Constitutional order arises, as it has here, we 
are obligated to rise above politics. This investigation must 
be nonpartisan.
    While we begin today by taking the public testimony of 
these four heroic men, we must also realize that the task of 
this Committee will require persistence. We must issue and 
enforce subpoenas promptly. We must get to objective truth. We 
must overcome the many efforts we are already seeing to cover 
up and obscure the facts.
    On January 6th and in the days thereafter, almost all 
Members of my party recognized the events of that day for what 
they actually were. One Republican, for example, said, ``What 
is happening at the U.S. Capitol right now is unacceptable and 
un-American. Those participating in lawlessness and violence 
must be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the 
law.''
    No Member of Congress should now attempt to defend the 
indefensible, obstruct this investigation, or whitewash what 
happened that day. We must act with honor and duty and in the 
interest of our Nation.
    America is great because we preserve our democratic 
institutions at all costs. Until January 6th, we were proof 
positive for the world that a Nation conceived in liberty could 
long endure. But now January 6th threatens our most sacred 
legacy.
    The question for every one of us who serves in Congress, 
for every elected official across this great Nation, indeed for 
every American, is this: Will we adhere to the rule of law? 
Will we respect the rulings of our courts? Will we preserve the 
peaceful transition of power? Or will we be so blinded by 
partisanship that we throw away the miracle of America? Do we 
hate our political adversaries more than we love our country 
and revere our Constitution?
    I pray that that is not the case. I pray that we all 
remember our children are watching. As we carry out this solemn 
and sacred duty entrusted to us, our children will know who 
stood for truth, and they will inherit the Nation we hand to 
them--a republic, if we can keep it.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you, Representative Cheney.
    I will now introduce our witnesses.
    We're joined today by Sergeant Aquilino Gonell of the 
United States Capitol Police. He's a 15-year veteran of the 
Capitol Police. He's assigned to a First Responder Unit in the 
United States Capitol Police's Uniformed Services Bureau.
    Before joining the Capitol Police, Sergeant Gonell served 8 
years in the United States Army and spent 545 days in Iraq, 
where his base was under constant mortar, rocket, and indirect 
fire by insurgents. He has received multiple awards and 
commendations for his military service.
    We're also joined by Officer Michael Fanone of the 
Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC. Officer 
Fanone began his law enforcement career with the United States 
Capitol Police shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
    For nearly 20 years, Officer Fanone has served the citizens 
of the District of Columbia in special units focusing on 
narcotics investigations and violent criminals.
    Officer Daniel Hodges is a member of Civil Disturbance Unit 
42 in the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, where his 
responsibilities include riot response.
    Prior to his service on the Metropolitan Police Department, 
he served 6 years in the 116th Infantry Regiment, 3d Battalion, 
as an indirect fire infantryman.
    U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn is a 13-year veteran 
of the United States Capitol Police and a member of its First 
Responder Unit. His responsibilities include ensuring the 
integrity of the perimeter around the Capitol Building. Officer 
Dunn has been among the first Capitol Police Officers to 
describe what happened to law enforcement on January 6th.
    I will now swear in our witnesses. The witnesses will 
please rise and raise their right hands.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. You may be seated.
    Let the record reflect the witnesses answered in the 
affirmative.
    Without objection, the witnesses' full statements will be 
included in the record.
    I now recognize Sergeant Gonell to summarize his testimony.
    Sergeant Gonell. \1\ Good morning, everybody.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Sergeant Gonell's prepared statement is included in the 
Appendix beginning on p. 55.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Thompson. Good morning.
    Sergeant Gonell. Chairman Thompson, Members of the Select 
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding 
the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
    It is with honor and heavy heart that I come before you to 
tell you my story, from a painful, first-hand experience what 
happened that terrible day at the Capitol.
    I'm providing this testimony solely in my personal capacity 
and not as a representative of the U.S. Capitol Police. It is 
imperative that the events of January 6th are fully 
investigated in the Congress and the American people know the 
truth of what actually occurred and that all those responsible 
are held accountable, particularly to ensure that horrific and 
shameful event in our history never repeats itself. I applaud 
you for pursuing this objective.
    Even though there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary, 
including hours and hours of videos and photographic coverage, 
there is a continued, shocking attempt to ignore or try to 
destroy the truth of what truly happened that day and to 
whitewash the facts into something other than what they 
unmistakenly reveal: an attack on our democracy by violent 
domestic extremists and a stain on our history and our moral 
standing here, home, and abroad.
    As a child in the Dominican Republic, I looked up to the 
United States as the land of opportunity and a place to better 
myself. From the moment I landed at JFK in 1992, I have tried 
to pursue that goal. Thankfully, I achieved that goal on many 
levels. I was the first in my family to graduate college, join 
the Army, and become a police officer.
    On July 23, 1999, the day before my 21st birthday, I raised 
my hand and swore to protect the Constitution of the United 
States because this country gave me an opportunity to become 
anything that I wanted.
    At that time, I already started basic training with the 
Army Reserves. In fact, I raised my hand several times in 
ceremonies to pledge my commitment to defend and protect the 
Constitution of the United States: when I joined the Army 
Reserves; when I was promoted to sergeant while in the Army; 
during my naturalization ceremony; my reenlistment in the Army; 
when I joined the United States Capitol Police; and, last, when 
I was promoted to sergeant 3 years ago.
    I have always taken my oath seriously. On January 6, 2021, 
I fulfilled my oath once more, this time to defend the United 
States Capitol and Members of Congress carrying out their 
Constitutional duties to certify the results of the November 
2020 Presidential election.
    To be honest, I did not recognize my fellow citizens who 
stormed the Capitol on January 6th or the United States that 
they claimed to represent. When I was 25 years old and then a 
sergeant in the Army, I had deployed to Iraq for Operation 
Iraqi Freedom. From time to time, I volunteered to travel on 
IED-infested roads to conduct supply missions for U.S. and 
allied forces and local Iraqi population as well. But, on 
January 6th, for the first time, I was more afraid to work at 
the Capitol than my entire deployment to Iraq.
    In Iraq, we expected armed violence because we were in a 
war zone, but nothing in my experience in the Army or as a law 
enforcement officer prepared me for what we confronted on 
January 6th. The verbal assaults and disrespect we endured from 
the rioters were bad enough. I was falsely accused of betraying 
my oath, of choosing my paycheck--choosing my paycheck--over my 
loyalty to the U.S. Constitution, even as I defended the very 
democratic process that protected everyone in the hostile 
crowd.
    While I was at the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol 
working with my fellow officers to prevent the breach and 
restore order, the rioters called me a traitor, a disgrace, and 
shouted that I--I, an Army veteran and a police officer--should 
be executed.
    Some of the rioters had the audacity to tell me there was 
nothing personal, that they will go through me, through us 
police officers to achieve their goal, as they were breaking 
metal barriers to use as weapons against us.
    Or they used more menacing language: ``If you shoot us, we 
all have weapons. We will shoot back.'' Or, ``We'll get our 
guns. We outnumber you.'' They said, ``Join us.''
    I heard specific threats to the lives of Speaker Nancy 
Pelosi and then also Vice President Mike Pence. But the 
physical violence we experienced was horrific and devastating. 
My fellow officers and I were punched, kicked, shoved, sprayed 
with chemical irritants, and even blinded with eye-damaging 
lasers by a violent mob who apparently saw us law enforcement 
officers, ironically dedicated to protecting them as U.S. 
citizens, as an impediment to their attempted insurrection.
    The mob brought weapons to try to accomplish their 
insurrectionist objectives and used them against us. These 
weapons included hammers, rebars, knives, batons, and police 
shields taken by force, as well as bear spray and pepper spray.
    Some of the rioters wore tactical gear, including 
bulletproof vests and gas masks. The rioters also forcibly took 
our batons and shields to use them against us.
    I was particularly shocked at the scene that 
insurrectionists violently attacked us with the very American 
flag that they claimed to protect. Based on the coordinated 
tactics we observed and verbal commands we heard, it appears 
that many of these attackers had law enforcement or military 
experience.
    The rioters were vicious and relentless. We found ourselves 
in a violent battle desperate to attempt to prevent a breach of 
the Capitol by the entrance near the inauguration stage. 
Metropolitan Police Officers were being pulled into the crowd. 
We have one right here, right next to me.
    As we tried to push the rioters back from breaching the 
Capitol, in my attempt to assist two MPD officers, I grabbed 
one officer by the back of the collar and pulled him back to 
the police line.
    When I tried to help the second officer, I fell on top of 
some police shields on the ground that were slippery because of 
pepper spray and bear spray. Rioters immediately began to pull 
me by my leg, by my shield, by my gear strap on my left 
shoulder.
    My survivalist instincts kicked in, and I started kicking 
and punching as I tried in vain to get an MPD officer's 
attention behind, above me, but they could not help me because 
they also were being attacked.
    I finally was able to hit the rioter who was grabbing me 
with my baton and able to stand. Then I continued to fend off 
new attackers as they kept rotating and attacking us again and 
again.
    What we were subjected to that day was like something from 
a medieval battle. We fought hand-to-hand, inch by inch to 
prevent an invasion of the Capitol by a violent mob intent on 
subverting our democratic process. My fellow officers and I 
were committed to not letting any rioters breach the Capitol.
    It was a prolonged and desperate struggle. The rioters 
attempting to breach the Capitol were shouting, ``Trump sent 
us. Pick the right side. We want Trump.''
    I vividly heard officers screaming in agony, in pain, just 
an arm's length from me. I didn't know at that time, but that 
was Officer Hodges, and he's here today to testify.
    I too was being crushed by the rioters. I could feel myself 
losing oxygen and recall thinking to myself, ``This is how I'm 
going to die, defending this entrance.''
    Many of the officers fighting alongside me were calling for 
shields because their shields had been stripped from them by 
the rioters. I was one of the few officers left with a shield, 
so I spent the majority of my time at the front of the line.
    I later find out that my wife and relatives here in the 
United States and abroad were frantically calling and texting 
me from 2 p.m. onward because they were watching the turmoil on 
television. It was now 4:26 p.m., after giving CPR to one of 
the rioters who breached the Capitol in an effort to save her 
life, that I finally had a chance to let my own family know 
that I was alive.
    After order had finally been restored at the Capitol and 
many hours, I arrived at home at nearly 4 a.m. on January 7th. 
I had to push my wife away from me because she wanted to hug 
me, and I told her no because of all the chemicals that my 
uniform had on.
    Sorry.
    I couldn't sleep because the chemical reactivated after I 
took a shower, and my skin was burning. I finally fell asleep 2 
hours later, completely physically and mentally exhausted, yet, 
by 8 o'clock a.m., I was already on my way back to the Capitol. 
I continued to work for 15 consecutive days until after the 
inauguration. I made sure to work despite my injuries because I 
wanted to continue doing my job and help secure the Capitol 
complex. More than 6 months later, I'm still trying to recover 
from my injuries.
    Many of my fellow Capitol officers, as well as MPD 
officers, suffered several physical injuries from the violence 
inflicted on us on January 6th. I sustained injuries on both my 
hands, my left shoulder, my left calf, and my right foot. I 
already have undergone bone fusion surgery on my right foot, 
and I was just told that I need surgery on my left shoulder. I 
have been on medical and administrative leave for much of the 
past 6 months, and I expect to need further rehabilitation for 
possibly more than a year.
    There are some who express outrage when someone kneels 
while calling for social justice. Where are those same people 
expressing the outrage to condemn the violent attack on law 
enforcement, the Capitol, and our American democracy? I'm still 
waiting for them.
    As America and the world watched in horror what was 
happening at the Capitol, we did not receive timely 
reinforcement and support we needed. In contrast, during the 
Black Lives Matter protests last year, U.S. Capitol Police had 
all the support we needed and more. Why the different response?
    Were it not for the brave members of the MPD and, later on, 
from other law enforcement agencies, I'm afraid to think what 
could have happened on January 6th. I want to publicly thank 
all the law enforcement agencies that responded to assist that 
day, for their courage and their support. I especially want to 
thank those Capitol Police Officers who responded on their own 
from home after working midnight shift.
    Despite being outnumbered, we did our job. Every Member of 
the House of Representatives, Senators, and staff members made 
it home. Sadly, as a result that day, we lost officers--some 
really good officers. But we held the line to protect our 
democratic process because the alternative would have been a 
disaster. We are not asking for medals, recognition. We simply 
want justice and accountability.
    For most people, January 6th happened for a few hours but 
for those of us who were in the thick of it, it has not ended. 
That day continues to be a constant trauma for us literally 
every day, whether because of our physical or emotional 
injuries, or both. While it has not received much attention, 
sadly many of my colleagues have quietly resigned from the 
Capitol because of that day.
    I am also regularly called by law enforcement officials and 
prosecutors to help identify from photographs and videos the 
rioters.
    To be honest, physical therapy is painful and hard. I could 
have lost my life that day, not once but many times. But, as 
soon as I recover from my injuries, I will continue forward and 
proudly serve my country in the U.S. Capitol Police.
    As an immigrant to the United States, I'm especially proud 
to have defended the U.S. Constitution and our democracy on 
January 6th. I hope that everyone in position of authority in 
our country has the courage and conviction to do their part by 
investigating what happened on that terrible day and why. This 
investigation is essential to our democracy, and I'm deeply 
grateful to you for undertaking it.
    I'm happy to assist as I can and answer any questions you 
may have to the best of my ability.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much for your vivid 
testimony, Sergeant Gonell.
    I now recognize Officer Fanone to summarize his testimony.
    Officer Fanone. \2\ Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Members of 
this Committee for inviting me to provide my eyewitness 
testimony of the violent assault on our Nation's Capitol on 
January 6, 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ Officer Fanone's prepared statement is included in the Appendix 
beginning on p. 57.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    My name, for those of you who don't know, is Michael 
Fanone. While I've been a sworn officer with the Metropolitan 
Police Department in Washington, DC, for almost two decades, my 
law enforcement career actually began here in this building as 
a United States Capitol Police Officer shortly after 9/11.
    In part because of the 2001 attack on our country by the 
terrorists, I felt called to serve. As a Capitol Police 
Officer, I was proud to protect this institution and dedicated 
Members of Congress and their staff who work hard each day to 
uphold our American democracy.
    I remain proud of the work of the United States Capitol 
Police and MPD Officers, who literally commit their lives to 
protecting the safety of each of you and all of us in this room 
in our Nation's Capital.
    After leaving the United States Capitol Police, I became an 
MPD officer, serving the residents of Washington, DC. I have 
spent the majority of my nearly 20 years as a Metropolitan 
Police Officer working in special mission units whose 
responsibilities include the investigation and arrest of 
narcotics traffickers and violent criminals.
    I've worked both as an undercover officer and the lead case 
officer in many of these investigations. In this line of work, 
it probably won't shock you to know that I've dealt with some 
dicey situations. I thought I had seen it all many times over, 
yet what I witnessed and experienced on January 6, 2021, was 
unlike anything I had ever seen, anything I had ever 
experienced or could have imagined in my country. On that day, 
I participated in the defense of the United States Capitol from 
an armed mob--an armed mob--of thousands determined to get 
inside.
    Because I was among the vastly outnumbered group of law 
enforcement officers protecting the Capitol and the people 
inside it, I was grabbed, beaten, tased, all while being called 
a traitor to my country. I was at risk of being stripped of and 
killed with my own firearm as I heard chants of ``kill him with 
his own gun.'' I can still hear those words in my head today.
    Although I regularly deal with risky situations on the job, 
nowhere in my wildest imagination did I ever expect to be in 
that situation or sitting here before you talking about it. 
That experience and its aftermath were something that not even 
my extensive law enforcement training could prepare me for.
    I was just one of hundreds of local police who lined up to 
protect Congress, even though I had not been assigned to do 
that. Some had asked why we ran to help when we didn't have to. 
I did that because I simply could not ignore what was 
happening. Like many other officers, I could not ignore the 
numerous calls--numerous calls--for help coming from the 
Capitol complex.
    I am a plainclothes officer assigned to the First District 
Crime Suppression Team. But, for the first time in nearly a 
decade, I put on my uniform.
    When my partner, Jimmy Albright, and I arrived at the 
Capitol around 3 that afternoon, it was like--excuse me. It was 
unlike any scene I had ever witnessed. Jimmy parked our police 
vehicle near the intersection of South Capitol Street and D 
Street in Southeast, and we walked to the Capitol, from there 
passing the Longworth House Office Building. It was eerily 
quiet. The sidewalks, usually filled with pedestrians, were 
empty.
    As we made our way to Independence Avenue, I could see 
dozens of empty police vehicles that filled the street, police 
barricades which had been abandoned, and hundreds of angry 
protesters, many of whom taunted us as we walked toward the 
Capitol Building.
    Jimmy and I immediately began to search for an area where 
we could be of most assistance. We made our way through a door 
on the south side of the Capitol, walking then to the Crypt, 
and finally down to the Lower West Terrace tunnel.
    It was there that I observed a police commander struggling 
to breathe as he dealt with the effects of CS gas that lingered 
in the air. Then I watched him collect himself, straighten his 
cap and trench coat adorned with its silver eagles, and return 
to the line.
    That commander was Ramey Kyle of the Metropolitan Police 
Department, and those images are etched into my memory, never 
to be forgotten. In the midst of that intense and chaotic 
scene, Commander Kyle remained cool, calm, and collected as he 
gave commands to his officers. ``Hold the line,'' he shouted 
over the roar.
    Of course, that day, the line was the seat of our American 
Government. Despite the confusion and the stress of the 
situation, observing Ray's leadership protecting a place I 
cared so much about was the most inspirational moment of my 
life. The bravery he and others showed that day are the best 
examples of duty, honor, and service. Each of us who carries a 
badge should bring those core values to our work every day.
    The fighting in the Lower West Terrace tunnel was nothing 
short of brutal. Here I observed approximately 30 police 
officers standing shoulder to shoulder, maybe 4 or 5 abreast, 
using the weight of their bodies to hold back the onslaught of 
violent attackers. Many of these officers were injured, 
bleeding, and fatigued, but they continued to hold the line.
    As I don't have to tell the Members in this room, the 
tunnel is a narrow and long hallway. It is not the sort of 
space anyone would want to be pulled into hand-to-hand combat 
with an angry mob, although the narrowness of the hallway 
provided what was probably the only chance of holding back the 
crowd from entering your personal offices, the House, and 
Senate Chambers.
    In an attempt to assist the injured officers, Jimmy and I 
asked them if they needed a break. There were no volunteers. 
Selflessly, those officers only identified other colleagues who 
may be in need of assistance.
    The fighting dragged on. I eventually joined the tactical 
line at the tunnel's entrance. I can remember looking around 
and being shocked by the sheer number of people fighting us; as 
my police body-worn camera shows, thousands upon thousands of 
people seemingly determined to get past us by any means 
necessary.
    At some point during the fighting, I was dragged from the 
line of officers and into the crowd. I heard someone scream, 
``I got one.''
    As I was swarmed by a violent mob, they ripped off my 
badge. They grabbed and stripped me of my radio. They seized 
ammunition that was secured to my body. They began to beat me 
with their fists and with what felt like hard metal objects. At 
one point, I came face to face with an attacker, who repeatedly 
lunged for me and attempted to remove my firearm. I heard 
chanting from some in the crowd: ``Get his gun and kill him 
with his own gun.''
    I was aware enough to recognize I was at risk of being 
stripped of and killed with my own firearm. I was electrocuted 
again and again and again with a taser. I'm sure I was 
screaming, but I don't think I could even hear my own voice.
    My body camera captured the violence of the crowd directed 
toward me during those very frightening moments. It's an 
important part of the record for this Committee's investigation 
and for the country's understanding of how I was assaulted and 
nearly killed as the mob attacked the Capitol that day, and I 
hope that everyone will be able to watch it.
    The portions of the video I've seen remained extremely 
painful for me to watch at times, but it is essential that 
everyone understands what really happened that tragic day.
    During those moments, I remember thinking there was a very 
good chance I would be torn apart or shot to death with my own 
weapon.
    I thought of my four daughters who might lose their dad.
    I remain grateful that no Member of Congress had to go 
through the violent assault that I experienced that day.
    During the assault, I thought about using my firearm on my 
attackers, but I knew that if I did, I would be quickly 
overwhelmed and that, in their minds, would provide them with 
the justification for killing me. So, I instead decided to 
appeal to any humanity they might have. I said as loud as I 
could manage, ``I've got kids.''
    Thankfully, some in the crowd stepped in and assisted me. 
Those few individuals protected me from a crowd and inched me 
toward the Capitol until my fellow officers could rescue me. I 
was carried back inside.
    What happened afterwards is much less vivid. I had been 
beaten unconscious and remained so for more than 4 minutes. I 
know that Jimmy helped to evacuate me from the building and 
drove me to MedStar Washington Hospital Center despite 
suffering significant injuries himself.
    At the hospital, the doctors told me that I had suffered a 
heart attack, and I was later diagnosed with a concussion, a 
traumatic brain injury, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
    As my physical injuries gradually subsided and the 
adrenaline that had stayed with me for weeks waned, I have been 
left with the psychological trauma and the emotional anxiety of 
having survived such a horrific event. My children continue to 
deal with the trauma of nearly losing their dad that day.
    What makes the struggle harder and more painful is to know 
so many of my fellow citizens, including so many of the people 
I put my life at risk to defend, are downplaying or outright 
denying what happened.
    I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the 
people in this room, but too many are now telling me that hell 
doesn't exist or that hell actually wasn't that bad. The 
indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful.
    My law enforcement career prepared me to cope with some of 
the aspects of this experience. Being an officer, you know your 
life is at risk whenever you walk out the door, even if you 
don't expect otherwise law-abiding citizens to take up arms 
against you.
    But nothing--truly nothing--has prepared me to address 
those elected Members of our Government who continue to deny 
the events of that day and, in doing so, betray their oath of 
office--those very Members whose lives, offices, staff members 
I was fighting so desperately to defend.
    I agreed to speak here today and have talked publicly about 
what happened because I don't think our response to the 
insurrection should have anything to do with political parties. 
I know that what my partner, Jimmy, and I suited up for on 
January 6th didn't have anything to do with political parties 
or about politics or what political party any of you public 
servants belong to.
    I've worked in this city for two decades, and I've never 
cared about those things, no matter who was in office. All I've 
ever cared about is protecting you and the public so you can do 
your job in service to this country and for those whom you 
represent.
    I appreciate your time and attention. I look forward to the 
Committee's investigation, and I am hopeful, with your 
commitment, we as a country will confront the truth of what 
happened on January 6th and do what is necessary to make sure 
this institution of our democracy never falls into the hands of 
a violent and angry mob.
    We must also recognize the officers who responded that day, 
many unsolicited, and their countless acts of bravery and 
selflessness. It has been 202 days since 850 MPD officers 
responded to the Capitol and helped stop a violent insurrection 
from taking over this Capitol complex, which almost certainly 
saved countless Members of Congress and their staff from injury 
and possibly death. The time to fully recognize these officers 
is now.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to provide my testimony 
here today.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much for your testimony.
    Now, I don't think there is any question you have our 
commitment that we will do just that as a Committee.
    Officer Fanone. Thank you, sir.
    Chairman Thompson. I now recognize Officer Hodges to 
summarize his testimony.
    Officer Hodges. \3\ Good morning to the Committee, members 
of the press, and to the country.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ Officer Hodges's prepared statement is included in the Appendix 
beginning on p. 59.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    To the Members of the Committee, I'd like to thank you for 
your invitation today to provide my account of my knowledge and 
experiences from January 6, 2021.
    As the Chairman mentioned, I am a member of Civil 
Disturbance Unit 42 and was working in that capacity on the day 
in question. We started that day at 7:30 a.m., and our 
assignment at the time was to maintain high visibility along 
Constitution Avenue, namely the blocks leading up to 
President's Park, where then-President Donald Trump was holding 
his gathering.
    My particular station was in front of 1111 Constitution 
Avenue, where I stood on foot as the crowd poured down the 
street and into the park. There were a significant number of 
men dressed in tactical gear attending the gathering or wearing 
ballistic vests, helmets, goggles, military face masks, 
backpacks. Without identifiable visible law enforcement or 
military patches, they appeared to be prepared for much more 
than listening to politicians speak at a park.
    Two of my colleagues were approached by a group of 3 to 4 
such men. They were white men, in good shape, with load-bearing 
vests equipped with MOLLE pouches. They were wearing BDUs, or 
battle dress uniform pants, tactical boots, black sunglasses, 
and short haircuts. They had radios, and one was equipped with 
an earpiece.
    After a bit of small talk, one of them asked my colleague 
something to the effect of, Is this all the manpower you have? 
Do you really think you are going to be able to stop all these 
people? Dumbfounded, my colleague simply expressed they didn't 
understand what the speaker meant, and the group continued on.
    As the day went on and speakers in the park said their 
piece, I monitored the crowd on the radio. Over the radio, I 
heard our gun recovery unit working constantly, monitoring 
those in the crowd suspected of carrying firearms and making 
arrests and seizures when possible.
    Multiple gun arrests were made from January 5th through the 
7th against those attending and likely had attended or planned 
to attend Donald Trump's gathering. Unfortunately, due to the 
course of events that day, we will never know exactly how many 
were carrying firearms and other lethal weapons.
    I don't know what time it was, but eventually the flow of 
foot traffic reversed, with people leaving President's Park and 
traveling eastbound down Constitution Avenue toward the United 
States Capitol.
    At approximately 12:30 p.m., I noticed a commotion about 
half a block to my east, and I saw the crowd starting to 
coalesce around two figures. I ran to where they were and found 
a confrontation at the intersection of 10th and Constitution 
Avenue Northwest.
    One counter-protester, a Black man, was backpedaling away 
from a white man in a Trump-labeled face mask who was closely 
following him with an outstretched arm. Myself and my colleague 
first arrived and physically separated the two, but a crowd of 
Donald Trump's people had gathered.
    They attempted to bait the counter-protester into 
attacking, shouting insults such as, ``Your mother's a whore,'' 
and accusing him of hiding behind the cops. Eventually, enough 
MPD members had gathered to move along the crowd who continued 
eastbound toward the Capitol Building, and the counter-
protester departed northbound on 10th Street.
    Returning to my post, I continued to monitor the radio. I 
could hear Commander Glover leading the defense efforts at the 
Capitol as the protesters began their transition from peaceful 
assembly into terrorism. I became agitated and wished we could 
move in to support, as I could hear the increasing desperation 
of the commander's voice, yet we still had to wait for our 
orders to change, and eventually they did.
    At approximately 1:30 p.m., the commander authorized rapid 
response platoons to deploy their hard gear and respond to the 
Capitol, including CDU-42.
    The last thing I remember hearing over the air before 
departing for the Capitol Grounds was confirmation that our 
Explosive Ordnance Disposal team had discovered a device. Given 
which unit was being associated with the device, I immediately 
realized MPD had discovered a bomb of some type near the 
Capitol. This thought was never far from my mind for the rest 
of the day.
    We ran back to our vans and got on our hard gear as quickly 
as we could. Navigating alternate routes to avoid the foot 
traffic, we drove as close as we could to the Capitol, 
disembarking at the northwest side of the Capitol Grounds. We 
gave our gear a final check and marched toward the West 
Terrace.
    The crowd was thinner the further out from the Capitol you 
were, so as we marched, the resistance that we initially met 
was verbal. A man sarcastically yelled, ``Here come the boys in 
blue, so brave.'' Another called on us to ``remember your 
oath.'' There was plenty of booing. A woman called us storm 
troopers. Another woman, who was part of the mob of terrorists 
laying siege to the Capitol of the United States, shouted, 
``Traitors.'' More found appeal in this label and shouted 
``traitors'' at us as we passed. One man attempted to turn it 
into a disyllabic chant. We continued to march.
    We had been marching in two columns, but as we got closer 
to the West Terrace, the crowd became so dense that in order to 
progress, we marched single file with our hands on the 
shoulders of the man in front of us in order to avoid 
separation. However, as we came close to the terrorists, our 
line was divided, and we came under attack.
    A man attempted to rip the baton from my hands, and we 
wrestled for control. I retained my weapon after I pushed him 
back. He yelled at me, ``You're on the wrong team.''
    Cut off from our leadership, which was at the front of our 
formation, we huddled up and assessed the threat surrounding 
us. One man tried and failed to build a rapport with me, 
shouting, ``Are you my brother?'' Another takes a different 
tact, shouting, ``You will die on your knees.''
    I was at the front of our group and determined that we had 
to push our way through the crowd in order to join the defense 
proper, so I began shouting ``make way,'' as I forged ahead, 
hoping that I'm clearing a path for others behind me to follow. 
However, as I looked back, I saw that the rest of the group 
came under attack and were unable to follow.
    The crowd attempted to physically bar the rest of the 
platoon from following. I backtrack and started pulling the 
terrorists off my team from their backpacks and their collars.
    Around this time, one of the terrorists who had scaled the 
scaffolding that adorned the Capitol at the time threw 
something heavy down at me and struck me in the head, 
disorienting me. I suspect this resulted in the likely 
concussion I dealt with in the weeks after.
    Another man attempted to disarm me of my baton, and again, 
we wrestled for control. He kicked me in my chest as we went to 
the ground. I was able to retain my baton again, but I ended up 
on my hands and knees and blind. The medical mask I was wearing 
at the time to protect myself from the coronavirus was pulled 
up over my eyes so I couldn't see. I braced myself against the 
impact of their blows and feared the worst. Thankfully, my 
platoon had repelled their own attackers and got me back on my 
feet.
    The crowd start chanting ``U-S-A'' at us, and we struck out 
again for the West Terrace. I led the charge through the midst 
of crowd control munitions, explosions, and smoke engulfing the 
area. Terrorists were breaking apart the metal fencing and bike 
racks into individual pieces, presumably to use as weapons.
    Thankfully, we made it to the secondary defense line on the 
West Terrace that MPD and Capitol Police were managing to hold. 
The rest of my platoon got behind the line, and we could take 
stock of the situation.
    I realized that back during the previous assault, someone 
had stolen my radio. From that point on, I was in the dark as 
to our current status, when reinforcements would arrive.
    Terrorists were scaling the scaffolding on both our sides 
of the tower that was in front of us and attempting to breach 
the waist-high metal fencing that was the only barrier we had 
aside from ourselves.
    The sea of people was punctuated throughout by flags, 
mostly variations of American flags and Trump flags. There were 
Gadsden flags. It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves 
to be Christians. I saw the Christian flag directly to my 
front. Another read, ``Jesus is my savior. Trump is my 
President.'' Another, ``Jesus is king.'' One flag read, ``Don't 
give up the ship.'' Another had crossed rifles beneath a skull 
emblazoned with the pattern of the American flag.
    To my perpetual confusion, I saw the thin blue line flag, 
the symbol of support for law enforcement--more than once--
being carried by the terrorists as they ignored our commands 
and continued to assault us. The acrid sting of CS gas, or tear 
gas, and OC spray, which is mace, hung in the air as the 
terrorists threw our own CS gas canisters back at us and 
sprayed us with their own OC, either that they bought 
themselves or stole from us. Later, I learned at least one of 
them was spraying us in the face with wasp spray.
    The terrorists alternated between attempting to break our 
defenses and shouting at or attempting to convert us. Men 
alleging to be veterans told us how they had fought for this 
country and were fighting for it again. One man tried to start 
a chant of ``4 more years.'' Another shouted, ``Do not attack 
us, we're not Black Lives Matter,'' as if political affiliation 
is how we determine when to use force.
    A man in a QAnon hoodie exclaims, ``This is the time to 
choose which side of history to be on.'' A man whose shirt 
read, ``God, guns, and Trump'' stood behind him silently, 
holding a Trump flag.
    A new man came to the front and fixated on me, continually 
berating me, telling me to take off my gear and give it to him 
to show solidarity with ``We the People,'' or, ``We're going to 
run over you.'' His voice cracked with the strain and the 
volume of his threats. He continued, ``Do you think your little 
peashooter guns are going to stop this crowd? No. We're going 
in that building.''
    Eventually, there is a surge in the crowd, the fence 
buckled and broke apart, and we were unable to hold the line. A 
chaotic melee ensued. Terrorists pushed through the line and 
engaged us in hand-to-hand combat. Several attempted to knock 
me over and steal my baton. One latched on to my face and got 
his thumb in my right eye, attempting to gouge it out. I cried 
out in pain and managed to shake him off. I managed to shake 
him off before any permanent damage was done.
    I couldn't fully engage anyone; for the moment I do is when 
another 20 terrorists move in to attack while my hands are 
full. It was all we could do to keep ourselves on our feet and 
continue to fall back. I was sprayed with a fire extinguisher, 
and a red smoke grenade burns at our feet.
    In the fight, a terrorist is knocked to the ground and his 
jacket rides up, exposing a large hunting knife on his belt. I, 
along with several other officers, piled on him while another 
removed the knife from his person. He regained himself unharmed 
and shouts indignantly, ``What are you doing? What are you guys 
doing?''
    At this point, the terrorists had claimed most of the 
western terrace, cornering myself and other officers on the 
southern edge. We found a side stair off of the terrace up to 
an upper landing, followed by more stairs up and inside.
    Inside the Capitol Building, officers walked through the 
halls briefly until they found a place to sit, decontaminate 
their faces of OC and CS, and take a quick breather. I followed 
suit. Someone had managed to find a package of water bottles 
and was passing them out. I washed off my face as best I could, 
rinsed out my mouth, and drank the rest.
    I took the opportunity of relative safety to don my gas 
mask. Not long afterward, I heard someone calling for officers 
to move to assist. I steeled myself for another round and 
descended the stairway into a long hallway filled with smoke 
and screams.
    The Capitol Building is labyrinthine, but judging from the 
sound of intense combat, I could tell this hallway led outside 
to where the terrorists had forced our retreat. Officers were 
stacked deep, but every so often, one would fall back from the 
front line nursing an injury or struggling to breathe, and 
those who remained would take a step forward. It was a battle 
of inches, with one side pushing the other a few and then the 
other side regaining their ground.
    At the time, I, and I suspect many others in the hallway, 
did not know that the terrorists had gained entry into the 
building by breaking in doors and windows elsewhere, so we 
believed ours to be the last line of defense before the 
terrorists had true access to the building and to potentially 
our elected representatives.
    Eventually, it was my turn in the meat grinder that was the 
front line. The terrorists had a wall of shields that they had 
stolen from officers as well as stolen batons, what other 
armaments they brought. Even during this intense contest of 
wills, they tried to convert us to their cult.
    One man shouted, ``We all just want to make our voices 
heard, and I think you feel the same. I really think you feel 
the same,'' all while another man attempts to batter us with a 
stolen shield.
    Another man, like many others, didn't seem to appreciate 
that this wasn't a game. He fought his way across the lawn, up 
the steps, through the western terrace, all the OC and CS gas, 
and at the front line of this final threshold was asking us to 
hold on because he has asthma.
    The two sides were at a stalemate at a metal door frame 
that sat in the middle of the hallway. At the front line, I 
inserted myself so the frame was at my back, in an effort to 
give myself something to brace against and provide additional 
strength when pushing forward. Unfortunately, soon after I 
secured this position, the momentum shifted, and we lost the 
ground that got me there. On my left was a man with a clear 
riot shield stolen during the assault. He slammed it against me 
and, with all the weight of the bodies pushing behind him, 
trapped me.
    My arms were pinned and effectively useless, trapped 
against either the shield on my left or the door frame on my 
right. With my posture granting me no functional strength or 
freedom of movement, I was effectively defenseless and 
gradually sustaining injury from the increasing pressure of the 
mob.
    Directly in front of me a man seized the opportunity of my 
vulnerability, grabbed the front of my gas mask and used it to 
beat my head against the door. He switched to pulling it off my 
head, the straps stretching against my skull and straining my 
neck. He never uttered any words I recognized but opted instead 
for guttural screams. I remember him foaming at the mouth.
    He also put his cell phone in his mouth so that he had both 
hands free to assault me. Eventually, he succeeded in stripping 
away my gas mask, and a new rush of exposure to CS and OC spray 
hit me. The mob of terrorists were coordinating their efforts 
now shouting ``heave-ho,'' as they synchronized pushing their 
weight forward, crushing me further against the metal door 
frame.
    A man in front of me grabbed my baton that I still held in 
my hands, and in my current state I was unable to retain my 
weapon. He bashed me in the head and face with it, rupturing my 
lip and adding additional injury to my skull.
    At this point, I knew I couldn't sustain much more damage 
and remain upright. At best, I would collapse and be a 
liability to my colleagues; at worst, be dragged out into the 
crowd and lynched. Unable to move or otherwise signal the 
officers behind me that I needed to fall back, I did the only 
thing that I could do and screamed for help.
    Thankfully, my voice was heard over the cacophony of yells 
and the blaring alarm. The officer closest to me was able to 
extricate me from my position and another helped me fall back 
to the building again. I had found some more water and 
decontaminated my face as best I could. I don't know how long I 
waited in the halls for, but soon after I got back on my feet, 
I went to where the fight was again. Until reinforcements 
arrived, every able body made a difference.
    Without my gas mask, I was afraid I'd be a liability in the 
hallway, so I took the exit outside of the upper landing above 
the West Terrace. I found a police line being held and the 
terrorists encircling us much like on the West Terrace Lower. 
It was getting later in the day, however, and it appeared we 
weren't the only ones getting tired. It seemed most of the mob 
was content to yell rather than try and break our line again.
    After some time of guarding the upper landing, I saw 
reinforcements arrive from the south. I'm not sure which law 
enforcement agency it was, but I turned to them and I started 
clapping, as it was a sign that badly needed help was starting 
to finally arrive.
    Soon after that, I started feeling the effects of the day 
taking their toll and went back inside to rest. Gradually, all 
the members of CDU-42 gathered in the room known as the Capitol 
Crypt. We checked on each other and convalesced, glad to see 
each other in one piece.
    Despite our exhaustion, we would have ran out into the 
fight again should the need have arisen. Thankfully, as the day 
wore on, more and more resources had arrived at the Capitol to 
drive off the terrorists. We stayed in the Crypt until quite 
late.
    Even after we were allowed to leave the grounds, we didn't 
get to go home. Those who needed immediate medical attention 
took a van to the local hospital, while the rest of us parked 
near the city center until the city was deemed secure enough 
for us to check off. I believe we finally got that message 
around 1 a.m. the following morning. We drove back to the 
Fourth District and from there went home.
    Thank you for letting me testify.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much for your testimony.
    I now recognize Officer Dunn to summarize his testimony.
    Officer Dunn. \4\ Chairman Thompson, Members of the Select 
Committee, thank you for the opportunity today to give my 
account regarding the events of January 6, 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ Officer Dunn's prepared statement is included in the Appendix 
beginning on p. 63.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    From my first-hand experience as a Capitol Police Officer 
directly involved in those events, and still hurting from what 
happened that day, I'm providing this testimony solely in my 
personal capacity and not as a representative of the United 
States Capitol Police.
    Before I begin, I'd like to take a moment of my time to ask 
for a moment of silence for my fallen colleague, Officer Brian 
Sicknick, who died from injuries he sustained in the line of 
duty defending the Capitol of our beloved democracy.
    Thank you.
    I reported for duty at the Capitol as usual early on the 
morning of January 6th. We understood that the vote to certify 
President Biden's election would be taking place that day and 
protests might occur outside the Capitol, but we expected any 
demonstrations to be peaceful expressions of First Amendment 
freedoms, just like the scores of demonstrations we had 
observed for many years.
    After roll call, I took my overwatch post on the East Front 
of the Capitol standing on the steps that led up to the Senate 
Chamber. As the morning progressed, I did not see or hear 
anything that gave me cause for alarm. But around 10:56 a.m., I 
received a text message from a friend forwarding a screen shot 
of what appeared to be the potential plan of action, very 
different from a peaceful demonstration.
    The screen shot bore the caption: ``January 6th--Rally 
Point--Lincoln Park,'' and said the objective was ``THE 
CAPITOL.'' It said, amongst other things, that ``Trump has 
given us marching orders,'' and to ``keep your guns hidden.'' 
It urged people ``to bring . . . your trauma kits'' and ``gas 
masks'' to ``[l]ink up early in the day'' in ``6-12 man 
teams.'' It indicated there would be ``time to arm up.''
    Seeing that message caused me concern. To be sure, looking 
back now, it seemed to foreshadow what happened later. At the 
time, though, we had not received any threat warnings from our 
chain of command. I had no independent reason to believe that 
violence was headed our way.
    As the morning progressed and the crowd of protesters began 
to swell on the east side of the Capitol, many displaying Trump 
flags, the crowd was chanting slogans like ``Stop the steal,'' 
and ``We want Trump.'' But the demonstration was still being 
conducted in a peaceful manner.
    Earlier that afternoon, Capitol Police dispatch advised all 
units over the radio that we had an active 10-100 at the 
Republican National Committee nearby: 10-100 is police code for 
a suspicious package, such as a potential bomb. That radio 
dispatch got my attention, and I started to get more nervous 
and worried, especially because the crowds on the East Front of 
the Capitol were continuing to grow.
    Around the same time, I started receiving reports on the 
radio about large crowd movements around the Capitol coming 
from the direction of The Ellipse to both the West and East 
Fronts of the Capitol. Then I heard urgent radio calls for 
additional officers to respond to the west side and an 
exclamation, a desperate voice, that demonstrators on the west 
side had breached the fence. Now it was obvious that there was 
a direct threat to the Capitol.
    I quickly put on a steel chest plate, which weighs 
approximately 20 pounds, and carrying my M-4 rifle, sprinted 
around the north side of the Capitol to the West Terrace and 
the railing of the inaugural stage, where I had a broad view of 
what was going on.
    I was stunned by what I saw. What seemed like a sea of 
people, Capitol Police Officers and Metropolitan Police 
Officers, MPD, were engaged in desperate hand-to-hand fighting 
with rioters across the west lawn.
    Until then, I had never seen anyone physically assault 
Capitol Police or MPD, let alone witness mass assaults being 
perpetrated on law enforcement officers. I witnessed the 
rioters using all kinds of weapons against officers, including 
flagpoles, metal bike racks that they had torn apart, and 
various kinds of projectiles. Officers were being bloodied in 
the fighting. Many were screaming, and many were blinded and 
coughing from chemical irritants being sprayed in their faces. 
I gave decontamination aid to as many officers as I could, 
flushing their eyes with water to dilute the chemical 
irritants.
    Soon thereafter, I heard, ``Attention all units, the 
Capitol has been breached,'' and that rioters were in various 
places inside the building. At that point, I rushed into the 
Capitol with another officer, going first to the basement on 
the Senate side where I'd heard an MPD officer needed a 
defibrillator.
    After returning outside to the West Terrace to assist the 
officers, I went back into the Capitol and up the stairs toward 
the Crypt. There I saw rioters who had invaded the Capitol, 
carrying a Confederate flag, a red MAGA flag, and a ``Don't 
Tread on Me'' flag.
    I decided to stand my ground there to prevent any rioters 
from heading down the stairs to the Lower West Terrace 
entrance, because that's where officers were getting 
decontamination aid and were particularly vulnerable.
    At the top of the stairs, I confronted a group of 
insurrectionists, warning them, do not go down those steps. One 
of them shouted, ``Keep moving, patriots.'' Another displayed 
what looked like a law enforcement badge and told me, ``We're 
doing this for you.'' One of the invaders approached me like he 
was going to try to get past me and head down the stairs. I hit 
him, knocking him down.
    After getting relieved by other officers in the Crypt, I 
took off running upstairs toward the Speaker's Lobby and helped 
the plainclothes officer who was getting hassled by 
insurrectionists. Some of them were dressed like members of a 
militia group, wearing tactical vests, cargo pants, and body 
armor. I was physically exhausted, and it was hard to breathe 
and to see because of all the chemical spray in the air.
    More and more insurrectionists were pouring into the area 
by the Speaker's Lobby near the Rotunda, and some wearing MAGA 
hats and shirts that said, ``Trump 2020.'' I told them to just 
leave the Capitol, and in response they yelled, ``No, man, this 
is our house.'' ``President Trump invited us here.'' ``We're 
here to stop the steal.'' ``Joe Biden is not the President.'' 
``Nobody voted for Joe Biden.''
    I'm a law enforcement officer, and I do my best to keep 
politics out of my job, but in this circumstance, I responded, 
``Well, I voted for Joe Biden. Does my vote not count? Am I 
nobody?''
    That prompted a torrent of racial epithets. One woman in a 
pink MAGA shirt yelled, ``You hear that, guys? This nigger 
voted for Joe Biden.'' Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 
people, joined in screaming, ``Boo, fucking nigger.'' No one 
had ever, ever called me a nigger while wearing the uniform of 
a Capitol Police Officer.
    In the days following the attempted insurrection, other 
Black officers shared with me their own stories of racial abuse 
on January 6th. One officer told me he had never in his entire 
40 years of life been called a nigger to his face, and that 
streak ended on January 6th. Yet, another Black officer later 
told me he had been confronted by insurrectionists in the 
Capitol who told him, ``Put your gun down and we'll show you 
what kind of nigger you really are.''
    To be candid, the rest of the afternoon is a blur, but I 
know I went throughout the Capitol to assist officers who 
needed aid and help expel more insurrectionists. In the Crypt, 
I encountered Sergeant Gonell, who was giving assistance to an 
unconscious woman who had been in the crowd of rioters on the 
west side of the Capitol. I helped to carry her to the area of 
the House Majority Leader's Office where she was administered 
CPR.
    As the afternoon wore on, I was completely drained, both 
physically and emotionally, and in shock and in total disbelief 
over what had happened. Once the building was cleared, I went 
to the Rotunda to recover with other officers and share our 
experiences from what happened that afternoon. Representative 
Rodney Davis was there offering support to officers, and when 
he and I saw each other, he came over and he gave me a big hug.
    I sat down on a bench in the Rotunda with a friend of mine, 
who is also a Black Capitol Police Officer, and told him about 
the racial slurs I endured. I became very emotional and began 
yelling, how the blank could something like this happen? Is 
this America? I began sobbing. Officers came over to console 
me.
    Later on January 6th, after order and security had been 
restored in the Capitol through the hard work and sacrifices of 
law enforcement, Members took the floor of the House to speak 
out about what had happened that day. Among them was House 
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who, along with my fellow 
officers, I had protected that day and will protect today and 
tomorrow--I had protected that day and will protect today and 
tomorrow.
    The Minority Leader, to his great credit, said the 
following to the House: ``The violence, destruction, and chaos 
we saw earlier was unacceptable, undemocratic, and un-American. 
It was the saddest day I have ever had serving in this 
institution.''
    Members of this Select Committee, the Minority Leader was 
absolutely right how he described what took place in the 
Capitol. For those of us in the Capitol Police, who serve and 
revere this institution and who love the Capitol Building, it 
was the saddest day for us as well.
    More than 6 months later, January 6th still isn't over for 
me. I've had to avail myself of multiple counseling sessions 
from the Capitol Police Employee Assistance Program, and I am 
now receiving private counseling therapy for the persistent 
emotional trauma of that day. I've also participated in many 
peer support programs with fellow law enforcement officers from 
around the United States.
    I know so many other officers continue to hurt both 
physically and emotionally. I want to take this moment to speak 
to my fellow officers about the emotions they are continuing to 
experience from the events of January 6th. There's absolutely 
nothing wrong with seeking professional counseling. What we 
went through that day was traumatic, and if you are hurting, 
please take advantage of the counseling services that are 
available to us.
    I also respectfully ask that this Select Committee review 
the available resources--the services available to us and 
consider whether they are sufficient enough to meet our needs, 
especially with respect to the amount of leave that we are 
allowed.
    In closing, we can never again allow our democracy to be 
put in peril as it was on January 6th. I thank the Members of 
the Select Committee for your commitment to determine what led 
to disaster at the Capitol on January 6th, what actually took 
place that day, and what steps should be taken to prevent such 
an attack on our democracy from ever happening again.
    I also want to thank and acknowledge my brothers and 
sisters in blue who fought alongside me on January 6th to 
protect our democracy. Each of you is a hero, and it is my 
honor to serve with you each and every day.
    I'd like to thank the American people for all of the 
support that they have provided these past several months to me 
and my fellow officers.
    Last, to the rioters, the insurrectionists, and the 
terrorists of that day, democracy went on that night and still 
continues to exist today. Democracy is bigger than any one 
person and any one party. You all tried to disrupt democracy 
that day and you all failed.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I would 
be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much.
    I thank all the witnesses for their testimony.
    The rules we established allowed you the opportunity to 
tell your story. There is no question about it; you have done 
it in your own words. We appreciate it. So, what we will do now 
is begin our questioning of you.
    I now recognize myself for questions.
    At the time of the attack on the Capitol, I was in the 
gallery observing the proceedings on the House floor. While 
Members of Congress were being protected by the police, you, 
the patriots protecting the Capitol in our very democracy, were 
being attacked by the mob outside.
    I want to learn more about what you did and what you 
witnessed. Officer Fanone, as a narcotics officer, you weren't 
supposed to be at the Capitol on January 6th. Is that right?
    Officer Fanone. Yes, sir, that's correct.
    Chairman Thompson. What prompted you to come to the 
Capitol?
    Officer Fanone. I mean, I was listening to the radio 
transmissions, specifically those coming from now-Commander 
Robert Glover, who was the on-scene commander. If you've 
listened to those transmissions, he identifies himself as 
Cruiser 50.
    I heard things that I had never heard before in my law 
enforcement career. In addition to the numerous distress calls 
or 10-33s that I heard, which are, while not commonplace, also 
not uncommon in policing, I heard things like, you know, the 
declaration of a city-wide 10-33, which in my career, to my 
recollection, has only been utilized, in addition to the 9/11 
attacks, on the Navy Yard attack. So, I found that particularly 
distressful.
    Also, you could hear the tone of the individual officer's 
voices. They were scared. They were, you know, clearly 
outnumbered and being violently assaulted.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. So, basically, the radio 
traffic, the 10-33 signal on the radio, and your basic law 
enforcement instinct said your fellow comrades needed help, and 
therefore you made your way, along with your friend, to the 
Capitol?
    Officer Fanone. Yes, sir.
    Chairman Thompson. So, you went anyway. Let me thank you 
for that. I understand a number of other people did the same.
    Officer Hodges, we've seen the harrowing video of you being 
crushed in a doorway as you bravely fought to keep the mob from 
breaching the Capitol. Many of your fellow officers' acts of 
heroism were not captured on video and are not therefore known 
to the public. Can you please share with the Committee other 
acts of heroism by your colleagues on January 6th that you're 
aware of?
    Officer Hodges. Absolutely. One of my sergeants, Sergeant 
Brian Peake, while fighting, maintained control over the 
barricades on the West Terrace, was struck by a rioter and 
fractured and severely lacerating his right index finger. He 
kept in the fight for several more hours after that and just 
put some tape on it, a napkin, and went back to work. He was 
there for several hours before finally accepting medical evac. 
He ended up having to have the tip of his finger removed.
    Another officer who was out there in the fight with us, 
he--much like myself--he had a large, heavy object thrown and 
struck his head. He wasn't as lucky as me, though. He has 
suffered lost time from that day, and he remains still out on 
medical leave. Even today he has not returned to work, but at 
the time he was still fighting.
    Another officer, who was fought on the West Terrace and in 
the tunnels, instrumental to the defense, after being 
completely soaked with OC spray, was shocked several times by a 
cattle prod one of the terrorists brought with them.
    When I went over my testimony--my opening statement before, 
I mentioned that we were attacked outside the second area-of-
defense line on the West Terrace, and after we rallied there, 
we continued onward. I know that another officer found a 
Capitol Police Officer who was being dragged out into the 
crowd, and he was unable to signal to us what was going on. So, 
he charged in there by himself and got that officer back out of 
there and in the process hyperextended his knee and took 
several other injuries.
    You know, The Washington Post and Carnegie Mellon 
University have estimated that there were about 9,400 
terrorists out there, and I would say we had about 150, 175 
officers. So, any one of them could tell you any amounts of 
heroic acts or injuries they sustained, but these are just a 
few that I know of.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much.
    Officer Gonell, you talked about your tour in Iraq and what 
have you--and thank you for your service. Can you give the 
Committee a sense of comparing that tour and experiences with 
what you experienced on January 6th?
    Sergeant Gonell. Sure. Back when I was in Iraq and sometime 
on a convoy mission to provide mutual support or taking care 
packages or whatnot to my other units in detachment--we went 
through roadside bomb-infested IEDs, whatnot, convoys. My fears 
were minimal around that time. It was not as constant. I know 
we knew at that time that we could run over an IED and that was 
it, but at least we knew that we were in a combat zone. Here, 
in our country, in our very own Capitol, we are being attacked. 
Not once but multiple times we had----
    Chairman Thompson. Can you pull the microphone to you just 
a little bit?
    Sergeant Gonell. Oh, sorry. Not only we were attacked one 
time, but it was multiple times, over and over, different 
people. They hit us and then they got tired of hitting us and 
then they switch, somebody else, rotating in and out.
    As my colleagues also have said, we were at the lowest 
entrance tunnel, and we didn't have a chance to rotate 
ourselves until later on, like after an hour and a half later. 
So, whoever was there, we were fighting for our life. We were 
fighting to protect all of you.
    In our mind, that time, at that entrance, that was it. That 
was the point of breach, and we were not letting them in.
    They tried to convert us. They tried to persuade us to let 
them in, yelling, and then once they saw that we were not doing 
that, they continued to attack us even more, and it was 
nonstop.
    So, my time compared to Iraq, totally different. This is 
our own citizens, people who we swore an oath to protect, but 
yet they are attacking us with the same flag that they claim to 
represent. It was bad.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    Officer Dunn, you talked about being called the N-word, you 
talked about being talked about like you've never heard before, 
and you talked about sharing comments from your other 
colleagues, as well as the seeing of the Confederate flag and 
other things carried through the Capitol.
    As an African-American law enforcement officer, can you 
give us, this Committee and those who are watching, how you 
felt defending the Capitol on that day being called that and 
seeing the symbols of the Confederacy going through the Capitol 
at the same time?
    Officer Dunn. Yes, sir. Thank you for your question. To be 
frank, while the attack was happening, I didn't view it and I 
wasn't able to process it as a racial attack. I was just trying 
to survive that day and get home.
    When I did have a moment to process it, I think that's in 
the Rotunda where I became so emotional, because I was able to 
process everything that happened, and it was just so 
overwhelming. It's so disheartening and disappointing that we 
live in a country with people like that, that attack you 
because of the color of your skin just to hurt you. Those words 
are weapons.
    Thankfully, at the moment, it didn't hinder me from doing 
my job, but once I was able to process it, it hurt. It hurt 
just reading it now and just thinking about it, that people 
demonize you because of the color of your skin, when my blood 
is red, I'm an American citizen, I'm a police officer, I'm a 
peace officer, I'm here to defend this country, defend 
everybody in this building, not just the Members, all the 
staff, guests, everybody.
    It just hurts that we have people in this country that 
resort to that regardless of your actions and what you desire 
to do to make a difference out there. It's disheartening.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. But because of your heroism 
on that day, lives were saved, and our democracy was preserved, 
in large part because you gave your all, all of you, for that 
day on January 6th. I assure you this Committee will ensure 
there is a comprehensive account of your heroic acts of that 
day, and your testimony this morning is an essential part of 
that record. Thank you for your service to this country and for 
coming before us today.
    The Chair now recognizes Members for questions they may 
wish to ask the witnesses. The gentlewoman from Wyoming, Ms. 
Cheney, is recognized.
    Ms. Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Again, thank you to all of our witnesses for your heroism 
and your bravery that day, and also for being here today and 
telling your story. I certainly join the Chairman and every 
Member of this Committee in our commitment to making sure we 
get to the truth and that those who did this are accountable.
    Officer Gonell, I'd like to ask you, you describe in your 
testimony that it was--you said it was like a medieval 
battlefield, that what you were subjected to that day was 
something like a medieval battlefield. You said, ``We fought 
hand-to-hand and inch by inch to prevent an invasion of the 
Capitol by a violent mob intent on subverting our democratic 
process.''
    Is it the case that as you were fighting there, you were 
not aware that the Capitol had been breached elsewhere? I 
believe you said that you really thought that was--you were the 
last line of defense. Is that right?
    Sergeant Gonell. That is correct, ma'am.
    Ms. Cheney. So, Officer Gonell, when you----
    Sergeant Gonell. Sergeant.
    Ms. Cheney [continuing]. Think about that and share with us 
the vivid memory of the cruelty and the violence of the assault 
that day, and then you hear former President Trump say, ``It 
was a loving crowd. There was a lot of love in the crowd,'' how 
does that make you feel?
    Sergeant Gonell. It's upsetting. It's a pathetic excuse for 
his behavior for something that he himself helped to create, 
this monstrosity. I'm still recovering from those hugs and 
kisses that day that he claimed that so many rioters, 
terrorists were assaulting us that day. If that was hugs and 
kisses, then we should all go to his house and do the same 
thing to him.
    To me, it's insulting, it's demoralizing, because 
everything that we did was to prevent everyone in the Capitol 
from getting hurt. What he was doing, instead of sending the 
military, instead of sending the support, or telling his 
people, his supporters to stop this nonsense, he egged them to 
continue fighting.
    I was in the Lower West Terrace fighting alongside these 
officers, and all of them--all of them--were telling us, 
``Trump sent us.'' Nobody else. There was nobody else. It was 
not Antifa. It was not Black Lives Matter. It was not the FBI. 
It was his supporters that he sent them over to the Capitol 
that day. He could have done a lot of things; one of them was 
to tell them to stop.
    He talks about sacrificing--sacrifices, whatnot; the only 
thing that he has sacrificed is the institutions of the country 
and the country itself only for his ego, because he wants the 
job but he doesn't want to do the job. That's a shame on him, 
himself.
    Ms. Cheney. Thank you.
    Officer Fanone, you talked in your testimony about the fact 
that the line that day was the seat of American democracy, was 
the seat of our Government. Can you talk about, as you think 
now about what was under threat, first of all, did you have a 
sense at the time, as you were going through the battle before 
the horrific violence happened to you, of the nature of the 
gravity of the threat that we were facing, that the line was, 
in fact, the seat of American democracy?
    Officer Fanone. Well, my response that day really was based 
off of my obligation as a police officer to not only protect 
the lives of the Members of Congress and their staff but also 
to my fellow officers. The politics of that day really didn't 
play into my response at all.
    Ms. Cheney. Thank you.
    Officer Hodges, in your testimony, you talk about when you 
were at The Ellipse, and you mentioned the significant number 
of men dressed in tactical gear attending the gathering, 
wearing ballistic vests, helmets, goggles. When you saw that, 
was that something that you had anticipated at all? Could you 
just tell us more about that crowd there at The Ellipse, the 
extent to which you saw people who clearly were in military or 
paramilitary garb?
    Officer Hodges. It was absolutely a source of concern. Like 
I said, they had outer carrier vests designed to carry 
ballistic shielding, helmets, goggles, face masks, backpacks 
filled with unknown objects. I couldn't get a count and we 
couldn't stop and search everyone, so I don't know how many 
there were. But I know that, it was obviously a concern of 
mine.
    Ms. Cheney. Thank you very much.
    Then, finally, Officer Dunn, you mentioned the text message 
that you received, and you expressed some surprise. You 
mentioned that you had not seen any intelligence that would 
have led you to believe that we should expect that kind of 
violence. Could you elaborate on that a little bit?
    Officer Dunn. Yes, ma'am. We were expecting civil 
disobedience, as we do at the Capitol, at least that was what 
was relayed to us; a couple of arrests, name calling, 
unfriendly people, but nowhere near the level of violence or 
even close to it like that we experienced.
    When I received the text messages, it made the hairs on my 
neck rise. But since our chain of command had not told us to 
prepare for any of these levels of violence, I was just like, 
okay, whatever. Like, I've been here--I start year 14 in 
November--and I've dealt with hundreds of protests where people 
get arrested and for peaceful First Amendment protests. 
Everybody has the right to protest. Okay. Do what you do, and 
we'll arrest you if you break the law, and we'll go home later 
that night. It was a lot different than that, but I was not 
alerted to the level of violence. Like, the text messages I got 
foreshadowed that looking back, but, no, we were not prepared 
for what we faced that day.
    Ms. Cheney. Thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, I'd like to ask unanimous consent to enter 
that complete text message into the record.
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, so ordered.
    Ms. Cheney. Thank you.
    [The information follows:]
    
    
    Ms. Cheney. Again, I would just like to express my deep 
gratitude for what you all did to save us, and it won't be 
forgotten, and we will get to the bottom of this. Thank you 
very much.
    With that, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentlelady yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from California, Ms. 
Lofgren.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thanks to each one of you and your colleagues for what you 
did. I was on the floor of the House helping to defend the 
voters of Arizona to a challenge to their electors while you 
were out trying to keep a violent mob from invading the 
Capitol.
    So, I really do want to thank you for your tremendous 
courage and stamina and heroism, not just for myself; I Chair 
the House Administration Committee, and I know how many others 
work in this Capitol, not only the staff to the Members of 
Congress, but the food service workers who were present and 
clerical staff. You saved them as well, and so they also owe 
you a debt of gratitude.
    I do realize that ultimately the rioters breached the 
Capitol, but the time that you kept them out really made a 
tremendous difference. You saved the day. You saved the 
Constitution, and it made a tremendous difference for our 
country.
    Officer Dunn, I did hear you about the need for additional 
help, and I want to pledge to you that we will work with the 
Capitol Police to make sure that the resources, the mental 
health unit has the resources that officers need. I'll make 
that pledge to you right now.
    Officer Dunn. Thank you.
    Ms. Lofgren. I would like to ask, Sergeant Gonell, not 
everyone knew that you were fighting in the hallway near the 
Lower West Terrace on January 6th. Can you tell me what you 
went through on that hallway? Then while you were there, 
Metropolitan Police arrived to help you out. What difference 
did that make?
    Sergeant Gonell. Sure, ma'am. Before I start, by no means 
am I suggesting that we would go to his house. I apologize for 
my outburst.
    After we retreated to the Lower West Terrace entrance, it 
was rough. It was terrible. Everything that was happening to 
us, it was simultaneously, and we didn't have a lot of support. 
We had probably like 50 officers at most when we went back in. 
Once we were there, we started saying to ourselves, this is it. 
This is the entrance where they're going to try to breach. 
We're going to hold the line. We're going to do everything 
possible, without even coordinating among ourselves.
    The few officers who were still carrying shields, we 
automatically assumed position in the front. Some of those 
shields were taken, ripped apart from the officers' hands. Some 
of the officers also got concussed because they were hit with 
the same shields they were holding, because that was so 
violently taken from them that they were concussed.
    There were multiple struggles in terms of fighting. My 
shield was round, and I was able to get some strikes, but 
because we were in so close quarters, it was hard for us to 
even do that. The only thing we were allowed to was push 
forward. Whoever has shields stay in the front, and whoever was 
in behind the people with the shield, then they were striking 
those rioters.
    At some point, I fell on the floor on top of some shields, 
trying to help and assist some of the officers, and I got 
pulled to the crowd. Luckily, I was able to free myself and 
stand up.
    Later on, the second time I went back to the front, that's 
when Officer Hodges was getting trampled. I was getting 
trampled, because just the mere force of the rioters pushing 
forward and police officers pushing out, we were getting 
trampled in the middle. So, it was a very terrible thing that 
happened to us, yes.
    Ms. Lofgren. Officer Fanone, before I ask you a question, 
I'd like to show a brief video clip of some of what you went 
through today. I realize this can be difficult to watch, but I 
think it's important for the public to see.

    Voice. Where is the West Front of the Capitol Building?
    Voice. What do you got there?
    Voice. 10-33.
    Crowd. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Come on, MPD!
    Voice. Push!
    Voice. You've got to fight the right people.
    Voice. Push!
    Voice. I got you, Mike. That's my hand. You're good.
    Voice. Push them back!
    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Voice. This is for you guys. This is for you.
    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Voice. I've got one.
    Voice. You can't do this to me. I've got kids.
    Voice.  . . . why the fuck?
    Voice. We need a medic! We need EMTs now!
    Officer Albright. Mike, stay in there, buddy. Mike, it's Jimmy; I'm 
here. Mike!

    Ms. Lofgren. Almost all of that was from your body camera 
footage. Can you walk us through what we've just seen, Officer 
Fanone?
    Officer Fanone. Well, I believe the first portion of that 
video began--that was my body-worn camera footage from the 
Crypt area of the Capitol Rotunda. It was there that I first 
heard the 10-33, or distress call, come out from the Lower West 
Terrace tunnel, which I didn't realize at the time was only a 
few hundred yards away from where I was at.
    I told my partner, Jimmy Albright, who was there with me, 
that there was a 10-33 coming out from the Lower West Terrace. 
We tried to get our bearings and figure out which way that 
might be. We asked a group of Capitol Police Officers, and they 
directed us down a set of stairs. From there, Jimmy and I 
walked down to the Lower West Terrace tunnel.
    The first thing I remember was seeing a buddy of mine, 
Sergeant Bill Bogner, who is an administrative sergeant. He 
used to work in my district. Now he works over at the academy. 
He was unable to see. He had been sprayed in the face with bear 
mace.
    I went up to him and told him, ``Hey, it's Fanone.'' I 
remember he stretched out his hand to shake mine. That's when 
he told me that the guys that were just beyond that set of 
double doors had been fighting there for--I believe he said 
about 30 minutes. I don't think he realized what time it was 
because they had been fighting since around 1 p.m. It was 3 
o'clock. So, those guys had been there fighting for 2 hours 
unrelieved.
    I remember looking up through the set of double doors. 
There was glass panes, and you could see the CS gas, like white 
powder, still lingering in the air. It was at that point that I 
realized I probably should have brought my gas mask.
    So, I went through the double doors, and I saw Ramey Kyle, 
who was, at the time, a commander with our Criminal 
Investigations Division, overseeing all the detectives units. 
Like many other officers, sergeants, lieutenants, captains that 
day, he self-deployed and found himself commanding a group of 
about 30 or 40 officers there in the Lower West Terrace tunnel.
    Commander Kyle was having a difficult time breathing. I 
remember I followed him back out through the set of double 
doors into that initial hallway, as he kind of cleared himself, 
straightened himself up. I described it before. I thought he 
looked like George Patton.
    I remember he put his hat back on and walked right back out 
through the doorway into the tunnel, and I followed him. It was 
at that point, I think, when I started approaching that group 
of officers there defending the doorway that I realized the 
gravity of the situation.
    My initial thought was these guys looked beat to hell, and, 
you know, maybe I could try to get in there and get some guys 
some help.
    So, I told Jimmy that, you know, we needed to get in there 
and try to offer assistance, and that's what we did initially. 
We started making our way through the crowd of officers, 
yelling out, ``Who needs a break?''
    Like I said in my initial testimony, there were no 
volunteers. There were officers who identified other colleagues 
who were in need of help, and I remember somebody yelling out, 
``This guy needs help,'' and handed me that officer. I handed 
him off to Jimmy and told him to get him to the back. I 
continued to make my way up to the front lines.
    Once I got up there, it was the first time I really came 
face-to-face with these terrorists. They were dressed in, you 
know, clothing adorned with political slogans, ``Make America 
Great Again,'' ``Donald Trump 2020,'' things of that nature. 
They were wearing military-style clothing, Kevlar vests, Kevlar 
helmets. Many of them had gas masks, and quite a few had 
shields, which they had taken away from law enforcement 
officers, and they were using them to beat us at the front 
line.
    The first thing I told them was, ``Hey, man, we've got to 
get these doors closed. We've got injured officers in here.''
    That really seemed to piss those guys off. They became 
incredibly violent, and that's when that surge that you watched 
in some of the video began. You had a large group at the mouth 
of that tunnel entrance trying to push their way through the 
officers who were fighting to defend it.
    I believe, had they done so or had they accomplished that, 
they would have trampled us to death. Most certainly, you would 
have had police officers killed.
    I fought there at the front for some time. I was yelling 
out, you know, trying to inspire some of the other officers 
that were up there that were tired, telling them to dig in and 
push, and we started to make some progress.
    Sergeant Gonell. I remember that.
    Officer Fanone. We pushed those guys out of the tunnel, out 
through the initial threshold, and I remember thinking to 
myself, ``Man, it's good to get some fresh air.'' It was at 
that point that I was pulled off the line.
    That initial period of time where I was pulled off that 
line was kind of a blur. I just remember getting violently 
assaulted from every direction and eventually found myself out 
probably about 250, maybe 300 feet away from the mouth of the 
tunnel where the other officers were at. I knew that I was up 
shit creek without a paddle.
    I was trying to push guys off of me, create some space. All 
the while, I recognized the fact that there were individuals 
that were trying to grab a hold of my gun. I remember one of 
them distinctly lunging at me time and time again trying to 
grab my gun. I heard people in the crowd yelling, ``Get his 
gun, kill him with his own gun,'' and words to that effect.
    I thought about using my weapon. I believed that there were 
individuals in the crowd whose intentions were to kill me. I 
came to that conclusion because of the fact that, separated 
from these other officers, who were only trying to defend the 
Capitol, I no longer posed any type of threat nor was I an 
impediment to them going inside of the building, but yet they 
tortured me. They beat me. I was struck with a taser device at 
the base of my skull numerous times. They continued to do so 
until I yelled out that I have kids.
    I said that hoping to appeal to some of those individuals' 
humanity, and fortunately, a few did step in and intervene on 
my behalf.
    They did assist me back toward the mouth of the tunnel 
entrance, and other officers were then able to rescue me and 
pull me back inside. But, at that point, I was unconscious. 
Based off the body-worn camera footage, it's believed that I 
was unconscious for approximately 4 minutes.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Officer. Thanks to each one of you. 
Our country is lucky, really blessed that you are as patriotic 
and brave as you are.
    I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentlelady yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. 
Kinzinger.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you to my colleagues on the Committee.
    Thank you to our witnesses. I never expected today to be 
quite as emotional for me as it has been. I've talked to a 
number of you and gotten to know you.
    I think it's important to tell you right now, though. You 
guys may individually feel a little broken. You guys all talked 
about the effects you have to deal with and you talked about 
the impact of that day.
    But you guys won. You guys held.
    You know, democracies are not defined by our bad days. 
We're defined by how we come back from bad days, how we take 
accountability for that. For all the overheated rhetoric 
surrounding this Committee, our mission is very simple. It's to 
find the truth, and it's to ensure accountability.
    Like most Americans, I'm frustrated that, 6 months after a 
deadly insurrection breached the United States Capitol for 
several hours on live television, we still don't know exactly 
what happened. Why? Because many in my party have treated this 
as just another partisan fight. It's toxic, and it's a 
disservice to the officers and their families, to the staff and 
the employees on the Capitol complex, to the American people 
who deserve the truth, and to those generations before us who 
went to war to defend self-governance because self-governance 
is at stake.
    That's why I agreed to serve on this Committee. I want to 
know what happened that day. But, more importantly, I want all 
Americans to be able to trust the work this Committee does and 
get the facts out there free of conspiracy.
    This cannot continue to be a partisan fight. I'm a 
Republican. I'm a conservative. But, in order to heal from the 
damage caused that day, we need to call out the facts. It's 
time to stop the outrage and the conspiracies that fuel the 
violence and division in this country. Most importantly, we 
need to reject those that promote it.
    As a country, it's time to learn from our past mistakes, 
rebuild stronger so this never happens again, and then we can 
move onward. Serving on this Committee, I'm here to investigate 
January 6th not in spite of my membership in the Republican 
Party but because of it; not to win a political fight but to 
learn the facts and defend our democracy.
    Here is what we know: Congress was not prepared on January 
6th. We weren't prepared because we never imagined that this 
could happen--an attack by our own people fostered and 
encouraged by those granted power through the very system they 
sought to overturn. That is a lesson. That is not a conspiracy 
theory or a counternarrative. We don't blame victims. We go 
after the criminals.
    Some have concocted a counternarrative to discredit this 
process on the grounds that we didn't launch a similar 
investigation into the urban riots and looting last summer.
    Mr. Chairman, I was called on to serve during the summer 
riots as an Air National Guardsman. I condemn those riots and 
the destruction of property that resulted, but not once did I 
ever feel that the future of self-governance was threatened 
like I did on January 6th. There is a difference between 
breaking the law and rejecting the rule of law, between a 
crime--even grave crimes--and a coup.
    As we begin our work today, I want to call this Committee's 
attention to the oath of office, an oath not to a party, not to 
an individual, but to the Constitution that represents all 
Americans. Everyone in elected office knows how hard it can be 
sometimes to keep that oath, to preserve, protect, and defend 
the Constitution of the United States in the forefront of our 
minds, what with the political pressures and reelections always 
around the corner.
    But, Mr. Chairman, our witnesses today, like every law 
enforcement officer across the country, took the same oath we 
did. On January 6th, the temptation to compromise their oaths 
didn't come in the form of a campaign check or a threat from 
leadership or an all-caps tweet. It came in the form of a 
violent mob.
    While we on this dais were whisked away from the danger, 
heroes like those here stood their posts before it and paid the 
price, and we are only here now because you guys were here 
then.
    Therefore, it's altogether fitting that we begin our 
investigation of January's lawless attack against the 
Constitution with these four men who made sure that the attack 
did not succeed, with those who helped to ensure that democracy 
held. I think it's important to remember that you are four with 
stories, but there are hundreds with stories as well that you 
represent, where you sit.
    Officer Fanone, I know your passion is to make sure that 
D.C. Metro gets the credit it's due, and I thank you. I know 
that you represent the hundreds of officers, like Officer 
Hodges, that responded to that call.
    What I want to ask: Does this feel like old history to any 
of the four of you? Sometimes we hear out there: It's time to 
move on, right? It's been 6 whole months, time to move on.
    Does this feel like old history and time to move on? You 
can just say yes or no.
    Sergeant Gonell. No, sir.
    Officer Fanone. Nope.
    Officer Hodges. There can be no moving on without 
accountability. There can be no healing until we make sure this 
can't happen again.
    Officer Dunn. I echo that. How do you move on without 
correcting what happened?
    Mr. Kinzinger. Let me ask you all--one of the narratives 
out there--and, Officer Fanone, it triggered something in your 
testimony when you said it. So, there has been this idea that 
this was not an armed insurrection, as if somehow that is 
justification for what happened. We know the hugs and kisses. 
We know it was BLM and Antifa, right? Of course, then you 
would, I'm sure, want to investigate that if that's the case.
    Now we've heard maybe the FBI actually had started this. 
But one of the ones that has always held was that this was not 
an armed insurrection.
    Officer Dunn, you mentioned that those that stormed the 
Capitol were very well-organized and trained. Let me ask you--
and I'll ask actually to all four of you. Officer Hodges, I 
know this was part of your job initially before you responded 
to the Capitol. If, in the middle of all that melee, you see 
somebody with a gun in that crowd, would you be able to go out, 
apprehend, arrest them, read them their rights, and go through 
that process, or was the mission at the moment survival and 
defense of the Capitol?
    So, I'm asking: Is it possible that people maybe had guns? 
We've seen that actually there were, but this idea that, wow, 
people weren't arrested with guns. At the time, it was raw 
survival.
    We can just start on the left. Let me ask you: What's your 
response to that?
    Sergeant Gonell. For those people who continue to downplay 
this violent attack on our democracy and officers, I suggest 
them to look at the videos and the footage, whatnot, because 
common things were used as weapons, like a baseball bat, a 
hockey stick, a rebar, a flagpole, including the American flag, 
pepper spray, bear spray.
    So, you name it. You had all these items and things that 
were thrown at us and used to attack us. Those are weapons. No 
matter--if it is a pen, the way they were using these items, it 
was to hurt officers. It was to hurt police officers. Their 
intent was not to say, ``Hey, let me go and find the 
Republicans or the Democrats in there, or the Independents.'' 
It was every single body that was here in this building, in the 
Capitol, that their intent was to get them out and hurt them.
    It would have been a much different outcome had we not 
stopped them, especially at the Lower West Terrace entrance. 
Even though, at that time, we didn't know that there were other 
breaches in the Capitol, our intent was to stop whoever was 
trying to come in through that door.
    Those weapons that were used, those were common items, but 
the way they were using it was as weapons.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Let me ask, too, in kind of my final 
moments, Sergeant Gonell--Officer Hodges, you were a Virginia 
guardsman, I believe--fellow guardsmen?
    Officer Hodges. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Kinzinger. At any time in your service in the 
military--as you know, I'm an Air Guardsman--and, Sergeant 
Gonell, you specifically mentioned your time in Iraq. At any 
time in your military service, did you change how you defended 
the person to your left or right or how you trained with them 
based on their political affiliation----
    Officer Hodges. No. Not at all.
    Mr. Kinzinger [continuing]. Whether it was in a war or 
anything?
    Officer Hodges. No.
    Sergeant Gonell. No, sir. The way I viewed it at the time 
was I'm an American, and the person right next to me is an 
American, and I would do everything possible for me to defend 
him and the country at that time.
    Mr. Kinzinger. You guys did that. You guys did that in the 
blue.
    Sergeant Gonell. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Kinzinger. I want to say that is the mission of this 
Committee. We may have our deep differences on other policy 
issues, but we are all Americans today, and we thank you for 
holding that line.
    Officer Dunn. Congressman, if I may? If I may respond to 
Congressman----
    Mr. Kinzinger. Please.
    Officer Dunn. When you asked about the armed part, when the 
officers--assumed officers--showed me what appeared to be a 
police badge, I don't know too many police officers--this is 
just me being a police officer for 13 years--that carry their 
badge and don't carry a gun with them.
    We look on their hips. You see a print. I didn't see that 
it was a gun, but a reasonable police officer will believe that 
that's a gun on their hip.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Just to quickly be specific, a print is 
basically what looks like the outline of a gun?
    Officer Dunn. That's correct.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you, witnesses.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. 
Schiff.
    Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I was on the House floor from the beginning of the joint 
session until the attack and evacuation by the Capitol Police, 
and I want to thank you. I'm convinced that one of the lives 
you saved that day might very well have been my own. We are all 
greatly in your debt. You are all heroes.
    Sergeant Gonell, Representative Lofgren asked you about 
your experience, and I won't ask you to repeat that. I would 
like the public to see, from your perspective, some video, if 
you're comfortable with my showing it?
    Sergeant Gonell. Yes, that's fine.
    Mr. Schiff. If the clerk could roll the video, please.

    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Voice. You're going to die tonight.
    Voice. You gotta lock `em together. Here, like this. Arms through 
these shields. You know how to put your arms? Do we have a hard platoon 
guy here?
    Voice. Yeah.
    Voice. Show them how to lock the shields together and hold the 
shields.
    Voice. We need an avenue of escape, so wait to lock this one in. Go 
ahead.
    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Gas! Gas! Gas! Gas! Gas! Gas!
    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Back up! No, stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!
    Crowd. [unintelligible]

    Mr. Schiff. Sergeant, in that video, one of the first 
things you hear is someone saying, ``You're going to die 
tonight.'' You described in your opening statement being 
crushed by rioters. You could feel yourself losing oxygen, 
thinking this was how your life was going to end, trampled to 
death defending the Capitol.
    It's hard for any of us to understand what you went through 
even though we were there. It's even harder, I think, for 
people around the country to understand what that was like.
    Can you tell us what you were thinking when you were losing 
oxygen and thought that might be the end?
    Sergeant Gonell. My rationale there and the way I was 
thinking, like we can't let these people in, no matter what, 
even if it costs my life. That bloody hand that you saw, that's 
me in there. Both my hands were bleeding bad. At no point in 
time did I stop, to consider to stop, because the attacks were 
so relentless. I was thinking I need to survive this, if 
possible, but I'm willing to sacrifice myself to prevent the 
attackers from coming in.
    I swore an oath to protect the public, the Members of 
Congress, and the United States Constitution and whatnot. 
That's what I was doing that day, regardless of my personal 
safety, along with everybody else who was there that day.
    They were calling us traitors, even though they were the 
ones committing the treasonous act that day. It is devastating 
and demoralizing for people, whoever party it is, to call this 
attack and continue to minimize it like nothing happened. It 
was an attempted coup that was happening at the Capitol that 
day. If it had been another country, the United States would 
have sent help.
    People need to understand the severity of, and the 
magnitude of, the event that was happening that day. We were 
all fighting for our lives, to give them--to give you guys--a 
chance to go home to your family, to escape. Now the same 
people who we helped, the same people who we gave them the 
borrowed time to get to safety, now they're attacking us. 
They're attacking our characters. They're attacking Officer 
Harry's character, people who never served in the military or 
in law enforcement. It's a disgrace.
    My actions that day was to save you guys, regardless of my 
personal safety. I still continue to want to do that today, 
tomorrow, and as long as I'm permitted to do it, and if it is 
demanded of myself to do that in the future.
    Mr. Schiff. Sergeant, this obviously had a deep impact on 
you, all of you, but it's also had a big impact on your family. 
You described how, when you got home, you couldn't even hug 
your wife because you had chemicals all over you. You wanted to 
go back. It seems like, no sooner had you gotten home, you 
wanted to go back.
    Sergeant Gonell. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Schiff. I think I read that you said you felt guilty.
    Did your wife want you to go back?
    Sergeant Gonell. No.
    Mr. Schiff. Why did you go back, and what was your 
conversation with her about that?
    Sergeant Gonell. After I took a shower, I spent about 10 
minutes hugging her and my son. I told her, ``I've got to get 
some sleep because I've got to go back to work.''
    She said, ``No, you're not. You're hurt.''
    I said, ``No. I'm still able to continue to carry out my 
duties.'' By 8 o'clock, I was already on my way back despite 
her concerns for my safety.
    My sense of duty for the country, for the Constitution, at 
that time was bigger than even my love for my wife and my son. 
I put that ahead.
    For me, it's confounding that some people who have sworn an 
oath, elected officials, including people in the military, that 
I seen at the Lower West Terrace fighting against me, they 
swore an oath, and they're forgetting about the oath. They're 
not putting the country before the party, and that's what 
bothers me the most because I, as a former soldier, I know what 
that inherits, that oath, and I'm still willing to do that.
    We've got people right now in front of the Justice 
Department asking to release some of the very same people even 
though we are testifying about the trauma and the agony, 
everything that happened to us. It's pathetic, and they 
shouldn't be elected officials anymore.
    Mr. Schiff. Officer Dunn, you described talking to your 
fellow Black officer about what you went through and 
experiencing those racial epithets. You asked a question, I 
think, that I've been haunted by ever since: Is this America? 
I'm very interested to know your thoughts on the answer to that 
question.
    Is this America, what you saw?
    Officer Dunn. Well, thank you for your question.
    You know, I've done a few interviews before about my 
experiences that day, and I said that it was a war that we 
fought, and a war is composed of a bunch of different battles. 
Everybody, even sitting at this table, fought a different 
battle that day, but it was all for the same war.
    As Black officers, I believe we fought a different battle 
also. The fact that we had our race attacked and just because 
of the way we look, you know, to answer your question, frankly, 
I guess it is America. It shouldn't be, but I guess that's the 
way that things are.
    I don't condone it. I don't like it, but, I mean, if you 
look at our history, of American history, things are--countries 
existed because they beat--they won a war, or colonies and 
State lines and boundaries exist because of violence and wars 
like--so I guess it sounds silly, but I guess it is American.
    But it's not the side of America that I like. It's not the 
side that any of us here represent. We represent the good side 
of America, the people that actually believe in decency--human 
decency. We appeal to just the good in people. That's what we 
want to see.
    Whether we disagree with how they vote on a bill about 
infrastructure, everybody wants the right thing, people to do 
okay.
    So, that's why I'm glad to see this Committee composed of 
Republican Members also. So, that's encouraging. It's 
encouraging. So, that's the side of America that I say, yes, 
this is America. This is the side that I like and the side that 
I acknowledge.
    Mr. Schiff. Officer, thank you. I believe in this country, 
and I believe in it because of people like you, who understand 
what the flag means and what our Constitution means and risk 
their lives to defend it.
    I'd like to think, as Amanda Gorman so eloquently said, 
that we're not broken; we're just unfinished. Because, if we're 
no longer committed to a peaceful transfer of power after 
elections if our side doesn't win, then God help us. If we deem 
elections illegitimate merely because they didn't go our way 
rather than trying to do better the next time, then God help 
us. If we're so driven by bigotry and hate that we attack our 
fellow citizens as traitors if they're born in another country 
or they don't look like us, then God help us.
    But I have faith because of folks like you.
    Adam, I didn't expect this would be quite so emotional 
either, but it must be an Adam thing today.
    But I'm so grateful to all of you.
    With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. 
Aguilar.
    Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Members of the 
Committee.
    Gentlemen, like my colleagues, I want to extend my 
gratitude and appreciation for your service on January 6th and 
since then, what you've had to go through.
    I was on the House floor, like my colleagues, on the 6th 
when I was told that a violent mob had breached the Capitol. 
It's because of your service--it's because of you and your 
colleagues--that we're here today, because you were literally 
the last line of physical defense, laying your life on the line 
for democracy.
    My time will be limited, so I'll be asking questions of 
Officer Hodges and Sergeant Gonell, primarily about the weapons 
that you observed and how they were used.
    Officer Hodges, you were in a unique position because you 
were down Constitution. You were closer to the White House to 
start, as you indicated in your testimony. During the morning 
and the early afternoon on the 6th, what did you hear 
specifically about guns and explosives that had been discovered 
by your fellow officers?
    Officer Hodges. I was listening on the radio to our gun 
recovery unit, working the crowd. What we usually try to do is 
wait for the crowd to disperse before making arrests. That way, 
we don't set off the crowd, set off a riot. So, I think they 
may have identified people of interest that they never got a 
chance to address. They were working the crowd to try and 
confirm reports of firearms on certain people, but it's also 
difficult to do given the nature of the crowd and how many 
there were.
    When I heard our EOD confirm the existence of a device, 
there was only one thing it could be. You know, explosives. 
But, in 42, we had our own objective, our own mission, so we 
would scan the crowd, but these people--they know how to 
conceal their weapons. So, on a big avenue like Constitution, 
it's difficult to detect the print or, if it's in a backpack, 
there is really not much you can do.
    But we continue to scan the crowd and find what we could, 
but mostly it was up to our other units to make those 
discoveries.
    Mr. Aguilar. In response to Representative Cheney, you 
talked about the gear that the individuals were wearing. So, 
combined with what you saw visually with what you had heard on 
the radio about guns, that all kind of led you to give pause 
about the next few hours, correct?
    Officer Hodges. Absolutely. You know, once we got to the 
Capitol and we were fighting, I was wondering, how many more 
bombs are there? What's the trigger? Is it going to be a cell 
phone? Is it on a timer? How many guns are there in this crowd? 
If we start firing, is that the signal to them to set off the 
explosives, however many there are in the city? Is that the 
signal for them to break out their firearms and shoot back?
    So, that's the reason why I didn't shoot anyone and I 
imagine why many others didn't, because, like I said before, 
there were over 9,000 of the terrorists out there with an 
unknown number of firearms, and a couple hundred of us maybe.
    So, if that turned into a firefight, we would have lost, 
and this was a fight we couldn't afford to lose.
    Mr. Aguilar. I want to play a video, and I'd ask that 
everyone watching pay attention specifically to the weapons the 
rioters were using. You can hear someone yell, ``Get your 
machete.'' You can see officers being attacked with flagpoles, 
flares, and gas canisters.
    If we could roll the video.

    Police Radio Transmission. We're still taking rocks, bottles, and 
pieces of flag and metal pole.
    Police Radio Transmission. Cruiser 50, the crowd is using munitions 
against us. They have bear spray in the crowd. Bear spray in the crowd.
    Voice. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Get your machete. Get your machete.
    Voice. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Pull back. Pull back.
    Voice. [unintelligible]

    Mr. Aguilar. Sergeant Gonell, in the video, we just saw 
someone throw a large speaker. Was that directed your way?
    Sergeant Gonell. I was further inside. That was afterward, 
toward the end--before they got clear. When they threw the 
speaker at me I was further inside the tunnel.
    Mr. Aguilar. What types of weapons did you see used against 
your fellow officers?
    Sergeant Gonell. Police shields, police baton, the 
sledgehammer that you saw on that video, flagpoles, tasers, 
pepper spray, bear spray, rebars, bats, PVC pipes, copper 
pipes, rocks, table legs broken down, furniture broken down, 
the guardrails for the inauguration stage, cones, four-by-four, 
any weapons, any items that they could get their hands on that 
day.
    Mr. Aguilar. You were further down the corridor, but a 
speaker was thrown at you, and it hit your foot. Is that 
correct?
    Sergeant Gonell. Correct, sir.
    Mr. Aguilar. We have a photo----
    Sergeant Gonell. It was thrown my way, and then, when it 
landed, it hit somebody else, and it hit my foot.
    Mr. Aguilar. I think we have the photo of your foot here as 
well that we'd like to show.
    Sergeant Gonell. That is correct.
    Mr. Aguilar. Can you tell me how you're doing? You 
mentioned in your opening statement about your continued 
physical therapy related to the foot. Can you tell me how 
you're doing?
    Sergeant Gonell. The foot, I had several conditions--one is 
fusion on No. 1 metatarsal, tarsal--metatarsal. Then there was 
the hammer toe as a result of the hit. Then the second and 
third digit also got damage. In order to fix one, they need to 
correct the big toe to stabilize. If not, later on in the 
future, I would have had the same problem returning.
    It is very painful. With a lot of patience and 
determination that I had gone through, I still have the same 
problems in terms of pain and stiffness, whatnot.
    The doctor last week, on Tuesday, told me that I'm going to 
need surgery on my shoulder because I have a labrum tear that 
has not healed even more than 6 months later. Possibly my 
rotator cuff also is going to need some work.
    So, you're talking about 8 months to a year more of 
physical treatment and rehab.
    Mr. Aguilar. Sergeant, you're an immigrant from the 
Dominican Republic, a naturalized U.S. citizen, and you 
mentioned how individuals had zeroed in on your race that day.
    Sergeant Gonell. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Aguilar. Can you tell me how that made you feel?
    Sergeant Gonell. Before, or right after, MPD arrived with 
the fluorescent mountain bike unit, I was on the front line, 
and apparently they seen--even through my mask--they saw my 
skin color and said, ``You're not even American.''
    Regardless whether I was in the military, they don't know 
that, but they yelling and saying all these things to me. I 
mean, when I heard that, I wasn't even thinking about any 
racial stuff. I was like, ``Okay. You don't know that for a 
fact,'' so I'm not even entertaining that.
    But it's--just like Officer Harry Dunn, it takes time for 
you to process that, and you only realize what was happening 
after you go back and see it from a different point in time 
because I only saw that recently. But, for me, I wasn't even 
thinking of it. I'm there to stop them regardless. I'm not 
thinking what they were yelling in terms of my skin color or my 
race. I know I'm an American former soldier and a police 
officer. I didn't take that into account when I was defending 
all of you guys.
    Mr. Aguilar. Officer Hodges, you characterized the attack 
on the Capitol as a white nationalist insurrection.
    Can you describe what you saw that led you to label the 
attack that way?
    Officer Hodges. The crowd was overwhelmingly white males, 
usually a little bit older, middle-aged, older, but some 
younger. I think, out of the entire time I was there, I saw 
just two women and two Asian males. Everyone else was white 
males.
    They didn't say anything especially xenophobic to me, but 
to my Black colleagues and anyone who is not white, and some of 
them would try to recruit me. One of them came up to me and 
said, ``Are you my brother?''
    There are many, many known organizations with ties to white 
supremacy who had a presence there, you know, like Three 
Percenters, Oath Keepers, that kind of thing. Everyone I've 
ever--people who associate with Donald Trump are, I find, more 
likely to subscribe to that kind of belief system.
    Mr. Aguilar. I want to thank the four of you for taking the 
very difficult step of sharing your stories and your 
recollections of the threats and violence that you endured. No 
one should have to experience what you went through.
    This Committee will continue its work to give a complete 
accounting of what happened, to protect further officers, and 
to amplify the stories that you've shared today.
    Thank you so much for being here.
    I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from Florida, Mrs. 
Murphy.
    Mrs. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you to the witnesses for your testimony today, for 
your bravery on January 6th, and for your service to our 
country.
    I know all of you endured a great deal on January 6th, and 
I know we've watched a lot of difficult video in this testimony 
so far, but I hope it's okay with you if I show a brief video 
of what Officer Hodges experienced that day.
    Can you please cue the video?

    Voices. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Hold it, baby. Hold it, baby.
    Voices. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Hold it, baby.
    Voice. Back up! Back up!
    Crowd. [screaming]
    Voice. Interlock the shields. Interlock shields.
    Voice. Watch out! Watch out!
    Voice. Interlock the shields. Shields!
    Crowd. Heave-ho. Heave-ho. Heave-ho.
    Officer Hodges. [screaming]

    Mrs. Murphy. Officer Hodges, I know that must have been 
difficult to watch, but I really think it's important for the 
American people to see that because that's the beginning of the 
kind of accountability that this Committee is committed to in 
order for us to do what you said, moving forward as a country.
    You know, January 6th was an attack on our democracy. It 
was an attack on the peaceful transfer of power, and it was an 
attack on this Capitol Building. But it was also an attack on 
real people. Most people don't know this, and I don't think 
even you know this, but your actions had a profound impact on 
me.
    So, at 3 p.m. on January 6th, while you were holding back 
the mob at the Lower West Terrace entrance, I was holed up with 
Congresswoman Kathleen Rice in a small office about 40 paces 
from the tunnel that you all were in. That's about from the 
distance where I'm sitting here on the dais to that back wall.
    From that office, in close proximity to where you all held 
the line, I listened to you struggle. I listened to you yelling 
out to one another. I listened to you care for one another, 
directing people back to the makeshift eyewash station that was 
at the end of our hall.
    Then I listened to people coughing, having difficulty 
breathing. But I watched you and heard you all get back into 
the fight. I think Congresswoman Rice and I were the only 
Members of Congress to be down there on that Lower West 
Terrace.
    You know, we had taken refuge in that office because we 
thought for sure being in the basement at the heart of the 
Capitol was the safest place we could be, and it turned out we 
ended up at the center of the storm.
    Officer Fanone, you had said, you know, you were 250 feet 
off of that tunnel, and you felt certain that they were going 
to kill you. Imagine if they had caught the two Members of 
Congress that were just 40 feet from where you all were.
    I know, Sergeant Gonell and Officer Hodges, you both said 
that you didn't realize that other parts of the Capitol had 
been breached, but you really felt like you were the last line 
of defense. Well, I'm telling you that you were our last line 
of defense.
    During the exact period of time, Officer Hodges, in that 
video where you were sacrificing your body to hold that door, 
it gave Congresswoman Rice and I and the Capitol Police 
Officers who had been sent to extract us the freedom of 
movement on that hallway to escape down the other end of that 
hallway. I shudder to think about what would have happened had 
you not held that line.
    You know, I have two young children. I have a 10-year-old 
son and a 7-year-old daughter, and they're the light of my 
life. The reason I was able to hug them again was because of 
the courage that you and your fellow officers showed that day.
    So, just a really heartfelt thank you.
    I think it's important for everybody, though, to remember 
that the main reason rioters didn't harm any Members of 
Congress was because they didn't encounter any Members of 
Congress. They didn't encounter any Members of Congress because 
law enforcement officers did your jobs that day, and you did it 
well.
    I think, without you, what would have been a terrible and--
what was a terrible and tragic day--would have been even more 
terrible and more tragic.
    So, just very grateful for all of you.
    Now, I'd like to talk a little bit about that video. You've 
talked a little bit about it in your opening statement, but can 
you walk us through what is happening in that scene? My 
understanding is that is a mix of your body camera as well as 
video from other vantage points.
    Officer Hodges. That's correct. At the beginning, you see 
me walking into the Capitol. That was after we were driven off 
of the West Terrace. I think you see me spit on the floor 
unfortunately. I was trying to clear my lungs and mouth of all 
the CS and OC. You see me preparing my gas mask, donning it, 
ready to get back out there.
    I followed the noise to the tunnel where it was just, you 
know, wall-to-wall people, packed, fighting with everything 
they had. It was full of OC and CS gas at the time, and I 
believe that the smoke was from a fire extinguisher. You could 
see all the residue on the officers who were there.
    It's like I said before. You know, they outnumbered us 50-
something to 1, so it didn't matter how many we defeated. We 
just had to hold on. We couldn't let anyone through, and they 
always had essentially an infinite number of replacements. 
They'd say, you know, ``We need fresh patriots up here,'' and 
there would be more.
    So, we just had to hold until someone came to help.
    Like I said, once I got out to the front, I didn't want any 
more pressure on the officers behind me, so I tried to insert 
myself to where I could use the door frame, brace myself, and 
push forward so I could take back more territory. 
Unfortunately, that backfired.
    So, once we lost ground, I was unable to retreat. I was 
crushed up against the door frame, and, in my most vulnerable 
moments, the man in front of me took advantage and beat me in 
the head; ripped off my gas mask, straining my neck, skull; 
split my lip open; just everything he could.
    At that point, I recognized that, if I stayed there, then I 
was going to pass out from lack of oxygen or get dragged out 
into the crowd and end up like Fanone.
    So, I called for help. You know, I tried to make it clear 
that, you know, my position was untenable, I had to fall back. 
Thankfully the other officers heard that, were able to get me 
out of there, and to the back where I recuperated as best I 
could before I got back out there again.
    Mrs. Murphy. Well, it's clear that you suffered immense 
pain from the assault. It's clear that you were outnumbered, 
and yet you just said you got back out there again. Tell me 
what's worth all of that pain? What was worth it? What were you 
fighting for that day?
    Officer Hodges. Democracy. You were 40 feet away, 40 yards, 
whatever. Especially with the razor-thin margins of Democrats 
and Republicans in the House and Senate, if any single one 
person was kidnapped or killed, which I have no doubt in my 
mind was what they intended, that would affect the outcome of 
legislation and all your duties for years to come. And that's 
just one person. What if, you know, more than one person? The 
difference would be even greater than what should be and will 
be.
    And obviously, for each other. You know, your immediate 
concern is the well-being of your colleagues, the other 
officers who were there fighting beside me. I think I can speak 
for everyone when I say we worry about each other more than 
ourselves. That's just in our nature. It's part of why you 
become a police officer.
    So, like when Fanone said he was trying to find out who 
needs help and no one would volunteer, that's just an example 
of that kind of a mindset that we have. So, it was for 
democracy; it was for the men and women of the House and 
Senate; it was for each other; and it was for the future of the 
country.
    Mrs. Murphy. Thank you, Officer Hodges, and thank you all 
for defending democracy, and I appreciate your testimony, and I 
appreciate your continued service.
    With that, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentlelady yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. 
Raskin.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Sergeant Gonell, Officer Fanone, Officer Hodges, Officer 
Dunn, you are great law enforcement officers and a hero to law 
enforcement officers across the country. You are great public 
servants. You are a hero to public servants across the country. 
But you are great Americans, and you are heroes to all of 
America. Long after you are gone, you will be remembered as 
heroes to our country, along with your fellow officers.
    Those who attacked you and those who beat you are fascist 
traitors to our country and will be remembered forever as 
fascist traitors.
    Now, Officer Dunn, I've got to start with you, because 
you're my constituent, and you are the pride of Maryland today 
because of the way you stood up for the Capitol and for the 
Congress and for our democracy.
    But you said something fascinating in your testimony. You 
said you'd never seen anybody physically assault a single 
officer before in your 13 years on the force, much less 
thousands and thousands of people attacking hundreds of 
officers. So, how did you experience that when it first 
happened?
    Officer Dunn. So, with regards to the never seeing, I'm 
sure I've seen videos of officers being attacked and people 
resisting arrest, but to clarify, it's never been the assault 
on the scale that we have seen like that before. I just wanted 
to clarify that.
    Can you repeat your question for me?
    Mr. Raskin. Well, it leads to my next one actually. You 
made a really interesting point. You said you'd seen protests 
for many, many years. You'd seen even civil disobedience for 
many years. There's an effort today to portray the events of 
January 6th like some kind of resurrection of Dr. King's march 
on Washington in 1963, you know.
    I've seen a lot of protests here too. I've seen the March 
for Our Lives that the young people did about gun violence. I 
see people marching for D.C. Statehood, arguing for their 
rights to representation in Congress, and I've seen civil 
disobedience. But was this like any of those rallies or marches 
or demonstrations you'd ever seen? If not, what was different 
about it?
    Officer Dunn. So, the marches that you--the protests that 
you specifically talked about, I'll go a step further and talk 
about the ones that had the potential to be not-so peaceful. 
You had the Million Man March rally, the 20th anniversary of 
it. There was a lot of opposition to that. You had the Klan 
that came up here. You had people that were pro-guns that 
wanted to come up here. So, all of those had the potential to 
be very violent and, frankly, quite deadly, but they did not.
    This wasn't the first time that, if I can just use this 
quote, that the MAGA people came up here to the Capitol before. 
They were in the District of Columbia before. There were some 
skirmishes, but it was never the attempt to overthrow 
democracy. I think this was maybe their second or third time 
that they had come up, on January 6th, and even then, as 
belligerent as they were, it didn't account to this violence.
    So, the only difference that I see in that is that they had 
marching orders, so to say. When people feel emboldened by 
people in power, they assume that they're right. Like, one of 
the scariest things about January 6th is that the people that 
were there, even to this day, think that they were right. They 
think that they were right, and that makes for a scary recipe 
for the future of this country.
    I think that's why it's very important that you all take 
this Committee seriously and get to the bottom of why this 
happened, and let's make it never happen again.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you.
    Officer Fanone, I think you've given our Committee our 
marching orders today, which is to hold the line. You held the 
line, and now we've got to hold the line. So, I want to thank 
you for that. If we show a fraction of the courage and the 
valor that you all demonstrated on January 6th, then we will 
hold the line in this Committee.
    But I want to ask you about holding the line. I want to go 
back to this question of weapons so we can clear this up, 
because there are still some people who are saying that the 
insurrectionists were unarmed. I wonder what your reaction is 
to that, because we've heard about--well, first of all, rampant 
baseball bats, lead pipes, Confederate battle flags and so on, 
and what about the question of firearms. So, what is your 
reaction generally to this proposition that they weren't armed?
    Officer Fanone. First and foremost, I would say that the 
implements that you just described are most certainly weapons. 
With regards to firearms, I know that in the days immediately 
before the January 6th insurrection and January 6th itself, 
firearms were recovered by law enforcement from individuals in 
Washington, DC, who were believed to have been participants or 
at least those who were planning to participate in the January 
6th insurrection. Yes, those were firearms, handguns, and such.
    Mr. Raskin. Forgive me for these questions, but I've got to 
ask you, apparently in some nether regions of the internet it's 
being said that you, Officer Fanone, maybe were mistaken for 
Antifa and that's why you were nearly beaten to death that day 
and carried into the crowd. Is there any way you think you were 
mistaken for Antifa?
    Officer Fanone. Well, I was in full uniform. I was, like I 
said, wearing a uniform shirt adorned with the Metropolitan 
Police Department's patch. I had my badge on, until somebody 
ripped it off my chest. I do not believe I was mistaken for a 
member of Antifa.
    Mr. Raskin. You mentioned in your testimony that there's 
some people who would prefer that all of this go away, that we 
not have an investigation, let's let bygones be bygones. But 
you seem pretty determined to get the country to focus on this. 
Why is that so important to you?
    Officer Fanone. Well, first and foremost, because of the 
actions of officers who responded there that day, specifically 
from my department, but also from the U.S. Capitol Police and 
some of the surrounding jurisdictions. You know, downplaying 
the events of that day is also downplaying those officers' 
response.
    Like Sergeant Gonell said, and some of the officers, part 
of the healing process from recovering from the traumatic 
events of that day is having the Nation accept the fact that 
that day happened.
    Mr. Raskin. Some people were saying that, as public 
servants, you all should not be speaking out; that cops, 
firefighters, teachers should just serve the public but should 
not speak out as citizens. What do you think about that, 
Officer Fanone?
    Officer Fanone. Well, I disagree. I've been outspoken 
throughout my career, never to this magnitude. As an undercover 
officer and a narcotics officer, I've preferred obscurity in 
the public eye. However, this event is something that we have 
not experienced in our lifetimes.
    Mr. Raskin. Officer Hodges, I read your testimony 
carefully. I hope every American reads your testimony. But I 
noted that you referred to ``terrorists'' or ``terrorism'' 15 
different times to describe the people who were assaulting 
officers, dragging them through the crowd, stealing their 
weapons, smashing them over the head, gouging eyes, and so on.
    However, some of our colleagues have been calling the 
violent insurrectionists not terrorists but tourists. Why do 
you call the attackers terrorists, and what do you think about 
our colleagues who think we should call them tourists?
    Officer Hodges. Well, if that's what American tourists are 
like, I can see why foreign countries don't like American 
tourists. But I can see why someone would take issue with the 
title of ``terrorist.'' It's gained a lot of notoriety in our 
vocabulary in the past few decades, and we like to believe 
that, no, that couldn't happen here, no domestic terrorism, no 
home-grown threats.
    But I came prepared. U.S. Code Title 18, part 1, chapter 
113, B as in Brown, section 2331: The term ``domestic 
terrorism'' means activities that involve acts dangerous to 
human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the 
United States or of any State; and B, appear to be intended to 
intimidate or coerce a civilian population; or to influence the 
policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to 
affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, 
assassination, or kidnapping, and occur primarily within the 
territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
    Mr. Raskin. Well, thank you for that.
    I had one final question for Sergeant Gonell, but it looks 
like my time is up, so I yield back to you.
    Chairman Thompson. The Chair will give the gentleman an 
opportunity to ask his question.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Chairman.
    Are there questions, Sergeant Gonell, that you hope we can 
answer as a Committee about the causes of the attack, the 
nature of the attack, and what happened in the weeks prior to 
January 6th as we develop our work plan moving forward?
    Sergeant Gonell. I think, in my opinion, we do need to get 
to the bottom of who incited, who brought those people here, 
why the people were made to believe that the process was 
rigged, along those lines.
    But going back to what Hodges says, I had, in my 15 years 
of service, I had given a tour to thousands of people at the 
Capitol, as an officer, as a sergeant, and even in plainclothes 
uniform. At no point in time did I ever get attacked.
    I don't know how you call an attack on police officers a 
tour. When you see me bleeding, my hands, when you see all the 
officers getting concussions, getting maimed, getting fingers 
shattered, eye gouged, it's undescribable. You're defending the 
undefensible, and you demoralize, not just the rank and file, 
but the future recruits that we are trying to get.
    What do you think people considering becoming law 
enforcement officers think when they see elected leaders 
downplaying this? Why would I risk my life for them when they 
don't even care? They don't care what happened to the public. 
They don't care what happened to the officers. All they care is 
their job, their position.
    If they don't have the courage to put their job on the line 
because they want to feed some lies or whatnot to feed 
somebody's ego or a ``like'' for a tweet, that's not putting 
the country first.
    We are willing to risk our life, but at least make it worth 
it. We do that regardless, whether you're a Republican, 
Democrat, Independent. We don't care. When radio call or 
dispatch sends a call, we don't ask, ``Hey, by the way, before 
I treat you, before I take care of you, are you a Republican or 
Democrat or Independent?'' We don't. We just respond.
    Normally, under any other circumstances, we just stay shut. 
We don't talk about politics. We don't talk about what happened 
to us. But this is bigger than that. You downplay an event that 
happened to the country itself, to democracy, to the rule of 
law.
    You don't care about people who claim that they are pro-law 
enforcement, pro-police, pro-law and order, and then yet when 
they have the chance and the opportunity to do something about 
it, to hold people accountable, you don't. You pass the bucket 
like nothing happened.
    It's so devastating for recruiting. Yes, we need bodies 
right now, but this makes it harder, especially when we're 
trying to attract the talent that we need, people who are 
willing to risk their lives to protect you guys.
    Mr. Raskin. Well, thank you very much, Sergeant Gonell.
    Mr. Chairman, you know, the question was asked by Officer 
Dunn: Is this America? I think these gentlemen embody the 
spirit of America, and we must do justice to their sacrifice in 
the work of our Committee.
    I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. No question about it.
    The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from Virginia, Mrs. 
Luria.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    I want to say to the four officers here today that I'm 
grateful for your service, for you sharing your stories, for 
your willingness to speak to the Members of this Committee and 
to the American people about the horrific things that you 
experienced on January 6th, truly experienced in defense of our 
democracy.
    Sergeant Gonell, we talked earlier, and you mentioned the 
many times that you took the oath, both to become a naturalized 
citizen, to join the Army, to serve as an officer of the 
Capitol Police force.
    Officer Hodges, you mentioned as well as a National 
Guardsman and as a police officer. And something I can't share 
with you, the horrific experiences that you had that day, but 
all of us having taken that oath, and I took it when I was 17 
and joined the Navy and over 2 decades.
    Sergeant Gonell, when you mentioned and compared this 
earlier to the experiences that you had in Iraq, that in a war 
zone you didn't feel like you felt that day, can you share that 
with us in a little more detail what was going through your 
head, your thoughts about what you had experienced defending 
our Nation on foreign soil and then being here in the heart of 
our Nation in our Capitol and being assaulted the way that you 
were?
    Sergeant Gonell. It is very disappointing in terms of, like 
when I was at the Lower West Terrace, and I saw many officers 
fighting for their lives against people, rioters, our own 
citizens turning against us--people who had the thin blue line 
on their chest, or another rioter with a Marine hat that says 
``veteran,'' or any other type of military paraphernalia or 
whatnot. And then, they're accusing us of betraying the oath 
when they're the ones betraying the oath.
    When I was in Iraq, the sense of camaraderie, it didn't 
matter whether you were white, Black, Spanish, Middle Eastern, 
we all knew what we were fighting for. My experience there--
there were times that yes, I was scared of going on convoys or 
doing my supply mission to local Iraqi population, because at 
any point we were possibly ambushed or getting shot at. We knew 
the risk.
    But here it was simultaneously over, over, and over, our 
own citizens; why they were attacking us, because we're 
defending the very institution that they are claiming that 
they're trying to save.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you for sharing that. I know it's been 
difficult today as we've watched these images from the Capitol, 
but I did want to share one more video. But this time I would 
ask people, you could even like close your eyes and listen 
without watching, just listen to what is being said as these 
brave men were being overrun.

    Voice. Traitors, how do you live with yourself?
    Voice. Die! Die, traitors!
    Voice. You should be mad too. Fucking traitors!
    Voice. You're on the wrong side of freedom. You're on the wrong 
side!
    Crowd. Fuck-the-blue! Fuck-the-blue! Fuck-the-blue!
    Voice. Fuck you guys! You can't even call yourselves American. You 
broke your fucking oath today. 1776!
    Voice. You're a traitor.
    Crowd. Traitor! Traitor! Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!

    Mrs. Luria. So, Officer Fanone, I wanted to turn to you. 
When you hear the rioters chanting things in this video, things 
like, F the blue, you can't even call yourself an American, you 
are on the wrong side of freedom, can you share how that makes 
you feel?
    Officer Fanone. Again, I think--you know, my response that 
day--and at no point that day did I ever think about the 
politics of that crowd. Even the things that were being said 
did not resonate in the midst of that chaos. But what did 
resonate was the fact that thousands of Americans were 
attacking police officers who were simply there doing their 
job, and that they were there to disrupt Members of Congress 
who were doing their job.
    You know, in retrospect now, thinking about those events 
and the things that were said, it's disgraceful that members of 
our Government, I believe, were responsible for inciting that 
behavior and then continue to propagate those statements, 
things like, you know, this was 1776, or that police officers 
who fought risked their lives and some who gave theirs were red 
coats and traitors. To me, those individuals are representative 
of the worst that America has to offer.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you.
    Thinking about the events that happened on January 6th and 
thinking about what led up to that day, I was reminded of a 
quote, a quote that I frequently heard used from Hemingway that 
asks, you know, how do these things happen? How do things like 
this happen? That quote, it's very short. It just says, 
``gradually and then suddenly.'' I think that our Founders 
understood that our Republic was very fragile and it would be 
tested, and it was tested here on January 6th.
    In 20 years, I don't want to look back on this moment and 
think that we saw these signs coming gradually, that these were 
signs that we ignored--signs that people thought were just 
isolated incidents or signs of things that we thought could 
never happen. I don't want to say to my daughter or, Sergeant 
Gonell, to your son or, Officer Fanone, to your 4 daughters, I 
don't want any of us to say that this happened gradually and 
then suddenly, and that some were just too worried about 
winning the next election to do something about it or too 
cowardly to seek the truth.
    So, that's the task before this Committee. I am sure that 
we'll be attacked by cowards--by those in the arena, those only 
in the stands--and that we'll be attacked by people who are 
more concerned about their own power than about the good of 
this country.
    But my oath, your oath, all of our oaths here today to 
protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, 
foreign and domestic, will be our guiding light for this 
investigation.
    As Officer Dunn said earlier, you said, ``we can never 
again allow our democracy to be put in peril.'' So, I will say 
that we will persevere, we will do what is right, and our 
Nation is truly ever grateful to you who held that line. Your 
actions on January 6th could very well have been what saved our 
democracy, and we thank you.
    Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    The gentleman from Maryland asked a question in terms of 
what you would expect this Committee to do in our body of work. 
Sergeant Gonell responded, but we didn't give the other three 
members an opportunity to kind of tell us, based on the last 
202 days of your life, what would you task this Committee in 
its body of work? What would you like to see us do?
    Officer Fanone, I'll start with you.
    Officer Fanone. Yes, sir. So, while I understand that there 
have been investigations into the events of January 6th, my 
understanding is that those have addressed some of the micro-
level concerns, that being the immediate security of the 
Capitol Building itself, also the force mobilization of 
officers that day, planning and preparation, and training and 
equipment concerns.
    A lot of, you know, the events of January 6th and the days 
preceding, I guess it's interesting, and from a law enforcement 
perspective, as a police officer, a lot of these events 
happened in plain sight. We had violent political rhetoric. We 
had the organization of a rally whose title was ``Stop the 
Steal,'' and that that rally occurred on January 6th, which I 
don't believe was a coincidence that on January 6th Members of 
Congress, you here in the room today, were charged with 
tallying the electoral votes and certifying the election of our 
President.
    In the academy, we learn about time, place, and 
circumstance in investigating potential crimes and those who 
may have committed them. So, the time, the place, and the 
circumstances of that rally, that rhetoric, and those events, 
to me, leads in the direction of our President and other 
Members not only of Congress and the Senate.
    But that is what I am looking for is an investigation into 
those actions and activities which may have resulted in the 
events of January 6th, and also whether or not there was 
collaboration between those Members, their staff, and these 
terrorists.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much.
    Officer Hodges.
    Officer Hodges. I think Fanone hit the nail on the head 
there. As patrol officers, we can only deal with the crimes 
that happen on the streets, the misdemeanors, and occasionally 
the violent felonies. But you guys are the only ones we've got 
to deal with crimes that occur above us.
    I need you guys to address if anyone in power had a role in 
this, if anyone in power coordinated or aided or abetted or 
tried to downplay, tried to prevent the investigation of this 
terrorist attack, because we can't do it. We're not allowed to. 
I think a majority of Americans are really looking forward to 
that as well.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    Officer Dunn.
    Officer Dunn. Thank you, Chairman. There's been a sentiment 
that's going around that says everybody's trying to make 
January 6th political. Well, it's not a secret that it was 
political. They literally were there to ``stop the steal.'' So, 
when people say it shouldn't be political, it is. It was and it 
is. There's no getting around that.
    Telling the truth shouldn't be hard. Fighting on January 
6th, that was hard. Showing up January 7th, that was hard. The 
8th, the 9th, the 10th, all the way till today, that was hard. 
When the fence came down, that was hard, when we lost our layer 
of protection that we had. The fence came down and still 
nothing has changed. Everything is different but nothing has 
changed.
    Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are being lauded as 
courageous heroes, and while I agree with that notion, why? 
Because they told the truth? Why is telling the truth hard? I 
guess in this America it is. Us four officers, we would do 
January 6th all over again. We wouldn't stay home because we 
knew what was going to happen; we would show up. That's 
courageous. That's heroic.
    So, what I ask from you all is to get to the bottom of what 
happened, and that includes, like I echo the sentiments of all 
of the other officers sitting here. I use an analogy to 
describe what I want as a hit man. If a hit man is hired and he 
kills somebody, the hit man goes to jail. But not only does the 
hit man go to jail, but the person who hired them does. There 
was an attack carried out on January 6th, and a hit man sent 
them. I want you to get to the bottom of that.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Thompson. Well, thank you. Very powerful comments, 
by the way.
    Sergeant Gonell. Chairman Thompson?
    Chairman Thompson. Yes.
    Sergeant Gonell. If I may, I also would like for you guys 
to give us the tools, or at least the things we need, to 
succeed, to continue protecting you guys. I think that's 
essential for you guys to provide us what we need in terms of 
like financially. I don't know. I'm not part of the innuendo 
about how that process works, but perhaps fortifying the 
Capitol, that will help. I know we were literally desperate. If 
we had that, that would have made a big difference on January 
6th.
    I know people want to keep this place open to the public as 
much as possible, but there are things that we could do to 
remediate that and also to reinforce entrances, whatnot. It's 
hard, but it takes will. I could tell the Capitol has some 
regulations, whatnot, but the time has passed. We still have 
security measures from 20 years ago that have to go. We need to 
reinvent the wheel and change that, but only you guys have the 
power to authorize that. They won't do it unless you guys do.
    The other thing is, we still are operating on certain 
things that we could adjust, things that we were doing back 
when 9/11 happened, we're still doing it today, even 6 months 
after the attack on the Capitol. But only you, perhaps with the 
Chief of Police, the new Chief of Police, which he seems 
receptive to some of these changes, perhaps that would change. 
But, just like Officer Dunn said, we're still doing things that 
prior to January 6th we were doing and we're still doing it 
today, and I think that should change.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Thompson. Well, again, I thank all of you for your 
testimony. Obviously you are our real heroes in this situation. 
What you did, in the Committee's opinion, helped preserve this 
democracy. The time you gave for reinforcements to finally get 
to the Capitol made the difference. So, for that we thank you. 
But you carried out your duties at tremendous risk.
    Now we on this Committee have a duty, however a far less 
dangerous one, but an essential one, to get to the bottom of 
what happened that day. We cannot allow what happened on 
January 6th to ever happen again. We owe it to the American 
people. We owe it to you and your colleagues. We will not fail, 
I assure you, in that responsibility.
    Thank you again to our witnesses as well as our 
distinguished colleagues of the Committee.
    Without objection, Members will be permitted 10 business 
days to submit statements for the record, including opening 
remarks and additional questions for witnesses to appropriate 
staff at all meetings of the Select Committee.
    Without objection, the Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]



                            A P P E N D I X

                              ----------                              

Prepared Statement of Aquilino A. Gonell, Sergeant, U.S. Capitol Police
                             July 27, 2021
    Chairman Thompson and Members of the Select Committee, thank you 
for the opportunity to testify regarding the attack on the U.S. Capitol 
on January 6, 2021. It is with honor, and a heavy heart, that I come 
before you to tell you my story, from painful, first-hand experience, 
of what happened that terrible day at the Capitol. I am providing this 
testimony solely in my personal capacity, and not as a representative 
of the U.S. Capitol Police.
    It is imperative that the events of January 6th are fully 
investigated, that Congress and the American people know the truth of 
what actually occurred, and that all those responsible are held 
accountable, particularly to ensure this horrific and shameful event in 
our history never repeats itself. I applaud you for pursuing this 
objective.
    Even though there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary, 
including hours and hours of video and photographic coverage, there is 
a continuous and shocking attempt to ignore or try to destroy the truth 
of what truly happened that day, and to whitewash the facts into 
something other than what they unmistakably reveal: An attack on our 
democracy by violent domestic extremists, and a stain on our history 
and our moral standing here at home and abroad.
    As a child in the Dominican Republic, I looked up to the United 
States as a land of opportunity and a place to better myself. From the 
moment I landed at JFK airport in 1992, I have strived to pursue that 
goal. Thankfully, I have achieved that goal on many levels: I was the 
first in my family to graduate college, join the U.S. Army, and become 
a police officer.
    On July 23, 1999, the day before my 21st birthday, I raised my hand 
to give back to the country that gave me an opportunity to be anything 
I wanted. At the time, I had already started basic training with the 
Army Reserve. In fact, I have raised my hand several times in 
ceremonies to pledge my commitment to ``Defend and Protect the 
Constitution of the United States'': When I joined the Army Reserves, 
when I was promoted to Sergeant while in the Army, during my 
naturalization ceremony, when I reenlisted in the Army, when I joined 
the United States Capitol Police, and last when I was promoted to 
sergeant in the U.S. Capitol Police 3 years ago. I have always taken my 
oath seriously.
    On January 6, 2021, I fulfilled my oath once more: This time, to 
defend the United States Capitol and Members of Congress carrying out 
their Constitutional duties to certify the results of the November 2020 
Presidential election.
    To be honest, I did not recognize my fellow citizens who stormed 
the Capitol on January 6, or the United States they claimed to 
represent. When I was 25, and then a sergeant in the Army, I had 
deployed to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom. From time to time, I 
volunteered to travel on IED-infested roads to conduct supply missions 
for U.S. and allied military forces and local Iraqi populations. But on 
January 6, for the first time, I was more afraid working at the Capitol 
than during my entire Army deployment to Iraq. In Iraq, we expected 
armed violence, because we were in a war zone. But nothing in my 
experience in the Army, or as a law enforcement officer, prepared me 
for what we confronted on January 6.
    The verbal assaults and disrespect we endured from the rioters were 
bad enough. I was falsely accused of betraying my ``oath'' and of 
choosing my ``paycheck'' over my loyalty to the U.S. Constitution--even 
as I defended the very democratic process that protected everyone in 
that hostile crowd. While I was on the Lower West Terrace at the 
Capitol, working with my fellow officers to prevent a breach and 
restore order, the rioters called me a ``traitor,'' a ``disgrace,'' and 
shouted that I (an Army veteran and police officer) should be 
``executed''. Some of the rioters had the audacity to tell me that it 
was ``nothing personal,'' that they would ``go through'' us to achieve 
their goals as they were breaking metal barriers to use as weapons 
against us. Others used more menacing language: ``If you shoot us, we 
all have weapons, and we will shoot back'', or ``we will get our 
guns''. ``We outnumber you, join us,'' they said. I also heard specific 
threats on the lives of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then-Vice President 
Mike Pence.
    But the physical violence we experienced was horrific and 
devastating. My fellow officers and I were punched, pushed, kicked, 
shoved, sprayed with chemical irritants, and even blinded with eye-
damaging lasers by a violent mob who apparently saw us law enforcement 
officers, dedicated to ironically protecting them as U.S. citizens, as 
an impediment in their attempted insurrection. The mob brought weapons 
to try to accomplish their insurrectionist objectives, and they used 
them against us. These weapons included hammers, rebars, knives, batons 
and police shields taken by force, as well as, bear spray and pepper 
spray. Some rioters wore tactical gear, including bulletproof vests and 
gas masks. The rioters also forcibly took our batons and shields and 
used them against us. I was particularly shocked at seeing the 
insurrectionists violently attack us with the very American flag they 
claimed they sought to protect. Based on the coordinated tactics we 
observed and verbal commands we heard, it appeared that many of the 
attackers had law enforcement or military experience.
    The rioters were vicious and relentless. We found ourselves in a 
violent battle in a desperate attempt to prevent a breach of the 
Capitol by the entrance near the Inauguration Stage. Metropolitan DC 
Police (``MPD'') officers were being pulled into the crowd as we tried 
to push all the rioters back from breaching Capitol. In my attempt to 
assist two MPD officers, I grabbed one officer by the back of the 
collar and pulled him back to our police line. When I tried to help the 
second officer, I fell on top of some police shields on the ground that 
were slippery because of the pepper and bear spray. Rioters started to 
pull me by my leg, by my shield, and by my gear straps on my left 
shoulder. My survival instincts kicked in and I started kicking and 
punching as I tried in vain to get the MPD officers' attention behind 
and above me. But they could not help me because they were also being 
attacked. I finally was able to hit a rioter who was grabbing me with 
my baton and able to stand. I then continued to fend off new attackers 
as they kept rotating after attacking us.
    What we were subjected to that day was like something from a 
medieval battlefield. We fought hand-to-hand and inch by inch to 
prevent an invasion of the Capitol by a violent mob intent on 
subverting our democratic process. My fellow officers and I were 
committed to not letting any rioters breach the Capitol. It was a 
prolonged and desperate struggle. I vividly heard officers screaming in 
agony and pain just an arms-length from me. One of those officers is 
here today. I, too, was being crushed by the rioters. I could feel 
myself losing oxygen and recall thinking to myself ``this is how I'm 
going to die, trampled defending this entrance.'' Many of the officers 
fighting alongside me were calling for shields, because their shields 
had been stripped from them by the rioters. I was one of the few 
officers left with a shield, so I spent the majority of the time at the 
front of the line.
    I later found out that my wife and relatives here in the United 
States and abroad were frantically calling and texting me from 2 
o'clock p.m. onwards because they were watching the turmoil live on 
television. But it was not until around 4:26 p.m., after giving CPR to 
one of the rioters who breached the Capitol in an effort to save her 
life, that I finally had a chance to let my own family know that I was 
alive.
    After order finally had been restored at the Capitol and after many 
exhausting hours, I arrived home at nearly 4 o'clock a.m. on January 7. 
I had to push away my wife from hugging me because of all the chemicals 
that covered my body. I couldn't sleep because the chemicals 
reactivated after I took a shower, and my skin was still burning. I 
finally fell asleep 2 hours later, completely physically and mentally 
exhausted. Yet by 8 o'clock a.m. that day I was already on my way back 
to the Capitol, and I continued to work for 15 consecutive days until 
after the Inauguration. I made sure to work despite my injuries because 
I wanted to continue doing my job and help secure the Capitol complex. 
Six months later, I am still trying to recover from my injuries.
    Many of my fellow Capitol Police Officers, as well as MPD Officers, 
suffered terrible physical injuries from the violence inflicted on us 
on January 6. I sustained injuries to both of my hands, my left 
shoulder, my left calf, and my right foot. I have already undergone 
fusion surgery on my foot, and I was just told that I need surgery on 
my left shoulder. I have been on medical and administrative leave for 
much of the past 6 months, and I expect to need further rehabilitation 
for possibly more than a year.
    There are some who expressed outrage when someone simply kneeled 
for social justice during the National anthem. Where are those same 
people expressing outrage to condemn the violent attack on law 
enforcement officers, the U.S. Capitol, and our American democracy?
    As America and the world watched in horror what was happening to us 
at the Capitol, we did not receive the timely reinforcements and 
support we needed. In contrast, during the Black Lives Matter protest 
last year, U.S. Capitol Police had all the support we needed and more. 
Why the different response? Were it not for the brave members of the 
MPD and officers for other agencies, I am afraid to think what could 
have happened on January 6. I want to publicly thank all the law 
enforcement agencies that responded to assist that day for their 
courage and support. I especially want to thank those Capitol Police 
Officers who responded on their own.
    Despite being outnumbered, we did our job. Every Member of the 
House of Representatives, Senator, and staff member made it home 
safely. Sadly, as a result of that day, we lost officers--some really 
good officers. But we held the line to protect our democratic process, 
and because the alternative would have been a disaster. We are not 
asking for medals or even recognition. We simply want accountability 
and justice.
    For most people, January 6th happened for a few hours that day. But 
for those of us who were in the thick of it, it has not ended. That day 
continues to be a constant trauma for us literally every day, whether 
because of our physical or emotional injuries, or both. While it has 
not received much attention, sadly many of my colleagues have quietly 
resigned from the Capitol Police because of that day. I am also 
regularly called by the law enforcement officials and prosecutors to 
help identify rioters from photographs and videos. And to be honest, 
physical therapy is painful and hard. I could have lost my life that 
day, but as soon as I recover from my injuries I will continue forward 
and proudly serve my country and the U.S. Capitol Police. As an 
immigrant to the United States, I am especially proud to have defended 
the U.S. Constitution and our democracy on January 6. I hope that 
everyone in a position of authority in our country has the courage and 
conviction to do their part by investigating what happened on that 
terrible day, and why.
    This investigation is essential to our democracy, and I am deeply 
grateful to you for undertaking it. I am happy to assist as I can, and 
answer any questions you have to the best of my ability.
                                 ______
                                 
  Prepared Statement of Michael Fanone, Officer, Metropolitan Police 
                               Department
                             July 27, 2021
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of this Committee, for inviting 
me to provide my eyewitness testimony of the violent assault on our 
Nation's Capitol on January 6, 2021.
    My name is Michael Fanone, and while I have been a sworn officer 
with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC. for almost 2 
decades, my law enforcement career actually began here in this building 
as a United States Capitol Police Officer shortly after 9/11. In part 
because of the 2001 attacks on our country by terrorists, I felt called 
to serve. As a Capitol Police Officer, I was proud to protect this 
institution and the dedicated Members of Congress and their staff who 
work hard each today to uphold our American democracy.
    I remain proud of the work of the Capitol Police and MPD Officers 
who literally commit their lives to protecting the safety of each of 
you, and all of us in this room, in our Nation's Capital.
    After leaving the United States Capitol Police, I became an MPD 
officer serving the residents of Washington, DC. I have spent the 
majority of my nearly 20 years at the Metropolitan Police Department 
working in special mission units whose responsibilities include the 
investigation and arrest of narcotics traffickers and violent 
criminals. I have worked as both an undercover officer and lead case 
officer in many of these investigations.
    In this line of work, it probably won't shock you to know I've 
dealt with some dicey situations. I thought I had seen it all, many 
times over. Yet what I witnessed and experienced on January 6, 2021 was 
unlike anything I had ever seen, experienced, or could have imagined in 
my country. On that day, I participated in the defense of the United 
States Capitol from an armed mob of thousands determined to get inside. 
Because I was among a vastly outnumbered group of law enforcement 
officers protecting the Capitol and the people in it, I was grabbed, 
beaten, tased, all while being called a traitor to my country. I was at 
risk of being stripped of, and killed with, my own firearm as I heard 
chants of, ``Kill him with his own gun!'' I can still hear those words 
in my head now.
    Although I regularly deal with risky situations on the job, nowhere 
in my wildest imagination did I ever expect to be in that situation, or 
sitting before you today talking about it. That experience and its 
aftermath were something that even my extensive law enforcement 
training didn't prepare me for.
    I was just one of hundreds of local police who lined up to protect 
Congress even though we were not assigned to do that. Some have asked 
why we ran to help when we didn't have to. I did that because I simply 
could not ignore what was happening. Like many other officers, I could 
not ignore the numerous calls for help coming from the Capitol Complex. 
I'm a plainclothes officer assigned to the First District Crime 
Suppression Team. But for the first time in nearly a decade, I put on 
my uniform.
    When my partner, Jimmy Albright, and I arrived at the Capitol 
around 3 that afternoon, it was unlike any scene I had ever witnessed. 
Jimmy parked our police vehicle near the intersection of South Capitol 
St. and D St., SE and we walked to the Capitol from there passing the 
Longworth House Office Building. It was eerily quiet and the sidewalks, 
usually filled with pedestrians, were empty. As we made our way to 
Independence Avenue, I could see dozens of empty police vehicles that 
filled the street, police barricades, which had been abandoned, and 
hundreds of angry protesters, many of whom taunted us as we walked 
toward the Capitol building.
    Jimmy and I immediately began to search for an area where we could 
be of most assistance. We first made our way through a door on the 
south side of the Capitol, walking then to the crypt and finally down 
to the Lower West Terrace Tunnel. It was there that I observed a police 
commander struggling to breathe as he dealt with the effects of CS gas 
that lingered in the air. Then I watched him collect himself, 
straighten his cap and trench coat adorned with silver eagles, and 
return to the line. That Commander was Ramey Kyle of the Metropolitan 
Police Department and those images are etched into my memory never to 
be forgotten.
    In the midst of this intense and chaotic scene, Commander Kyle 
remained cool, calm, and collected as he gave commands to his officers. 
``Hold the line,'' he shouted over the roar. Of course, that day ``the 
line'' was the seat of our American government. Despite the confusion 
and stress of the situation, observing Ray's leadership, protecting a 
place I cared so much about, was the most inspirational moment of my 
life. The bravery he and others showed that day are the best examples 
of duty, honor, and service. Each of us who carries a badge should 
bring those core values to our work every day.
    The fighting in the Lower West Terrace Tunnel was nothing short of 
brutal. Here I observed approximately 30 police officers standing 
shoulder-to-shoulder, maybe 4 or 5 abreast, using the weight of their 
own bodies to hold back the onslaught of violent attackers. Many of 
these officers were injured, bleeding, and fatigued. But they continued 
to hold the line.
    As I don't have to tell the Members in this room, the Tunnel is a 
narrow and long hallway. It is not the sort of space where anyone would 
want to be pulled into hand-to-hand combat with an angry mob, although 
the narrowness of the hallway provided what was probably the only 
chance of holding back that crowd from entering your personal offices 
and the House and Senate Chambers.
    In an attempt to assist injured officers, Jimmy and I asked them if 
they needed a break. There were no volunteers. Selflessly, they only 
identified other colleagues who may be in need of assistance.
    The fighting dragged on, and I eventually joined the tactical line 
at the Tunnel's entrance. I can remember looking around and being 
shocked by the sheer number of people fighting us. As my police body-
worn camera shows, thousands upon thousands of people, seemingly 
determined to get past us by any means necessary.
    At some point during the fighting, I was dragged from the line of 
officers into the crowd. I heard someone scream, ``I got one!'' as I 
was swarmed by a violent mob. They ripped off my badge. They grabbed my 
radio. They seized the ammunition that was secured to my body. They 
began to beat me, with their fists and with what felt like hard metal 
objects. At one point I came face-to-face with an attacker who 
repeatedly lunged for me and attempted to remove my firearm. I heard 
chanting from some in the crowd, ``get his gun'' and ``Kill him with 
his own gun.'' I was aware enough to recognize I was at risk of being 
stripped of, and killed with, my own firearm. I was electrocuted, again 
and again and again with a Taser. I'm sure I was screaming, but I don't 
think I could even hear my own voice.
    My body camera captured the violence of the crowd directed toward 
me during those very frightening moments. It's an important part of the 
record for this Committee's investigation and for the country's 
understanding of how I was assaulted and nearly killed as the mob 
attacked the Capitol that day, and I hope that everyone will be able to 
watch it. The portions of the video I've seen remain extremely painful 
for me to watch. But it is essential that everyone understands what 
really happened that tragic day.
    During those moments, I remember thinking that there was a very 
good chance that I would be torn apart or be shot to death with my own 
weapon. I thought of my four daughters who might lose their Dad. I 
remain grateful that no Member of Congress had to go through the 
violent assault that I experienced that day.
    During the assault, I thought about using my firearm on my 
attackers. But I knew that if I did that, I would quickly be 
overwhelmed. And that, in their minds, it would provide them with the 
justification for killing me. So instead, I decided to appeal to any 
humanity they might have. I said as loud as I could manage, ``I've got 
kids.'' Thankfully, some in the crowd stepped in and assisted me.
    Those few individuals protected me from the crowd and inched me 
toward the Capitol until my fellow officers could rescue me. I was 
carried back inside the Capitol Building. What happened afterwards is 
much less vivid to me. I had been beaten unconscious and remained so 
for more than 4 minutes. I know that Jimmy helped evacuate me from the 
building and drove me to MedStar Washington Hospital Center despite 
suffering significant injuries himself. At the hospital, doctors told 
me that I suffered a heart attack, and I was later diagnosed with a 
concussion, traumatic brain injury, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
    As my physical injuries gradually subsided and the adrenaline that 
had stayed with me for weeks waned, I have been left with the 
psychological trauma and the emotional anxiety of having survived such 
a horrifying event. And my children continue to deal with the trauma of 
nearly losing their Dad that day.
    What makes that struggle harder and more painful is to know so many 
of my fellow citizens, including so many of the people I put my life at 
risk to defend, are downplaying or outright denying what happened. I 
feel like I went to Hell and back to protect the people in this room. 
But too many are now telling me that Hell doesn't even exist--or that 
Hell actually wasn't all that bad.
    The indifference shown to my colleagues and I is disgraceful. My 
law enforcement career prepared me to cope with some aspects of this 
experience. Being an officer, you know your life is at risk whenever 
you walk out the door, even if you don't expect otherwise law-abiding 
citizens to take up arms against you. But nothing--truly nothing--has 
prepared me to address those elected Members of our Government who 
continue to deny the events of that day. Those very same Members whose 
lives, offices, staff members I was fighting so desperately to defend.
    I agreed to speak here today, and have talked publicly about what 
happened, because I don't think our response to the insurrection should 
have anything to do with political parties. I know that when my partner 
Jimmy and I suited up on January 6, we didn't care what we or our 
fellow officers believed about politics or what political party any of 
you public servants belonged to. I've worked in this city for 2 decades 
and never cared about those things, no matter who was in office. All 
I've ever cared about is protecting you, and the public, so you can do 
your job in service to this country and for the people you represent.
    I appreciate your time and attention. I look forward to the 
Committee's investigation. I am hopeful that with your commitment, we 
as a country will confront the truth of what happened on January 6th 
and do what is necessary to make sure this institution of our democracy 
never again falls into the hands of a violent and angry mob.
    We must also recognize the officers who responded that day, many 
unsolicited, and their countless acts of bravery and selflessness. It 
has been 202 days since 850 MPD officers responded to the Capitol and 
helped stop a violent insurrection from taking over the Capitol 
Complex, which almost certainly saved countless Members of Congress and 
their staff from injury and possibly even death. The time to fully 
recognize these officers' actions is now.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to provide my testimony today.
                                 ______
                                 
   Prepared Statement of Daniel Hodges, Officer, Metropolitan Police 
                               Department
    Good morning to the Committee, members of the press, and to the 
country.
    To the Members of the Committee, I'd like to thank you for the 
invitation today to provide my account of my knowledge of and 
experiences from January 6th, 2021.
    As the Chairman mentioned I am a member of Civil Disturbance Unit 
42 and was working in that capacity on the day in question. A fully-
staffed CDU platoon consists of 1 lieutenant, 4 sergeants, and 28 
officers. We started that day at 7:30 a.m. and our assignment was to 
maintain high visibility along Constitution Avenue, namely the blocks 
leading up to President's Park, where then-President Donald Trump was 
holding his gathering. My particular station was in front of 1111 
Constitution Avenue, where I stood on foot as the crowd poured down the 
street and into the park.
    There were a significant number of men dressed in tactical gear 
attending the gathering. Wearing ballistic vests, helmets, goggles, 
military face masks, backpacks, and without identifiable, visible law 
enforcement or military patches, they appeared to be prepared for much 
more than listening to politicians speak in a park.
    Two of my colleagues were approached by a group of 3 to 4 of such 
men. The men were white, in good shape, with load-bearing vests 
equipped with MOLLE pouches. They were wearing BDUs, or battle dress 
uniform pants, tactical boots, black sunglasses and short haircuts. 
They had radios and one was equipped with an earpiece.
    After a bit of small talk one of them asked my colleagues something 
to the effect of, ``Is this all the manpower you have? Do you really 
think you're going to be able to stop all these people?'' Dumbfounded, 
my colleagues simply expressed that they didn't understand what the 
speaker meant, and the group continued on.
    As the day went on and the speakers in the park said their piece, I 
monitored the crowd and the radio. Over the radio I heard our Gun 
Recovery Unit working constantly, monitoring those in the crowd 
suspected of carrying firearms and making arrests and seizures when 
possible. Multiple gun arrests were made from January 5th through the 
7th against those attending, planning to attend, or had attended Donald 
Trump's gathering. Unfortunately due to the course of events that day 
we will likely never know exactly how many were carrying firearms and 
other lethal weapons.
    I don't know what time it was, but eventually the flow of foot 
traffic reversed, with people leaving President's Park and traveling 
eastbound down Constitution Avenue toward the United States Capitol.
    At approximately 12:30 p.m. I noticed a commotion about half a 
block to my east, and saw the crowd starting to coalesce around two 
figures. I ran to where they were and found a confrontation at the 
intersection of 10th and Constitution Avenue NW. One counter-protester, 
a Black man, was backpedaling away from a white man in a Trump-labeled 
face mask who was closely following him with an outstretched arm. 
Myself and my colleague arrived first and physically separated the two, 
but a crowd of Donald Trump's people had gathered. They attempted to 
bait the counter-protester into attacking, shouting insults such as 
``You're mother's a whore!'' and accusing him of ``Hiding behind the 
cops.'' Eventually enough MPD members had gathered to move along the 
crowd who continued eastbound toward the Capitol building, and the 
counter-protester departed northbound on 10th Street.
    Returning to my post I continued monitoring the radio. I could hear 
Commander Glover leading the defense efforts at the Capitol as the 
protesters began their transition from peaceful assembly into 
terrorism. I became agitated and wished we could move in to support as 
I could hear the increasing desperation in the Commander's voice, yet 
we still had to wait for our orders to change. Eventually they did, as 
at approximately 1:30 p.m. the Commander authorized rapid response 
platoons to deploy their hard gear and respond to the Capitol, 
including CDU 42.
    The last thing I remember hearing over the air before departing for 
the Capitol grounds was confirmation that our Explosive Ordinance 
Disposal team had discovered a ``device''. Given which unit was being 
associated with this ``device'' I immediately realized MPD had 
discovered a bomb of some type near the Capitol. This thought was never 
far from my mind for the rest of the day.
    We ran back to our vans and got on our hard gear as quickly as we 
could. Navigating alternate routes to avoid the foot traffic, we drove 
as close as we could to the Capitol, disembarking at the northwest side 
of the Capitol grounds. We gave our gear a final check and marched 
toward the West Terrace.
    The crowd was thinner the further out from the Capitol you were, so 
as we marched the resistance we initially met was verbal. A man 
sarcastically yelled ``Here come the boys in blue! So brave!'' Another 
called on us to ``remember your oath.'' There was plenty of boo-ing. A 
woman called us ``stormtroopers''. Another woman, who was part of the 
mob of terrorists laying siege to the Capitol of the United States, 
shouted ``Traitors!'' More found appeal in the label, and shout 
``Traitors!'' at us as we pass; one man attempted to turn it into a 
duosyllabic chant. We continue to march.
    We had been marching in two columns, but as we got closer to the 
West Terrace the crowd became so dense that in order to progress we 
marched single-file, with our hands on the shoulders of the man in 
front of us in order to avoid separation. However as we came close to 
the terrace our line was divided and we came under attack. A man 
attempted to rip my baton from my hands and we wrestled for control. I 
retained my weapon and after I pushed him back, he yelled at me 
``You're on the wrong team!''
    Cut off from our leadership at the font of our formation we huddled 
up and assessed the threat surrounding us. One man tried and failed to 
build a rapport with me, shouting, ``Are you my brother?!'' Another 
takes a different tack, shouting ``You will die on your knees!''
    I was at the front of our group and determined we had to push our 
way through the crowd in order to join the defense proper, so I began 
shouting ``Make way!'' as I forged ahead, hoping that I'm clearing a 
path for the others to follow. However as I looked back I saw that the 
rest of the group came under attack and were unable to follow. The 
crowd attempted to physically bar the rest of the platoon from 
following. I backtrack and started pulling terrorists off of my team by 
their backpacks. Around this time one of the terrorists who had scaled 
the scaffolding that adorned the Capitol at the time threw something 
heavy down at me and struck me in the head, disorienting me (I suspect 
this resulted in the likely concussion I dealt with in the weeks 
after). Another man attempted to disarm me of my baton again, and we 
wrestled for control. He kicked me in my chest as we went to the 
ground. I was able to retain my baton again, but I ended up on my hands 
and knees and blind; the medical mask I was wearing to protect myself 
from the coronavirus was pulled up over my eyes so I couldn't see. I 
braced myself against the impact of their blows and feared the worst. 
Thankfully my platoon had repelled their own attackers and got me back 
on my feet. The crowd started chanting ``U-S-A!'' at us, and we struck 
out again for the West Terrace.
    I lead the charge again through the midst of crowd-control 
munitions, explosions, and smoke engulfing the area. Terrorists were 
breaking apart metal fencing and bike racks into individual pieces, 
presumably to use as weapons. Thankfully we made it to the secondary 
defense line on the West Terrace that MPD and Capitol Police were 
managing to hold. The rest of my platoon got behind the line and we 
take stock of the situation. I realized that back during the previous 
assault someone had stolen my radio; from that point on I was in the 
dark as to our current status and when reinforcements would arrive. 
Terrorists were scaling the scaffolding on both our sides, the tower 
that was in front of us, and attempting to breach the waist-high metal 
fencing that was the only barrier we had, aside from ourselves.
    The sea of people was punctuated throughout by flags. Lots of 
American flags and Trump flags. Gadsden flags. It was clear the 
terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians: I saw the Christian 
flag directly to my front. Another read ``Jesus is my Savior, Trump is 
my President.'' Another, ``Jesus is King.'' One flag read, ``Don't give 
up the ship''. Another had crossed rifles beneath a skull emblazoned 
with the pattern of the American flag. To my perpetual confusion, I saw 
the Thin Blue Line flag, a symbol of support for law enforcement, more 
than once being carried by the terrorists as they ignored our commands 
and continued to assault us.
    The acrid sting of CS gas (tear gas) and OC spray (mace) hung in 
the air, as the terrorists threw our own CS gas canisters back at us 
and sprayed us with their own OC, either that they brought themselves 
or stole from us. Later I learned that at least one of them was 
spraying us in the face with wasp spray.
    The terrorists alternated between attempting to break our defenses 
and shouting at or attempting to convert us. Men alleging to be 
veterans told us how they had fought for this country and were fighting 
for it again. One man tried to start a chant of ``Four-more-years!'' 
Another shouted ``Do not attack us! We are not `Black Lives Matter!' '' 
as if political affiliation is how we determine when to use force. A 
man in a ``QAnon'' hoodie exclaims, ``This is the time to choose what 
side of history to be on!'' A man whose shirt reads ``God Guns & 
Trump'' stood behind him, silently holding a Trump flag.
    A new man came to the front and fixated on me, continually berated 
me, telling me to take off my gear and give it to him: ``Show 
solidarity with `we the people' or we're going to run over you!'' his 
voice cracked with the strain and volume of his threats. He continued, 
``Do you think your little pea-shooter guns are going to stop this 
crowd? No! We're going in that building!''
    Eventually there is a surge in the crowd, the fence buckled and 
broke apart and we were unable to hold the line. A chaotic melee 
ensued. Terrorists pushed through the line and engaged us in hand-to-
hand combat. Several attempted to knock me over and steal my baton. One 
latched onto my face and got his thumb in my right eye, attempting to 
gouge it out. I cried out in pain and managed to shake him off before 
any permanent damage was done. I couldn't engage anyone fully for the 
moment I do is when another 20 terrorists move in to attack while I am 
occupied. It's all we could do to keep ourselves on our feet and 
continue to fall back. I'm sprayed with a fire extinguisher and a red 
smoke grenade burned at our feet.
    In the fight a terrorist is knocked to the ground and his jacket 
rides up, exposing a large hunting knife on his belt. I along with 
several other officers piled on him while another removed the knife 
from his person. He regained himself, unharmed, and shouts indignantly, 
``What are you doing! What are you guys doing!''
    The terrorists had claimed most of the western terrace, cornering 
myself and other officers on the southern edge. We took a side stair 
off the terrace, up to an upper landing, followed by more stairs up and 
inside.
    Inside the Capitol building officers walked through the halls 
briefly until they found a place to sit, decontaminate their faces of 
OC and CS, and take a quick breather. I followed suit. Someone had 
managed to find a package of water bottles and was passing them out. I 
washed off my face as best as I could, rinsed out my mouth and drank 
the rest. I took the opportunity of relative safety to don my gas mask. 
Not long afterward I heard someone calling for officers to move to 
assist. I steeled myself for another round and descended a stairway 
into a long hallway filled with smoke and screams.
    The Capitol building is labyrinthine, but judging from the sound of 
intense combat I could tell this hallway led outside to where the 
terrorists had forced our retreat. Officers were stacked deep, but 
every so often one would fall back from the front line, nursing an 
injury or struggling to breathe, and those who remained would take a 
step forward.
    It was a battle of inches, with one side pushing the other a few 
and then the other side regaining their ground. At the time I (and I 
suspect many others in the hallway) did not know that the terrorists 
had gained entry to the building by breaking in doors and windows 
elsewhere, so we believed ours to be the last line of defense before 
the terrorists had true access to the building, and potentially our 
elected representatives.
    Eventually it was my turn in the meat grinder that was the front 
line. The terrorists had a wall of shields that they had stolen from 
officers, as well as stolen batons and whatever other armaments they 
brought. Even during this intense contest of wills they continued to 
try to convert us to their cult. One man shouted ``We just want to make 
our voices heard! And I think you feel the same! I really think you 
feel the same!'', all while another man attempts to batter us with a 
stolen shield. Another man, like many others, didn't seem to appreciate 
that this wasn't a game. He fought his way across the lawn, up the 
steps, through the western terrace, and at the front line of this final 
threshold was asking us to ``hold on'' because he ``has asthma''.
    The two sides were at a stalemate at a metal door frame that sat in 
the middle of the hallway. At the front line, I inserted myself so that 
the frame was at my back in an effort to give myself something to brace 
against and provide additional strength when pushing forward. 
Unfortunately soon after I secured this position the momentum shifted 
and we lost the ground that got me there. On my left was a man with a 
clear riot shield stolen during the assault. He slammed it against me 
and, with the weight of all the bodies pushing behind him, trapped me. 
My arms were pinned and effectively useless, trapped against the either 
the shield on my left or the door frame on my right. With my posture 
granting me no functional strength or freedom of movement, I was 
effectively defenseless and gradually sustaining injury from the 
increasing pressure of the mob.
    Directly in front of me a man seized the opportunity of my 
vulnerability. He grabbed the front of my gas mask and used it to beat 
my head against the door. He switched to pulling it off my head, the 
straps stretching against my skull and straining my neck. He never 
uttered any words I recognized, but opted instead for guttural screams. 
I swear I remember him foaming at the mouth. He also put his cell phone 
in his mouth so that he had both hands free to assault me. Eventually 
he succeeded in stripping away my gas mask, and a new rush of exposure 
to CS gas and OC spray hit me. The mob of terrorists were coordinating 
their efforts now, shouting ``Heave! Ho!'' as they synchronized pushing 
their weight forward, crushing me further against the metal door frame. 
The man in front of me grabbed my baton that I still held in my hands 
and in my current state I was unable to retain my weapon. He bashed me 
in the head and face with it, rupturing my lip and adding additional 
injury to my skull.
    At this point I knew that I couldn't sustain much more damage and 
remain upright. At best I would collapse and be a liability to my 
colleagues, at worst be dragged out into the crowd and lynched. Unable 
to move or otherwise signal the officers behind me that I needed to 
fall back, I did the only thing I could still do and screamed for help.
    Thankfully my voice was heard over the cacophony of yells and the 
blaring alarm. The officer closest to me was able to extricate me from 
my position and another helped me fall back to the building again.
    I found some water and decontaminated my face as best as I could. I 
don't know how long I waited in the halls but soon after got back on my 
feet and went to where the fight was again. Until reinforcements 
arrived every able body made a difference.
    Without my gas mask I was afraid I'd be a liability in the hallway 
so I took the exit outside to the upper landing above the West Terrace. 
I found a police line being held and the terrorists encircling us, much 
like on the West Terrace. It was getting later in the day however, and 
it appeared we weren't the only ones getting tired. It seemed most of 
the mob was content to yell rather than to break our line again.
    After some time of guarding the upper landing I saw reinforcements 
arrive from the south. I'm not sure which law enforcement agency it was 
but I turned to them and started clapping, as it was a sign that badly-
needed help was starting to finally arrive.
    Soon after that I started feeling the effects of the day taking 
their toll, and I went back inside to rest. Gradually all the members 
of CDU 42 gathered in the room known as the Capitol Crypt. We checked 
on each other and convalesced, glad to see each other in one piece. 
Despite our exhaustion, we all would have ran out to the fight again 
should the need have arisen. Thankfully as the day wore on, more and 
more resources arrived at the Capitol to drive off the terrorists. We 
stayed in the Crypt until quite late, and even after we were allowed to 
leave the grounds we didn't get to go home. Those who needed immediate 
medical attention took a van to the local hospital while the rest of us 
parked near the city center until the city was deemed secure enough for 
us to check off. I believe we finally got that message around 1 a.m. 
the following morning. We drove back to the Fourth district and from 
there went home.
                                 ______
                                 
Prepared Statement of Harry A. Dunn, Private First Class, U.S. Capitol 
                                 Police
                             July 27, 2021
    Chairman Thompson and Members of the Select Committee, thank you 
for the opportunity today to give my account regarding the events of 
January 6, 2021, from my first-hand experience as a Capitol Police 
Officer directly involved in those events, and still hurting from what 
happened that day. I am providing this testimony solely in my personal 
capacity, and not as a representative of the U.S. Capitol Police.
    I reported for duty at the Capitol, as usual, early on the morning 
of January 6. We understood that the vote to certify President Biden's 
election would be taking place that day, and that protests might occur 
outside the Capitol, but we expected any demonstrations to be peaceful 
expressions of First Amendment freedoms, just like the scores of 
demonstrations we had observed for many years. After roll call, I took 
my overwatch post on the East Front of the Capitol, standing on the 
steps that lead to the Senate chamber. As the morning progressed, I did 
not see or hear anything that gave me cause for alarm.
    But around 10:56 am, I received a text message from a friend 
forwarding a screen shot of what appeared to be a potential plan of 
action very different from a peaceful demonstration. The screen shot 
bore the caption ``Jan. 6th--Rally Point--Lincoln Park,'' and said the 
``objective'' was ``THE CAPITAL.'' It said, among, other things, that 
``Trump has given us marching orders,'' and to ``keep your guns 
hidden.'' It urged people to ``bring . . . your trauma kits'' and ``gas 
mask,'' to ``[l]ink up early in the day'' in ``6-12 man teams,'' and 
indicated there would be a ``time to arm up.'' Seeing that message 
caused me concern, to be sure, and looking back now, it seemed to 
foreshadow what happened later. At the time, though, we had not 
received any threat warnings from our chain of command, and I had no 
independent reason to believe that violence was headed our way.
    As the morning progressed, the crowd of protestors began to swell 
on the east side of the Capitol, many displaying ``Trump'' flags. The 
crowd was chanting slogans like ``Stop the Steal!'' and ``We want 
Trump!'' But the demonstration was still being conducted in a peaceful 
manner.
    Early that afternoon, Capitol Police dispatch advised all units 
over the radio that we had an ``active 10-100'' at the Republican 
National Committee nearby. ``10-100'' is police code for a suspicious 
package, such as a potential bomb. That radio dispatch got my attention 
and I started to get more nervous and worried, especially because the 
crowds on the East Front of the Capitol were continuing to grow. Around 
the same time, I started receiving reports on the radio about large 
crowd movements around the Capitol, coming from the direction of the 
Ellipse to both the West and East Fronts of the Capitol. Then I heard 
urgent radio calls for additional officers to respond to the west side, 
and an exclamation, in a desperate voice, that demonstrators on the 
west side had ``breached the fence!''
    Now it was obvious that there was an active threat to the Capitol. 
I quickly put on a steel chest plate (which weighs about 20 pounds) 
and, carrying my M-4 rifle, sprinted around the north side of the 
Capitol to the West Terrace and the railing of the Inaugural stage, 
where I had a broad view of what was going on. I was stunned by what I 
saw. In what seemed like a sea of people, Capitol Police Officers and 
Metropolitan DC Police (``MPD'') officers were engaged in desperate 
hand-to-hand fighting with rioters across the west lawn. Until then, I 
had never seen anyone physically assault a Capitol Police or MPD 
Officer--let alone witness mass assaults being perpetrated on law 
enforcement officers. I witnessed the rioters using all kinds of 
weapons against the officers, including flag poles, metal bike racks 
they had torn apart, and various kinds of projectiles. Officers were 
being bloodied in the fighting, many were screaming, and many were 
blinded and coughing from chemical irritants being sprayed in their 
faces. I gave decontamination aid to as many officers as I could, 
flushing their eyes with water to dilute the chemical irritants.
    Soon thereafter, I heard an ``Attention, all units!'' radio 
dispatch that the Capitol had been breached, and that rioters were in 
various places inside the building. At that point, I rushed into the 
Capitol with another officer, going first to the basement on the Senate 
side where I had heard an MPD officer needed a defibrillator. After 
returning outside to the West Terrace to assist officers, I went back 
into the Capitol and up the stairs to the Crypt. There, I saw rioters 
who had invaded the Capitol carrying a Confederate flag, a red ``MAGA'' 
flag, and a ``Don't Tread on Me'' flag.
    I decided to stand my ground there to prevent any rioters from 
heading down the stairs to the Lower West Terrace entrance, because 
that was where officers were getting decontamination aid and were 
particularly vulnerable. At the top of the stairs, I confronted a group 
of the insurrectionists, warning them not to go down. One of them 
shouted ``Keep moving, Patriots!'' Another, displaying what looked like 
a law enforcement badge, told me ``We're doing this for you!'' One of 
the invaders approached like he was about to try and get past me and 
head down the stairs, and I hit him, knocking him down.
    After getting relieved by other officers in the Crypt, I took off 
running upstairs toward the Speaker's Lobby, and helped a plain-clothes 
officer who was being hassled by insurrectionists. Some of them were 
dressed like members of a militia group, wearing tactical vests, cargo 
pants, and body armor. I was physically exhausted, and it was hard to 
breathe and see because of all the chemical spray in the air.
    More and more insurrectionists were pouring into the area by the 
Speaker's Lobby near the Rotunda, some wearing ``MAGA'' hats and shirts 
that said ``Trump 2020.'' I told them to leave the Capitol, and in 
response, they yelled back: ``No, no, man, this is our house!'' 
``President Trump invited us here!'' ``We're here to stop the steal!'' 
``Joe Biden is not the President!'' ``Nobody voted for Joe Biden!''
    I am a law enforcement officer, and I keep politics out of my job. 
But in this circumstance, I responded: ``Well, I voted for Joe Biden. 
Does my vote not count? Am I nobody?''
    That prompted a torrent of racial epithets. One woman in a pink 
``MAGA'' shirt yelled, ``You hear that, guys, this nigger voted for Joe 
Biden!'' Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in, screaming 
``Boo! Fucking Nigger!''
    No one had ever--ever--called me a ``nigger'' while wearing the 
uniform of a Capitol Police Officer. In the days following the 
attempted insurrection, other Black officers shared with me their own 
stories of racial abuse on January 6th. One officer told me he had 
never, in his entire 40 years of life, been called a ``nigger'' to his 
face, and that that streak ended on January 6th. Yet another Black 
officer later told he had been confronted by insurrectionists inside 
the Capitol, who told him to ``Put your gun down and we'll show you 
what kind of nigger you really are!''
    To be candid, the rest of that afternoon is a blur. But I know I 
went throughout the Capitol to assist other officers who needed aid, 
and to help expel more insurrectionists. In the Crypt, I encountered 
Sergeant Gonell, who was giving assistance to an unconscious woman who 
had been in the crowd of rioters on the west side of the Capitol. I 
helped to carry her to the House Majority Leader's office, where she 
was administered CPR. As the afternoon wore on, I was completely 
drained both physically and emotionally, and in shock and disbelief 
over what had happened. Once the building was cleared, I went to the 
Rotunda to recover with other officers and share our experiences from 
that afternoon. Rep. Rodney Davis was there offering support to 
officers, and when he and I saw each other he came over and gave me a 
big hug.
    I sat down on a bench with a friend of mine who is also a Black 
Capitol Police Officer, and told him about the racial slurs I had 
endured. I became very emotional and began yelling ``How the 
[expletive] can something like this happen?! Is this America?'' I began 
sobbing, and officers came over to console me.
    Later on January 6th, after order and security had been restored in 
the Capitol through the hard work and sacrifices of law enforcement, 
Members took to the floor of the House to speak out about what had 
happened that day. Among them was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, 
who--along with my fellow officers--I had protected that day, and will 
protect today and tomorrow. And the Minority Leader, to his great 
credit, said the following to the House: ``The violence, destruction, 
and chaos we saw earlier was unacceptable, undemocratic, and un-
American. It was the saddest day I've ever had serving in this 
institution.'' Members of this Select Committee, the Minority Leader 
was absolutely right that day in how he described what took place at 
the Capitol. And for those of us in the Capitol Police who serve and 
revere this institution, and who love the Capitol building, it was the 
saddest day for us as well.
    More than 6 months later, January 6th still isn't over for me. I 
have had to avail myself of multiple counseling sessions from the 
Capitol Police Employee Assistance Program, and I am now receiving 
private counseling therapy for the persistent emotional trauma of that 
day. I have also participated in many peer support programs with fellow 
law enforcement officers from around the United States. I know so many 
other officers continue to hurt, both physically and emotionally.
    I want to take this moment and speak to my fellow officers about 
the emotions they are continuing to experience from the events of 
January 6th. There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking 
professional counseling. What we all went through that day was 
traumatic, and if you are hurting please take advantage of the 
counseling services that are available to us. I also respectfully ask 
this Select Committee to review the services available to us and 
consider whether they are sufficient to meet our needs, especially with 
respect to the amount of leave we are allowed.
    In closing, we can never again allow our democracy to be put in 
peril as it was on January 6th. I thank the Members of this Select 
Committee for your commitment to determine what led to the disaster at 
the Capitol on January 6th, what actually took place at the Capitol 
that day, and what steps should be taken to prevent such an attack on 
our democracy from ever happening again.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I would be 
happy to answer any questions you may have.


 
                              HEARING ON 
                     THE JANUARY 6TH INVESTIGATION

                              ----------                              


                         Thursday, June 9, 2022

                     U.S. House of Representatives,
 Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on 
                                 the United States Capitol,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 8:02 p.m., in 
room 390, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Bennie G. Thompson 
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Thompson, Cheney, Lofgren, Schiff, 
Aguilar, Murphy, Raskin, Luria, and Kinzinger.
    Chairman Thompson. The Select Committee to Investigate the 
January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol will be in 
order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare the 
Committee in recess at any point.
    Pursuant to House Deposition Authority Regulation 10, the 
Chair announces the Committee's approval to release the 
deposition material presented during tonight's hearing.
    Thanks to everyone watching tonight for sharing part of 
your evening to learn the facts and causes of the events 
leading up to and including the violent attack on January 6, 
2021, on our democracy, electoral system, and country.
    I am Bennie Thompson, Chairman of the January 6th, 2021, 
Committee. I was born, raised, and still live in Bolton, 
Mississippi, a town with a population of 521, which is midway 
between Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the Mississippi 
River.
    I am from a part of the country where people justify the 
actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and lynching. I am 
reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and 
justify the actions of the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021.
    Over the next few weeks, hopefully you will get to know the 
other Members, my colleagues up here, and me. We represent a 
diversity of communities from all over the United States, rural 
areas and cities, East Coast, West Coast, and the heartland.
    All of us have one thing in common: We swore the same oath, 
that same oath that all Members of Congress take upon taking 
office and afterwards every 2 years if they are reelected. We 
swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, 
foreign and domestic.
    The words of the current oath taken by all of us that 
nearly every U.S. Government employee takes have their roots in 
the Civil War. Throughout our history, the United States has 
fought against foreign enemies to preserve our democracy, 
electoral system, and country.
    When the United States Capitol was stormed and burned in 
1814, foreign enemies were responsible. Afterward, in 1862, 
when American citizens had taken up arms against this country, 
Congress adopted a new oath to help make sure no person who had 
supported the rebellion could hold a position of public trust. 
Therefore, Congresspersons and United States Federal Government 
employees were required for the first time to swear an oath to 
defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and 
domestic.
    That oath was put to the test on January 6, 2021. The 
police officers who held the line that day honored their oath. 
Many came out of that day bloodied and broken. They still bear 
those wounds, visible and invisible. They did their duty. They 
repelled the mob and ended the occupation of the Capitol. They 
defended the Constitution against domestic enemies so that 
Congress could return, uphold our own oath, and count your 
votes to ensure the transfer of power, just as we have done for 
hundreds of years.
    But, unlike in 1814, it was domestic enemies of the 
Constitution who stormed the Capitol and occupied the Capitol, 
who sought to thwart the will of the people, to stop the 
transfer of power. They did so at the encouragement of the 
President of the United States--the President of the United 
States trying to stop the transfer of power, a precedent that 
had stood for 220 years, even as our democracy had faced its 
most difficult test.
    Thinking back again to the Civil War, in the summer of 
1864, the President of the United States believed he would be 
doomed in his bid for reelection. He believed his opponent, 
General George McClellan, would wave the white flag when it 
came to preserving the Union. But even with that grim fate 
hanging in the balance, President Lincoln was ready to accept 
the will of the voters, come what may.
    He made a quiet pledge. He wrote down the words: ``This 
morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable 
that this Administration will not be reelected. Then it will be 
my duty to so co-operate with the President-elect . . . ''
    ``It will be my duty.''
    Lincoln sealed that memo and asked his Cabinet Secretaries 
to sign it, sight unseen. He asked them to make the same 
commitment he did: To accept defeat if indeed defeat was the 
will of the people, to uphold the rule of law, to do what every 
President who came before him did and what every President who 
followed him would do until Donald Trump.
    Donald Trump lost the Presidential election in 2020. The 
American people voted him out of office. It was not because of 
a rigged system. It was not because of voter fraud. Don't 
believe me? Hear what his former attorney general had to say 
about it. I warn those who are watching that this contains 
strong language.

    Attorney General Barr. No, just what I--I've been--I've had--I had 
three discussions with the President that I can recall. One was on 
November 23rd, one was on December 1st, and one was on December 14th. 
And I've been through sort-of the give-and-take of those discussions. 
And in that context, I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of 
saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told 
the President was bullshit. And, you know, I didn't want to be a part 
of it, and that's one of the reasons that went into me deciding to 
leave when I did. I observed, I think it was on December 1st, that, you 
know, how can we--you can't live in a world where--where the incumbent 
administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by 
specific evidence, that the election--that there was fraud in the 
election.

    Chairman Thompson. Bill Barr, on election day 2020, he was 
the Attorney General of the United States, the top law 
enforcement official in the country, telling the President 
exactly what he thought about claims of a stolen election.
    Donald Trump had his days in court to challenge the 
results. He was within his rights to seek those judgments. In 
the United States, law-abiding citizens have those tools for 
pursuing justice. He lost in the courts just as he did at the 
ballot box. In this country, that is the end of the line.
    But for Donald Trump, that was only the beginning of what 
became a sprawling, multistep conspiracy aimed at overturning 
the Presidential election, aimed at throwing out the votes of 
millions of Americans--your votes, your voice in our 
democracy--and replacing the will of the American people with 
his will to remain in power after his term ended.
    Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy. 
Ultimately, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, 
spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march 
down the Capitol and subvert American democracy.
    Any legal jargon you hear about seditious conspiracy, 
obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud 
the United States boils down to this: January 6th was the 
culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one 
rioter put it shortly after January 6th, to overthrow the 
Government. The violence was no accident. It represented 
Trump's last stand, his most desperate chance to halt the 
transfer of power.
    Now you may hear those words and think this is just another 
political attack on Donald Trump by people who don't like him.
    That is not the case. My colleagues and I all wanted an 
outside, independent commission to investigate January 6th, 
similar to what we had after 9/11. But, after first agreeing to 
the idea, Donald Trump's allies in Congress put a stop to it. 
Apparently, they don't want January 6th investigated at all.
    In the last 17 months, many of those same people have tried 
to whitewash what happened on January 6th, to rewrite history, 
call it a tourist visit, label it ``legitimate political 
discourse.''
    Donald Trump and his followers have adopted the words of 
the songwriter: Do you believe me or your lying eyes?
    We can't sweep what happened under the rug. The American 
people deserve answers. So, I come before you this evening not 
as a Democrat but as an American who swore an oath to defend 
the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't protect just 
Democrats or just Republicans. It protects all of us, ``We the 
people.'' This scheme was an attempt to undermine the will of 
the people.
    So, tonight and over the next few weeks, we are going to 
remind you of the reality of what happened that day, but our 
work must do much more than just look backward. Because our 
democracy remains in danger, the conspiracy to thwart the will 
of the people is not over. There are those in this audience who 
thirst for power but have no love or respect for what makes 
America great: devotion to the Constitution, allegiance to the 
rule of law, our shared journey to build a more perfect Union.
    January 6th and the lies that led to insurrection have put 
2\1/2\ centuries of Constitutional democracy at risk. The world 
is watching what we do here. America has long been expected to 
be a shining city on the hill, a beacon of hope and freedom, a 
model for others when we are at our best. How can we play that 
role when our house is in such disorder?
    We must confront the truth with candor, resolve, and 
determination. We need to show that we are worthy of the gifts 
that are the birthright of every American. That begins here, 
and it begins now with a true accounting of what happened and 
what led to the attack on our Constitution and our democracy.
    In this moment when the dangers of our Constitution and our 
democracy loom large, nothing could be more important. Working 
alongside the public servants on this dais has been one of the 
greatest honors of my time in Congress.
    It has been a particular privilege to count as a partner in 
this effort and to count as a friend the gentlewoman from 
Wyoming, Ms. Cheney. She is a patriot, a public servant of 
profound courage, of devotion to her oath and the Constitution.
    It is my pleasure to recognize Ms. Cheney for her opening 
statement.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Let me echo those words about the importance of 
bipartisanship and what a tremendous honor it is to work on 
this Committee.
    Mr. Chairman, at 6:01 p.m. on January 6th, after he spent 
hours watching a violent mob besiege, attack, and invade our 
Capitol, Donald Trump tweeted. But he did not condemn the 
attack. Instead, he justified it.
    ``These are the things and events that happen,'' he said, 
``when a sacred landslide election victory is so 
unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots 
who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long.''
    As you will see in the hearings to come, President Trump 
believed his supporters at the Capitol, and I quote, ``were 
doing what they should be doing.'' This is what he told his 
staff as they pleaded with him to call off the mob, to instruct 
his supporters to leave.
    Over a series of hearings in the coming weeks, you will 
hear testimony, live and on video, from more than half a dozen 
former White House staff in the Trump administration, all of 
whom were in the West Wing of the White House on January 6th. 
You will hear testimony that, ``the President did not really 
want to put anything out,'' calling off the riot or asking his 
supporters to leave.
    You will hear that President Trump was yelling and, 
``really angry'' at advisors who told him he needed to be doing 
something more.
    Aware of the rioters' chants to hang Mike Pence, the 
President responded with this sentiment, ``Maybe our supporters 
have the right idea.'' Mike Pence, ``deserves it.''
    You will hear evidence that President Trump refused for 
hours to do what his staff, his family, and many of his other 
advisors begged him to do: Immediately instruct his supporters 
to stand down and evacuate the Capitol.
    Tonight you will see never-before-seen footage of the 
brutal attack on our Capitol, an attack that unfolded while a 
few blocks away President Trump sat watching television in the 
dining room next to the Oval Office.
    You will hear audio from the brave police officers battling 
for their lives and ours, fighting to defend our democracy 
against a violent mob Donald Trump refused to call off.
    Tonight, and in the weeks to come, you will see evidence of 
what motivated this violence, including directly from those who 
participated in this attack. You will see video of them 
explaining what caused them to do it. You will see their posts 
on social media. We will show you what they have said in 
Federal court.
    On this point, there is no room for debate: Those who 
invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were 
motivated by what President Trump had told them, that the 
election was stolen and that he was the rightful President. 
President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit 
the flame of this attack.
    You will also hear about plots to commit seditious 
conspiracy on January 6th, a crime defined in our laws as 
conspiring to overthrow, put down, or destroy by force the 
Government of the United States or to oppose by force the 
authority thereof.
    Multiple members of two groups, the Oath Keepers and the 
Proud Boys, have been charged with this crime for their 
involvement in the events leading up to and on January 6th. 
Some have pled guilty.
    The attack on our Capitol was not a spontaneous riot. 
Intelligence available before January 6th identified plans to, 
``invade the Capitol,'' ``occupy the Capitol,'' and take other 
steps to halt Congress' count of electoral votes that day.
    In our hearings to come, we will identify elements of those 
plans, and we will show specifically how a group of Proud Boys 
led a mob into the Capitol Building on January 6th.
    Tonight, I am going to describe for you some of what our 
Committee has learned and highlight initial findings you will 
see this month in our hearings.
    As you hear this, all Americans should keep in mind this 
fact: On the morning of January 6th, President Donald Trump's 
intention was to remain President of the United States, despite 
the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his 
Constitutional obligation to relinquish power. Over multiple 
months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated 7-
part plan to overturn the Presidential election and prevent the 
transfer of Presidential power. In our hearings, you will see 
evidence of each element of this plan.
    In our second hearing, you will see that Donald Trump and 
his advisors knew that he had, in fact, lost the election. But, 
despite this, President Trump engaged in a massive effort to 
spread false and fraudulent information, to convince huge 
portions of the U.S. population that fraud had stolen the 
election from him. This was not true.
    Jason Miller was a senior Trump campaign spokesman. In this 
clip, Miller describes a call between the Trump campaign's 
internal data expert and President Trump a few days after the 
2020 election.

    Mr. Miller. I was in the Oval Office, and at some point in the 
conversation Matt Oczkowski, who was the lead data person, was brought 
on, and I remember he delivered to the President pretty blunt terms 
that he was going to lose.
    Mr. Heaphy. And that was based, Mr. Miller, on Matt and the data 
team's assessment of the sort-of county-by-county, State-by-State 
results as reported?
    Mr. Miller. Correct.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Alex Cannon was one of President Trump's 
campaign lawyers. He previously worked for the Trump 
organization. One of his responsibilities was to assess 
allegations of election fraud in November 2020. Here is one 
sample of his testimony, discussing what he told White House 
Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

    Mr. Cannon. I remember a call with Mr. Meadows where Mr. Meadows 
was asking me what I was finding, and if I was finding anything. And I 
remember sharing with him that we weren't finding anything that would 
be sufficient to change the results in any of the key States.
    Mr. Harris. When was that conversation?
    Mr. Cannon. Probably in November, mid- to late-November. I think it 
was before my child was born.
    Mr. Harris. And what was Mr. Meadows' reaction to that information?
    Mr. Cannon. I believe the words he used were, so there's no there 
there.

    Vice Chair Cheney. ``There is no there there.''
    The Trump campaign's general counsel, Matt Morgan, gave 
similar testimony. He explained that all of the fraud 
allegations and the campaign's other election arguments taken 
together and viewed in the best possible light for President 
Trump could still not change the outcome of the election.
    President Trump's Attorney General, Bill Barr, also told 
Donald Trump his election claims were wrong.

    Attorney General Barr. Repeatedly told the President in no 
uncertain terms that I did not see evidence of fraud. And--you know, 
that would have affected the outcome of the election. And frankly a 
year and a half later, I haven't seen anything to change my mind on 
that.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Attorney General Barr also told 
President Trump that his allegations about Dominion voting 
machines were groundless.

    Attorney General Barr. I saw absolutely zero basis for the 
allegations, but they were made in such a sensational way that they 
obviously were influencing a lot of people--members of the public--that 
there was this systemic corruption in the system and that their votes 
didn't count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were 
actually determining it, which was complete nonsense. And it was being 
laid out there. And I told them that it was--that it was crazy stuff 
and they were wasting their time on that. And it was doing a great, 
grave disservice to the country.

    Vice Chair Cheney. But President Trump persisted, repeating 
the false Dominion allegations in public at least a dozen more 
times, even after his Attorney General told him they were, 
``complete nonsense.''
    After Barr's resignation on December 23rd, the Acting 
Attorney General who replaced him, Jeff Rosen, and the Acting 
Deputy, Richard Donoghue, told President Trump over and over 
again that the evidence did not support allegations he was 
making in public.
    Many of President Trump's White House staff also recognized 
that the evidence did not support the claims President Trump 
was making. This is the President's daughter commenting on Bill 
Barr's statement that the Department found no fraud sufficient 
to overturn the election.

    Mr. Heaphy. How did that affect your perspective about the election 
when Attorney General Barr made that statement?
    Ms. Trump. It affected my perspective. I respect Attorney General 
Barr. So, I accepted what he was saying.

    Vice Chair Cheney. As you will hear on Monday, the 
President had every right to litigate his campaign claims. But 
he ultimately lost more than 60 cases in State and Federal 
courts. The President's claims in the election cases were so 
frivolous and unsupported that the President's lead lawyer, 
Rudy Giuliani, not only lost the lawsuits, his license to 
practice law was suspended. Here is what the court said of Mr. 
Giuliani: Giuliani ``communicated demonstrably false and 
misleading statements to courts, lawmakers, and the public at 
large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. 
Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump's failed 
effort at reelection in 2020.''
    As you will see in great detail in our hearings, President 
Trump ignored the rulings of our Nation's courts. He ignored 
his own campaign leadership, his White House staff, many 
Republican State officials. He ignored the Department of 
Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.
    President Trump invested millions of dollars of campaign 
funds purposely spreading false information, running ads he 
knew were false, and convincing millions of Americans that the 
election was corrupt and that he was the true President. As you 
will see, this misinformation campaign provoked the violence on 
January 6th.
    In our third hearing, you will see that President Trump 
corruptly planned to replace the Attorney General of the United 
States so the U.S. Justice Department would spread his false 
stolen election claims. In the days before January 6th, 
President Trump told his top Justice Department officials, 
``Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me 
and the Republican Congressmen.''
    Senior Justice Department officials, men he had appointed, 
told him they could not do that because it was not true.
    So, President Trump decided to replace them. He offered 
Jeff Clark, an environmental lawyer at the Justice Department, 
the job of Acting Attorney General. President Trump wanted Mr. 
Clark to take a number of steps, including sending this letter 
to Georgia and 5 other States, saying the United States 
Department of Justice had, ``identified significant concerns 
that may have impacted the outcome of the election.''
    This letter is a lie. The Department of Justice had, in 
fact, repeatedly told President Trump exactly the opposite, 
that they had investigated his stolen election allegations and 
found no credible fraud that could impact the outcome of the 
election. This letter and others like it would have urged 
multiple States to withdraw their official and lawful electoral 
votes for Biden.
    Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue described 
Jeff Clark's letter this way, ``this would be a grave step for 
the Department to take and it could have tremendous 
Constitutional, political, and social ramifications for the 
country.''
    The Committee agrees with Mr. Donoghue's assessment. Had 
Clark assumed the role of Attorney General in the days before 
January 6th and issued these letters, the ramifications could 
indeed have been grave.
    Mr. Donoghue also said this about Clark's plan.

    Acting United States Deputy Attorney General Donoghue. And I recall 
toward the end saying what you're proposing is nothing less than the 
United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a 
Presidential election.

    Vice Chair Cheney. In our hearings, you will hear first-
hand how the senior leadership of the Department of Justice 
threatened to resign, how the White House Counsel threatened to 
resign, and how they confronted Donald Trump and Jeff Clark in 
the Oval Office. The men involved, including Acting Attorney 
General Jeff Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard 
Donoghue, were appointed by President Trump. These men honored 
their oaths of office. They did their duty. You will hear from 
them in our hearings.
    By contrast, Jeff Clark has invoked his Fifth Amendment 
privilege against self-incrimination and refused to testify.
    Representative Scott Perry, who was also involved in trying 
to get Clark appointed as Attorney General, has refused to 
testify here. As you will see, Representative Perry contacted 
the White House in the weeks after January 6th to seek a 
Presidential pardon.
    Multiple other Republican Congressmen also sought 
Presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn 
the 2020 election.
    In our fourth hearing, we will focus on President Trump's 
efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to 
count electoral votes on January 6th.
    Vice President Pence has spoken publicly about this.

    Vice President Pence. President Trump is wrong. I had no right to 
overturn the election. 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.

    Vice Chair Cheney. What President Trump demanded that Mike 
Pence do wasn't just wrong. It was illegal, and it was 
unconstitutional. You will hear this in great detail from the 
Vice President's former general counsel.
    Witnesses in these hearings will explain how the former 
Vice President and his staff informed President Trump over and 
over again that what he was pressuring Mike Pence to do was 
illegal. As you will hear, President Trump engaged in a 
relentless effort to pressure Pence, both in private and in 
public. You will see the evidence of that pressure from 
multiple witnesses live and on video.
    Vice President Pence demonstrated his loyalty to Donald 
Trump consistently over 4 years, but he knew that he had a 
higher duty to the United States Constitution. This is 
testimony from the Vice President's Chief of Staff.

    Mr. Short. That's why I think the Vice President was proud of his 4 
years of service, and he felt like much had been accomplished in those 
4 years. And I think he was proud to have stood beside the President 
for all that had been done. But I think he ultimately knew that his 
fidelity to the Constitution was his first and foremost oath. And--and 
that's--that's what he articulated publicly. And I think that that's 
what he felt.
    Mr. Heaphy. His fidelity to the Constitution was more important 
than his fidelity to President Trump and his desires----
    Mr. Short. The oath he took.
    Mr. Heaphy. Yes.

    Vice Chair Cheney. You will also hear about a lawyer named 
John Eastman. Mr. Eastman was deeply involved in President 
Trump's plans. You will hear from former Fourth Circuit Federal 
Judge Michael Luttig, a highly-respected leading conservative 
judge. John Eastman clerked for Judge Luttig. Judge Luttig 
provided counsel to the Vice President's team in the days 
before January 6th. The judge will explain how Eastman, ``was 
wrong at every turn.''
    You will see the email exchanges between Eastman and the 
Vice President's counsel as the violent attack on Congress was 
underway. Mr. Jacob said this to Mr. Eastman: ``Thanks to your 
bullshit, we are under siege.''
    You will also see evidence that John Eastman did not 
actually believe the legal position he was taking. In fact, a 
month before the 2020 election, Eastman took exactly the 
opposite view on the same legal issues.
    In the course of the Select Committee's work to obtain 
information from Mr. Eastman, we have had occasion to present 
evidence to a Federal judge. The judge evaluated the facts, and 
he reached the conclusion that President Trump's efforts to 
pressure Vice President Pence to act illegally by refusing to 
count electoral votes likely violated two Federal criminal 
statutes.
    The judge also said this: ``If Dr. Eastman and President 
Trump's plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the 
peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy 
and the Constitution. If the country does not commit to 
investigating and pursuing accountability for those 
responsible, the Court fears January 6th will repeat itself.''
    Every American should read what this Federal judge has 
written.
    The same judge, Judge Carter, issued another decision on 
Tuesday night, just this week, indicating that John Eastman and 
other Trump lawyers knew that their legal arguments had no real 
chance of success in court, but they relied on those arguments 
anyway to try to, ``overturn a democratic election.''
    You will hear that, while Congress was under attack on 
January 6th and the hours following the violence, the Trump 
legal team in the Willard Hotel war room continued to work to 
halt the count of electoral votes.
    In our fifth hearing, you will see evidence that President 
Trump corruptly pressured State legislators and election 
officials to change election results. You will hear additional 
details about President Trump's call to Georgia officials, 
urging them to, ``find 11,780 votes,'' votes that did not 
exist, and his efforts to get States to rescind certified 
electoral slates without factual basis and contrary to law.
    You will hear new details about the Trump campaign and 
other Trump associates' efforts to instruct Republican 
officials in multiple States to create intentionally false 
electoral slates and transmit those slates to Congress, to the 
Vice President, and the National Archives, falsely certifying 
that Trump won States he actually lost.
    In our final two June hearings, you will hear how President 
Trump summoned a violent mob and directed them illegally to 
march on the United States Capitol. While the violence was 
under way, President Trump failed to take immediate action to 
stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the 
Capitol.
    As we present these initial findings, keep two points in 
mind: First, our investigation is still on-going. So, what we 
make public here will not be the complete set of information we 
will ultimately disclose. Second, the Department of Justice is 
currently working with cooperating witnesses and has disclosed 
to date only some of the information it has identified from 
encrypted communications and other sources.
    On December 18, 2020, a group, including General Michael 
Flynn, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and others, visited the 
White House. They stayed late into the evening. We know that 
the group discussed a number of dramatic steps, including 
having the military seize voting machines and potentially rerun 
elections.
    You will also hear that President Trump met with that group 
alone for a period of time before White House lawyers and other 
staff discovered the group was there and rushed to intervene.
    A little more than an hour after Ms. Powell, Mr. Giuliani, 
General Flynn, and the others finally left the White House, 
President Trump sent the tweet on the screen now, telling 
people to come to Washington on January 6th. ``Be there,'' he 
instructed them, ``will be wild.''
    As you will see, this was a pivotal moment. This tweet 
initiated a chain of events. The tweet led to the planning for 
what occurred on January 6th, including by the Proud Boys, who 
ultimately led the invasion of the Capitol and the violence on 
that day.
    The indictment of a group of Proud Boys alleges that they 
planned, ``to oppose by force the authority of the Government 
of the United States.''
    According to the Department of Justice, on January 6, 2021, 
the defendants directed, mobilized, and led members of the 
crowd onto the Capitol Grounds and into the Capitol, leading to 
the dismantling of metal barricades, the destruction of 
property, the breaching of the Capitol Building, and the 
assaults on law enforcement.
    Although certain former Trump officials have argued that 
they did not anticipate violence on January 6th, the evidence 
suggests otherwise. As you will see in our hearings, the White 
House was receiving specific reports in the days leading up to 
January 6th, including during President Trump's Ellipse rally, 
indicating that elements in the crowd were preparing for 
violence at the Capitol.
    On the evening of January 5th, the President's close 
advisor, Steve Bannon, said this on his podcast.

    Mr. Bannon. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. Just 
understand this. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.

    Vice Chair Cheney. As part of our investigation, we will 
present information about what the White House and other 
intelligence agencies knew and why the Capitol was not better 
prepared.
    But we will not lose sight of the fact that the Capitol 
Police did not cause the crowd to attack. We will not blame the 
violence that day, violence provoked by Donald Trump, on the 
officers who bravely defended all of us.
    In our final hearing, you will hear a moment-by-moment 
account of the hours-long attack from more than half a dozen 
White House staff, both live in the hearing room and via 
videotaped testimony.
    There is no doubt that President Trump was well aware of 
the violence as it developed. White House staff urged President 
Trump to intervene and call off the mob.
    Here is a document written while the attack was under way 
by a member of the White House staff, advising what the 
President needed to say: ``Anyone who entered the Capitol 
without proper authority should leave immediately.''
    This is exactly what his supporters on Capitol Hill and 
Nation-wide were urging the President to do. He would not.
    You will hear that leaders on Capitol Hill begged the 
President for help, including Republican Leader McCarthy, who 
was ``scared'' and called multiple members of the President 
Trump's family after he could not persuade the President 
himself.
    Not only did President Trump refuse to tell the mob to 
leave the Capitol, he placed no call to any element of the U.S. 
Government to instruct that the Capitol be defended. He did not 
call his Secretary of Defense on January 6th. He did not talk 
to his Attorney General. He did not talk to the Department of 
Homeland Security. President Trump gave no order to deploy the 
National Guard that day, and he made no effort to work with the 
Department of Justice to coordinate and deploy law enforcement 
assets.
    But Vice President Pence did each of those things. For 
example, here is what General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, testified to this Committee.

    General Milley. There were two--two or three calls with Vice 
President Pence. He was very animated, and he issued very explicit, 
very direct, unambiguous orders. There was no question about that. 
And--and he was--and--and I can give you the exact quotes, I guess, 
from some of our records somewhere. But he was very animated, very 
direct, very firm. And to Secretary Miller: get the military down here. 
Get the Guard down here, put down this situation, et cetera.

    Vice Chair Cheney. By contrast, here is General Milley's 
description of his conversation with President Trump's Chief of 
Staff, Mark Meadows, on January 6th.

    General Milley. He said we have--we have to kill the narrative that 
the Vice President is making all the decisions. We need to establish 
the narrative that, you know, that the President is still in charge and 
that things are steady or stable or words to that effect. I immediately 
interpret that as politics, politics, politics. Red flag for me 
personally, no action. But I remember it distinctly.

    Vice Chair Cheney. You will hear from witnesses how the day 
played out inside the White House, how multiple White House 
staff resigned in disgust, and how President Trump would not 
ask his supporters to leave the Capitol. It was only after 
multiple hours of violence that President Trump finally 
released a video instructing the riotous mob to leave. As he 
did so, he said to them: ``We love you, and you are very 
special.''
    You will also hear that, in the immediate aftermath of 
January 6th, members of the President's family, White House 
staff, and others tried to step in to stabilize the situation, 
``to land the plane'' before the Presidential transition on 
January 20th.
    You will hear about members of the Trump Cabinet discussing 
the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment and replacing 
the President of the United States.
    Multiple members of President Trump's own Cabinet resigned 
immediately after January 6th. One member of the Cabinet 
suggested that the remaining Cabinet officers needed to take a 
more active role in running the White House and the 
administration.
    But most emblematic of those days is this exchange of texts 
between Sean Hannity and former President Trump's press 
secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. Sean Hannity wrote in part: ``Key 
now. No more crazy people.'' ``No more stolen election talk.'' 
``Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real . . . many 
people will quit.''
    Ms. McEnany responded in part: ``Love that.'' ``That is the 
playbook.''
    The White House staff knew that President Trump was willing 
to entertain and use conspiracy theories to achieve his ends. 
They knew the President needed to be cut off from all of those 
who had encouraged him. They knew that President Donald Trump 
was too dangerous to be left alone at least until he left 
office on January 20th.
    These are important facts for Congress and the American 
people to understand fully.
    When a President fails to take the steps necessary to 
preserve our Union or, worse, causes a Constitutional crisis, 
we are at a moment of maximum danger for our Republic.
    Some in the White House took responsible steps to try to 
prevent January 6th. Others egged the President on. Others who 
could have acted refused to do so.
    In this case, the White House Counsel was so concerned 
about potentially lawless activity that he threatened to resign 
multiple times. That is exceedingly rare and exceedingly 
serious. It requires immediate attention, especially when the 
entire team threatens to resign.
    However, in the Trump White House, it was not exceedingly 
rare, and it was not treated seriously.
    This is a clip of Jared Kushner addressing multiple threats 
by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and his team of lawyers to 
resign in the weeks before January 6th.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Jared, are you aware of instances where Pat 
Cipollone threatened to resign?
    Mr. Kushner. I--I kind-of--like I said, my interest at that time 
was on trying to get as many pardons done. And I know that, you know, 
he was always--to him and the team were always saying, Oh, we're going 
to resign. We're not going to be here if this happens, if that happens. 
So, I kind-of took it up to just be whining to be honest with you.

    Vice Chair Cheney. ``Whining.''
    There is a reason why people serving in our Government take 
an oath to the Constitution. As our Founding Fathers 
recognized, democracy is fragile. People in positions of public 
trust are duty-bound to defend it, to step forward when action 
is required.
    In our country, we don't swear an oath to an individual or 
a political party. We take our oath to defend the United States 
Constitution, and that oath must mean something.
    Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are 
defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald 
Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.
    Finally, I ask all of our fellow Americans, as you watch 
our hearings over the coming weeks, please remember what is at 
stake. Remember the men and women who have fought and died so 
that we can live under the rule of law, not the rule of men.
    I ask you to think of the scene in our Capitol rotunda on 
the night of January 6th. There, in a sacred space in our 
Constitutional Republic, the place where our Presidents lie in 
state, watched over by statues of Washington and Jefferson, 
Lincoln and Grant, Eisenhower, Ford, and Reagan, against every 
wall that night encircling the room there were SWAT teams, men 
and women in tactical gear with long guns, deployed inside our 
Capitol Building.
    There in the rotunda these brave men and women rested 
beneath paintings depicting the earliest scenes of our 
Republic, including one painted in 1824 depicting George 
Washington resigning his commission, voluntarily relinquishing 
power, handing control of the Continental Army back to 
Congress. With this noble act, Washington set the indispensable 
example of the peaceful transfer of power, what President 
Reagan called nothing less than a miracle.
    The sacred obligation to defend this peaceful transfer of 
power has been honored by every American President except one.
    As Americans, we all have a duty to ensure that what 
happened on January 6th never happens again, to set aside 
partisan battles, to stand together to perpetuate and preserve 
our great Republic.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Thompson. As we provide answers to the American 
people about January 6th, it is important that we remember 
exactly what took place, that this was no tourist visit to the 
Capitol.
    Most of the footage we are about to play has never been 
seen. The Select Committee obtained it as a part of our 
investigation.
    This isn't easy to watch. I want to warn everyone that this 
video includes violence and strong language.
    Without objection, I include in the record a video 
presentation of the violence of January 6th.

    Voice. Grab your bullet. Grab your bullet. Grab your bullet.
    MPD Radio Transmission. Yeah. Just be aware, be advised there's 
probably about 300 Proud Boys. They're marching eastbound in this 400 
block of kind-of Independence, actually on the Mall toward the United 
States Capitol.
    Crowd. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
    Voice. I am not allowed to say what's going to happen today, 
because everyone's just going to have to watch for themselves. But it's 
going to happen. Something's going to happen.
    Crowd. Whose streets? Our streets. Whose streets? Our streets. 
Whose streets? Our streets.
    Voice. Don't need to hurt you. We are on your side. Don't make us 
go against you. Must be a brown shirt. Pick a side. Pick a side. These 
are our streets. 20 bucks a picture.
    President Trump. I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope 
so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the 
election . . . 
    All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the States to 
recertify, and we become President, and you are the happiest people . . 
. 
    Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. And if he 
doesn't, that will be a--a sad day for our country, because you'll 
never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, 
and you have to be strong.
    Crowd. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
    MPD Radio Transmission. Cruiser 50, it does look like we're going 
to have an ad hoc march stepping off here. There's a crowd surge 
heading east.
    Crowd. We love Trump. We love Trump. We love Trump. We love Trump. 
We love Trump. We love Trump. We love Trump. We love Trump.
    President Trump. Mike Pence, I hope you are going to stand up for 
the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if 
you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you, I will tell you 
right now.
    Crowd. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
    Voice. [screaming]
    Voice. Get back, lady. Get back, lady.
    USCP Radio Transmission. EA 101 priority, we've been passed first 
on Peace Circle, breached the line. We need back-up.
    Voice. What are you doing? Guys, what are you doing? Fuck yeah. 
Fuck yeah. [unintelligible]
    House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul D. Irving. Madam Speaker, the Vice 
President and the United States Senate. [applause]
    MPD Radio Transmission. Cruiser 50, we're going to give riot 
warning [unintelligible]. We're going to give riot warning. We're gonna 
try and get compliance, but this is now effectively a riot.
    MPD Radio Transmission. 1349 hours, declaring it a riot.
    MPD Radio Transmission. Cruiser 5 to 50, be advised Capitol Police 
1 advised they're trying to breach and get into the Capitol.
    MPD Radio Transmission. 50, I copy.
    Voice. Hold the line. Hold the line. Hold the line. Hold the line. 
Hold the line.
    Voice. Fuck the line.
    MPD Radio Transmission. 42, we're about 5 minutes out. We're trying 
to make our way through all this.
    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Go, go, go, go, go.
    MPD Radio Transmission. Cruiser 50, we have a breach of the 
Capitol, breach of the Capitol from the upper level.
    MPD Radio Transmission. Be advised, they are requesting additional 
resources on the east side, as they have broken into that window, and 
they're trying to kick it in.
    Rep. James P. McGovern. Without objection, the Chair declares the 
House in recess pursuant to clause 12(b) of rule I.
    Voice. ``Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have 
been done to protect our Country and our Constitution giving States a 
chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or 
inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. US[A] 
demands the truth.''
    Crowd. Bring out Pence. Bring out Pence. Bring him out. Bring out 
Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike 
Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence.
    Voice. You pepper sprayed another American that was fighting for 
you. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Take it all away. Take it all away. Get him back in. 
[unintelligible]
    Crowd. Our house. Our house. Our house. Move, move. Our house. 
Whose house? Our house. Whose house? Our house. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Get the fuckers. [unintelligible]
    Voice. We can't hold this. We're going to get too many fucking 
people here. Look at this fucking vantage point. Man, we're fucked.
    USCP Radio Transmission. We need an area for the House Members. 
They're all walking over now through the tunnel.
    MPD Radio Transmission. We're trying to hold the upper deck. We are 
trying to hold the upper deck now. We need to close the doors of the 
Capitol. I need more support. [unintelligible]
    We've lost the line. We've lost the line. All MPD get back. All MPD 
pull back up to the upper deck. All MPD pull back to the upper deck 
ASAP.
    Crowd. Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, 
Nancy, Nancy, Nancy. [unintelligible]
    Voice. Nancy Pelosi. [unintelligible]
    MPD Radio Transmission.  . . . Cruiser 50, be advised that Capitol 
Police are going to start moving their resources inside. They're going 
to start the N4 officers first.
    Voice. No violence. No violence. [unintelligible]
    USCP Radio Transmission.  . . . H-208 with the four Members, the 
door's barricaded. There's people flooding the hallways outside, and we 
have no way out.
    USCP Radio Transmission.  . . . Is that officers still remaining on 
the House floor in the--on the third floor to use the subways 
themselves. It's time to evacuate, so we can secure the Members on the 
other side. Copy?
    Crowd. Stop the steal! Stop the steal!
    Voice. It's up to us people now, the American people.
    Voice. But what are you ready to do?
    Voice. One more time?
    Voice. What are you ready to do?
    Voice. Whatever it takes. I'll lay my life down if it takes.
    Voice. Absolutely. That's why we showed up today.
    Voice. Bring her out. Bring her out here. We're coming in if you 
don't bring her out. Fuck you. Fuck you, you son of a bitch. You back 
up. You back up.
    Voice. Can I have my cell phone back?
    Voice. Go ahead and try.
    Voice. Get him up. Get him up. Get a medic.
    Voice. Officer down, get him up.
    Voice. We love you guys.
    Voice. Get him up. Get him up. Get him up.
    Crowd. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! 
[unintelligible]
    MPD Radio Transmission.  . . . West Terrace door for backup.
    Voice. I need backup. I need backup.
    Voice. Back up. Back up. [unintelligible]
    President Trump. They were peaceful people. These were great 
people. The crowd was unbelievable. And I mentioned the word love. The 
love--the love in the air, I've never seen anything like it.

    Chairman Thompson. Pursuant to the order of the Committee 
of tonight, the Chair declares the Committee in recess for a 
period of approximately 10 minutes.
    [Accordingly, at 9:02 p.m., the Committee recessed until 
9:12 p.m., when it was called to order by the Chairman.]
    Chairman Thompson. I want to thank our witnesses for being 
with us this evening to share their first-hand accounts of that 
terrible day.
    I know that some of the witnesses from our first hearing 
are in the room with us, along with some of the family members, 
friends, and widows of the officers who lost their lives as a 
result of the attack. Thank you all for being here for us and 
the American people.
    Officer Caroline Edwards has been with the United States 
Capitol Police since 2017. On January 6th, Officer Edwards was 
assigned to the First Responder Unit, which serves as the first 
line of defense at the Capitol complex. She also served as a 
member of the Civil Disturbance Unit, a special subset of the 
Uniformed Division trained to respond to mass demonstration 
events. Officer Edwards is a graduate of the University of 
Georgia and currently is working on a master's degree in 
intelligence analysis from Johns Hopkins University.
    Nick Quested is an acclaimed filmmaker whose credits 
include documenting stories from war zones in Afghanistan, 
Syria, and Iraq. On January 6th, Mr. Quested was working on a 
documentary about, ``why Americans are so divided when 
Americans have so much in common.'' During that day, Mr. 
Quested interviewed and documented movements of the people 
around the Capitol, including the first moments of the violence 
against the Capitol Police and the chaos that ensued.
    I will now swear in our witnesses. The witnesses will 
please stand and raise your right hands.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Chairman Thompson. Let the record reflect the witnesses 
answered in the affirmative.
    Without objection, the witnesses' statements will be 
included in the record.
    Pursuant to section 5(c)(8) of House Resolution 503, I 
recognize myself for questioning.
    As you saw just a few minutes ago, the Proud Boys 
instigated the first breach of the Capitol just before 1 
o'clock p.m., where rioters pushed over barricades near the 
Peace Circle at the foot of the Capitol. Our two witnesses 
tonight were both there at the time of that first breach.
    Officer Edwards was standing with other officers behind a 
line of bike racks that marked the perimeter of the Capitol 
Grounds. She bravely tried to prevent an angry crowd from 
advancing on the Capitol. Unfortunately, she was overrun and 
knocked unconscious as the crowd advanced on the Capitol.
    Mr. Quested was a few yards away from Officer Edwards, 
taking footage of the Proud Boys as part of his work on a 
documentary film. Most of his footage has never been shown 
publicly before we shared it this evening.
    Officer Edwards, I would like to start by asking if you 
could tell us why you believe it is important for you to share 
your story this evening with the Committee and the American 
public.
    Officer Edwards.\1\ Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really 
appreciate it. Thank you to the Committee for having me here to 
testify.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Officer Edwards's prepared statement is included in the 
Appendix beginning on p. 93.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I was called a lot of things on January 6, 2021, and the 
days thereafter. I was called Nancy Pelosi's dog, called 
incompetent, called a hero, and a villain. I was called a 
traitor to my country, my oath, and my Constitution.
    In actuality, I was none of those things. I was an American 
standing face-to-face with other Americans asking myself how 
many times--many, many times--how we had gotten here.
    I had been called names before, but never had my patriotism 
or duty been called into question. I, who got up every day, no 
matter how early the hour or how late I got in the night 
before, to put on my uniform and to protect America's symbol of 
democracy; I, who spent countless hours in the baking sun and 
freezing snow to make sure that America's elected officials 
were able to do their job; I, whose literal blood, sweat, and 
tears were shed that day defending the building that I spent 
countless holidays and weekends working in.
    I am the proud granddaughter of a Marine that fought in the 
Battle of the Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War. I think of my 
papa often in these days, how he was so young and thrown into a 
battle he never saw coming, and answered the call at a great 
personal cost; how he lived the rest of his days with bullets 
and shrapnel in his legs but never once complained about his 
sacrifice.
    I would like to think that he would be proud of me, proud 
of his granddaughter that stood her ground that day and 
continued fighting even though she was wounded, like he did 
many years ago. I am my grandfather's granddaughter, proud to 
put on a uniform and serve my country.
    They dared to question my honor. They dared to question my 
loyalty. They dared to question my duty. I am a proud American, 
and I will gladly sacrifice everything to make sure that the 
America my grandfather defended is here for many years to come.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Thompson. Officer Edwards, your story and your 
service is important, and I thank you for being here tonight.
    Mr. Quested, I would also like to ask you to introduce 
yourself. Can you tell us how you found yourself in Washington, 
DC, on January 6, 2021?
    Mr. Quested.\2\ Good evening, Chair and Madam Vice Chair. 
Thank you for the introduction.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ Mr. Quested's prepared statement is included in the Appendix 
beginning on p. 93.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As stated, in the winter of 2020, I was working on a 
documentary. As part of that documentary, I filmed several 
rallies in Washington, DC, on December 11th and December the 
12th, and I learned there would be a rally on The Mall on 
January 6th. So, my three colleagues and I came down to 
document the rally.
    According to the permit at the event, there was going to be 
a rally at the Ellipse. We arrived at The Mall and observed a 
large contingent of Proud Boys marching toward the Capitol. We 
filmed them, and almost immediately I was separated from my 
colleagues.
    I documented the crowd turn from protesters to rioters to 
insurrectionists. I was surprised at the size of the group, the 
anger, and the profanity.
    For anyone who didn't understand how violent that event 
was, I saw it, I documented it, and I experienced it. I heard 
incredibly aggressive chanting, and I subsequently shared that 
footage with the authorities.
    I am here today pursuant to a House subpoena.
    Thank you so much.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Quested.
    The Select Committee has conducted extensive investigative 
work to understand what led the Proud Boys and other rioters to 
the Capitol on January 6th.
    We have obtained substantial evidence showing that the 
President's December 19th tweet calling his followers to 
Washington, DC, on January 6th energized individuals from the 
Proud Boys and other extremist groups.
    I would like to play a brief video highlighting some of 
this evidence.

    Mr. Childress. My name is Marcus Childress, and I'm an 
investigative counsel for the Select Committee to Investigate 
the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
    President Trump. What do you want to call him? Give me a 
name. Give me a name. Go ahead.
    Debate Moderator Chris Wallace. White supremacists. 
[crosstalk]
    President Trump. Who would you like me to condemn?
    Debate Moderator Chris Wallace. White supremacists and----
    Then-Candidate Biden. Proud Boys. [crosstalk]
    President Trump. Proud Boys, stand back and stand by----
    Mr. Childress. After he made this comment, Enrique Tarrio, 
then chairman of the Proud Boys, said on Parler, ``Standing by 
sir.'' During our investigation, we learned that this comment 
during the Presidential debate actually led to an increase in 
membership in the Proud Boys.
    Mr. Quinn. Would you say that Proud Boys numbers increased 
after the stand back, stand by comment?
    Mr. Bertino. Exponentially. I'd say tripled probably. With 
the potential for a lot more eventually.
    Ms. Phoenix. And did you ever sell any stand back and stand 
by merchandise?
    Mr. Tarrio. Uh, one of the vendors on my page actually beat 
me to it, but I wish I would have--I wish I would have made a 
stand back, stand by shirt.
    Mr. Childress. On December 19th, President Trump tweeted 
about the January 6th rally and told attendees, ``Be there, 
will be wild!'' Many of the witnesses that we interviewed were 
inspired by the President's call and came to DC for January 
6th, but the extremists, they took it a step further. They 
viewed this tweet as a call to arms. A day later, the 
Department of Justice describes how the Proud Boys created a 
chat called the Ministry of Self Defense Leadership Chat. In 
this chat, the Proud Boys established a command structure in 
anticipation of coming back to DC on January 6th. The 
Department of Justice describes Mr. Tarrio coming into 
possession of a document called the ``1776 Returns,'' which 
describes individuals occupying key buildings around the United 
States Capitol. The Oath Keepers are another group that the 
Committee investigated.
    Mr. Jones. You better get your ass to DC folks this 
Saturday.
    Mr. Rhodes. Yeah. If you don't, there's gonna be no more 
Republic. But we're not gonna let that happen. It's not even an 
``if.'' It's either President Trump is encouraged and 
bolstered, strengthened to do what he must do, or we wind up in 
a bloody fight. We all know that. The fight's coming.
    Mr. Childress. The Oath Keepers began planning to block the 
peaceful transfer of power shortly after the November 3rd 
election. And according to the Department of Justice, Stewart 
Rhodes, the Oath Keeper's leader, said to his followers that, 
``We aren't getting through this without a civil war.'' In 
response to the December 19, 2020, tweet by President Trump, 
the Oath Keepers focused on January 6th in Washington, DC. In 
response to the tweet, one member, the president of the Florida 
chapter, put on social media, ``the President called us to the 
Capitol, he wants us to make it wild.'' The goal was for the 
Oath Keepers to be called to duty so that they could keep the 
President in power although President Trump had just lost the 
election. The Committee learned that the Oath Keepers set up 
quick reaction forces outside of the city and in Virginia where 
they stored arms. The goal of these quick reaction forces was 
to be on standby just in case President Trump invoked the 
Insurrection Act.
    Mr. Prasanna. Did the Oath Keepers ever provide weapons to 
members?
    Mr. Rhodes. I'm going to decline to answer that on Fifth 
Amendment grounds--for due process grounds.
    Mr. Childress. In footage obtained by the Committee, we 
learned that on the night of January 5th, Enrique Tarrio and 
Stewart Rhodes met in a parking garage in Washington, DC.
    Mr. Tarrio. There's mutual respect there. I think we're--
we're fighting the same fight, and I think that's what's 
important.
    Mr. Childress. The Committee learned that the Oath Keepers 
went into the Capitol through the east doors in two stack 
formations. The DOJ alleges that one of the stacks went into 
the Capitol looking for Speaker Pelosi, although they never 
found her. As the attack was unfolding, Mr. Tarrio took credit. 
In documents obtained by the Department of Justice, Mr. Tarrio 
said, in an encrypted chat, ``make no mistake'' and ``we did 
this.'' Later on that evening, Mr. Tarrio even posted a video 
which seemed to resemble him in front of the Capitol with a 
black cape. And the title of the video was, ``Premonition.'' 
The evidence developed by the Select Committee and the 
Department of Justice highlights how each group participated on 
the attack on the Capitol on January 6th.
    In fact, the investigation revealed that it was individuals 
associated with the Proud Boys who instigated the initial 
breach at the peace circle at 12:53 p.m.
    Crowd. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
    Mr. Childress. Within 10 minutes, rioters had already 
filled the Lower West Plaza. [inaudible] By 2 o'clock, rioters 
had reached the doors on the West and the East Plazas. And by 
2:13, rioters had actually broken through the Senate wing door 
and got into the Capitol building. [inaudible] A series of 
breaches followed. At 
2:25 p.m., rioters breached the east side doors to the rotunda. 
[inaudible] And then right after 2:40 p.m., rioters breached 
the east side doors near the Ways and Means room. [inaudible] 
Once the rioters infiltrated the Capitol, they moved to the 
crypt, the rotunda, the hallways leading to the House Chamber, 
and even inside the Senate Chamber. [inaudible]

    Chairman Thompson. Individuals associated with two violent 
extremist groups have been charged with seditious conspiracy in 
connection with the January 6th attack.
    One is the Oath Keepers. They are a group of armed, 
antigovernment extremists. The other group is the Proud Boys. 
They promote white supremacist beliefs and have engaged in 
violence with people they view as their political enemies.
    Members of both groups have already pled guilty to crimes 
associated with the January 6th attack.
    Mr. Quested, as part of the documentary you have been 
filming, you gained access to the Proud Boys and their leader, 
Enrique Tarrio. Your crew filmed them in Washington, DC, on the 
evening of January 5th and then on January 6th.
    On January 5th, the night before the attack, you were with 
the head of the Proud Boys, Mr. Tarrio, in Washington, DC. What 
happened?
    Mr. Quested. We picked up Mr. Tarrio from jail. He had been 
arrested for carrying some magazines, some long--some extra-
capacity magazines, and for the--he took responsibility for the 
burning of the Black Lives Matter flag that was stolen from the 
church on December the 12th.
    We were attempting to get an interview with Mr. Tarrio. We 
had no idea of any of the events that were going to 
subsequently happen.
    We drove him to pick up his bags from the property 
department of the police, which is just south of The Mall. We 
picked up his bags and went to get some other bags from the 
Phoenix Hotel, where we encountered Mr. Stewart Rhodes from the 
Oath Keepers.
    By the time I had gone to park the car, my colleague was 
saying--who had got into the car with Mr. Tarrio--that they had 
moved to a location around the corner, the parking garage of 
the Hall of Legends, I believe. So, we quickly drove over 
there. We drove down into the parking garage and filmed the 
scene of Mr. Tarrio and Mr. Rhodes and certain other 
individuals in that garage.
    We then continued to follow Mr. Tarrio. There was some 
discussion about where he was going to go. He ended up going 
toward a hotel in Baltimore, and we conducted an interview with 
him in the hotel room.
    Then we returned to DC for that night in a--and what was 
interesting that night, actually, was, that was the first 
indication that DC was much more busy than it had been any 
other time we had been here, because we couldn't get into the 
hotels we wanted to, and we ended up at a hotel that, you know, 
was not as satisfactory as we would have hoped.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. So, what you are saying is, 
you filmed the meeting between Mr. Tarrio and Oath Keepers 
leader Stewart Rhodes, right?
    Mr. Quested. Indeed.
    Chairman Thompson. You couldn't hear what was said, but, 
according to the Justice Department indictment of Mr. Tarrio, a 
participant referenced the Capitol.
    Now, on the morning of January 6th, you learned the Proud 
Boys would gather near the rally scheduled to take place near 
the White House. What time did you meet up with the Proud Boys, 
and what was happening when they met?
    Mr. Quested. We met up with the Proud Boys somewhere around 
10:30 a.m., and they were starting to walk down The Mall in an 
easterly direction toward the Capitol.
    There was a large contingent, more than I had expected. I 
was confused, to a certain extent, why we were walking away 
from the President's speech, because that is what I felt we 
were there to cover.
    Chairman Thompson. So, at 10:30 a.m., that is early in the 
day. That is even before President Trump had started speaking. 
Am I correct?
    Mr. Quested. Yes, sir.
    Chairman Thompson. So, how many Proud Boys would you 
estimate were marching together to the Capitol?
    Mr. Quested. A couple of hundred, potentially. Yes, I would 
say a couple of hundred Proud Boys were marching toward the 
Capitol at that point.
    Chairman Thompson. At the time, was the area heavily 
guarded?
    Mr. Quested. No. That was--I remember we walked past the--
we walked down The Mall, we walked to the right of the 
Reflecting Pool and then north along the road that leads to the 
Peace Circle. As we were walking past the Peace Circle, I 
framed the Proud Boys to the right of my shot, with the Capitol 
behind, and we see one sole police officer at the barriers, 
which are subsequently breached.
    We then walk up and past a tactical unit preparing. You see 
that in the film, where the man questions their duty and their 
honor, and you see maybe a dozen Capitol Police putting on 
their riot gear.
    Chairman Thompson. So, how would you describe the 
atmosphere at that time?
    Mr. Quested. The atmosphere was--it seemed to be much 
darker. I make efforts to create familiarity between myself and 
my subjects to, you know, make them feel comfortable, and the 
atmosphere was much darker this day than it had been in these 
other days.
    There was also a contingent of Proud Boys that I hadn't met 
before from Arizona who appeared to wear these orange hats and 
had orange armbands.
    Chairman Thompson. So, when the Proud Boys went back down 
the hill to the Peace Circle, did a larger crowd start to 
gather?
    Mr. Quested. Well, no, first of all, we went around to the 
back and down the steps, and we took some photographs on the 
east side of the Capitol. Then we went for lunch. We went for 
tacos.
    Chairman Thompson. So, Mr. Quested, you are a journalist, 
so you are careful to stick to things that you have observed, 
but what you have told us is highly relevant.
    Let me highlight a few key facts that you and others have 
provided the Committee.
    First, there was a large group of Proud Boys present at the 
Capitol. We know that from multiple sources. You now estimate 
that there were around 250 to 300 individuals, you have 
testified. They weren't there for President Trump's speech. We 
know this because they left that area to march toward the 
Capitol before the speech began.
    They walked around the Capitol that morning. I am concerned 
this allowed them to see what defenses were in place and where 
weaknesses might be. They decided to launch their attack at the 
Peace Circle, which is a front door of the Capitol complex.
    It is the first security perimeter that those marching from 
the Ellipse would have to come to as they move toward the 
Capitol. The Peace Circle walkway was always where the 
thousands of angry Trump supporters would arrive after 
President Trump sent them from the Ellipse.
    The Proud Boys timed their attack to the moments before the 
start of the joint session in the Capitol, which is also where 
President Trump directed the angry mob. ``We fight like hell,'' 
he told them before sending them down Pennsylvania Avenue right 
to where the Proud Boys gathered and where you were filming.
    Now, a central question is whether the attack on the 
Capitol was coordinated and planned. What you witnessed is what 
a coordinated and planned effort would look like. It was the 
culmination of a months-long effort spearheaded by President 
Trump.
    Mr. Quested, thank you for your eyewitness account of the 
lead-up to the breach of the Peace Circle.
    This brings us to a point in time where you and Officer 
Edwards were in close proximity.
    At this point, I reserve the balance of my time.
    Pursuant to section 5(c)(8) of House Resolution 503, the 
Chair recognizes gentlewoman from Wyoming, Ms. Cheney, for 
questioning.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Officer Edwards, I want to start by thanking you for your 
service and thank you for your courage. Thank you for being 
here this evening.
    I know that it is not easy to relive what happened, for you 
and for the officers behind you and for the family members of 
the officers in the audience this evening, but it is really 
important for the country to have a full accounting and 
understand what happened.
    I want to start, Officer Edwards, with a short clip that 
shows the horrible moment when you were injured as the Peace 
Circle was breached.
    [Video of the attack on Officer Edwards shown.]
    Vice Chair Cheney. Officer Edwards, can you describe the 
crowd that had assembled at the Peace Circle as you and your 
fellow officers stood behind and guarded the bike racks at the 
Peace Circle?
    Officer Edwards. Yes.
    So, there were about, I want to say, about five of us on 
that line. There were, so there was our bike rack, and then at 
the bottom of the Pennsylvania Avenue walkway or right by Peace 
Circle, there was another bike rack. So, the crowd had kind-of 
gathered there. It was the crowd led by Joseph Biggs.
    They were mostly in civilian clothes. There were some who 
had military fatigues on. We could see people with bullet-proof 
vests on, you know, things like that. They didn't seem, you 
know, extremely cohesive, but they had gathered there in their 
outfits.
    But they had gathered there together, and Joseph Biggs 
started, he had a megaphone, and he started talking about, you 
know, first it was things kind-of relating to Congress. Then 
the table started turning once the, what is now the Arizona 
group, is what you said, the crowd with the orange hats, they 
came up chanting, ``F-u-c-k Antifa,'' and they joined that 
group.
    Once they joined that group, Joseph Biggs's rhetoric turned 
to the Capitol Police. He started asking us questions like, 
``You didn't miss a paycheck during the pandemic,'' mentioning 
stuff about--our pay scale was mentioned--and, you know, 
started turning the tables on us.
    I have worked, I can, you know, conservatively say, 
probably hundreds of civil disturbance events. I know when I am 
being turned into a villain. That is when I turned to my 
sergeant, and I stated the understatement of the century. I 
said, ``Sarge, I think we are going to need a few more people 
down here.''
    So, after that, you know, I think they started conferring. 
They went a little silent; they started conferring among each 
other. I saw the person now identified as Ryan Samsel. He put 
his arm around Joseph Biggs, and they were talking. Then they 
started approaching the first barricade. They ripped the first 
barricade down, and they approached our bike racks.
    You know, at that time, we started holding on, grabbing the 
bike racks. You know, there weren't many of us, so I grabbed 
the middle between two different bike racks. You know, I wasn't 
under any pretense that I could hold it for very long, but I 
just wanted to, you know, make sure that we could get more 
people down and get our CDU units time to answer the call.
    So, we started grappling over the bike racks. I felt the 
bike rack come on top of my head, and I was pushed backward. My 
foot caught the stair behind me, and my chin hit the handrail. 
Then I--at that point I had blacked out, but the back of my 
head clipped the concrete stairs behind me.
    Vice Chair Cheney. You were knocked unconscious; is that 
right, Officer Edwards?
    Officer Edwards. Yes, ma'am.
    Vice Chair Cheney. But then, when you regained 
consciousness, even with the injuries, you returned to duty. Is 
that right?
    Officer Edwards. Yes, ma'am. You know, at that time, 
adrenaline kicked in. I ran toward the West Front, and I tried 
to hold the line at the Senate steps at the Lower West Terrace.
    More people kept coming at us. It just seemed like, you 
know, more and more people started, you know, coming onto the 
West Front. They started overpowering us.
    That was right about when MPD's officers showed up. Their 
bike officers pushed the crowd back and allowed our CDU units, 
as well as theirs, to form that line that you see, that very 
thin line between us and the protesters, or the rioters, you 
know, at that time.
    I fell behind that line. For a while, I started 
decontaminating people who had gotten sprayed and treating 
people medically who needed it.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Then you were injured again, there on 
the West Terrace. Is that right, Officer Edwards?
    Officer Edwards. Yes, ma'am.
    So, after a while, I got back on the line. It was on the 
House side of the Lower West Terrace, and I was holding that 
line for a while. There weren't many of us over there. Officer 
Sicknick was behind me for most of the time, for about 30 to 45 
minutes that I was down there. We were just--as the best we 
could, we were just, you know, grappling over bike racks and 
trying to hold them as quick as possible.
    All of a sudden, I see movement to the left of me, and I 
turned, and it was Officer Sicknick with his head in his hands. 
He was ghostly pale, which--I figured at that point that he had 
been sprayed, and I was concerned. My, you know, cop alarm 
bells went off. Because if you get sprayed with pepper spray, 
you are going to turn red. He turned just about as pale as this 
sheet of paper.
    So, I looked back to see what had hit him, what had 
happened, and that is when I got sprayed in the eyes as well. I 
was taken to be decontaminated by another officer, but we 
didn't get the chance because we were then tear-gassed.
    Vice Chair Cheney. We are going to play just a brief clip 
of that moment that you have just described, Officer Edwards.
    [Video of the moment Officer Edwards was tear-gassed 
shown.]
    Vice Chair Cheney. Officer Edwards, I just want to thank 
you for being here. I know, again, how difficult it is. I know 
the family of Officer Sicknick, as well, is here tonight.
    One of the things one of the Capitol Police officers said 
to me recently was to ask me whether or not, as Members of 
Congress, all of us understood that on that day, on January 
6th, when we were evacuated from the Chamber, were led to a 
safe, undisclosed location, whether we knew that so many of you 
had rushed out of the building and into the fight. I can assure 
you that we do know that and that we understand how important 
your service is.
    Thank you for your continued work with our Committee and 
the interviews.
    Thank you very much, for both of you, for being here this 
evening.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much.
    Ms. Edwards, can you give us one memory of that awful day 
that stands out most vividly in your mind?
    Officer Edwards. I can.
    That time when I talked about falling behind MPD's line, I 
remember--because I had been kind-of shielded away, because I 
was holding those stairs, so I wasn't able to really see what 
was going on over here. When I fell behind that line and I saw, 
I can just remember my breath catching in my throat, because 
what I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I had 
seen out of the movies. I couldn't believe my eyes.
    There were officers on the ground. You know, they were 
bleeding, they were throwing up, they were, you know, they had, 
I mean, I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was 
slipping in people's blood. You know, I was catching people as 
they fell.
    It was carnage. It was chaos. I can't even describe what I 
saw.
    Never in my wildest dreams did I think that, as a police 
officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in 
the middle of a battle. You know, I am trained to detain, you 
know, a couple of subjects and, you know, handle a crowd, but I 
am not combat trained. That day, it was just hours of hand-to-
hand combat, hours of dealing with things that were way beyond 
what any law enforcement officer has ever trained for.
    I just remember, I just remember that moment of stepping 
behind the line and just seeing the absolute war zone that the 
West Front had become.
    Chairman Thompson. Let me thank you for your service and 
obviously your bravery that you have told the world about 
tonight. It is unfortunate that you had to defend the Capitol 
from fellow Americans. None of us would ever think that that 
would have to happen, but it did.
    So let me thank our witnesses for joining us tonight and 
sharing their experiences with America.
    Throughout my chairmanship of this Committee, I have 
continuously vowed that this Committee will ensure a 
comprehensive account of the heroic acts on January 6th and 
that we will follow the facts wherever they lead. Your 
testimony is an essential part of that record and helps us do 
our job.
    Mr. Quested, thank you for sharing your footage and your 
account of the day's events with us. The images you recorded 
and have shared with the Committee do a better job than any of 
our words in reinforcing the violence of January 6th. We hope 
that the power of your footage helps encourage all Americans to 
consider how citizens with so much in common could viciously 
brawl at the seat of their democratic government.
    Officer Edwards, thank you for your brave service, as I 
indicated, on January 6th and all you did to protect us and, 
most importantly, our democracy. If you and your fellow 
officers hadn't held the line against those violent 
insurrectionists, we can only imagine the disaster that would 
have ensued.
    Your heroism in the face of danger is admirable, and your 
will to continue to protect and serve, despite your serious 
injuries, should be an inspiration to all of us. We wish you a 
continued recovery and look forward to seeing you back in 
uniform sometime soon.
    The Members of the Select Committee may have additional 
questions for tonight's witnesses, and we ask that you respond 
expeditiously in writing to those questions.
    Without objection, Members will be permitted 10 business 
days to submit statements for the record, including opening 
remarks and additional questions for the witnesses.
    The witnesses have just told us what they heard the rioters 
saying, why they stormed the Capitol on that day. Now we are 
going to hear it from the rioters themselves.
    Without objection, I include in the record a video 
presentation.

    Voice. We were invited by the President of the United States.
    Mr. Schornack. What really made me want to come was the fact that, 
you know, I had supported Trump all that time. I did believe, you know, 
that the election was being stolen. And Trump asked us to come.
    Mr. Barber. He personally asked for us to come to DC that day. And 
I thought, for everything he's done for us, if this is the only thing 
he's going to ask of me, I'll do it.
    President Trump. We're going to walk down to the Capitol.
    Mr. Childress. Do you recall President Trump mentioning going to 
the Capitol during his speech?
    Mr. Barber. Oh, yeah. So, that's one of my disappointments. He said 
he was going to go, go with us, that he was going to be there.
    Mr. Wright. I know why I was there, and that's because he called me 
there, and he laid out what is happening in our government. He laid it 
out.
    Mr. Meza. But I remember Donald Trump telling people to be there, 
I--I mean, to support.
    Mr. Sasso. So, you mentioned that the President--that the President 
asked you. Do you remember a specific message?
    Mr. Herendeen. Basically, yeah--yes, for us to come to DC, that big 
things are going to happen.
    Mr. Walter. What got me interested, he said I have something very 
important to say on January 6th, or something like that is what got--
what got me interested to be there.
    Mr. Schornack. You know, Trump has only asked me for two things. He 
asked me for my vote, and he asked me to come on January 6th.

    Chairman Thompson. When the Committee reconvenes next week, 
we are going to examine the lies that convinced those men and 
others to storm the Capitol to try to stop the transfer of 
power. We are going to take a close look at the first part of 
Trump's attack on the rule of law, when he lit the fuse that 
ultimately resulted in the violence of January 6th.
    Without objection, and with that, the Committee stands 
adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 9:54 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]



                            A P P E N D I X

                              ----------                              

 Prepared Statement of Officer Caroline Edwards, U.S. Capitol Police, 
                             Washington, DC
                              June 9, 2022
    I was called a lot of things on January 6, 2021 and the days 
thereafter. I was called Nancy Pelosi's dog, called incompetent, called 
a hero and a villain. I was called a traitor to my country, my oath, 
and my Constitution. In actuality, I was none of those things.
    I was an American standing face-to-face with other Americans asking 
myself many times how we had gotten here. I had been called names 
before, but never had my patriotism or duty been called into question. 
I, who got up every day, no matter how early the hour or how late I got 
in the night before, to put on my uniform and protect America's symbol 
of democracy. I, who spent countless hours in the baking sun and 
freezing snow to make sure America's elected officials were able to do 
their job. I, whose literal blood, sweat, and tears were shed that day 
defending the building that I spent countless holidays and weekends 
working in.
    I am the proud granddaughter of a Marine that battled in the Chosin 
reservoir in the Korean War. I think of my Papa often in these days, 
how he was so young and thrown into a battle he never saw coming, and 
answered the call at great personal cost. How he lived the rest of his 
days with bullets and shrapnel in his legs, but never once complained 
about his sacrifice. I would like to think that he would be proud of 
me, proud that his granddaughter stood her ground that day and 
continued fighting even though she was wounded, like he did many years 
ago. I am my grandfather's granddaughter, proud to put on a uniform and 
serve my country.
    They dared to question my honor. They dared to question my loyalty. 
They dared to question my duty. I am a proud American, and I will 
gladly sacrifice everything to make sure that the America my 
grandfather defended is here for many years to come.
    Thank you.
                                 ______
                                 
Prepared Statement of Nick Quested, Documentary Filmmaker, New York, NY
    I am a British-born legal resident of the United States. I received 
my Bachelor of Fine Arts from New York University in 1992. I am an 
artist and an independent filmmaker. I have directed hundreds of music 
videos and have produced upwards of 40 documentaries. I have won an 
Emmy and a Dupont Columbia Award, and I have produced an Oscar-
nominated film.
    Much of my work in the last 20 years has revolved around conflict. 
I have filmed documentaries dealing with war and areas in conflict such 
as Restrepo, Korengal, The Last Patrol, Hell on Earth: The Fall of 
Syria and the Rise of ISIS, and most recently, Blood on the Wall.
    I testified before this Committee on June 9, 2022, because in 
December 2020 and January 2021, I was filming a documentary in 
Washington, DC about ``why Americans are so divided when Americans have 
so much in common.'' I had started working on this film in the summer 
of 2020 when I observed what America was experiencing. As part of that 
documentary, I interviewed and spoke with groups such as Antifa and the 
Proud Boys. I filmed several rallies in Washington, DC on December 11 
and December 12, 2020, and began filming several of the groups 
spearheading those rallies such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
    I learned there would be a rally on the National Mall on January 6, 
2021, and three colleagues and I came to document the rally. We 
traveled from New York to Washington, DC on January 5, 2021, and we 
started filming when we were invited to document a Proud Boy, Enrique 
Tarrio's release from Government custody. On January 5, 2022, we 
documented Mr. Tarrio as he retrieved his property from the 
Metropolitan Police Department, retrieved his luggage from a 
Washington, DC Hotel, participated in a meeting in an underground 
parking garage, and traveled to a hotel in Baltimore. After documenting 
those events, we returned to Washington, DC.
    On January 6, 2021, my colleagues and I headed to the Mall for the 
rally. According to the permit for the event, there was to be a rally 
at the Ellipse. I arrived as a group was heading west on the Mall. I 
observed a large contingent of Proud Boys marching toward the Capitol. 
I filmed the crowd walking toward Capitol Hill. Almost immediately, I 
was separated from my colleagues. I documented the crowd turn from 
protesters to insurrectionists. I was surprised at the size of the 
group, the anger, and the profanity. I experienced pepper spray, 
violent surging, and acts of violence, and I heard aggressive chanting.
    My goal as an independent journalist is always to prioritize truth 
and to let people speak for themselves rather than to interpret events 
for my audience. The clips of my footage that were shown to the world 
on June 9, 2022, were a snapshot of what we saw occur on January 6, 
2021. I hope my footage and the subsequent documentary will help people 
understand and visualize what occurred on that date. It is important 
for Americans to see the unvarnished truth of what happened for 
themselves. The events I captured on film leading up to January 6, and 
the January 6 attacks themselves, shook me.

                HEARING ON THE JANUARY 6TH INVESTIGATION

                              ----------                              


                         Monday, June 13, 2022

                     U.S. House of Representatives,
 Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on 
                                 the United States Capitol,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:46 a.m., in 
room 390, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Bennie G. Thompson 
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Thompson, Cheney, Lofgren, Schiff, 
Aguilar, Murphy, Raskin, Luria, and Kinzinger.
    Chairman Thompson. The Select Committee to Investigate the 
January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol will be in 
order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare the 
Committee in recess at any point.
    Pursuant to House Deposition Authority Regulation 10, the 
Chair announces the Committee's approval to release the 
deposition material presented during today's hearing.
    Good morning.
    Last week, the Select Committee laid out a preview of our 
initial findings about the conspiracy overseen and directed by 
Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential 
election and block the transfer of power--a scheme 
unprecedented in American history.
    My colleagues and I don't want to spend time talking about 
ourselves during these hearings, but as someone who has run for 
office a few times, I can tell you, at the end of a campaign, 
it all comes down to the numbers. The numbers tell you the 
winner and the loser.
    For the most part, the numbers don't lie. But if something 
doesn't add up with the numbers, you go to court to get 
resolution. That is the end of the line. We accept those 
results. That is what it means to respect the rule of law. That 
is what it means to seek elective office in our democracy.
    Because those numbers aren't just numbers. They are votes. 
They are your votes. They are the will and the voice of the 
people. The very least we should expect from any person seeking 
a position of public trust is the acceptance of the will of the 
people--win or lose.
    Donald Trump didn't. He didn't have the numbers. He went to 
court. He still didn't have the numbers. He lost.
    But he betrayed the trust of the American people. He 
ignored the will of the voters. He lied to his supporters and 
the country. He tried to remain in office after the people had 
voted him out and the courts upheld the will of the people.
    This morning, we'll tell the story of how Donald Trump lost 
an election--and knew he lost an election--and as a result of 
his loss decided to wage an attack on our democracy, an attack 
on the American people, by trying to rob you of your voice in 
our democracy, and, in doing so, lit the fuse that led to the 
horrific violence of January 6th, when a mob of his supporters 
stormed the Capitol, sent by Donald Trump, to stop the transfer 
of power.
    Today, my colleague from California, Ms. Lofgren, and our 
witnesses will detail the Select Committee's findings on these 
matters.
    But, first, I will recognize our distinguished Vice Chair, 
Ms. Cheney of Wyoming, for any opening statement she would care 
to offer.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Last week, as the Chairman noted, our Committee began 
outlining a 7-part plan--overseen by President Trump--to 
overturn the 2020 election.
    Today, we will begin looking at the initial part of that 
plan: President Trump's effort to convince millions of 
Americans that the election was stolen from him by overwhelming 
fraud.
    A Federal court has already reviewed elements of the 
Committee's evidence on this point, and said this: ``In the 
months following the election, numerous credible sources--from 
the President's inner circle to agency leadership and 
statisticians--informed President Trump and Dr. Eastman that 
there was no evidence of election fraud,'' sufficient to 
overturn the 2020 Presidential election.
    The court's opinion methodically documents each of the 
principal reasons for that conclusion, and I would urge all 
those watching to read it.
    Today, we will begin to show the American people some of 
our evidence. Today, you will hear much more from former 
Attorney General Bill Barr's recorded testimony, and you will 
hear in greater detail what others in the Department told 
President Trump: that his claims of election fraud were 
nonsense.
    You will also hear much more from President Trump's own 
campaign experts, who had also concluded that his fraud claims 
could not be supported.
    Let me focus briefly on just three points now.
    First, you will hear first-hand testimony that the 
President's campaign advisors urged him to await the counting 
of votes and not to declare victory on election night. The 
President understood, even before the election, that many more 
Biden voters had voted by mail, because President Trump ignored 
the advice of his campaign experts and told his supporters only 
to vote in person.
    Donald Trump knew before the election that the counting of 
those mail-in ballots in several States would not begin until 
late in the day and would not be complete for multiple days. 
This was expected, reported, and widely known.
    You will also hear testimony that President Trump rejected 
the advice of his campaign experts on election night and, 
instead, followed the course recommended by an apparently 
inebriated Rudy Giuliani to just claim he won and insist that 
the vote counting stop, to falsely claim everything was 
fraudulent.
    He falsely told the American people that the election was 
not legitimate, in his words, ``a major fraud.'' Millions of 
Americans believed him.
    Second, pay attention to what Donald Trump and his legal 
team said repeatedly about Dominion voting machines--far-flung 
conspiracies with a deceased Venezuelan Communist allegedly 
pulling the strings. This was, ``complete nonsense,'' as Bill 
Barr said.
    President Trump's own campaign advisors, his Department of 
Justice, and his cybersecurity experts all told him the same 
thing.
    Here, for example, is White House lawyer Eric Herschmann. 
His view was shared by many of the Trump team whom we 
interviewed.

    Mr. Herschmann. I thought the Dominion stuff was--I never saw any 
evidence whatsoever to sustain those allegations.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Third, as Mike Pence's staff started to 
get a sense for what Donald Trump had planned for January 6th, 
they called the campaign experts to give them a briefing on 
election fraud and all of the other election claims.
    On January 2nd, the general counsel of the Trump campaign, 
Matthew Morgan--this is the campaign's chief lawyer--summarized 
what the campaign had concluded weeks earlier: That none of the 
arguments about fraud or anything else could actually change 
the outcome of the election.

    Mr. Morgan. Generally discussed on that topic was whether the 
fraud, maladministration, abuse, or irregularities, if aggregated and 
read most favorably to the campaign, would that be outcome 
determinative. And I think everyone's assessment in the room, at least 
amongst the staff, Marc Short, myself, and Greg Jacob, was that it was 
not sufficient to be outcome determinative.

    Vice Chair Cheney. As is obvious, this was before the 
attack on the Capitol. The Trump campaign legal team knew there 
was no legitimate argument--fraud, irregularities, or 
anything--to overturn the election. Yet, President Trump went 
ahead with his plans for January 6th anyways.
    Mr. Chairman, hundreds of our countrymen have faced 
criminal charges--many are serving criminal sentences--because 
they believed what Donald Trump said about the election and 
they acted on it. They came to Washington, DC, at his request. 
They marched on the Capitol at his request. Hundreds of them 
besieged and invaded the building at the heart of our 
constitutional Republic.
    As one conservative editorial board put it recently, ``Mr. 
Trump betrayed his supporters by conning them on January 6th, 
and he is still doing it.''
    Another conservative editorial board that has long 
supported President Trump said last week, Donald Trump, ``won't 
stop insisting that 2020 was stolen, even though he has offered 
no proof that that is true.''
    And this. Donald Trump now, ``clings to more fantastical 
theories, such as Dinesh D'Souza's debunked `2000 Mules,' even 
as recounts in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin confirm Trump 
lost.''
    Those are the correct conclusions to draw from the evidence 
gathered by this Committee. We have much more evidence to show 
the American people on this point than we can reasonably show 
in one hearing. But, today, we will begin.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, the Chair recognizes 
the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Lofgren, for an opening 
statement.
    Ms. Lofgren. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    In our opening hearing, we gave an overview of our 
investigation into the January 6th attack. The plot to 
overthrow the election was complex and had many parts, which 
we'll explore in remaining hearings. But, today, we examine the 
false narrative that the 2020 election was ``stolen.''
    Former President Trump's plan to overturn the election 
relied on a sustained effort to deceive millions of Americans 
with knowingly false claims of election fraud. All elements of 
the plot relied on convincing his supporters about these false 
claims.
    Today, we'll demonstrate the 2020 election was not stolen. 
The American people elected President Joe Biden. We'll present 
evidence that Mr. Trump's claims of election fraud were false, 
that he and his closest advisors knew those claims were false, 
but they continued to peddle them anyway, right up until the 
moments before a mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol.
    We'll also show that the Trump campaign used these false 
claims of election fraud to raise hundreds of millions of 
dollars from supporters who were told their donations were for 
the legal fight in the courts. But the Trump campaign didn't 
use the money for that. The Big Lie was also a Big Rip-Off.
    The former President laid the groundwork for these false 
claims well in advance of the election. As early as April 2020, 
Mr. Trump claimed that the only way he could lose an election 
would be as a result of fraud.

    President Trump. You know the things with bundling and all of the 
things that are happening with votes by mail where thousands of votes 
are gathered. And I'm not going to say which party does it, but 
thousands of votes are gathered, and they come in and they're dumped in 
a location. And then all of a sudden, you lose elections that you think 
you're going to win.
    President Trump. The only way we're going to lose this election is 
if the election is rigged. Remember that. It's the only way we're going 
to lose this election.
    President Trump. This is going to be a fraud like you've never 
seen. Did you see what's going on? Take a look at West Virginia. 
Mailmen selling the ballots. They're being sold. They're being dumped 
in rivers. This is a horrible thing for our country.
    Then-Candidate Biden. There is no----
    President Trump. This is not----
    Then-Candidate Biden. There is no evidence of that.
    President Trump. This is not going to end well.

    Ms. Lofgren. Mr. Trump decided even before the election 
that, regardless of the facts and the truth, if he lost the 
election, he would claim it was rigged.
    Mr. Trump was right about one thing: It did not end well. 
On election night, Mr. Trump claimed, even before the votes 
were counted, that his loss was a result of fraud.
    Now, Thursday, we had testimony from Attorney General Barr 
about the Department of Justice investigation of Mr. Trump's 
fraud claims. Barr told Trump directly that his claims were 
``BS.'' Yet, after hearing the truth and that warning from the 
AG, Mr. Trump continued to peddle the false claims of fraud.
    You will hear detailed testimony from Attorney General Barr 
describing the various election fraud claims the Department of 
Justice investigated. He will tell you how he told Mr. Trump 
repeatedly that there was no merit to those claims. Mr. Barr 
will tell us that Mr. Trump's election night claims of fraud 
were made without regard to the truth and before it was even 
possible to look for evidence of fraud.
    Attorney General Barr wasn't alone. You will see and hear 
today other Department of Justice officials and senior advisors 
to Mr. Trump that they told him the claims he was making were 
not supported by evidence.
    The election fraud claims were false. Mr. Trump's closest 
advisors knew it. Mr. Trump knew it. That didn't stop him from 
pushing the false claims and urging his supporters to ``fight 
like hell'' to ``take back their country.''
    After he lost the election, various legal challenges were 
made. You will hear testimony today from a renowned Republican 
election litigation lawyer who will explain the normal process 
by which candidates challenge an election.
    Rather than accept the results of the election and the 
decisions of the courts, Mr. Trump pursued a different 
strategy: He tried to convince the American people the election 
had been stolen. Many of his supporters believed him, and many 
still believe him today.
    The attack on January 6th was a direct and predictable 
result of Mr. Trump's decision to use false claims of election 
fraud to overturn the election and to cling to power.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much.
    I now welcome our first witness.
    We are joined today by former Fox News Politics Editor 
Chris Stirewalt.
    Bill Stepien, President Trump's former campaign manager, 
was subpoenaed to be here and was in Washington this morning 
prepared to testify.
    Kevin Marino, Mr. Stepien's attorney, is here with us 
today--thank you, Mr. Marino, for coming--and he has advised us 
that Mr. Stepien's wife went into labor this morning. Mr. 
Stepien unexpectedly had to travel to be with his wife, and we 
wish him the best.
    Due to the depth and rigor of our investigation, we have 
several hours of Mr. Stepien's testimony from when we 
interviewed him in February, and we will be presenting that 
testimony today.
    I'll now swear in our witness.
    The witness will please stand and raise his right hand.
    [Witness sworn.]
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. Please be seated.
    Let the record reflect the witness answered in the 
affirmative.
    I now recognize myself for questions.
    I want to start by showing a video that tells the story of 
what was going on in the Trump White House on election night in 
November 2020.

    Mr. Heaphy. Do you remember where you were on the night of the 
election November the 3rd?
    Ms. Trump. I was at the White House.
    Mr. Heaphy. Do you know where, specifically, over the course of 
that night you spent your time within the White House?
    Ms. Trump. There was an event that was organized in the residence. 
So, I moved between the residence, a room sort-of off the residence 
where some family members were.
    Mr. Heaphy. I take it, the President was upstairs in the residence?
    Mr. Kushner. He was upstairs. I was--we were kind-of on the first 
floor, so not upstairs we were with--mostly with Ivanka and her 
brothers and a couple other people who'd be coming in and out.
    Mr. George. Can you just describe the atmosphere? What were people 
expecting that night when you got to the White House?
    Mr. Miller. I think that there was--typically, for people who show 
up there on election night it's going to be a self-select more positive 
environment. I think people were a little bit nervous not knowing what 
was going to happen with the red wave or the red mirage as the debate 
was being carried out.
    Fox News Anchor Bret Baier. The Fox News decision desk is calling 
Arizona for Joe Biden. That is a big get for the Biden campaign.
    Mr. George. Arizona is called. Do you remember that?
    Mr. Stepien. I do.
    Mr. George. What do you remember happening where you were when 
Arizona was called?
    Mr. Stepien. I--there was surprise at the call.
    Mr. George. Who was surprised?
    Mr. Stepien. Most--most everyone in the room.
    Mr. George. Were--you being one of them?
    Mr. Stepien. Yes.
    Mr. George. Did that shift the atmosphere or the attitude in the 
White House?
    Mr. Miller. Completely.
    Mr. George. How so? Can you describe that?
    Mr. Miller. Because Fox News was the first one to go out and say 
that.
    Mr. George. And so was it anger kind-of directed toward Fox News 
for making a call more so than a disappointment that maybe the campaign 
lost Arizona?
    Mr. Miller. All of the above.
    Mr. George. So both? Anger and disappointment?
    Mr. Miller. Both disappointed with Fox and concerned that maybe our 
data or our numbers weren't accurate.
    Mr. Harris. Were you in the White House residence during the sort-
of past midnight into the early morning hours of November 4th?
    Mr. Giuliani. Yes, I'm sure it--it went over beyond midnight. Yes.
    Mr. George. Do you remember Rudy Giuliani being at the White House 
on election night and into the early hours the next morning?
    Mr. Stepien. I do.
    Mr. George. What do you remember about when he came?
    Mr. Stepien. He--he was--there were--I had heard that he was 
upstairs, you know, in that aforementioned reception area. And he was 
looking to talk to the President. And it was suggested instead that 
he'd come talk to several of us down off the Map Room.
    Mr. George. You said that Mr.--you had heard that Mr. Giuliani 
wanted to talk to the President and then he was directed your way. Did 
you end up talking to Mr. Giuliani when he was directed your way?
    Mr. Stepien. I did. I did.
    Mr. George. What was that conversation?
    Mr. Stepien. A lot of conversations were directed my way. A few of 
us, myself, Jason Miller, Justin Clark, Mark Meadows, gathered in a 
room off the Map Room to--to listen to whatever Rudy presumably wanted 
to say to the President.
    Mr. Heaphy. Was there anyone in that conversation who in your 
observation had had too much to drink?
    Mr. Miller. Like--Mayor Giuliani.
    Mr. Heaphy. Tell me more about that. What was your observation 
about his potential intoxication during that--that discussion about 
what the President should say when he addressed the Nation on election 
night?
    Mr. Miller. And the mayor was definitely intoxicated, but I do not 
know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the President, for 
example.
    Mr. Harris. Were you part of any discussions with the people I 
mentioned, Mr. Stepien, Mr. Meadows, or anyone else about whether the 
President should make any sort of speech on election night?
    Mr. Giuliani. I mean, I spoke to the President. They may have been 
present, but the President--spoke to the President several times that 
night.
    Mr. Miller. There were suggestions by, I believe it was Mayor 
Giuliani, to go and declare victory and say that we won it outright.
    Mr. Stepien. It was far too early to be making any calls like that. 
Ballots--ballots were still being counted. Ballots were still going to 
be counted for days. And it was far too early to be making any 
proclamation like that.
    Mr. Miller. I remember saying that I--to the best of my memory, and 
I was saying that we should not go and declare victory until we had a 
better sense of the numbers.
    Mr. George. Okay. Can you be more specific about that conversation? 
In particular, what Mayor Giuliani said, your response, and then 
anybody else in the room's response.
    Mr. Miller. I think effectively, Mayor Giuliani was saying we won 
it. They're stealing it from us. Where'd all the votes come from? We 
need to go say that we won. And essentially that anyone who didn't 
agree with that position was being weak.
    Mr. Heaphy. What was your view at the time as to what he should or 
shouldn't say?
    Ms. Trump. I don't know that I had a firm view as to what he should 
say in that circumstance. The results were still being counted. It was 
becoming clear that the race would not be called on election night.
    Mr. Stepien. My belief, my recommendation was to say that votes are 
still being counted. It's too early to--to tell. Too early to call the 
race. But, you know, we are proud of the race we--we run--we ran and, 
you know, we think--we think we're in a--in good position. And we'll 
have more to say about this, you know, the next day or the next day 
whenever we had something to say.
    Mr. George. And did anybody who is a part of that conversation 
disagree with your message?
    Mr. Stepien. Yes.
    Mr. George. Who is that?
    Mr. Stepien. The President disagreed with that. I don't recall the 
particular words. He thought I was wrong. He told me so. And, you know, 
that they were going to, you know, go in it--he was going--to go in a 
different direction.
    President Trump. This is a fraud on the American public. This is an 
embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this 
election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election. 
[applause]

    Chairman Thompson. Mr. Stirewalt, did President Trump have 
any basis to declare victory on November 4, 2020?
    Mr. Stirewalt. No, none at all.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    Mr. Stepien also testified that President Trump had no 
basis for declaring victory at that point in time.

    Mr. Stepien. My belief, my recommendation was to say that votes are 
still being counted. It's too early to--to tell. Too early to call the 
race. But, you know, we are proud of the race we--we run--we ran and, 
you know, we think--we think we're in a--in good position. And we'll 
have more to say about this, you know, the next day or the next day 
whenever we had something to say.

    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    Mr. Stirewalt, after the votes were counted, who won the 
Presidential election of 2020?
    Mr. Stirewalt. Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., of the great 
State of Delaware.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    That is the bottom line. We have had an election. Mr. Trump 
lost. But he refused to accept the results of the democratic 
process.
    Pursuant to section 5(c)(8) of House Resolution 503, I now 
recognize the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Lofgren, for 
questions.
    Ms. Lofgren. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Stirewalt, I would like you to explain a term that was 
thrown around a lot during the election, and that is the so-
called ``red mirage.'' What does that mean?
    Mr. Stirewalt. So, in the 40 or 50 years, let's say, that 
Americans have increasingly chosen to vote by mail or early or 
absentee, Democrats prefer that method of voting more than 
Republicans do. So, basically, in every election Republicans 
win election day and Democrats win the early vote.
    Then you wait and start counting, and it depends on which 
ones you count first, but usually it is election day votes that 
get counted first and you see the Republicans shoot ahead. Then 
the process of baling and binding and unbinding all those mail-
in votes. Some States, like Pennsylvania, refused to count the 
votes first. So, you have to wait for all of that to come in.
    So, in every election, and certainly a National election, 
you expect to see the Republican with a lead, but it's not 
really a lead.
    When you put together a jigsaw puzzle, it doesn't matter 
which piece you put in first. It ends up with the same image. 
So, for us, who cares? But that's because no candidate had ever 
tried to avail themself of this quirk in the election counting 
system.
    We had gone to pains--and I'm proud of the pains we went 
to--to make sure that we were informing viewers that this was 
going to happen, because the Trump campaign and the President 
had made it clear that they were going to try to exploit this 
anomaly. We knew it was going to be bigger because the 
percentage of early votes was higher, right? We went from about 
45 percent of the votes being early and absentee to, because of 
the pandemic, that increased by about 50 percent.
    So, we knew it would be longer. We knew it would be more. 
So, we wanted to keep telling viewers: Hey, look, the number 
that you see here is sort of irrelevant, because it's only a 
small percentage of these votes.
    Ms. Lofgren. So, this red mirage, that's really what you 
expected to happen on election night?
    Mr. Stirewalt. Happens every time.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Stirewalt.
    Now, I'd like to play a clip of Attorney General Bill Barr, 
who also explains what was expected to happen on election 
night.

    Attorney General Barr. Right out of the box on election night, the 
President claimed that there was major fraud underway. I mean, this 
happened as far as I could tell before there was actually any potential 
of looking at evidence . . . 
    It seemed to be based on the dynamic that--that at the end of the 
evening, a lot of Democratic votes came in which changed the vote 
counts in certain States.
    That seemed to be the basis for this broad claim that there was 
major fraud. And I didn't think much of that because people had been 
talking for weeks and everyone understood for weeks that that was going 
to be what happened on election night.

    Ms. Lofgren. Mr. Stepien obviously could not be with us 
today, and it's proper for him to be with his wife as they 
welcome their child. But he also had discussions with the 
President about the red mirage--that is, that it would be a 
long night and that early votes would favor him, but lots more 
votes would be counted over the course of the night and the 
days after.
    So, let's play clip 1 from our interview with Mr. Stepien.

    Mr. Stepien. I--I recounted back to that conversation with 
him in which I said--just like I said in 2016, it was going to 
be a long night. I--I told him in 2020 that, you know, there 
were--it was going to be a--a process again. As, you know, the 
early returns are going to be, you know, positive. Then we're 
gonna, you know, be watching the returns of--of ballots as, you 
know, they rolled in thereafter.
    Mr. George. Is it fair to say you're trying to present a--
a--what you thought would be a realistic picture of what might 
happen over the course of that night, being election night?
    Mr. Stepien. That night and the days that followed. Yeah. 
I--I--I always--I always, you know, I always told the President 
the truth. And, you know I--I, you know, I think he expected 
that from me. And I told him it was going to be a process. It 
was going to be, you know--you know, we're gonna have to wait 
and see how this turned out. So I--I--just like I did in 2016, 
I did the same thing in 2020.

    Ms. Lofgren. So, let's watch a short clip of President 
Trump speaking after he received that information from his 
campaign advisors.

    President Trump. We want all voting to stop. We don't want 
them to find any ballots at 4 o'clock in the morning and add 
them to the list.

    Ms. Lofgren. So, when former President Trump said that, it 
contradicted what his advisors had warned would happen. We all 
know that mail-in ballots played an important role in the 2020 
election. However, President Trump continuously discouraged 
mail-in voting.
    Mr. Stepien was so concerned about the President's position 
on mail-in voting that, in the summer of 2020, he met with 
President Trump, along with House Minority Leader Kevin 
McCarthy.
    Let's play clip 4.

    Mr. Stepien. Meeting that was had in particular, I invited 
Kevin McCarthy to join the meeting. He being of like mind on 
the issue with me in which we made our case for--for why we 
believed mail-in balloting--mail-in voting not to be a bad 
thing for his campaign. But, you know, the--the President's 
mind was made up and you understand, you know, how many times 
to, you know, go to the well on a particular topic.
    Mr. Heaphy. Yeah, I understand. Tell me a little bit more 
about the argument that you and Mr. McCarthy made to the 
President in that meeting as to why it wasn't a bad thing that 
mail-in voting was available.
    Mr. Stepien. Largely two pillars to that argument, both of 
which I've previously mentioned. One, you know, leaving a good 
deal to chance. Pushing or urging your voters to vote only on 
election day leaves a lot to chance. That's--that's A. And B, 
also previously mentioned, the fact that the Trump campaign, 
the Republican National Committee, the Republican Party had an 
advantage of--of grassroots workers and volunteers on the 
ground that would allow, you know, an--an advantage to enhance 
return rates of--of ballots that were mailed.
    Those were the two pillars of the argument.
    Mr. Heaphy. I see. And what, if anything, do you recall 
Representative McCarthy saying during that meeting?
    Mr. Stepien. We were--we were echoing the same argument. I 
mean, his--his words echoed--echoed mine and vice versa on 
those--on those two topics.

    Ms. Lofgren. Mr. Stirewalt, you were at the decision desk 
at Fox News on election night, and you called Arizona early for 
President Biden, which was controversial.
    How did you make that call? Where did you think the race 
stood in the early hours of the next day?
    Mr. Stirewalt. Well, it was really controversial to our 
competitors, who we beat so badly by making the correct call 
first. Our decision desk was the best in the business, and I 
was very proud to be a part of it.
    Because we had partnered with the Associated Press and the 
National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, 
thanks to my colleague and friend Arnon Mishkin, we had built a 
wonderful device for forecasting the outcomes of election.
    So, we had a different set of data than our competitors 
did. We had more research, and we had a better system, and we 
had a great team.
    So, what you're waiting to see is, do the actual votes 
match up with the expectations in the poll? The real votes are 
testing the quality of your poll in targeted precincts and in 
targeted places.
    Let me tell you, our poll in Arizona was beautiful, and it 
was doing just what we wanted it to do, and it was cooking up 
just right.
    At some point--and I forget exactly who--but, at some 
point, it became clear that Arizona was getting ready to make a 
call.
    So we, around, you know, my boss, Bill Sammon, said, 
``We're not making any call until everybody says yes,'' because 
that was always our policy, unanimity.
    You have to understand, in this room you have, you know, 
the best--people from academia, Democrats, Republicans, a broad 
cross-section of people who had worked together for a decade, 
who were really serious about this stuff.
    So, we knew it would be a consequential call, because it 
was one of five States that really mattered, right? Wisconsin, 
Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona were the ones that we 
were watching. We knew it would be significant to call any one 
of those five. But we already knew Trump's chances were very 
small and getting smaller based on what we had seen.
    So, we were able to make the call early. We were able to 
beat the competition. We looked around the room. Everybody 
says, ``yea,'' and on we go.
    By the time we found out how much everybody was freaking 
out and losing their minds over this call, we were already 
trying to call the next State. We had already moved on. We were 
to Georgia. We were to North Carolina. We were looking at these 
other States.
    So, we thought it was--we were pleased, but not surprised.
    Ms. Lofgren. I see. You know, after the election, as of 
November 7th, in your judgment, what were the chances of 
President Trump winning the election?
    Mr. Stirewalt. After that point?
    Ms. Lofgren. Yes.
    Mr. Stirewalt. None. I mean, I guess you could--it's always 
possible that you could have, you know, a truckload of ballots 
be found somewhere, I suppose. But, once you get into this 
space, you know, ahead of today, I thought about what are the 
largest margins that could ever be overturned by a recount in 
the normal kind of--the kind of stuff that we heard Mike Pence 
talking about, sounding like a normal Republican that night, 
when he said, you know, we'll keep every challenge.
    Nothing like that. In a recount, you're talking about 
hundreds of votes. When we think about calling a race, one of 
the things that we would think about is, is it outside the 
margin of a recount?
    When we think about that margin, we think about, in modern 
history, you're talking about 1,000 votes, 1,500 votes at the 
way, way outside. Normally, you're talking about hundreds of 
votes, maybe 300 votes that are going to change.
    So, the idea that, through any normal process in any of 
these States--remember, he had to do it thrice, right? He 
needed three of these States to change. In order to do that, I 
mean, you're at an infinite--you're better off to play the 
Powerball than to have that come in.
    Ms. Lofgren. On November 7th, the other major news outlets 
called the race for President Biden. Now, Mr. Stepien told the 
Committee that he thought the odds were--and this is a quote--
``very, very, very bleak,'' and held a meeting with the 
President that same day.
    Let's show video clip 8.

    Mr. Stepien. With each day that wore on, I mean the--the 
trajectory of the race, you know, on election night Trump ahead 
in--in many States. And as--as that week wore on as the third 
became the fourth became the fifth and so on and so forth, and 
the vote-by-mail ballots were tabulated, you know, Trump's--
Trump's lead, you know, grew more narrow.
    And--and in--and in some places Biden surpassed, you know, 
Trump in--in the vote totals. So as--as the week wore on, as we 
paid attention to those numbers every single--multiple times a 
day, you know, internally, you know, I--I was feeling less 
confident for sure.
    Mr. George. What was your view on the state of the election 
at that point?
    Mr. Stepien. You know, very, very, very bleak. You know, 
I--I--I--we--we told him, you know, the group that went over 
there outlined, you know, my belief in--in--in chances for 
success at this point. And then we pegged that at, you know, 5 
maybe--maybe 10 percent based on recounts that were--that--
that, you know, either were automatically initiated or--or--or 
could be--could be initiated based on, you know, realistic 
legal challenges, not all the legal challenges that eventually 
were pursued. But, you know, it was, you know, my belief is 
that it was a very, very--I mean, 5 to 10 percent is not a very 
good optimistic outlook.

    Ms. Lofgren. Now, as President Trump and others continued 
to claim that the election was stolen, there were lawyers who 
were a part of the campaign, campaign lawyers, who were 
responsible for investigating the fraud claims.
    That includes Alex Cannon, who could not validate the 
claims that were being made, including those being made by the 
President.
    Let's roll video 13.

    Mr. George. This is an email. It's two emails actually. The 
first is from Alex Cannon to you and Faith McPherson, and then 
you forward that email on to Mark Meadows, Justin Clark, and 
Jason Miller, the subject being AZ Federal ID voters. If you 
look at the original email there it says, ``Bill, we completed 
the AZ analysis you requested.'' I assume that's about Arizona.
    And because of the un--the substantial uncertainty 
surrounding the databases, this is a highly unreliable way to 
identify ineligible voters. Can you explain the task that you 
gave to Mr. Cannon for this Arizona analysis?
    Mr. Stepien. Sure. Previously, I described some of my 
frustration with some of the--the claims that people would 
throw at President Trump regarding, you know, you know, you 
need to look at this. You know, this happened in this State or 
that happened in that State. And it would be, you know--those 
would flow to us to--to--to look into.
    I--I talked about that before I think.
    Mr. George. Yep.
    Mr. Stepien. You know, this is an example of that. I 
recall--I recall in Arizona someone had thrown out, I believe 
this to be the claim, that there were thousands of illegal 
citizens, people not eligible to vote, having cast their 
ballots in Arizona. Someone had thrown out that claim to 
President Trump. And with, you know, the margins being as close 
as they were as previously described, you know, that could 
potentially matter.
    So, this--this wild claim is thrown out, which, you know, 
on its face didn't seem, you know, realistic or possible to me. 
I asked Alex to look at the--you know, the--the claim. And I--I 
haven't read his full email, but I recall that the response to 
that, the reality of that was not illegal citizens voting in 
the election, I think it was like overseas voters voting in the 
election. I--I--so, obviously, you know, people who were 
eligible to vote.

    Ms. Lofgren. When these findings were passed up the chain 
to President Trump, he became frustrated, and he replaced the 
campaign's legal team.
    Let's play clip 14.

    Mr. Stepien. You know, I think the President, it was during the 
second week where things like you displayed were occurring, where he 
was, you know, growing increasingly unhappy with, you know, his team, 
you know, me less so because I was less involved at this point, but 
still me; growing increasingly unhappy with Justin Clark. And that--
that kind-of, you know--you know, paved the way for, you know, Justin 
to be moved out and Mayor Giuliani be moved in as the person in charge 
of, you know, the legal side of the campaign and, for all intents and 
purposes, the campaign at that point.

    Ms. Lofgren. Now, when Mr. Stepien became campaign manager, 
he was the second Trump campaign manager for the 2020 race, and 
there were only about 115 days until election day.
    So, let's play the video.

    Mr. Stepien. I inherited a campaign that was--the day I was hired 
was, I believe, President Trump's low point in the 2020 daily average 
polling against President Biden. It was--it was a campaign at a low 
point in the polls. It was structurally and fiscally deficient. You 
know, I--you know, there was a great deal wrong with the campaign in--
in--in both of those--in--in both of those areas. So, most of my day 
was spent fixing what--and I think I took over with 115 days left in 
the campaign. Most of my time was spent fixing the things that could be 
fixed with 115 days left in the campaign.

    Ms. Lofgren. Now, Mr. Stepien has been in the campaign 
field for a long time, and he worked for lots of different 
candidates and campaigns. He testified to this Committee about 
his concerns given the claims that Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell 
and their team were making publicly.
    Let's play clip 15.

    Mr. Heaphy. Okay. And it was important for you, Mr. Stepien, to 
sort-of pull back just for your own professional reputation. You didn't 
want to be associated with some of what you were hearing from the 
Giuliani team and others that--that sort-of stepped in in the wake of 
your departure.
    Mr. Stepien. I didn't mind being categorized. There were two groups 
of them. We called them kind-of my team and Rudy's team. I--I didn't 
mind being characterized as being part of Team Normal, as--as 
reporters, you know, kind-of started to do around that point in time. 
You know, I said, you know, hours ago, early on, that, you know, I've--
I've been doing this for a long time, 25 years, and I've spanned, you 
know, political ideologies from Trump to McCain to Bush to Christie, 
you know.
    And, you know, I can work under a lot of circumstances for a lot of 
varied, you know, candidates and politicians. But a situation where--
and I think along the way I've built up a pretty good--I hope a good 
reputation for being honest and--and professional, and I--I didn't 
think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that 
point in time. So, again, that led to me stepping away.

    Ms. Lofgren. So, the President did get rid of ``Team 
Normal,'' and I'd like to play a clip showing that the 
President found the people he needed to perpetuate his claims 
of fraud.

    Mr. Giuliani. They saw a big truck bringing in 100,000 ballots in 
garbage cans, in wastepaper baskets, in cardboard boxes, and in 
shopping baskets. And every single one of them was for Biden . . . 
    Because they were being notified by Smartmatic in Frankfurt that 
Biden was way behind, and they better come up with a lot more ballots. 
And we can prove every single thing I just said . . . 
    If you gave me the paper ballots, I could probably turn around each 
one of these States. I'm absolutely convinced if you--if you let me 
examine each one of those ballots, I'd pull out enough that were 
fraudulent that it would shake the hell out of the country.
    Ms. Powell. It can set and run an algorithm, that probably ran all 
over the country, to take a certain percentage of votes from President 
Trump and flip them to President Biden, which we might never have 
uncovered had the votes for President Trump not been so overwhelming in 
so many of these States that it broke the algorithm . . . 
    I remember that one of the things Mark said at some point was, 
``You can't show an actual vote was flipped,'' which I found at the 
time to be a remarkable assertion, because--because you don't have to 
have the gun to see the body lying on the floor bleeding out with five 
bullet holes in it was killed by a gun.
    Mr. Herschmann. What they were proposing I thought was nuts. You 
know, the theory was also completely nuts, right? I mean, it was a 
combination of Italians and Germans. I mean, different things have been 
floating around as to who was involved. I remember Hugo Chavez and the 
Venezuelans. She has an affidavit from somebody who says they wrote a 
software in--and something with the Philippines, just all over the 
radar.
    Mr. Heaphy. Did you ever share, Mr. Kushner, your view of Mr. 
Giuliani? Did you ever share your perspective about him with the 
President?
    Mr. Kushner. I guess--yes.
    Mr. Heaphy. Tell me what you said.
    Mr. Kushner. Well, basically not the approach I would take if I was 
you.
    Mr. Heaphy. Okay. And--and how did he react? How did President 
Trump react when you shared that view with him?
    Mr. Kushner. Oh, he said, you know, I--I have confidence in Rudy.
    Mr. Morgan. I think I had conversations with probably all of our 
counsel who were signed up to assist on election day as they disengaged 
with the campaign . . . 
    The general consensus was that the law firms were not comfortable 
making the arguments that Rudy Giuliani was making publicly . . . 
    I seem to recall that I had a similar conversation with most all of 
them.
    Attorney General Barr. I made it clear I did not agree with the 
idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, 
which I told the President was bullshit. And, you know, I didn't want 
to be a part of it. And that's one of the reasons that went into me 
deciding to leave when I did.

    Ms. Lofgren. Even Sidney Powell, defending herself in a 
defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, argued 
that, ``No reasonable person would conclude that her statements 
were truly statements of fact.''
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. I thank the witness for joining us 
today.
    The first panel is now dismissed.
    Without objection, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman 
from California, Ms. Lofgren.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Last week, we presented the testimony of former Attorney 
General Bill Barr, who testified before this Committee.
    Today, we present additional evidence, including his 
testimony that former President Trump started making claims of 
election fraud immediately after the election and that Barr 
concluded the claims were untrue.
    Now, due to the length of Attorney General Barr's 
testimony, we're only going to include relevant portions at the 
hearing today.
    So, let's play the video.

    Attorney General Barr. The Department, in fact, when we received 
specific and credible allegations of fraud, made an effort to look into 
these to satisfy ourselves that they were without merit . . . 
    And--and I was in the posture of trying to figure out--there was an 
avalanche of all these allegations of fraud that built up over a number 
of days, and it was like playing Whac-A-Mole because something would 
come out one day and then the next day it would be another issue . . . 
    Also, I was influenced by the fact that all the early claims that I 
understood on--were--were completely bogus and silly and usually based 
on complete misinformation. And so, I--I didn't consider the quality of 
claims right out of the box to give me any, you know, feeling that 
there was really substance here.

    Ms. Lofgren. For the first time since the election, the 
Attorney General spoke personally with the President on 
November 23rd, and this was at the White House.
    Let's play the video, please.

    Attorney General Barr. So, on November 23rd, I--I hadn't spoken to 
the President since the election, and, in fact, as I said, since the 
middle of October roughly. It was a little--getting awkward because 
obviously he had lost the election, and I hadn't said anything to him. 
And so, Cipollone said, ``You know, I think it's time you come over 
here.''
    And so, I came over to meet with the President in the Oval Office. 
And--and Meadows were--and Cipollone were there. And the President--
and--and this is leading up to this conversation with Kushner. The 
President said there had been major fraud and that, as soon as the 
facts were out, the results of the election would be reversed.
    And he went on--on this for quite a while, as he is prone to do. 
And then he got to something that I was expecting, which is to say that 
apparently the Department of Justice doesn't think that it has a role 
of looking into these fraud claims . . . 
    And I said, you know, that has to be the campaign that raises that 
with the State. The Department doesn't take sides in elections, and the 
Department is not an extension of--of your legal team. And our role is 
to investigate fraud. And if--and we'll look at something if it's--if 
it's specific, credible, and could have affected the outcome of the 
election. And--and we're doing that, and it's just not--they're not--
they're just not meritorious. They're not pan--panning out . . . 
    And as I walked out of the Oval Office, Jared was there with Dan 
Scavino, who ran his--ran the President's social media and who I 
thought was a reasonable guy and believe is a reasonable guy. And I 
said, how long is--how long is he going to carry on with this stolen 
election stuff? Where is this going to go?
    And by that time, Meadows had caught up with me and--leaving the 
office, and caught up to me and--and said that--he said, ``Look, I--I 
think that he's becoming more realistic and knows that there's a limit 
to how far he can take this.'' And then Jared said, ``You know, yeah, 
we're working on this. We're working on it.''

    Ms. Lofgren. Even after his Attorney General told him his 
claims of election fraud were false, President Trump continued 
to promote these claims.

    Attorney General Barr. I felt that things continued to deteriorate 
between the 23rd and the weekend of the 29th . . . 
    And then on November 29th, he appeared on Maria Bartiromo's show, 
``Sunday Futures,'' I believe it was. And he said that the Department 
was missing in action . . . 
    President Trump. Well, no, we had glitches where they moved 
thousands of votes from my account to Biden's account, and these are 
glitches. So, they're not glitches. They're theft. They're fraud, 
absolute fraud . . . 
    This election was over, and then they did dumps. They call them 
dumps--big, massive dumps in Michigan, in Pennsylvania, and all over . 
. . 
    How the FBI and Department of Justice--I don't know, maybe they're 
involved, but how people are allowed to get away from this stuff--with 
this stuff is unbelievable.

    Ms. Lofgren. Now, spurred by what he saw, Barr told the 
Associated Press on December 1st that there was no evidence of 
election fraud. Immediately after Attorney General Barr's 
statement went public, Mr. Trump berated and he nearly fired 
Barr. But Barr persisted in telling the President that there 
was no evidence to support the fraud claims.

    Attorney General Barr. This got under my skin, but I also felt it 
was time for me to say something. So on--I had--so I set up a lunch 
with the AP reporter, Mike Balsamo, and I told him at lunch--I made the 
statement that ``to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could 
have effected a different outcome in the election.''
    I had a later meeting scheduled at the White House at 3 o'clock 
with Meadows. This was previously scheduled. So, I knew this was gonna 
to come up. And I went over there, and I told my secretary that I 
thought I would probably be fired and told not to--to go home 
[laughter]--I mean, not to go back to my office, so I said you might 
have to pack up for me.
    And so, when I got over there, I met with the chief of staff. He 
said the President was angry. He didn't really go--get into the issue 
of the fraud. And then I went up to Pat Cipollone's office, and we were 
talking with each other. And word came down that he wanted us both to 
go to the Oval . . . 
    And the President was as mad as I've ever seen him, and he was 
trying to control himself . . . 
    And the President said, ``Well, this is, you know, killing me. You 
didn't have to say this. You must have said this because you hate 
Trump. You hate Trump.'' . . . 
    Then he raised the--the big vote dump, as he called it, in Detroit. 
And that, you know, he said people saw boxes coming in to the counting 
station at all hours of the morning and so forth. And I explained to 
him that I--at that point, I knew the exact number of precincts for 
Detroit. I think it was 630-something. I said, Mr. President, there are 
630 precincts in Detroit. And unlike elsewhere in the State, they 
centralize the counting process. So, they're not counted in each 
precinct, they're moved to counting stations.
    And so, a normal process would involve boxes coming in at all 
different hours, so there's nothing--and I said, did anyone point out 
to you--did all the people complaining about it point out to you, you 
actually did better in Detroit than you did--you did last time? I mean, 
there's no indication of fraud in Detroit . . . 
    And I told him that the stuff that his people were shoveling out to 
the public were bull--was bullshit. I mean, that the claims of fraud 
were bullshit. And, you know, he was indignant about that. And I 
reiterated that they've wasted a whole month on these claims--on the 
Dominion voting machines, and they were idiotic claims . . . 
    And I specifically raised the Dominion voting machines, which I 
found to be among the most disturbing allegations. Disturbing in the 
sense that I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations. But they 
were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were 
influencing a lot of people--members of the public--that there was this 
systemic corruption in the system and that their votes didn't count and 
that these machines controlled by somebody else were actually 
determining it, which was complete nonsense.
    And it was being laid out there. And I told them that it was--it 
was crazy stuff, and they were wasting their time on that. And it was 
doing a great, grave disservice to the country.

    Ms. Lofgren. Okay. So, the very next day, the President 
released a video rehashing some of the very same claims that 
his chief law enforcement officer had told him were, 
``nonsense.''

    President Trump. Here's an example. This is Michigan. At 6:31 in 
the morning, a vote dump of 149,772 votes came in unexpectedly. We were 
winning by a lot. That batch was received in horror . . . 
    We have a company that's very suspect. Its name is Dominion. With 
the turn of a dial or the change of a chip, you can press a button for 
Trump and the vote goes to Biden. What kind of a system is this?

    Ms. Lofgren. Barr again told the President that there was 
nothing to these claims on December 14th.

    Attorney General Barr. When I walked in, sat down, he went off on a 
monologue saying that there was now definitive evidence involving fraud 
through the Dominion machines, and a report had been prepared by a very 
reputable cybersecurity firm, which he identified as Allied Security 
Operations Group. And he held up the report and he had--and then he 
asked that a copy of it be made for me. And while a copy was being 
made, he said, ``You know, this is absolute proof that the Dominion 
machines were rigged. The report means that I am going to have a second 
term.''
    And then he gave me a copy of the report. And as he talked more and 
more about it, I sat there flipping through the poor report and looking 
through it. And to be frank, it looked very amateurish to me . . . 
didn't have the credentials of the people involved . . . but I didn't 
see any real qualifications. And the statements were made very 
conclusory like this--these machines were designed to, you know, engage 
in fraud or something to that effect, but I didn't see any supporting 
information for it . . . 
    And I was somewhat demoralized because I thought, boy, if he really 
believes this stuff he has, you know, lost contact with--with--he's 
become detached from reality, if he really believes this stuff . . . 
    On the other hand, you know, when I went into this and would, you 
know, tell him how crazy some of these allegations were . . . 
    There was never--there was never an indication of interest in what 
the actual facts were . . . 
    In my opinion then, and my opinion now, is that the election was 
not stolen by fraud, and I haven't seen anything since the election 
that changes my mind on that, including the ``2000 Mules'' movie. 
[laughter]
    Ms. Lofgren. So maybe you can assess that ``2000 Mules,'' and 
people are talking about that.
    Attorney General Barr. Well, I mean, just in a nutshell, you know, 
I just think that the GBI was unimpressed with it, and I was similarly 
unimpressed with it because I think if you--because I was holding my 
fire on that to see what the photographic evidence was because I 
thought, well, hell, if they have a lot of photographs of the same 
person dumping a lot of ballots in different boxes, you know, that's 
hard to explain.
    So, I wanted to see what the photographic evidence was, but the 
cell phone data is singularly unimpressive. I mean it basically, if you 
take 2 million cell phones and--and figure out where they are 
physically in a big city like Atlanta or wherever, just by definition 
you're going to find many hundreds of them have passed by and spent 
time in the vicinity of these boxes.
    And the premise that, you know, if you go by about, you know, five 
boxes or whatever it was, you know, that that's a mule is just 
indefensible. If--by definition you're going to have a lot--hundreds of 
this. I mean, when I saw one contractor said, ``We figured out that our 
truck alone would account for six cell phone signals.'' This was a, you 
know, some kind of contractor. And you know, ``Our route would take us 
by these things on a regular basis.''
    So I--but then when the movie came out, you know, I think the 
photographic evidence in it was completely lack--I mean it was--there 
was a little bit of it, but it was lacking. You know it didn't--it 
didn't establish wide-spread illegal harvesting.
    The other thing is people don't understand is that it's not clear 
that even if you can show harvesting that that changes the--the results 
of the election. The courts are not going to throw out votes and then 
figure out what votes were harvested and throw them out. You'd still--
the burden on the challenging party to show that illegal votes were 
cast, votes were the result of undue influence or bribes or there was 
really, you know, the person was non compos mentis. But absent that 
evidence, I just didn't see courts throwing out votes anyway . . . 
    I felt that before the election it was possible to talk sense to 
the President. And while you sometimes had to engage in a big wrestling 
match with him, then it was possible to keep things on track. But I 
was--felt that after the election, he didn't seem to be listening, and 
I didn't think it was, you know, that I was inclined not to stay around 
if he wasn't listening to advice from me or his other Cabinet 
Secretaries.

    Ms. Lofgren. So, on December 14th, Barr quit.
    Now, the Attorney General wasn't the only person who told 
the President that his claims were false. Other officials and 
close advisors told him the same thing.

    Acting Attorney General Rosen. Rather than try to address a 
counterfactual or a hypothetical, let me just say, there were instances 
where the President would say, ``People are telling me this,'' or ``I 
heard this,'' or ``I saw on television,'' you know, this--this 
impropriety in Atlanta or Pennsylvania or something. And we were in a 
position to say, ``Our people already looked at that. And we know that 
you're getting bad information that--that's not correct. It's been 
demonstrated to be incorrect from our point of view. It had been 
debunked.''
    Mr. Lyons. A month-and-a-half or so after the election day and at 
that meeting, you know, various allegations of fraud were discussed, 
and you know, Eric and Pat didn't, you know--told the group, the 
President included, that none of those allegations had been 
substantiated to the point where they could be the basis for any 
litigation challenge to the election.

    Ms. Lofgren. President Trump's own Vice President and his 
top advisors also knew that there wasn't evidence to support 
the claims that the President was making.

    Mr. Harris. Anyone else other than Mr. Meadows who asked you about 
the status, outside of your legal group, you know, Mr. Morgan and the 
others you mentioned. Anyone else who asked you the status of what you 
were finding in your assessment of it?
    Mr. Cannon. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Harris. Who's that?
    Mr. Cannon. Peter Navarro.
    Mr. Harris. When did you talk to Mr. Navarro?
    Mr. Cannon. Mid-November.
    Mr. Harris. Around the same time as Mr. Meadows?
    Mr. Cannon. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Harris. And tell me about that conversation.
    Mr. Cannon. I recall him asking me questions about Dominion. And 
maybe some other categories of allegations of voter fraud. And I 
remember telling him that I didn't believe the Dominion allegations 
because I thought the hand recount in Georgia would resolve any issues 
with a technology problem and with Dominion or Dominion flipping votes.
    And I mentioned at that time that the CISA, Chris Krebs, had 
recently released a report saying that the election was secure. And I 
believe Mr. Navarro accused me of being an agent of the deep state 
working with Chris Krebs against the President. And I never took 
another phone call from Mr. Navarro . . . 
    Mr. Harris. Anyone else besides Mr. Meadows, Mr. Navarro, Mr. 
Hershman that you had discussions with inquiring about what you were 
finding in your review of the allegations that were pouring in?
    Mr. Cannon. I believe I had about a 15-second conversation with the 
Vice President about it as well.
    Mr. Harris. When was that?
    Mr. Cannon. During one of the visits to the White House. I don't 
know which one. I think it was the first one in November. I was--I had 
met him briefly at the campaign, and he remembered me and saw me. And 
he asked what I was doing on the campaign, and I told him that we were 
looking into some of the issues related to voter fraud.
    And he asked me, I don't remember his exact words, but he asked me 
if we were finding anything. And I said that I didn't believe we were 
finding--or, I was not personally finding--anything sufficient to alter 
the results of the election. And he--he thanked me. That was our 
interaction.

    Ms. Lofgren. At a later hearing, you'll hear live testimony 
from the former Acting Deputy Attorney General of the 
Department of Justice, Rich Donoghue, but now I would like to 
play a portion of his testimony.

    Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue. I tried to again put this 
in perspective and to try to put it in very clear terms to the 
President. And I said something to the effect of, ``Sir, we've done 
dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews. The major allegations 
are not supported by the evidence developed. We've looked at Georgia, 
Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada. We're doing our job. Much of the info 
you're getting is false.'' And then I went into, ``For instance, this 
thing from Michigan--this report about 68 percent error rate. Reality 
is it was only 0.0063 percent error rate, less than 1-in-15,000.'' So, 
the President accepted that. He said, ``Okay, fine, but what about the 
others?''
    And again, this gets back to the point that there were so many of 
these allegations that when you gave him a very direct answer on one of 
them, he wouldn't fight us on it, but he would move to another 
allegation. So, then I talked about--a little bit about the 
Pennsylvania truck driver. This is another allegation that had come up. 
And this claim was by a truck driver who believed, perhaps honestly, 
that he had transported an entire tractor trailer truck full of ballots 
from New York to Pennsylvania.
    And this was again out there in the public and discussed, and I 
essentially said, ``Look, we looked at that allegation. We looked at 
both ends, both the people who load the truck and the people unload the 
truck. And that allegation was not supported by the evidence.'' Again, 
he said, ``Okay''--then he said, ``Note, I didn't mention that one. 
What about the others?''
    And I said, ``Okay, well, with regard to Georgia, we looked at the 
tape, we interviewed the witnesses, there is no suitcase.'' The 
President kept fixating on this suitcase that supposedly had fraudulent 
ballots, and that the suitcase was rolled out from under the table. And 
I said, ``No, sir, there is no suitcase. You can watch the video over 
and over. There is no suitcase. There is a wheeled bin where they carry 
the ballots, and that's just how they move ballots around that 
facility. There's nothing suspicious about that at all.''
    I told him that there was no multiple scanning of the ballots--
one--one part of that allegation was that they were taking one ballot 
and scanning it through three or four or five times to rack up votes 
presumably for Vice President Biden. I told him that the video did not 
support that.
    Then he went off on double voting--the top of the next page. He 
said, ``Dead people are voting. Indians are getting paid to vote.'' He 
meant people on Native American reservations. He said, ``There's lots 
of fraud going on here.'' . . . 
    Told him flat out that much of the information he's getting is 
false and/or just not supported by the evidence. We looked at the 
allegations, but they don't pan out.

    Ms. Lofgren. Mr. Barr and his advisors were not the only 
ones who determined that the President's allegations regarding 
Dominion voting machines were false.
    So, Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to include in the 
record of this hearing reports issued by the Department of 
Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security 
Agency, otherwise known as CISA, that addressed and rejected 
the claims of manipulation of voting machines in the 2020 
election.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The information has been included in the Appendix and may be 
found on page 126.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, so ordered.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I also ask unanimous consent to include in the record a 
report prepared by the Michigan senate oversight committee that 
disproved claims of election fraud in Michigan;\2\ as well as a 
statement by 59 of the country's leading election security 
scientists noting the absence of any credible evidence that the 
2020 election had been altered through technical compromise;\3\ 
and 5 other reports from organizations and individuals 
confirming there was no wide-spread fraud in the 2020 election 
or describing the spread of the former President's lies.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ The information has been included in the Appendix and may be 
found on page 127.
    \3\ The information has been included in the Appendix and may be 
found on page 181.
    \4\ The information has been included in the Appendix and may be 
found on page 183.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, so ordered.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Pursuant to the order of the Committee 
of today, the Chair declares the Committee in recess for a 
period of approximately 10 minutes.
    [Accordingly, at 12:02 p.m., the Committee recessed until 
12:16 p.m., when it was called to order by the Chairman.]
    Chairman Thompson. I now welcome our second panel of 
witnesses.
    We are joined today by BJay Pak, Al Schmidt, and Ben 
Ginsberg.
    Mr. Pak is a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District 
of Georgia.
    Mr. Schmidt is a former city commissioner for the city of 
Philadelphia, where he served for more than 10 years.
    Mr. Ginsberg is one of the leading election law attorneys 
in the country and has represented Republican Presidential 
candidates in election litigation dating back to 2000, where he 
represented George W. Bush in the Bush v. Gore litigation.
    I will now swear in our witnesses.
    Please stand and raise your right hands.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. Please be seated.
    Let the record reflect the witnesses answered in the 
affirmative.
    Pursuant to section 5(c)(8) of House Resolution 503, I now 
recognize the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Lofgren, for 
questions.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Before the break, I think you all heard Mr. Barr and Mr. 
Donoghue talk about the false claims that Mr. Trump and his 
supporters made about suitcases of fake ballots in Georgia. We 
have a witness here today who thoroughly investigated that 
issue.
    Mr. Pak, I want to thank you for appearing before us today.
    You were appointed by President Trump to serve as the U.S. 
Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, and you served 
from 2017 until January 2021. You were the lead Federal 
prosecutor there and worked for the Department of Justice under 
then-Attorney General Bill Barr.
    Now, were you ever asked by Attorney General Barr to 
investigate claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election? If so, 
what were those claims?
    Mr. Pak.\5\ Thank you, Congresswoman Lofgren. Thank you for 
the question.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ The prepared statement of Mr. Pak has been included in the 
Appendix and may be found on page 123.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Approximately December 4th, I believe, of 2020, Attorney 
General Barr and I had a conversation about an unrelated case 
at issue. At the end of the conversation, Mr. Barr had asked me 
if I had seen a certain videotape that was being reported in 
the news where Mr. Giuliani, in a senate subcommittee hearing 
that was held the day before, December 3rd, showed a videotape 
of a purportedly--a security tape at the State Farm Arena in 
Atlanta, which is also in Fulton County, in the city of 
Atlanta--oh, I am sorry, city of--yes.
    At the time, Mr. Barr asked me--he had made a public 
statement that he had not seen any wide-spread election fraud 
that would question the outcome of the election, and because of 
the videotape and the serious allegation that Mr. Giuliani was 
making with respect to the suitcase full of ballots purported 
in the video, he asked me to find out what I could about it, 
because he had envisioned that in some days after our call that 
he was going to go to the White House for a meeting and then 
that issue might come up. He asked me to make it a priority to 
get to the bottom of--to try to substantiate the allegation 
made by Mr. Giuliani.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you.
    I understand the Georgia secretary of state's office 
investigated those State Farm Arena allegations and didn't find 
any evidence of fraud.
    What did you find when your office conducted its own 
investigation?
    Mr. Pak. We found that the suitcase full of ballots, the 
alleged black suitcase that was being seen pulled from under 
the table, was actually an official lockbox where ballots were 
kept safe.
    We found out that there was a mistake in terms of a 
misunderstanding that they were done counting ballots or 
tallying ballots for the night, and the partisan watchers that 
were assigned by each of the respective parties were announced 
to go home.
    But once they realized the mistake, someone from the 
secretary of state's office had indicated, ``No, no, no, we're 
not done for the night. You need to go ahead and continue 
counting.'' So, once they packed up the lockbox full of 
ballots, they brought back the official ballot box again and 
continued to tally the ballots from that--from the lockbox.
    Unfortunately, during the senate hearing, Mr. Giuliani only 
played a clip that showed them pulling out the official ballot 
box from under the table and referring to that as a smoking gun 
of fraud in Fulton County, but, in actuality, in review of the 
entire video, it showed that that was actually an official 
ballot box that was kept underneath the tables, and then we saw 
them pack up because of the announcement that they thought they 
were done for the night, and then, once the announcement was 
made that you should continue counting, they brought the ballot 
box back out and they continued to count.
    We interviewed--the FBI interviewed the individuals that 
are depicted in the videos that purportedly were double-, 
triple-counting the ballots and determined that nothing 
irregular happened in the counting and the allegations made by 
Mr. Giuliani were false.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you very much.
    I would like to play again testimony from Mr. Donoghue, who 
appeared before the Committee before today.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Mr. Donoghue you--we talked at some length about 
whether or not the White House or the President was informed about the 
Antrim report. On the results of the investigations, the interviews 
that have gone on on Fulton County, how would those results have been 
communicated to the White House, to the President?
    Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue. I don't know how they were 
initially communicated. I do know that they came up in subsequent 
conversations with the President, and DAG Rosen and I essentially told 
him, ``We looked into that and it's just not true.''
    Vice Chair Cheney. Okay. So, he was--he was informed.
    Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue. I told the President 
myself that several times, in several conversations that these 
allegations about ballots being smuggled in in a suitcase and run 
through the machine several times, it was not true--that we looked at 
it. We looked at the video; we interviewed the witnesses; it was not 
true.

    Ms. Lofgren. Mr. Pak, after you left the U.S. attorney's 
office on January 4, 2021, did the next U.S. attorney there, I 
think Mr. Trump's personal pick, Bobby Christine, did he 
investigate any remaining claims of fraud? If so, did he find 
any evidence that supported the President's claims of voter 
fraud?
    Mr. Pak. It is my understanding that Mr. Christine 
continued any investigations that were pending at the time of 
my departure, but he was unable to find any evidence of fraud 
that affected the outcome of the election.
    Ms. Lofgren. So, after investigating the President's and 
Mr. Giuliani's claims about voter fraud in Georgia, is it your 
view today that there was no evidence of wide-spread fraud 
sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome of the 
election in Georgia?
    Mr. Pak. That is correct.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Pak. I want to thank you also 
for the service that you have given to our country. We 
appreciate that.
    Next, I would like to turn to President Trump's false 
allegations about election integrity in Philadelphia. The 
Attorney General discussed these allegations at some length.

    Attorney General Barr. You know, the idea the President has 
repeatedly suggested that there was some kind of outpouring of 
unexpected votes in inner city areas like Philadelphia as recently as 
January 13th when he walked off the NPR set. He was asked by the 
interviewer, you know, what's--you know, what's your evidence of fraud?
    And he said more people voted in Philadelphia than there were 
voters. And that was absolute rubbish. The turnout in Philadelphia was 
in line with the State's turnout and in fact it was not as--as 
impressive as many suburban counties. And there was nothing strange 
about the Philadelphia turnout. It wasn't like there were all these 
unexpected votes that came out in Philadelphia.
    So, you know, I think once you actually look at the votes and then 
if there's an obvious explanation, he--you know, for example, in 
Pennsylvania, Trump ran weaker than the Republican ticket generally. He 
ran weaker than two of the State candidates. He ran weaker than the 
Congressional delegate--delegation running for Federal Congress, and he 
ran weaker than the--the Republican--I think, I haven't looked at this 
recently, but he generally was a weak element on the Republican ticket. 
So, that does not suggest that the election was stolen by fraud.
    Mr. Heaphy. How about Pennsylvania and Bill McSwain? You were 
talking with the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia about an alleged 
discrepancy between the number of absentee ballots issued and the 
number of ballots cast.
    Attorney General Barr. Right. So, I--I--you know, that was a--a--
one of the big ones for a period of time. I think--I think that was 
raised in Gettysburg by Giuliani or something like that, but it kept on 
being repeated. And I found it annoying because it didn't seem that it 
was right. So, I called--I called McSwain, and he got back to me. He 
said, ``No, the problem is that Mastriano, threw out a--threw out this 
number. And what he did was he mixed apples and oranges. He took the 
number of applications for the Republican primary, and he compared it 
to the number of absentee votes cast in the general election. But once 
you actually go and look and compare apples to apples, there's no 
discrepancy at all.''
    And, you know, that's one of the--I--I think at some point I 
covered that with the President.

    Ms. Lofgren. We have another witness here today who has 
detailed knowledge about the election process in Philadelphia.
    Mr. Schmidt, at the time of the 2020 Presidential election, 
you were serving as the only Republican member of 
Philadelphia's three-member city commission which is 
responsible for overseeing elections throughout the city. Is 
that correct?
    Mr. Schmidt. That is correct, Congressperson.
    Ms. Lofgren. So, President Trump made numerous claims 
regarding fraudulent voting practices in Philadelphia, 
including the claim that dead people were voting. In fact, Mr. 
Giuliani told Pennsylvania State legislators that 8,000 dead 
people voted in Pennsylvania.
    You investigated those claims of voter fraud. Can you tell 
us what you found?
    Mr. Schmidt. Not only was there not evidence of 8,000 dead 
voters voting in Pennsylvania, there wasn't evidence of 8.
    We took seriously every case that was referred to us, no 
matter how fantastical, no matter how absurd, and took every 
one of those seriously, including these.
    Ms. Lofgren. As it turns out, even Mr. Trump's campaign 
lawyers knew that the dead voter claims weren't valid.

    Mr. Giuliani. I guess the crooks in Philadelphia are disappointed 
in this. They only submitted 8,021 ballots from dead people--mail-in 
ballots for dead people. Probably easier for dead people to submit 
mail-in ballots than it is to vote in person.
    Mr. Herschmann. Rudy was at this stage of his life and the same 
ability to manage things at this level or not. And obviously, I think 
Bernie Kerik publicly said it. They never proved the allegations that 
they were making, and they were trying to develop.

    Ms. Lofgren. Mr. Schmidt, on November 11, 2020, President 
Trump tweeted about you, saying--and here is a quote--``A guy 
named Al Schmidt, a Philadelphia Commissioner and so-called 
Republican (RINO), is being used big time by the Fake News 
Media to explain how honest things were with respect to the 
Election in Philadelphia. He refuses to look at a mountain of 
corruption & dishonesty. We win!''
    As a result of that tweet and the CNN interview you gave 
where you stated the dead voter claims in Pennsylvania were 
false, you and your staff were subjected to disturbing threats. 
Can you tell us about that?
    Mr. Schmidt. The threats prior to that tweet--and, on some 
level, it feels almost silly to talk about a tweet, but we can 
really see the impact that they have, because, prior to that, 
the threats were pretty general in nature: ``Corrupt election 
officials in Philadelphia are gonna get what's coming to 
them''; ``You're what the Second Amendment is for''; ``You're 
walking into the lion's den''--all sorts of things like that.
    After the President tweeted at me by name, calling me out 
the way that he did, the threats became much more specific, 
much more graphic, and included not just me by name but 
included members of my family by name, their ages, our address, 
pictures of our home--just every bit of detail that you could 
imagine. That was what changed with that tweet.
    Ms. Lofgren. Behind me are redacted threats that you 
received that you have provided to the Committee. Now, we 
redacted portions of the text to protect your family.
    Mr. Schmidt, I think I speak for all of my colleagues when 
I say we are deeply sorry for what you and your loved ones have 
been through. I also want to thank you for your service to your 
country and for standing up for the rule of law.
    I want to thank both Mr. Pak and Mr. Schmidt for their 
service, their testimony, and for standing up for the rule of 
law.
    Now I would like to turn to another subject.
    The courts in our country provide a legitimate venue for 
campaigns to challenge what they view as irregular election 
practices. Now, courts have the final say on how the law 
applies to those challenges.
    We have a renowned legal expert here to address the Trump 
campaign's activities in court.
    Mr. Ginsberg, you have spent your entire career 
representing Republicans in election-related litigation. You 
served as the national counsel on Republican Presidential 
campaigns in 2000, in 2004, and in 2012. You played a key role 
in the 2000 Florida recount that led to the Supreme Court's 
decision in Bush v. Gore. You served as the co-chair of the 
Presidential Commission on Election Administration. I think it 
is fair to say you are the most prominent Republican lawyer who 
has litigated in the election field.
    Now, you have analyzed the Trump campaign's litigation 
pretty carefully. What is the, like, normal process for post-
election litigation? How was the Trump campaign's different 
from the kinds of post-election litigation you have been 
involved in and know about?
    Mr. Ginsberg. In the normal course of things, any campaign, 
on the night of the election and in the days after, will do a 
couple of different things.
    One is that they will analyze precinct results to look for 
abnormalities in the results, and they will send people to 
those precincts to ask more questions.
    Second, all campaigns will have poll watchers and poll 
workers and observers in the polling place. So, campaigns will 
talk to those people if they saw any irregularities that could 
cause problems in the election.
    Now, the Trump campaign talked pre-election about having 
50,000 poll workers, so presumably they did have eyes on the 
ground in all of these places.
    So, in the normal course of things, a campaign will analyze 
the reports that come in. The Trump campaign had a couple of 
basic problems, however. No. 1, the 2020 election was not 
close. In 2000, that was 537 and close. In this election, the 
most narrow margin was 10,000-and-something in Arizona, and you 
just don't make up those sorts of numbers in recounts.
    When the claims of fraud and irregularities were made, you 
have heard very compelling testimony from Mr. Stepien, from 
Matt Morgan, from Alex Cannon about those claims and how they 
didn't believe them. So, that put the Trump campaign on sort-of 
a process of bringing cases without the actual evidence that 
you have to have and which the process is designed to bring 
out.
    Ms. Lofgren. So, are you aware of any instance in which a 
court found the Trump campaign's fraud claims to be credible?
    Mr. Ginsberg. No. There was never that instance in all the 
cases that were brought. I have looked at the more than 60 that 
include more than 180 counts. No, the simple fact is that the 
Trump campaign did not make its case.
    Ms. Lofgren. The Select Committee has identified 62 post-
election lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and his allies 
between November 4, 2020, and January 6, 2021. Those cases 
resulted in 61 losses and only a single victory, which actually 
didn't affect the outcome for either candidate.
    Despite those 61 losses, President Trump and his allies 
claim that the courts refused to hear them out and, as a 
result, they never had their day in court.
    Mr. Ginsberg, what do you say about the claims that Mr. 
Trump wasn't given an opportunity to provide the evidence they 
had of voter fraud? In fact, did they have their day in court?
    Mr. Ginsberg. They did have their day in court.
    About half of those cases that you mentioned were dismissed 
at the procedural stage for a lack of standing--the proper 
people didn't bring the case--or there wasn't sufficient 
evidence and it got dismissed on a motion to dismiss.
    But, in the others, there was discussion of the merits that 
were contained in the complaints, and in no instance did a 
court find that the charges of fraud were real.
    It is also worth noting that, even if the Trump campaign 
complained that it did not have its day in court, there have 
been post-election reviews in each of the 6 battleground States 
that could have made a difference, and those ranged from the 
somewhat-farcical Cyber Ninjas case in Arizona to the Michigan 
senate report that was mentioned earlier, the hand recount in 
Georgia that Mr. Pak addressed, and in each one of those 
instances there was no credible evidence of fraud produced by 
the Trump campaign or his supporters.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you.
    You know, as Mr. Ginsberg has explained, there are no cases 
where the Trump campaign was able to convince a court that 
there was wide-spread fraud or irregularities in the 2020 
election.
    Over and over, judges, appointed by Democrats and 
Republicans alike, directly rebutted this false narrative. They 
called out the Trump campaign's lack of evidence for its 
claims. The judges did that even in cases where they could have 
simply thrown out the lawsuit without writing a word.
    You can see behind me a few excerpts from the decisions in 
these 62 cases.
    The Trump campaign's lack of evidence was criticized by 
judges across the political spectrum.
    In Pennsylvania, a Trump-appointed judge concluded, 
``Charges require specific allegations and proof. We have 
neither here.''
    Another Trump-appointed judge warned that, if cases like 
these succeeded, ``Any disappointed loser in a Presidential 
election able to hire a team of clever lawyers could flag 
claimed deviations from election results and cast doubt on 
election results.''
    The list goes on and on.
    Allegations are called, ``an amalgamation of theories, 
conjecture, and speculation.'' In another, ``strained legal 
arguments without merit''; ``unsupported by evidence''; 
``derived from wholly unreliable sources''; ``a fundamental and 
obvious misreading of the Constitution.''
    The rejection of President Trump's litigation efforts was 
overwhelming. Twenty-two Federal judges appointed by Republican 
Presidents, including 10 appointed by President Trump himself, 
and at least 24 elected or appointed Republican State judges 
dismissed the President's claims.
    At least 11 lawyers have been referred for disciplinary 
proceedings due to bad faith and baseless efforts to undermine 
the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. Rudy Giuliani 
had his license to practice law suspended in New York, and, 
just this week, a newly-filed complaint will potentially make 
his suspension from practicing law in D.C. permanent.
    As we have just heard from perhaps the most preeminent 
Republican election lawyer in recent history, the Trump 
campaign's unprecedented effort to overturn its election loss 
in court was a deeply damaging abuse of the judicial process.
    As stated by U.S. District Court Judge David Carter, this 
was ``a coup in search of a legal theory.''
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. I want to thank our witnesses for 
joining us today.
    The Members of the Select Committee may have additional 
questions for today's witnesses, and we ask that you respond 
expeditiously in writing to those questions.
    Without objection, Members will be permitted 10 business 
days to submit statements for the record, including opening 
remarks and additional questions for the witnesses.
    The second panel of witnesses is now dismissed.
    Without objection, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman 
from California, Ms. Lofgren, for a closing statement.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Now that we understand the litigation efforts by President 
Trump and his allies, I would like to present additional 
actions taken by the Trump campaign during this time.
    President Trump continued to push the ``stolen election'' 
narrative even though he and his allies knew that their 
litigation efforts making the same claim had failed.
    Now, it is worth pointing out that litigation generally 
does not continue past the safe harbor date of December 14th. 
But the fact that this litigation went on--well, that decision 
makes more sense when you consider the Trump campaign's 
fundraising tactics. Because if the litigation had stopped on 
December 14th, there would have been no fight to defend the 
election and no clear path to continue to raise millions of 
dollars.
    Mr. Chairman, at this time, I would ask for unanimous 
consent to include in the record a video presentation 
describing how President Trump used the lies he told to raise 
millions of dollars from the American people. These fundraising 
schemes were also part of the effort to disseminate the false 
claims of election fraud.
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, so ordered.

    Ms. Wick. My name is Amanda Wick, and I'm senior investigative 
counsel at the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th 
Attack on the United States Capitol.
    Between election day and January 6th, the Trump campaign sent 
millions of fundraising emails to Trump supporters, sometimes as many 
as 25 a day. The emails claimed the, `` . . . Left-wing MOB'' was 
undermining the election; implored supporters to, ``step up . . . to 
protect the integrity'' of the election; and encourage them to, ``fight 
back.''
    But as the Select Committee has demonstrated, the Trump campaign 
knew these claims of voter fraud were false. Yet they continued to 
barrage small-dollar donors with e-mails encouraging them to donate to 
something called the Official Election Defense Fund. The Select 
Committee discovered no such fund existed.
    Ms. Allred. I don't believe there was actually a fund called the 
Election Defense Fund.
    Mr. Aganga-Williams. Is it fair to say that the Election Defense 
Fund was another--I think we can call that a marketing tactic?
    Mr. Coby. Yes.
    Mr. Aganga-Williams. And tell us about these funds as marketing 
tactics.
    Mr. Coby. Just the topic matter where money could potentially go to 
be--how money could potentially be used.
    Ms. Wick. The claims that the election was stolen were so 
successful President Trump and his allies raised $250 million, nearly 
$100 million in the first week after the election.
    On November 9, 2020, President Trump created a separate entity 
called the Save America PAC. Most of the money raised went to this 
newly-created PAC, not to election-related litigation.
    The Select Committee discovered that the Save America PAC made 
millions of dollars of contributions to pro-Trump organizations, 
including $1 million to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows's charitable 
foundation; $1 million to the America First Policy Institute, a 
conservative organization which employs several former Trump 
administration officials; $204,857 to the Trump Hotel Collection; and 
over $5 million to Event Strategies Inc., the company that ran 
President Trump's January 6th rally on the Ellipse.
    President Trump. All of us here today do not want to see our 
election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats, which is 
what they're doing.
    Ms. Wick. The evidence developed by the Select Committee highlights 
how the Trump campaign aggressively pushed false election claims to 
fundraise, telling supporters it would be used to fight voter fraud 
that did not exist. The emails continued through January 6th, even as 
President Trump spoke on the Ellipse.
    Crowd. [unintelligible]
    Ms. Wick. Thirty minutes after the last fundraising email was sent, 
the Capitol was breached.
    Crowd. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! [unintelligible] U-S-A! U-S-A!

    Ms. Lofgren. Every American is entitled and encouraged to 
participate in our electoral process. Political fundraising is 
part of that. Small-dollar donors use scarce disposable income 
to support candidates and causes of their choosing, to make 
their voices heard, and those donors deserve the truth about 
what those funds will be used for.
    Throughout the Committee's investigation, we found evidence 
that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to 
where their funds would go and what they would be used for. So, 
not only was there the Big Lie, there was the Big Rip-Off.
    Donors deserve to know where their funds are really going. 
They deserve better than what President Trump and his team did.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, the Chair recognizes 
the gentlewoman from Wyoming, Ms. Cheney, for a closing 
statement.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank all of our witnesses 
today.
    I would also like to, in particular, wish Mr. Stepien and 
his family all the best on the arrival of a new baby.
    Today's hearing, Mr. Chairman, was very narrowly focused, 
and in the coming days you will see the Committee move on to 
President Trump's broader planning for January 6th, including 
his plan to corrupt the Department of Justice and his detailed 
planning with lawyer John Eastman to pressure the Vice 
President, State legislatures, State officials, and others to 
overturn the election.
    Let me leave you today with one clip to preview what you 
will see in one of our hearings to come. This is the testimony 
of White House lawyer Eric Herschmann. John Eastman called Mr. 
Herschmann the day after January 6th, and here is how that 
conversation went.

    Mr. Herschmann. I said to him, ``Are you out of your f-ing mind?'' 
I said I could--I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth 
from now on, ``Orderly transition.''

    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. At the conclusion of last week's 
hearing, we showed you a video of rioters explaining why they 
had come to Washington on January 6th. It was because Donald 
Trump told them to be here.
    Today, we heard about some of the lies Donald Trump 
embraced and amplified when it became clear he didn't have the 
numbers of votes to win the election.
    We heard about how officials at different levels of 
government explored claims of fraud and found no evidence, yet 
the former President continued to repeat those false claims 
over and over again.
    Today, we will end things where we did on Thursday, back on 
January 6th, hearing words of individuals who wanted to stop 
the transfer of power. We know they were there because of 
Donald Trump. Now we will hear some of the things they 
believed.
    Without objection, I enter into the record a video 
presentation.

    Voice. I know exactly what's going on right now: fake election. 
They think they're going to fucking cheat us out of our vote and put 
Communist fucking Biden in office. It ain't fucking happening today, 
buddy.
    Voice. You voted?
    Voice. Yes, sir.
    Voice. How'd it go?
    Voice. Voted early, it went well except for the can't--can't really 
trust software--Dominion software all over it.
    Voice. We voted, and right in the top, right-hand corner of the 
Dominion voting machine that we used, there was a wi-fi symbol with 
five bars, so that most definitely connected to the internet, without a 
doubt. So, they stole that from us twice. We're not doing it anymore. 
We're not taking it anymore. So, we're standing up. We're here. 
Whatever happens, we're not laying down again.
    Voice. I'm from Pennsylvania.
    Voice. It worked.
    Voice. It didn't work. It absolutely----
    Voice. It worked----
    Voice. It didn't work----
    Voice. You voted.
    Voice. No!
    Voice. Trust the system.
    Voice. Two hundred thousand people that weren't even registered 
voted. Four hundred and thirty thousand votes disappeared from 
President Trump's tally, and you can't stand there and tell me it 
worked.
    Voice. I don't want to tell you that what we're doing is right, but 
if the election's being stolen what is it going to take?

    Chairman Thompson. The Chair requests those in the hearing 
room remain seated until the Capitol Police have escorted 
Members from the room.
    Without objection, the Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]


                            A P P E N D I X

                              ----------                              

              Prepared Statement of Byung Jin ``BJay'' Pak
                             June 13, 2022
    Chairman Thompson, Vice Chair Cheney, and Members of the Committee, 
good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you 
today. My name is BJay Pak, and I had the great honor to serve as the 
Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia 
from October 10, 2017, to January 4, 2021. My resignation early last 
year capped off nearly a decade of service in the U.S. Department of 
Justice, as I had previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in 
the Criminal Division of my former office, from 2002 to 2008. I have 
also had the honor to serve in the judicial branch of the Federal 
Government as a law clerk for Judge Richard Mills of the United States 
District Court for the Central District of Illinois. Moreover, I served 
as a State Representative in the Georgia General Assembly from 2011 to 
2017. Because I am a believer in term limits, I decided not to stand 
for re-election after three terms. Since 2021, I have been in private 
practice in Atlanta, Georgia.
    As a 10-year-old immigrant boy from South Korea, I never could have 
imagined that I would one day serve the United States as the chief 
Federal law enforcement officer for one of the largest Federal 
districts in the Nation. Unlike the Americans who were granted 
citizenship through birthright, I, along with millions of immigrants to 
this Nation, had the privilege to take an oath to become a citizen of 
this great country. The oath of citizenship is very similar to the oath 
I took to become a U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. 
Each oath makes clear, in no uncertain terms, that one's allegiance is 
to the Constitution, and not to any President, or political party. The 
oath has served as my guiding principle throughout my public service 
career.
    Like many Americans, I was called to public service after the 
terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Prior to the attacks, I 
thought our country was invincible. But those attacks showed that we 
were vulnerable, and our country needed its citizens to help protect 
it, and to serve within its ranks. I was fortunate to be able to serve 
nearly a decade in the Department of Justice--the only Department in 
the country that has a moral virtue in its name.
    My testimony today relates to my time as U.S. attorney, and 
particularly, the last month of my tenure. The events which unfolded on 
January 6th at the U.S. Capitol brought extreme shock and 
disappointment to Americans and to the world. I certainly felt those 
same emotions as I saw images of that event on television. But I hope 
that what occurred that day and the days leading up to January 6th will 
never overshadow all the great work done by the career public servants 
who faithfully serve the Northern District of Georgia and the 
Department of Justice every single day.
    During my tenure as U.S. attorney, from fiscal year 2017 to fiscal 
year 2020, our prosecutors and law enforcement partners:
   increased overall prosecutions by 30 percent;
   increased drug enforcement by 85 percent to fight the opioid 
        epidemic;
   increased white-collar crime prosecutions by 112 percent;
   help recover hundreds of millions of dollars in restitutions 
        and fines; and,
   instituted an innovative and successful recidivism reduction 
        program for violent offenders who were returning to society 
        after serving their sentences.
    Of course, 2020 was a particularly difficult year for our country 
generally, and for the Northern District of Georgia in particular. We 
started the year working through the longest Government shutdown in 
recent history and faced challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic, 
demonstrations and unrest following the murders of George Floyd and 
Ahmaud Arbery, including challenges from those who sought to use the 
cover of legitimate protest as an opportunity to wreak havoc and 
mayhem. At the end of the year, the 2020 Presidential election became 
one of the most intense in our Nation's recent history. As this 
Committee is well aware, Georgia was a hotly contested swing State, and 
our office and our law enforcement partners in the Northern District of 
Georgia went above and beyond the call of duty to fulfill their mission 
to enforce the law, despite the many challenges that they faced.
                      state farm arena video clip
    Among those challenges were individuals who continuously made false 
allegations that the elections in Georgia had serious irregularities, 
or that the result of those elections was fraudulent. One such example 
was the alleged ``suitcase full of fake ballots'' incident. On December 
3, 2020, Rudy Giuliani appeared before a subcommittee of the Georgia 
State senate that was looking into election integrity issues. During 
the hearing, Mr. Giuliani played a video clip purportedly showing the 
tallying of ballots from Fulton County at the State Farm Arena on 
election night--November 3, 2020. I learned of his appearance at the 
committee hearing and the existence of the video clip through media 
reports. According to the media reports, Mr. Giuliani claimed that the 
video showed the Fulton County election workers at State Farm Arena 
taking a black ``suitcase'' out from under a table, removing 
purportedly fake ballots from the suitcase, and running the purportedly 
fake ballots through the tabulating machine after the observers from 
the respective political parties had been sent home. Mr. Giuliani 
claimed that this video was a ``smoking gun'' of evidence of election 
fraud in Fulton County.
    Mr. Giuliani's claims were simply untrue and making such a claim 
was reckless. At the request of Attorney General William Barr, our 
office and the FBI conducted a preliminary inquiry to evaluate whether 
any of the allegations made by Mr. Giuliani with respect to the State 
Farm Arena video could be substantiated. After reviewing the evidence 
and interviewing witnesses, my office and the FBI concluded that there 
was nothing to substantiate Mr. Giuliani's claims, let alone any 
potential violations of Federal law. The ``suitcase'' was a legitimate 
lockbox used to store official ballots, and all lockboxes and ballots 
were accounted for. I reported our conclusions from the preliminary 
inquiry to Attorney General Barr, and to Rich Donoghue, who was then 
the principal associate deputy attorney general to Deputy Attorney 
General Jeff Rosen.
    One unfortunate consequence of Mr. Giuliani making such 
unsubstantiated claims of election fraud was that the Fulton County 
Election workers depicted in the State Farm Arena video clips were 
``doxed''--in other words, their names, addresses, and other 
information were publicized. I received reports that they were being 
harassed, and that some had received death threats. As a result, law 
enforcement resources had to be diverted from other areas and deployed 
to protect the workers.
                             jeffrey clark
    A few days before January 1, 2021, I spoke again with Mr. Donoghue, 
who was by this time, the acting deputy attorney general. Mr. Donoghue 
indicated that he had just left a long meeting at the White House with 
President Trump. He told me that the President was singularly focused 
on Georgia, and that he was unable to dissuade the President from the 
notion that that he won Georgia, and that the election was stolen. I 
reiterated to Mr. Donoghue that, although every election has some 
irregularities, I had received no substantial reports of election fraud 
supported by evidence, enough to even initiate a formal investigation. 
Mr. Donoghue agreed and expressed frustration that some individuals 
were feeding the President various unsubstantiated theories of election 
fraud, and that he and others had to spend a significant amount of time 
to dispel the theories.
    Mr. Donoghue then asked if I knew Jeff Clark. I have never met nor 
spoken with Mr. Clark. Mr. Donoghue told me that Mr. Clark was the 
Assistant Attorney General for the Environment & Natural Resources 
Division, and at the time, was also the Acting Assistant Attorney 
General of the Civil Division. Mr. Donoghue stated that Mr. Clark had 
``the President's ear'', and that Mr. Clark was suggesting that the 
DOJ, in an extremely unorthodox fashion, both intervene in support of 
the Trump campaign in a civil lawsuit filed in Fulton County, Georgia 
alleging election fraud, and sign a letter urging the Georgia 
legislature to call a special session to investigate alleged election 
irregularities. Mr. Donoghue and I both felt strongly that this was 
highly unusual and not appropriate. Mr. Donoghue also told me that Mr. 
Clark would call me about election irregularities. I told Mr. Donoghue 
that I would be happy to tell Mr. Clark that there was no evidence of 
wide-spread election fraud, and that I would reject any request for the 
U.S. attorney's office to either intervene in a lawsuit or ask any 
State authority to pause the certification process. Mr. Donoghue stated 
that he would not be surprised if the President himself called me. I 
told Mr. Donoghue that even if the President called me himself, my 
answer would not change. Neither Mr. Clark nor President Trump ever 
contacted me, however.
                              resignation
    After President Biden's victory in the 2020 election, I had always 
planned to submit my resignation in January 2021, as is customary for 
many DOJ political appointees. My plan was to make my resignation 
effective on Inauguration Day--January 20, 2021, so that my first 
assistant U.S. attorney would be promoted as acting U.S. attorney, 
pursuant to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. I did not announce my 
intentions to the public at that time. However, during the latter part 
of December, I notified members of the U.S. attorney's office, the 
District Court, and some of our law enforcement partners of my plans. I 
also told Mr. Donoghue.
    On January 3, 2021, I learned for the first time, through media 
reports, of the call between President Trump and Georgia Secretary of 
State Brad Raffensperger, in which President Trump reportedly attempted 
to persuade Secretary Raffensperger to ``find votes,'' and continued to 
claim that the Georgia election was ``rigged.'' On learning about this 
call, I was deeply concerned and disturbed about what was being asked 
of the Office of the Secretary of State and considered resigning 
immediately. I eventually decided against an immediate resignation, 
given the upcoming run-off election in Georgia where the control of the 
U.S. Senate hung in the balance; I did not want my sudden resignation 
to be used or interpreted in any way to influence that run-off 
election.
    Around 10 o'clock pm that evening, I noticed that I had several 
missed calls from Mr. Donoghue, and a text from him asking me to return 
his calls. When I called him back, Mr. Donoghue told me that he and 
Acting Attorney General Rosen had returned from a 3-hour meeting at the 
White House during which the President had expressed extreme 
displeasure toward the DOJ for ``not doing enough'' about the purported 
fraud that he believed cost him the election. Mr. Donoghue indicated 
that the President had read a 2016 New York Times article--in which I 
was quoted regarding how then-candidate Trump's campaign rhetoric 
created difficulties in recruiting minorities to the Republican party--
and became convinced that I was a ``never-Trumper,'' which in the 
President's mind, was the reason there was no election fraud 
investigations in Atlanta. The President wanted the DOJ leadership to 
fire me. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue were opposed to my removal and told 
the President that, as I am a Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney, they did 
not have the power to fire me. At that point, someone at the meeting 
noted that I was already going to submit my resignation in the upcoming 
week, so the President could simply accept my resignation early, rather 
than fire me. The President indicated that he wanted the resignation 
letter as soon as possible.
    Mr. Donoghue offered to place me in a Senior Executive Service 
position within DOJ until Inauguration. I declined because, after the 
revelations of that day, I no longer wished to serve in that 
administration. Concerned about the disruption that would be caused by 
a sudden transition of leadership in the office, I asked Mr. Donoghue 
if my first assistant U.S. attorney, Kurt Erskine, could serve as 
acting U.S. attorney after my resignation. Mr. Donoghue said that he 
and Mr. Rosen had suggested Mr. Erskine to the President, but the 
President recommended that Bobby Christine, then the U.S. Attorney for 
the Southern District of Georgia, serve as the acting U.S. Attorney for 
Northern District, because the President had heard ``good things'' 
about Mr. Christine. Mr. Donoghue indicated that the President called 
Mr. Christine from the White House to offer him the position. Mr. 
Donoghue stated that Mr. Christine was caught off-guard by the offer 
and was confused as to whether he could even serve in both roles 
simultaneously. Mr. Donoghue indicated that I could choose how to 
announce my resignation, either in a press conference to ``blow the 
whistle'' or by issuing a statement. He suggested that a low-key 
resignation would be best for all involved, especially when he and a 
few others were ``trying to hold the ship together'' until 
Inauguration. I told him I would think about it and let him know.
    The next morning on Monday, January 4, 2021, I called Mr. Donoghue 
on my way to the office to let him know that I had decided to make a 
quiet exit, as I did not want my resignation to become a distraction to 
those who still had a job to do at DOJ. I told Mr. Donoghue to ``hang 
in there,'' because we needed him, and that it was an honor to serve 
the Nation with him. I then called Mr. Christine to arrange a 
conference call between our leadership teams to facilitate a smooth 
transition and offered to set up a briefing on all election-related 
investigations that were pending.
    Once at the office, I spoke to my first assistant U.S. attorney, 
Mr. Erskine, and the remaining members of my leadership team to inform 
them that I would be resigning, effective immediately. I then sent my 
resignation to the Acting Attorney General and to the President.
    Despite the abrupt end to my tenure as U.S. attorney, I am proud of 
the great work done by our everyday heroes in the law enforcement 
community, and by the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District 
of Georgia. Serving as U.S. attorney and working with the dedicated 
public servants has been the greatest honor of my professional life. 
But the best part of working in the U.S. Department of Justice, and in 
particular the U.S. attorney's office, is that it is where you do the 
right thing, the right way, for the right reasons. I have strived to 
conduct myself in a way that serves and honors those ideals.
    Thank you for your time. God bless you, and may God bless these 
United States.
                                 ______
                                 
  Joint Statement of Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating 
  Council & The Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive 
                               Committees
                Original release date: November 12, 2020
    WASHINGTON.--The members of Election Infrastructure Government 
Coordinating Council (GCC) Executive Committee--Cybersecurity and 
Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Assistant Director Bob Kolasky, 
U.S. Election Assistance Commission Chair Benjamin Hovland, National 
Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) President Maggie Toulouse 
Oliver, National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) 
President Lori Augino, and Escambia County (Florida) Supervisor of 
Elections David Stafford--and the members of the Election 
Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council (SCC)--Chair Brian Hancock 
(Unisyn Voting Solutions), Vice Chair Sam Derheimer (Hart InterCivic), 
Chris Wlaschin (Election Systems & Software), Ericka Haas (Electronic 
Registration Information Center), and Maria Bianchi (Democracy Works)--
released the following statement:
    ``The November 3d election was the most secure in American history. 
Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and 
double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the 
result.
    ``When States have close elections, many will recount ballots. All 
of the States with close results in the 2020 Presidential race have 
paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count 
each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and 
resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction 
of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system 
deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.
    ``Other security measures like pre-election testing, State 
certification of voting equipment, and the U.S. Election Assistance 
Commission's (EAC) certification of voting equipment help to build 
additional confidence in the voting systems used in 2020.
    ``While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities 
for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure 
you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our 
elections, and you should too. When you have questions, turn to 
elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.''
    Last Published Date: November 12, 2020
                                 ______
                                 
           Report by the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee

[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
                                 ______
                                 
                          Joint Expert Report
   scientists say no credible evidence of computer fraud in the 2020 
 election outcome, but policy makers must work with experts to improve 
                               confidence
16 November 2020
    We are specialists in election security, having studied the 
security of voting machines, voting systems, and technology used for 
government elections for decades.
    We and other scientists have warned for many years that there are 
security weaknesses in voting systems and have advocated that election 
systems be better secured against malicious attack. As the National 
Academies recently concluded, ``There is no realistic mechanism to 
fully secure vote casting and tabulation computer systems from cyber 
threats.'' However, notwithstanding these serious concerns, we have 
never claimed that technical vulnerabilities have actually been 
exploited to alter the outcome of any U.S. election.
    Anyone asserting that a U.S. election was ``rigged'' is making an 
extraordinary claim, one that must be supported by persuasive and 
verifiable evidence. Merely citing the existence of technical flaws 
does not establish that an attack occurred, much less that it altered 
an election outcome. It is simply speculation.
    The presence of security weaknesses in election infrastructure does 
not by itself tell us that any election has actually been compromised. 
Technical, physical, and procedural safeguards complicate the task of 
maliciously exploiting election systems, as does monitoring of likely 
adversaries by law enforcement and the intelligence community. Altering 
an election outcome involves more than simply the existence of a 
technical vulnerability.
    We are aware of alarming assertions being made that the 2020 
election was ``rigged'' by exploiting technical vulnerabilities. 
However, in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have 
been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent. To our collective 
knowledge, no credible evidence has been put forth that supports a 
conclusion that the 2020 election outcome in any State has been altered 
through technical compromise.
    That said, it is imperative that the U.S. continue working to 
bolster the security of elections against sophisticated adversaries. At 
a minimum, all States should employ election security practices and 
mechanisms recommended by experts to increase assurance in election 
outcomes, such as post-election risk-limiting audits.
    If you are looking for a good place to start learning the facts 
about election security, we recommend the recent National Academies of 
Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) study, ``Securing the 
Vote'', which is available for free download at https://doi.org/
10.17226/25120.
            Signed,
(Affiliations are for identification purposes only; listed 
        alphabetically by surname.)
1. Tony Adams, Independent Security Researcher.
2. Andrew W. Appel, Professor of Computer Science, Princeton 
University.
3. Arlene Ash, Professor, University of Massachusetts Medical School.
4. Steven M. Bellovin, Percy K. and Vida L.W. Hudson Professor of 
Computer Science; affiliate faculty, Columbia Law, Columbia University.
5. Matt Blaze, McDevitt Chair of Computer Science and Law, Georgetown 
University.
6. Duncan Buell, NCR Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, 
University of South Carolina.
7. Michael D. Byrne, Professor of Psychological Sciences and Computer 
Science, Rice University.
8. Jack Cable, Independent Security Researcher.
9. Jeremy Clark, NSERC/Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton/Catallaxy 
Industrial Research Chair in Blockchain Technologies, Concordia 
Institute for Information Systems Engineering.
10. Sandy Clark, Independent Security Researcher.
11. Stephen Checkoway, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Oberlin 
College.
12. Richard DeMillo, Chair, School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and 
Warren Professor of Computing, Georgia Tech.
13. David L. Dill, Donald E. Knuth Professor, Emeritus, in the School 
of Engineering, Stanford University.
14. Zakir Durumeric, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Stanford 
University.
15. Aleksander Essex, Associate Professor of Software Engineering, 
Western University, Canada.
16. David Evans, Professor of Computer Science, University of Virginia.
17. Ariel J. Feldman, Software Engineer.
18. Edward W. Felten, Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science and 
Public Affairs, Princeton University.
19. Bryan Ford, Professor of Computer and Communication Sciences, Swiss 
Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL).
20. Joshua M. Franklin, Independent Security Researcher.
21. Juan E. Gilbert, Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Professor & 
Chair, University of Florida.
22. J. Alex Halderman, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, 
University of Michigan.
23. Joseph Lorenzo Hall, SVP Strong Internet, Internet Society.
24. Harri Hursti, Co-founder, Nordic Innovation Labs and Election 
Integrity Foundation.
25. Neil Jenkins, Chief Analytic Officer, Cyber Threat Alliance.
26. David Jefferson, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (retired).
27. Douglas W. Jones, Associate Professor of Computer Science, 
University of Iowa.
28. Joseph Kiniry, Principal Scientist, Galois, CEO and Chief 
Scientist, Free & Fair.
29. Philip Kortum, Associate Professor of Psychological Sciences, Rice 
University.
30. Carl E. Landwehr, Visiting Professor, University of Michigan.
31. Maggie MacAlpine, Co-founder, Nordic Innovation Labs and Election 
Integrity Foundation.
32. Bruce McConnell, former Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity, 
Department of Homeland Security, (currently) president, EastWest 
Institute.
33. Patrick McDaniel, Weiss Professor of Information and Communications 
Technology, Penn State University.
34. Walter Mebane, Professor of Political Science and of Statistics, 
University of Michigan.
35. Eric Mill, Chrome Security PM, Google.
36. David Mussington, Professor of the Practice, School of Public 
Policy, University of Maryland College Park.
37. Peter G. Neumann, Chief Scientist, SRI International Computer 
Science Lab.
38. Lyell Read, Researcher at SSH Lab, Oregon State University.
39. Ronald L. Rivest, Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology.
40. Aviel D. Rubin, Professor of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins 
University.
41. Bruce Schneier, Fellow and Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School.
42. Alexander A. Schwarzmann, Dean of Computer and Cyber Sciences, 
Augusta University.
43. Hovav Shacham, Professor of Computer Science, The University of 
Texas at Austin.
44. Micah Sherr, Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor, 
Georgetown University.
45. Barbara Simons, IBM Research (retired).
46. Kevin Skoglund, Chief Technologist, Citizens for Better Elections.
47. Michael A. Specter, EECS PhD Candidate, MIT.
48. Alex Stamos, Director, Stanford Internet Observatory.
49. Philip B. Stark, Professor of Statistics and Associate Dean of 
Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of California, Berkeley.
50. Jacob Stauffer, Director of Operations, Coherent CYBER.
51. Camille Stewart, Cyber Fellow, Harvard Belfer Center.
52. Rachel Tobac, Hacker, CEO of SocialProof Security.
53. Giovanni Vigna, Professor, Computer Science, University of 
California, Santa Barbara.
54. Poorvi L. Vora, Professor of Computer Science, The George 
Washington University.
55. Dan S. Wallach, Professor, Departments of Computer Science and 
Electrical & Computer Engineering, Rice Scholar, Baker Institute of 
Public Policy, Rice University.
56. Tarah Wheeler, Cyber Fellow, Harvard Belfer Center.
57. Eric Wustrow, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical, 
Computer & Energy Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder.
58. Ka-Ping Yee, Review Team Member, California Secretary of State's 
Top-to-Bottom Review of Voting Systems.
59. Daniel M. Zimmerman, Principal Researcher, Galois and Principled 
Computer Scientist, Free & Fair.
                                 ______
                                 
Statement of Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal 
                   Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
                              May 3, 2022
                            i. introduction
    Thank you for the opportunity to directly submit this statement to 
the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the 
United States Capitol. No other act of mass violence in modern history 
has threatened the existence of our Republican form of government more 
than the insurrection that occurred at the United States Capitol a mere 
16 months ago. The goal of the insurrectionists was clear: To 
effectuate a violent coup, deny the will of the majority of voters, and 
upend the functioning of our increasingly multi-racial, multi-ethnic 
democracy. Therefore, it is essential to the security and endurance of 
our democracy that this committee understand the January 6th attack in 
its full context: As a manifestation of broad white supremacist 
backlash against robust democratic participation by people of color. 
This backlash has been fueled in part by the false narrative that 
rampant voter fraud occurred in communities of color and also by a 
deep-seated fear that the changing racial and ethnic demographics in 
the United States and the increasing racial and ethnic diversity of the 
electorate threaten the existing power structure premised on white 
supremacy. Moreover, the insurrection was preceded and followed by a 
rash of racially discriminatory voter suppression laws aimed at Black 
and Brown Americans and which continue to threaten the integrity of our 
electoral process. Faced with the added specter of future mass violence 
in our electoral process, Congress must not only address the threat to 
our democracy by investigating the January 6th attack but also by 
enacting legislation to fully protect the right to vote and ensure 
against election subversion.
A. Statement of Purpose and Outline
    The purpose of this testimony is to make clear the explicit 
connection between the violence of January 6th and the legal 
retrenchment that both preceded and followed it, and to insist that 
Congress cannot address the root cause of the Insurrection without 
acting to build a more inclusive, multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy 
by protecting what the late Congressman John Lewis called the 
``precious, almost sacred'' right to vote for Black and Brown 
Americans.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Rep. John Lewis: ``Your Vote Is Precious, Almost Sacred,'' PBS 
Newshour (Sep. 6, 2021),https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/rep-john-
lewis-your-vote-is-precious-almost-sacred.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I briefly discuss the history of racial progress and backlash in 
the United States; show how a false narrative about elections stolen 
through massive voter fraud has served as a coded appeal to white 
racial resentment and a central frame that connects the January 6th 
Insurrection with wide-spread efforts to restrict the franchise; 
highlight the historic 2020 turnout of voters of color that intensified 
the current backlash; detail the various ways the backlash has taken 
shape since 2020; and explain how furthering progress on race and 
preventing future insurrection both require solutions that promote a 
truly inclusive, multi-racial democracy, starting at the ballot box and 
that protect our elections from subversion.
B. LDF and Our Work
    LDF is America's premier legal organization fighting for racial 
justice. Through litigation, advocacy, and public education, LDF seeks 
structural changes to expand democracy, eliminate disparities, and 
achieve racial justice in a society that fulfills the promise of 
equality for all Americans. LDF also defends the gains and protections 
won over the past 80 years of civil rights struggle and works to 
improve the quality and diversity of judicial and executive 
appointments.
    Since its founding in 1940, LDF has been a leader in the fight to 
secure, protect, and advance the voting rights of Black voters and 
other communities of color.\2\ LDF's founder Thurgood Marshall--who 
litigated LDF's watershed victory in Brown v. Board of Education,\3\ 
which set in motion the end of legal segregation in this country and 
transformed the direction of American democracy in the 20th century--
referred to Smith v. Allwright,\4\ the 1944 case ending whites-only 
primary elections, as his most consequential case. He held this view, 
he explained, because he believed that the right to vote, and the 
opportunity to access political power, was critical to fulfilling the 
guarantee of full citizenship promised to Black people in the 14th 
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. LDF has prioritized its work 
protecting the right of Black citizens to vote for more than 80 years--
representing Martin Luther King Jr. and the marchers in Selma, Alabama 
in 1965, litigating seminal cases interpreting the scope of the Voting 
Rights Act, and working in communities across the South to strengthen 
and protect the ability of Black citizens to participate in a political 
process free from discrimination.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ LDF has been an entirely separate organization from the NAACP 
since 1957.
    \3\ 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
    \4\ 321 U.S. 649 (1944).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition to a robust voting rights litigation docket, LDF has 
monitored elections for more than a decade through our Prepared to Vote 
initiative (``PTV'') and, more recently, through our Voting Rights 
Defender (``VRD'') project, which place LDF staff and volunteers on the 
ground for primary and general elections every year to conduct non-
partisan election protection, poll monitoring, and to support Black 
political participation in targeted jurisdictions--primarily in the 
South. LDF is also a founding member of the non-partisan civil rights 
Election Protection Hotline (1-866-OUR-VOTE), presently administered by 
the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
    ii. race in the united states: a history of progress & backlash
    America's history has been a halting and fraught journey concerning 
racial equality. This journey, however, has never been a straight line. 
In fact, the story of multiracial democracy in the United States is a 
tale of progress, backlash, and retrenchment--at times followed by 
further progress, yet often long-delayed.\5\ This pattern is clear in 
the experience of Black Americans across four centuries. The backlash 
that follows moments of progress can take many forms. Two 
manifestations, however, are consistent and concrete: Violence and 
legal changes intended to relegate Black people to the margins of 
democratic society. We've experienced several of these cycles 
throughout American history, and our current moment shows all the signs 
of this same pattern.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ Indeed, 8 of the 17 post-Bill of Rights amendments to the U.S. 
Constitution expanded the franchise directly or expanded the 
Constitutional rights and protection to ensure a more inclusive vision 
of ``we the people'' over the course of XX years. U.S. CONST. amends. 
XIII, XIV, XV, XVII, XIX, XXIII, XXIV, XXVI.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A. Cycles of Progress and Backlash
    The first substantial step toward racial equality in the United 
States came through the post-Civil War amendments to the Constitution, 
which ushered in an era known as Reconstruction. During this period, 
the Federal Government enforced new rules protecting the civil and 
voting rights of Black people in the South, and as a result Black 
people began to build political power through elected office and 
economic stability through institutions such as trade unions.\6\ This 
moment of progress, however, engendered a severe backlash wherein the 
influence and dominance of white supremacy was restored through 
violence and laws, in a period known as Redemption.\7\ Following the 
Compromise of 1877, the Federal Government withdrew its enforcement of 
the rules protecting the civil and voting rights of Black people and 
the Supreme Court ruled that courts would not protect Black people's 
civil rights against private actors \8\ resulting in nearly a century 
of racial terror through lynchings, mob violence, and Jim Crow ``Black 
Codes'' enforcing strict segregation and second-class citizenship 
ensued.\9\ It was not until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, 
and specifically the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that the racial caste 
system reestablished through Redemption began to give way.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \6\ Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and 
Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (2019).
    \7\ Id.
    \8\ U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876).
    \9\ Foner supra note 6.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This pattern of progress and retrenchment has repeated throughout 
American history. In the early 20th Century, Black Americans began to 
leave the South--often under cloak of darkness--to escape the yoke of 
Jim Crow and seek fairer treatment and economic opportunity in the 
cities of the North.\10\ This ``Great Migration'' of approximately 6 
million people provided opportunities unfathomable in the Redemption 
South. Yet those who migrated North were not met with open arms. The 
backlash from Northern whites and the National power structure 
manifested in myriad ways, but perhaps the most painful and lasting was 
redlining--a process through which mortgage lenders enforced strict 
residential segregation and robbed Black Americans of the single 
biggest opportunity to build generational wealth.\11\ Ironically, the 
same Federal Government that briefly enforced Southern Blacks' rights 
during Reconstruction now drove their deprivation in Northern cities 
through its racist housing policy \12\ among other racially 
discriminatory practices.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of 
America's Great Migration (2011).
    \11\ Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law (2018); Lisa Rice, Long 
Before Redlining: Racial Disparities in Homeownership Need Intentional 
Policies, Shelterforce (Feb. 15, 2019), https://shelterforce.org/2019/
02/15/long-before-redlining-racial-disparities-in-homeownership-need-
intentional-policies/; Douglas S. Massey & Nancy A. Denton, American 
Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (1998); Ira 
Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of 
Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (2005); Robert C. 
Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State 
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
    \12\ See generally Color of Law.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Similarly, the progress of LDF's landmark Brown v. Board of 
Education case which ended decades of legal segregation in America's 
public schools, was followed by ``massive resistance'' and segregation 
academies.\13\ In addition to defying the law to maintain racial 
hierarchy throughout the South, communities chose to shutter public 
infrastructure rather than share it equally--even draining public pools 
rather than allowing Black and white children to swim together.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\ Report: Segregation in America, EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE 
(2018), 20-39, https://segregationinamerica.eji.org/
report.pdf?action=purge.
    \14\ HEATHER MCGHEE, THE SUM OF US: WHAT RACISM COSTS EVERYONE AND 
HOW WE CAN PROSPER TOGETHER (2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Keeping with this insidious pattern, the progress of electing the 
Nation's first Black president in 2008 was followed by a substantial 
mobilization of white Americans through the Tea Party movement who 
pushed back vehemently against policies that once received bipartisan 
support (such as health insurance mandates) and questioned President 
Barack Obama's birthplace and thus his legitimacy as President.\15\ 
More recently, robust public demonstrations of anguish and anger over 
George Floyd's murder and countless other examples of police devaluing 
Black lives with wanton violence generated an important National 
conversation about structural racism. However, these multi-racial 
efforts to confront police violence against communities of color have 
been met with sharp backlash in the form of white-led State 
legislatures and school boards passing so-called ``anti-critical race 
theory'' measures that mandate that our public school systems teach 
students an inaccurate, sanitized version of American history and ban 
an increasing number of books about race, including some classic texts 
that have long been part of the public school curricula.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\ Robb Willer, Matthew Feinberg & Rachel Wetts, Threats to 
Racial Status Promote Tea Party Support Among White Americans (May 4, 
2016). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2770186 or http://
dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2770186.
    \16\ In Defense of Truth, NAACP LDF (accessed Jan. 19, 2022), 
https://www.naacpldf.org/truth/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
B. The Response to the 2020 Presidential Election Fits the Pattern of 
        Cyclical Backlash
    The 2020 Presidential election and its aftermath fit the long-
standing cyclical pattern of progress and backlash that continually 
thwarts efforts at cementing durable change to perfect our union. In 
2020, communities of color drove robust voter turnout leading to 
electoral results that challenged the political status quo. The 
violence on January 6th and the attendant effort to override the valid 
outcome of the 2020 Presidential election were one concrete form of 
backlash, and the rash of anti-voter laws introduced and enacted in 
States across the country, building on a wave of voter suppression 
efforts that preceded the election,\17\ was another. Both responses 
were fueled by a common false narrative rooted in racism and the 
project of white supremacy. What will happen next remains an open 
question. Whether we confront this backlash head-on and advance toward 
further progress or backslide into what some have justly called Jim 
Crow 2.0 depends in significant part upon Congress' response to the 
current moment.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \17\ Will Wilder, Voter Suppression in 2020, Brennan Center for 
Justice (Aug. 20, 2020), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/
research-reports/voter-suppression-2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  iii. framing the 2020 backlash: false rhetoric of stolen elections 
           connects january 6th to on-going voter suppression
    Coded racial appeals have served as an overarching frame for the 
backlash against the 2020 election. Those seeking to stoke racial 
resentment for their political and economic advantage began laying the 
groundwork for this frame for many years prior to 2020. For decades, 
those seeking to restrict the franchise have used false concerns about 
voter fraud to justify barriers to the ballot.\18\ This framework began 
to take center stage during the prior administration. When President 
Trump won the 2016 election through the Electoral College but fell more 
than 3 million total votes short of Hillary Clinton, he told his 
supporters that there was only one reasonable explanation: Millions of 
people had voted illegally for Clinton, masking his true victory among 
legitimate voters.\19\ With no actual evidence of voter fraud to 
support his claim, Trump set up the Presidential Commission on Election 
Integrity allegedly to find it.\20\ The Commission produced no such 
evidence and shut down amidst credible allegations of secrecy, 
mismanagement, and discriminatory intent.\21\ Nonetheless, the mere 
creation of this high-level government commission stoked doubt about 
the sanctity of our elections and likely helped legitimize the false 
claim of rampant voter fraud for some.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\ German Lopez, The case against voter ID laws, in one chart, 
Vox.com (August 6, 2015), https://www.vox.com/2015/8/6/9107927/voter-
id-election-fraud; See also, Quinn Scanlan, `We've never found systemic 
fraud, not enough to overturn the election: Georgia Secretary of State 
Raffensperger says,' ABC News (Dec. 6, 2020), https://abcnews.go.com/
Politics/weve-found-systemic-fraud-overturnelection-georgia-secretary/
story?id=74560956; Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth, Brennan Center for 
Justice (Jan. 31, 2017), https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/
files/analysis/Briefing_Memo_Debunking_Voter_Fraud_Myth.pdf.
    \19\ Glenn Kessler, Donald Trump's bogus claim that millions of 
people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton, Washington Post (Nov. 27, 
2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/11/27/
trumps-bogus-claim-that-millions-of-people-voted-illegally-for-hillary-
clinton/.
    \20\ President Announces Formation of Bipartisan Presidential 
Commission on Election Integrity, the White House (May 11, 2017), 
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/president-
announces-formation-bipartisan-presidential-commission-election-
integrity/.
    \21\ Jessica Huseman, A Short History of the Brief and Bumpy Life 
of the Voting Fraud Commission, ProPublica (Jan. 4, 2018), https://
www.propublica.org/article/a-short-history-of-the-brief-and-bumpy-life-
of-the-voting-fraud-commission.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Heading into the 2020 election, President Trump also told his 
supporters repeatedly that he could only lose through massive 
fraud;\22\ and he refused to say definitively whether he would accept 
the election results if he lost.\23\ When Trump did in fact lose the 
2020 Presidential election--both the popular vote and the Electoral 
College--his supporters echoed his false Statements that rampant fraud 
explained the outcome, and both the Trump campaign and legions of its 
most loyal supporters used this frame as a central theme to guide their 
activities in the aftermath. In response to false claims that the 2020 
election was stolen through rampant fraud, extremist factions 
orchestrated a campaign to disrupt the counting and certification of 
the Presidential election and ultimately to overturn its results.\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\ Zachary Wolf, The 5 key elements of Trump's Big Lie and how it 
came to be, CNN (May 19, 2021), https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/
politics/donald-trump-big-lie-explainer/index.html.
    \23\ David Leonhardt, Trump's Refusal to Concede, New York Times 
(Nov. 12, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/briefing/ron-klain-
jeffrey-toobin-tropical-storm-eta.html.
    \24\ Simon Romero, Shaila Dewan & Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, 
In a Year of Protest Cries, Now It's `Count Every Vote!' and `Stop the 
Steal!', THE N.Y. TIMES (Nov. 5, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/
11/05/us/electionprotests-vote-count.html; LDF Issues Statement 
Condemning Breach of U.S. Capitol, Attempted Coup by Supporters of 
President Trump, NAACP LDF (Jan. 6, 2020), https://www.naacpldf.org/
press-release/ldf-issues-Statement-condemning-breach-of-u-s-capitol-
attempted-coup-by-supporters-of-president-trump/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This false narrative of voter fraud is rooted in racism and 
connects the violence of January 6th to the litany of voter suppression 
laws taken up by nearly every State. First, the sharp racial divide 
between those promoting and believing these false claims and those who 
accept the results of the 2020 election is one indication of how the 
phantom fraud frame is in fact steeped in racism.\25\ Second, views 
about whether the 2020 election was stolen appear to be correlated with 
views on race. Third, the connection between the embrace of the false 
fraud narrative and regressive attitudes about race has manifest in 
legislatures across the country. For example, State legislators who 
were the authors or lead sponsors of some of the most aggressive 2021 
voter suppression laws have also introduced legislation banning so-
called ``critical race theory'' from being taught in schools; barred 
the removal of Confederate monuments; and responded to racial justice 
protests about police brutality against Black people by increasing 
criminal penalties for protest-related activities.\26\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\ Belief in the Big Lie narrative is sharply divided by 
partisanship, which is highly correlated with race. See Joel Rose & Liz 
Baker, 6 in 10 Americans say U.S. democracy is in crisis as `Big Lie' 
takes route, NPR (Jan. 3, 2022), https://www.npr.org/2022/01/03/
1069764164/american-democracy-poll-jan-6. In addition, ``Republicans 
most likely to believe that racism and discrimination are not a problem 
are also the most devout believers in the Stop the Steal narrative.'' 
Lee Drutman, Theft Perception, VOTER STUDY GROUP (June 2021), https://
www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/theft-perception.
    \26\ See AR H.B. 1218, 93d Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess., (Ark. 2021) 
(banning school curricula that ``promotes societal division'' on the 
basis of race, among other factors), available at https://
www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/
Detail?id=HB1218&ddBienniumSession=2021%2F2021R; AR H.B. 1231, 93d Gen. 
Assemb., Reg. Sess., (Ark. 2021) (banning teaching the 1619 Project), 
available at https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/
Detail?id=HB1231&ddBienniumSession=2021%2F2021R; AR H.B. 1761, 93d Gen. 
Assemb., Reg. Sess., (Ark. 2021) (banning educational materials that 
portray any group of people as inherently racist, that argue that any 
group of people should feel guilt or shame due to race, and that the 
United States is systemically racist), available at https://
www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/
Detail?id=HB1761&ddBienniumSession=2021%2F2021R; AR S.B. 12, 93d Gen. 
Assemb., Reg. Sess., (Ark. 2021) (adding schools to list of 
institutions that are not allowed to promote ``divisive concepts'' 
including that any group of people is inherently racist), available at 
https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/
Detail?id=SB12&ddBienniumSession=2021%2F2021S2; and TX S.B. 3, 82d 
Leg., 2d Sess., (Tex. 2021) (banning curricula that promote the idea 
that anyone is inherently racist by virtue of their race, whether 
consciously or unconsciously, an individual bears responsibility for 
actions undertaken in the past by members of the same race, or the 
advent of slavery in the now-United States constituted the true 
founding of the United States, among other ideas), available at https:/
/capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=872&Bill=SB3. See 
also TX S.B. 1663, 86th Leg., Reg. Sess., (Tex. 2019) (banning the 
removal monuments that have existed for at least 40 years, among other 
restrictions), available at https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/- 
History.aspx?LegSess=86R&Bill=SB1663; AR S.B. 553, 93d Gen. Assemb., 
Reg. Sess., (Ark. 2021) (banning the removal of monuments that pertain 
to any war, including the Civil War), available at https://
www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/
Detail?id=SB553&ddBienniumSession=2021%2F2021R; and FL S.B. 288, 2019 
Sen., (Fla. 2019) (banning removal, alteration, concealment, etc. of 
statutes or memorials commemorating veterans or military organizations, 
including during the Civil War), available at https://www.flsenate.gov/
Session/Bill/2019/288/?Tab=BillText. See also GA S.B. 403, 2021-2022 
Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess., (Ga. 2022) (providing immunity for law 
enforcement transporting individuals to mental health facilities), 
available at https://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/61506; AL H.B. 284, 
2021 Leg., Reg. Sess., (Ala. 2021) (providing liability protection for 
law enforcement officials taking individuals with mental illness to a 
mental health facility and removing requirement that such officials go 
through the involuntary commitment process before doing so), available 
at https://legiscan.com/AL/text/HB284/id/2271288; TX H.B. 1788, 87th 
Leg., Reg. Sess., (Tex. 2021) (creating immunity for schools, school 
districts, and security personnel for ``reasonable actions'' taken by 
school security personnel to preserve safety), available at https://
capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/- Text.aspx?LegSess=87R&Bill=HB1788; and 
FL S.B. 826, 2021 Sen., (Fla. 2021) (extending sovereign immunity to 
members of Child Protection Teams), available at https://
www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/826/?Tab=BillText. See also AR S.B. 
300, 93d Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess., (Ark. 2021) (prohibiting parole for 
certain firearm possession cases), available at https://
www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/
Detail?id=SB300&ddBienniumSession=2021%2F2021R, AR H.B. 1866, 92d Gen. 
Assemb., Reg. Sess., (Ark. 2019) (imposing time limits on when someone 
can apply for a pardon), available at https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/
Bills/Detail?id=HB1866&ddBienniumSession=2019%2F2019R; AR H.B. 1064, 
93d Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess., (Ark. 2021) (increasing the loopback 
period for certain DWI offenses for the purpose of sentence 
enhancements), available at https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/
Detail?id=HB1062&ddBienniumSession=2021%2F2021R; KY H.B. 215, 2022 Gen. 
Assemb., Reg. Sess., (Ky. 2022) (removing pretrial diversion and 
increasing minimum penalties for certain drug trafficking offenses), 
available at https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/22rs/hb215.html; GA 
S.B. 479, 2021-2022 Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess., (Ga. 2022) (for firearm 
possession cases, charges a separate offense for each firearm 
possessed), available at https://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/61936, 
and GA S.B. 359, 2021-2022 Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess., (Ga. 2022) 
(providing minimum criminal penalties for a series of crimes, including 
some firearm felonies, and requiring the maximum sentence for certain 
repeat offender elder or child abuse crimes), available at https://
www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/61213.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Perhaps the clearest sign that the January 6th insurrection and the 
recent rash of anti-voter laws are not separate phenomena, but rather 
are two expressions of white racial anxiety about shifting power 
dynamics in the United States, is that both have strongholds in places 
where the white population is declining, either absolutely or in 
relation to people of color.
    The Chicago Project on Security & Threats analyzed various 
characteristics of 716 people who have been charged with crimes related 
to January 6th.\27\ After examining several factors, the Project 
determined that (other than county size) the strongest predictor of 
insurrection participation was residing in a county with a substantial 
decline in white population since 2015.\28\ The authors conclude that 
their ``analysis suggests that local decline of the non-Hispanic white 
population has a galvanizing effect, and counties that have had higher 
rates of non-Hispanic white population decline in the last half-decade 
are likely to produce insurrectionists at a higher rate.''\29\ They 
note further that, ``[g]iven the overwhelming whiteness of the 
population of insurrectionists, the finding that counties with higher 
rates of demographic change are also counties that sent more 
insurrectionists even when controlling for a host of competing factors 
is consistent with a political movement that is partially driven by 
racial cleavages and white discontent with diversifying 
communities.''\30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \27\ Robert Pape et al., American Face of Insurrection: Analysis of 
Individuals Charged for Storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, 
Chicago Project on Security and Threats (Jan. 5, 2022), https://
d3qi0qp55mx5f5.cloudfront.net/cpost/i/docs/
Pape_American_Face_of_Insurrection_(2022-01-05)_1.pdf?mtime=1641481428.
    \28\ Id. at 21.
    \29\ Id. at 18.
    \30\ Id. at 21-22.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In sum, the false narrative around stolen elections is not just 
about a single politician or a single election but rather it 
effectively foments and channels a broader wave of status insecurity 
and racial resentment. It is a common progenitor of both the violence 
and attempt to erase the results of the 2020 election that occurred on 
January 6th and the wide-spread effort to restrict access to the 
ballot.
iv. voters of color overcame barriers to assert consequential political 
                             power in 2020
    The 2020 election was not beset with large-scale fraud, as those 
promoting the January 6th insurrection have claimed.\31\ It also did 
not, as numerous news reports suggested, ``go smoothly.''\32\ Accounts 
from LDF's Voting Rights Defender and Prepared to Vote teams, detailed 
in the LDF Thurgood Marshall Institute's latest Democracy Defended 
report,\33\ reveal the depth and breadth of the issues voters faced, 
especially voters of color. From onerous vote-by-mail restrictions 
during a pandemic to voter intimidation, poll closures and unreasonably 
long lines, Black voters in particular faced a litany of barriers to 
the ballot.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \31\ Melissa Block, The clear and present danger of Trump's 
enduring `Big Lie', National Public Radio (December 23, 2021), https://
www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1065277246/trump-big-lie-jan-6-election.
    \32\ Sherrilyn Ifill, No, This Election Did Not Go `Smoothly,' 
SLATE (Nov. 9, 2020), https://slate.com/news-andpolitics/2020/11/2020-
election-voting-did-not-go-smoothly.html.
    \33\ Thurgood Marshall Institute, Democracy Defended, NAACP LDF 
(Sept. 2, 2021), https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/
LDF_2020_DemocracyDefended-1-3.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Yet, participating in the 2020 Presidential election was historic. 
Voters overcame a host of obstacles with determination and resilience. 
Two-thirds of eligible voters casted ballots in the 2020 Presidential 
election.\34\ This is the highest turnout rate recorded since 1900; but 
it actually represents the highest turnout ever given the significant 
expansion of both the general population and the population of eligible 
voters since the turn of the twentieth century.\35\ Black voter turnout 
was greater than 65% and nearly matched records set when President 
Obama was on the ballot.\36\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \34\ Michael P. McDonald, National General Election VEP Turnout 
Rates, 1789-Present, UNITED STATES ELECTIONS PROJECT, Jan. 14, 2022, 
http://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present.
    \35\ Id.
    \36\ Michael P. McDonald, Voter Turnout Demographics, UNITED STATES 
ELECTIONS PROJECT (accessed Jan. 14, 2022), http://
www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The historic turnout continued on January 5, 2021 with Georgia's 
runoff election. Turnout in runoff elections, which occur after 
Election Day, is typically modest, and at times anemic. But, with 
control of the U.S. Senate at stake, and the opportunity to elect 
candidates who reflected the growing diversity of the State, a record 
60% of Georgians turned out in the January runoff.\37\ The 4.4 million 
Georgians who cast ballots on January 5 was more than double the number 
who voted in the previous record turnout runoff election in 2008.\38\ 
Black voters drove this historic participation, with Black turnout 
dropping just 8% from the general election compared with an 11% decline 
among white voters.\39\ The result was the election of the first Black 
and Jewish senators in Georgia's history.\40\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \37\ Nathaniel Rakich et al., How Democrats Won the Georgia 
Runoffs, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT (Jan. 7, 2021, 2:47 PM), https://
fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-democrats-won-the-georgia-runoffs/.
    \38\ Id.
    \39\ Mark Niesse & Jennifer Peebles, Turnout dip among Georgia 
Republicans flipped U.S. Senate, THE ATLANTA J.-CONST. (Feb. 2, 2021), 
https://www.ajc.com/politics/turnout-dip-among-georgia-republicans-
flipped-us-senate/IKWGEGFEEVEZ5DXTP7ZXXOROIA/.
    \40\ Steve Peoples, Bill Barrow, and Russ Bynum, Warnock, Ossoff 
win in Georgia, handing Dems control of Senate, ASSOCIATED PRESS (Jan. 
6, 2021), https://apnews.com/article/Georgia-election-results-
4b82ba7ee3cc74d33e68daadaee2cbf3.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This historic turnout was no accident and was not driven by the 
stakes alone. National civil rights and civil liberties groups and 
Black-led grassroots organizations in Georgia had spent years 
challenging attempts to restrict access to the ballot and building 
substantial voter outreach campaigns to educate voters regarding the 
stakes of Federal, State, and local elections and assist communities as 
they navigate the voting process.\41\ The Herculean effort it took to 
help Black and Brown voters overcome barriers to the ballot in the 2020 
election is not sustainable, however, nor should it be required given 
the protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The backlash to 
the results of this historic turnout and its consequences was 
immediate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \41\ Anna North, 6 Black women organizers on what happened in 
Georgia--and what comes next, Vox (November 11, 2020), https://
www.vox.com/21556742/georgia-votes-election-organizers-stacey-abrams.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  v. the post-2020 backlash in action
    A new chapter of an old story, the backlash to historic 2020 voter 
turnout among people of color has been swift and severe. As with past 
reactions to racial progress the post-2020 backlash has featured both 
violence and legal regression--in this case in the form of efforts to 
restrict the franchise. Based on the false narrative of voter fraud, 
this violence and votes backlash began with campaign operatives 
questioning vote totals in Black and Brown communities. It continued 
through a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol focused on 
invalidating the election results and thus the political power 
exercised by the Black and Brown communities and accelerated through 
both successful efforts to erect barriers to the ballot and a 
regressive redistricting cycle that severely constricts the ability of 
voters of color to assert their full strength at the polls. It 
continues to this day with active plans to subvert future elections.
A. Questioning Vote Totals in Black and Brown Communities
    The spark to this particular backlash was the turnout among voters 
of color, especially Black voters, that led to President Biden's 
victory in the 2020 election. President Trump and his allies reacted 
immediately by asserting claims of massive fraud and questioning vote 
totals, specifically targeting Black elections officials and voters in 
Black population centers such as Detroit (where election officials 
counting votes were mobbed and harassed),\42\ Philadelphia (where the 
FBI helped local police arrest two men with weapons suspected of a plot 
to interfere with ballot counting),\43\ and the Atlanta metro region 
(where Trump alleged that hundreds of thousands of ballots mysteriously 
appeared).\44\ Similarly, President Trump and his allies alleged fraud 
in places like Arizona where robust turnout among the Latino population 
was decisive. Again, we saw coordinated attempts to infiltrate ballot 
counting headquarters and tamper with vote counting.\45\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \42\ Bostock, supra note 41.
    \43\ Ewing et al., supra n. 41.
    \44\ Jeff Amy, Darlene Superville, & Jonathan Lemire, GA election 
officials reject Trump call to `find' more votes, ASSOCIATED PRESS 
(Jan. 4, 2021), https://apnews.com/article/trump-raffensperger-phone-
call-georgia-d503c8b4e58f7cd648fbf9a746131ec9.
    \45\ Lahut, supra n. 41.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Wayne County, Michigan emerged as a central focus of attempts to 
translate the false narrative regarding voter fraud into actual 
subversion of a free and fair election. On November 20, 2020, LDF filed 
a lawsuit on behalf of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and 
three individuals alleging that President Trump's attempt to prevent 
Wayne County, Michigan from certifying its election results was a clear 
example of intimidating those charged with ``aiding a[] person to vote 
or attempt to vote'' in violation of the Voting Rights Act, and that 
this intimidation was aimed at disenfranchising Black voters.\46\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \46\ Complaint, Mich. Welfare Rights Org. v. Trump, Civ. Action 20-
3388 (EGS) (D.D.C. Apr. 1, 2022). Available at https://
www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/Trump-Campaign-Complaint.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Complaint explained how race was a driving factor in the 
Michigan certification debate: ``During [a meeting of the Wayne County 
canvassing board], one of the Republican Canvassers said she would be 
open to certifying the rest of Wayne County (which is predominately 
white) but not Detroit (which is predominately Black), even though 
those other areas of Wayne County had similar discrepancies [between 
ballot numbers and poll book records] and in at least one predominantly 
white city, Livonia, the discrepancies were more significant than those 
in Detroit.''\47\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \47\ Complaint at \27 at 7. Mich. Welfare Rights Org. v. Trump.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Subsequently, on December 21, 2020, LDF amended its Complaint, 
adding the NAACP as a Plaintiff, and alleging that President Trump and 
his supporters made similar efforts to disenfranchise voters--and 
especially Black voters--in other States, including Georgia, 
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
    The Amended Complaint summarizes the racial discrimination central 
to the post-election strategy to invalidate the political voice of 
Black and Brown communities:
    Under the specter of preventing ``fraud,'' Defendants engaged in a 
conspiracy, executed through a coordinated effort, to disenfranchise 
voters by disrupting vote counting efforts, lodging groundless 
challenges during recounts, and attempting to block certification of 
election results through intimidation and coercion of election 
officials and volunteers. These systematic efforts--violations of the 
VRA and the Ku Klux Klan Act--have largely been directed at major 
metropolitan areas with large Black voter populations. These include 
Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and others. Because 
President Trump lost the popular vote in Michigan and other States that 
were necessary for a majority of the electoral college, Defendants 
worked to block certification of the results, on the (legally 
incorrect) theory that blocking certification would allow State 
legislatures to override the will of the voters and choose the Trump 
Campaign's slate of electors . . . On November 19, 2020, President 
Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and others, held a press 
conference at the RNC headquarters in Washington, DC, where they 
repeated false allegations of fraud and openly discussed their strategy 
of disenfranchising voters in Detroit and Wayne County. At that press 
conference, Mr. Giuliani asserted without evidence that the Trump 
campaign had identified 300,000 ``illegitimate ballots,'' and stated: 
``These ballots were all cast basically in Detroit that Biden won 80-
20,'' and ``it changes the result of the election in Michigan, if you 
take out Wayne County.''\48\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \48\ Complaint at 18-21 Mich. Welfare Rights Org. v. Trump.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In sum, the strategy to block election certifications by alleging 
fraud and questioning vote totals was not only a political ploy to 
rescue a failed candidacy. But by focusing the efforts on cities and 
counties with large populations of voters of color, the strategy was 
also to advance a narrative that people of color are not legitimate 
actors in our democracy (as voters or election officials).
B. The January 6th Insurrection
    After challenging election results in communities of color, the 
next step in the violence and votes backlash was the January 6th 
Insurrection--just 1 day after Black voters asserted their power in 
Georgia. The violent attack on the Capitol on January 6th was a brazen, 
virulent, and deadly manifestation of the concerted effort to undermine 
our democracy, to overthrow the government, and to negate the votes 
cast by our communities. The information unveiled through the on-going 
investigations of this committee and the Department of Justice confirms 
that the violence was foreseeable and part of a larger planned coup 
attempt abetted by encouragement or deliberate inaction at the highest 
levels.\49\ The founder of the Oath Keepers and ten others have been 
charged with ``seditious conspiracy''\50\ and according to an early 
assessment, 13% of those arrested have had associations with militias 
or right-wing extremist groups.\51\ Perhaps most concerning, January 
6th marked an embrace of political violence and previously fringe 
ideologies by mainstream conservatives,\52\ a threat that has been 
growing for some time,\53\ has only worsened since the Insurrection and 
remains of serious concern.\54\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \49\ Paul LeBlanc, The January 6 committee formed 6 months ago. 
Here's what it's uncovered, CNN (January 4, 2022), https://www.cnn.com/
2021/12/29/politics/january-6-committee-investigation-trump-what-
matters/index.html; Department of Justice, One Year Since the Jan. 6 
Attack on the Capitol, (Updated Dec. 30, 2021), https://
www.justice.gov/usao-dc/one-year-jan-6-attack-capitol.
    \50\ Department of Justice, Leader of Oath Keepers and 10 Other 
Individuals Indicted in Federal Court for Seditious Conspiracy and 
Other Offenses Related to U.S. Capitol Breach: Eight Others Facing 
Charges in Two Related Cases, Department of Justice Office of Public 
Affairs (Jan. 13, 2022), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-oath-
keepers-and-10-other-individuals-indicted-Federal-court-seditious-
conspiracy-and.
    \51\ Ayman Ismail, We Know Exactly Who the Capitol Rioters Were, 
Slate (Jan. 4, 2022), https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/01/
january-6-capitol-riot-arrests-research-profile.html.
    \52\ (``The normalization of the conspiracies that animate their 
beliefs is great news for extremists, who don't have to work nearly as 
hard to have their views accepted in the mainstream.'') Digital 
Forensic Research Lab, Experts react to the year since January 6, 
Atlantic Council (Jan. 4, 2022), https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-
depth-research-reports/experts-react-to-the-year-since-january-6/
#perilous; (``The Jan. 6 insurrectionists really are best understood as 
a product of the mainstream.'') Ayman Ismail supra note 60.
    \53\ Seth Jones, The Rise of Far-Right Extremism in the United 
States, Center for Strategic and International Studies (Nov. 7, 2018), 
https://www.csis.org/analysis/rise-far-right-extremism-united-states.
    \54\ (In a poll, 25% of Republicans believe the Qanon conspiracy 
and 15% of Americans believed that ``American patriots may have to 
resort to violence'') Giovanni Russonello, QAnon Now as Popular in U.S. 
as Some Major Religions, Poll Suggests, New York Times (updated Aug. 
12, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/us/politics/qanon-
republicans-trump.html; (``Extremist movements are stronger, conspiracy 
networks larger, and elements of the GOP more radical, with some 
elected officials spreading extremist views. The prosecution of 
insurrectionists has not shut down groups like the racist Proud Boys 
and anti-government Oath Keepers, or like-minded allies who thrive on-
line and on the streets.'') Digital Forensics Lab supra note 61.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power--the very 
hallmark of a functioning democracy--was the natural conclusion of 
years of rhetoric inciting and condoning racism and white 
supremacy,\55\ expanding the proliferation of conspiracy theories,\56\ 
and flouting the rule of law. More specifically, it was the direct 
result of false rhetoric regarding stolen elections that tapped into 
existing racial anxiety. As the political scientist Hakeem Jefferson 
and the sociologist Victor Ray have written, ``Jan. 6 was a racial 
reckoning. It was a reckoning against the promise of a multiracial 
democracy and the perceived influence of the Black vote.''\57\ We know 
this in part because ``those who participated in the insurrection were 
more likely to come from areas that experienced more significant 
declines in the non-Hispanic white population--further evidence that 
the storming of the Capitol was, in part, a backlash to a perceived 
loss of status, what social scientists call `perceived status threat.' 
''\58\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \55\ James Rainey & Melissa Gomez, Asked to condemn white 
supremacists, Trump tells Proud Boys hate group to `stand by', THE LA 
TIMES (Sept. 29, 2020), https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/
2020-09-29/asked-to-condemn-white-supremacists-trump-tells-proud-boys-
hate-group-to-stand-by.
    \56\ Shirin Ghaffary, The long-term consequences of Trump's 
conspiracy theory campaign, Vox (Nov. 20, 2020), https://www.vox.com/
recode/21546119/trump-conspiracy-theories-election-2020-coronavirus-
voting-vote-by-mail.
    \57\ Hakeem Jefferson & Victor Ray, White Backlash is a Type of 
Racial Reckoning, Too, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT (Jan. 6, 2022), https://
fivethirtyeight.com/features/white-backlash-is-a-type-of-racial-
reckoning-too/.
    \58\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Some of the most enduring imagery from the attack on the U.S. 
Capitol points to race as a central, underlying factor. Many 
photographs from the January 6th insurrection were disturbing, but one 
in particular encapsulated the historical significance and the stakes 
for our Republic: the image of an insurgent inside the U.S. Capitol 
brandishing a Confederate flag.\59\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \59\ Indeed, many insurrectionist donned Confederate paraphernalia. 
Javonte Anderson, Capitol riot images showing Confederate flag a 
reminder of country's darkest past, USA TODAY (Jan. 13, 2021), https://
www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/01/07/capitol-riot-images-confederate-
flag-terror/6588104002/ . . . 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
C. The Backlash Accelerates: States Pass Anti-Voter Laws and Use 
        Centennial Redistricting to Weaken the Voices of Voters of 
        Color
    The next stage of the backlash played out in State legislatures 
across the country through bills and laws intended to block Black and 
Brown Americans' access to the ballot. In 2021 we saw a repeat of 
history--a steady drip of old poison in new bottles.\60\ Whereas in a 
bygone era discriminatory intent in voting restrictions was dressed up 
in the alleged espousal of ideals such as securing a more informed and 
invested electorate, the new professed justification is fighting voter 
fraud, an imaginary phantom that serves as a basis to attack the right 
to vote. State lawmakers introduced and advanced new voting laws 
targeted to ensure that the robust turnout among voters of color in the 
2020 Presidential election could not be repeated. Legislators 
introduced more than 400 bills in nearly every State aiming to restrict 
the franchise.\61\ Nineteen States enacted a total of 34 laws that roll 
back voting rights and erect new barriers to the ballot.\62\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \60\ Deuel Ross, Pouring Old Poison into New Bottles: How 
Discretion and the Discriminatory Administration of Voter ID Laws 
Recreate Literacy Tests1 45 COLUM. HUM. Rts. L. REV. 362 (2014).
    \61\ Resource: Voting Laws Roundup: December 2021, BRENNAN CENTER 
FOR JUSTICE (Jan. 12, 2022) https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/
research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-december-2021.
    \62\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Critically, many of these laws are directly targeted at blocking 
pathways to the ballot box that Black and Brown voters used 
successfully in 2020. For example, after Black voters increased their 
usage of absentee ballots as a result of the pandemic, S.B. 90 in 
Florida severely curtailed the use of unstaffed ballot return drop 
boxes and effectively eliminated community ballot collection.\63\ And 
in Georgia and Texas, after strong early in-person turnout among Black 
voters, lawmakers initially moved to outlaw or limit Sunday voting in a 
direct attack on the ``souls to the polls'' turnout efforts undertaken 
by many Black churches to mobilize voters to engage in collective civic 
participation.\64\ Another law in Georgia hampers vote-by-mail, cuts 
back on early voting, and more.\65\ The 2021 omnibus voting law in 
Texas eliminates a number of accessible, common-sense voting methods, 
including ``drive-thru'' voting and 24-hour early voting--both methods 
that proved invaluable for Black and Brown voters in Texas's largest 
cities in 2020.\66\ In all, these laws severely restrict the ability of 
voters of color to cast a ballot and specifically target the ways in 
which these voters participated successfully in the 2020 Presidential 
election.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \63\ See generally Compl. for Decl. and Inj. Relief, Fla. State 
Conferences of Branches v. Lee, No. 4:21-cv-00187-WS-MAF (N.D. Fla. May 
6, 2021), ECF No. 1.
    \64\ Letter from Sam Spital et al., NAACP LDF to Texas Senate (May 
29, 2021), https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/LDF-Conference-
Committee-Report-Opposition-Senate-20210529-1.pdf; Letter from John 
Cusick et al., NAACP LDF et al., to Georgia House of Representatives, 
Special Committee on Election Integrity (Mar. 14, 2021), https://
www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/LDF-SPLC-Written-Testimony-on-
SB202-3.18.21.pdf. In both States, after advocacy from LDF and others, 
lawmakers eventually removed these blatantly discriminatory provisions 
from the omnibus voting bills under consideration--although in both 
States, the final forms of the enacted bills remained extremely harmful 
to voters of color. See LDF Files Lawsuit Against the State of Florida 
Over Suppressive Voting Law, NAACP LDF (May 6, 2021), https://
www.naacpldf.org/press-release/ldf-files-lawsuit-against-the-state-of-
florida-over-suppressive-voting-law/; Civil Rights Groups Sue Georgia 
Over New Sweeping Voter Suppression Law, NAACP LDF (March 30, 2021), 
https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/civil-rights-groups-sue-georgia-
over-new-sweeping-voter-suppression-law/.
    \65\ See S.B. 202, https://www.legis.ga.gov/api/legislation/
document/20212022/201498.
    \66\ Compl. for Decl. and Injunctive Relief, Houston Justice v. 
Abbott, No. 5:21-cv-00848 (W.D. Tex. Sept. 7, 2021), ECF No. 1, 
available at https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/Houston-
Justice-et-al.-v.-Abbott-et-al.-Complaint.pdf; see also Press Release: 
Lawsuit Filed Challenging New Texas Law Targeting Voting Rights, NAACP 
LDF (Sept. 7, 2021), https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/lawsuit-
filed-challenging-new-texas-law-targeting-voting-rights/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The people targeted by these laws are well aware of what is 
happening and are actively fighting back. Jeffrey Clemmons, a Black 
resident of Harris County Texas in his early twenties who was a leader 
in his college NAACP chapter and served as an election judge in 2020, 
is suing to push back on the Texas 2021 voter suppression law, 
represented by LDF.\67\ Mr. Clemmons says:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \67\ Compl. for Decl. and Injunctive Relief, Houston Justice v. 
Abbott, No. 5:21-cv-00848 (W.D. Tex. Sept. 7, 2021), ECF No. 1.

``I absolutely think that the over 400 laws that were pushed through 
legislatures from Texas to Georgia to curtail our rights to vote were 
indeed because of the incredible turnout of people of color and young 
people again who had never turned up to the ballot box before. We felt 
so motivated and so strongly about this election because we knew [what] 
was on the line if we didn't vote in so many instances and because we 
are tired of not being represented properly . . . And so these election 
laws are an attempt to turn back the clock on our voting rights and 
make sure that [] never happens again to create, you know, this 
environment of fear that if you vote, you're going to be punished for 
it.''\68\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \68\ Interview by Adam Lioz, Senior Policy Counsel for LDF, with 
Jeffrey Clemmons (Jan. 10, 2022) (on file with author).

    Of the more than 400 bills introduced last year, at least 152 in 18 
States have carried over into current legislative sessions, and more 
than a dozen additional bills were pre-filed by December in 
anticipation of the 2022 session.\69\ As of January 2022, legislatures 
in more than half of U.S. States had introduced, pre-filed, or carried 
over more than 250 anti-voter bills.\70\ Like in 2021, many of these 
bills target the specific ways that Black and Brown voters have made 
their voices heard in recent elections.\71\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \69\ Resource: Voting Laws Roundup: December 2021, supra n. 70.
    \70\ Voting Laws Roundup: February 2022, Brennan Center for Justice 
(Feb. 9, 2022), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
reports/voting-laws-roundup-february-
2022?_ga=2.231456991.1301012527.1649763533-1535293244.1632777334.
    \71\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition to enacting laws that restrict access to the ballot, 
several States have used the first centennial redistricting process in 
six decades without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act, to 
weaken the voices of voters of color. From 1970--just after the 
``reapportionment revolution'' forced line-drawers to adhere to the 
one-person, one-vote principal \72\--through the 2010 redistricting 
cycle, the preclearance protection of Section 5 of the Voting Rights 
Act was the most powerful tool to protect Black and Brown voters 
through the districting process. Section 5 certainly did not ensure 
that Black voters enjoyed fully equal representation throughout the 
country, but its anti-retrogression principle did mean that at least 
hostile State legislatures could not set Black voters further back 
after each Census.\73\ Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has been a 
complementary tool, allowing Black and Brown voters and community 
organizations to bring lawsuits when district maps disempowered them 
compared with neighboring white communities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \72\ See e.g., Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962); Reynolds v. 
Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964).
    \73\ See 52 U.S.C. 10304(b); Beer v. United States, 425 U.S. 130 
(1976); Florida v. United States, 885 F..Supp. 2d 299 (D.D.C. 2012); 
Texas v. United States, 887 F. Supp.2d 133 (D. D.C. 2012).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Supreme Court, however, substantially weakened these 
protections in the 2013 Shelby case when it undercut the preclearance 
protections of Section 5 and in 2021 when the Court made Section 2 
claims more challenging in Brnovich v. DNC.\74\ The result is that 
Black communities entered the current redistricting cycle with a 
shredded shield, more exposed to the manipulations of white-dominated 
State legislatures than at any time since Jim Crow.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \74\ 594 U.S. (2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Prior to the current round of redistricting, political 
representation in the United States was already sharply skewed. In 
2019, people of color made up 39% of the U.S. population but only 12% 
of elected officials across the country, according to an analysis of 
nearly 46,000 Federal, State, and local office holders.\75\ Put another 
way, white Americans occupied nearly 90% of elected offices in the U.S. 
despite forming just over 60% of the population.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \75\ Datasets, The Electability Myth: The Shifting Demographics of 
Political Power in America, REFLECTIVE DEMOCRACY CAMPAIGN, https://
wholeads.us/datasets/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The current districting process threatens to worsen this already 
skewed representation. The Nation has grown substantially more diverse 
since 2010,\76\ but political representation is not on track to reflect 
this growing diversity--and Black and Brown Americans are likely to see 
their representation remain static or even lose ground in many places 
rather than see their power increase with their numbers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \76\ U.S. Census Bureau's Diversity Index has gone up from 54.9% to 
61.1% since 2010. Eric Jensen et al., The Chance That Two People Chosen 
at Random Are of Different Race or Ethnicity Groups Has Increased Since 
2010, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU (Aug. 12, 2021), https://www.census.gov/
library/stories/2021/08/2020-united-states-population-more-racially 
ethnically diverse-than-2010.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 42% of Americans are 
now people of color.\77\ Since the 2010 Census, the Latino population 
grew by 23%, compared to just 4.3% non-Latino population growth.\78\ 
The Black population grew by nearly 6%.\79\ This growth was even 
starker among voters of color. One 2021 report projected that nearly 
80% of the growth in voting eligible population would be through people 
of color, including 17% from Black voters.\80\ These shifts, and the 
accompanying anxiety around power and social status, have made certain 
Americans vulnerable to the false fraud frame, especially in States 
with the most profound changes. A key backlash strategy has been to use 
the districting process to ensure that the power of voters of color 
does not grow with their numbers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \77\ Id.
    \78\ Press Release, 2020 Census Statistics Highlight Local 
Population Changes and Nation's Racial and Ethnic Diversity, U.S. 
CENSUS BUREAU (Aug. 12, 2021), https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-
releases/2021/population-changes-nations-diversity.html.
    \79\ U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census Redistricting Data (Public Law 
94-171) Summary File, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU (accessed Jan. 18, 2022); U.S. 
Census Bureau, 2020 Census Redistricting Data (Public Law 94-171) 
Summary File, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU (accessed Jan. 18, 2022). See also 
U.S. Census Bureau, Race and Ethnicity in the United States: 2010 
Census and 2020 Census (Aug. 12, 2021), https://www.census.gov/library/
visualizations/interactive/race-and-ethnicity-in-the-united-state-2010-
and-2020-census.html.
    \80\ Michael C. Li, The Redistricting Landscape, 2021-2022, BRENNAN 
CENTER FOR JUSTICE (Feb. 11, 2021), at 15, fig. 7, https://
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/redistricting-
landscape-2021-22.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In the leadup to the current districting cycle, Brennan Center 
districting expert Michael Li issued a report citing the loss of 
Section 5 and narrowing of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to warn 
that in substantial parts of the country ``there may be even greater 
room for unfair processes and results than in 2011, when the Nation saw 
some of the most gerrymandered and racially discriminatory maps in its 
history.''\81\ So far, unfortunately, his predictions have largely 
borne out. In late November, Li noted that ``[c]ommunities of color are 
bearing the brunt of aggressive map drawing,'' citing Illinois, North 
Carolina, and Texas as examples.\82\ In Texas, ``communities of color 
accounted for 95% of the State's population growth last decade. Yet, 
not only did Texas Republicans create no new electoral opportunities 
for minority community communities, but their maps also often went 
backwards.''\83\ The pattern has continued--so much so that Li noted in 
mid-January that ``[p]people of color are getting shellacked in 
redistricting'' this cycle.\84\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \81\ Id. at 3.
    \82\ Michael C. Li, Early Lessons from the Current Redistricting 
Round, BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE (Nov. 30, 2021), https://
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/early-lessons-current-
redistricting-round.
    \83\ Id.
    \84\ Michael Li (@mcpli), Twitter (Jan. 13, 2022, 2:33 PM), https:/
/twitter.com/mcpli/status/1481711130020130816.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A December 2021 New York Times article detailed how white lawmakers 
are systematically driving Black elected officials from positions of 
power by carving up their districts and at times forcing them to run 
against other incumbents.\85\ The article cites at least two dozen 
examples, including former Congressional Black Caucus chair G.K. 
Butterfield of North Carolina, who is retiring as a result and called 
the situation a ``five-alarm fire.''\86\ \87\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \85\ Nick Corasaniti & Reid J. Epstein, Map by Map, G.O.P. Chips 
Away at Black Democrats' Power, THE N.Y. TIMES (Dec. 18, 2021), https:/
/www.nytimes.com/2021/12/18/us/politics/gop-gerrymandering-black-
democrats.html.
    \86\ Id.
    \87\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    LDF has brought lawsuits challenging the anti-voter laws and the 
unfair redistricting maps in several States; and our allies are suing 
in many others. For example, 6 of the 9 States formerly covered by 
Section 5 have completed at least some of their post-Census districting 
maps, and in 5 of these 6 States at least one map (and often more than 
one) is being challenged in lawsuits alleging racial 
discrimination.\88\ Had the Supreme Court not gutted the heart of the 
Voting Rights Act in 2013 by rendering inoperable the requirement that 
jurisdictions with histories of voting discrimination ``preclear'' 
voting changes before they take hold, many of the restrictive voting 
laws passed in 2021 would not have gone into effect. Five of the 19 
States that passed restrictive laws were fully covered by the VRA's 
preclearance provisions.\89\ Now affected voters are forced to push 
back piecemeal, using the Constitution's protections against 
intentional vote discrimination and the Voting Rights Act's remaining 
protections against discriminatory impact.\90\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \88\ Redistricting Across States, ALL ABOUT REDISTRICTING, https://
redistricting.lls.edu/ (accessed Jan. 18, 2022).
    \89\ See U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, Jurisdictions Previously Covered by 
Section 5, https://www.justice.gov/crt/jurisdictions-previously-
covered-section-5; Resource: Voting Laws Roundup: December 2021, supra 
n. 70.
    \90\ 594 U.S. (2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    LDF is currently litigating cases against 2021 voter suppression 
laws in Georgia, Florida, and Texas; and discriminatory redistricting 
plans in Alabama, South Carolina, and Louisiana. This litigation is an 
important but limited tool to protect Black and Brown Americans' right 
to vote. Voting rights litigation can be slow and expensive, often 
costing parties millions of dollars.\91\ The cases also expend 
significant judicial resources.\92\ Additionally, the average length of 
Section 2 cases is 2 to 5 years.\93\ In the years during a case's 
pendency, thousands--and, in some cases, millions--of voters are 
effectively disenfranchised.\94\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \91\ The Cost (in Time, Money, and Burden) of Section 2 of the 
Voting Rights Act Litigation1 NAACP LDF (Feb. 19, 2021), https://
www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/Section-2-costs-2.19.21.pdf.
    \92\ Federal Judicial Center, 2003-2004 District Court Case-
Weighting Study, Table 1 (2005) (finding that voting cases consume the 
sixth most judicial resources out of 63 types of cases analyzed).
    \93\ Voting Rights Act: Section 5 of the Act--History, Scope, and 
Purpose: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on the Constitution of the H. 
Comm. on the Judiciary, 109th Cong. 92 (2005) (``Two to 5 years is a 
rough average'' for the length of Section 2 lawsuits).
    \94\ See e.g., Veasey v. Abbott, No. 20-40428 (5th Cir. Sept. 3, 
2021), available at https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/20/20-
40428-CV0.pdf (upholding grant of $6,790,333.31 in attorneys' fees).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The details of these cases (described in chronological order below) 
show that these laws are targeted at pushing back on strong 2020 
turnout among voters of color and are clearly part of the backlash 
unleashed through false narratives about voter fraud. These cases have 
survived multiple attempts to block aggrieved voters from having their 
day in court--such as motions to dismiss or for summary judgment--and 
two of them have already resulted in victories for Black voters at the 
trial court level. In January, a three-judge panel ordered Alabama to 
draw new Congressional maps that give Black voters a fair opportunity 
to elect their preferred candidates (this ruling was put on hold by the 
Supreme Court).\95\ A Federal judge in March struck down Florida's 
voter suppression law and ruled that it was the product of intentional 
racial discrimination.\96\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \95\ 21A375 Merrill v. Milligan 595 U. S. (2022). Available at 
https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/
order_supreme_court_alabama_case_2_7_2022.pdf.
    \96\ League of Women Voters of Fla. Inc. v. Lee, 4:21cv186-MW/MAF 
(N.D. Fla. Mar. 31, 2022).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
            a. Georgia
    In addition to being the most visible place Black voters asserted 
power in 2020, Georgia has seen significant population growth among 
people of color over the last decade. According to the U.S. Census 
Bureau, the State's diversity index jumped several points over the past 
decade, and Georgia jumped two slots to become the ninth most diverse 
State in the Nation.\97\ This made the Peach State especially 
vulnerable to the false fraud frame. In fact, Georgia wasted no time 
translating the backlash against the rising voices of voters of color 
into legislative action to restrict the franchise. On January 7, 2021--
two days after the run-off election, and the day after the 
Insurrection--Georgia House Speaker David Ralston announced the 
creation of a Special Committee on Election Integrity (``EIC'') and by 
early February, Georgia legislators had filed sweeping legislation to 
limit early and absentee voting.\98\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \97\ Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the United States: 2010 Census 
and 2020 Census, U.S. Census Bureau (Aug. 12, 2021), https://
www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/racial-and-ethnic-
diversity-in-the-united-States-2010-and-2020-census.html.
    \98\ Stephen Fowler, Sweeping Elections Bill To Limit Early And 
Absentee Voting, NPR (Feb. 19, 2021), https://www.npr.org/2021/02/19/
969497398/georgia-republicans-file-sweeping-elections-bill-to-limit-
early-and-absentee-vot.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    LDF, jointly with the Southern Poverty Law Center (``SPLC''), 
provided oral and written testimony throughout the legislative session 
to oppose omnibus bills restricting access to the right to vote, 
explaining that these bills would disproportionately harm low-income 
voters and voters of color.\99\ Yet, the Georgia General Assembly 
refused to conduct any racial-impact study of legislation that would 
carry forward the State's troubling history of voting 
discrimination.\100\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \99\ LDF and SPLC Action Fund Submit Testimony Opposing Georgia's 
S.B. 202, NAACP LDF (Mar. 18, 2021), https://www.naacpldf.org/news/ldf-
and-splc-action-fund-submit-testimony-opposing-georgias-s-b-202/.
    \100\ Since the 2013 Shelby decision, the State of Georgia has 
enacted voting restrictions across five major categories studied by the 
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: Voter identification requirements, 
documentary proof of citizenship requirements, voter purges, cuts to 
early voting, and polling place closures or relocations. Democracy 
Diminished, NAACP LDF (Oct. 6, 2021), at 25-32, https://
www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/Democracy-Diminished_10.06.2021-
Final.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On March 17, 2021, with little notice to EIC members, and members 
of the public, an EIC member introduced a substitute bill to Senate 
Bill 202 (``S.B. 202''), which expanded the legislation from 3 pages to 
over 90 pages just hours before a full hearing. With limited 
opportunity for meaningful engagement and review, the EIC rushed S.B. 
202 through additional hearings. On March 25, 2021, the House and 
Senate passed S.B. 202, and the Governor signed it into law during a 
closed-door session.\101\ One of the most restrictive voting laws of 
recent years, S.B. 202: (1) Severely limits mobile voting; (2) imposes 
new identification requirements for requesting and casting an absentee 
ballot; (3) delays and compresses the time period for requesting 
absentee ballots; (4) imposes new restrictions on secure drop boxes; 
(5) implements out-of-precinct provisional ballot disqualification; (6) 
drastically reduces early voting in run-off elections; and (7) 
criminalizes the provision of food and water to voters waiting in line 
to cast a ballot.\102\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \101\ Stephen Fowler, ``Georgia Governor Signs Election Overhaul, 
Includes Changes to Absentee Voting,'' NPR (Mar. 25, 2021), https://
www.npr.org/2021/03/25/981357583/georgia-legislature-approves-election-
overhaul-including-changes-to-absentee-vot.
    \102\ Civil Rights Groups Sue Georgia Over New Sweeping Voter 
Suppression Law NAACP LDF (Mar. 30, 2021), https://www.naacpldf.org/
press-release/civil-rights-groups-sue-georgia-over-new-sweeping-voter-
suppression-law/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On March 30, 2021, LDF, along with allies, filed a lawsuit, later 
amended, in the Northern District of Georgia, which challenges S.B. 202 
on behalf of several groups including the Sixth District of the African 
Methodist Episcopal Church, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc, Georgia 
ADAPT, Georgia Advocacy Office, and the Southern Christian Leadership 
Conference.\103\ The lawsuit raises several claims including racial 
discrimination in violation of the VRA and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth 
Amendments; an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote under the 
First and Fourteenth Amendments; an unconstitutional burden on the 
right to freedom of speech and expression under the First Amendment; 
discrimination on the basis of disability under Title II of the 
American Disabilities Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 
1973, and a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's prohibition on 
immaterial requirements to voting.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \103\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In the 2022 legislative session, Georgia lawmakers picked up where 
they left off last year. After promising no further major election 
changes, the Georgia House nonetheless pushed through a package that 
sought to give the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) original 
jurisdiction to investigate nonexistent election crimes; reduce the 
number of voting machines required on Election Day; and increase 
mandates on elections officials without corresponding resources.\104\ 
After strong pushback from elections officials and the voting rights 
community, the legislature removed most of the anti-voter provisions, 
but did pass legislation that threatens to intimidate voters by 
involving the GBI directly in elections.\105\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \104\ GA HB1464. Regular Session 2021-2022, (Mar. 30, 2022).
    \105\ Cami Mondeaux, Georgia lawmakers pass bill giving GBI power 
to investigate voter fraud, Washington Examiner (Apr. 5, 2022), https:/
/www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/georgia-lawmakers-pass-bill-
giving-gbi-power-to-investigate-voter-fraud.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
            b. Florida
    Florida, which also grew more diverse in the last decade,\106\ was 
not far behind Georgia in channeling the false fraud claims and 
resulting backlash into new voting restrictions. On May 6, 2021, 
Governor DeSantis signed into law a broad voter suppression bill known 
as S.B. 90.\107\ The same day LDF filed a lawsuit on behalf of the 
Florida State Conference of the NAACP, Disability Rights Florida, and 
Common Cause against the Florida Secretary of State, challenging 
multiple provisions of the bill including: (1) Restrictions and new 
requirements for VBM applications; (2) limitations on where, when, and 
how drop boxes can be used; and (3) a vague and overbroad prohibition 
on conduct near polling places, including potentially criminalizing 
offering free food, water, and other relief to Florida voters waiting 
in long lines.\108\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \106\ Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the United States supra note 
106.
    \107\ Gov. DeSantis Signs GOP-Backed Elections Bill at Event Closed 
to Local Media, ASSOCIATED PRESS (May 6, 2021), https://
www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/gov-desantis-signs-gop-backed-elections-
bill/2444871/.
    \108\ Important Facts About LDF's Lawsuit Challenging Florida's New 
Voting Law, NAACP LDF (accessed Jan. 19, 2022), https://
www.naacpldf.org/naacp-publications/ldf-blog/important-facts-about-
ldfs-lawsuit-challenging-floridas-new-voting-law/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On October 8, 2021, Chief Judge Mark E. Walker denied the Secretary 
of State's motion to dismiss with respect to most of our claims, noting 
that the allegations of intentional discrimination in our complaint 
drew a ``a straight, shameful line from the discriminatory laws of the 
1880's to today.''\109\ Judge Walker then struck down S.B. 90 in March 
of this year, ruling that the law violates Section 2 of the Voting 
Rights Act, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. 
Constitution.\110\ Because the district court found that the Florida 
legislature intentionally discriminated against Black voters through 
its enactment of S.B. 90, the court granted the Plaintiffs' request for 
bail-in relief, thereby retaining jurisdiction in the matter for 10 
years and prohibiting Florida from enacting certain voting changes 
without pre-approval.\111\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \109\ Order on Motion to Dismiss at 52, Florida State Conference of 
the NAACP et. al. v. Laurel Lee, No. 4:21-cv001-87-MW-MAF (N.D. Fla 10/
8/21), ECF No. 249.
    \110\ https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/FINAL-ORDER-
SB90.pdf.
    \111\ Id. at 136.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In reaching its finding of intentional discrimination, the Court 
pointed to decades of troubling history, noting that ``[a]t some point, 
when the Florida Legislature passes law after law disproportionately 
burdening Black voters, this Court can no longer accept that the effect 
is incidental.''\112\ It also discussed the specific context of the 
2020 election and how S.B. 90 was framed in response. After noting a 
surge in vote-by-mail participation, high turnout generally, and the 
fact that by all accounts the election was conducted without major 
security concerns, the court referenced the National climate and 
Florida's response, making an explicit connection to the January 6th 
Insurrection:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \112\ Id. at 64.

``While Florida's election went smoothly, this Court cannot ignore 
reality. The 2020 election and its aftermath, on a national scale, was 
chaotic, though scant evidence was presented on this issue. Between the 
2020 election and SB 90's introduction, then-President Trump refused to 
acknowledge that he had lost the election, causing an escalating crisis 
that culminated in a mob storming the United States Capitol on January 
6, 2021. This is not determinative, but this Court cannot evaluate the 
Legislature's actions without at least acknowledging these events. 
Indeed, the [election] Supervisors' lobbyist, David Ramba, testified 
that considering ``all of the things that were on the national news and 
who stole what and everything else, we knew that somebody was going to 
come up with a piece of legislation.''
``As Mr. Ramba expected, in the first legislative session after the 
2020 election, the Legislature, through SB 90, made a sweeping set of 
changes to Florida's election code, with a specific focus on VBM. For 
context, between 2013 and 2020 the Legislature made no changes to VBM. 
And the exact justification for SB 90 as a whole, and for its 
constituent parts, is difficult to pin down, with sponsors and 
supporters offering conflicting or nonsensical rationales. Indeed, as 
Senator Farmer testified, the rationale for SB 90 ``was perhaps the 
most [elusive] answer we faced.'' . . . Nor was there any evidence 
before the Legislature that fraud is even a marginal issue in Florida 
elections.\113\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \113\ Id. at 68-70 (internal citations omitted).

    Judge Walker's careful 288-page opinion makes clear that Florida 
legislators used false claims of voter fraud as a pretext to enact 
legislation they knew would suppress the Black vote, in direct response 
to robust 2020 turnout.
            c. Texas
    Texas is another State that experienced substantial population 
shifts since 2010. On September 7, 2021, Governor Abbott of Texas 
signed S.B. 1, one of the most restrictive voting laws in the country. 
As the bill advanced, members and witnesses who raised concerns--and 
evidence--that the bill would harm voters of color and voters with 
disabilities were largely ignored or chastised for uttering the word 
``racism'' in the debate. Texas House Democrats staged a walkout and 
eventually left the State to break quorum and prevent the passage of 
such a damaging bill. But proponents of the omnibus election bill 
rammed it through the legislative process, which the Governor extended 
by two special sessions and threatened funding of legislative staff 
salaries in order to force passage of the bill.\114\ After submitting 
testimony and advocating against the bill as it made its way through 
the Texas legislature, LDF filed a lawsuit challenging S.B. 1 on the 
same day it was signed into law.\115\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \114\ Heidi Perez-Moreno, 2,100 State Workers Caught in the 
Crosshairs of Gov. Greg Abbott's Veto of Legislature Funding, THE TEXAS 
TRIBUNE (July 2, 2021), https://www.texastribune.org/2021/07/02/greg-
abbott-veto-legislature-staffers/.
    \115\ Our lawsuit is 1 of 6 challenging S.B. 1 that have been 
consolidated under La Union del Pueblo Entero v. State of Texas, No. 
5:21-cv-00844 (W.D. Tex.), including a case brought by the U.S. 
Department of Justice.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The passage of S.B. 1 was a direct backlash to the record voter 
turnout in Texas in the 2020 election cycle and in particular, the 
power that Black and Brown voters exercised at the polls. Expanded 
early voting, drive-thru voting, and 24-hour voting facilitated this 
record-high voter participation, particularly for urban voters of color 
who were more likely to use these means of access. For example, 
approximately 1.6 million registered voters in Harris County: 1.3 
million voted early in person; over 177,000 voted by mail; and over 
200,000 voted on Election Day.\116\ S.B. 1 targeted the means and 
methods of voting primarily used by Black and Brown voters that had 
facilitated a smooth, secure, and accessible election. Among its many 
restrictions,S.B. 1 eliminates drive-thru voting and 24-hour voting, 
restricts early voting hours, restricts vote-by-mail opportunities and 
application distribution, and bans drop boxes--innovations that had 
given local counties the options and flexibility they needed to help 
eligible voters of all backgrounds and abilities cast a ballot, and 
that Black and Brown voters had disproportionately relied on to vote. 
S.B. 1 also imposes burdens and intrusive documentation requirements on 
individuals who provide voters assistance or transport voters to the 
polls, those providing such assistance to the threat of criminal 
penalties for violations. Finally, by making it harder for election 
officials to regulate and supervise poll watchers, S.B. 1 empowers 
partisan poll watchers to interfere with election administration and to 
intimidate and harass voters at the polls.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \116\ Harris County Elections, Election Results Archive, Canvass 
Report: Nov Live 110320 General and Special Elections, (Nov. 16, 2020), 
https://www.harrisvotes.com/HISTORY/20201103/Official%20Canvass.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    S.B. 1 has already caused substantial problems in Texas' March 1 
primary election, where counties were forced to reject a huge 
percentage of vote-by-mail applications.\117\ One hundred eighty-seven 
of Texas' 254 counties threw out 22,898 duly cast vote by mail 
ballots--approximately 13% of all ballots cast during primary vs. 1-2% 
rejected in previous elections.\118\ The rejection rate in the most 
populous counties was roughly 15%, a staggering increase from the 2020 
election, where the State-wide rejection rate was roughly 1%.\119\ The 
unprecedented vote-by-mail rejections seems to have a disproportionate 
impact on minority voters across the State. In particular, 6 of the 9 
zip codes in Harris County with the most ballot rejections were 
majority Black.\120\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \117\ Alexa Ura, Hundreds of Mail-in Ballot Applications are Being 
Rejected Under Texas' New Voting Rules, THE TEXAS TRIBUNE (Jan. 13, 
2022), https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/13/texas-voting-mail- 
rejections/?utm--source=Texas+Tribune+Newsletters&utm--
campaign=22dff95b59- trib-newsletters-top-story-
alert&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d9a68d8efc-22dff95b59- 
101201265&mc_cid=22dff95b59.
    \118\ Ross Ramsey, Analysis: When 1 in 8 Texas mail ballots gets 
trashed, that's vote suppression, Texas Tribune (Mar. 18, 2022), 
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/03/18/texas-rejected-election-
ballots/.
    \119\ Nick Corasaniti, Mail Ballot Rejections Surge in Texas, With 
Signs of a Race Gap, New York Times (Mar. 18, 2022), https://
www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/us/politics/texas-primary-ballot-
rejections.html.
    \120\ Nick Corasaniti supra n. 128.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    S.B. 1 has made it more difficult for voters to cast ballots, 
stifled innovation, undermined trust in our democracy, and chipped away 
at voluntary participation as election workers by making the job more 
difficult while adding criminal penalties for the job.
    In our lawsuit, LDF, along with our co-counsel from The Arc and 
Reed Smith, argues that S.B. 1 discriminates against Black and Brown 
voters and burdens voters with disabilities in violation of the First 
and Fourteenth Amendments, Sections 2 and 208 of the Voting Rights Act, 
the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 504 of the 
Rehabilitation Act.\121\ We represent Houston Justice, the Houston Area 
Urban League, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and The Arc of Texas, 
organizations that have long worked to ensure Black and Brown voters, 
incarcerated voters, and voters with disabilities can access the 
franchise through providing voter education and voter assistance. 
Largely through volunteer efforts, these groups help vulnerable 
communities make their voices heard through the ballot box, for example 
by educating voters about their voting method options and election 
rules, providing transportation to the polls, distributing, and 
assisting with the completion of vote-by-mail applications, and helping 
voters with disabilities navigate the voting process and complete their 
ballots.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \121\ Lawsuit Filed Challenging New Texas Law Targeting Voting 
Rights, NAACP LDF (Sept. 7, 2021), https://www.naacpldf.org/press-
release/lawsuit-filed-challenging-new-texas-law-targeting-voting-
rights/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    S.B. 1 frustrates the mission of our clients, placing obstacles, 
bans, and exposure to criminal prosecution in the way of their efforts 
to help marginalized communities vote. But the greatest loss is for 
Texas voters themselves who will be disenfranchised or burdened by the 
web of bans and restrictions erected by the law--Black and Brown voters 
and voters with disabilities who relied on the methods of voting now 
made illegal and who counted on engagement and assistance from groups 
like our clients to safely cast a ballot. In intent and effect, S.B. 1 
blocks their right to vote, continuing a shameful history of voter 
suppression in Texas.
            d. Alabama
    Alabama has played a special role in the Civil Rights Movement, due 
in significant part to its shameful history of racial discrimination in 
voting. In 1992, litigation forced Alabama to create a Congressional 
district that allowed Black voters a real opportunity to elect 
candidates of their choice.\122\ As a result, a Black Congressperson 
was elected from Alabama for the first time since Reconstruction.\123\ 
Yet outside of that one district, Black candidates continue to face 
defeat in Congressional elections, though many strong candidates have 
run and have attracted the support of the overwhelming majority of 
Black voters.\124\ Indeed, Alabama is one of only 10 States where no 
Black person has ever won State-wide elected office.\125\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \122\3Wesch v. Hunt, 785 F. Supp. 1491, 1498 (S.D. Ala. 1992), 
aff'd sub nom. Camp v. Wesch, 504 U.S. 902 (1992).
    \123\ Compl., Milligan v. Merrill, No. 2:21-cv--01530-AMM (N.D. 
Ala. Nov. 16, 2021), ECF No. 1 (``Milligan Compl.'').
    \124\ U.S. House of Representatives, Black-American Members by 
State and Territory, 1870-Present, https://history.house.gov/
Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Data/Black-American-
Representatives-and-Senators-by-State-and-Territory/ (last visited 
January 18, 2022).
    \125\ Summer Ballentine, Analysis: 10 States still haven't elected 
minority State-wide, ASSOCIATED PRESS (Sept. 3, 2016), https://
apnews.com/article/6d70082a5f854109aee7874e915c6631.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For some time now, it has been possible to create two majority-
Black Congressional districts in Alabama.\126\ This is even more true 
now given that all of the State's population growth in the last decade 
was driven by people of color.\127\ As of the 2020 Census, non-Hispanic 
whites have fallen to 63% of the Alabama's population while Black 
Alabamians have grown to just over 27% of the population.\128\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \126\ Even in 1992, the Black population was large enough and 
geographically compact enough to create two majority-Black 
Congressional districts, but Black leaders at that time believed an 
effective electoral opportunity for Black voters required significantly 
more than a bare majority. Wesch, 785 F. Supp. at 1498.
    \127\ Alabama Population Grew 5.1% Since 2010, Surpassing 5 
Million, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU (Aug. 5, 2021), https://www.census.gov/
library/stories/state-by-state/alabama-population-change-between-
census-decade.html.
    \128\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Yet Alabama's white power structure has refused to contend with the 
State's growing diversity, preferring to maintain the status quo in a 
process that was anything but transparent. In September 2021, the 
State's Legislative Reapportionment Office held 28 public hearings, all 
but one of which were held during regular business hours when working 
Alabamians were unlikely to attend.\129\ Comments by the legislators 
overseeing the process indicated the outlines of the Congressional plan 
had already been decided before the public hearings, yet no draft map 
was released until after the public comment period had closed.\130\ And 
no changes were made to the plans in response to public input. 
Moreover, although civil rights advocates and Black State legislators 
asked for a racial polarization study before the legislature adopted a 
map that continued packing Black voters into a single Congressional 
district, no such study was ever done.\131\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \129\ Mike Cason, Alabama lawmakers begin task of drawing new 
political districts, al.com, (Aug. 31, 2021) https://www.al.com/news/
2021/08/alabama-lawmakers-begin-task-of-drawing-new-political-
districts.html.
    \130\ Id. (quoting State Senator Jim McClendon stating that ``there 
won't be any surprises'' in the new Congressional plan).
    \131\ Milligan Compl., supra n. 122,  50-71.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On November 4, 2021, Alabama enacted a Congressional map under 
which Black Alabamians have a meaningful chance to see their preferred 
candidate elected in only one out of the State's 7 Congressional 
districts.\132\ In other words, Black Alabamians are more than 27% of 
the population, but are a majority--and have a realistic chance of 
electing their preferred representatives--in only 14% of the State's 
Congressional districts. In contrast, white Alabamians are 63% of the 
population but form a majority in nearly 86% of the Congressional 
districts. This is akin to one-person, half-a-vote for Black residents, 
and one-person, one-and-a-third votes for white residents.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \132\ See Stipulation of Facts, Milligan v. Merrill, No. 2:21-cv-
01530-AMM (N.D. Ala. 2021), ECF No. 53.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In November, after the State adopted a Congressional plan that 
continued the status quo, LDF sued on behalf of Greater Birmingham 
Ministries, the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, and five 
affected voters, demanding that the State create a second district that 
gives Black Alabamians an equal chance to see their preferred 
candidates represent them in Congress.\133\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \133\ Milligan Compl., supra n. 135.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The lack of adequate representation in Congress has real 
consequences for Alabama's Black communities. Shalela Dowdy, a 
community organizer and captain in the U.S. Army Reserves who is one of 
the plaintiffs in LDF's Congressional redistricting litigation, 
explained how elected officials work against the needs of Alabamians in 
the State's Black Belt, who disproportionately lack access to health 
care.\134\ The region suffers from high rates of HIV and has been hit 
hard by COVID-19, regional hospitals have closed, doctors are often far 
away, and residents often cannot afford health insurance. Despite these 
serious issues affecting their constituents, many Alabama legislators 
have refused to support expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care 
Act.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \134\ Milligan Compl., supra n. 135.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The State legislative plan, adopted through the same problematic 
process as the Congressional plan, similarly distorts Black 
representation, and LDF has also challenged this plan. In January, a 
unanimous three-judge district court struck down Alabama's 
Congressional map and ordered the State legislature to draw a new map 
that complies with the Voting Rights Act by including two districts 
where Black voters have the opportunity to elect candidates of their 
choice.\135\ Unfortunately, the Supreme Court subsequently granted a 
motion to the stay the trial court's injunction of the maps, which 
means that the 2022 elections will take place under discriminatory maps 
and the underlying challenge to the maps will proceed next Term.\136\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \135\ Singleton v. Merrill, No. 2:21-cv-01291 (N. D. Ala.). 
Available at https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/PRELIMINARY-
INJUNCTION-MEMORANDUM-OPINION-AND-ORDER.-Signed-by-Judge-Anna-M-
Manasco-on-1_24_2022.-1.pdf.
    \136\ https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/
order_supreme_court_- alabama_case_2_7_2022.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
            e. South Carolina
    South Carolina has a long history of racial discrimination in 
voting and in the redistricting process in particular. During the four 
decades that the State was covered by the Voting Rights Act's 
preclearance protections, the Department of Justice objected 120 times 
to racially discriminatory voting changes, and at least 27 of these 
objections involved State or local redistricting plans.\137\ And, in 
every redistricting cycle since Congress enacted the VRA, voters have 
been forced to go into court to seek redress from discriminatory 
maps.\138\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \137\ First Amended Compl. for Inj. and Decl. Relief at 13, South 
Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v. McMaster, No. 3:21-cv-03302-
JMC-TJH-RMG (D.S.C. Dec. 23, 2021), ECF No. 84, available at https://
www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/AMENDED-PLAINT-for-injunctive-and-
declaratory-relief-against-JoAnne-Day-Clifford-J-Elder-002.pdf.
    \138\ Id.  43.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In October 2021, LDF first filed suit regarding post-2020 Census 
redistricting in the State on behalf of the South Carolina State 
Conference of the NAACP and an individual voter.\139\ Plaintiffs were 
forced to bring this initial complaint because of the South Carolina 
legislature's unnecessary delay in drawing new redistricting maps that 
respect the Constitutional one-person-one-vote principle. The 
legislature's failure to remedy malapportioned districts threatened to 
delay the process of drawing updated districts until the legislature 
was due back on January 11, 2022, which would have undermined the 
public's and courts' ability to evaluate the legality of new district 
lines before the March 30, 2022 filing deadline for primary 
elections.\140\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \139\ Compl. for Inj. and Decl. Relief, South Carolina State 
Conference of the NAACP v. McMaster, No. 3:21-cv-03302-JMC-TJH-RMG 
(D.S.C. Oct. 12, 2021), ECF No. 1, available at https://
www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/2021-10-12-SC-NAACP-v.-McMaster-
Malaportionment-Complaint-FINAL-FILE-STAMPED.pdf.
    \140\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The legislature did ultimately return to draw new State House and 
Senate districts before the end of 2021. South Carolina's map-drawing 
process was largely inaccessible and unresponsive to public input. In 
August and October 2021, LDF, South Carolina NAACP, ACLU, and other 
organizations sent letters to the House and Senate \141\ Committee 
expressing concern about the lack of transparency and proposing 
legislative and Congressional maps that would redress population 
disparities and create opportunities for Black voters to elect 
candidates of choice.\142\ The committees responsible for these maps 
repeatedly posted proposed plans with limited opportunities for 
meaningful review. As just one example, the House Committee invited 
public input on its draft State House map on November 10, which was 
posted less than 48 hours before the only public hearing it sought 
public testimony on the plan.\143\ The House Judiciary Committee 
subsequently amended and adopted this initial State House map with no 
opportunity for public input.\144\ The legislature also repeatedly 
discounted and ignored the public testimony that it did receive. And 
there is no indication that the legislature conducted a racially 
polarized voting analysis or any other analysis key to compliance with 
the Voting Rights Act despite repeated requests to do so.\145\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \141\ LDF Sends Letter to the South Carolina House Redistricting Ad 
Hoc Committee About their Obligations Under Section 2 of the Voting 
Rights Act and the Constitution, NAACP LDF (Aug. 9, 2021), https://
www.naacpldf.org/news/ldf-sends-letter-to-the-south-carolina-house-
redistricting-ad-hoc-committee-about-their-obligations-under-section-2-
of-the-voting-rights-act-and-the-constitution/; LDF Submits Proposed 
Congressional and Senate Redistricting Maps to the South Carolina 
Senate Judiciary Redistricting Subcommittee and the House Redistricting 
Ad Hoc Committee, NAACP LDF (Oct. 8, 2021), https://www.naacpldf.org/
press-release/ldf-submits-proposed-submitting-proposed-congressional-
and-senate-maps-to-the-south-carolina-senate-judiciary-redistricting-
subcommittee-and-the-house-redistricting-ad-hoc-committee/.
    \142\ Id.  70, 71.
    \143\ Id.  75.
    \144\ Id.  85-95.
    \145\ Id.  9.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ultimately, the legislature evaded their Constitutional obligations 
for redistricting. They did so by enacting State House and 
Congressional maps with districts that both ``pack'' and ``crack'' 
Black voters to dilute Black voting strength and opportunities for 
Black voters to elect candidates of their choice. But this result was 
not inevitable; the legislature had many alternative maps available to 
them that would have corrected for malapportionment, complied with 
Federal and State law considerations, and relevant redistricting 
criteria that the legislature adopted. Now, these maps are the latest 
examples of a decades-long pattern by the legislature of adopting 
discriminatory maps. LDF's current lawsuit provides an opportunity for 
Black South Carolinians to have a fair chance to elect State House and 
Congressional candidates who adequately represent their interests.
            f. Louisiana
    In Louisiana, which has the second-highest Black population of any 
State in the country, we are seeing the same pattern as in Alabama. In 
March, the State legislature passed redistricting plans that continue 
to pack Black Louisianans into a single Congressional district 
stretching from New Orleans to Baton Rouge and into many fewer State 
legislative districts than fairness and their numbers in the population 
demand.\146\ As in much of the South, voting in Louisiana remains 
stubbornly and starkly polarized along racial lines, with large 
majorities of white voters declining to support Black candidates. The 
result is that in districts in which white voters make up the majority, 
candidates supported by Black Louisianans do not succeed at the ballot 
box.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \146\ Letter to Louisiana Senate and House Governmental Affairs 
Committee, NAACP LDF (Oct. 18, 2021), https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-
content/uploads/2021.10.18-Letter-re-Louisiana-congressional-
Redistricting.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    According to the 2020 census, Louisiana's Black population has 
grown to more than 33% while the white population has fallen to 
57%.\147\ The legislature's Congressional plan, however, hands control 
of over 83% of the seats to white voters. A similar pattern holds in 
the redistricting plans for the Louisiana House of Representatives and 
Senate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \147\ U.S. Census Bureau, LOUISIANA: 2020 Census (Aug. 25, 2021). 
Available at https://www.census.gov/library/stories/state-by-state/
louisiana-population-change-between-census-decade.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The legislature adopted these plans in the face of powerful 
community input demanding a greater voice for Black voters and despite 
the introduction of several alternative plans by members of the State's 
legislative Black caucus that would have created an additional seat in 
the Congressional plan. At least one of the alternative plans scored as 
well as or better than the plan the that was ultimately adopted on 
every measure the legislature purported to care about. The explanation 
from the legislature for their failure to consider these alternatives 
has been misinformation and, as in Alabama, unsupported claims that the 
Voting Rights Act requires a gerrymandered majority-Black district 
based in New Orleans that deprives Black voters of an equal opportunity 
to have their voices heard anywhere else in the State.
    On March 9, 2022, in response to sustained community advocacy, 
Governor John Bel Edwards vetoed the Congressional plan passed by the 
legislature because it failed to include a second majority-Black 
Congressional district. On March 30, 2022, the legislature voted to 
override the Governor's veto rather than attempt to craft a compromise 
plan that would provide greater voting opportunities to Black 
Louisianans. That this was the first time in nearly three decades that 
Louisiana has seen a successful veto override is a testament to the 
legislature's commitment to its refusal to share power with the State's 
rising Black population. Hours after the veto override vote, LDF filed 
suit under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act challenging the 
Congressional plan.
                (a) Judicial Redistricting
    Black representation on Louisiana's Supreme Court is also under 
threat. Under a consent decree that resulted from a landmark decision 
in the case of Chisom v. Roemer, there is currently one member of the 
State supreme court who is elected from a majority-Black district.\148\ 
The State recently asked the Federal court to dissolve that decree and 
end Federal oversight under the pretext of a need to redistrict to 
correct population imbalances. The State's motion comes at a time when 
it faces pressure to add an additional majority-minority district and 
amid an effort to expand the size of the court from 7 to 9 members, 
which would further dilute the influence of Black voters on judicial 
elections.\149\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \148\ Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U.S. 380 (1991).
    \149\ See Allen v. Louisiana, 14 F.4th 366 (5th Cir. 2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                (b) Drawing Local Lines
    Congressional maps and State-wide plans are critical, but far from 
the only arena where fair districting is under attack. The one-person, 
one-vote principle requires thousands of jurisdictions across the 
country to redraw lines every decade--from county commissions and city 
councils to school boards. In the absence of preclearance, 
redistricting plans are being drawn that will affect the most intimate 
aspects of people's lives for a decade with no serious scrutiny or 
oversight. LDF lawyers, trainers, organizers, and policy staff have 
spent the past 6 months working to make sure that local communities 
have the tools they need to engage meaningfully in the process. Non-
profit organizations like LDF can fill some of the gap left by the 
Shelby County decision, but with no mandate that they affirmatively 
scrutinize and justify their redistricting plans, many localities are 
giving little heed to the requirements of the Voting Rights Act and the 
Fourteenth Amendment.
D. Backlash Beyond Election Day: Subverting Election Results
    The 2020 election and 2021 runoff taught entrenched interests that 
even in the face of formidable obstacles and deliberate barriers, Black 
and Brown voters can at times break through to make their voices heard. 
Given this lesson, we are now seeing bold and deliberate efforts to 
interfere with the voting infrastructure in ways that will facilitate 
the sabotage of elections or the subversion of election results. Two 
primary approaches are to provide more direct control over elections to 
partisan actors, and to replace nonpartisan, good-faith election 
workers with loyalists who strongly believe in the false narrative 
around stolen elections.
    In 2021, 32 laws were enacted in 17 States which allow State 
legislatures to politicize, criminalize election administration 
activity, or otherwise interfere with elections.\150\ These include 
measures to shift authority over elections from executive agencies or 
nonpartisan bodies to the legislature; roll back local authority 
through centralization and micromanagement; and criminalize good-faith 
mistakes or decisions by elections officials.\151\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \150\ Memorandum from States United Democracy Center, Protect 
Democracy, and Law Forward to Interested Parties (Dec. 23, 2021), at 2, 
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21169281/democracy-crisis-in-
the-making-report-update_12232021-year-end-numbers.pdf.
    \151\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These new rules allow white-dominated legislatures or State-wide 
bodies to assert control over majority Black local jurisdictions. In 
Georgia, for example, another provision of S.B. 202 allowed the State 
Election Board to assume control of county boards.\152\ Through this 
bill and separate legislation to reorganize county election boards, 
several Black election board members or supervisors have been replaced 
with individuals closely aligned with a particular partisan 
ideology.\153\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \152\ James Oliphant & Nathan Layne, Georgia Republicans purge 
Black Democrats from county election boards, REUTERS (Dec. 9, 2021), 
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/georgia-republicans-purge-black-
democrats-county-election-boards-2021-12-09/.
    \153\ For example, H.B. 162 reconstituted the Morgan County Board 
of Elections, giving control over all appointments to the Board of 
County Commissioners, and leading directly to the removal of Helen 
Butler and Avery Jackson, two Black members Board members. Ms. Butler 
had served on the board for more than a decade without any allegations 
of wrongdoing and neglect, using her position to advocate for more 
accessible elections. Protecting the Freedom to Vote--Recent Changes to 
Georgia Voting Laws and the Need for Basic Federal Standards to Make 
Sure All Americans Can Vote in the Way that Works Best for Them, 
Hearing Before the S. Comm. On Rules and Admin, 117th Cong. 11 (2021) 
(Statement of Helen Butler, Exec. Dir., Ga. Coal. for the People's 
Agenda), https://www.rules.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/
Testimony_Butler.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Furthermore, criminalization provisions of legislation expose good-
faith election officials to unreasonable risk for doing their jobs. For 
example, Texas' S.B.1, contains a provision that exposes election 
judges who take action to prevent poll watchers from harassing voters 
to possible criminal sanctions.\154\ This despite the fact that the 
Texas Election Code contains specific provisions designed to protect 
voters from exactly such interference--and it is the election judge's 
responsibility to enforce these provisions at a given polling 
location.\155\ The new law thus puts good-faith election judges in a 
no-win situation where they can incur criminal penalties for fulfilling 
their duties.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \154\ Compl. for Decl. and Injunctive Relief, Houston Justice v. 
Abbott, No. 5:21-cv-00848 (W.D. Tex. Sept. 7, 2021), ECF No. 1.
    \155\ Tex. Election Code  33.057, 33.058.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Beyond legal changes, extremists who believe the 2020 election was 
stolen have subjected elections officials to death threats and other 
forms of harassment on an on-going basis. A November 2021 Reuters 
Special Report documented nearly 800 threats to election workers over 
the previous year, including more than 100 that could warrant 
prosecution.\156\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \156\ In June, an Arizona man called Secretary of State Katie 
Hobbs' office and left a messaging saying she would hang ``from a f----
tree . . . They're going to hang you for treason, you f----bitch.'' 
156[sic] In August 2021, a Utah man who had been listening to a Mesa 
County, Colorado election clerk criticize Secretary of State Jena 
Griswold sent Secretary Griswold a Facebook message: ``You raided an 
office. You broke the law. STOP USING YOUR TACTICS. STOP NOW. Watch 
your back. I KNOW WHERE YOU SLEEP, I SEE YOU SLEEPING. BE AFRAID, BE 
VERRY AFFRAID. I hope you die.'' Linda So & Jason Szep, Special Report: 
Reuters unmasks Trump supporters who terrified U.S. election workers, 
REUTERS (Nov. 9, 2021), https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/
reuters-unmasks-trump-supporters-terrifying-us-election-workers-2021-
11-09/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    According to an April 2021 survey, approximately one-third of 
election officials are concerned about feeling unsafe on the job, being 
harassed on the job, and/or facing pressure to certify election 
results.\157\ Nearly one-third have already felt unsafe and almost 20% 
have been threatened on the job.\158\ This has led to a wave of 
retirements, causing the director of the Center for Election Innovation 
and Research to tell the New York Times, ``We may lose a generation of 
professionalism and expertise in election administration. It's hard to 
measure the impact.''\159\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \157\ Brennan Center for Justice, Local Election Officials Survey 6 
(June 16, 2021), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
reports/local-election-officials-survey.
    \158\ Id. at 7.
    \159\ Michael Wines, After a Nightmare Year, Election Officials Are 
Quitting, N.Y. TIMES (July 2, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/
02/us/politics/2020-election-voting-officials.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This concern is almost certainly more acute for Black election 
officials and other election officials of color. Texas election judge 
and LDF client Jeffrey Clemmons, a Black man in his early twenties, 
says that if he works as an election worker again in the future:

    ``I am almost certain that I am going to face probably more 
harassment than I did the last time around because of the heightened 
political environment that we're in, where people feel again as if 
their elections are being stolen, that you know, democracy is being 
undermined left and right, which it is, but of course not in the way 
that they think that it is. And so you're going to have people who are 
signing up to be poll watchers for probably partisan campaigns and 
coming into polling places and attempting to identify election fraud as 
it were through the Texas election bills . . . I can only imagine 
things I'm going to face, whether it's someone, you know, yelling 
belligerently at me or taking video of me when I'm just doing my job or 
potentially having the cops called on me because of the color of my 
skin and the fact that I'm working an election.''\160\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \160\ Interview with Jeffrey Clemmons, supra note 77.

    The effort to subvert elections from the inside is picking up 
steam. With Black and Brown election workers pushed out of the picture, 
those who embrace the false fraud frame are waiting in the wings to 
infiltrate the system. According to the New York Times, ``[i]n races 
for State and county-level offices with direct oversight of elections, 
Republican candidates coming out of the Stop the Steal movement are 
running competitive campaigns, in which they enjoy a first-mover 
advantage in electoral contests that few partisans from either party 
thought much about before last November.''\161\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \161\ Charles Homans, In Bid for Control of Elections, Trump 
Loyalists Face Few Obstacles, N.Y. TIMES (Dec. 11, 2022), https://
www.nytimes.com/2021/12/11/us/politics/trust-in-elections-trump-
democracy.html?campaign--id=9&emc=edit_nn_- 20211213&instance_id=- 
47676&nl=the-morning&regi_id=67300419&segment_id=76841&te=1&user_id=- 
a026c13970046cd04a509ac0738ecf7a.
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    Secretary of state races have also been transformed by this 
phenomenon. Formerly about election mechanics or perhaps how much to 
expand voting opportunities these contests are now being driven by 
inaccurate claims regarding election legitimacy. In about half of this 
year's 27 secretary of state contests there's at least one candidate 
who claims the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, or otherwise 
questions its legitimacy.\162\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \162\ `The Big Lie' Lives On, And May Lead Some to Oversee The Next 
Election, NPR (Jan. 6, 2022), https://www.npr.org/transcripts/
1070864361. Candidates have claimed that Georgia ``certified the wrong 
result'' and that ``700,000 people are illegal voters'' in the State; 
that Michigan added dead people to the voter file, while calling for an 
Arizona-style audit; that there were up to 35,000 ``fictitious voters'' 
in Pima County, Arizona; and that there was a group of secretary of 
state candidates ``doing something behind the scenes to try to fix 2020 
like President Trump said.'' Ian Vandewalker & Lawrence Norden, 
Financing of Races for Offices that Oversee Elections: January 2022, 
BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE (Jan. 12, 2022), at 15, fig. 7, https://
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/financing-races-
offices-oversee-elections-january-2022.
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    With no pushback from Congress, those intent on subverting the next 
election by continuing to raise doubts about 2020 are becoming more 
brazen, not less. On January 15, President Trump held his first 2022 
rally in Florence, Arizona.\163\ Former Trump chief strategist Stephen 
Bannon explained that the purpose of the rally was to kick off an 
attempt to decertify President Biden's 2020 electors in 4 swing 
States.\164\ The explicit strategy was to sow distrust and paint 
President Biden as an illegitimate President.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \163\ Trump rally in Arizona: Former president calls Biden `a 
disaster' for the country, AZCENTRAL (Jan. 14, 2022), https://
www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2022/01/14/trump-rally 
arizona-live-updates-florence/6529316001/.
    \164\ Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski), Twitter (Jan. 15, 2022, 
11:04 AM), https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/
1482383205181366278.
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    The combination of removing non-partisan or bipartisan election 
officials, exposing good-faith election workers to criminal penalties, 
and a constant stream of threats and harassment contributes to perhaps 
the most dangerous aspect of the efforts to subvert election results: 
Thousands of election officials with experience and integrity are being 
replaced by false fraud loyalists who are on a mission to achieve a 
particular election outcome without regard to whether that outcome 
aligns with the voice and intent of the majority of the electorate.
vi. solutions: congress has the power and responsibility to protect our 
                               democracy
    The U.S. Constitution gives Congress both the authority and the 
responsibility to act to protect our democracy. This Committee has been 
charged with the responsibility of diagnosing the root causes of the 
January 6th Insurrection and prescribing the solutions that can heal 
our ailing democracy. To do that work, it is critical that Congress 
view January 6th in its full context, and not as an isolated incident; 
only then does the full range of necessary solutions come into view. 
This includes legislation to protect the right to vote, especially for 
people of color; and to protect democracy from subversion.
A. Protect the Right to Vote
    The purpose of the raft of 2021 voter suppression laws, the 
discriminatory redistricting process, and the efforts to sabotage 
election results is to prevent people of color from ever again 
asserting their full voice and power. We need Congress to step up to 
its responsibility to ensure that we can achieve full and fair 
representation by passing legislation that protects the right to vote 
for Black and Brown Americans. Such legislation should, at a minimum, 
contain the following essential provisions:
   Restore the VRA's preclearance protections through updated 
        coverage parameters. Many of the States manipulating maps or 
        passing restricting voting laws--including the 6 States LDF is 
        suing--were covered by the Voting Rights Act's preclearance 
        protections prior to Shelby and would likely be covered again 
        under a restored Voting Rights Act. Preclearance in the new law 
        would start in 2021, so these laws would need to go through the 
        process and could be blocked from further effect.\165\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \165\ Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, H.R. 5746, 117th Cong. 
(2021-2022)  9016(c).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Restore and strengthen Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 
        giving litigators across the country more powerful tools to 
        push back on discrimination. This includes clarifying the legal 
        standards for bringing Section 2 vote denial claims after the 
        Brnovich case, and that partisan motivation does not undercut a 
        claim of racial discrimination and establishing a new Nation-
        wide prohibition against diminishing the ability of voters of 
        color to access the ballot or elect candidates of choice.\166\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \166\ Id. at  9001-9002.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Provide a broad set of minimum standards for ballot 
        accessibility for Federal elections such that the ability to 
        exercise your right to vote is not dependent upon which State 
        you live in. States should be required to offer Same Day 
        Registration, robust early voting and vote-by-mail 
        opportunities, accept a broad range of voter identification, 
        make Election Day a holiday, implement automatic voter 
        registration, restore the vote to people with felony 
        convictions and more.\167\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \167\ Id. at  1031, 1202, 1301-1305, 1801.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Create a new Federal statutory claim against undue burdens 
        on the right to vote.* For harsh rules that restrict access 
        across the board, this can provide an alternative to First and 
        Fourteenth Amendment claims under the so-called Anderson-
        Burdick standard which has been weakened by the Supreme Court 
        and other courts in recent years. And in cases where laws place 
        disparate burdens on the rights of voters of color, low-income 
        voters, women, and others, a new claim can supplement Voting 
        Rights Act claims, which require extensive expert analysis and 
        statistical evidence to prove and increase the chances of 
        timely relief.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    * Id. at  3401-3403.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Outlaw partisan gerrymandering for Congressional 
        districts.\168\ This helps communities of color by undercutting 
        a key excuse lawmakers give for undermining their political 
        voice--it was about partisanship, not race \169\--and by 
        reducing the chances that leaders elected by these communities 
        are marginalized within the elected bodies in which they serve.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \168\ Id. at  5001-5008.
    \169\ See e.g. Michael Wines, ``Republican Gerrymander of North 
Carolina Maps is Upheld in Court,'' THE N.Y. TIMES (Jan. 11, 2022), 
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/us/politics/north-carolina-
redistricting.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
B. Fight Election Subversion
    In addition to protecting the right to vote, Congress must take 
action to prevent subversion of our free and fair elections. This 
includes enacting explicit new protections for election workers and 
election infrastructure, as well as a provision that prevents partisan 
bodies such as State legislatures from removing State and local 
election officials without due cause.\170\ Congress must also update 
the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to fix the vague and outdated vote 
counting and election certification processes that provided an opening 
for bad-faith actors to attempt to subvert the will of the people by 
manipulating election results.\171\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \170\ Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, H.R. 5746, 117th Cong. 
(2021-2022)  3001-3301.
    \171\ Discussion Draft ``Electoral Count Modernization Act,'' 
available at https://www.king.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/
mcg22051.pdf.pdf, is one such proposal.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Reform of the Electoral Count Act is far from sufficient to address 
the multitude of threats to ensuring free and fair democratic elections 
facing the Nation today but it is a needed component.
                            vii. conclusion
    This Select Committee does its work at a historic moment when it is 
not hyperbole to say that the fate of American democracy hangs in the 
balance. Black and Brown Americans face the greatest assault on our 
voting rights since the Jim Crow Black Codes rolled back the progress 
made during Reconstruction. Indeed, the threat of our democracy 
breaking apart at the seams and sliding irreversibly into 
authoritarianism has not been as acute since the Civil War.
    The recent Census confirmed that the Country is growing more 
diverse by the day and the great question before us is whether we will 
embrace a truly inclusive, multiracial democracy or entrench a racial 
hierarchy of white supremacy that has beleaguered our democracy since 
its inception.
    When NPR asked University of Southern California election scholar 
Franita Tolson to rank her concern about our democracy as a whole and 
the trend of false fraud narrative adherents taking over election 
offices in particular on a scale from one-to-ten, her response was a 
resounding 50.\172\ In April, respected election law scholar Richard L. 
Hasen wrote in the Harvard Law Review that ``[t]he United States faces 
a serious risk that the 2024 Presidential election, and other future 
U.S. elections, will not be conducted fairly and that the candidates 
taking office will not reflect the free choices made by eligible voters 
under previously announced election rules.''\173\ I believe the threat 
to our democracy is even more urgent than this. If people of color are 
blocked from the ballot or the vote is subverted in 2022, it may be too 
late to steer our democracy back on course.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \172\ `The Big Lie', supra n. 165.
    \173\ Richard L. Hansen, Identifying and Minimizing the Risk of 
Election Subversion and Stolen Elections in the Contemporary United 
States (Sep. 18, 2021). Harvard Law Review Forum, Vol.135, 2022, UC 
Irvine School of Law Research Paper No. 2021-50, Available at SSRN: 
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3926381. see also Barton Gellman, Trump's 
Next Coup Has Already Begun, THE ATLANTIC (Dec. 6, 2021), https://
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/january-6-insurrection-
trump-coup-2024-election/620843/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Historians will study the period between 2020 and 2025 for decades 
to come, seeking to explain the next century of American life. They 
will ask the question: Did we act when we had the chance, or did we 
squander our last, best hope to protect the freedom to vote and save 
our democracy? Black Americans have played a special role in our 
country's history in calling the Nation to honor its highest ideals. 
And, we have been raising alarm bells about the descent of our 
democracy for years.\174\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \174\ Lani Guinier & Gerald Torres, The Miner's Canary, Harvard 
University Press (2003).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    January 6th was not an isolated incident, but rather the 
unfortunate consequence of powerful interests fomenting a backlash to 
the 2020 elections. Those interests are determined to block the 
emergence of an inclusive, multi-racial democracy by erecting barriers 
to the ballot and by dismantling the non-partisan election 
infrastructure. Securing and protecting the freedom to vote and the 
integrity of our elections are essential to maintaining our still 
nascent democracy. Congress must act swiftly to do so before our 
democracy is unrecognizable, if it exists at all.
                                 ______
                                 
   Statement of Trevor Potter, Founder and President, Campaign Legal 
                                 Center
                             April 1, 2022
    Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony before the Select 
Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States 
Capitol. I am the founder and president of Campaign Legal Center (CLC), 
a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to advancing American 
democracy through law. I am also a Republican former commissioner and 
chair of the Federal Election Commission, and served as general counsel 
to John McCain's 2000 and 2008 Presidential campaigns and deputy 
general counsel to President George H. W. Bush's 1988 Presidential 
campaign.
    American democracy stands at a perilous crossroads: Will it remain 
a country based on the rule of law and of truth, or fall to hidden 
manipulation and deception, and will the peaceful struggle to ensure 
representative self-government prevail over the fight for raw power? 
This Select Committee's urgent work to investigate the sources of what 
ails our political process and fueled the unprecedented attack on our 
Capitol is critical to begin reinforcing America's founding democratic 
ideals as a Nation of integrity and freedom.
    I testify before you to emphasize the threat that persistent lies 
about an allegedly ``stolen election'' present to our democratic 
institutions. The fiction that the voting and counting in the 2020 
election was in any form illegitimate has been thoroughly debunked in 
court proceedings across the country, in experts' analyses, and by the 
hardworking officials who oversaw the election. Nonetheless, the stolen 
election lies have persisted, creating a dangerous ecosystem in which 
contrived emergencies degrade public trust in elections, which is then 
used to justify changes in policy and law that impose real harms on our 
voting processes and the people who administer them.
    The emerging threats to our democratic processes that I want to 
address here manifest in four main categories: The increasing number of 
proposed State bills and enacted laws that cynically limit eligible 
voters' access to the ballot; the proliferation of ad hoc, partisan 
reviews of election results; the widening of cracks in our legal 
framework that can be exploited by rogue actors to usurp the electoral 
power from the people; and the alarming increase of threats against 
election officials and the politicization of their roles. These efforts 
to cast doubt on our electoral system have led to a startling loss of 
trust in the American political system that will take concerted efforts 
to restore.
    Although these problems are significant, I am confident they are 
solvable. The public's faith in the truth and in our democracy can 
overcome these difficult times. The Federal Government must help the 
truth prevail by enacting and enforcing laws that shore up our 
institutions and reduce the dangers imposed by the stolen election 
lies.
 a. stolen election lies lead to harmful voting restrictions, improper 
        government practices, and threats to election officials.
    Traditionally, the work of CLC and other voting rights and 
democracy reform organizations has emphasized combatting restrictions 
on the freedom to vote and improving voting access--from registration 
to the casting of ballots to the processing and tabulating stages. This 
work has taken on renewed importance in the face of the dramatic 
increase in State legislatures pushing bills that make it more 
difficult to vote for no good reason. But the nature of our work has 
also changed significantly since the post-election events that 
culminated on January 6, 2021. Now, democracy advocates must confront 
new hazards in the form of election sabotage and the politization of 
election administration that, along with pre-election restrictions of 
the franchise, can damage the integrity of the entire electoral system. 
Addressing these mounting concerns is critical to advancing democracy 
and protecting the freedom to vote.
    In this section of my testimony, I will briefly overview the stolen 
election lies that have escalated in recent years, and then will 
discuss in greater detail how those falsehoods have prompted real harms 
to voters, our democratic institutions, and the people who make our 
electoral system work.
    The election skeptics cast doubt on time-tested and widely-used 
programs that enable eligible voters to safely, conveniently, and 
securely exercise their freedom to vote--such as vote by mail, early 
voting, and accessible drop boxes--and have encouraged new laws that 
arbitrarily increase the costs of political participation. The 
falsehoods have led to partisan reviews of ballots and voting systems 
and have inspired new legislation that makes it easier for politicians 
to discard the expressed will of their voters. Distressingly, the lies 
endanger election officials with threats of violence, often forcing 
hardworking nonpartisan public servants out of their jobs and rousing 
highly partisan election conspiracists to try and replace them.
1. The stolen election lies are groundless and damaging.
    The proximate causes of the new subversive threats to American 
democracy are the widely dispersed lies that the 2020 Presidential 
election was ``stolen'', and that the winner is somehow illegitimate. 
Leading up to and since the 2020 election cycle, partisan actors have 
promoted the false narrative that there is wide-spread voter fraud in 
American elections and that their preferred candidates lose only 
because the other side cheated. Propagators of this conspiracy have 
used their stolen election lies to justify efforts to overturn the 
results of elections, to make voting harder, and to actually corrupt 
elections in the future.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ See, e.g., Nick Corasaniti & Reid J. Epstein, How Republican 
States Are Expanding Their Power over Elections, N.Y. Times (June 19, 
2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/us/politics/republican-
states.html; National Task Force on Election Crises, Undermining Free & 
Fair Elections: An Update on the Risk of Election Crises Since November 
2020 at 3 (July 14, 2021), https://static1.squarespace.com/static/
5e70e52c7c72720- ed714313f/t/60ecbb773b84fb5bce43c7fc/1626127223644/
Task+- Force+Progress+Report+%28July+2021%29.pdf; see also States 
United Democracy Ctr., Protect Democracy, and Law Forward, Democracy 
Crisis Report Update: New Data and Trends Show the Warning Signs Have 
Intensified in the Last Two Months (June 10, 2021), https://
statesuniteddemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Democracy-Crisis-
Part-II_June-10_Final_v7.pdf; States United Democracy Ctr., Protect 
Democracy, and Law Forward, A Democracy Crisis in the Making (Apr. 22, 
2021), https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20688594/democracy-
crisis-report-april-21.pdf.
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    For example, what started as on-line misinformation that voters in 
Arizona were being ``forced to use felt-tipped Sharpie pens'' that they 
wrongly believed voting machines would not count inspired the false 
allegation ``that thousands of Trump votes would be thrown out in 
Arizona'' and became part of a slew of election lies about the election 
results there.\2\ This simple lie, quickly demonstrated by nonpartisan 
election officials to be false, might have been comical if it were not 
so destructive. But the falsehoods about Sharpies and ballots went on 
to help generate frivolous lawsuits challenging Arizona's results,\3\ 
and led to armed protesters crowding outside a ballot-counting center 
calling for vote-counting to stop.\4\ The election conspiracies in 
Arizona further prompted prominent elected officials to submit a 
falsified slate of alternative Presidential electors to Congress 
contrary to the popular vote in that State, undertake a costly and 
damaging partisan review of the ballots in the State's largest county, 
and propose and enact changes to State election law that reduce voter 
access and needlessly increase election costs and complexity.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ Official Information Regarding the Use of Sharpies in Maricopa 
County, Citizens Clean Elections Comm'n, https://
www.azcleanelections.gov/election-security/sharpies (last accessed Mar. 
15, 2022); Rachel Leingang &McKenzie Sadeghi, Fact check: Arizona 
election departments confirm Sharpies can be used on ballots, USA Today 
(Nov. 5, 2022), https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/11/
04/fact-check-sharpiegate-controversy-arizona-false-claim/6164820002/.
    \3\ Jim Rutenberg, et al., 77 Days: Trump's Campaign to Subvert the 
Election, N.Y. Times (Jan 31, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/
31/us/trump-election-lie.html.
    \4\ Tony Romm, et al., Facebook Bans `STOP THE STEAL' Group Trump 
Allies Were Using to Organize Protests Against Vote Counting, Wash. 
Post (Nov. 5, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/
05/facebook-trump-protests/.
    \5\ See States United Democracy Ctr. April and June Reports, supra 
note 1.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Other stolen election lies arose from partisans exploiting some 
voters' misperception that all the eligible ballots would be processed 
and counted by the end of election day, and that they could expect 
final results that night. The time line for when all votes are 
processed and counted is in part related to the volume of ballots that 
election officials must accurately canvass. But perceived delays to the 
time line are also directly related to whether State law allows 
election officials to preprocess early returned ballots to be ready to 
tabulate as soon as polls close.\6\ Nearly every State in the country 
enables its election officials to preprocess valid ballots that are 
returned before election day by, for example, simply removing the 
ballot from its envelope, flattening it, and stacking it with other 
ballots to be ready for tabulation after polls close.\7\ With millions 
of ballots to count, this preparation time adds up; preprocessing 
reduces the already significant strain on election day. States that 
limit or prohibit preprocessing--including closely contested States 
like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin--prolonged the counting 
process, which stolen election lie believers exploited to sow doubt in 
the election.\8\ During this time, partisans used the delays they 
created in State law to promote their stolen election lies and pressure 
their constituents to launch ``stop the count'' movements that sought 
to distort election results by not tabulating lawful votes.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \6\ See, e.g., Derek Tisler, et al., The Roadmap to the Official 
Count in an Unprecedented Election, Brennan Ctr. for Justice (Oct. 26, 
2020), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/roadmap-
official-count-unprecedented-election; Edward B. Foley & Charles 
Stewart III, Explaining the Blue Shift in Election Canvassing, J. of 
Pol. Institutions and Pol. Economy (Mar. 1, 2020), http://dx.doi.org/
10.2139/ssrn.3547734.
    \7\ See Table 16: When Absentee/Mail Ballot Processing and Counting 
Can Begin, Nat'l Conf. of State Legislatures (Mar. 15, 2022), https://
www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-table-16-when-
absentee-mail-ballot-processing-and-counting-can-begin.aspx; Quinn 
Scanlan, How battleground States process mail ballots--and why it may 
mean delayed results, ABC News (Oct. 30, 2020), https://abcnews.go.com/
Politics/battleground-states-process-mail-ballots-delayed-results/
story?id=73717671.
    \8\ See, e.g., Zach Montellaro, Michigan, Pennsylvania and 
Wisconsin decided the 2016 election. We'll have to wait on them in 
2020., Politico (Sept. 15, 2020), https://www.politico.com/news/2020/
09/15/swing-states-election-vote-count-michigan-pennsylvania-wisconsin-
414465; Miles Parks, In Swing States, Officials Struggle To Process 
Ballots Early Due To Strict Local Laws, NPR (Oct. 14, 2020), https://
www.npr.org/2020/10/14/922202497/in-swing-states-laws-add-pressure-
prevent-officials-from-processing-ballots-earl.
    \9\ See, e.g., Tresa Baldas, et al., Chaos erupts at TCF Center as 
Republican vote challengers cry foul in Detroit, Detroit Free Press 
(Nov. 4, 2020), https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/
2020/11/04/tcf-center-challengers-detroit-michigan/6164715002/; Jim 
Rutenberg et al., supra note 5.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The pressure campaign for partisans to subscribe to the stolen 
election lies has made the issue a National political litmus test for 
candidates across the country. During the height of the over 60 
frivolous litigation contests challenging the 2020 results, former 
President Trump undertook an unrelenting attack on the election by 
using his bully pulpit to publicly incite his supporters and to 
privately seek to coerce Federal and State officials to throw out the 
popular election.\10\ The lies spread on-line and on partisan media 
outlets, which were then promoted by hundreds of elected lawmakers who 
breached the public trust by magnifying the reach of these 
falsehoods.\11\ The rising threat of political violence from these lies 
prompted the incumbent National security and Federal law enforcement 
apparatus to reassure the public that the 2020 election was ``the most 
secure in American history'' with ``no evidence that any voting system 
deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way 
compromised''\12\ and no serious evidence of voter fraud.\13\ But the 
mistrust already sown meant many ``true believers'' believed these 
statements too were false. Since then, even some prominent proponents 
of the stolen election lies have admitted as a defense in court that 
``[n]o reasonable person would conclude that the statements 
[challenging the 2020 election] were truly statements of fact.''\14\ 
Nonetheless, the lies have continued, and are still believed by many.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ Karen Yourish & Larry Buchanan, Since Election Day, a Lot of 
Tweeting and Not Much Else for Trump, N.Y. Times, Nov. 24, 2020, 
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/24/us/politics/trump-
twitter-tweets-election-results.html (``In total, the president 
attacked the legitimacy of the election more than 400 times since 
Election Day, though his claims of fraud have been widely debunked''); 
Anita Kumar & Gabby Orr, Inside Trump's Pressure Campaign to Overturn 
the Election, Politico (Dec. 21, 2020), www.politico.com/news/2020/12/
21/trump-pressure-campaign-overturn-election-449486 (``In total, the 
President talked to at least 31 Republicans, encompassing mostly local 
and State officials from four critical battleground States he lost--
Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. The contacts included at 
least 12 personal phone calls to 11 individuals, and at least 4 White 
House meetings with 20 Republican State lawmakers, party leaders, and 
attorneys general, all people he hoped to win over to his side. Trump 
also spoke by phone about his efforts with numerous House Republicans 
and at least 3 current or incoming Senate Republicans.'').
    \11\ Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, VoterFraud2020 Twitter 
Database, https://voterfraud2020.io/ (last visited Mar. 21, 2022); 
Justin Hendrix, The Big Lie Is a Reality, Just Security (Feb. 23, 
2022),https://www.justsecurity.org/80324/the-big-lie-is-a-reality/; 
Representative Zoe Lofgren, Social Media Review(Jan. 31, 2021), https:/
/housedocs.house.gov/lofgren/SocialMediaReview8.pdf.
    \12\ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Joint 
Statement From Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council 
& The Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees 
(Nov. 12, 2020), https://www.cisa.gov/news/2020/11/12/joint-statement-
elections-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-election.
    \13\ Adam Goldman & Zolan Kanno-Youngs, F.B.I. Director Sees No 
Evidence of National Mail Voting Fraud Effort, N.Y. Times (Sept. 24, 
2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/us/politics/fbi-director-
voter-fraud.html (quoting FBI director Christopher Wray); Michael 
Balsamo, Disputing Trump, Barr says no widespread election fraud, 
Associated Press (Dec. 1, 2020), https://apnews.com/article/barr-no-
widespread-election-fraud-b1f1488796c9a98c4b1a9061a6c7f49d (quoting 
former Attorney General Bill Barr).
    \14\ Jane C. Timm, Sidney Powell's legal defense: `Reasonable 
people' wouldn't believe her election fraud claims, NBC News (Mar. 23, 
2021), https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/sidney-powell-s-
legal-defense-reasonable-people-wouldn-t-believe-n1261809 (citing 
Sidney Powell legal filing in a subsequent defamation case).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Our democratic institutions bent but ultimately held firm under the 
strain of the post-2020 election chaos that culminated with the January 
6 attack on the Capitol and challenges to the electors. But the damage 
done, and the weaknesses exploited during that time, have laid the 
groundwork for future attacks against and within our electoral system. 
The former President has kept the stolen election lies narrative at the 
forefront,\15\ and made a candidate's willingness to accept those 
falsehoods a salient political criterion in party politics.\16\ The 
fabricated stolen election efforts have shifted political dynamics 
across the country, with one recent analysis finding that ``163 
Republicans who have embraced Trump's false claims are running for 
State-wide positions that would give them authority over the 
administration of elections.''\17\ And numerous losing candidates for 
public office since the 2020 election have already harnessed the stolen 
election lies to cast doubt on their losses and the legitimacy of their 
opponents, no matter the margin of victory.\18\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\ See, e.g., Melissa Block, The clear and present danger of 
Trump's enduring `Big Lie', NPR (Dec. 23, 2021), https://www.npr.org/
2021/12/23/1065277246/trump-big-lie-jan-6-election; Josh Dawsey, Trump 
muses on war with Russia and praises Kim Jong Un, Wash. Post (Mar. 6, 
2022), https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/06/trump-focuses-
foreign-policy-speech-gops-top-donors/.
    \16\ Calvin Woodward, Trump's `Big Lie' imperils Republicans who 
don't embrace it, Associated Press (May 9, 2021), https://apnews.com/
article/michael-pence-donald-trump-election-2020-government-and-
politics-0c07947f9fd2b9911b3006f0fc128ffd.
    \17\ Ashley Parker, et al., How Republicans became the party of 
Trump's election lie after Jan. 6, Wash. Post (Jan. 5, 2022), https://
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-jan-6-election-lie/2022/01/
05/82f4cad4-6cb6-11ec-974b-d1c6de8b26b0_story.html.
    \18\ Numerous losing candidates have refused to concede because of 
trumped-up lies about voting fraud. For example, upon losing to 
Congresswoman Karen Bass of California, challenger Errol Webber echoed 
President Trump's rhetoric, tweeting, ``I will NOT concede. Every LEGAL 
vote needs to be counted!'' In Maryland, candidate Kimberly Klacik cast 
doubt on the validity of mail-in votes, writing, ``I beat my opponent 
on day of & in-person early voting, along with absentee. However, 97k 
mail-in ballots were found in his favor?'' See Teo Armus, Echoing 
Trump, Congressional Candidates Refuse to Concede, Make Unproven Fraud 
Claims, Wash. Post (Nov. 10, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/
nation/2020/11/10/congress-trump-election-fraud-claim/; see also John 
L. Dorman, A Florida Republican who was defeated by 59 percentage 
points in a Congressional special election won't concede, Business 
Insider (Jan. 16, 2022), https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-
republican-mariner-wont-concede-cherfilus-mccormick-house-race-
landslide-2022-1.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These stolen election lies cast a dangerous shadow extending well 
beyond 2020. Proponents of the lies continue to interrogate election 
officials and demand they prove a negative--that no distortions 
affected the elections--as a justification to continue repeating 
falsehoods about the voting system indefinitely.\19\ Researchers 
studying misinformation predict that such manipulations of the truth 
and the public trust will continue on ``for years or even 
decades.''\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \19\ Jane Mayer, The Big Money Behind the Big Lie, The New Yorker 
(Aug. 2, 2021), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-big-
money-behind-the-big-lie.
    \20\ Brian Fung & Rishi Iyengar, Misinformation Channels Claim 
Biden Is No Longer President-elect. That's Not True., CNN (Nov. 11, 
2020), https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/10/tech/biden-lost-pennsylvania-
fact-check/index.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. The election falsehoods encourage laws that limit voter access.
    Even before the post-election chaos of 2020, early proponents of 
stolen election lies derided States that sought to make access to 
voting easier--during an unprecedented global pandemic--so their 
citizens could safely make their voices heard without putting their 
health in jeopardy.\21\ The focus of the attack became voting by mail, 
where eligible registered voters receive a mailed ballot to their home 
and can return their voted ballot before election day, often by return 
mail or by dropping it off at a designated location.\22\ This type of 
voting has been available for years in a range of States, with 
Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and Utah adopting a comprehensive 
vote by mail system before 2020 but still providing their citizens with 
alternative opportunities to vote in-person on election day.\23\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\ See, e.g., Miles Parks, Ignoring FBI And Fellow Republicans, 
Trump Continues Assault On Mail-In Voting, NPR (Aug. 28, 2020), https:/
/www.npr.org/2020/08/28/906676695/ignoring-fbi-and-fellow-republicans-
trump-continues-assault-on-mail-in-voting.
    \22\ See, e.g., Kimberly Hall, Vote-By-Mail and Absentee Voting--
Secure Alternatives to Cast Your Ballot in 2020, Campaign Legal Ctr. 
(Aug. 27, 2020), https://campaignlegal.org/update/vote-mail-and-
absentee-voting-secure-alternatives-cast-your-ballot-2020.
    \23\ Since 2020, three other States--California, Nevada, and 
Vermont--have also moved to a comprehensive vote-by-mail system. See 
Table 18: States With All-Mail Elections, Nat'l Conf. of State 
Legislatures (Feb. 3, 2022), https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-
and-campaigns/vopp-table-18-states-with-all-mail-elections.aspx.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Despite the successful practices in these States, numerous studies 
showing vote by mail is safe and secure, and even many stolen election 
proponents themselves using that method to cast their own ballot, 
falsehoods about vote by mail took off in 2020.\24\ The lies were 
deliberate and carefully planned, operating to convince a segment of 
voters that there would be two elections, one legitimate and comprised 
only of in-person, election-day voting, and a separate, fraudulent 
election where vote-by-mail ballots were frauds and favored one 
political party.\25\ This highly effective and pernicious 
disinformation campaign against expanded voting access spread across 
the American political media ecosystem to mislead Americans that vote 
by mail is somehow unreliable or manipulable.\26\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \24\ Tim Alberta, A Journey Into the Heart of America's Voting 
Paranoia, Politico Magazine (Oct. 30, 2020), https://www.politico.com/
news/magazine/2020/10/30/voting-mail-election-2020-paranoia-433356.
    \25\ Jonathan Swan & Zachary Basu, A premeditated lie lit the fire, 
Axios (Jan. 16, 2021), https://www.axios.com/trump-election-
premeditated-lie-ebaf4a1f-46bf-4c37-ba0d-3ed5536ef537.html?deepdive=1.
    \26\ Yochai Benkler, et al., Mail-In Voter Fraud: Anatomy of a 
Disinformation Campaign, Harvard Berkman Klein Ctr. (Oct. 1, 2020), 
https://cyber.harvard.edu/publication/2020/Mail-in-Voter-Fraud-
Disinformation-2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In reality, our elections are quite secure, and the actual 
occurrence of voter fraud is vanishingly rare.\27\ The many successes 
in the administration of the 2020 election and low occurrence of 
irregularities, even under strained pandemic conditions, only further 
proves the point.\28\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \27\ See, e.g., Elaine Kamarck and Christine Stenglein, Low Rates 
of Fraud in Vote-By-Mail States Show the Benefits Outweigh the Risks, 
The Brookings Institution (June 2, 2020), https://brook.gs/3ct24tJ 
(analyzing elections in universal vote-by-mail States--Colorado, 
Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington--and discrediting fraud concerns); 
Wendy R. Weiser, The False Narrative of Vote-by-Mail Fraud Brennan Ctr. 
for Justice (Apr. 10, 2020), www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-
opinion/false-narrative-vote-mail-fraud (studying voter datasets and 
concluding it is ``more likely for an American to be struck by 
lightning than to commit mail voting fraud''); Richard L. Hasen, 
Election Meltdown 128 (2020) (summarizing that ``[t]he issue of 
organized voter fraud has now been put to the test in courts and in 
social science'' and amounts to no more than ``a sham perpetuated by 
people who should know better, advanced for political advantage'').
    \28\ Nick Corasaniti, et al., The Times Called Officials in Every 
State: No Evidence of Voter Fraud, N.Y. Times (Nov. 6, 2021), https://
www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/us/politics/voting-fraud.html; Christina A. 
Cassidy, Far too little vote fraud to tip election to Trump, AP finds, 
Associated Press (Dec. 14, 2021), https://apnews.com/article/voter-
fraud-election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-
7fcb6f134e528fee8237c7601db3328f; Jane Mayer, supra note 19 (stating, 
for example, that ``data on Arizona, the putative center of the storm, 
is not exactly alarming: of the millions of votes cast in the State 
from 2016 to 2020, only nine individuals were convicted of fraud. Each 
instance involved someone casting a duplicate ballot in another State. 
There were no recorded cases of identity fraud, ballot stuffing, voting 
by non-citizens, or other nefarious schemes. The numbers confirm that 
there is some voter fraud, or at least confusion, but not remotely 
enough to affect election outcomes'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    But the stolen election lies that attacked the innovations ensuring 
voting was safe and convenient in 2020--and producing record-breaking 
high turnout for voters of all political persuasions \29\--have 
continued and materialized in harmful changes in State laws. As 
Benjamin Ginsberg, a prominent Republican election lawyer, summarized, 
partisans who support the stolen election lies are ``conjuring up 
charges of fraud to erect barriers to voting for people [the Republican 
party] fears won't support its candidates.''\30\ The falsehoods have 
inspired a well-funded national movement that exploits the stolen 
election lies and baseless claims of fraud to make voting needlessly 
harder; it undermines the basic democratic guarantee that all eligible 
voters must be empowered to vote and have that vote counted.\31\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \29\ Drew DeSilver, Turnout soared in 2020 as nearly two-thirds of 
eligible U.S. voters cast ballots for president, Pew Research Ctr. 
(Jan. 28, 2021), https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/28/
turnout-soared-in-2020-as-nearly-two-thirds-of-eligible-u-s-voters-
cast-ballots-for-president/  (collecting turnout sources).
    \30\ Jeremy W. Peters, In Restricting Early Voting, the Right Sees 
a New `Center of Gravity', N.Y. Times (Mar. 24, 2021), https://
www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/us/politics/republicans-trump-voting-
rights.html/.
    \31\ Jane Mayer, supra note 19.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At the end of the 2021 State legislative sessions, States across 
the country had enacted a record-shattering number of new voting 
restrictions that often derived from the stolen election lies. In 
total, State legislators proposed 581 new bills that experts say would 
have made voting more difficult.\32\ Lawmakers in 21 States enacted 
into law 52 of those proposed bills--many of which were omnibus bills 
containing dozens of new restrictions--to make voting more 
difficult.\33\ This steep increase in new anti-voter laws far exceeded 
the previous high-water mark set with the 19 total voting restrictions 
enacted in 2011.\34\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \32\ These totals from the 2021 legislative sessions are derived 
from trackers at the Brennan Center for Justice, the Voting Rights Lab, 
and FiveThirtyEight. See, e.g., Voting Rights Lab, Comprehensive Bill 
Search, https://tracker.votingrightslab.org/pending/search (last 
accessed Mar. 23, 2022); Kaleigh Rogers, The Big Lie's Long Shadow, 
FiveThirtyEight (Jan. 12, 2022), https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/
the-big-lie-voting-laws/; Nathaniel Rakich & Elena Mejia, Texas's New 
Law Is The Climax Of A Record-Shattering Year For Voting Restrictions, 
FiveThirtyEight (Sept. 8, 2021), https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/
texass-new-law-is-the-climax-of-a-record-shattering-year-for-voting-
restrictions/; Voting Laws Roundup: December 2021, Brennan Ctr. for 
Justice (Jan. 12, 2022), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/
research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-december-2021.
    \33\ See sources cited supra note 32.
    \34\ Wendy R. Weiser & Lawrence Norden, Voting Law Changes in 2012, 
Brennan Ctr. for Justice (Oct. 3, 2011), https://www.brennancenter.org/
our-work/research-reports/voting-law-changes-2012/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Recent laws enacted in Texas and Georgia provide two of the most 
glaring examples. In those States, lawmakers hastily pushed through two 
broad election law measures--known as Georgia S.B. 202 and Texas S.B. 
1--that dramatically changed the States' voting processes to make 
access to the ballot more difficult overall. The legislatures in both 
States did so by engaging in procedural maneuvering that limited public 
input, relying on politically-motivated outside organizations to draft 
numerous provisions, and at times admitting that the changes were to 
serve a political calculation rather than bolster a fair voting 
process.\35\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \35\ See Exclusive: Documented Obtains Recording of 3 Hour Long 
Voter Suppression Strategy Session Hosted by ALEC, Documented (Dec. 6, 
2021), https://documented.net/investigations/exclusive-documented-
obtains-recording-of-3-hour-long-voter-suppression-strategy-session-
hosted-by-alec; Aris Folley, Georgia's GOP House Speaker says vote-by-
mail system would be `devastating to Republicans', The Hill (Apr. 4, 
2020), https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/490879-georgias-gop-
house-speaker-says-vote-by-mail-system-would-be-devastating; Stephen 
Fowler and David Armstrong, 16 Years Later, Georgia Lawmakers Flip 
Views On Absentee Voting, Georgia Public Broadcasting (Mar. 7, 2021), 
https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/03/07/16-years-later-georgia-lawmakers-
flip-views-on-absentee-voting.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Among other restrictions, both laws reduce the applicable time 
periods to request a mail-in ballot, and then add confusing 
requirements for voters submitting a vote by mail ballot or an 
application for a ballot to provide additional information that does 
not correlate with voting eligibility and disrupts voters' settled 
expectations. So far, the results of the two new laws are that fewer 
eligible voters, and in particular voters of color, are able to 
participate in the political process. In Texas this year, provisions of 
S.B. 1 resulted in election officials disqualifying vote-by-mail 
ballots at abnormally high rates during the State's 2022 primary.\36\ 
Roughly 13% of all submitted vote-by-mail ballots were discarded as a 
direct result of the new restrictive legal requirements, while experts 
say that any rejection rate above 2% is cause for concern in a typical 
election.\37\ The result was that 22,898 likely eligible voters in 
Texas did not have their ballots counted during the primary because of 
new hurdles S.B. 1 put in place.\38\ In Georgia, S.B. 202's changed 
requirements also led to election officials rejecting 4% of mail-in 
ballot request forms--up from fewer that 1% before the new law's 
restrictions were enacted. In a State like Georgia, where the margin of 
victory is often narrow, such a high number of voter rejections could 
make the difference in close elections.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \36\ Paul J. Weber & Acacia Coronado, Texas mail ballot rejections 
soar under new restrictions, Associated Press (Mar. 16, 2022), https://
apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-elections-texas-voting-only-
on-ap-45ba51fe9dd951a0f82015bd6bd9ff41.
    \37\ Id.
    \38\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Texas' and Georgia's new restrictions are unfortunately not 
outliers. Florida in 2021 similarly enacted an omnibus restrictive 
voting law, S.B. 90, that also increased the costs of voting by mail 
and risks heightened rejections of eligible voters as in Georgia and 
Texas.\39\ Arizona, among several other restrictive laws, enacted H.B. 
1485 \40\ that made the State's permanent early voting list no longer 
permanent because declining to vote would trigger eligible voters being 
kicked off the list.\41\ Montana enacted numerous new laws--H.B. 176, 
H.B. 506, and S.B. 169--that in effect make it harder for students and 
Native voters to participate in the political process.\42\ And Iowa 
enacted S.F. 413, which makes voting more burdensome at nearly every 
stage of the process by significantly shortening available voting hours 
and opportunities.\43\ All of these bills and others have drawn costly 
litigation, requiring taxpayers to expend huge sums to defend laws that 
make it harder for them to vote, and are based on lies about elections 
rather than any empirical need to disrupt the valid ballot security 
measures already in place.\44\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \39\ Lawrence Mower, Florida Senate passes law calling for new 
elections security office under DeSantis control, Miami Herald (Mar. 6, 
2022), https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-
politics/article259083293.html.
    \40\ H.B. 1485, 55th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2021).
    \41\ Ben Giles, Arizona Republicans Enact Sweeping Changes To 
State's Early Voting List, NPR (May 11, 2021), https://www.npr.org/
2021/05/11/995998370/arizona-republicans-enact-sweeping-changes-to-
states-early-voting-list.
    \42\ Iris Samuels, Lawsuit argues new Montana law suppresses 
student vote, Associated Press (Oct. 12, 2021), https://apnews.com/
article/congress-university-of-montana-montana-helena-voter-
registration-1e8774b19ba6faaa2165a96cf9e4e89e; Kevin Trevellyan, 
Advocates Fear Montana's New Ballot Law Could Harm Voters Who Struggle 
To Be Heard, NPR (May 25, 2021), https://www.npr.org/2021/05/25/
999904063/advocates-fear-montanas-new-ballot-law-could-harm-voters-who-
struggle-to-be-hear.
    \43\ Stephen Gruber-Miller, Gov. Kim Reynolds signs law shortening 
Iowa's early and Election Day voting, Des Moines Reg. (Mar. 9, 2021), 
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/08/iowa-
governor-kim-reynolds-signs-law-shortening-early-voting-closing-polls-
earlier-election-day/6869317002/.
    \44\ See, e.g., Voting Rights Litigation Tracker, Brennan Ctr. for 
Justice (Mar. 22, 2022), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/
research-reports/voting-rights-litigation-tracker.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The harmful results of the 2021 legislative session are far from 
the last word about what the stolen election lies have done to reshape 
voting in America. This year, in 2022, State legislatures across the 
country are back to work building on the election falsehoods to 
continue making voting harder for their citizens. As of March 2022, 
numerous proposed bills that are even more extreme that those presented 
in 2021 are making their way through States' legislatures.\45\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \45\ See e.g., Voting Laws Roundup: February 2022, Brennan Ctr. for 
Justice (Feb. 9, 2022), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/
research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-february-2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For example, Arizona legislators have rushed to introduce over a 
hundred election bills that would politicize the State's election 
administration processes and propose substantial cutbacks to voting 
options that have historically eased the burdens on Arizona voters.\46\ 
One of the most egregious proposals that Arizona recently enacted into 
law, H.B. 2492, adds significant new voter registration and voter 
eligibility requirements that proponents knowingly enacted to violate 
Federal law.\47\ Among other extreme provisions, H.B. 2492 feeds off 
the stolen election lies by demanding that all voters provide costly 
and at times inaccessible documentary proof of U.S. citizenship and 
proof of current residence to be eligible to vote; conditioning ability 
to register on whether a voter submits a State registration form or 
Federal registration form; targeting naturalized U.S. citizens by 
mandating registrants disclose their place of birth, even though that 
is immaterial to eligibility; requiring State officials to check voters 
against inaccurate and stale databases to initiate purging them from 
the registration rolls, and then subjecting them to potential criminal 
prosecution; and prohibiting an entire class of eligible registered 
voters from using vote-by-mail opportunities and voting in Presidential 
elections at all.\48\
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    \46\ Kirk Siegler & Liz Baker, Arizona Republicans continue pushing 
voting restrictions, risking backfire, NPR (Mar. 4, 2022), https://
www.npr.org/2022/03/04/1083501487/arizona-republicans-continue-pushing-
voting-restrictions-risking-backfire.
    \47\ H.B. 2492, 56th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2022).
    \48\ Ray Stern, Arizona requires proof of citizenship for voters, 
under bill signed by Gov. Ducey, Arizona Republic (Mar. 29, 2022), 
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/03/30/
proof-citizenship-bill-arizona-voters-signed-gov-ducey/7221503001/; 
Katya Schwenk, `Extreme' Arizona Elections Bills Inching Closer to Law, 
Phoenix New Times (March 30, 2022), https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/
news/extreme-arizona-elections-bills-inching-closer-to-law-13323436; 
Ray Stern, Would proof-of-citizenship bill really purge 200K voters? 
Answers mixed, Arizona Republic (Mar. 29, 2022), https://
www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/legislature/2022/03/29/arizona-
bill-proof-citizenship-voters-legal-issues/7188177001/.
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    Additionally, a law that recently passed in Florida, S.B. 254, 
creates a new election crimes ``police force''--a measure local 
election officials deemed a ``recipe for disaster'' that seeks to 
placate stolen election lie proponents and invites the harassment of 
eligible voters.\49\ Georgia lawmakers have taken similar steps to 
advance H.B. 1464, which would, along with other disruptive election 
law changes, also create a broad-mandated election investigation task 
force that nonpartisan election officials oppose.\50\ And Idaho 
legislators have pushed two bills, H.B. 692 and H.B. 693, that reduce 
voting opportunities and that proponents have explicitly tied to their 
2020 stolen election lies.\51\ These are among many other examples of 
State lawmakers continuing to make policy decisions based on myths 
about the 2020 Presidential results, and currying political favor with 
the proponents of those falsehoods.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \49\ Gary Fineout, Legislature gives DeSantis new election police 
to target voter fraud in Florida,  Politico (Mar. 10, 2022), https://
www.politico.com/news/2022/03/10/desantis-gets-florida-election-police-
00015926.
    \50\ See, e.g., Jeff Amy, Georgia Republicans seek further changes 
to election laws, Associated Press (Mar. 16, 2022), https://apnews.com/
article/2022-midterm-elections-voting-donald-trump-elections-atlanta-
c6484e2653e93bb8885b6273f65c1cab; Maya King & Nick Corasaniti, Local 
Election Officials in Georgia Oppose G.O.P. Election Bill, N.Y. Times 
(Mar. 28, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/us/politics/
georgia-election-bill.html.
    \51\ Clark Corbin, Idaho legislative committee advances to bills 
making last-minute voting changes,  Idaho Capital Sun (Mar. 2, 2022), 
https://idahocapitalsun.com/2022/03/02/idaho-legislative-committee-
advances-to-bills-making-last-minute-voting-changes/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Moreover, some key States have continued their unwillingness to 
make positive changes in State election law that would give voters 
greater faith in our elections. Most notable are Pennsylvania, 
Michigan, and Wisconsin, which, as described above, have continued 
their refusal to implement adequate procedures for election officials 
to preprocess early received ballots to lessen the overwhelming work on 
election day, enable quicker results, and reduce the ability of 
election conspiracists to sow doubt during the post-election day 
period. Pennsylvania failed to enact legislation that would give 
election officials more time to process vote-by-mail ballots.\52\ 
Wisconsin lawmakers have likewise declined to take up a proposal that 
would allow preprocessing and ease election day burdens.\53\ Michigan 
officials changed the law in late 2020 to permit some larger cities to 
open ballot envelopes 1 day before election day, but this slight change 
was inadequate to allow for proper preprocessing.\54\ Following the 
2020 election, some Michigan lawmakers wanted to go the opposite 
direction and make ballot counting even more difficult. Instead of 
allowing election officials added time to preprocess ballots, the 
lawmakers introduced a bill that would have mandated vote-counting stop 
the day after election day, regardless of whether all ballots were 
counted.\55\ States failing to make necessary and noncontroversial 
changes to avoid prolonged vote counting risks repeating the same 
mistakes of the 2020 election that gave room for the stolen election 
lies to develop.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \52\ Stephen Caruso, Little has changed for Pennsylvania election 
officials, voters heading into 2022, Pennsylvania Capital-Star (Mar. 
18, 2022), https://www.penncapital-star.com/civil-rights-social-
justice/little-has-changed-for-pennsylvania-election-officials-voters-
heading-into-2022/.
    \53\ See Shawn Johnson, Wisconsin bill to allow for early canvass 
of absentee ballots likely dead, Wisc. Public Radio (Mar. 8, 2022), 
https://www.wpr.org/wisconsin-bill-allow-early-canvass-absentee-
ballots-likely dead.
    \54\ Jonathan Oosting, Clerks: Michigan needs practical election 
reforms, not partisan posturing, Bridge Michigan (Mar. 1, 2022), 
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/clerks-michigan-needs-
practical-election-reforms-not-partisan-posturing.
    \55\ See S.B. 299, 100th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Mich. 2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The choices undertaken by legislators to give credence to stolen 
election lies by undermining our voting system are deeply misguided. 
Alternatively, bipartisan groups of lawmakers in some States have 
rightly taken the lesson of the 2020 election to be that expansions to 
voter access help all voters and do not benefit one political party 
over another. Kentucky is an example of productive, bipartisan 
lawmaking to make voting easier without compromising election security. 
The State recently enacted legislation to increase voting options and 
election security (at least as compared to pre-pandemic elections), 
including an expansion of early voting, an on-line portal for 
requesting a mail-in ballot, and a gradual transition to voting systems 
that guarantee a paper ballot trail.\56\ Likewise, Utah's legislature 
rejected a proposed bill that would have eliminated Utah's 
comprehensive vote-by-mail system, H.B. 371, because a bipartisan group 
of lawmakers spurned the baseless claims of fraud and understood that 
expansions to voting help all citizens.\57\ Indeed, in Virginia, which 
has in recent years enacted many reliable expansions that improve 
voting access, saw historic high voter turnout in the election of a 
Republican Governor, further disproving the notion that letting more 
people vote redounds to the advantage of one political party.\58\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \56\ Bruce Schreiner, Kentucky Governor Signs Bipartisan Early 
Voting Measure, Associated Press (Apr. 7, 2021), https://
www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-04-07/kentucky-governor-
signs-bipartisan-early-voting-measure.
    \57\ Bryan Schott, Utah House committee rejects baseless claims of 
election fraud; soundly defeats bill to end universal vote by mail, 
Salt Lake Trib. (Feb. 23, 2022), https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/
2022/02/23/utah-house-committee/.
    \58\ Reid J. Epstein, The Democratic Turnout Myth Unravels, N.Y. 
Times (Nov. 6, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/us/politics/
democrats-turnout-virginia.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The last 2 years of States' efforts to make significant cutbacks to 
the freedom to vote show that groundless stolen election myths are 
resulting in real-world consequences at voters' expense. Falsely 
asserting that voting by mail is somehow illegitimate (while often 
using that mechanism oneself) or that expanding times to vote somehow 
increases the risk of corruption is not empty rhetoric. Voters carry 
the burdens of these lies, and in the end they result in bad policy 
that makes the costs of participating in our democratic process higher 
for no valid reason.
3. The election falsehoods encourage partisan ballot reviews and 
        partisan election takeovers that undermine the integrity of the 
        voting system.
    The stolen election lies have also led to problematic new laws and 
practices that hyper-politicize the administration of elections and 
reviews of their results. This falls into two main categories: The 
inception of partisan sham audits that question lawfully certified 
results, and the attempted partisan usurpation of authority over 
elections administration that shifts control from designated election 
officials to political actors. These transformations that arise from 
the stolen election lies pose a tremendous threat to the proper 
functioning of, and the people's trust in, our voting system.
            i. Post-election partisan sham ``audits'' diminish trust in 
                    elections.
    True post-election audits, in which a subset of the ballots cast in 
each county are hand-counted to verify the accuracy of the initial 
reported results, are standard practice in many States across the 
county.\59\ But following the 2020 election, partisan actors in certain 
States sought to vindicate their falsehoods by undertaking unreliable 
post-certification reviews of the final results. Unlike standard post-
election audits--which include numerous safeguards to ensure 
reliability and transparency, and which serve a valuable role in our 
democracy--these ad hoc partisan investigations employ unqualified 
third parties using unreliable techniques to go on fishing expeditions 
for political fodder. Such sham investigations that build off the 
stolen election lies threaten to undermine confidence in our election 
systems.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \59\ See Post-Election Audits, Nat'l Conf. of State Legislatures 
(Oct. 25, 2019), https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/
post-election-audits635926066.aspx.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The most infamous of these efforts, in Maricopa County, Arizona, 
illustrates the deficiencies and dangers of post-election partisan 
reviews that operate outside the typical audit framework. Roughly 
10,000 votes separated the winner and loser in Arizona's Presidential 
election results in 2020.\60\ A standard post-election audit conducted 
by a bipartisan group of election officials under State law found no 
irregularities.\61\ But dissatisfied with this outcome, and under 
pressure from supporters of the stolen election lies, Arizona's State 
senate leadership authorized a so-called ``forensic audit'' of the 
results only in Maricopa County--Arizona's largest and most diverse 
county.\62\ The legislature demanded--on threat of criminal 
prosecution--that Maricopa County officials turn over voter equipment 
and millions of ballots to a contractor called Cyber Ninjas that had no 
relevant experience in election work, dubious fundraising sources, 
unambiguous partisan and financial incentives, and volunteer staff 
comprised of aggrieved supporters of the losing Presidential 
candidate.\63\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \60\ See Arizona Election Results, State of Ariz., https://
results.arizona.vote/#/featured/18/0 (last visited Mar. 19, 2022).
    \61\ See Jonathan Bydlak, et al., Brennan Ctr. for Justice, 
Partisan Election Review Efforts in Five States 3-4 (July 8, 2021), 
https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2021-07/
Partisan%20Election%20Review%20- 
Efforts%20Across%20the%20United%20States%20in%202021%20%2007.08.21.pdf.
    \62\ See Jonathan Bydlak, et al., supra note 62, at 5-6; Bob 
Christie, Arizona Senate Releases More Records of 2020 Election Review, 
Associated Press (Sept. 1, 2021), https://apnews.com/article/elections-
senate-elections-election-recounts-87a4805f495f9d4cfddf5827429ab105.
    \63\ See, e.g., Trey Grayson and Barry C. Burden, Report on the 
Cyber Ninjas Review of the 2020 Presidential and U.S. Senatorial 
Elections in Maricopa County, Arizona, States United Democracy Ctr. 
(June 22, 2021); StephenRicher, The Madness of the Maricopa County 
Election Audit, National Review (May 27, 2021), https://
www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/the-madness-of-the-maricopa-county-
election-audit/; Dan Zak, The Mess in Maricopa, Washington Post (May 
21, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/05/21/arizona-
election-audit-trump-maricopa/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The unprofessional and partisan Cyber Ninjas process ultimately 
confirmed that the announced winner of Arizona's Presidential election 
did in fact receive the most votes. But it nevertheless raised several 
baseless claims about the security of Arizona's elections,\64\ which 
has provided a pretext for Arizona lawmakers to foment skepticism of 
the results and propose changes in Arizona law that would make voting 
access harder and election administration more partisan.\65\ Despite 
Maricopa County publishing an exhaustive report thoroughly debunking 
the conspiracies promoted in the Cyber Ninjas report, polls show that 
the damage to Arizonans' faith in the integrity of the State's 
elections was already done just by having the sham review at all.\66\ 
Only 36% of those polled believe that the Cyber Ninjas review proved 
the fair winner in Maricopa County, and a majority of Republicans still 
rejected that topline finding, choosing to believe instead that the 
process found significant fraud to further validate the stolen election 
lies.\67\ The tangible costs go even further, with the Cyber Ninjas 
process now running up a $4 million bill to taxpayers to replace 
compromised election equipment and address numerous legal disputes.\68\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \64\ Ben Giles, The Discredited GOP Election Review in Arizona's 
Largest County Also Finds Biden Won, NPR (Sept. 24, 2021), https://
www.npr.org/2021/09/24/1040327483/the-controversial-election-review-in-
arizona-confirms-bidens-win.
    \65\ Miles Parks, Experts Call It a `Clown Show' but Arizona 
`Audit' Is a Disinformation Blueprint, NPR (June 3, 2021), https://
www.npr.org/2021/06/03/1000954549/experts-call-it-a-clown-show-but-
arizona-audit-is-a-disinformation-blueprint.
    \66\ See Maricopa County Elections Department, Correcting the 
Record (Jan. 2022), https://recorder.maricopa.gov/justthefacts/pdf/
Correcting%20The%20Record%20- %20January%202022%20Report.pdf.
    \67\ Erin Snodgrass, The much-maligned Arizona election audit 
reinforced doubt about the 2020 election results, according to a new 
poll, Business Insider (Nov. 15, 2021), https://
www.businessinsider.com/arizona-election-audit-reinforced-doubt-about-
2020-election-results-2021-11.
    \68\ Mary Jo Pitzl, How the price tag of the Arizona Senate's 
review of the 2020 election grew from $150K to more than $4M, Arizona 
Republic (Feb. 23, 2022), https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/
politics/arizona/2022/02/23/arizona-audit-cost-to-taxpayers-for-2020-
election-review-tops-4-million/6829459001/.
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    Unfortunately, Arizona's error-prone, costly, and partisan-
motivated ``investigation'' has not been an isolated occurrence.\69\ 
Undeterred by the roundly rejected and wasteful Cyber Ninjas review, 
other States have followed Arizona's lead to undertake their own 
partisan election investigations that further damage faith in our 
voting systems. After the Governor vetoed the Pennsylvania 
legislature's proposed wide-ranging measure to rewrite the State's 
election law, including provisions that would enable partisan officials 
to sabotage elections, lawmakers turned to other methods to further 
their stolen election lies. In September 2021, State senators in 
Pennsylvania began what they called a ``forensic investigation'' of the 
election that was decided and certified almost a year prior.\70\ The 
investigation launched a sweeping, ad hoc, secretive, and standardless 
review of ballots, which, among other things, attempted to subpoena the 
private information of more than 9 million registered voters for 
analysis by a firm with no experience in election law or data 
analytics.\71\ When details of the contract with the audit company were 
eventually released to the public, more questions than answers remained 
and it is unclear if the results of the ``investigation'' due in May 
2022 will be released for public scrutiny.\72\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \69\ See Not an Audit, States United Action, Fair Fight Action 
United to Protect Democracy, https://notanaudit.com/ (last visited Mar. 
31, 2022).
    \70\ Andrew Seidman & Jonathan Lai, What to know about Pennsylvania 
Republicans' investigation of the 2020 election, The Phila. Inquirer 
(Sept. 29, 2021), https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/
pennsylvania-election-audit-2021-updates-results-20210922.html.
    \71\ States United Democracy Ctr. June Report, supra note 1.
    \72\ Sam Dunklau, Pa. Senate election probe contract doesn't say if 
the public will see the results, among other things, WITF (Dec. 9, 
2021), https://www.witf.org/2021/12/07/pa-senate-election-probe-
contract-doesnt-say-if-the-public-will-see-the-results-among-other-
things/.
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    In Texas, just days after the conclusion of the Arizona sham review 
and hours after a request from the former President, the Texas 
secretary of state's office announced a ``full forensic audit'' of the 
2020 general election in four Texas counties: Collin, Dallas, Harris, 
and Tarrant.\73\ Unsurprisingly, the first batch of results of the 
review found nothing out of the ordinary.\74\ But regardless, the 
efforts undertaken gave election skeptics more reasons to further their 
lies about the results--even in a State that the former President won.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \73\ Neelam Bohra, Texas secretary of state's office auditing four 
counties' 2020 elections months after an official called the Statewide 
process ``smooth and secure'', The Texas Tribune (Sept. 23, 2021), 
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/23/texas-2020-election-audit/.
    \74\ Alexa Ura & Allyson Waller, First part of Texas' 2020 election 
audit reveals few issues, echoes findings from review processes already 
in place, The Texas Tribune (Dec. 31, 2021), https://
www.texastribune.org/2021/12/31/secretary-state-texas-election-audit/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Finally, in Wisconsin, a top State lawmaker hired former Wisconsin 
Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to oversee a partisan 
investigation of the 2020 election, announcing the selection at his 
political party's annual convention.\75\ Gableman's alleged vow to act 
as a neutral arbiter with no preconceived conclusions was inconsistent 
with his previous public and private efforts to spread the stolen 
election lies.\76\ When Gableman released his 136-page report to the 
General Assembly in February 2022, he embraced fringe election 
conspiracies and advocated for the decertification of the 2020 election 
results--a proposal both impossible and unlawful.\77\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \75\ Shawn Johnson, Following Warning By Trump, Vos Announces 
Former Justice Will Lead Assembly GOP Election Probe, Wisc. Public 
Radio (June 26, 2021), https://www.wpr.org/following-warning-trump-vos-
announces-former-justice-will-lead-assembly-gop-election-probe.
    \76\ Patrick Marley, Michael Gableman said bureaucrats `stole our 
votes' before he was put in charge of reviewing 2020 election, 
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Jan. 6, 2022), https://www.jsonline.com/
story/news/politics/2021/08/09/michael-gableman-said-election-stolen-
before-put-charge-wisconsin-review/5518815001/ Scott Bauer, Ex-
justice's Wisconsin election probe drags as critics scoff, Associated 
Press (Feb. 7, 2022), https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-wisconsin-
elections-racial-injustice-election-2020-
9f9ce4a95e3d21bebb4ef7bd9543146f.
    \77\ GOP investigator suggests Wisconsin Legislature decertify 2020 
election results, WISN (Mar. 1, 2022) https://www.wisn.com/article/
wisconsin-republican-report-suggests-decertifying-2020-election-
results/39271268; Zach Montellaro, Wisconsin GOP's 2020 report embraces 
fringe election decertification theory, Politico (Mar. 1, 2022), 
www.politico.com/news/2022/03/01/wisconsin-republicans-embrace-
election-decertification-00012793.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While these partisan audits have largely gone unaddressed and seem 
to be further expanding to other States, the U.S. Department of Justice 
has published warnings about their harms to our democratic process. In 
July 2021, the Attorney General released guidance to ensure that States 
comply with Federal law if conducting post-election ``audits.''\78\ The 
Attorney General's stated primary concerns with these purported audits 
are two-fold: The risk to compromising election records, as happened in 
Arizona, and the threats of voter intimidation, such as those 
associated with stolen election conspiracists going door-to-door to 
interrogate voters in North Carolina, Colorado, and elsewhere.\79\ 
Along these lines, the Attorney General sent a letter to the organizers 
of the Arizona audit, which lead them to drop a planned canvass of 
voters under the threat of Federal enforcement action.\80\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \78\ U.S. Dep't of Justice, Justice Department Issues Guidance on 
Federal Statutes Regarding Voting Methods and Post-Election ``Audits'' 
(July 28, 2021), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-
issues-guidance-federal-statutes-regarding-voting-methods-and-post.
    \79\ See, e.g., Nicholas Riccardi, Lawsuit seeks to stop group's 
door-to-door voter fraud hut, Associated Press (Mar. 9, 2022), https://
apnews.com/article/voting-rights-2022-midterm-elections-biden-steve-
bannon-colorado-63beba2f69226f53ed305457c47a83ea; Press Release, 
Statement Regarding Door-to-Door Canvassers Requesting Voter 
Information, North Carolina State Board of Elections (Feb. 18, 2022), 
https://www.ncsbe.gov/news/press-releases/2022/02/18/statement-
regarding-door-door-canvassers-requesting-voter-information.
    \80\ Jeremy Duda, Justice Department raises concerns with audit, 
Arizona Mirror (May 5, 2021), https://www.azmirror.com/2021/05/05/
justice-department-raises-concerns-with-audit/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These partisan-driven, costly, and amateur reviews of elections by 
lawmakers and inexperienced third parties feed the stolen election 
narrative. They are at best redundant with the States' existing 
legitimate audit procedures that are dependable and designed by experts 
in the field of election administration. More dangerously, the so-
called ``fraudits'' further erode trust in democracy, and the 
fabricated results can be used as a cover story for partisans' efforts 
to exert greater control over elections and enact laws that make voting 
needlessly more difficult.
            ii. Attempts at partisan usurpation of election 
                    administration reduce security in elections.
    Among the most concerning responses to the stolen election lies are 
attempts by partisan actors to interfere with traditionally nonpartisan 
election administration functions. In the 2021 legislative sessions, 
State legislators ``proposed more than two hundred bills in 41 States 
that have the potential to allow those legislators to interfere with 
election administration in one way or another, and at least two dozen 
bills have already been passed into law.''\81\ These efforts can be 
tied directly to the former President's efforts to ``pursu[e] a 
strategy to have Republican-run legislatures in battleground States 
override results favoring [his opponent], in an unprecedented bid to 
alter the outcome of the election,''\82\ as well as to his pressure 
campaign on election officials to ``find'' votes and manufacture his 
victory.\83\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \81\ See, e.g., sources cited supra note 1.
    \82\ Deanna Paul, Trump Campaign Wants States to Override Electoral 
Votes for Biden. Is That Possible?, The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 21, 
2020), https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-campaign-wants-states-to-
override-electoral-votes-for-biden-is-that-possible-11605973695.
    \83\ Former president Trump's much-publicized call to Secretary 
Raffensperger asking him to ``find'' an additional 11,780 votes and 
declare Trump the winner of Georgia's Presidential election shows the 
political willingness to corruptly influence election officials to set 
aside the principles of impartial election administration to achieve 
partisan aims. See Amy Gardner, `I Just Want to Find 11,780 Votes': In 
Extraordinary Hour-Long Call, Trump Pressures Georgia Secretary of 
State to Recalculate the Vote in His Favor,  Wash. Post (Jan. 3, 2021), 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-
georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-
615aaefd0555_story.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Most alarming were new State proposals that in some cases would 
have allowed partisan actors to entirely discard the results of popular 
elections with which they disagreed.\84\ For example, a proposed bill 
in Arizona last year, H.B. 2720, would have provided that ``by majority 
vote at any time before the Presidential inauguration [the legislature] 
may revoke the secretary of state's issuance or certification of a 
Presidential elector's certificate of election.''\85\ A similar 
proposal in Missouri, H.B. 1301, would have allowed the State 
legislature to ``retain its authority to name Presidential electors in 
cases of fraud'' or if a court or the Executive branch were perceived 
to have interfered in election administration.\86\ In Texas, S.B. 7, a 
bill ultimately replaced by S.B. 1 discussed above, would have granted 
power to overturn elections to the State's elected judges.\87\ And in 
Nevada, certain lawmakers sought a State constitutional amendment that 
would have transferred power to certify the State's election results 
from the State supreme court to the State legislature.\88\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \84\ See, e.g., Matt Vasilogambros, Republican Legislators Curb 
Authority of County, State Election Officials, Pew Charitable Trusts 
(July 28, 2021), https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/
blogs/stateline/2021/07/28/republican-legislators-curb-authority-of-
county-state-election-officials.
    \85\ H.B. 2720, 55th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2021). Arizona had two 
other proposed bills that would have similarly allowed the state 
legislature to interfere with election results. See States United 
Democracy Ctr. June Report, supra note 1, at 9-10.
    \86\ H.B. 1301, 101st Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Mo. 2021).
    \87\ Brennan Ctr. for Justice, Voting Laws Roundup: December 2021 
(Jan. 12, 2022), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
reports/voting-laws-roundup-december-2021.
    \88\ Assemb. J. Res. 13, 81st Leg., 2021 Reg. Sess. (Nev. 2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These failed efforts are part of a concerning trend of State 
legislatures responding to the outcome of the 2020 election by trying 
to consolidate power to themselves at the expense of experienced 
election officials.\89\ Indeed, several less extreme but still 
problematic proposals in the same vein have become law since 2020.\90\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \89\ See Election Crisis Task Force Report, supra note 1, at 3.
    \90\ See Nick Corasaniti, Voting Rights and the Battle Over 
Elections: What to Know, N.Y. Times (Dec. 29, 2021), https://
www.nytimes.com/article/voting-rights-tracker.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For instance, in Arkansas, lawmakers passed a new law, S.B. 643, 
that authorizes a legislative committee to investigate election 
complaints and makes it easier to take over county elections without a 
legitimate justification.\91\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \91\ Sam Levine, How Trump's big lie has been weaponized since the 
Capitol attack, The Guardian (July 7, 2021), https://
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/07/us-capitol-riot-attack-on-
democracy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Legislators in Georgia followed suit after proponents of the stolen 
election lies baselessly accused nonpartisan county election workers of 
manipulating votes. Part of Georgia's S.B. 202, enacted during Spring 
2021 and described above, grants the State Election Board broad power 
over county election officials.\92\ Specifically, S.B. 202 allows ``the 
State Election Board [to] suspend elected county or municipal 
superintendents and appoint an individual to serve as the temporary 
superintendent'' in that jurisdiction.\93\ Superintendents are 
considered the ``top election officials'' of each county, and the 
Board-appointed superintendent will be able to ``exercise all the 
powers and duties of a superintendent as provided by law,''\94\ which 
includes disqualifying voters, relocating polling sites, and 
potentially refusing to certify results.\95\ Because a party with the 
majority in both houses of the Georgia General Assembly will control 
the Board, the broad power granted to the State Election Board 
correspondingly broadens the Assembly's power to influence members of 
the Board on partisan grounds.\96\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \92\ Nicholas Reimann, GOP-Controlled Georgia Board Launches Probe 
in Possible Takeover of Atlanta Elections from Local Officials, Forbes 
(Aug. 18, 2021), https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2021/08/
18/gop-controlled-georgia-board-launches-probe-in-possible-takeover-of-
atlanta-elections-from-local-officials.
    \93\ Ga. Code Ann.  21-2-33.1(f).
    \94\ Ga. Code Ann.  21-2-33.1(f).
    \95\ S.B. 202 did not alter the standards for certifying election 
results. See, e.g., Ga. Code Ann.  21-2-33.1(f) (giving Board-
appointed superintendents ``all the powers and duties of a 
superintendent as provided by law''). However, there is debate over the 
circumstances under which a superintendent could refuse to certify 
results and what the consequences of that refusal would be. The 
relevant statute provides that a superintendent ``shall . . . 
certif[y]'' the results by the Monday following the election after the 
returns are ``found to be correct or corrected.'' Id.  21-2-493(k). As 
part of this process, ``[i]f any error or fraud is discovered, the 
superintendent shall compute and certify the votes justly.'' Id.  21-
2-493(i). Georgia law also does not explicitly provide for what happens 
if a superintendent declines to certify results: The relevant provision 
provides only that she ``shall'' do so. Ga. Code Ann. Sec.  21-2-
493(k). When a county refused to certify the results of a recount in 
2020, the Secretary of State's office responded by providing technical 
support to facilitate the recount process and launching a still-on-
going investigation of the county's process. Secretary of State's 
Office Opens Investigation into Coffee County's Handling of Recount, 
Ga. Sec'y Of State, https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/
secretary_of_states_office_opens_investigation_into_coffee_countys_handl
ing_of_recount (last visited Mar. 30, 2022).
    \96\ See, e.g., Ga. Code Ann.  21-2-33.1(f) (giving Board-
appointed superintendents ``all the powers and duties of a 
superintendent as provided by law''); see also States United Democracy 
Ctr. April Report, supra note 1, at 12-14; Nick Corasantini & Reid J. 
Epstein, What Does Georgia's Voting Law Really Do?, N.Y. Times (Aug. 
18, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/us/politics/georgia-
voting-law-annotated.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    S.B. 202 also more directly grants the Georgia General Assembly 
power over local election officials by allowing individual Georgia 
representatives to request performance reviews of election officials in 
their jurisdictions.\97\ Upon receiving these requests, the State 
Election Board is to appoint ``an independent performance review 
board'' and then may use the findings of the review board as the basis 
to remove the official whose performance is in question.\98\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \97\ Ga. Code Ann.  21-2-106(a).
    \98\ Id.  21-2-106(a), (c).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Reviews pursuant to this provision are already under way. The State 
Election Board appointed a partisan performance review board to 
investigate the baseless stolen election allegations in Fulton County 
and potentially take over election administration there, which contains 
Georgia's largest concentration of Democratic voters.\99\ Despite 
recently confirming the accuracy of Fulton County's election results, 
the State Election Board nonetheless referred the county election 
officials to the State attorney general for investigation of the scant 
incidents of inadvertent and inevitable human errors--moving a step 
closer to the county officials being replaced by appointed partisans 
who would administer the next election.\100\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \99\ Mark Niesse, Prospect of Georgia election takeover fuels 
concerns about vote integrity, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Dec. 
23, 2021), https://www.ajc.com/politics/prospect-of-georgia-election-
takeover-fuels-concerns-about-vote-integrity/
CFMTLFW6TZFH7O4LLNDZ3BY4NE/; Kristal Dixon, Exit interview with 
Georgia's most high-profile elections director, Axios (Mar. 23, 2022), 
https://www.axios.com/local/atlanta/2022/03/23/exit-interview-georgia-
elections-director-richard-barron; Nick Corasaniti, Potential G.O.P. 
Takeover of Atlanta-Area Election Board Inches Forward, N.Y. Times 
(Aug. 18, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/us/politics/
georgia-elections-republicans.html.
    \100\ Mark Niesse, Investigation blames human error for issues in 
Fulton election audit, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Mar. 16, 
2022), https://www.ajc.com/politics/investigation-blames-human-error-
for-issues-in-fulton-election-audit/QTRKTKJYY5B3BMK2WOHU6AQXVY/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Additionally, in other Georgia counties, nonpartisan election 
boards that have been in place for years to manage and certify 
Georgia's elections are being abruptly dissolved under new Georgia 
law.\101\ This fundamental restructuring of local election 
administration in Georgia has enabled counties to shift power away from 
long-time impartial election officials and toward inexperienced 
partisan actors, who in some instances have explicitly endorsed 
groundless stolen election claims.\102\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \101\ See, e.g., Stephanie McCrummen, `Gutted': What happened when 
a Georgia elections office was targeted for takeover by those who claim 
the 2020 election was a fraud, Wash. Post (Mar. 14, 2022), https://
www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/14/georgia-elections-fraud-purge/
; James Oliphant & Nathan Layne, Georgia Republicans purge Black 
Democrats from county election boards, Reuters (Dec. 9, 2021), https://
www.reuters.com/world/us/georgia-republicans-purge-black-democrats-
county-election-boards-2021-12-09/; Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. 
Epstein, supra note 1.
    \102\ James Oliphant & Nathan Layne, Georgia Republicans purge 
Black Democrats from county election boards, Reuters (Dec. 9, 2021 8:53 
PM), https://www.reuters.com/world/us/georgia-republicans-purge-black-
democrats-county-election-boards-2021-12-09/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Finally, adding to the Georgia General Assembly's intrusion on 
election administration functions, S.B. 202 removes the Georgia 
secretary of state as the chairperson of the State Election Board, 
instead calling for the chairperson to be elected by the Georgia 
General Assembly, with the secretary of state merely deemed an ``ex 
officio nonvoting member of the board.''\103\ While the chairperson 
``shall be nonpartisan,''\104\ this new procedures nonetheless open the 
door for the election of a chairperson who shares the majority of the 
General Assembly's views regarding the results or legitimacy of any 
given election. Given the tensions between Georgia's secretary of state 
and legislators that arose during the 2020 election--with Republican 
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger facing criticism for not 
supporting the former President and his allies' stolen election lies 
\105\--legislators could seek out a chairperson whom members believe 
would follow its party line on any given matter, including whether to 
certify the results of an election if the winner does not belong to the 
same party that controls the General Assembly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \103\ Ga. Code Ann.  21-2-30(a), (d).
    \104\ Id.  21-2-30(a.1)(2).
    \105\ Amy Gardner, Ga. Secretary of State Says Fellow Republicans 
Are Pressuring Him to Find Ways to Exclude Ballots, Wash. Post (Nov. 
16, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/brad-raffensperger-
georgia-vote/2020/11/16/6b6cb2f4-283e-11eb-8fa2-
06e7cbb145c0_story.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Additionally, a new law proposed but recently struck down in 
Arizona would have also shifted power away from the Arizona secretary 
of state, Katie Hobbs, on blatantly partisan grounds.\106\ The law 
provided that Arizona's attorney general, Mark Brnovich, ``has sole 
authority to direct the defense of State election law or laws being 
challenged,'' thereby permitting him to ``intervene on behalf of the 
State'' ``in any proceeding in which the validity of a State election 
law is challenged . . . if [he] determines'' that ``intervention is 
appropriate.''\107\ Accordingly, the law would have given the Arizona 
Attorney General, who is Republican, ultimate authority to dictate 
legal strategy in election law cases in the event that he disagrees 
with the State's elected secretary of state, currently a Democrat.\108\ 
Importantly, this designation of control over litigation was designed 
to last only through the end of Secretary Hobbs' term, as the goal of 
the legislature was ``to ensure that the authority given to . . . 
Brnovich would not transfer to any Democrat who won the next race for 
attorney general.''\109\ Although the Arizona Supreme Court struck down 
this law on procedural grounds because the legislature improperly 
passed it in an omnibus budget bill,\110\ nothing in the court's 
decision prevents the State from reenacting it, and numerous pending 
proposals in the Arizona legislature would effectively do so.\111\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \106\ See Michael Wines, In Arizona, G.O.P. Lawmakers Strip Power 
From a Democrat, N.Y. Times (June 25, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/
2021/06/25/us/Arizona-Republicans-voting.html..--
    \107\ S.B. 1819, sec. 33, 55th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2021).
    \108\ Ben Giles, Arizona Republicans Strip Some Election Power from 
Democratic Secretary of State, NPR (June 30, 2021), https://
www.npr.org/2021/06/30/1011154122/arizona-republicans-strip-some-
election-power-from-democratic-secretary-of-state.
    \109\ Michael Wines, In Arizona, G.O.P. Lawmakers Strip Power from 
a Democrat, N.Y. Times (June 25, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/
06/25/us/Arizona-Republicans-voting.html.
    \110\ See Jeremy Duda, Court strikes down bans on mask mandates, 
critical race theory and more, Arizona Mirror (Sept. 27, 2021), https:/
/www.azmirror.com/2021/09/27/court-strikes-down-bans-on-mask-mandates-
critical-race-theory-and-more/.
    \111\ See, e.g., H.B. 2691, 56th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2022); 
H.B. 2378, 56th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2022); S.B. 1137, 56th 
Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2022).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In Texas, the recently enacted S.B. 1 presents another instance of 
the legislative usurpation of election officials' authority. S.B. 1 
imposes severe restrictions on how election officials can administer 
elections and help citizens apply to vote or cast a vote.\112\ For 
example, the Texas law prohibits early voting clerks from any ``attempt 
to solicit a person to complete an application for an early voting 
ballot,''\113\ and forbids State or local officials from 
``distribut[ing] an application form for an early ballot'' to someone 
who did not request the application, or from ``us[ing] public funds to 
facilitate'' such distribution by someone else.\114\ Finally, the bill 
uses sweeping language to mandate that public officials ``not create, 
alter, modify, waive, or suspend any election standard, practice, or 
procedure mandated by law or rule in a manner not expressly authorized 
by this code.''\115\ In effect, S.B. 1 would eliminate election 
officials' ability to administer State law in the manner that they 
believe would, based on their experience and discretion in specific 
circumstances, ensure that more citizens are able to vote easily and 
that elections run efficiently within the processes established by the 
legislature.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \112\ Chuck Lindell, Gov. Greg Abbott Signs SB 1, the GOP Voting 
Bill, into Law, Austin Am. Statesman (Sept. 7,2021), https://
www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/09/07/texas-voting-law-gop-greg-
abbott-sb-1/5751333001.
    \113\ Tex. Elec. Code  84.0011 (sec. 4.02)
    \114\ Tex. Elec. Code  84.0111 (sec. 4.05)
    \115\ Tex. Elec. Code  276.017 (sec. 6.03)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    New proposals in 2022 continue the trend of State legislators 
attempting to enact laws that seize power over elections to partisan 
lawmakers at the expense of experienced election officials. From new 
bills filed in Wisconsin and Michigan to renewed efforts in 
Arizona,\116\ legislators are pursuing troubling ways to put election 
administration in the hands of political party patrons rather than 
trusted election officials.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \116\ See, e.g., Lalee Ibssa & Meg Cunningham, GOP-controlled 
legislatures look to overhaul election laws ahead of 2022 midterms, ABC 
News (Feb. 10, 2022), https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gop-controlled-
legislatures-overhaul-election-laws-ahead-2022/story?id=82730052 
(Michigan); Michael McDaniel, Arizona Senate pushes an election bill to 
create a permanent audit team that could be fielded by Cyber Ninja 
auditors, Courthouse News (Feb. 17, 2022), https://
www.courthousenews.com/arizona-senate-pushes-an-election-bill-to-
create-a-permanent-audit-team-that-could-be-fielded-by-cyber-ninja-
auditors/ (Arizona); Jake Thomas, Ex-Oath Keeper, 1/6 Protester Lead 
Push to Change Michigan's Election Audit Process, Newsweek (Jan. 20, 
2022), https://www.newsweek.com/ex-oath-keeper-1-6-protester-lead-push-
change-michigans-election-audit-process-1671428.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The changes in State laws that narrow the authority traditionally 
given to impartial elections experts, or that provide for increased 
influence over the functions of election administration by the State 
legislature, risk removing the key guardrails that prevented further 
democratic crises in 2020. By increasing the partisan influence over 
traditionally nonpartisan election administration tasks, such as the 
ministerial responsibility of certifying the final results after the 
votes have been counted, supporters of the stolen election lies have 
made usurping the electoral power away from the people easier. Enabling 
greater partisan manipulation of election administration risks widening 
cracks in our legal framework and removing the principled election 
officials who were willing to stand firm for democratic norms rather 
than submit to raw political objectives during the 2020 election.
4. The election falsehoods encourage threats against hardworking 
        election officials, the criminalization of their work, and the 
        politicization of their roles.
    Nonpartisan election officials have borne the brunt of some of the 
worst consequences from the 2020 stolen election lies. These public 
servants, who work under-appreciated jobs to ensure that our democratic 
processes properly function and that every vote that should be counted 
gets counted, have come under tremendous stress throughout the 2020 
election cycle and since. Given that the former President recently 
suggested that because ``[t]he vote counter is often more important 
than the candidate,'' and that his supporters ``have to get a lot 
tougher and smarter at the polls,'' the forces intimidating election 
officials are unlikely to subside.\117\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \117\ Josh Dawsey, Trump muses on war with Russia and praises Kim 
Jong Un, Wash. Post (Mar. 6, 2022), https://www.washingtonpost.com/
nation/2022/03/06/trump-focuses-foreign-policy-speech-gops-top-donors/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The immense pressure on election officials most alarmingly includes 
a steep rise in the harassment and threats of violence targeting 
them.\118\ A recent investigation identified hundreds of occurrences of 
intimidation and harassment against election workers and officials 
Nation-wide, but only a handful of arrests of the attackers.\119\ 
Proponents of the stolen election lies directed over 100 explicit 
threats of death or violence at more than 40 election officials.\120\ 
Nearly 8 in 10 local election officials feel the physical danger 
presented in their work has increased recently, and one-sixth report 
having received explicit threats of violence.\121\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \118\ See, e.g., Linda So & Jason Szep, Special Report: Terrorized 
U.S. Election Workers Get Little Help from Law Enforcement, Reuters 
(Sept. 8, 2021), https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/terrorized-
us-election-workers-get-little-help-law-enforcement-2021-09-08/; The 
Brennan Ctr. for Justice and the Bipartisan Policy Ctr., Election 
Officials Under Attack (June 16, 2021), https://www.brennancenter.org/
sites/default/files/2021-06/BCJ-129%20ElectionOfficials_v7.pdf.
    \119\ Linda So & Jason Szep, supra note 118.
    \120\ Id.
    \121\ See, e.g., Poll of Local Election Officials Finds Safety 
Fears for Colleagues--and Themselves,  Brennan Ctr.for Justice (Mar. 
10, 2022), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/
poll-local-election-officials-finds-safety-fears-colleagues-and; Zach 
Montellaro, Local election officials are exhausted, under threat and 
thinking about quitting, Politico (Mar. 10, 2022), https://
www.politico.com/news/2022/03/10/election-officials-exhausted-under-
threat-00015850; Press Release, ``One in Three Election Officials 
Report Feeling Unsafe Because of Their Job,'' Brennan Ctr. For Justice 
& Bipartisan Policy Ctr. (June 16, 2021), https://
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/one-three-election-
officials-report-feeling-unsafe-because-their-job.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    State secretaries of state--who typically serve as their States' 
chief election officers--are among those who faced significant threats 
and intimidation to themselves and their families in the wake of the 
2020 election.
    In her testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and 
Administration in October 2021, Arizona secretary of state Katie Hobbs 
described the threats that she and other election officials have faced 
in the year since the 2020 election.\122\ From the armed groups that 
amassed outside Secretary Hobbs' home chanting, ``Katie come out and 
play, we are watching you,'' to the orange jumpsuits mailed to 
intimidate Arizona county supervisors,\123\ these once behind-the-
scenes election officials are now facing growing threats.\124\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \122\ U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Emerging 
Threats to Election Administration (Oct. 26,2021), https://
www.rules.senate.gov/hearings/emerging-threats-to-election-
administration.
    \123\ Denelle Confair, AZ Secretary of State Katie Hobbs Testifies 
Before U.S. Senate Committee on Emerging Election Threats, News 4 
Tucson (Nov. 1, 2021), https://www.kvoa.com/news/az-secretary-of-state-
katie-hobbs-testifies-before-u-s-senate-committee-on-emerging-election/
article_0193c76e-3689-11ec-b3c7-1f2864e3a0ae.html.
    \124\ Miles Parks, Death Threats and Conspiracy Theories: Why 2020 
Won't End for Election Officials, NPR (Aug. 17, 2021), https://
www.npr.org/2021/08/17/1027747378/death-threats-and-conspiracy-
theories-why-2020-wont-end-for-election-officials; Jane Mayer, supra 
note 19.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who resisted the 
former President's claims that the election in Georgia was stolen, also 
``receiv[ed] death threats almost immediately after Trump's surprise 
loss in Georgia,'' leading him and his family to go into hiding after 
his daughter-in-law's home was broken into and individuals identified 
as members of the Oath Keepers, an extremist group, were discovered 
outside his own home.\125\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \125\ Linda So, Trump-Inspired Death Threats Are Terrorizing 
Election Workers, Reuters (June 11, 2021), https://www.reuters.com/
investigates/special-report/usa-trump-georgia-threats/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson also faced death threats 
and harassment following the election.\126\ Armed protesters used 
megaphones to chant election-related conspiracy theories outside of 
Benson's home a few weeks after the election while Benson was home with 
her 4-year-old son.\127\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \126\ Id.; see also Bill Chappel, Michigan Secretary of State Says 
Armed Protesters Descended on Her Home Saturday, NPR (Dec. 7, 2020), 
https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition-updates/2020/12/07/
943820889/michigan-secretary-of-state-says-armed-protesters-descended-
on-her-home-saturday.
    \127\ Bill Chappel, Michigan Secretary of State Says Armed 
Protesters Descended on Her Home Saturday, NPR (Dec. 7, 2020), https://
www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition-updates/2020/12/07/943820889/
michigan-secretary-of-state-says-armed-protesters-descended-on-her-
home-saturday.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Colorado secretary of state Jena Griswold reported to Federal 
officials receiving 22 death threats in 1 week alone in February 
2022.\128\ One prominent proponent of election conspiracy theories in 
Colorado claimed that Griswold stole the election and threatened that 
``if you're involved in election fraud, then you deserve to hang'' 
because, he said, ``sometime the old ways are the best ways.''\129\ 
Long after the 2020 Presidential election, these threats suggest that 
the dangerous trend extends beyond high-profile Federal elections to 
even include off-cycle State elections.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \128\ Zach Montellaro, supra note 121.
    \129\ Bente Birkeland, Facing ongoing threats, Colorado's Secretary 
of State says the position needs more security--and other politicians 
want the same, Colo. Public Radio (Mar. 2, 2022), www.cpr.org/2022/03/
02/colorado-secretary-of-state-jena-griswold-security-harassment/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Workers in lower- or mid-level positions similarly face threats and 
intimidation from those angered by the outcome of the election and 
their misguided stolen election beliefs. For example, some supporters 
of the election falsehoods seized on a video that spread quickly on-
line of a poll worker placing paper in the trash, believing it proved 
the vote count had been corrupted.\130\ Even though Fulton County 
quickly fact-checked the claims, showing they were false by comparing 
the size of the paper thrown away with the size of a ballot, ``by the 
time fact checkers weighed in, the poll worker had already quit and 
gone into hiding, due to the false accusations against him.''\131\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \130\ Dan Glaun, Threats to Election Officials Piled Up as 
President Trump Refused to Concede, PBS News Frontline (Nov. 17, 2020), 
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/threats-to-election-
officials-piled-up-as-president-trump-refused-to-concede/.
    \131\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These threats are unlikely to subside on their own. Indeed, a 
recent poll shows that nearly 4-in-10 polled Americans who believe the 
stolen election lies also say that violence may be necessary to ``save 
our country,'' in their view.\132\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \132\ Aaron Blake, Nearly 4 in 10 Who Say Election Was Stolen From 
Trump Say Violence Might Be Needed to Save America, Wash. Post (Nov. 1, 
2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/01/4-10-who-say-
election-was-stolen-trump-say-violence-might-be-needed-save-america/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While the Federal Government has attempted to step in, those 
efforts have so far been unable to abate the serious threats and risks 
of harm to election officials. The Department of Justice held a recent 
meeting with a bipartisan group of over 1,400 election officials to 
``discuss mounting and persistent threats to the safety of election 
officials and workers across the country,'' and launched an Election 
Threats Task Force to monitor and address such threats.\133\ And the 
Department of Homeland Security issued an advisory warning that 
``[s]ome domestic violent extremists have continued to advocate for 
violence in response to false or misleading narratives about 
unsubstantiated election fraud,'' and that the ``months preceding the 
upcoming 2022 midterm elections could provide additional opportunities 
for these extremists and other individuals to call for violence 
directed at democratic institutions, political candidates, party 
offices, election events, and election workers.''\134\ But from this 
announced increased attention to the issue, the Department of Justice 
has revealed only two prosecutions of stolen election extremists who 
credibly threatened violence against election officials.\135\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \133\ Press Release, Readout of Justice Department Leadership 
Meeting on Threats to Election Workers, U.S. Dep't of Justice Office of 
Public Affairs (Aug. 26, 2021), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/readout-
justice-department-leadership-meeting-threats-election-workers; Jane C. 
Timm, `We Have to Protect Them': DOJ Vows Investigations, Prosecutions 
of Threats to Election Workers, Wash. Post (June 25, 2021), https://
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-allies-election-oversight/2021/
11/28/3933b3ce-4227-11ec-9ea7-3eb2406a2e24_story.html.
    \134\ Dep't of Homeland Security, Summary of Terrorism Threat to 
the U.S. Homeland (Feb. 7, 2022), https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/
national-terrorism-advisory-system-bulletin-february-07-2022.
    \135\ Press Release, Man Charged for Threatening Nevada State 
Election Worker, U.S. Dep't of Justice Office of Public Affairs (Jan. 
27, 2022), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/man-charged-threatening-
nevada-state-election-worker; Press Release, Texas Man Arrested for 
Making Election-Related Threats to Government Officials, U.S. Dep't of 
Justice Office of Public Affairs (Jan. 27, 2022), https://
www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-arrested-making-election-related-
threats-government-officials.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At the same time that election workers are fielding alarming 
harassment and intimidation from outside actors, recent changes in 
State laws since the 2020 election have also created new ways for 
election work to be subject to formal criminal prosecution. Numerous 
States--including Texas, Iowa, and North Dakota--have enacted new laws 
that specifically criminalize activities by election officials, in many 
cases with the threat of felony prosecutions or with hefty punishments 
for even ``technical infractions'' of election law.\136\ Some of these 
new criminal law proposals, such as the recently-enacted Arizona H.B. 
2492 described above, put election workers in the precarious position 
to either abandon their duties to register eligible voters pursuant to 
Federal law requirements, or follow those Federal duties but face State 
felony prosecution applying new State criminal laws that target only 
election officials.\137\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \136\ See, e.g., States United Democracy Ctr. April and June 
Reports, supra note 1.
    \137\ H.B. 2492, 56th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2022); Ray Stern, 
supra note 48.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Under these perilous conditions, election workers are leaving their 
posts at worrying rates, or they are being forced out of their 
positions for partisan gain. Administering an election during an 
unprecedented global pandemic is a challenging feat and harrowing 
experience in itself; many election officials who now face threats of 
violence after getting through the 2020 election are opting for 
retirement rather than continue through the 2022 or 2024 election 
cycles.\138\ In one recent study, 30% of polled election officials 
reported knowing one or more workers who have already left their job at 
least in part because of a fear for their safety due to the increased 
threats and intimidation.\139\ The same poll shows that 20% of the 
remaining election officials say they are likely to quit before 
2024.\140\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \138\ Michael Wines, After a Nightmare Year, Election Officials Are 
Quitting, N.Y. Times (July 2, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/
02/us/politics/2020-election-voting-officials.html.
    \139\ Poll of Local Election Officials Finds Safety Fears for 
Colleagues--and Themselves Brennan Ctr. for Justice (Mar. 10, 2022), 
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/poll-local-
election-officials-finds-safety-fears-colleagues-and.
    \140\ See id.; see also Miles Parker, 1 in 5 local election 
officials say they're likely to quit before 2024, NPR (Mar. 10, 2022), 
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/10/1085425464/1-in-5-local-election-
officials-say-theyre-likely-to-quit-before-2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Other election officials willing to stick around may not be able to 
do so because partisan actors are finding new ways to force their 
removal. In Michigan, after a Republican appointee to the State board 
of canvassers refused to stop the certification of the State's 2020 
election results, partisan lawmakers blocked reappointing him to a 
subsequent term.\141\ Virginia's Governor recently replaced the State's 
top election official, who was widely seen as a nonpartisan consensus 
choice, with a former top aide to a State senator who while in office 
praised the January 6 insurrectionists.\142\ In Pennsylvania, the State 
legislature pursued the impeachment of the members of two county 
election commissions who voted to count timely received vote-by-mail 
ballots that lacked a date handwritten by the voter, which has been 
subject to on-going litigation.\143\ And the former State supreme court 
justice leading the partisan sham review of Wisconsin's elections has 
pushed to jail city election officials for refusing to participate in 
the stolen election conspiracy.\144\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \141\ Sam Levine, How Trump's big lie has been weaponized since the 
Capitol attack, The Guardian (July 7, 2021), https://
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/07/us-capitol-riot-attack-on-
democracy.
    \142\ Patrick Wilson, Youngkin names local GOP official, former 
aide to Chase, as new State elections commissioner, The Richmond Times-
Dispatch (Mar. 20, 2022), https://richmond.com/news/state-and-regional/
youngkin-names-local-gop-official-former-aide-to-chase-as-new-state-
elections-commissioner/article_2d9ee742-742f-5325-
9692562bd65c37fc.html.
    \143\ Jonathan Lai, Pa. Republican Lawmakers Threaten to Impeach 
Philly Officials for Counting Undated Mail Ballots, The Phila. Inquirer 
(May 28, 2021), https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/
pennsylvania-republican-lawmakers-impeachment-philadelphia-city-
commissioners-20210528.html; States United Democracy Ctr. June Report, 
supra note 1.
    \144\ Patrick Marley, Wisconsin Republicans seek to jail more 
officials as part of their review of the 2020 Presidential election, 
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Feb. 18, 2022), https://www.jsonline.com/
story/news/politics/2022/02/18/wisconsin-republicans-michael-gableman-
seeks-jail-officials-2020-presidential-election-review/6853176001/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While election officials are under attack and offices across the 
country are experiencing a mass exodus of experienced employees, stolen 
election lies proponents have redoubled their efforts to replace 
election workers with rogue political actors. There is currently an 
active, well-funded campaign to recruit partisans to take over election 
administration roles, making it easier to sabotage future 
elections.\145\ As of January 27, 2022, at least 21 candidates who have 
subscribed to stolen election lies are running for secretary of states 
in 18 States; this means that in 2 out of 3 secretary of state contests 
Nation-wide, one of the leading candidates has publicly supported the 
conspiracy challenging the 2020 election results.\146\ Some the most 
highly contested secretary of state races with election skeptics as 
candidates are in swing States--e.g., Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, and 
Nevada--where a rogue State elections chief could cause significant 
uncertainty and disruption.\147\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \145\ Amber Phillips, How Trump-backed secretary of state 
candidates would change elections in the United States Wash. Post (Dec. 
1, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/12/01/how-trump-
backed-secretary-state-candidates-would-change-elections-america/; 
Lawrence Norden & Derek Tisler, Addressing Insider Threats in 
Elections, Brennan Ctr. for Justice (Dec. 8, 2021), https://
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/addressing-insider-
threats-elections.
    \146\ States United Democracy Ctr., Secretary of State Races in 
2022 (Jan 27, 2022), https://statesuniteddemocracy.org/wp-content/
uploads/2022/02/sos_deniers.html.
    \147\ Amber Phillips, How Trump-backed secretary of state 
candidates would change elections in the United States Wash. Post (Dec. 
1, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/12/01/how-trump-
backed-secretary-state-candidates-would-change-elections-america/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Lower-profile election worker positions are also at risk of being 
coopted for political purposes. Appointees to State and county election 
positions are becoming more extreme and partisan. In Michigan, for 
example, political actors have worked in recent months to replace 
county canvassers with partisans who have embraced the stolen election 
lies.\148\ Similar efforts are under way in Ohio, Iowa, and other 
States.\149\ In a particularly shocking example, one of the attendees 
at the so-called Stop the Steal rally leading to the January 6 storming 
of the U.S. Capitol soon returned home to Pennsylvania, declared his 
candidacy to be an election judge, and then won that election.\150\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \148\ Sam Levine, Why are Michigan Republicans quietly replacing 
key election officials?, The Guardian (Oct. 14, 2021), https://
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/14/michigan-republicans-election-
officials-fight-to-vote.
    \149\ See, e.g., Jake Zuckerman, Governor appoints former lawmaker 
to elections board who hyped up 2020 voter fraud claims, Ohio Capital 
Journal (Mar. 10, 2022), https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/03/10/
governor-appoints-former-lawmaker-to-elections-board-who-hyped-up-2020-
voter-fraud-claims/; Thomas Beaumont & Anthony Izaguirre, Iowa flap 
raises fears of politicized local election offices, Associated Press 
(May 30, 2021), https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-iowa-local-
elections-voting-rights-elections-8ae7926dcd07f4dba7- ede49d6fc894d9.
    \150\ Charles Homans, In Bid for Control of Elections, Trump 
Loyalists Face Few Obstacles, N.Y. Times (Dec. 15, 2021), https://
www.nytimes.com/2021/12/11/us/- politics/trust-in-elections-trump-
democracy.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In sum, election officials since 2020 have faced intense external 
forces of threats of violence and harassment, and internal forces of 
being criminalized, fired, or politicized. In this environment, the 
country's election infrastructure will struggle to maintain nonpartisan 
and impartial workers who are in it to promote democracy and fair 
results rather than seeking partisan gain. Election officials are the 
lifeblood of a properly functioning voting system. Allowing them to be 
replaced by partisan actors risks severe consequences if and when the 
next election crisis arises.
b. the consequences of stolen election lies are depressed public trust 
                in government and the electoral process.
    Since the 2020 Presidential election, poll after poll has shown 
that the events of January 6th and the fallout of the stolen election 
lies have shaken Americans' belief in our democratic institutions. 
Generally, Americans' trust in government is at historic lows.\151\ 
People are concerned that the events of January 6th are not just 
isolated incidents but a sign of increasing political violence, and 
this has eroded the belief that American democracy is secure.\152\ In 
one January 2022 poll, 64% of Americans believe democracy in the United 
States is ``in crisis and at risk of failing''\153\ and only 20% are 
very confident in the country's ability to conduct an honest 
election.\154\ Polled voters see that risk growing, with two-thirds of 
respondents in one poll saying the county is more at risk of democratic 
decline than it was a year ago.\155\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \151\ Public Trust in Government: 1958-2021, Pew Research Ctr. (May 
17, 2021), https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/05/17/public-
trust-in-government-158-2021/ (last accessed Mar. 30, 2022).
    \152\ Anthony Salvanto, Kabir Khanna, Fred Backus, & Jennifer 
Depinto, CBS News poll: A year after Jan. 6, violence still seen 
threatening U.S. democracy, and some say force can be justified, CBS 
News (Jan. 2, 2022, 1:01 PM), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/january-6-
opinion-poll-2022/.
    \153\ Joel Rose, 6 in 10 Americans say U.S. democracy is in crisis 
as the `Big Lie' takes root, NPR (Jan. 3, 2022), https://www.npr.org/
2022/01/03/1069764164/american-democracy-poll-jan-6.
    \154\ Brittany Shepherd, Americans' faith in election integrity 
drops: POLL, ABC News (Jan. 6, 2022), https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/
americans-faith-election-integrity-drops-poll/story?id=82069876; 
Brittany Shepherd, Majority of Americans think Jan. 6 attack threatened 
democracy: POLL, ABC News (Jan. 2, 2022), https://abcnews.go.com/
Politics/majority-americans-jan-attack-threatened-democracy-poll/
story?id=81990555.
    \155\ Salvanto, supra note 152.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This deterioration of voters' confidence in elections and in 
Government crosses party lines. General feelings of pride in American 
democracy are at all-time lows, hovering above 50% and down 
considerably from a high of 90% in 2001 and 63% in 2017.\156\ While 
only 30% of polled Democratic voters attest they are confident in the 
U.S. election system,\157\ the falsehood that the 2020 election was 
stolen from the former President has been disastrous for Republicans' 
faith in our elections, with only 13% of Republicans who are very 
confident in the election system and 59% that have little faith.\158\ 
Overall, only 37% of polled Republicans said they are confident the 
next Presidential election will be open and fair.\159\ And while 82% of 
Democrats said they would trust the results of the 2024 Presidential 
election to be accurate if their candidate did not win; only 33% of 
Republicans reported feeling the same.\160\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \156\ Dan Balz, Scott Clement, & Emily Guskin, Republicans and 
Democrats divided over Jan. 6 insurrection and Trump's culpability, 
Post-UMD poll finds, Wash. Post (Jan. 1, 2022), https://
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/01/post-poll-january-6/.
    \157\ Shepherd, supra note 154.
    \158\ Id.
    \159\ David Nather, Axios-Ipsos Poll: Republicans lose trust in 
elections, Axios (Nov. 20, 2021), https://www.axios.com/axios-ipsos-
poll-republicans-lose-trust-elections-52410b23-9513-453b-8a37-
d140cae2d455.htmldeepdive=1.
    \160\ PBS News Hour/NPR/Marist Poll, Nature of the Sample: NPR/PBS 
NewsHour/Marist Poll of 1,209 National Adults (Nov. 5, 2021), https://
maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/NPR_PBS-
NewsHour_Marist-Poll_USA-NOS-and-Tables_B_202110251104.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Troublingly, voters of both parties doubt that State officials of 
the other party will agree to accept the results of an election if 
their party loses.\161\ Democrats have become more skeptical, with 67% 
concerned about the results in Republican States, compared to 56% of 
Republicans about results in Democratic States.\162\ Independents share 
in the skepticism but are more concerned about Republican-controlled 
States.\163\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \161\ Balz, supra note 156.
    \162\ Id.
    \163\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Polling conducted after the results of the Arizona Cyber Ninjas 
review also shows those partisan-motivated ``investigations'' are 
especially damaging to the public trust. As noted above, only 36% of 
those polled believe that the Cyber Ninjas review proved the correct 
winner of Maricopa County's Presidential votes; a majority of polled 
Republicans reject the audit's findings, choosing to believe instead 
that the process found significant voter fraud when it in fact did 
not.\164\ Additional polling from before and after Arizona's partisan 
election investigation found that it did more to reinforce concerns 
around election fraud than to alleviate them.\165\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \164\ Erin Snodgrass, The much-maligned Arizona election audit 
reinforced doubt about the 2020 election results, according to a new 
poll, Business Insider (Nov. 15, 2021), https://
www.businessinsider.com/arizona-election-audit-reinforced-doubt-about-
2020-election-results-2021-11.
    \165\ Doubt in American System Increases, Monmouth Univ. Polling 
Institute (Nov. 15, 2021), https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/
reports/monmouthpoll_us_111521/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The perceived and actual risk of repeated political violence 
because of disputed election results is also on the rise. Asked if 
violent action against the Government is justified at times, over a 
third of respondents in one poll agreed, with the strongest support 
coming from Republicans and independents.\166\ This increased 
acceptance of political violence is significantly higher than past 
polls over more than two decades.\167\ Disturbingly, recent polling 
shows that Americans now expect violence from supporters of the losing 
side in an election: While only 2% of respondents say they actively 
favor violence if their side lost the election, a quarter said it would 
depend on the circumstances.\168\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \166\ Balz, supra note 156.
    \167\ Id.
    \168\ Salvanto, supra note 152.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Researchers studying political violence are also ringing alarm 
bells about the increased risks in the United States. For example, 
Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and 
Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 
and a leading expert on political violence, warns that both the amount 
and nature of political extremism has worsened in the United 
States.\169\ Kleinfeld's identified factors that elevate the risks of 
political violence typify our current circumstances: (1) Perceived 
highly-competitive contests that could shift the balance of power; (2) 
stark partisan division based on identity; (3) electoral rules that can 
be manipulated; and (4) weak institutional constraints on violence that 
lead perpetrators to believe they will not be held accountable.\170\ 
According to Kleinfeld, ideas that were once considered fringe are now 
covered on mainstream media outlets, creating a growing audience that 
is willing to undertake, support, or excuse the use of force for 
perceived political gain.\171\ The people who could be willing to 
commit political violence are now not just rogue outliers, but 
sometimes regular Americans who are integrated in social life but 
nonetheless captured and manipulated by stolen election 
conspiracies.\172\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \169\ Rachel Kleinfeld, The Rise of Political Violence in the 
United States, Journal of Democracy (Oct. 2021), https://
www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-rise-of-political-violence-in-
the-united-states/.
    \170\ Id.
    \171\ Id.
    \172\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Additionally, the election falsehoods have split the Republican 
Party into fractions of supporters and representatives who believe the 
conspiracy and those who accept reality.\173\ The unwillingness of some 
partisans to accept the results of the 2020 election now over 15 months 
later creates deep rifts in our political associations. Even some 
leading Republican officials who initially were willing to question 
aspects of the election without fully committing to the conspiracy now 
cannot reel in members of their party who are perpetuating the extreme 
falsities.\174\ As the fringe views are given credence, they become 
more prominent and take on a life of their own that cannot easily be 
pulled away from the minds of voters and lawmakers once party 
leadership realizes the deception has gone too far.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \173\ Reid J. Epstein, Fringe Scheme to Reverse 2020 Election 
Splits Wisconsin G.O.P., N.Y. Times (Feb. 19, 2022), https://
www.nytimes.com/2022/02/19/us/politics/wisconsin-election-
decertification.html.
    \174\ Id.; see also Calvin Woodward, supra note 16.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In sum, manufactured concerns over stolen elections make large 
segments of the electorate distrust legitimate results and question the 
democratic process. Far from empty rhetoric or just politics as usual, 
these stolen election lies mislead Americans into challenging the rule 
of law and contesting the peaceful transition of power when their 
preferred candidates lose. This reduced confidence in elections leads 
to partisan lawmakers further damaging the system by enacting laws that 
politicize the process or make voting needlessly more difficult. And 
the stolen election lies inspire the type of political violence 
perpetrated on January 6, 2021, which rips at the ties binding our 
country by denigrating our democratic institutions and ideals.
c. the federal government must take action to prevent further damage to 
                          our election system.
    While the problems stemming from the stolen election lies are 
significant and pose a serious threat to the proper functioning of our 
democracy, many of them are solvable through Federal legislative and 
enforcement action. The priorities must be to address increased efforts 
to raise the burdens of voting, the manipulation of votes and results 
after election day, and the alarming threats against election 
officials. Congress can pass new laws that fix weaknesses in our 
current legal framework where proponents of stolen election lies have 
sought to exploit gaps for political gain. Many such fixes already 
exist in specific provisions contained in proposed laws currently 
before Congress.
    First, Congress must enact new laws that will curb the rise of laws 
that make voting needlessly more difficult based on stolen election 
lies. As I have described above, new laws and proposed legislation in 
the last 2 years have chased the shadow of voter fraud by finding 
heavy-handed and overbroad news ways to remove eligible voters from the 
registration rolls and make voter access more difficult.
    There are several critical provisions already drafted in 
legislation before Congress that would make an immediate difference and 
have had successful bipartisan use in the States. To begin, enacting 
same-day registration can limit the harmful effects of wrongful 
registration purges by allowing eligible voters to still show up to 
register and vote on election day.\175\ Standardizing meaningful early 
voting in the States will also enable citizens with greater voting 
inflexibilities (such as rural voters, students, and voters with less 
access to resources) to still be able to cast their ballot even if they 
cannot do so on election day.\176\ Guaranteeing access to vote by 
mail--a process that States across the country have tested for years 
and found is safe, secure, and partisan-neutral \177\--will make sure 
that any eligible voter who wants to vote is empowered to do so.\178\ 
And requiring that States give their election officials meaningful 
additional time before election day to preprocess received ballots and 
prepare them to be tabulated after the polls close will help ensure 
timely election results.\179\ Enacting these Federal baselines, among 
others, will reinforce our National ideals that, no matter where 
someone lives or how many resources they have, all citizens should have 
a fair chance to participate in the electoral process.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \175\ See, e.g., Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, Rules 
Committee Print 117-28 Text of the House Amendment to the Senate 
Amendment to H.R. 5746, Sec. 1031. Same Day Registration, at 71-75 
(Jan. 12, 2022), https://rules.house.gov/sites/
democrats.rules.house.gov/files/BILLS-117HR5746EAS-RCP117-
28.pdf#page=71; see also See Same Day Voter Registration, Nat'l Conf. 
of State Legislatures (Sept. 9, 2021), https://www.ncsl.org/research/
elections-and-campaigns/same-day-registration.aspx.
    \176\ See, e.g., Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, Rules 
Committee Print 117-28 Text of the House Amendment to the Senate 
Amendment to H.R. 5746, Sec. 1201. Early Voting, at 119-126 (Jan. 12, 
2022), https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/
BILLS-117HR5746EAS-RCP117-28.pdf#page=119; see also Early In-Person 
Voting, Nat'l Conf. of State Legislature (Jan. 17, 2022), https://
www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/early-voting-in-state-
elections.aspx.
    \177\ See, e.g., Daniel M. Thompson, et al., Universal vote-by-mail 
has no impact on partisan turnout or vote share, Proceedings on the 
National Academy of Sciences (June 9, 2020), https://www.pnas.org/doi/
10.1073/pnas.2007249117; see also sources cited supra notes 28 & 29.
    \178\ See, e.g., Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, Rules 
Committee Print 117-28 Text of the House Amendment to the Senate 
Amendment to H.R. 5746, Subtitle D--Voting by Mail, at 128-169 (Jan. 
12, 2022), https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/
files/BILLS-117HR5746EAS-RCP117-28.pdf#page=128.
    \179\ See, e.g., Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, Rules 
Committee Print 117-28 Text of the House Amendment to the Senate 
Amendment to H.R. 5746, Sec. 1201. Early Voting, at 126-27 (Jan. 12, 
2022), https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/
BILLS-117HR5746EAS-RCP117-28.pdf#page=126.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Second, Congress should legislatively reinforce that States have no 
power to disturb the results of popular elections. Congress can do so 
by updating the Electoral Count Act (ECA), focusing on two core 
clarifying revisions that remove ambiguities in the 1887 statute's at-
times obscure and outdated language. Critically, the ECA must make 
clear that once a State holds a legitimate popular election to select 
its Presidential electors, the State legislature has no power to 
displace those results. The ECA is key to reinforcing what we know from 
our Constitution to be true--that any post-hoc usurpation of the 
Presidential electors power from the people violates voters' 
fundamental Constitutional rights, and intrudes on the Federal 
Government's Constitutional prerogative to designate the time for 
holding Presidential elections and the process for counting the duly 
provided votes from States' legitimate popular election results.
    Along similar lines, Congress must update the ECA to expressly 
provide that once a State's election results are settled, the State 
Governor has no authority to refuse to certify that outcome. Again, our 
Constitution forbids any contrary result. But the ECA can and should be 
updated to fortify that elections in our modern democracy are dictated 
by the people, not one potentially rogue official. Congress can 
likewise enact additional laws that authorize the Department of 
Justice, as provided in existing legislative proposals, to prevent 
interference with State and local officials conducting the vote count 
and election certification to ensure the people's voice is accurately 
reflected.\180\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \180\ See, e.g., Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, Rules 
Committee Print 117-28 Text of the House Amendment to the Senate 
Amendment to H.R. 5746, Title III--Preventing Election Subversion, 
Subtitle A--Restrictions on Removal of Election Administrators, at 251-
62 (Jan. 12, 2022), https://rules.house.gov/sites/
democrats.rules.house.gov/files/BILLS-117HR5746EAS-RCP117-
28.pdf#page=251.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Third, Congress must urgently pass new laws that provide greater 
Federal protections for election officials and volunteers. Existing 
Federal criminal law generally prohibits threats made through 
interstate communications, which has been the source of the Department 
of Justice's recent prosecutions of two stolen election extremists who 
threatened officials in Nevada and Georgia.\181\ But that leaves 
enforcement gaps for certain intrastate and in-person threats that 
Federal law may not reach, and fails to protect the specific security 
needs of election officials under attack.\182\ Existing proposals in 
legislation before Congress that add new Federal criminal offenses and 
resources for the prosecutions of violent stolen election conspiracists 
would aid the Department of Justice to provide needed protections for 
election workers.\183\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \181\ See sources cited supra note 135.
    \182\ See Linda So & Jason Szep, supra note 118.
    \183\ See, e.g., Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, Rules 
Committee Print 117-28 Text of the House Amendment to the Senate 
Amendment to H.R. 5746, Subtitle B--Increased Protections for Election 
Workers at 263-64 (Jan. 12, 2022), https://rules.house.gov/sites/
democrats.rules.house.gov/files/BILLS-117HR5746EAS-RCP117-
28.pdf#page=263; Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, Rules Committee 
Print 117-28 Text of the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to 
H.R. 5746, Sec. 3205. Private Rights Of Action By Election Officials, 
Sec. 3206. Making Intimidation Of Tabulation, Canvass, And 
Certification Efforts A Crime, at 278-80 (Jan. 12, 2022), https://
rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/BILLS-
117HR5746EAS-RCP117-28.pdf#page=278.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Additionally, the Federal Government, through CISA and other 
agencies, must engage now to coordinate more trainings and provide 
additional funding for election offices to protect themselves against 
threats and take steps to remove identifying information on-line to 
avoid harassment or doxing.\184\ Programs that protect the information 
of domestic violence and stalking victims in government databases can 
serve as a model.\185\ Additionally, election officials under threat 
should be provided Federal grants to purchase home intrusion detection 
systems, and further funding for training and education related to 
maintaining greater personal security.\186\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \184\ See Brennan Ctr. for Justice, Election Officials Under 
Attack, supra note 118, at 8-9.
    \185\ Id. at 7.
    \186\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Fourth, Congress can enact new laws to strengthen protections over 
the security of State voting equipment, voters' ballots, and the 
counting process. Provisions in existing proposals before Congress 
include improving security and chain-of-custody procedures for voting 
equipment and ballots to prevent their manipulation by State actors or 
private companies during sham partisan reviews of election 
results.\187\ Federal law should also be updated to prohibit Federal 
actors from improperly seizing State or county voting equipment and 
materials.\188\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \187\ Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, Rules Committee Print 
117-28 Text of the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 
5746, Subtitle D--Protection of Election Records & Election 
Infrastructure, at 280-86 (Jan. 12, 2022), https://rules.house.gov/
sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/BILLS-117HR5746EAS-RCP117-
28.pdf#page=280.
    \188\ See, e.g., Matthew S. Schwartz, Jan. 6 panel is investigating 
a Trump administration plan to seize voting machines, NPR (Jan. 23, 
2022), https://www.npr.org/2022/01/23/1075219215/jan-6-panel-is-
investigating-a-trump-administration-plan-to-seize-voting-machine.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Fifth, Congress should enact new laws that seek to address post-
election misinformation, as well as fraudulent fundraising and spending 
on efforts to perpetuate the stolen election lies. Congress can do so 
by prohibiting misinformation campaigns intended to impede the lawful 
counting of ballots or certification of results.\189\ Congress can 
address problematic financial incentives for stolen election lies \190\ 
and protect donors by restricting fraudulent post-election fundraising 
for frivolous election contests.\191\ It can also increase post-
election spending transparency for voters by defining spending by 
candidates and groups on efforts to influence vote counting as election 
spending, so it is subject to the same limits and disclosure 
requirements as other campaign spending.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \189\ See, e.g., Social Media Misinformation and Administration in 
the 2020 General Election, Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project (Mar. 
10, 2021), https://healthyelections.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/
Social_Media_Misinformation.pdf.
    \190\ See, e.g., Isaac Stanley-Becker, et al., Prosecutors demanded 
records of Sidney Powell's fundraising groups as part of criminal 
probe, Wash. Post (Nov. 30, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/
politics/2021/11/30/sidney-powell-defend-the-republic-criminal-probe/.
    \191\ See, e.g., John L. Dorman, supra note 18.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                 ______
                                 
  Statement of Wendy R. Weiser, Vice President for Democracy, Brennan 
              Center for Justice at NYU School of Law \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of 
Law is a nonpartisan public policy and law institute that works to 
strengthen the systems of democracy and justice so that they work for 
all Americans. I am the vice president for democracy and director of 
the Brennan Center's Democracy Program, which among other issues 
focuses on voting rights and election administration. I have authored 
numerous nationally-recognized reports, studies, and articles on voting 
rights and elections. My work has been featured in academic journals 
and media outlets across the country. I have served as counsel in many 
voting rights lawsuits and have testified previously before Congress, 
and before several State legislatures, on a variety of issues relating 
to election administration. My testimony does not purport to convey the 
views, if any, of the New York University School of Law. I thank Lauren 
Miller, counsel at the Brennan Center, for her substantial assistance 
in preparing this testimony.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                             April 8, 2022
    Chairman Thompson and Members of the Select Committee: Thank you 
for the opportunity to submit this testimony to discuss the 
disinformation about the 2020 Presidential election that fueled the 
violent January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol (the 
``insurrection'') and how that disinformation continues to threaten 
voting and elections in America.
    On behalf of the Brennan Center for Justice, I thank this Committee 
for its investigation into one of the most shameful and alarming 
attacks on American democracy in our Nation's history. As you know, the 
insurrection's motivating theory was that the 2020 Presidential 
election was ``stolen'' from former President Donald Trump.\2\ This 
``Big Lie'' relies on disproven \3\ and racially charged allegations of 
wide-spread voter fraud,\4\ ballot irregularities,\5\ and conspiracies 
to otherwise ``rig'' the election.\6\ The 2020 election is over, but 
the Big Lie continues to wreak havoc on our elections. My testimony 
will explain how the same disinformation about voter fraud and the 2020 
election that drove the January 6 insurrection is fueling on-going 
efforts to undermine voting rights and sabotage the electoral process 
across the country, as well as efforts to attack election officials and 
otherwise undermine impartial election administration.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ ``Transcript of Trump's Speech at Rally before US Capitol 
Riot,'' Associated Press, January 13, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/
election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-capitol-siege-media-
e79eb5164613d6718e9f4502eb471f27; Brian Naylor, ``Read Trump's Jan. 6 
Speech, a Key Part of Impeachment Trial,'' National Public Radio, 
February 10, 2021, https://wwwnpr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-
jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial; Lauren Leatherby et al., 
``How a Presidential Rally Turned into a Capitol Rampage,'' New York 
Times, January 12, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/
12/us/capitol-mob-timeline.html; and Southern Poverty Law Center, The 
Road to Jan. 6: A Year of Extremist Mobilization, https://
www.splcenter.org/news/2021/12/30/road-jan-6-year-extremist-
mobilization.
    \3\ Daniel Funke, ``Fact Check: How We Know the 2020 Election 
Results Were Legitimate, Not `Rigged' as Donald Trump Claims,'' USA 
Today, January 6, 2022, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/
2022/01/06/fact-check-donald-trump-2020-election-results/9115875002/; 
``Joint Statement from Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating 
Council & the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive 
Committees,'' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, 
November 12, 2020, accessed April 8, 2022, https://www.cisa.gov/news/
2020/11/12/joint-statement-elections-infrastructure-government-
coordinating-council-election; and Brennan Center for Justice, It's 
Official: The Election Was Secure, 2020, https://www.brennancenter.org/
our-work/research-reports/its-official-election-was-secure.
    \4\ Donald Trump, interview by Maria Bartiromo, Sunday Morning 
Futures, Fox News, November 29, 2020, https://vimeo.com/485180163.
    \5\ ``Tweets of November 16, 2020,'' American Presidency Project, 
UC Santa Barbara, November 16, 2020, accessed April 8, 2022, https://
www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-november-16-2020.
    \6\ American Presidency Project, ``Tweets.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Part I of my testimony walks through evidence of how the Big Lie is 
driving two anti-democratic trends in the States: The swift, aggressive 
push to restrict access to voting rights and the novel push to enable 
partisan actors to interfere in election administration. In the 12 
months following the insurrection, 19 States passed 34 restrictive 
voting bills, or bills that make it more difficult to vote, according 
to the Brennan Center's count.\7\ This was a significant escalation 
over years past. At the same time, State lawmakers pressed a new 
species of legislation-election sabotage bills--which enable partisan 
actors to interfere with or manipulate elections by changing who runs 
elections, counts the votes, and how. At least 11 election sabotage 
laws passed in 9 States in 2021.\8\ This anti-democratic push continues 
today; as of the Brennan Center's January 14, 2022 count, State 
lawmakers had introduced, pre-filed, or carried over more than 250 
restrictive voting bills \9\ and 41 election sabotage bills.\10\ These 
bills are much more closely connected to the push to overturn the 2020 
election than many realize.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\ Brennan Center for Justice, Voting Laws Roundup: December 2021, 
2021, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-
laws-roundup-december-2021.
    \8\ Will Wilder, Derek Tisler, and Wendy R. Weiser, The Election 
Sabotage Scheme and How Congress Can Stop It 2021, Brennan Center for 
Justice, 3-6, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/
election-sabotage-scheme-and-how-congress-can-stop-it.
    \9\ Brennan Center for Justice, Voting Laws Roundup: February 2022, 
2022, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-
laws-roundup-february-2022.
    \10\ Brennan Center, Voting Laws Roundup: February 2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    My testimony will establish, first, that many of these new 
restrictive voting and election sabotage bills stem directly from the 
false allegations made in lawsuits brought by former President Trump's 
campaign and his supporters in their bid to change the 2020 election 
results. Second, it will demonstrate that the State lawmakers leading 
this legislative charge are among the same individuals who rejected the 
2020 election results. Almost all of them made public statements 
connecting their support for restrictive voting legislation to 
disinformation about the legitimacy of the 2020 election or wide-spread 
voter fraud. Already, the voting legislation that they succeeded in 
passing is creating tangible, negative effects on voters and 
disproportionately impacting voters of color.
    Part II of my testimony will describe two ways in which the Big Lie 
is driving attacks on impartial election administration. First, false 
claims about voter fraud and the legitimacy of the 2020 election are 
triggering attacks on our Nation's election administrators, leading an 
unprecedented number to contemplate quitting. A recent Brennan Center 
survey found that 1 in 6 election officials have experienced threats 
because of their job, and nearly 1 in 3 know of at least one colleague 
who has left their position due to safety concerns, increased threats, 
or intimidation.\11\ Second, my testimony lays out how the Big Lie is 
politicizing election administration in other ways. Among other things, 
2022 candidates for election administration positions are embracing 
election denial in their pitch to voters and donors. Races that feature 
election denial have seen massive increases in contributions, 
particularly from out-of-State donors. These trends pose a serious risk 
to impartial election administration in America.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\ Brennan Center for Justice, Local Election Officials Survey 
(March 2022) 2022, 6, 19, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/
research-reports/local-election-officials-survey-march-2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In short, there is ample evidence that the disinformation that 
fueled the January 6th insurrection continues to undermine our election 
system. With 2022 primaries in progress, and the 2024 Presidential 
election around the corner, the dangers to American democracy loom 
large.
    This Committee's work is critical to repairing the breach in the 
fabric of our Nation caused by the January 6th insurrection. It is 
critical to ensuring that the perpetrators of the violent insurrection 
are held accountable, and its victims receive justice. It also is 
critical to ensuring that this reprehensible history does not repeat 
itself. And it is critical to ensuring the that the Big Lie that fueled 
the insurrection does not continue to grow and further damage our 
democracy.
    i. the same election denial claims and rhetoric that fueled the 
    insurrection are driving damaging vote suppression and election 
                            sabotage efforts
    Since the 2020 election, the country has witnessed two aggressive, 
anti-democratic developments in State legislatures. First, efforts to 
suppress voting have soared. In 2021 alone, at least 19 States passed 
34 restrictive voting laws, or laws that make it more difficult to vote 
\12\--the largest number that the Brennan Center has seen in any year 
since it first began tracking voting legislation in 2011.\13\ Indeed, 
between 2011 and 2021, at least 33 States passed 97 restrictive voting 
bills, and more than a third of those laws passed last year alone.\14\ 
This legislative push was Nation-wide; overall, legislators introduced 
more than 400 restrictive voting bills in 49 States in 2021.\15\ This 
trend continues in 2022. As of the Brennan Center's January 14, 2022 
count, State lawmakers had introduced, pre-filed, or carried over more 
than 250 restrictive voting bills.\16\ The provisions in these bills 
range from curtailing access to mail voting and enacting new or 
stricter voter ID requirements, to imposing new barriers for voters and 
limiting or eliminating same-day voter registration.\17\ These numbers 
continue to grow.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\ Brennan Center, Voting Laws Roundup: December 2021.
    \13\ Brennan Center, Voting Laws Roundup: December 2021.
    \14\ Brennan Center, Voting Laws Roundup: December 2021; Brennan 
Center for Justice, Voting Laws Roundup 2020, 2020, https://
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-
2020-0; Brennan Center for Justice, Voting Laws Roundup 2019, 2019, 
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-
roundup-2019; Brennan Center for Justice, Voting Laws Roundup 2018, 
2018, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-
laws-roundup-2018; Brennan Center for Justice, Voting Laws Roundup 
2017, 2017, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/
voting-laws-roundup-2017; Brennan Center for Justice, Voting Laws 
Roundup 2016, 2016, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
reports/voting-laws-roundup-2016; Brennan Center for Justice, Voting 
Laws Roundup 2015, 2015, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/
research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-2015; Brennan Center for Justice, 
Voting Laws Roundup 2014, 2014, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/
research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-2014; Brennan Center for Justice, 
Voting Laws Roundup 2013, 2013, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/
research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-2013; Brennan Center for Justice, 
Election 2012: Voting Laws Roundup, 2012, https://
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/election-2012-voting-
laws-roundup; and Wendy R. Weiser and Nhu-Y Ngo, Voting Rights in 2011: 
A Legislative Round-Up, 2011, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/
research-reports/voting-rights-2011-legislative-round.
    \15\ Brennan Center, Voting Laws Roundup: December 2021.
    \16\ Brennan Center, Voting Laws Roundup: February 2022.
    \17\ Brennan Center, Voting Laws Roundup: December 2021; and 
Brennan Center, Voting Laws Roundup: February 2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Second, States have seen a dramatic spike in legislation that would 
enable partisan actors to meddle in election administration and vote 
counting processes--otherwise known as ``election sabotage'' bills. The 
Brennan Center identified at least 11 election sabotage laws passed in 
9 States in 2021,\18\ including laws in 2 States that allow partisan 
actors to remove election officials from their positions and replace 
them close to an election,\19\ laws in 6 States that create criminal 
penalties for election officials who take certain steps to make it 
easier for individuals to vote,\20\ and laws in 3 States that empower 
partisan poll watchers to interfere in the vote-counting process.\21\ 
Our January 14, 2022 count found that legislators in at least 13 States 
already had pre-filed and introduced an unprecedented 41 such bills 
that would threaten the people and processes that make elections 
work.\22\ These provisions range from allowing any citizen to initiate 
or conduct biased election audits; to imposing new criminal or civil 
penalties on election officials for making unintentional errors; to 
allowing partisan actors to remove election officials from office.\23\ 
These numbers also continue to grow.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\ Wilder, Tisler, and Weiser, Election Sabotage Scheme, 3-6.
    \19\ Wilder, Tisler, and Weiser, Election Sabotage Scheme, 3.
    \20\ Wilder, Tisler, and Weiser, Election Sabotage Scheme, 5.
    \21\ Wilder, Tisler, and Weiser, Election Sabotage Scheme, 5.
    \22\ Brennan Center, Voting Laws Roundup: February 2022.
    \23\ Brennan Center, Voting Laws Roundup: February 2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Brennan Center has been chronicling and studying these negative 
developments. Specifically, two recent analyses demonstrate that the 
same false allegations of a stolen election that drove the insurrection 
are driving these on-going efforts to undermine voting rights and 
sabotage electoral processes. One analysis examined the text of 
restrictive voting and election sabotage legislation to show that it 
closely maps onto the same allegations made in lawsuits brought by 
former President Trump and his supporters in the wake of the 2020 
election--all of which were unsuccessful. The second analysis reviewed 
the rhetoric of those legislators leading restrictive voting and 
election sabotage efforts to establish that these bills rest upon the 
same debunked rhetoric of wide-spread voter fraud that fueled the 
insurrection.
A. There Is Strong Evidence That the False Claims That Fueled the 
        Insurrection Are Fueling Vote Suppression and Election Sabotage 
        Legislation
    For more than a decade, the Brennan Center has tracked and reported 
on new laws that make it more difficult for individuals to vote.\24\ 
From the outset, baseless claims of voter fraud fueled this legislative 
movement.\25\ Following the 2020 election, former President Trump and 
his supporters used this same rhetoric to conjure up claims of a 
``stolen'' election and launch a full-scale effort to overturn the 
Presidential election results in key States, including through a flurry 
of unsuccessful lawsuits discussed in section i below. In the wake of 
that failed effort, election denial proponents began rapidly 
introducing and passing State bills that restrict access to voting and 
make it easier for partisan actors to meddle in election 
administration. Our research demonstrates that this unprecedented 
legislative push was driven in significant part by claims that the 2020 
election was stolen, as reflected by the similarity between the false 
claims made in lawsuits and the new legislative provisions, as well as 
by the public statements made by legislative sponsors concerning the 
legitimacy of the 2020 election and wide-spread voter fraud.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \24\ Brennan Center, Voting Laws Roundup: February 2022.
    \25\ Brennan Center for Justice, Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth, 
2017, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/
debunking-voter-fraud-myth; Brennan Center, Refuting the Myth of Voter 
Fraud; and ``The Myth of Voter Fraud,'' Brennan Center for Justice, 
accessed April 8, 2022, https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-
every-american-can-vote/vote-suppression/myth-voter-fraud.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It is well-established that voter fraud, while pernicious, is 
vanishingly rare in U.S. elections.\26\ Courts universally rejected 
lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2020 election result based upon false 
theories of fraud.\27\ Election officials and experts of all political 
persuasions overwhelmingly agree that the 2020 election was one of the 
most secure in modern history.\28\ Nevertheless, false claims about 
wide-spread voter fraud and the legitimacy of the 2020 election 
continue to drive legislation and policy efforts in the States.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \26\ Brennan Center, Refuting the Myth of Voter Fraud.
    \27\ Rosalind S. Helderman and Elise Viebeck, `` `The Last Wall': 
How Dozens of Judges across the Political Spectrum Rejected Trump's 
Efforts to Overturn the Election,'' Washington Post, December 12, 2020, 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/judges-trump-election-lawsuits/
2020/12/12/e3a57224-3a72-11eb-98c4-
25dc9f4987e8story.html?utmcampaign=wptodayshead- 
lines&utmmedium=email&utmsource=newsletter&wpisrc=nlheadlines.
    \28\ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, ``Joint 
Statement''; and Brennan Center, It's Official: The Election Was 
Secure.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
            i. Comparison of False Legal Claims about the 2020 Election 
                    and State Legislation Introduced and Passed in 2021
    In the days before and after the 2020 election, former President 
Trump's campaign and his supporters filed a blizzard of unsuccessful 
lawsuits in an attempt to alter the election's outcome.\29\ These 
lawsuits made a variety of allegations that the election was rife with 
fraud and irregularities. A recent Brennan Center analysis demonstrates 
that the false allegations contained in these suits map directly onto 
many provisions in the wave of new restrictive voting and election 
sabotage measures passed in 2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \29\ ``Voting Rights Litigation Tracker 2020,'' Brennan Center for 
Justice, July 28, 2020, accessed April 8, 2022, https://
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/voting-rights-litigation-
tracker-2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The analysis focuses on those lawsuits that raised false claims of 
fraud and attempted to disrupt or overturn the election, which were 
filed in 17 States.\30\ Although courts rejected these suits,\31\ in 
2021 legislators in 16 of the 17 States where suits were filed 
introduced bills to restrict access to voting.\32\ The majority of 
lawsuits filed before or immediately after the 2020 election centered 
on allegations that the mail voting process was not secure, despite 
well-settled evidence to the contrary.\33\ Not surprisingly, the most 
common theme of new restrictive voting legislation last year was, in 
turn, an effort to restrict mail voting.\34\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \30\ Katie Friel and Will Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation 
in Anti-Voter Lawsuits and Anti-Voter Legislation, Brennan Center for 
Justice (forthcoming), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
reports/finding-same-misinformation-anti-voter-lawsuits-and-anti-voter. 
The Brennan Center's analysis focused exclusively on those 2020 
election lawsuits that relied on false claims about voter fraud and 
sought to disrupt or overturn the election. The analysis included 
lawsuits filed before the election that relied on false fraud claims 
and sought to enjoin certain methods of voting or have certain 
categories of votes cast out. It also included lawsuits filed after the 
election that used false claims of fraud to seek to invalidate certain 
categories of votes or overturn the election entirely. The analysis 
excluded cases filed by pro se litigants that made vague allegations of 
fraud that were not specific to any State or jurisdiction.
    \31\ Helderman and Viebeck, `` `The Last Wall.' ''
    \32\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation.
    \33\ Wendy R. Weiser, ``The False Narrative of Vote-by-Mail 
Fraud,'' Brennan Center for Justice, April 10, 2020, https://
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/false-narrative-vote-
mail-fraud.
    \34\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In fact, the connections between the 2020 litigation claims and the 
2021 restrictive voting bills were much more specific than that. In 15 
of the 16 States with both litigation and legislation, at least one 
provision in a new restrictive voting bill can be directly traced to a 
specific false claim made in a 2020 election lawsuit in that State.\35\ 
The similarities remain just as strong when looking only at the most 
extreme category of lawsuits: Those filed after Election Day seeking to 
overturn the results or block certification of an election. These 
lawsuits, filed in at least 12 States, relied heavily upon spurious 
claims of fraud that courts ultimately rejected.\36\ Yet in 11 of these 
12 States, a provision contained in a 2021 restrictive voting bill 
directly mirrors false claims made in those suits.\37\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \35\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation.
    \36\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation.
    \37\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In Arizona, for example, one 2020 lawsuit contested the results of 
the Presidential election based in part upon an unproven claim that 
out-of-State voters cast ballots in Arizona.\38\ The case was 
dismissed, but in 2021 Arizona legislators introduced a bill to expand 
voter roll purges in an effort to remove hypothetical out-of-State 
voters from the voter rolls.\39\ Similarly, multiple cases in Wisconsin 
challenged election officials' decision to accept absentee ballots 
without a photo ID during the pandemic based upon the State's exemption 
to the voter ID requirement for individuals who are ``indefinitely 
confined.''\40\ In 2021, legislators introduced two bills to repeal the 
exemption.\41\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \38\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation; and Pet. 
For Elec. Cont., Stevenson v. Ducey, No. CV2020-096490 (Ariz. Super. 
Ct. 2020).
    \39\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation; and H.B. 
2358, 55th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2021).
    \40\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation; and Pls.' 
Compl., Feehan v. Wis. Elections Commission, 2020 WL 7630410 (E.D. Wis. 
2020).
    \41\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation. S.B. 204, 
2021 Leg., Reg. Sess. (Wis. 2021). One of the two bills (Wis. S.B. 204) 
was passed by the legislature but subsequently vetoed by the Governor.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In some States, the connections between 2020 litigation claims and 
2021 legislative efforts were especially pronounced. In Georgia, for 
instance, litigation pushed four spurious claims to cast doubt upon the 
election results: (i) Poll watchers were deliberately blocked from 
observing ballot processing, creating doubt in the accuracy of the 
counting process; (ii) the State's use of drop boxes increased the risk 
of fraud; (iii) absentee ballots generally threaten election integrity 
and lead to fraud; and (iv) private foundations used grant funding to 
gain undue influence over election officials.\42\ These claims were 
unsuccessful, and yet the Georgia legislature reinforced them by 
signing into law Senate Bill 202, which: (i) Expands legal rights of 
poll watchers to observe elections without constraints by election 
administrators; (ii) limits the availability of drop boxes; (iii) 
significantly restricts access to mail voting by imposing stricter 
identification requirements for absentee voters and narrows the window 
to apply for absentee ballots; and (iv) prohibits local election 
administrators from accepting funding from private sources.\43\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \42\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation.
    \43\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation; and S.B. 
202, 156th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Ga. 2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Pennsylvania illustrates the connection between baseless lawsuits 
challenging the integrity of the 2020 election and 2021 election 
sabotage provisions. Many of the legal challenges in Pennsylvania 
falsely claimed that the State's certification of the 2020 election was 
somehow invalid.\44\ Although unfounded, these claims did influence 
Pennsylvania legislators, who introduced at least five resolutions in 
2021 directly aimed at invalidating the results of the 2020 
election.\45\ Legal challenges in the State also made allegations of 
fraud as to the State's ``notice and cure'' practice, by which election 
officials notify voters if there is an issue with their mail-in ballot 
and provide the voter with an opportunity to fix the mistake.\46\ While 
those claims were rejected, legislators subsequently introduced a bill 
to prohibit election officials from providing any opportunity for 
voters to cure their mail ballots.\47\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \44\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation.
    \45\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation.
    \46\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation.
    \47\ Friel and Wilder, Finding the Same Misinformation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
            ii. Analysis of Public Statements by Proponents of 
                    Restrictive Voting and Election Sabotage 
                    Legislation
    A second recent Brennan Center analysis examined public statements 
made by sponsors and key proponents of restrictive voting and election 
sabotage legislation in the States and found that those sponsors 
justified their legislation using the same discredited claims of a 
wide-spread fraud and a stolen election that fueled the insurrection. 
The analysis focused on two sets of public rhetoric: (i) Statements 
made by the chief sponsors and co-sponsors of the 13 most restrictive 
new laws passed in 2021; and (ii) statements concerning all 25 such 
bills introduced in Georgia and all 31 introduced in Pennsylvania in 
2021, as these two States saw some of the most aggressive restrictive 
voting and election sabotage bills.\48\ In total, the analysis 
uncovered relevant statements for 58 bills \49\ made in legislative 
proceedings, at campaign events, to reporters, and on social media, 
with striking results.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \48\ Andrew Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric from Sponsors of State 
Voter Suppression Legislation, Brennan Center for Justice 
(forthcoming), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/
election-denial-rhetoric-sponsors-state-voter-suppression-legislation. 
The analysis excluded legislation with more minor voting restrictions 
and mixed legislation that included both provisions that restricted 
voting access and expanded it.
    \49\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric. In total, the analysis 
reviewed 68 bills (one of which is a Georgia bill that was counted both 
in the list of the most restrictive new laws and in the list of 
restrictive voting bills in Georgia). Fifty-eight of these 68 bills 
contained relevant public statements from their sponsors.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    We found, first, that the vast majority of the 58 bills were 
sponsored by legislators who publicly questioned the validity of the 
2020 election, including the chief sponsors of 10 of the 13 most 
restrictive new State laws.\50\ For example, Arkansas Representative 
Mark Lowery, who served as the chief sponsor of legislation enhancing 
voter ID requirements,\51\ notably stated that he ``believe[s] Donald 
Trump was elected President'' in 2020 and signed a letter asking for 
audits of the 2020 election in every State and decertification of any 
result declared ``prematurely and inaccurately.''\52\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \50\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
    \51\ H.B. 1112, 93d Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Ark. 2021).
    \52\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Similarly, sponsors of 20 of the 25 restrictive bills introduced in 
Georgia last year questioned the election's outcome, mostly by 
suggesting that the surge in absentee ballots in 2020 led to fraud.\53\ 
Representative Barry Fleming, chair of the Georgia House Special 
Committee on Elections formed in the wake of the 2020 election, 
suggested in an op-ed that unreliable mail ballots changed the outcome 
of certain races in 2020.\54\ He argued that ``Democrats [were] relying 
on the always-suspect absentee balloting process to inch ahead in 
Georgia and other close States'' and proceeded to compare mail ballots 
to ``the shady part of town down near the docks you do not want to 
wander into because the chance of being shanghaied is 
significant.''\55\ He added: ``Expect the Georgia Legislature to 
address that in our next session in January [2021].''\56\ 
Representative Fleming later shepherded Senate Bill 202--an omnibus 
vote suppression and election sabotage package--through the House and 
served as the lead sponsor on two other restrictive bills.\57\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \53\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
    \54\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric; and Barry Fleming, ``Guest 
Column: Republican Party Wins on Election Day, and Future Is Bright,'' 
Augusta Chronicle, November 15, 2020, https://www.augustachronicle.com/
story/opinion/columns/guest/2020/11/15/guest-column-republican-party-
wins-on-election-day-and-future-is-bright/43155971/.
    \55\ Fleming, ``Guest Column: Republican Party Wins.''
    \56\ Fleming, ``Guest Column: Republican Party Wins.''
    \57\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric; and S.B. 202, 156th Gen. 
Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Ga. 2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    And in Pennsylvania, sponsors of 25 of the 31 restrictive bills 
introduced in 2021 questioned the 2020 election's integrity.\58\ 
Representative Russ Diamond, for instance, wrote a Facebook post 
alleging that there were ``troubling discrepancies between the numbers 
of total votes counted and total numbers of voters who voted in the 
2020 General Election.''\59\ He also believed that officials counted 
200,000 extra votes and considered certifying Pennsylvania's election 
results to have been ``absolutely premature, unconfirmed, and in 
error.''\60\ Representative Diamond subsequently sponsored five bills 
to restrict voting access in 2021 and served as the lead sponsor on 
four.\61\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \58\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
    \59\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
    \60\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
    \61\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Second, sponsors of many vote suppression and election sabotage 
bills introduced last year expressly connected those bills to false 
claims about the 2020 election. Sponsors of 6 of the 13 most 
restrictive bills made connections between voter fraud and the bill at 
hand.\62\ For example, when introducing Senate Bill 1111, which would 
have limited the types of addresses at which voters register to vote 
and otherwise enhances ID requirements,\63\ Texas Senator Paul 
Bettencourt maintained that the ``November 2020 election demonstrated 
the lack of transparency and lack of integrity within the election 
process.''\64\ Along with six other ``election integrity'' bills that 
he filed, Senator Bettencourt posited that Senate Bill 1111 would help 
``to make sure the problems we faced in 2020 will not happen 
again.''\65\ In Pennsylvania, Senator Doug Mastriano--who was present 
on Capitol grounds on January 6, held hearings in which Rudy Giuliani 
spread false claims of voter fraud, attempted to lead a partisan audit 
of the 2020 election, and reportedly claimed that he saw ``better 
elections in Afghanistan'' \66\--went on to co-author a memorandum in 
support of Senate Bill 515, which would repeal no-excuse mail 
voting.\67\ The memo echoed his earlier rhetoric by claiming that the 
bill would ``once again restore confidence in our democracy and shine a 
light into the shadow of doubt that has been cast over Americans' most 
democratic process.''\68\ Likewise in Georgia, sponsors of 9 of the 
State's 25 restrictive bills argued that the provisions in those bills 
were intended to address purported 2020 election fraud.\69\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \62\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
    \63\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric; and S.B. 1111, 87th Leg., 
Reg. Sess. (Tex. 2021).
    \64\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
    \65\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
    \66\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
    \67\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
    \68\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
    \69\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Finally, and not surprisingly, our analysis found that sponsors of 
every piece of introduced and enacted legislation publicly justified 
their legislation as measures to address voter fraud and election 
integrity--often in language mirroring that used by proponents of 
conspiracy theories relating to the 2020 election.\70\ This language 
included, for example, trying to ``restore or confirm confidence in the 
election process'' or creating ``an election where legal votes count, 
and illegal votes do not.''\71\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \70\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
    \71\ Garber, Election Denial Rhetoric.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                 ______
                                 
    In short, the connections uncovered by the Brennan Center's 
research demonstrate that the same election denial that drove 
litigation and rhetoric to overturn the 2020 election result played a 
critical role in driving restrictive voting and election sabotage 
efforts in 2021.
B. Restrictive Voting Legislation Fueled by Disinformation About the 
        2020 Election and Voter Fraud Is Harming Voters, and 
        Disproportionately Voters of Color
    The spike in restrictive voting legislation in 2021 already is 
harming voters, with a disproportionate amount of this harm falling on 
voters of color. First, existing research has found measurable, 
negative turnout effects for many of the types of provisions passed in 
2021.\72\ For example, multiple social science studies have found that 
measures that create stricter voter ID requirements or limit polling 
place access markedly depress voter turnout, with larger effects for 
voters of color.\73\ Other studies have found that reducing early in-
person voting opportunities can reduce turnout,\74\ as do earlier 
registration deadlines \75\ and policies leading to long lines on 
Election Day.\76\ Where empirical studies have not found a negative 
turnout impact, that does not mean harm is not occurring, but rather 
that it cannot be measured by existing empirical tools--or that large 
amounts of resources have been invested to overcome these barriers and 
maintain turnout levels.\77\ Already, the new law led to the rejection 
of thousands of mail-in ballots in the March 2022 primary election.\78\ 
In Texas's largest counties, rejection rates ranged from between 6- and 
almost 22%--significantly higher than the State's 1% rejection rate in 
the 2020 election cycle.\79\ Similarly, after the passage of mail 
voting restrictions in Georgia Senate Bill 202, voters in the State's 
2021 local elections were 45 times more likely to have their mail 
ballot applications rejected--and ultimately not vote as a result--than 
in 2020.\80\ These examples represent just a small slice of the surge 
in new restrictive voting legislation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \72\ See, e.g., Brennan Center for Justice, The Impact of Voter 
Suppression on Communities of Color, 2022, https://
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/impact-voter-
suppression-communities-color.
    \73\ Brennan Center, Impact of Voter Suppression on Communities of 
Color.
    \74\ Hannah L. Walker, Michael C. Herron, and Daniel A. Smith, 
``Early Voting Changes and Voter Turnout: North Carolina in the 2016 
General Election,'' Political Behavior 41 (2019); and Ethan Kaplan and 
Haishan Yuan, ``Early Voting Laws, Voter Turnout, and Partisan Vote 
Composition: Evidence from Ohio,'' American Economic Journal: Applied 
Economics 12(1) (2020).
    \75\ Greg Vonnahme, ``Registration Deadlines and Turnout in 
Context,'' Political Behavior 34 (2012).
    \76\ Stephen Pettigrew, ``The Downstream Consequences of Long 
Waits: How Lines at the Precinct Depress Future Turnout,'' Electoral 
Studies 71 (2021).
    \77\ S.B. 1., 87th Leg., 1st Spec. Sess. (Tex. 2021)
    \78\ Kevin Morris, Coryn Grange, and Zoe Merriman, The Impact of 
Restrictive Voting Legislation, Brennan Center for Justice, 2022, 
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/impact-
restrictive-voting-legislation.
    \79\ Morris, Grange, and Merriman, Restrictive Voting Legislation.
    \80\ Ryan Little and Ari Berman, ``We Uncovered How Many Georgians 
Were Disenfranchised by GOP Voting Restrictions. It's Staggering.'' 
Mother Jones, January 28, 2022, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/
2022/01/gop-voting-law-disenfranshised-georgia-voters/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Second, as new laws begin to take effect, there is mounting 
evidence that they already are disenfranchising voters. In Texas, for 
example, Senate Bill 1 creates a more stringent voter ID requirement 
pursuant to which voters must provide their driver's license number or 
partial social security number that matches the county's own files.
    Further, these new laws target and fall most harshly on voters of 
color. There is a growing body of social science research proving that 
restrictive voting laws disproportionately impact voters of color.\81\ 
There also is mounting evidence that the laws passed this year are 
especially like to have, and already are having, that effect.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \81\ Brennan Center, Impact of Voter Suppression on Communities of 
Color.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For example, new laws making mail voting more difficult target and 
already are harming voters of color. Black voters--who make up about a 
third of the electorate in Georgia--comprised half of all late ballot 
application rejections in the State during 2021 local elections.\82\ In 
Florida, an analysis of drop box usage amongst different groups 
revealed that the State's new restrictions on this voting method will 
impose greater burdens on Black voters than on other groups.\83\ And in 
Arizona, the State's shorter window for voters to add missing 
signatures to mail ballots will especially harm Navajo voters, many of 
whom would have to travel hundreds of miles to an election office to 
add their signature.\84\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \82\ Morris, Grange, and Merriman, Restrictive Voting Legislation.
    \83\ Morris, Grange, and Merriman, Restrictive Voting Legislation; 
and S.B. 90, 2021 Leg., Reg. Sess. (Fla. 2021).
    \84\ Morris, Grange, and Merriman, Restrictive Voting Legislation; 
S.B. 1003, 55th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2021); and Navajo Nation, 
Office of the President and Vice President, ``Navajo Nation Leaders 
Urge Arizona Governor to Veto Voter Suppression Bill,'' news release, 
April 30, 2021, https://www.navajo-nsn.gov/News%20Releases/OPVP/2021/
Apr/FOR%20IMMEDIATE- 
%20RELEASE%20%20Navajo%20Nation%20leaders%20urge%20Arizona%20Governor%20
to%- 20veto%20voter%20suppression%20bill.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    There also is significant evidence that laws restricting voters 
from receiving help when voting or registering to vote 
disproportionately impact voters of color.\85\ Black and Latino voters 
are more likely to depend upon the help of third-party organizations to 
register and vote in Florida.\86\ As a result, the State's new limits 
on these organizations will create a disproportionate impact on them as 
compared to white voters.\87\ Similarly, many Native American voters in 
Montana rely upon paid ballot collectors, as they often have infrequent 
mail service and limited access to locations at which they can submit 
their ballot.\88\ A new State law bans the use of paid ballot 
collectors, creating a more burdensome voting process for many Native 
Americans, especially those with disabilities or who may lack access to 
transportation.\89\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \85\ Morris, Grange, and Merriman, Restrictive Voting Legislation.
    \86\ Morris, Grange, and Merriman, Restrictive Voting Legislation.
    \87\ Morris, Grange, and Merriman, Restrictive Voting Legislation; 
and Fla. S.B. 90.
    \88\ Morris, Grange, and Merriman, Restrictive Voting Legislation.
    \89\ Morris, Grange, and Merriman, Restrictive Voting Legislation; 
and H.B. 530, 2021 Leg., Reg. Sess. (Mont. 2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Further, new voter identification laws will disproportionately harm 
voters of color. For example, although Black registered voters account 
for only 30% of Georgia's registered voters, they comprise more than 
half of those registrants without a qualifying State ID number or 
driver's license under Senate Bill 202.\90\ This is consistent with 
existing research that shows the racial turnout gap grows when States 
enact strict voter ID laws.\91\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \90\ Morris, Grange, and Merriman, Restrictive Voting Legislation.
    \91\ Brennan Center, Impact of Voter Suppression on Communities of 
Color.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These disparate impacts are not coincidental. There is a growing 
body of evidence that the push to restrict access to voting in the 
States is inextricable from race. Social science studies over the past 
decade have linked restrictive voting legislation to increases in 
political participation or population growth by voters of color.\92\ 
Forthcoming Brennan Center research provides evidence that the 
disinformation fueling restrictive voting legislation is perceived as 
race-based and that racial resentment is one of the most significant 
factors driving efforts to make voting more difficult.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \92\ Brennan Center, Impact of Voter Suppression on Communities of 
Color; Daniel R. Biggers and Michael J. Hanmer, ``Understanding the 
Adoption of Voter Identification Laws in the American States,'' 
American Politics Research 45 (2017); Keith G. Bentele and Erin E. 
O'Brien, ``Jim Crow 2.0? Why States Consider and Adopt Restrictive 
Voter Access Policies,'' Perspectives on Politics 11 (2013); and Angela 
Behrens, Christopher Uggen, and Jeff Manza, ``Ballot Manipulation and 
the `Menace of Negro Domination': Racial Threat and Felon 
Disenfranchisement in the United States, 1850-2002,'' American Journal 
of Sociology 109 (2003).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  ii. the same election denial that drove the insurrection threatens 
                   impartial election administrators
    In addition to these on-going threats to voting rights and 
electoral processes, disinformation about the 2020 election and voter 
fraud also is driving a wave of attacks on impartial election 
administrators. This risks triggering an election official retention 
crisis as experienced and capable officials leave or are forced out of 
their positions. Election denial also is politicizing--and 
nationalizing--the races by which these election officials are chosen, 
raising fears about who will replace the officials from both parties 
\93\ who worked tirelessly to hold the line against election sabotage 
during the 2020 election.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \93\ The 2020 Democracy Fund/Reed College Survey of Local Election 
Officials found that 44% of local election officials surveyed 
identified as Republican, compared to 33% who identified as Democrat 
and 22% who described themselves as Independent (among the 72% of 
respondents who shared their party identification). Paul Gronke et al., 
``Pursuing Diversity and Representation Among Local Election 
Officials,'' Democracy Fund, May 20, 2021, https://democracyfund.org/
idea/pursuing-diversity-and-representation-among-local-election-
officials/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A. Disinformation About the 2020 Election and Voter Fraud Is Driving 
        Attacks on Election Officials and Pushing Them out of Their 
        Positions
    Election officials are facing unprecedented levels of threats and 
harassment. These attacks, which range from vigilante threats and 
intimidation to overt political interference and threats of 
prosecution, are forcing impartial, experienced election workers across 
the country to question their personal safety. Many of these attacks 
stem from the same election denial that fueled both the insurrection 
and the surge in restrictive voter and election sabotage legislation 
discussed above.
            i. Vigilante Threats and Harassment
    In the wake of the 2020 election, threats and harassment against 
State and local election officials have skyrocketed.\94\ A recent 
survey of local election officials conducted by the Brennan Center 
reveals that 1 in 6 local election officials have experienced threats, 
ranging from racist and gendered harassment to death threats that named 
the election official's spouse and children.\95\ More than 3 in 4 local 
election officials said that threats have increased in recent years, 
and nearly 1 in 3 know of at least one election worker who has left 
their job at least in part because of fears for their safety.\96\ These 
findings reaffirm previous research conducted by the Brennan Center, 
which detailed patterns of harassment and interference directed at all 
levels of State and local election administration following the 2020 
election.\97\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \94\ Brennan Center for Justice and Bipartisan Policy Center, 
Election Officials Under Attack, 2021, https://www.brennancenter.org/
our-work/policy-solutions/election-officials-under-attack, 3-5.
    \95\ Brennan Center, Local Election Officials Survey, 6; Linda So 
and Jason Szep, ``Exclusive--Two Election Workers Break Silence after 
Enduring Trump Backers' Threats,'' Reuters, December 10, 2021, https://
www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-threats-georgia-exclusiv-
idCAKBN2IP0VZ; and James Verini, ``He Wanted to Count Every Vote in 
Philadelphia. His Party Had Other Ideas,'' New York Times Magazine, 
December 16, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/magazine/trump-
election-philadelphia-republican.html.
    \96\ Brennan Center, Local Election Officials Survey, 5, 19.
    \97\ Brennan Center and Bipartisan Policy Center, Election 
Officials Under Attack.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Many of these attacks are traceable to the same stolen election 
allegations that fueled the insurrection. The violent threats against 
election workers have often explicitly invoked the baseless narratives 
of wide-spread election fraud and a stolen election. One email 
threatening to bomb polling places in Georgia declared that ``no one at 
these places will be spared unless and until Trump is guaranteed to be 
POTUS again.''\98\ In another case, a 63-year-old city clerk--who now 
carries a handgun out of fear for her safety--recalls a man who 
harassed her on the street and yelled ``why did you allow Trump to 
lose? Why did you cheat?''\99\ Election officials themselves have 
attributed increasing threats against them to disinformation; nearly 2 
in 3 respondents in the Brennan Center's survey of local election 
officials believe that false information is making their job more 
dangerous.\100\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \98\ Linda So, ``Trump-Inspired Death Threats Are Terrorizing 
Election Workers,'' Reuters, June 11, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/
investigates/special-report/usa-trump-georgia-threats/.
    \99\ Kyung Lah and Kim Berryman, ``This Grandmother Has Overseen 
Dozens of Elections in Her City. And after 2020, She Carries a Gun,'' 
CNN, January 21, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/21/politics/
michigan-wisconsin-election-worker-intimidation/index.html.
    \100\ Brennan Center, Local Election Officials Survey, 12.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Threats and harassment driven by election denial have continued at 
a dangerous pace into 2022. A recent POLITICO review across major 
social media platforms revealed a ``flood'' of recent posts promoting 
2020 stolen election theories, including posts that used violent 
imagery and explicitly discussed attacking election officials.\101\ In 
February, the Department of Homeland Security issued an advisory 
warning that election fraud disinformation could motivate violent 
attacks on democratic institutions, including election workers, in the 
months preceding the 2022 midterm elections.\102\ As 2022 elections 
approach, these threats continue to directly impact the lives of 
election officials.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \101\ Mark Scott and Rebecca Kern, ``The Online World Still Can't 
Quit the `Big Lie,' '' POLITICO, January 6, 2022, https://
www.politico.com/news/2022/01/06/social-media-donald-trump-jan-6-
526562.
    \102\ ``Summary of Terrorism Threat to the U.S. Homeland,'' 
Department of Homeland Security, last modified February 7, 2022, 
accessed April 8, 2022, https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-
terrorism-advisory-system-bulletin-february-07-2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
            ii. Political Interference and Threats of Prosecution
    The aftermath of the 2020 election also sparked a barrage of 
political attacks against election officials. These attacks included 
the widely-reported efforts by former President Trump and his 
supporters to overturn the election outcome in key swing States. Most 
notably, the former President attempted to pressure Georgia Secretary 
of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to ``find 11,780 votes'' and 
illegitimately declare him the State's winner.\103\ In Michigan, he 
publicly pressured local and State officials to revoke their votes to 
certify the election for President Biden.\104\ These initial efforts to 
pressure election officials and sow distrust in the electoral system 
stem from the same false allegations of a stolen election that drove 
the insurrection.\105\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \103\ Amy Gardner and Paulina Firozi, ``Here's the Full Transcript 
and Audio of the Call Between Trump and Raffensperger,'' Washington 
Post, January 5, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-
raffensperger-call-transcript-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/2768e0cc-4ddd-
11eb-83e3-322644d82356story.html.
    \104\ Maggie Haberman et al., ``Trump Targets Michigan in His Ploy 
to Subvert the Election,'' New York Times, November 19, 2020, https://
www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/us/politics/trump-michigan-election.html.
    \105\ See Brennan Center and Bipartisan Policy Center, Election 
Officials Under Attack, 16-17; and Ann Gerhart, ``Election Results 
Under Attack: Here Are the Facts,'' Washington Post, March 11, 2021, 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/interactive/2020/election-
integrity/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Even after the 2020 election result was definitively resolved, 
political meddling persisted in the form of unsubstantiated audits and 
recounts. In Maricopa County, Arizona Republican Party leaders 
organized a sham ``audit'' of the county's election results in an 
effort to discredit them.\106\ To this day, Republican leaders in 
Arizona continue to claim--without evidence--that election 
administrators mishandled thousands of ballots.\107\ The Arizona audit 
sparked copycat movements across the country, as the Wisconsin and 
Pennsylvania State legislatures ordered similar reviews of the 2020 
vote.\108\ As recently as September 2021, the Texas secretary of 
state's office announced a ``comprehensive forensic audit'' of the 2020 
results in four major counties.\109\ And in Nevada, the State's 
Republican Party compelled Republican Secretary of State Barbara 
Cegavske to review nearly 123,000 ballots based upon unfounded 
allegations of voter fraud.\110\ Secretary Cegavske's review, which 
consumed 125 hours of her staff's time, found no evidence of 
fraud.\111\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \106\ Elizabeth Howard and Gowri Ramachandran, ``Partisan Arizona 
Election `Audit' Was Flawed From the Start,'' Brennan Center for 
Justice, September 27, 2021, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/
analysis-opinion/partisan-arizona-election-audit-was-flawed-start.
    \107\ Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services, ``Another Senate 
Subpoena Issued for Arizona 2020 Election Documents,'' Arizona Daily 
Star, March 21, 2022, https://tucson.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-
and-politics/another-senate-subpoena-issued-for-arizona-2020-election-
documents/articledcc76aaa-a96d-11ec-a17a-b7f87b1c1504.html.
    \108\ Michael Wines, ``Arizona's Criticized Election Review Nears 
End, but Copycats Are Just Getting Started,'' New York Times, September 
23, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/23/us/arizona-election-
review.html; Laurel White, ``Wisconsin's GOP-Backed Election 
Investigation Expanded over the Holidays,'' Wisconsin Public Radio, 
January 3, 2022, https://www.wpr.org/wisconsins-gop-backed-election-
investigation-expanded-over-holidays; and Sam Dunklau, ``Pa. Senate 
Election `Audit' Contract Doesn't Say If the Public Will See the 
Results,'' WITF, December 7, 2021, https://www.witf.org/2021/12/07/pa-
senate-election-probe-contract-doesnt-say-if-the-public-will-see-the-
results-among-other-things/.
    \109\ Reid J. Epstein, ``Texas, Under Pressure From Trump, 
Announces a `Full Forensic Audit' of the 2020 Election In Four 
Counties,'' New York Times, September 23, 2021, https://wwwnytimes.com/
2021/09/23/us/politics/texas-trump-election-audit.html.
    \110\ Jacob Solis, ``2020 Election Fraud Conspiracy Theories Remain 
Central to Many Republican Campaigns,'' Nevada Independent, October 17, 
2021, https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/2020-election-fraud-
conspiracy-theories-remain-central-to-many-republican-campaigns.
    \111\ Barbara K. Cegavske, secretary of state, and Mark A. 
Wlaschin, deputy secretary for elections, ``Re: Elections Integrity 
Violation Reports,'' (via email, Nevada Office of the Secretary of 
State: April 21, 2021), https://www.nvsos.gov/sos/home/
showpublisheddocument?id=9428.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    More disturbingly, election officials increasingly face threats in 
the form of criminal prosecution. Just recently, election officials in 
Wisconsin were threatened with jail time as part of a months-long, 
spurious review of the 2020 Presidential election.\112\ Michael 
Gableman, a former State Supreme Court justice leading the review for 
Republican legislators, issued the threat after the chairwoman of the 
State Elections Commission and several other officials refused to sit 
for secret, closed-door interviews with him and instead requested to 
sit for the interviews before a legislative committee.\113\ As 
discussed in Part I above, other States such as Texas and Arizona are 
passing laws that would impose criminal penalties on election officials 
for routine activities and unintentional mistakes.\114\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \112\ Patrick Marley, ``Wisconsin Republicans Seek to Jail More 
Officials as Part of Their Review of the 2020 Presidential Election,'' 
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 18, 2022, https://
www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/02/18/wisconsin-republicans-
michael-gableman-seeks-jail-officials-2020-Presidential-election-
review/6853176001/.
    \113\ Marley, ``Wisconsin Republicans Seek to Jail More 
Officials.''
    \114\ S.B. 1, 87th Leg., 1st Spec. Sess. (Tex. 2021); and H.B. 
2905, 55th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Like the upsurge in vigilante attacks, the wave of political 
attacks following the 2020 election finds its roots in the same 
election denial that drove the insurrection. Unfortunately, political 
attacks against election officials show no sign of abating.\115\ State 
legislators across the county continue to propose bills that allow for 
criminal penalties against, or the removal of, experienced election 
officials.\116\ In fact, when the Brennan Center asked local election 
officials to compare how worried they were about political interference 
in the 2020 election with how worried they are about political 
interference in future elections, nearly three times as many said they 
are very worried about the future.\117\ In other words, election 
officials themselves believe that the political attacks against them 
will get worse.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \115\ Grace Gordon, et al., The Dangers of Partisan Incentives for 
Election Officials, Bipartisan Policy Center and Election Reformers 
Network, 2022, https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/the-dangers-of-
partisan-incentives-for-election-officials/.
    \116\ NH H.B. 1567, 2022 Leg., Reg. Sess. (N.H. 2022); and S.F. 
413, 89th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Iowa 2021).
    \117\ Brennan Center, Local Election Officials Survey, 9.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
            iii. Growing Election Official Retention Crisis
    These disinformation-driven attacks threaten to create a retention 
crisis among election officials. According to the Brennan Center's 
survey, 3 in 5 local election officials are concerned that threats and 
harassment will make it more difficult to retain or recruit election 
workers going forward.\118\ Disinformation also exacerbates the 
already-heavy strain on election workers, who must spend significant 
time correcting misleading and false information.\119\ Due to these 
challenging circumstances, dozens of local election officials in 
Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin already have left their 
positions.\120\ In Nevada, by 2024 more than a third of the State's 17 
top county election officials will be new to the job.\121\ And Nation-
wide, 1 in 5 elected officials surveyed plan to leave their position 
before 2024.\122\ These officials overwhelmingly cited stress and the 
belief that politicians are attacking ``a system that they know is fair 
and honest'' as their top reasons for leaving.\123\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \118\ Brennan Center, Local Election Officials Survey, 19.
    \119\ Brennan Center and Bipartisan Policy Center, Election 
Officials Under Attack, 10.
    \120\ Sean Golonka, ``Election Official Departures Rising Amid 
Burnout, Angry Voters, New Requirements,'' Nevada Independent, January 
23, 2020, https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/election-official-
departures-rising-amid-burnout-angry-voters-new-requirements.
    \121\ Golonka, ``Election Official Departures.''
    \122\ Brennan Center, Local Election Officials Survey, 18.
    \123\ Brennan Center, Local Election Officials Survey, 18.
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B. Disinformation About the 2020 Election and Voter Fraud Is Distorting 
        State-wide Campaigns to Oversee Elections
    The vast majority of the thousands of State and local election 
officials in America are elected. This year, elections from town clerk 
and supervisor to State secretary of state and Governor will decide who 
will administer and certify the elections during the next Presidential 
cycle in 2024.\124\ Twenty-seven States will hold elections for 
secretary of state--the official who typically serves as a State's 
chief election officer.\125\ These races are being run in the context 
of a disinformation campaign intended to cast doubt on election 
results, and a significant number of election official candidates in 
these races are invoking claims that the 2020 election was 
invalid.\126\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \124\ Local officials, like county clerks, are typically 
responsible for designing ballots, running polling places, employing 
poll workers, and overseeing ballot counts. Secretaries of state are 
often a State's chief election official, overseeing procedures for 
voter registration and voting, as well as certifying results. Governors 
can also be involved in election administration through appointments, 
emergency declaration powers, and sometimes certification of results. 
Ian Vandewalker and Lawrence Norden, Financing of Races for Offices 
that Oversee Elections: January 2022, Brennan Center for Justice, 2022, 
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/financing-
races-offices-oversee-elections-january-2022.
    \125\ Louis Jacobson, Secretary of State Races: More Important Than 
Ever in 2022, and More Complicated, Too, Sabato's Crystal Ball--UVA 
Center for Politics, December 1, 2021, https://centerforpolitics.org/
crystalball/articles/secretary-of-state-races-more-important-than-ever-
in-2022-and-more-complicated-too/.
    \126\ Lawrence Norden and Derek Tisler, ``Addressing Insider 
Threats in Elections,'' Brennan Center for Justice, December 8, 2021, 
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/addressing-
insider-threats-elections.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For example, many candidates embrace disinformation about the 2020 
election and voter fraud in their pitch to voters and donors, 
including--at the highest level--secretaries of state and gubernatorial 
candidates. The States United Democracy Center found that 21 secretary 
of state candidates disputed the results of the 2020 election, 
including at least 1 candidate in 18 of the 27 States holding secretary 
of state contests this year.\127\ Similarly, 24 of the 36 gubernatorial 
contests this year have seen campaigns take part in this 
disinformation.\128\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \127\ ``Secretary of State Races in 2022,'' States United Democracy 
Center, last modified January 27, 2022, accessed April 8, 2022, https:/
/statesuniteddemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/sosdeniers.html.
    \128\ ``Governor Races in 2022,'' States United Democracy Center, 
last modified January 27, 2022, accessed April 8, 2022, https://
statesuniteddemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/govdeniers.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This disinformation has, in turn, increased the prominence of these 
races, illustrated by trends in the financing of contests for secretary 
of state in key battleground States. Compared to recent election 
cycles, campaigns are raising more money, from more donors, with 
greater reliance upon out-of-State donations.
    Across the States with the closest margins in the 2020 Presidential 
contest that are holding secretary of state elections this year 
(Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, and Wisconsin), the 
amount of campaign contributions has climbed more than 3 times higher 
than at this point in the 2018 cycle and 8 times higher than 2014, 
according to the Brennan Center's analysis.\129\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \129\ Ian Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices that Oversee 
Elections: February 2022, Brennan Center for Justice, 2022, https://
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/financing-races-
offices-oversee-elections-february-2022. We include the Wisconsin 
secretary of state race even though that office does not administer 
elections because election denial is an issue there. The Wisconsin 
Elections Commission, like elections administrators in many States, has 
been attacked over the 2020 elections. There has been a push, including 
by several declared candidates for secretary of state or Governor, to 
give the secretary of state greater power over elections. See Laurel 
White, ``GOP Lawmaker Amy Loudenbeck Launches Secretary of State 
Campaign, Calls for Office to Take Control of Elections,'' Wisconsin 
Public Radio, December 1, 2021, https://www.wpr.org/gop-lawmaker-amy-
loudenbeck-launches-secretary-state-campaign-calls-office-take-control-
elections.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Disinformation about the 2020 election and voter fraud is primarily 
responsible for this trend. Arizona, for example, has received National 
attention for claims about election irregularities, as is discussed 
above. One candidate, a leading fundraiser in the secretary of state 
race, has claimed that ``Trump won'' and called for ``decertifying'' 
the election.\130\ Amidst this disinformation-driven dialog, 
contributions to Arizona secretary of state candidates doubled since 
the last cycle and have reached levels more than 8 times higher than at 
this point in the 2014 cycle.\131\ Further, the number of donors giving 
in this year's secretary of state election, 11,566, is higher than that 
of recent cycles by a factor of 10.\132\ By comparison, only 1,235 
people gave to all the Arizona secretary of state candidates combined 
in 2018.\133\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \130\ Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 2022.
    \131\ Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 2022.
    \132\ Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 2022.
    \133\ Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In Michigan, one leading candidate has claimed that Dominion voting 
machines used by the State changed votes and said that ``Trump won 
Michigan.''\134\ Another has said the ``Big Lie'' is leading to ``an 
effort to try again in 2024 what those democracy deniers attempted to 
do in 2020 but failed.''\135\ Amid this rhetoric, contributions to 
Michigan secretary of state candidates are 3 times higher than at this 
point in the 2018 cycle.\136\ Incumbent Jocelyn Benson (D), who 
administered the 2020 election in Michigan and opposes claims that the 
2020 election was invalid, has raised $1.5 million, from 4,890 
donors.\137\ Educator Kristina Karamo, Benson's Republican opponent, 
has raised the second-largest amount: $233,494 from 2,206 donors.\138\ 
They each have more donors than those giving to all the secretary of 
state candidates combined in the last cycle, which was 1,478.\139\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \134\ Jeremy Herb and Sara Murray, ``Trump-Backed Michigan 
Secretary of State Candidate Spread False Election Claims and January 6 
Conspiracy Theories,'' CNN, November 16, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/
2021/11/16/politics/kristina-karamo-michigan-secretary-of-state-
candidate/index.html.
    \135\ Vandewalker and Norden, Financing of Races for Offices: 
January 2022.
    \136\ Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 2022.
    \137\ Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 2022.
    \138\ Beth LeBlanc, ``Benson Leads Karamo in Cash Haul for Michigan 
Secretary of State's Race,'' Detroit News, January 31, 2022, https://
www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2022/01/31/jocelyn-benson-
leads-kristina-karamo-cash-haul-michigan-secretary-state-race/
9288506002/; and Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 
2022.
    \139\ Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Beyond the sheer amounts of money flowing into secretary of state 
races, these contests for bureaucratic State positions are taking on a 
more National profile as candidates attract unprecedented numbers of 
donors and funding from outside their own State.
    In Arizona, the amount that donors from other States have 
contributed has soared to almost 10 times more than in the 2018 cycle 
and over 30 times more than in either the 2014 or 2010 cycle.\140\ 
Republican State Representative Mark Finchem has received contributions 
from 4,983 people who live outside Arizona--two-thirds of his 
donors.\141\ Another secretary of state candidate, Democratic State 
Representative Reginald Bolding, also counts a majority of his donors--
54% of his 1,390 contributors--from other States.\142\ In the 2018 
cycle, by comparison, only 117 out-of-State donors made contributions 
throughout the entire secretary of state contest.\143\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \140\ Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 2022.
    \141\ Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 2022.
    \142\ Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 2022.
    \143\ Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Similarly, the Michigan secretary of state election also has seen a 
sudden increase in out-of-State funding. Donors living outside of 
Michigan have contributed $474,977--three-and-a-half times higher than 
the amount from the prior election, which also saw out-of-State funding 
levels higher than each of the two election cycles before.\144\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \144\ Vandewalker, Financing of Races for Offices: February 2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In light of these numbers, it is important to recognize the 
dangerous interplay between election denial, threats against election 
officials, and the nationalization of races for election official 
positions. As detailed above, disinformation-driven attacks against 
election officials are pushing experienced officials from both parties 
out of their positions. At the same time, the individuals who may 
replace them will in many instances emerge from nationalized, 
politically-charged races that heavily feature disinformation about the 
2020 election and voter fraud. Our research shows that local election 
officials themselves are worried about this very problem and the impact 
on their profession: Over half of local election officials surveyed by 
the Brennan Center worry that their incoming colleagues might believe 
that ``wide-spread voter fraud'' contaminated the 2020 elections.\145\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \145\ Brennan Center, Local Election Officials Survey, 14.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Regardless of the outcome of these elections, relentless voter 
fraud lies and conspiracy theories have damaged voter confidence in 
election results, which is necessary for a functioning democracy. A 
majority of Americans believe U.S. democracy is ``in crisis and at risk 
of failing.''\146\ One candidate put it starkly: ``If American 
democracy is to survive, political figures of both parties need to 
abandon stolen-election claims.''\147\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \146\ Mallory Newall, Chris Jackson, and James Diamond, ``Seven in 
Ten Americans Say the Country Is in Crisis, at Risk of Failing,'' 
Ipsos, January 3, 2022, https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/seven-ten-
americans-say-country-crisis-risk-failing.
    \147\ Vandewalker and Norden, Financing of Races for Offices: 
January 2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                 ______
                                 
    My testimony has shown that the same allegations that fueled the 
insurrection are continuing to wreak havoc on our democracy. The 
attacks on our democracy, in turn, expose the uncomfortable truth that 
our country does not have sufficient guardrails in place to protect our 
elections from efforts to restrict voting, sabotage our electoral 
processes, and undermine impartial election administration. To ensure 
free and fair elections, we must bolster and strengthen those 
guardrails. Most critically, we need baseline National standards for 
voting access and election administration, protections against voting 
discrimination, protections for impartial election administrators, and 
other defenses against election sabotage.
    Congress has broad authority under the Constitution to enact the 
necessary legislation, and it came close to doing so earlier this year. 
The Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, which narrowly failed to 
overcome a filibuster in March, would address many of these problems. 
Most importantly, it would establish National standards for the casting 
and the counting of ballots in Federal elections and protect against 
harmful rollbacks of voting rights, partisan efforts to discard or 
otherwise manipulate election results, and attacks on election 
officials who are simply following well-recognized best practices. It 
also would directly insulate election officials from politicized 
efforts to remove them, increase safeguards against vigilante threats 
and harassment, curb the fraudulent ``audits'' that have been conducted 
in Arizona and elsewhere, and give voters a statutory right to sue if 
their voting rights are infringed, including by a failure to certify 
lawful election results. It contains direct curbs on disinformation--
including a clear prohibition on the dissemination of false information 
about elections designed to suppress the vote--as well as increased 
transparency for paid political communications over the internet. 
Finally, it would revitalize the landmark Voting Rights Act's 
protections against racial discrimination in voting that the Supreme 
Court has hobbled, among many other much-needed provisions.\148\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \148\ See Wilder, Tisler, and Weiser, The Election Sabotage Scheme; 
Brennan Center for Justice, The Freedom to Vote Act, 2022, https://
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/freedom-vote-act; 
Hearing on Protecting a Precious, Almost Sacred Right: The John R. 
Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, before the S. Comm. On Judiciary, 
117th Cong. (2021) (testimony of Wendy Weiser, vice president for 
democracy, Brennan Center for Justice), https://www.brennancenter.org/
our-work/research-reports/testimony-protecting-precious-almost-sacred-
right-john-r-lewis-voting; Hearing on Oversight of the Voting Rights 
Act: Potential Legislative Reforms, before the H. Comm. on Judiciary, 
Subcomm. on the Constitution, Civil Rights, & Civil Liberties, 117th 
Cong. (2021) (testimony of Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy, 
Brennan Center for Justice), https://docshouse.gov/meetings/JU/JU10/
20210816/114010/HHRG-117-JU10-Wstate-WeiserW-20210816.pdf; Hearing on 
the Oversight of the Voting Rights Act: A Continuing Record of 
Discrimination, before the H. Comm. on Judiciary, Subcomm. on the 
Constitution, Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, 117th Cong. (2021) 
(testimony of Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy, Brennan 
Center for Justice), https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU10/20210527/
112700/HMTG-117-JU10-Wstate-WeiserW-20210527.pdf; Hearing on Voting in 
America: The Potential for Polling Place Quality and Restrictions on 
Opportunities to Vote to Interfere with Free and Fair Access to the 
Ballot, 117th Cong. (2021) (testimony of Kevin Morris, Researcher, 
Brennan Center for Justice), https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/
default/files/2021-06/Morris%20%20Written%20Testimony.pdf; Hearing on 
Voting in America: A National Perspective on the Right to Vote, Methods 
of Election, Jurisdictional Boundaries, and Redistricting, before the 
H. Comm. on House Administration, Subcomm. on Elections, 117th Cong. 
(2021) (testimony of Michael Waldman, president, Brennan Center for 
Justice), https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/
2021-06-22%20Waldman%20%20Testimony- .pdf; and Hearing on the 
Implication of Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee and Potential 
Legislative Responses, before the H. Comm. On Judiciary, Subcomm. on 
the Constitution, Civil Rights, & Civil Liberties, 117th Cong. (2021) 
(testimony of Sean Morales-Doyle, acting director, voting rights and 
elections program, Brennan Center for Justice), https://docshouse.gov/
meetings/JU/JU10/20210716/113905/HHRG-117-JU10-Wstate-Morales-DoyleS-
20210716.pdf.
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    The only way to neutralize the disinformation-driven threats to our 
democracy and to protect against potentially catastrophic results is 
through such Federal legislation. We strongly urge Congress to revisit 
this critical bill and pass it into law.
                                 ______
                                 
   Joint Statement of Christine Todd Whitman, former Governor of New 
  Jersey; Steve Bullock, former Governor of Montana; Jim Hood, former 
 Attorney General of Mississippi; Tom Rath, former Attorney General of 
New Hampshire; Trey Greyson, former Secretary of State of Kentucky; and 
  Frankie Sue Del Papa, former Secretary of State of Nevada, For the 
                     States United Democracy Center
                              May 27, 2022
    Chair Thompson, Vice Chair Cheney, and distinguished Members of the 
Select Committee, we are pleased to submit this statement in our 
capacity as members of the Bipartisan Advisory Board of the States 
United Democracy Center. States United is a nonpartisan organization 
advancing free, fair, and secure elections. We focus on connecting 
State officials, law enforcement leaders, and pro-democracy partners 
across America with the tools and expertise they need to safeguard our 
democracy. We are more than a think tank--we are an action tank. 
Together, we are committed to making sure every vote is counted, every 
voice is heard, and every election is safe. Our founders and Advisory 
Board are comprised of former administration officials, law enforcement 
leaders, and former State and local leaders from both the Republican 
and Democratic political parties who are committed to engaging and 
empowering pro-democracy leadership.
    Thank you for the opportunity to submit this statement to help the 
Select Committee in its on-going review of issues connected to the 
attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. As we will 
discuss, the attack that occurred on January 6, 2021, was not an 
isolated event involving random protestors. Rather, it was the logical 
next step in a continuing anti-democracy movement, instigated and 
fomented by various people, including former President Donald Trump, 
which was put into motion years earlier. But the movement does not 
begin or end solely with Trump; a host of diverse groups of people are 
involved, including lawyers such as Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and 
John Eastman; advisors to Trump, like Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, 
Michael Flynn, and Mike Lindell; and State and local officials from all 
over the country, including Pennsylvania State Senator and Republican 
nominee for the Governorship of Pennsylvania Doug Mastriano, Arizona 
Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward, and Texas Attorney General Ken 
Paxton.
    January 6 was also merely a next step, not a final one. Events 
leading up to and following that day reveal a sustained and coordinated 
effort by the former president and his anti-democracy allies to 
suppress voting rights, delegitimize free and fair elections, and 
subvert the will of the voters by overturning election results deemed 
undesirable to their movement. As we explain in our testimony, many of 
the tactics used to produce the January 6 attack and many of the people 
who affirmatively helped make it happen are still hard at work 
undermining our democracy today.
i. the january 6, 2021, attack on the capitol was not an isolated event
    The unprecedented and horrific attack on the United States Capitol 
on January 6, 2021, was not an isolated event. It was just one in a 
years-long series of coordinated efforts by former President Trump, his 
advisors, various lawyers, and like-minded State and local officials to 
delegitimize and attempt to overturn President Joseph Biden's victory 
in the November 2020 Presidential election.
a. The Precursors to the Current Anti-Democracy Movement
    The anti-democracy movement in America is not new, but Trump's 
leading role in it can be traced back to the 2012 Presidential 
election. As early as election night on November 6, 2012, when then-
President Obama was reelected after defeating now-Senator Mitt Romney, 
Trump tweeted that the election was a ``total sham'' and a 
``travesty,'' and claimed that the United States is not a democracy.\1\ 
Trump also asserted via Twitter that there were ``reports of voting 
machines switching Romney votes to Obama'' and warned voters to 
``[m]ake sure to verify the voting machine does not switch your 
vote.''\2\ After major news outlets called the race for then-President 
Obama around 11 p.m. on November 6, Trump tweeted, ``We can't let this 
happen . . . We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our 
nation is totally divided!''\3\ The next day, Trump foreshadowed his 
2016 election campaign slogan, tweeting: ``We have to make America 
great again!''\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Trump Twitter Archive, Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) (Nov. 
6, 2012, 11:33 PM EST), https://www.thetrumparchive.com.
    \2\ Trump Twitter Archive, Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) (Nov. 
6, 2012, 2:56-2:57 PM EST), https://www.thetrumparchive.com.
    \3\ Trump Twitter Archive, Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) (Nov. 
6, 2012, 11:29 PM EST), https://www.thetrumparchive.com.
    \4\ Trump Twitter Archive, Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) (Nov. 
7, 2012, 2:03 PM EST), https://www.thetrumparchive.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Two years later, during the midterm elections in November 2014, 
Trump furthered his conspiracy theory, baselessly alleging wide-spread 
election fraud, claiming that ``[e]lection officials [were] saying that 
there is nothing stopping illegal immigrants from voting. This is very 
bad (unfair) for Republicans!''\5\ Trump repeated the same baseless 
narrative leading up to the 2016 election when polls predicted that 
former Secretary Hillary Clinton would win the presidency. In October 
2016, Trump tweeted that the ``election is absolutely being rigged by 
the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary--but also at 
many polling places--SAD.''\6\ Even after he won the election, he 
continued to falsely declare that he had won the popular vote, even 
though Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes.\7\ While 
complaining about unfairness or mismanagement of elections may be valid 
where wrong-doing has actually occurred, Trump and his allies' 
complaints are striking because they have no factual basis, they are 
made preemptively (before the elections even take place), and they are 
baked into an ideological certainty that their side must win or else 
the elections are rigged. This view has served as a litmus test to 
determine whether one is a true ally of the anti-democracy movement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ Trump Twitter Archive, Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) (Oct. 
31, 2014, 4:43 PM EST), https://www.thetrumparchive.com.
    \6\ Trump Twitter Archive, Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) (Oct. 
16, 2016, 1:01 PM EST), https://www.thetrumparchive.com.
    \7\ 2016 Presidential Election Results, N.Y. Times (Aug. 9, 2017), 
https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/president; Trump has 
longstanding history of calling elections `rigged' if he doesn't like 
the results, ABC News (Nov. 11, 2020), https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/
trump-longstanding-history-calling-elections-rigged-doesnt-results/
story?id=74126926; Trump Twitter Archive, Donald J. Trump 
(@realDonaldTrump) (Nov. 27, 2016, 3:30 PM EST), https://
www.thetrumparchive.com (``In addition to winning the Electoral College 
in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of 
people who voted illegally.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Trump was far from alone in touting these anti-democracy lies. For 
example, as Trump was ramping up for the 2016 election, his long-time 
confidante, Roger Stone, reportedly sent him a 13-page strategy 
memorandum, suggesting that the campaign should emphasize that the 
``system is rigged against the citizens.''\8\ Additionally, in an 
interview on a far-right radio show, Stone explained that he thought 
Trump's campaign should address ``wide-spread voter fraud'' and 
``talk[] about it constantly.''\9\ Likewise, Rudy Giuliani, former 
mayor of New York City who would later become Trump's lawyer, asserted 
on CNN that one would have been a ``moron'' to assume there would be no 
election fraud in cities like Philadelphia and Chicago.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\ Trump and the Truth: The ``Rigged'' Election, The New Yorker 
(Oct. 8, 2016), https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-and-the-
truth-the-rigged-election.
    \9\ Trump labels Clinton `the devil' and suggests election will be 
rigged, The Guardian (Aug. 2, 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/us-
news/2016/aug/02/donald-trump-calls-hillary-clinton-the-devil-and-
suggests-election-will-be-rigged?CMP=fb_gu.
    \10\ Why Trump's talk of a rigged vote is so dangerous, CNN (Oct. 
19, 2016), https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/18/politics/donald-trump-rigged-
election/index.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While complaints about the results of an election routinely emanate 
from leaders on both sides of the aisle following a contest, former 
President Trump and his allies' behavior stands out because of its 
reliance on falsehoods, conspiracies, and blatant lies.\11\ In short, 
for the better part of the last decade, Trump and his allies 
intentionally planted seeds to cast doubt on legitimate election 
results and to foment suspicions among a substantial portion of the 
American public that voting is rigged, so much so that the number of 
votes cast for the other side cannot be trusted and the election 
results cannot be believed. This narrative feeds on baseless assertions 
that votes from undocumented immigrants, deceased individuals, or 
people who have moved are changing election outcomes \12\ and on 
general distrust in democratic institutions, including the Government 
itself, as well as the press, spurred by Trump's ``fake news'' 
campaign.\13\ Because these false election-related theories have now 
become so ubiquitous, anti-democracy activists can (and often do) claim 
that any electoral losses by their preferred candidates must be the 
result of wide-spread voter fraud--and for that reason must be 
overturned. The poisonous seeds planted in the past decade flourished 
during the 2020 election, leading up to the Capitol attack on January 
6, 2021, and have continued to grow in ways that severely threaten the 
life and health of our democracy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\ Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, The Crisis of American 
Democracy, American Educator (Fall 2020), https://files.eric.ed.gov/
fulltext/EJ1272137.pdf; Nicolas Berlinksi et al., The Effects of 
Unsubstantiated Claims on Confidence in Elections, https://cpb-us-
e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/5/2293/files/2021/03/voter-
fraud.pdf?_sm_au_=iHV4TH4F6TNDzFH7FcVTvKQkcK8MG.
    \12\ How a racist myth about immigrants voting continues to fuel 
unproven claims of voter fraud, Los Angeles Times (June 25, 2021), 
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-25/racist-myth-of-
immigrants-voting-fuels-claims-of-voter-fraud.
    \13\ Donald Trump's ``Fake News'' Tactics, The New Yorker (Dec. 2, 
2017), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/donald-trumps-
fake-news-tactics.
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b. The Anti-Democracy Movement in the Run-Up to the 2020 Election
    When former President Trump was up for reelection in 2020, he and 
his allies (new and old), including lawyers, advisors, and State and 
local officials, built upon his long-standing efforts to cast doubt on 
the legitimacy of the voting process. Ultimately, this metastasized 
into a full-throated attempt to overthrow the legitimate Presidential 
election of November 2020, commonly known as the ``Stop the Steal'' 
movement.
    This movement stemmed from the baseless theory that expanded mail-
in voting, which was being offered or expanded in many States because 
the COVID-19 pandemic made in-person voting difficult or dangerous, 
would cause rampant voter fraud. There is no truth to the assertion 
that wide-spread mail-in voting leads to wide-spread voter fraud,\14\ 
nor is there any support for Trump's assertions that undocumented 
immigrants cast significant numbers of mail-in ballots in our 
elections.\15\ Instead, former President Trump and his allies created 
this narrative leading up to the 2020 election because they believed 
that mail-in ballots could skew heavily toward then-candidate Biden--
especially during the pandemic when many of Trump's proponents eschewed 
social distancing and other safety precautions and called upon Trump's 
base to do the same.\16\ Because mail-in voting was expanded for the 
2020 election, it was well understood that days or weeks would likely 
be required to count all votes following Election Day.\17\ As a 
consequence, it was widely expected that votes counted on Election Day 
would skew toward former President Trump, but that as the mail-in 
ballots cast on or before Election Day were counted, the number of 
votes for Biden would increase.\18\ Thus, efforts by the former 
President and his allies to delay the mail, to discourage mail-in 
voting, and to stop counting ballots past November 3, 2020, were 
entirely self-serving.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\ Natalie Scala, et. al, Evaluating mail-based security for 
electoral processes using attack trees, Risk Analysis: An International 
Journal (Jan. 24, 2022), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/
10.1111/risa.13876; Why a Vote-by-Mail Option is Necessary, Brennan 
Center for Justice (Apr. 7, 2020), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-
work/research-reports/why-vote-mail-option-necessary; How does vote-by-
mail work and does it increase election fraud?, Brookings (June 22, 
2020), https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/how-does-vote-
by-mail-work-and-does-it-increase-election-fraud/.
    \15\ The Actually True and Provable Facts About Non-Citizen Voting 
TIME (Feb. 13, 2017), https://time.com/4669899/illegal-citizens-voting-
trump/; Yet again, Trump falsely blames illegal voting for getting 
walloped in California, Wash. Post (July 23, 2019), https://
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/23/yet-again-trump-falsely-
blames-illegal-voting-getting-walloped-california/; Analysis: 
Noncitizen Voting is Vanishingly Rare, Brennan Center for Justice (Jan. 
25, 2017), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/
analysis-noncitizen-voting-vanishingly rare; Noncitizens Don't 
Illegally Vote in Detectable Numbers, Cato Institute (Nov. 25, 2020), 
https://www.cato.org/blog/noncitizens-dont-illegally-vote-detectable-
numbers.
    \16\ A step-by-step look at Trump's falsehoods on mail-in voting: 
Analysis, ABC News (Oct. 1, 2020), https://abcnews.go.com/politics/
step-step-trumps-falsehoods-mail-voting-analysis/story?id=73354979; 
Edward B. Foley, A Big Blue Shift: Measuring an Asymmetrically 
Increasing Margin of Litigation, 48 Journal of Law & Politics 501 
(2013), http://www.lawandpolitics.org/hifi/files/content/vol-xxvii-no-
4/Foley_Color_116.pdf; Richard L. Hasen, Beyond the Margin of 
Litigation: Reforming U.S. Election Administration to Avoid Electoral 
Meltdown, 62 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 937 (2005), https://law2.wlu.edu/
deptimages/Law%20Review/62-3Hasen.pdf; see also The `Blue Shift' Will 
Decide the Election The Atlantic (Aug. 10, 2020), https://
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/brace-blue-shift/615097/.
    \17\ How Long Will Vote Counting Take? Estimates and Deadlines in 
All 50 States, N.Y. Times (updated Nov. 7, 2020), https://
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/upshot/vote-counting-today-polls-
election.html; How many votes will be counted after election night?, 
MIT News (Oct. 15, 2020), https://news.mit.edu/2020/votes-counted-
after-election-1015; How Trump's mail voting sabotage could result in 
an election night nightmare, Vox (Aug. 11, 2020), https://www.vox.com/
2020/8/11/21358960/trump-mail-voting-sabotage-explained.
    \18\ Id.
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    An effort to impede the functioning of the United States Postal 
Service (USPS) gained steam in May 2020 when the USPS Board of 
Governors, all appointed by Trump, selected Trump campaign donor Louis 
DeJoy to be postmaster general.\19\ Shortly after DeJoy assumed office, 
the USPS adopted a number of operational changes that threatened to 
delay mail deliveries, including reductions in the availability of 
overtime, restrictions on extra trips to transport mail, and 
elimination of some mail processing equipment.\20\ Reporting complaints 
from constituents about a slowdown in service, Members of Congress from 
both parties, including anumber of ardent Trump supporters, pushed back 
against these changes. Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines and Republican 
U.S. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Greg Gianforte, Peter King, David 
McKinley, and Daniel Webster sent or signed on to letters with 
Democratic Members of Congress to DeJoy pressing for reversal of the 
changes in mail handling.\21\
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    \19\ Board of Governors Announces Selection of Louis DeJoy to Serve 
as Nation's 75th Postmaster General, U.S. Postal Serv. (May 6, 2020), 
https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2020/0506-bog-
announces-selection-of-louis-dejoy-to-serve-as-nations-75th-postmaster-
general.htm.
    \20\ Following Yesterday's Meeting, Leader Schumer and Speaker 
Pelosi Send New Letter to Postmaster DeJoy Calling for Immediate 
Reversal of Recent Postal Service Changes that Threaten Timely Mail 
Delivery for Millions, Senate Democrats (Aug. 6, 2020), https://
www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/following-yesterdays-
meeting-leader-schumer-and-speaker-pelosi-send-new-letter-to-
postmaster-dejoy-calling-for-immediate-reversal-of-recent-postal-
service-changes-that-threaten-timely-mail-delivery-for-millions.
    \21\ Senator Steve Daines, Letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy 
(Aug. 8, 2020), https://www.daines.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/USPS%20-
%20Mail%20Delay.%202020.08.06.pdf; Carolyn B. Maloney et al., Letter to 
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy (Aug. 6, 2020), https://
oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/2020-08-
06.CBM%20et%20al.%20to%20DeJoy-
%20PMG%20re%20Postal%20Standards%20Changes.pdf; Congress urges Postal 
Service to undo changes slowing mail, AP (Aug. 6, 2020), https://
apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-seniors-mt-state-wire-voting-steve-
daines-a291ebc31c5638aa5a9adafc2ff2b430.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At the same time, Trump disseminated theory after theory about how 
mail-in voting would contaminate the 2020 election, further laying the 
foundation for claims of fraud to be made in the event of a Biden win 
in November. On May 21, 2020, at a press conference in Michigan, he 
said of mail-in ballots, ``who knows who's signing it? . . . [T]hey 
pirate these applications . . . You have all of the harvesting . . . 
They walk in at the end of a race . . . and then all of a sudden, out 
of the blue come thousands of votes at the very end.''\22\ Trump 
tweeted on May 24 that ``People grab [ballots] from mailboxes, print 
thousands of forgeries and `force' people to sign. Also, forge 
names.''\23\ On June 22, he tweeted, ``RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS 
OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT 
WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!''\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\ Remarks by President Trump in Listening Session with African 
American Leaders, The White House (May 21, 2020), https://
trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-
trump-listening-session-african-american-leaders-ypsilanti-mi/.
    \23\ Trump Twitter Archive, Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) (May 
24, 2020, 10:08 AM EST), https://www.thetrumparchive.com.
    \24\ Trump attacks mail-in voting with new series of false claims, 
The Guardian (June 22, 2020) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/
jun/22/trump-mail-in-voting-fraud-claims.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Trump, who had already been opposing a $25 billion package of 
resources requested by the Postal Service, stated openly in August 2020 
that withholding the funds would prevent ``universal mail-in 
voting.''\25\ On the Fox Business Network, the former President told 
host Maria Bartiromo on August 13 that, ``[i]f we don't make a deal, 
that means they don't get the money, [which] means they can't have 
universal mail-in voting; they just can't have it.''\26\ Shortly after 
these comments, and after sustained bipartisan pressure, Postmaster 
General DeJoy announced suspension of some changes at the Postal 
Service and promised to ``deliver the nation's election mail on time 
and within our well-established service standards.''\27\ Ultimately, 
the inspector general for the Postal Service concluded that the Postal 
Service prioritized processing election mail during the 2020 election 
cycle and that, while timeliness fell slightly below target goals, it 
improved significantly over the delivery speed for election mail during 
the 2018 midterm election cycle.\28\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\ USPS Requests $75B in Emergency Funds to Keep Agency Alive, 
Gov. Exec. (Apr. 9, 2020), https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/04/
usps-requests-75b-emergency-funds-keep-agency-alive/164506/; see also 
President Trump with Coronavirus Task Force Briefing, C-SPAN at 36:44 
(Apr. 7, 2020), available at https://www.c-span.org/video/?471020-1/
president-trump-criticizes-who-comments-resignation-acting-navy-
secretary.
    \26\ Trump admits he's blocking postal cash to stop mail-in votes, 
AP (Aug. 13, 2020), https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-election-
2020-ap-top-news-elections-politics-14a2ceda724623604cc8d8e5ab9890ed.
    \27\ Postmaster General Louis DeJoy Statement, U.S. Postal Serv. 
(Aug. 18, 2020), https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/
2020/0818-postmaster-general-louis-dejoy-statement.htm.
    \28\ Office of the Inspector General, United States Postal Service, 
Service Performance of Election and Political Mail During the November 
2020 General Election (Mar. 5, 2021), https://www.uspsoig.gov/document/
service-performance-election-and-political-mail-during-november-2020-
general-election.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Although Trump and his allies never pointed to any evidence of 
significant voter fraud, they continued to claim that mail-in voting 
could lead to such fraud. For instance, Doug Mastriano, a Pennsylvania 
State senator, originally voted to pass a law in 2019 called Act 77 
that expanded access to mail-in ballots to any voter who requested 
one.\29\ However, after an unprecedented number of Pennsylvanians 
applied for mail-in ballots by April 2020, Mastriano was quoted as 
saying, ``I feel a bit dubious about this,'' due to purportedly 
heightened risks of voter fraud.\30\ In Texas, Attorney General Ken 
Paxton praised the U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of a case seeking to 
extend access to mail-in ballots because he thought the rejection would 
help guard against ``wide-spread fraud.''\31\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \29\ Op-Ed: How Pennsylvania Democrats Hijacked Act 77, Senator 
Doug Mastriano (Jan. 26, 2022), https://senatormastriano.com/2022/01/
26/op-ed-how-pennsylvania-democrats-hijacked-act-77/ (noting ``[e]very 
single Republican Senator voted for [Act 77]'' in October 2019); With 
audit, Pa. Sen. Mastriano is obscuring his own role in fomenting 
election chaos, Pennsylvania Capital-Star (July 11, 2021), https://
www.penncapital-star.com/commentary/with-audit-pa-sen-mastriano-is-
obscuring-his-own-role-in-creating-act-77-fomenting-election-chaos-
opinion/;  Unprecedented volume of mail-in voting looming in primary, 
The Daily Item (Apr. 30, 2020) https://www.dailyitem.com/news/
local_news/unprecedented-volume-of-mail-in-voting-looming-in-primary/
article_e7710206-72c7-522f-ba8f-6bb6f5519d9a.html.
    \30\ Unprecedented volume of mail-in voting looming in primary, The 
Daily Item (Apr. 30, 2020) https://www.dailyitem.com/news/local_news/
unprecedented-volume-of-mail-in-voting-looming-in-primary/
article_e7710206-72c7-522f-ba8f-6bb6f5519d9a.html.
    \31\ Voting rules changed quickly for the primaries. But the battle 
over how Americans will cast ballots in the fall is just heating up., 
Wash. Post (July 3, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/
voting-rules-changed-quickly-for-the-primaries-but-the-battle-over-how-
americans-will-cast-ballots-in-the-fall-is-just-heating-up/2020/07/03/
9b865dfa-ba43-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
c. The Anti-Democracy Movement from November 3, 2020, to January 6, 
        2021
    Between the election on November 3, 2020, and the Electoral College 
vote count on January 6, 2021, the ``Stop the Steal'' movement employed 
a multifaceted approach to subvert the will of the American people. 
Their efforts were often chaotic, and when a given tactic failed, they 
shifted focus to another that might succeed in overturning the election 
result favoring Biden. During this period, their strategy encompassed 
five primary anti-democracy efforts: (1) Inspired by Trump and his 
allies' statements, aggressive and dangerous protests at central count 
facilities in States with narrow margins while ballots were still being 
counted; (2) a wave of baseless lawsuits alleging wide-spread election 
fraud; (3) a campaign to pressure Republican officials to overturn 
election results; (4) the creation of a group of sham electors from 
swing States to sign certificates falsely claiming that former 
President Trump had won the election in their States; and (5) a broader 
disinformation campaign intended to persuade portions of the American 
public that Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 Presidential 
election.
    First, the Trump-inspired protests.--On election night, in the 
early morning hours of Wednesday, November 4, former President Trump 
appeared on television declaring that he had won the election. After 
listing several States where he claimed to be in the lead or nearly so, 
the former President declared, ``most importantly, we're winning 
Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount.''\32\ This announcement was met by 
a standing ovation from his audience of supporters. He continued, ``We 
want all voting to stop. We don't want them to find any ballots at 4 
o'clock in the morning and add them to the list.''\33\ At the time, 
vote counting was ongoing in Pennsylvania, because under State law 
absentee ballots could not be canvassed until Election Day. On Twitter 
at 3:04 a.m., Al Schmidt, a Republican commissioner on the Philadelphia 
County Board of Elections responded to the then-President of the United 
States: ``Philadelphia will NOT stop counting ALL legitimate votes cast 
by eligible voters. And we will report and report and report until the 
last vote is counted.''\34\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \32\ Trump declares victory prematurely, says will go to Supreme 
Court to dispute election count, YouTube (Nov. 4, 2020), https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsI3jcgiIhA.
    \33\ Id.
    \34\ Al Schmidt (@commish--schmidt), Twitter (Nov. 4, 2020), 
https://twitter.com/commish_schmidt/status/1323898927666659328.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The following night, Kevin McCarthy, the Minority Lead of the U.S. 
House of Representatives, spoke on Fox News about fraud supposedly 
taking place in vote counting facilities around the country. He urged 
listeners to ``not be quiet, do not be silent about this. We cannot 
allow this to happen before our very eyes.''\35\ Hundreds of 
demonstrators then showed up outside central count facilities in 
numerous cities chanting, ``stop the steal'' and calling for police to 
``arrest the poll workers,'' and carrying signs that read ``Make 
Elections Fair Again'' and ``We Love Trump.''\36\ Many of these 
demonstrators were also carrying guns--some of them handguns, and 
others, military-style semiautomatic rifles.\37\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \35\ 77 Days: Trump's Campaign to Subvert the Election, N.Y. Times 
(Jan. 31, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/us/trump-election-
lie.html.
    \36\ Increasingly normal: Guns seen outside vote counting centers, 
AP (Nov. 7, 2020), https://apnews.com/article/protests-vote-count-
safety-concerns-653dc8f0787c9258524078548d518992.
    \37\ Id.; Two charged with carrying weapons near Philadelphia vote-
counting site, Wash. Post (Nov. 8, 2020); https://
www.newsnationnow.com/politics/2020-election/trump-supporters-protest-
outside-vote-centers-in-arizona-michigan/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In the days and weeks immediately following Election Day, central 
count facilities in large and traditionally Democratic-leaning cities 
such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Phoenix, and Las 
Vegas were confronted by angry protesters demanding to oversee vote 
counting and questioning the legitimacy of the voting process. There 
was nothing suspicious about the count process taking longer than in 
past elections in these cities--they have much larger populations than 
their rural counterparts and thus had to process a larger number of 
mail-in ballots--but then-President Trump had expressed outrage that 
ballots were being counted past Election Day.
    Poll workers reported fearing for their safety as they worked to 
count the remaining votes.\38\ In Detroit, poll workers were harassed 
by unruly challengers yelling, taunting, jeering, and pounding their 
fists on windows while the counting went on.\39\ In Pennsylvania, 
Commissioner Schmidt later described his work as ``racing against a 
disinformation campaign that could potentially disenfranchise voters . 
. . It's not about the campaign or about who you want to win. This is 
never about who wins and who doesn't. But if a campaign is trying to 
disenfranchise the voters of Philadelphia, you can't not respond to 
it.''\40\ While votes were still being counted, Trump's supporters 
began attending ``Stop the Steal'' rallies in various cities as 
disparate as Boise, Idaho; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Delray 
Beach, Florida to protest Biden's victory.\41\ Pro-Trump State 
lawmakers attended many of these rallies, which often involved 
altercations between Trump supporters and counter-protesters.\42\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \38\ Increasingly normal: Guns seen outside vote counting centers, 
AP (Nov. 7, 2020), https://apnews.com/article/protests-vote-count-
safety-concerns-653dc8f0787c9258524078548d518992.
    \39\ `Get to TCF': What really happened inside Detroit's ballot 
counting center, Detroit Free Press (Nov. 6, 2020), https://
www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2020/11/06/tcf-center-
detroit-ballot-counting/6173577002/.
    \40\ He Wanted to Count Every Vote in Philadelphia, His Party Had 
Other Ideas., N.Y. Times, (Dec. 16, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/
2020/12/16/magazine/trump-election-philadelphia-republican.html.
    \41\ Trump supporters gather for `Stop the Steal' rally in Boise, 
Idaho Press (Nov. 7, 2020), https://www.idahopress.com/news/local/
trump-supporters-gather-for-stop-the-steal-rally in-boise/
article_2110cb2a-35c6-52ba-a753-336ad7b8bef3.html; Trump supporters 
gather for `Stop the Steal' rally in Colorado Springs, Fox21News (Nov. 
7, 2020), https://www.fox21news.com/top-stories/trump-supporters-
gather-for-stop-the-steal-rally-in-colorado-springs/; `Stop the steal' 
protestors rally in Delray Beach to show support for Trump, CBS12 (Nov. 
7, 2020), https://cbs12.com/news/local/stop-the-steal-protestors-rally-
in-delray-beach-to-show-support-for-trump.
    \42\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Second, the lawsuits.--At the news conference at Four Seasons Total 
Landscaping in Philadelphia on November 7, 2020, Rudy Giuliani 
announced the Trump campaign's intention to begin litigation over 
allegations of voter fraud in Pennsylvania and other States.\43\ On 
November 13, Sidney Powell, a lawyer aligned with the Trump campaign, 
appeared on the Fox Business Network proclaiming to host Lou Dobbs that 
there had been massive voter fraud ``organized and conducted with the 
help of Silicon Valley people, the big tech companies, the social media 
companies and even the media companies.''\44\ Powell promised to combat 
the fraud with overwhelming evidence in blockbuster lawsuits, pledging 
that she would ``release the Kraken.''\45\ Powell proceeded to file 
lawsuits in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, alleging that 
manipulated voting machines destroyed ballots and switched votes. Each 
of these lawsuits was dismissed as baseless by the courts.\46\ The 
district court in Michigan presciently observed that Powell's lawsuit 
there ``seems to be less about achieving the relief Plaintiffs seek--as 
much of that relief is beyond the power of this Court--and more about 
the impact of their allegations on People's faith in the democratic 
process and their trust in our government.''\47\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \43\ Rudy Giuliani Trump Campaign Philadelphia Press Conference at 
Four Seasons Total Landscaping, Rev Transcripts (Nov. 7, 2020), https:/
/www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/rudy-giuliani-trump-campaign-
philadelphia-press-conference-november-7.
    \44\ `Release the Kraken,' a catchphrase for unfounded conspiracy 
theory, trends on Twitter, N.Y. Times (Nov. 17, 2020), https://
www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/technology/release-the-kraken-a-catchphrase-
for-unfounded-conspiracy-theory-trends-on-twitter.html.
    \45\ ``Release the Kraken'' is a reference to a line from the 1981 
movie ``The Clash of the Titans,'' featuring the mythical sea monster. 
Id.
    \46\ Sidney Powell's `Kraken' lawsuits failed again, as judges in 
Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin have now dismissed her cases, 
Business Insider (Dec. 10, 2020), https://www.businessinsider.com/
sidney-powell-lawsuits-dismissed-michigan-georgia-arizona-wisconsin-
2020-12; Federal judges reject GOP effort to overturn swing State 
election results, Politico (Dec. 7, 2020), https://www.politico.com/
news/2020/12/07/judge-rejects-overturn-michigan-election-results-
443411.
    \47\ King et al. v. Whitmer et al., Case No. 20-cv-13134-LVP-RSW 
(E.D. Mich.), ECF No. 62, 35-36.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In reality, the anti-democracy movement never had a legal strategy 
in pursing this long string of lawsuits. Instead, this was a public 
relations strategy from the start: Their only goal was to generate 
noise about election fraud, repeated in case after case and headline 
after headline, with the goal of creating the false public impression 
that the vote must have been affected by some level of corruption. In 
total, Trump and his allies filed more than 75 baseless lawsuits in 
State and Federal courts seeking to overturn election results in States 
where Trump lost.\48\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \48\ Post-Election Litigation Analysis and Summaries, Stanford-MIT 
Healthy Elections Project (Mar. 10, 2021), https://
healthyelections.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/Post-
Election_Litigation_Analysis.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    To be clear, we are not suggesting that post-election litigation is 
necessarily illegitimate--the ability to challenge election results in 
court is an important tool to ensure free and fair elections in our 
country. But these lawsuits were illegitimate because they were not 
based on any evidence or plausible allegations of any kind. Indeed, 
Trump's claims of election fraud were debunked by officials in his own 
administration. On November 23, 2020, then-Attorney General William 
Barr told Trump that, based on the Justice Department's investigation, 
the notion that voting machines were rigged in Biden's favor was 
``bullshit.''\49\ Additionally, on December 1, Attorney General Barr 
told Trump that the theory of voting machine fraud was ``demonstrably 
crazy.''\50\ The same day, the former Attorney General announced 
publicly that the Justice Department had not found any wide-spread 
election fraud.\51\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \49\ Bob Woodward & Robert Costa, Peril 166 (2021).
    \50\ Id. at 170.
    \51\ Disputing Trump, Barr says no wide-spread election fraud, AP 
(Dec. 1, 2020), https://apnews.com/article/barr-no-widespread-election-
fraud-b1f1488796c9a98c4b1a9061a6c7f49d.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Unsurprisingly, Trump's legal team lost all but one of their post-
election lawsuits (the one suit in which they prevailed had nothing to 
do with fraud, nor could it have changed the outcome of the 
election).\52\ Many of these cases failed for basic lack of standing. 
For example, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit (in 
which Trump sought to intervene) in the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to 
invalidate millions of votes cast in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, 
and Wisconsin.\53\ The Supreme Court denied Paxton's request to 
initiate the case in a one-page order, holding that Texas had no 
standing to sue about ``the manner in which another State conducts its 
election.''\54\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \52\ Trump did not win two-thirds of election lawsuits `where 
merits considered', Politifact (Feb. 9, 2021), https://
www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/feb/09/blog-posting/trump-did-not-
win-two-thirds-election-lawsuits-whe/.
    \53\ Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al., 141 S. Ct. 1230 (2020); Trump 
asks Supreme Court to invalidate millions of votes in battleground 
states, CNN (Dec. 10, 2020), https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/09/politics/
trump-supreme-court/index.html.
    \54\ Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al., 141 S. Ct. 1230 (2020).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Other courts dismissed similar lawsuits because there was no merit 
to the allegations of voter fraud.\55\ For instance, Kelli Ward, a 
former Arizona State senator and the chair of the Arizona Republican 
Party, filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn Biden's narrow victory in 
Arizona. After hearing 2 days of testimony and oral arguments, the 
trial court found ``no misconduct, no fraud and no effect on the 
outcome of the election.''\56\ The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed the 
decision, holding that Ward ``failed to present evidence of misconduct 
or illegal votes, `let alone establish any degree of fraud or a 
sufficient error rate that would undermine the certainty of the 
election results,' '' and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear 
Ward's case.\57\ In another example, attorney Erick Kaardal filed suit 
on December 22, 2020, in Federal district court in Washington, DC on 
behalf of a group of voter alliances from several States seeking, among 
other things, to enjoin Vice President Mike Pence from counting the 
Electoral College votes for several States.\58\ This last-ditch effort 
failed, and the judge found the allegations so baseless that she 
referred Kaardal to a disciplinary committee.\59\ Another Federal 
district court judge in Michigan granted a motion for sanctions against 
Trump's lawyers who brought an election fraud lawsuit there, including 
Sidney Powell. The court's order, more than 100 pages in length, 
concluded that the ``lawsuit represent[ed] a historic and profound 
abuse of judicial process.''\60\ A Colorado State court judge--who also 
granted sanctions against the lawyers who brought a putative class 
action lawsuit alleging wide-spread voter fraud in the Presidential 
election--found the plaintiffs' complaint to be ``one enormous 
conspiracy theory.''\61\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \55\ By the numbers: President Donald Trump's failed efforts to 
overturn the election, USA Today (Jan. 6, 2021) www.usatoday.com/in-
depth/news/politics/elections/2021/01/06/trumps-failed-efforts-
overturn-election-numbers/4130307001/; Trump's judicial campaign to 
upend the 2020 election: A failure, but not a wipe-out, Brookings (Nov. 
30, 2021), https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/11/30/trumps-
judicial-campaign-to-upend-the-2020-election-a-failure-but-not-a-wipe-
out/.
    \56\ Ward v. Jackson, Case No. CV2020-015285 (Ariz. Super. Ct. Dec. 
4, 2020); Judge rejects Arizona Republican Party's attempt to overturn 
election results; GOP vows appeal, AZCentral (Dec. 4, 2020), https://
www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/04/arizona-
judge-rejects-republican-effort-overturn-State-election-results/
3821578001/.
    \57\ Ward v. Jackson, Case No. CV-20-0343-AP/EL (Ariz. Sup. Ct. 
Dec. 8, 2020); Ward v. Jackson, et al., No. 20-809 (U.S. Feb. 22, 2021) 
(denying petition for review), https://www.supremecourt.gov/
search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/20-809.html; 
Election lawsuit from Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward denied hearing by 
U.S. Supreme Court, AZCentral (Feb. 22, 2021), https://
www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/02/22/us-supreme-
court-wont-hear-kelli-wards-lawsuit-arizona-election/4544983001/.
    \58\ Wisc. Voters Alliance v. Pence, et al., Case No. 1:20-cv-
03791-JEB (D.D.C. Dec. 22, 2020), ECF No. 1.
    \59\ Id., ECF No. 23.
    \60\ King et al. v. Whitmer et al., Case No. 2:20-cv-1314-LVP-RSW 
(E.D. Mich. Aug. 25, 2021), ECF No. 172.
    \61\ O'Rourke et al. v. Dominion Voting Systems et al., Case No. 
1:20-cv-03747-NRN (D. Colo. Aug. 3, 2021), ECF No. 136.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Third, the pressure campaign aimed at State officials.--Trump and 
his allies also bombarded State officials in key swing States, 
pressuring them to alter election results in his favor. For example, in 
Arizona, in the weeks following the election, Republican chair of the 
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Clint Hickman, received calls 
from the White House, Rudy Giuliani, and Kelli Ward urging the Board to 
announce that it had discovered voting irregularities. Hickman refused 
these requests so that the Board's work and related litigation could 
follow their proper course. As Hickman stated, ``We were in litigation 
at all these points . . . Whatever needed to be said, needed to be said 
in a courtroom in front of a judge or a jury.''\62\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \62\ Maricopa County supervisor on rejecting calls from Trump 
allies: `Whatever needed to be said, needed to be said in a courtroom', 
CNN (July 5, 2021), https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/05/politics/clint-
hickman-trump-giuliani-election-calls-maricopa-county-cnntv/index.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Similarly, Aaron Van Langevelde, a Republican member of the 
Michigan State Board of Canvassers, recounted that ``some political 
leaders urged the Board to withhold certification [of electoral votes 
for Biden] based on unproven allegations of voter fraud, even though we 
had no legal authority to do so . . . We were asked to take power we 
didn't have. What would have been the cost if we had done so? 
Constitutional chaos and the loss of our integrity.''\63\ Van 
Langevelde refused, and Michigan certified its electoral votes for 
Biden.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \63\ Aaron Van Langevelde's speech about the 2020 election: `We 
were asked to take power we didn't have', Boston Globe (July 5, 2021), 
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/05/nation/aaron-van-langeveldes-
speech-about-2020-election-we-were-asked-take-power-we-didnt-have/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Trump and his closest advisors also directly pressured State 
legislators. In mid-November 2020, days before Michigan certified its 
election results, Trump invited members of the Michigan State 
legislature to come to the White House, including the House speaker and 
Senate majority leader.\64\ Around a week later, he invited several 
Pennsylvania lawmakers, including Doug Mastriano.\65\ Attorneys Rudy 
Giuliani and Jenna Ellis visited members of several State legislatures 
on Trump's behalf, including in Arizona,\66\ Pennsylvania, and Michigan 
to make allegations of voter fraud and to pressure the lawmakers to 
take legislative action to overturn the results.\67\ Giuliani told the 
Pennsylvania contingent: ``It's the State [l]egislature that controls 
this process. It's your power. It's your responsibility. And I think 
you know, and you have to convince the rest of your members, Republican 
and Democrat, [that] they owe that to the people of their State, and 
they owe that to the people of the United States.''\68\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \64\ Michigan lawmakers who met with Trump say they see nothing to 
change election outcome, CNN (Nov. 21, 2020), https://www.cnn.com/2020/
11/20/politics/michigan-house-speaker-will-meet-trump/index.html.
    \65\ President Trump invited Pa. lawmakers to the White House. Then 
everyone went silent., PennLive (Nov. 27, 2020), https://
www.pennlive.com/news/2020/11/president-trump-invited-pa-lawmakers-to-
the-white-house-then-everyone-went-silent.html.
    \66\ Arizona GOP lawmakers hold meeting on election outcome with 
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani AZCentral (Nov. 30, 2020), https://
www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/30/republican-
lawmakers-arizona-hold-meeting-rudy-giuliani/6468171002/.
    \67\ Here's How The Trump Campaign Is Still Trying to Overturn 
Biden's Victory, Forbes (Dec. 1, 2020), https://www.forbes.com/sites/
alisondurkee/2020/12/01/heres-how-the-trump-campaign-is-still-trying-
to-overturn-bidens-victory/?sh=132938f13561.
    \68\ Giuliani tells Pennsylvania legislators they can override 
popular vote to appoint pro-Trump electors, Yahoo! News (Nov. 25, 
2020), https://news.yahoo.com/giuliani-tells-pennsylvania-legislators-
they-can-override-popular-vote-to-appoint-pro-trump-electors-
010121925.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On January 2, 2021, Trump, joined by attorney Cleta Mitchell,\69\ 
called Brad Raffensperger, the Republican Secretary of State of 
Georgia, pressuring him to ``find'' enough votes for a Trump victory. 
Trump pressed Raffensperger, asserting that ``the ballots are corrupt. 
And you're going to find that they are--which is totally illegal, it is 
more illegal for you than it is for [those who corrupted them] because, 
you know what they did and you're not reporting it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \69\ How a lawyer who aided Trump's 2020 subversion efforts was 
named to a Federal election advisory board, CNN (Nov. 18, 2021), 
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/politics/cleta-mitchell-election-
assistance-commission-advisor/index.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    That's a criminal--that's a criminal offense.'' Raffensperger did 
not give in to this pressure, answering instead: ``Well, Mr. President, 
the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong.''\70\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \70\ Transcript: President Trump's Phone Call With Georgia Election 
Officials, N.Y. Times (Jan. 3, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/
03/us/politics/trump-raffensperger-georgia-call-transcript.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These instances are only a few examples. Trump and his team were 
contacting everyone they could in their attempt to overturn the 
election result. It is thanks to Hickman, Van Langevelde, 
Raffensperger, and other courageous local election officials around the 
country that this effort to not count eligible votes or to find 
additional votes for Trump that did not exist failed.
    Fourth, the fake electors.--In an effort reportedly overseen by 
Rudy Giuliani and Trump campaign officials,\71\ people who would have 
been electors from seven swing States had Trump won declared themselves 
the rightful electors on December 14, 2020. These sham electors 
``submitted false Electoral College certificates declaring Trump the 
winner of the Presidential election in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New 
Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.''\72\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \71\ Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw fake 
electors plot in 7 States, CNN (Jan. 20, 2022), https://www.cnn.com/
2022/01/20/politics/trump-campaign-officials-rudy-giuliani-fake-
electors/index.html.
    \72\ EXPLAINER: How fake electors tried to throw result to Trump, 
AP (Feb. 21, 2022), https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-joe-biden-
presidential-elections-election-2020-electoral-college-
311f88768b65f7196f52a4757dc162e4.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Trump's allies then used these sham electors to try to overturn the 
election. In Arizona, 30 Republican lawmakers, including Arizona State 
Representative Mark Finchem,\73\ signed a joint resolution asking 
Congress to accept their State's ``alternate'' electoral votes cast for 
Trump.\74\ On January 6, several of Trump's allies in the House and 
Senate used these fake certificates to delay and attempt to block the 
certification of Biden's victory during Congress's joint session.\75\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \73\ Donald Trump is now backing a QAnon conspiracy theorist to run 
Arizona's elections, CNN (Sept. 14, 2021), https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/
14/politics/donald-trump-mark-finchem-arizona/index.html.
    \74\ `This should terrify the nation': the Trump ally seeking to 
run Arizona's elections, The Guardian (Feb. 21, 2022), https://
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/21/mark-finchem-trump-arizona-
elections-secretary-of-state.
    \75\ EXPLAINER: How fake electors tried to throw result to Trump, 
AP (Feb. 21, 2022), https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-joe-biden-
presidential-elections-election-2020-electoral-college-
311f88768b65f7196f52a4757dc162e4.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These fake electors were a necessary component of a scheme that 
centered on then-Vice President Pence and that was set to culminate on 
January 6 when he would throw out the legitimate electoral votes from 
those States and substitute in the fake ones--if he could be persuaded 
to do so. By law and custom, the Vice President plays only a ceremonial 
role in the electoral process. Under Article II of the Constitution and 
the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the Vice President opens the 
certificates of votes sent by the States' Presidential electors and, 
after the votes have been counted, announces the outcome, officially 
certifying the result of the Presidential election.\76\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \76\ Trump Says Pence Can Overturn His Loss in Congress. That's Not 
How it Works, N.Y Times (Apr. 30, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/
01/05/us/politics/pence-trump-election.html. The limited role of the 
Vice President in the certification of the electoral results was even 
reflected in testimony from Mr. Eastman himself following the 2000 
Presidential election. He stated then that under the Electoral Count 
Act, Congress ``counts'' the votes and is ``the ultimate judge'' of 
disputes about the count and, in doing so, ``is answerable to no one, 
not the Supreme Court of the United States, not the Supreme Court of 
Florida, in that judging, because that power is delegated to it by the 
Constitution.'' 67 Florida Select Joint Committee on the Manner of 
Appointment of Presidential Electors, 2000, (Fl. 2000) (testimony of 
Professor John C. Eastman), https://www.c-span.org/video/?160847-1/
manner-appointment-presidential-electors.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    But Trump advisor and then-professor at Chapman University John 
Eastman concocted a plan spelled out in memoranda in late December 2020 
and early January 2021 in which Pence would ignore his legal 
obligations at the joint session of Congress on January 6 and would 
refuse to recognize electoral votes from several States based on a 
claim that there were ``multiple slates of electors'' in those States 
(i.e., the valid electors and sham electors discussed earlier). Pence 
was either to declare an outright victory for Trump or to pass the 
Presidential election to the House of Representatives. Since each State 
delegation in the House would have one vote, the Republicans' control 
of 26 State delegations was expected to ensure a majority for 
Trump.\77\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \77\ READ: Trump lawyer's memo on six-step plan for Pence to 
overturn the election, CNN (Sep. 21, 2021), https://www.cnn.com/2021/
09/21/politics/read-eastman-memo/index.html (two-page memo).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Eastman argued that these measures, though ``BOLD,'' were justified 
by the fact that ``this Election was Stolen by a strategic Democrat 
plan to systematically flout existing election laws for partisan 
advantage,'' and ``we're no longer playing by Queensbury Rules, 
therefore.''\78\ Trump demanded that Pence take part in this scheme, 
essentially presenting Pence with a choice between violating the 
Constitution and being denounced by Trump, likely dashing any chance 
Pence had of ever becoming President himself with support from Trump's 
base.\79\ As this Select Committee well knows, in March of this year, a 
Federal judge weighed in on Eastman's plot. In a civil case related to 
the Committee's pursuit of documents from Eastman, the court found that 
Eastman and Trump most likely had committed felonies, including by 
obstructing the work of Congress in counting electoral votes and 
conspiring to defraud the United States.\80\ The court called the 
scheme ``a coup in search of a legal theory.''\81\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \78\ Id. (six-page memo).
    \79\ Pence Reached His Limit With Trump. It Wasn't Pretty, N.Y. 
Times (Jan. 12, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/politics/
mike-pence-trump.html.
    \80\ Eastman v. Thompson et al., Case No. 8:22-cv-00099-DOC-DFM 
(C.D. Cal. Mar. 28, 2022), ECF. No. 260.
    \81\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Around the same time that John Eastman was working on his January 6 
legal strategy from outside the administration, Jeffrey Clark, the 
acting Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice's Civil 
Division, was working on a legal strategy from within the Government. 
By late December, Clark told colleagues that he was aware of 
information implicating Chinese intelligence in using thermometers to 
change the election results, despite there being no evidence of such 
foreign interference.\82\ On December 28, 2020, Clark emailed his 
superiors with a draft letter that urged Georgia officials to convene 
the State legislature in a special session to investigate 
``irregularities'' in the election.\83\ Fortunately, his superiors 
refused to send the letter.\84\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \82\ How a Trump Environmental Lawyer Tried To Weaponize the 
Justice Department To Help the President, CNN (Aug. 6, 2021), https://
www.cnn.com/2021/08/06/politics/doj-clark-trump-election/index.html.
    \83\ Trump Loyalist at DOJ Circulated Draft Georgia Letter with 
False Election Fraud Claims ABC News (Aug. 4, 2021), https://
www.cnn.com/2021/08/04/politics/draft-doj-georgia-letter-election-
reversal/index.html.
    \84\ How a Trump Environmental Lawyer Tried To Weaponize the 
Justice Department To Help the President, CNN (Aug. 6, 2021), https://
www.cnn.com/2021/08/06/politics/doj-clark-trump-election/index.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Fifth, the disinformation campaign.--The disinformation campaign 
related to the 2020 election started well before election day. The high 
volume of mail-in ballots was further exploited by anti-democracy 
forces, who fabricated stories suggesting the ballots were susceptible 
to fraud. For example, a single tweet in September contending that over 
1,000 mail-in ballots had been found in a dumpster was picked up by a 
far-right news website, which ran an ``exclusive'' story on a purported 
scheme by the county to dump uncounted ballots. In fact, the photo 
shared in the tweet showed old envelopes from the 2018 election that 
were being recycled--and ballots for the 2020 election cycle had not 
yet even been mailed. Within a day, the story had been shared by over 
25,000 Twitter users, including Donald Trump Jr.\85\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \85\ As U.S. election nears, researchers are following the trail of 
fake news, Science.org (Oct. 26, 2020), https://www.science.org/
content/article/us-election-nears-researchers-are-following-trail-fake-
news.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Disinformation came from the top, too. Harvard researchers found 
that tweets or briefings or Fox News appearances by Trump himself drove 
most spikes in media coverage, which allowed him to ``disseminate and 
reinforce his disinformation campaign'' regarding election fraud.\86\ 
This trend was exacerbated by the fact that different segments of the 
population held different beliefs about the election, driven in large 
part by the news outlets they tuned in to.\87\ Thus, for example, in 
September 2020, 61 percent of Republicans who primarily watched Fox 
News or listened to talk radio for their news said fraud had been a 
``major problem when mail-in ballots are used,'' whereas the percentage 
dropped to 44 percent for Republicans who also listened to other 
outlets, and to 23 percent for Republicans who did not rely on Fox News 
or talk radio.\88\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \86\ Id.
    \87\ How Americans Navigated the News in 2020: A Tumultuous Year in 
Review, Pew Research Center (Feb. 22, 2021), https://
www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2021/02/22/misinformation-and-competing-
views-of-reality-abounded-throughout-2020/.
    \88\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    After the election, lawsuits, recounts, audits, and other actions 
by Trump and his allies served as fodder for a broader anti-democracy 
disinformation campaign to convince segments of the American public 
that Biden stole the election. Indeed, a central goal of this anti-
democracy movement--since before 2016--has been to cast doubt on 
election results and give anti-democracy allies enough of an echo 
chamber so that if and when Trump lost the election, whether in 2016 or 
2020, a substantial number of people would believe it was because of 
fraud.
    This disinformation campaign has been supported by many of Trump's 
allies. For example, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said that he spent $25 
million pushing voter fraud claims and that he would ``spend everything 
[he has] and sell everything [he has] if that's what it takes'' to 
overturn Biden's victory.\89\ Steve Bannon, Trump's former chief 
strategist, promoted the theory that Biden stole the election from 
Trump on his popular podcast, War Room.\90\ Former Trump National 
Security Advisor and Retired Army General Michael Flynn went on a 
public speaking campaign to further sow doubts about the vote and urge 
States to conduct independent reviews of their election results.\91\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \89\ MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told Insider he's already spent $25 
million pushing voter-fraud claims and will spend everything he has on 
the cause, Business Insider (Dec. 16, 2021), https://
www.businessinsider.com/mypillow-mike-lindell-25-million-pushing-
baseless-voter-fraud-claims-2021-12.
    \90\ Heeding Steve Bannon's Call, Election Deniers Organize to 
Seize Control of the GOP--and Reshape America's Elections, ProPublica 
(Sept. 2, 2021), https://www.propublica.org/article/heeding-steve-
bannons-call-election-deniers-organize-to-seize-control-of-the-gop-and-
reshape-americas-elections.
    \91\ The military-intelligence veterans who helped lead Trump's 
campaign of disinformation, Reuters (Dec. 15, 2021), https://
www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-military/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    NewsGuard, an independent service that evaluates the credibility of 
media sources, investigated and found 166 websites in the United States 
and Europe spreading misinformation about voting, the ballot-counting 
process, and the results of the 2020 U.S. election.\92\ The top myths 
spread included the theories that Democrats committed significant voter 
fraud using manipulated voting machines or mail-in ballots to change 
votes from Trump to Biden or to add extra votes for Biden; that 
undocumented immigrants unlawfully cast a significant number of 
absentee ballots (presumably heavily skewed toward Biden); and that 
poll workers manipulated ballots at counting centers when demonstrators 
were not allowed to oversee their counting process.\93\ Trump's 
supporters also took to social media to spread these lies, which 
Trump's team then attempted to use as evidence of wide-spread voter 
fraud in their ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits.\94\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \92\ 2020 Election Misinformation Tracking Center, The Top Election 
Myths Spreading Online and the Red-Rated Websites Promoting Them: 166 
and Counting, NewsGuard (Jan. 20, 2021), https://www.newsguardtech.com/
special-reports/election-misinformation-tracker/.
    \93\ Id.
    \94\ Trump's 5-year campaign of lies led to the Capitol attack. And 
we just let it happen.1 USA Today (Jan. 13, 2021), https://
www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/01/13/trump-disinformation-
campaign-led-to-capitol-coup-attempt-column/6639309002/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
d. Preparation for and Participation in January 6
    Leading up to the joint session of Congress on January 6, the 
effort to overturn Biden's victory included public rallies in 
Washington, DC in support of Trump's election fraud theories.
    In the early morning of December 12, 2020, ahead of the ``Million 
MAGA March'' planned for later that day, Roger Stone told a crowd of 
Trump supporters, ``We will fight to the bitter end for an honest count 
of the 2020 election. Never give up, never quit, never surrender, and 
fight for America. We have an obligation to see that the rightful 
winner of the election is seated, and that is the greatest president 
since Abraham Lincoln, Donald J. Trump.''\95\ Michael Flynn also spoke 
at the December 12 rally, promising that Trump would remain in 
office\96\ and likening the assembled protesters to the biblical 
figures who destroyed the walls of Jericho.\97\ Lesser-known figures 
spoke too: Amanda Chase, a State senator in Virginia who has been 
described as ``Trump in heels,'' echoed Trump's claim that Biden 
``cheated to win'' and that she and many other Americans would ``never 
accept these results.''\98\ She made drastic claims that Trump should 
declare martial law to conduct an audit of election results in her 
State.\99\ That same month, incidentally, Sidney Powell, working with 
Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano, began funding an audit of 
the voting machines in rural Fulton County, Pennsylvania, a community 
of fewer than 15,000 people that had voted overwhelmingly for Trump. 
This audit served as a test case of the audit trend that would persist 
well into 2022 throughout several States.\100\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \95\ `Nothing is Over': Roger Stone Addresses Trump Supporters at 
Protest in Washington, Yahoo! News (Dec. 12, 2020), https://
www.yahoo.com/now/nothing-over-roger-stone-addresses-142409365.html.
    \96\ Michael Flynn Says Trump Will Remain President in First Public 
Remarks Since Pardon, Newsweek (Dec. 12, 2020), https://
www.newsweek.com/michael-flynn-says-trump-will-remain-president-first-
public-remarks-since-pardon-1554374; see also Flynn delivers first 
public remarks since Trump pardon at DC rallies, The Hill (Dec. 12, 
2020), https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/529956-flynn-
delivers-first-public-remarks-since-trump-pardon-at-dc-rallies.
    \97\ US election: Pro-Trump rallies see scuffles in US cities, BBC 
News (Dec. 13, 2020), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2020-
55292610; Trump riots: 65 days that led to chaos at the Capitol, BBC 
News (Jan. 10, 2021), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-
55592332.
    \98\ Pro-Trump Martial-Law-Pushing Amanda Chase `Getting Things in 
Order' to Run for Congress Newsweek (Nov. 8, 2021), https://
www.newsweek.com/pro-trump-martial-law-pushing-amanda-chase-getting-
things-order-run-congress-1647184.
    \99\ Virginia gubernatorial candidate says, `Trump should declare 
martial law', Fox News (Dec. 17, 2020), https://www.foxnews.com/
politics/virginia-amanda-chase-trump-martial-law.
    \100\ Group led by `Kraken' lawyer Sidney Powell hired the firm 
recounting AZ's election to probe election in Fulton Co., Pennsylvania 
Capital-Star (May 24, 2021), https://www.penncapital-star.com/
government-politics/group-led-by-kraken-lawyer-sidney-powell-hired-the-
firm-recounting-azs-election-to-probe-a-pa-election/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Members of the Proud Boys hate group were among the rally goers on 
December 12. After it ended, they prowled the streets of Washington, 
vandalizing a Black Lives Matter sign at a historic Black church, and 
confronting counter-protesters in altercations that left at least four 
people with stab wounds.\101\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \101\ Metro. African Methodist Episcopal Church v. Proud Boys 
Int'l, L.L.C. et al., Case No. 2021 CA 000004 B (D.C. Super. Ct.) 
(Complaint); Proud Boys leader arrested, accused of destroying D.C. 
Church's Black Lives Matter sign, NBC News (Jan. 4, 2021), https://
www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/proud-boys-leader-arrested-after-
allegedly-destroying-d-c-church-n1252789; How a D.C. Bar Became the 
`Haven' for the Proud Boys, Politico (Dec. 14, 2020), https://
www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/14/harrys-bar-proud-boys-
washington-dc-445015.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Further rallies in D.C. on and immediately before January 6 were 
coordinated in part by Ali Alexander, who had created a limited 
liability company called Stop the Steal in 2020.\102\ Alexander Stated 
in internet broadcasts in December 2020 that he had organized his 
January 6 rally with U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, and Mo 
Brooks,\103\ and on December 7, 2020, Alexander posted a tweet stating 
that he was ``willing to give [his] life for this fight,'' which the 
Arizona Republican Party (chaired by Kelli Ward) then retweeted with 
the addition, ``He is. Are you?''\104\ Trump tweeted from his own 
account on December 19, 2020: ``Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be 
there, will be wild!''\105\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \102\ Business Entity Records--Stop the Steal, LLC, Alabama 
Secretary of State, https://arc-sos.State.al.us/cgi/corpdetail.mbr/
detail?corp=821150; Trump allies helped plan, promote rally that led to 
Capitol attack, ABC News (Jan. 8, 2021), https://abcnews.go.com/US/
trump-allies-helped-plan-promote-rally led-capitol/story?id=75119209.
    \103\ `Stop the Steal' organizer, now banned by Twitter, said three 
GOP lawmakers helped plan his D.C. rally, Wash. Post (Jan. 13, 2021), 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/13/ali-alexander-capitol-
biggs-gosar/.
    \104\ `Stop the Steal' Organizer in Hiding After Denying Blame for 
Riot, The Daily Beast (Jan. 11, 2021); Arizona GOP asks if followers 
willing to give their lives to `stop the steal', The Hill (Dec. 8, 
2020), https://thehill.com/homenews/news/529195-arizona-gop-asks-if-
followers-willing-to-give-their-life-to-stop-the-steal.
    \105\ Trump Twitter Archive, Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 
(Dec. 19, 2020, 1:42 AM EST), https://www.thetrumparchive.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Many others in Trump's orbit helped to organize and promote the 
anti-democracy events that led up to the Capitol attack on January 6--
some also spoke at the events. During the week before, Senator 
Mastriano helped arrange bus rides for Trump supporters from 
Pennsylvania to DC.\106\ Many of the key figures in the Stop the Steal 
movement spoke at a rally on January 5 at Freedom Plaza, emceed by 
Alexander. Flynn spoke at the event, declaring that ``the Members of 
Congress, the members of the House of Representatives, the members of 
the U.S. Senate, those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of 
you that don't have the moral fiber in your body, get some tonight 
because tomorrow we the people are going to be here, and we want you to 
know we will not stand for a lie.''\107\ Mike Lindell urged the crowd: 
``Tomorrow, you need to pray for our Vice President to look up to God 
and say, `I need to make a decision, Lord, and to make the right 
decision for our country.' ''\108\ Other speakers included Roger Stone 
and Mark Finchem.\109\ Between speakers, Alexander led the crowd in 
chants of ``stop the steal'' and made declarations including, ``[t]he 
rebellion starts now''\110\ and ``[w]e ready for battle!''\111\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \106\ Mastriano campaign spent thousands on buses ahead of D.C. 
insurrection, WHYY (Jan. 12, 2021), https://whyy.org/articles/
mastriano-campaign-spent-thousands-on-buses-ahead-of-d-c-insurrection.
    \107\ Flynn, Papadopoulos address pro-Trump rally in DC, AP (Jan. 
10, 2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu5BJY-tG-c; Longtime Trump 
advisers connected to groups behind rally that led to Capitol attack, 
ABC News (Jan. 15, 2021), https://abcnews.go.com/US/longtime-trump-
advisers-connected-groups-rally led-capitol/story?id=75261028.
    \108\ #StopTheSteal Coalition Pre-Rally in DC at Freedom Plaza, 
RSBN TV, Periscope (Jan. 5, 2021), https://www.pscp.tv/w/1RDxlPOgyorxL.
    \109\ Id.
    \110\ Id. at 43:30.
    \111\ Id. at 1:06:47.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Also on January 5, a group of around 100 State legislators sent a 
letter to Pence regarding the purported ``illegalities present in the 
2020 election'' and asking him to ``afford [the] nation more time to 
properly review'' the election results by ``postponing the January 6th 
opening and counting of the electoral votes for at least 10 
days.''\112\ Doug Mastriano, Mark Finchem, and Wisconsin State 
Assemblyman Timothy Ramthun signed the letter.\113\ In an email to Vice 
President Pence's counsel on January 6, Eastman conceded that this 
proposed 10-day postponement would constitute a ``minor violation'' of 
the law.\114\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \112\ Letter to Vice President Michael R. Pence, Wisconsin Examiner 
(Jan. 5, 2021), https://wisconsinexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/
01/Letter-to-Pence-1.pdf; These 15 State legislators asked Pence not to 
certify election results, Wisconsin Examiner (Jan. 14, 2021), https://
wisconsinexaminer.com/2021/01/14/these-15-State-legislators-asked-
pence-not-to-certify-election-results/.
    \113\ Letter to Vice President Michael R. Pence, Wisconsin Examiner 
(Jan. 5, 2021), https://wisconsinexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/
01/Letter-to-Pence-1.pdf.
    \114\ Eastman v. Thompson et al., Case No. 8-22-cv-00099-DOC-DFM 
(C.D. Cal. Mar. 2, 2022), ECF No. 160-16.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Also on January 5, on his War Room podcast, Steve Bannon told his 
listeners, ``All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.'' He announced 
that, ``it's not going to happen like you think it's going to happen. 
Okay, it's going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all I can 
say is, strap in . . . You have made this happen and tomorrow it's game 
day. So, strap in. Let's get ready.''\115\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \115\ Ep. 631-Pandemic: One Day Away (W/ Maggie Vandenberghe, Jack 
Posobiec, Sean Parnell and Richard Baris) at 29:30, Steve Bannon's War 
Room (Jan. 5, 2021), https://listen.warroom.org/e/ep-631-pandemic-one-
day-away-w-maggie-vandenberghe-jack-posobiec-sean-parnell-and-richard-
baris/; How Trump allies stoked the flames ahead of Capitol riot, CNN 
(Jan. 18, 2021), https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/18/politics/trump-bannon-
stone-giuliani-capitol-riot-invs/index.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
e. The January 6 Assault on the Capitol and Democracy
    Then came January 6 itself, which began with Trump tweeting shortly 
after midnight echoing his and his supporters' long-standing efforts to 
delegitimize the election results and to pressure Pence to violate his 
Constitutional obligations. ``If Vice President @Mike--Pence comes 
through for us, we will win the Presidency. Many States want to 
decertify the mistake they made in certifying incorrect & even 
fraudulent numbers in a process NOT approved by their State 
Legislatures (which it must be). Mike can send it back!''\116\ Later in 
the morning, Trump tweeted: ``All Mike Pence has to do is send them 
back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme 
courage!''\117\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \116\ Trump Twitter Archive, Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 
(Jan. 6, 2021, 1 o'clock AM EST), https://www.thetrumparchive.com.
    \117\ Trump Twitter Archive, Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump) (Jan. 
6, 2021, 8:17 AM EST), https://www.thetrumparchive.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Next came speeches to a crowd assembled at the Ellipse next to the 
White House. This time, the speakers included Texas Attorney General 
Ken Paxton, who declared that ``[o]ne of the great things about the 
State of Texas is, we did not quit,'' referring to his failed lawsuit 
to force other States to cast their electoral votes for Trump. ``If you 
look at Georgia, they capitulated, they consented. We kept fighting in 
Texas.'' Paxton went on, ``What we have in President Trump is a 
fighter. And I think that's why we're all here.'' He pledged, ``We will 
not quit fighting. We're Texans, we're Americans, and the fight will go 
on.''\118\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \118\ Ken Paxton at Trump's D.C. Rally: `We will not quit 
fighting', Houston Chronicle (Jan. 6, 2021), https://
www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Paxton-Trump-DC-rally 
election-2020-georgia-15850073.php.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Giuliani told the crowd that ``[i]t is perfectly appropriate given 
the questionable constitutionality of the Election Counting Act [sic] 
of 1887 that the Vice President can cast it aside.'' He asserted that, 
in the previous day's U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia and in the 
November Presidential election, voting machines had been programmed to 
fraudulently add votes, claiming that an ``expert'' had examined the 
machines and ``has absolutely what he believes is conclusive proof that 
in the last 10 percent, 15 percent of the vote counted, the votes were 
deliberately changed.'' Giuliani exhorted the crowd, ``Let's have trial 
by combat.''\119\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \119\ Rudy Giuliani Speech Transcript at Trump's Washington, DC. 
Rally: Wants `Trial by Combat', Rev Transcripts (Jan. 6, 2021), https:/
/www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/rudy-giuliani-speech-transcript-at-
trumps-washington-d-c-rally-wants-trial-by-combat.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Eastman spoke on the Ellipse as well, repeating that ``we know 
there was fraud, traditional fraud that occurred. We know that dead 
people voted.'' He went on to describe the supposed voting machine 
fraud, concluding that ``all we are demanding of Vice President Pence 
is this afternoon at 1 o'clock he let the legislators of the State look 
into this.''\120\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \120\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Trump then addressed the crowd, asserting that ``we won this 
election, and we won it by a landslide.'' He challenged the crowd, ``if 
you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country 
anymore.''\121\ And he addressed Pence, who was not present: ``Mike 
Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution 
and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be 
very disappointed in you.''\122\ Pence issued a letter shortly before 
he was scheduled to preside over the joint session of Congress, stating 
that he lacked ``unilateral authority to determine which electoral 
votes should be counted and which should not,'' and indicating that he 
would abide by the Electoral Count Act.\123\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \121\ Read Trump's Jan. 6 Speech, A Key Part Of Impeachment Trial, 
NPR (Feb. 10, 2021), https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-
trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial.
    \122\ Id.
    \123\ Read Pence's Full Letter Saying he Can't Claim `Unilateral 
Authority' to Reject Electoral Votes, AP (Jan. 6, 2021), https://
www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-pences-full-letter-saying-he-cant-
claim-unilateral-authority-to-reject-electoral-votes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A large portion of the crowd at the Ellipse moved from there to 
Capitol Hill. Among them was Ron Hanks, who had recently been elected 
to the Colorado legislature. He said that he had come to DC ``to get a 
read of the Nation's Trump supporters . . . to get a sense of what may 
happen next to combat this stolen election.''\124\ Altercations with 
the Capitol Police soon followed--and many of the ringleaders of the 
anti-democracy movement were there to fan the flames. Finchem tweeted 
photographs of protestors gathered on the steps of the Capitol 
building.\125\ Alexander led chants outside the Capitol of ``victory or 
death.''\126\ Mastriano claimed that he did not go beyond police lines 
and left the area ``when it was apparent that this was no longer a 
peaceful protest,'' but video footage shows him and his wife passing 
through a breached police barricade.\127\ At 2:11 p.m., rioters 
breached a window at the Capitol building.\128\ As you know all too 
well, the mob entered the Capitol, and Members of Congress and the Vice 
President were forced to evacuate. Ward tweeted, ``Congress is 
adjourned. Send the elector choice back to the legislatures.''\129\ 
Trump tweeted that Pence lacked ``the courage to do what should have 
been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,''\130\ but 
eventually, through heroic efforts, the Capitol Police and the National 
Guard restored order at the Capitol, and the vote count resumed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \124\ The Trump Rally (Jan. 7, 2021), https://drive.google.com/
file/d/1jyoRaj7kI0V4X-0jAB3Z0xaJjOc2uk8e/view (copy on file with States 
United); see also Colorado House Democrat calls for removal of GOP 
colleague who was at Jan. 6 rally, Denver Post (Feb. 16, 2021), https:/
/www.denverpost.com/2021/02/16/ron-hanks-colorado-house-removal-
capitol-riot/.
    \125\ Seven Arizonan Republican legislators face calls to ban them 
from the House and Senate, KNXV (Jan. 8, 2021), https://www.abc15.com/
news/state/seven-arizonan-republican-legislators-face-calls-to-ban-
them-from-the-house-and-senate.
    \126\ Baked Alaska, the QAnon Shaman . . . who led the storming of 
the Capitol?, The Guardian (Jan. 7, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/
us-news/2021/jan/07/baked-alaska-the-qanon-shaman-who-led-the-storming-
of-the-capitol.
    \127\ Pa. GOP lawmaker Doug Mastriano says he left the Capitol area 
before the riot. New videos say otherwise, The Philadelphia Inquirer 
(May 25, 2021), https://www.inquirer.com/news/doug-mastriano-capitol-
riot-pennslyvania-video-20210525.html; Videos Contradict State 
Lawmaker's Claim He Left Capitol While It Was `Still Peaceful', 
HuffPost (May 25, 2021), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/doug-mastriano-
capitol-riot_n_60ac5e99e4b019ef10de09c7.
    \128\ How the rioters who stormed the Capitol came dangerously 
close to Pence, Wash. Post (Jan. 15, 2021), https://
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pence-rioters-capitol-attack/2021/01/
15/ab62e434-567c-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html; Inside the Capitol 
Riot: An Exclusive Video Investigation, N.Y. Times (Sept. 23, 2021), 
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/us/jan-6-capitol-attack-
takeaways.html.
    \129\ Kelli Ward (@kelliwardaz), Twitter (Jan. 6, 2021), https://
twitter.com/kelliwardaz/status/1346916956801179649.
    \130\ Trump Twitter Archive, Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump) (Jan. 
6, 2021, 2:24 PM EST), https://www.thetrumparchive.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Soon after, a new disinformation campaign was launched to cast the 
riot as either a protest that got out of hand or a false-flag operation 
by leftists to embarrass Trump. Hanks wrote that the crowd at the 
Capitol was not the same as at Trump's rally: ``[v]ery few people at 
the Ellipse were wearing masks. Those at the Capitol were wearing 
bandanas, like the Antifa bandits of the summertime riots.''\131\ 
Congressmembers Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, and Mo Brooks all spouted the 
conspiracy theory that Antifa had attacked the Capitol.\132\ Giuliani 
appeared on Bannon's podcast on January 9, asserting that Democrats had 
stormed the building.\133\ The same claims were echoed by Finchem,\134\ 
Ward,\135\ Paxton,\136\ and Lindell.\137\
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    \131\ The Trump Rally (Jan. 7, 2021), https://drive.google.com/
file/d/1jyoRaj7kI0V4X-0jAB3Z0xaJjOc2uk8e/view (copy on file with States 
United).
    \132\ Antifa Didn't Storm The Capitol. Just Ask The Rioters., NPR 
(Mar. 2, 2021), https://www.npr.org/2021/03/02/972564176/antifa-didnt-
storm-the-capitol-just-ask-the-rioters.
    \133\ YouTube bans Steve Bannon's podcast channel hours after Rudy 
Giuliani appeared on an episode and blamed the Capitol siege on 
Democrats Business Insider (Jan. 9, 2021), https://
www.businessinsider.com/youtube-bans-steve-bannon-war-room-podcast-
rudy-giuliani-comments-2021-1; Google bans two Steve Bannon YouTube 
channels after Trump lawyer Giuliani claims stolen election, The 
Mercury News (Jan. 8, 2021), https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/08/
googles-youtube-hosts-video-of-trump-lawyer-giuliani-claiming-stolen-
election-two-days-after-deadly-capitol-insurrection/.
    \134\ Among some in Arizona GOP, siege of the US Capitol was 
everyone's fault except Trump, AZCentral (Jan. 7, 2021), https://
www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2021/01/07/these-arizona-
republicans-say-trump-isnt-to-blame-for-capitol-riot/6580354002/.
    \135\ As Nation's Capitol swirled into chaos, Arizona played a 
central role, AZCentral (Jan 6, 2021), https://www.azcentral.com/story/
news/politics/arizona/2021/01/06/arizonas-role-us-capitol-riot-paul-
gosar-election-certification/6571625002/.
    \136\ Ken Paxton told Trump supporters to `keep fighting.' When 
they breached the Capitol, he falsely claimed it wasn't them., The 
Texas Tribune (Jan. 7, 2021), https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/07/
texas-ken-paxton-trump-supporters/.
    \137\ How Trump's pied pipers rallied a faithful mob to the 
Capitol, Reuters (Jan. 11, 2021), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-
usa-trump-protest-organizers-insight/how-trumps-pied-pipers-rallied-a-
faithful-mob-to-the-capitol-idUSKBN29G2UP.
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    For those who were involved in the attempted coup on January 6, the 
fight did not end on that day. Soon after, Amanda Chase gave a floor 
speech in Virginia defending those who stormed the Capitol, calling 
them ``patriots who love their country and do not want to see our great 
republic turned into a socialist country.''\138\ On January 10, 
Alexander appeared in an internet video, promising: ``We are going to 
punish the traitors,'' referring to Republican politicians who endorsed 
Biden's electoral victory. ``The Lord says vengeance is his, and I pray 
I am the tool to stab these motherf--ers.''\139\ This continuing 
rhetoric was a cause for concern for House Minority Leader Kevin 
McCarthy. In newly released audio from a private call from January 10, 
2021, McCarthy urged Republican leaders to monitor lawmakers' public 
statements and alert him to potentially dangerous messages: ``I do not 
want to look back and think we caused something, or we missed 
something, and someone got hurt. I don't want to play politics with any 
of that.''\140\
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    \138\ Virginia Senator Who Defended Capitol Rioters Faces Censure 
Effort NBC4 Washington (Jan. 23, 2021), https://www.nbcwashington.com/
news/local/virginia-senator-who-defended-capitol-rioters-faces-censure-
effort/2549545/.
    \139\ Id.
    \140\ McCarthy Feared G.O.P. Lawmakers Put `People in Jeopardy' 
After Jan. 6 New York Times (April 26, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/
2022/04/26/us/politics/mccarthy-republican-
lawmakers.html?partner=slack∣=sl-share.
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               ii. the anti-democracy movement continues
    As we explained, the terrible events of January 6 were not the 
start of this anti-democracy movement, nor were they the end. The 
central tenet of the ``Stop the Steal'' movement--the ``Big Lie'' that 
the 2020 Presidential election was stolen from Trump--has only spread 
further. Today, it is a tool for certain anti-democracy activists, whom 
we at States United call ``election deniers,'' to take steps to ensure 
that former President Trump and his advisors, lawyers, and like-minded 
State and local officials will be able to control the outcomes of 
future elections across the country regardless of whether they or their 
preferred candidates actually win those elections.\141\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \141\ The clear and present danger of Trump's enduring `Big Lie', 
NPR (Dec. 23, 2021), https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1065277246/trump-
big-lie-jan-6-election.
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    That's where we now find ourselves. Many of the same people who 
preemptively cast doubt on the 2016 and 2020 elections, and who were 
involved in efforts to take over the Government by force to change the 
result of the 2020 Presidential election, have now developed a playbook 
for future elections: First, they change the rules of elections; then, 
they change the referees--the people who will enforce those rules. This 
process is accompanied by many of the same anti-democracy tactics that 
were employed prior to January 6, such as pressure aimed at State 
officials--including challenging them in primary elections--and 
sustained disinformation campaigns. The objective is to change the 
results in the future--and some even bizarrely believe that the results 
of 2020 can still be changed. The purported justification for all of 
that is the ``Big Lie,'' that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump 
through voter fraud.
a. Changing the Rules
    We first turn to the efforts to change the rules of elections. In 
the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential election, a wave of legislative 
proposals to revise election laws swept across the country State by 
State.\142\ The Voting Rights Lab identified more than 2,000 bills that 
seek to alter in one way or another the way elections are 
administered.\143\
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    \142\ A Democracy Crisis in the Making, States United Democracy 
Center (Apr. 22, 2021), https://statesuniteddemocracy.org/wp-content/
uploads/2021/04/FINAL-Democracy-Crisis-Report-April-21.pdf.
    \143\ Legislative Tracker, Voting Rights Lab (last checked Apr. 12, 
2022), https://tracker.votingrightslab.org/.
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    Of course, as we said earlier with respect to litigation, nothing 
is inherently problematic about introducing bills relating to election 
laws. But many of these bills involve efforts to alter basic principles 
about how elections are administered and aspire to put highly partisan 
State legislators in charge of basic decisions about our elections--
with the ostensible goal being to rig election outcomes and give a 
political party the ability to nullify the votes of the people.
    Traditionally, the executive branch and local election officials 
have run our voting systems, but these recent efforts would give State 
legislators the power to disrupt election administration and the 
reporting of results--powers beyond those they had in 2020 or indeed 
throughout much of the last century. Had such bills been law in 2020, 
they would have significantly added to the turmoil that surrounded the 
election, and they would have raised the alarming prospect that the 
outcome of the Presidential election could be decided contrary to the 
people's votes. When the losing party overrides the will of the voters, 
our system of Government collapses.
    Our organization, States United, published a report, Democracy 
Crisis in the Making, on precisely this issue. In April 2021,\144\ we 
identified 148 bills threatening to interfere with election 
administration across 36 States. In May 2022, States United published 
an updated report that found the trend of introducing election 
subversion bills has accelerated. As of April 8, 2022, legislatures in 
33 States have introduced 229 bills--175 introduced in this calendar 
year alone and 54 rolled over from the last calendar year. In total, 50 
election subversion bills have been enacted or adopted (32 last year 
and 18 thus far this year).\145\ A few are worth highlighting.
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    \144\ Democracy Crisis in the Making: How State Legislatures are 
Politicizing, Criminalizing, and Interfering with Elections, States 
United Democracy Center, https://statesuniteddemocracy.org/resources/
democracy-crisis-in-the-making-how-state-legislatures-are-politicizing-
criminalizing-and-interfering-with-elections/.
    \145\ Democracy Crisis in the Making: How State Legislatures are 
Politicizing, Criminalizing, and Interfering with Elections, States 
United Democracy Center, https://statesuniteddemocracy.org/wp-content/
uploads/2022/05/DCITM_2022.pdf.
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    Buried among the more publicized provisions of Georgia's S.B. 
202,\146\ enacted in March 2021, are changes to Georgia's election laws 
that fundamentally alter the balance of power between the executive and 
legislative branches. For example, the law changes the appointments 
power and restricts the State Election Board's ability to respond to 
emergencies. In particular, the law replaces the directly-elected 
secretary of state as chair of the State Election Board with a 
``chairperson elected by the General Assembly''\147\ and it empowers 
the State Election Board--now chaired by a legislative appointee--to 
investigate and replace local election officials whose competence has 
been, as the law puts it, ``call[ed] into question.''\148\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \146\ S.B. 202, Georgia 2021-2022 Regular Session, https://
www.legis.ga.gov/api/legislation/document/20212022/201498; A Democracy 
Crisis in the Making, States United Democracy Center (Apr. 22, 2021), 
https://statesuniteddemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/FINAL-
Democracy-Crisis-Report-April-21.pdf.
    \147\ S.B. 202, Georgia 2021-2022 Regular Session, https://
www.legis.ga.gov/api/legislation/document/20212022/201498.
    \148\ Id.
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    Context is important here. In light of the Secretary of State Brad 
Raffensperger's resisting calls from State legislators and others 
(including Trump) to overturn the election results, this is a clear 
effort by partisan legislators to wrest control of the State's 
elections into their own hands.
    Before this year, the State Election Board was chaired by the 
secretary of state and, in addition, was comprised of two legislative 
appointees and one representative of each political party. Under the 
new law, the chair is selected by a simple majority vote of the Georgia 
Senate and House. While the chair must be ``nonpartisan,'' this merely 
means that they must not have engaged in partisan politics--for 
example, by participating in a partisan campaign--for the previous 2 
years. Additionally, the chair can be removed and replaced by the 
legislature at any time by a majority vote, giving the legislature 
effective control of the board.
    Further, those legislative appointees now have the power to replace 
local election officials with their own hand-picked substitutes. In 
Georgia, elections are administered by ``superintendents''--usually 
bipartisan or nonpartisan county election boards. Under the new law, 
the State Election Board can replace superintendents if it finds that 
there has been ``demonstrated nonfeasance, malfeasance, or gross 
negligence in the administration of . . . elections'' over a 2-year 
period. This vague standard raises the specter of election manipulation 
by partisan actors.
    Indeed, in an extreme case, the legislature--acting through the 
Board--might be able to abuse this power to overturn the results of an 
election--for example, by replacing a superintendent to prevent the 
certification of election results.
    Kansas's H.B. 2332,\149\ which was passed by overriding the 
Governor's veto in May 2021,\150\ charts a different path for inserting 
the legislature into crucial election functions and depriving the 
Governor or secretary of state of vital powers. This law strips the 
Governor of any authority to modify election laws or procedures. The 
secretary of state is now barred from settling any litigation regarding 
elections without the consent of the legislative coordinating council. 
And Kansas State courts now lack the authority to modify State election 
laws except under powers that may be granted to them by the State's 
constitution. As a result, in the event of an emergency, such as a 
flood that renders polling places inaccessible, the Governor will be 
unable to act quickly to modify election procedures. Likewise, the 
secretary of state will have their hands tied in court, and effectively 
every lawsuit regarding voting in Kansas--potentially everything from 
the certification of election results to how voter registration is 
conducted--will be overseen by a group of partisan political actors.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \149\ Democracy Crisis Report Update: New Data and Trends Show the 
Warning Signs Have Intensified in the Last Two Months, States United 
Democracy Center, Project Democracy, and Law Forward (June 10, 2021), 
https://statesuniteddemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Democracy-
Crisis-Part-II_June-10_Final_v7.pdf.
    \150\ HB 2332, Kansas 2021-2022 Legislative Sessions (Apr. 12, 
2022), http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2021--22/measures/hb2332/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Last, in Arkansas, the State legislature enacted a new measure in 
2021, H.B. 1803,\151\ which expands the power and investigative scope 
of the State's partisan State Board of Election Commissioners to 
oversee or even undo election results. The seven-member board is 
chaired by the secretary of state, and the remaining six members of the 
board are appointed by the State's Governor, legislative leaders, and 
the heads of its Republican and Democratic parties. Under previous law, 
the board was empowered to hear and resolve complaints about violations 
of voter registration laws as well as general election complaints, but 
it was considered to be ``toothless.'' Now, the board may hear a 
broader range of complaints including about how county boards tabulated 
ballots or certified results, as well as their ``election processes'' 
or the conduct of elections in general. If the board finds a complaint 
valid, it is entitled to impose fines and ``institute corrective 
actions.''\152\ Since the remedy is not further specified in the law, 
critics have worried that the broad language could enable the board to 
overturn elections.\153\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \151\ Id.
    \152\ Are State legislators really seeking power to overrule the 
voters?, Politifact (July 14, 2021), https://www.politifact.com/
article/2021/jul/14/are-state-legislators-really-seeking-power-
overrul/.
    \153\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Since Georgia is a State that has been characterized by some 
extremely close elections, we know that laws restricting voting rights 
there can directly affect the outcomes of critical State-wide elections 
that have an impact on the whole Nation. Although the latter two laws 
we discussed were not enacted in States with as narrow election 
margins, they illustrate a disturbing trend of anti-democracy forces 
developing and workshopping laws to change the election system to suit 
their ends, which they can then import into other States with more 
closely contested elections. In this way, certain solidly Republican 
States have acted as, as The New York Times called them, ``laboratories 
for legislation.''\154\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \154\ In Bid for Control of Elections, Trump Loyalists Face Few 
Obstacles, N.Y. Times (Dec. 11, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/
11/us/politics/trust-in-elections-trump-democracy.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It is also notable that many of the same individuals who were 
involved in anti-democracy efforts before the 2020 Presidential 
election and in the run-up to and during the January 6 insurrection are 
now leading these efforts to change the rules of elections. Again, we 
want to be clear: These efforts to change election rules are premised 
on baseless accusations and lies, not verifiable evidence or even 
plausible allegations of fraud.\155\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \155\ 10 Voter Fraud Lies Debunked, Brennan Center for Justice (May 
27, 2020), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/10-
voter-fraud-lies-debunked; Factbox: Trump's False claims debunked: the 
2020 election and Jan. 6 riot, Reuters (Jan. 6, 2022), https://
www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-false-claims-debunked-2020-election-
jan-6-riot-2022-01-06/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Last November, Doug Mastriano announced legislation to repeal Act 
77,\156\ the law that had established no-excuse mail voting in 
Pennsylvania,\157\ even though he voted for its passage in 2019.\158\ 
He has also supported challenges to Act 77 in Pennsylvania's courts. 
When the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court struck down Act 77 in January 
of this year,\159\ Mastriano said that he ``welcome[s] the end of `no-
excuse' mail-in voting in Pennsylvania.''\160\ Pennsylvania's Supreme 
Court later stayed the lower court's decision,\161\ allowing Act 77 to 
remain in effect while the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the appeal.\162\ 
Mastriano also initiated a so-called ``forensic investigation'' of the 
2020 Presidential election,\163\ though he was later stymied in those 
efforts by fellow Republican and Pennsylvania Senate President Pro 
Tempore Jake Corman.\164\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \156\ Op-Ed: Election Reform--Let the People Decide, Senator Doug 
Mastriano (May 4, 2021), https://senatormastriano.com/2021/05/04/op-ed-
election-reform-let-the-people-decide/; Pennsylvania court strikes down 
no-excuse mail voting law CBS News (Jan. 28, 2022), https://
www.cbsnews.com/news/mail-in-voting-ballots-struck-down-pennsylvania.
    \157\ Pennsylvania court strikes down no-excuse mail voting law, 
CBS News (Jan. 28, 2022), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mail-in-voting-
ballots-struck-down-pennsylvania/.
    \158\ Details for Senate RCS No. 311, Pennsylvania State Senate 
(Oct. 29, 2019), https://www.legis.state.pa.us/CFDOCS/Legis/RC/Public/- 
rc_view_action2.cfm?sess_yr=2019&sess_ind=0&rc_body=S&rc_nbr=311.
    \159\ Pennsylvania court strikes down no-excuse mail voting law CBS 
News (Jan. 28, 2022), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mail-in-voting-
ballots-struck-down-pennsylvania/.
    \160\ Pennsylvania court strikes down State's no-excuse absentee/
mail-in voting law, Ballotpedia News (Feb. 2, 2022), https://
news.ballotpedia.org/2022/02/02/pennsylvania-court-strikes-down-states-
no-excuse-absentee-mail-in-voting-law/.
    \161\ McLinko et al. v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania et al., Case 
Nos. J-18A-2022, J-18B-2022, J-18C-2022, J-18D-2022, J-18E-2022 (Penn. 
S. Ct. Mar. 1, 2022).
    \162\ Pa. Supreme Court weighs future of State's popular mail 
voting law, The Philadelphia Inquirer (Mar. 8, 2022), https://
www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/spl/pennsylvania-mail-voting-
supreme-court-hearing-20220308.html&outputType=app-web-view.
    \163\ Op-Ed: Why I am initiating a forensic investigation of the 
2020 General Election and 2021 Primary, Senator Doug Mastriano (July 7, 
2021), https://senatormastriano.com/2021/07/07/op-ed-why-i-am-
initiating-a-forensic-investigation-of-the-2020-general-election-and-
2021-primary/.
    \164\ Here's why State Sen. Doug Mastriano says Pa. election audit 
`stopped for the time being'1 GoErie (Aug. 20, 2021), https://
www.goerie.com/story/news/2021/08/20/pa-election-audit-mastriano-trump/
8198996002/; see also Frontrunning Pa. Governor candidate still focused 
on unproven election fraud claims, PennLive (Mar. 19, 2022), https://
www.pennlive.com/news/2022/03/leading-candidate-for-pa-governor-
amplifies-false-unproven-stolen-election-narrative.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    John Eastman, who wrote the now-infamous memoranda about Pence's 
purported ability to overturn the 2020 Presidential election on January 
6, penned a new memorandum regarding the supposed right of Wisconsin's 
State legislature to overturn the State's Presidential election 
results.\165\ In a memorandum to Wisconsin State Assemblyman Timothy 
Ramthun, Eastman argued that ``State legislatures . . . do have the 
authority to de-certify the election of Presidential electors in their 
State upon a definitive showing of illegality and/or fraud in the 
conduct of the election sufficient to have altered the results of the 
election.''\166\ Eastman concluded that the State legislature could 
then ``appoint electors as it sees fit.''\167\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \165\ Wisconsin Is Ground Zero for the MAGA Effort to Steal the 
Next Election, Rolling Stone (Feb. 6, 2022), https://
www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-wisconsin-
eastman-election-decertification-1295191/.
    \166\ John Eastman Letter to Representative Timothy Ramthun (Dec. 
30, 2021), https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/madison.com/- 
content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/dc/7dca5f5e-6d6d-5527-8c82-
cfe4dbf52236/6201a1a5e6d38.pdf.
    \167\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Arizona Republican Chairwoman Kelli Ward has been a vocal supporter 
of legislative and judicial efforts in Arizona to limit voting 
rights.\168\ She has also publicly shamed Republican legislators who 
did not support so-called ``election integrity'' bills, tweeting: 
``Keep your eyes open AFTER the legislative session to see what rewards 
Boyer and Ugenti-Rita get from the swamp for killing #ElectionIntegrity 
bills in the Senate . . . ''.\169\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \168\ Arizona Republicans Seek to Stop Early Voting with Supreme 
Court Lawsuit, Phoenix New Times (Mar. 2, 2022), https://
www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/arizona-republican-yvonne-cahill-sues-
katie-hobbs-in-lawsuit-that-could-end-early-voting-13135090; Kelli Ward 
(@kelliwardaz), Twitter (Feb. 28, 2022), https://twitter.com/
kelliwardaz/status/1498466919908737028.
    \169\ Kelli Ward (@kelliwardaz), Twitter (Mar. 14, 2022) https://
twitter.com/kelliwardaz/status/1503509426224869376; Arizona State 
senators block a dozen GOP-sponsored election reform bills, Courthouse 
News Service (Mar. 14, 2022), https://www.courthousenews.com/arizona-
state-senators-block-a-dozen-gop-sponsored-election-reform-bills/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem recently introduced HCR 
2033, a concurrent resolution ``calling for the elections of Maricopa, 
Pima, and Yuma counties to be set aside based on clear and convincing 
evidence that the elections in those counties were irredeemably 
compromised.''\170\ Arizona also recently enacted a new law requiring 
proof of citizenship to vote in Presidential elections,\171\ which 
voting rights groups estimate could disenfranchise tens of thousands of 
people who are entitled to vote but lack the required 
documentation.\172\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \170\ News Release, Representative Finchem Introduces Resolution to 
Set Aside & Decertify Three 2020 County Elections, Arizona House of 
Representatives, Representative Mark Finchem (Feb. 7, 2022) https://
www.azleg.gov/press/house/55LEG/2R/220207FINCHEMHCR2033.pdf.
    \171\ H.B. 2492, Arizona Fifty-fifth Legislature--Second Regular 
Session, https://apps.azleg.gov/BillStatus/BillOverview/76970.
    \172\ Arizona Passes Proof-of-Citizenship Law for Voting In 
Presidential Elections, N.Y. Times (Mar. 31, 2022), https://
www.nytimes.com/2022/03/31/us/politics/arizona-voting-bill-
citizenship.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In Texas, Attorney General Paxton, who previously stated that Trump 
``would've lost the election'' in Texas had his office not convinced 
the State Supreme Court to prevent Harris County from sending 
applications for mail-in ballots to all registered voters,\173\ formed 
a ``2021 Texas Election Integrity Unit'' in an effort to ``devote 
agency lawyers, investigators, support staff, and resources to ensuring 
this local election season . . . is run transparently and 
securely.''\174\ It was ``specially tasked with overseeing the 2021 
election season.''\175\ Paxton also sought to indict a county clerk 
based on her administration of the 2020 Presidential election, though 
the case was rejected by a grand jury.\176\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \173\ Texas AG Says Trump Would've `Lost' State If It Hadn't 
Blocked Mail-In Ballots Applications Being Sent Out, Newsweek (June 5, 
2021), https://www.newsweek.com/texas-ag-says-trump-wouldve-lost-state-
if-it-hadnt-blocked-mail-ballots-applications-being-1597909.
    \174\ AG Paxton Announces Formation of 2021 Texas Election 
Integrity Unit, Press Release (Oct. 18, 2021), https://
www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/ag-paxton-announces-
formation-2021-texas-election-integrity-unit.
    \175\ Id.
    \176\ Amid Texas GOP's effort to question electoral integrity, 
attorney general tried to indict Travis County elections chief, The 
Texas Tribune (Dec. 20, 2021), https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/20/
texas-ken-paxton-travis-county-elections/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Colorado HB 1204 was introduced by Representative Ron Hanks to 
overhaul the State's election system. The bill did not make it out of 
committee, but would have eliminated early voting, both in person and 
by mail, unless the voter had requested an absentee ballot based on a 
``valid'' excuse.\177\ Otherwise, all ballots would need to be cast in 
person on Election Day, and then counted by hand within 24 hours after 
the polls have closed.\178\ Further, the bill would have withdrawn 
Colorado from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a 
non-profit organization of States that helps to ``improve the accuracy 
of America's voter rolls and increase access to voter registration for 
all eligible citizens.''\179\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \177\ HB22-1204 Election Systems, Colorado General Assembly, 
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb22-1204.
    \178\ Id.
    \179\ Ensuring the Efficiency And Integrity of America's Voter 
Rolls, Election Registration Information Center, https://
ericstates.org/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Virginia State Senator Amanda Chase previously said she was working 
with Sidney Powell ``to expose what I and others believe is extensive 
fraud here in Virginia,''\180\ and has now introduced SB 605, a bill 
that would require a ``forensic audit'' of the results of the 2020 
election and create a process for future citizen-initiated audits.\181\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \180\ GOP gubernatorial candidate in Virginia calls on Trump to 
declare martial law, The Hill (Dec. 15, 2020), https://thehill.com/
homenews/campaign/530291-gop-gubernatorial-candidate-in-virginia-calls-
on-trump-todeclare-martial.
    \181\ SB 605 Conduct of election, election results, post-election 
forensic audits, Virginia's Legislative Information System, https://
lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?221+sum+SB605.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Attorney Erick Kaardal appeared in Wisconsin conducting on-camera 
interviews of people at nursing homes and questioning the mental 
capacity of elderly people who voted in 2020.\182\ Attorney Cleta 
Mitchell, who helped Trump pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad 
Raffensperger to overturn the election results there, was quietly 
appointed to the board of advisors for the U.S. Election Assistance 
Commission, which was created after the controversial 2000 Presidential 
election recount in Florida ``to serve as a clearinghouse for election 
administration information and provide voluntary guidance to 
States.''\183\ Additionally, Michael Flynn and Roger Stone just 
recently announced an initiative to train election volunteers in eight 
closely contested States to ``expose shenanigans at the ballot 
box.''\184\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \182\ In conspiracy-laden `circus' Gableman attacks Wisconsin 
election administration, Wisconsin Examiner (Mar. 2, 2022), https://
wisconsinexaminer.com/2022/03/02/in-conspiracy-laden-circus-gableman-
attacks-wisconsin-election-administration/.
    \183\ How a lawyer who aided Trump's 2020 subversion efforts was 
named to a Federal election advisory board CNN (Nov. 18, 2021), https:/
/www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/politics/cleta-mitchell-election-assistance-
commission-advisor/index.html.
    \184\ Patrick Byrne, Gen. Flynn, Roger Stone Announce New Election 
Integrity Initiative In Orlando, PJ Media (Feb. 26, 2022), https://
pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/jeff-reynolds/2022/02/26/patrick-byrne-
gen-flynn-roger-stone-announce-new-election-integrity-initiative-in-
orlando-n1562049; General Flynn, Patrick Byrne, Roger Stone, Joe Flynn 
Will Unveil Bi-Partisan Election Integrity Initiative at CPAC, PR 
Newswire (Feb. 23, 2022), https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/
general-flynn-patrick-byrne-roger-stone-joe-flynn-will-unveil-bi-
partisan-election-integrity-initiative-at-cpac-301488663.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
b. Replacing the Refs
    As we mentioned earlier, the strategy since January 6 has been two-
fold: First, change the rules governing elections, and then, change the 
people who enforce those rules. When elections are run by anti-
democracy operatives, then those same people can control the outcomes. 
Since 2020, election deniers have lined up to oversee voting at all 
levels of the system, from State-wide officials to precinct-level poll 
workers.
    We are tracking the trend of election deniers running for State-
wide office as part of a research project Replacing the Refs.\185\ To 
qualify as an election denier, a candidate must have falsely claimed 
that Trump won the 2020 election, spread lies about the legitimacy of 
the 2020 Presidential election, called for a ``forensic audit'' of the 
2020 Presidential election after the results were certified or 
otherwise finalized, promoted conspiracies about the 2020 Presidential 
election, and/or taken actions to undermine the integrity of the 2020 
Presidential election, including, for example, participating in a Stop 
the Steal event.\186\ We have found that, as of April 4, 2022, at least 
53 election deniers are running for Governor in 25 States, at least 13 
election deniers are running for attorney general in 13 States, and at 
least 23 election deniers are running for secretary of state in 19 
States.\187\ Put another way, an election denier is running in 2 out of 
3 races for Governor and secretary of state, and 1 out of 3 races for 
attorney general. In addition, 9 States have election deniers running 
in all 3 State-wide races.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \185\ Replacing the Refs, States United Democracy Center, https://
statesuniteddemocracy.org/resources/replacingtherefs/.
    \186\ Id.
    \187\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It's not just top-line State-wide roles that are important to 
election administration. In fact, local races--such as judges and 
inspectors of elections--can be just as impactful.\188\ People in these 
types of positions oversee polling locations and safeguard the counting 
of votes. Although partisan judges or inspectors might only affect a 
small number of votes per precinct, their cumulative effect could tilt 
State-wide elections.\189\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \188\ The Desperate Scramble to Stop an Insider Election Threat The 
Atlantic (Nov. 14, 2021), https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/
2021/11/pennsylvania-election-threat/620684/.
    \189\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Election deniers are focusing on these positions, too. Last year, 
in two of Pennsylvania's 67 counties--York and Lancaster--almost a 
dozen candidates for judge or inspector of elections were election 
deniers.\190\ One election denier--who ran to be judge of elections in 
his precinct--organized buses traveling to Washington, DC for the 
January 6 ``Stop the Steal'' rally.\191\ He was viewed as being so 
outside the mainstream that a fellow Republican urged the leader of the 
local Democratic committee to find someone to run against him.\192\ He 
won anyway.\193\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \190\ Id.
    \191\ Id.; How January 6 changed what it means to be a Republican 
in one Pennsylvania county, CNN (Jan. 5, 2022), https://www.cnn.com/
2022/01/05/politics/jan-6-capitol-riot-lancaster-republicans/
index.html.
    \192\ How January 6 changed what it means to be a Republican in one 
Pennsylvania county, CNN (Jan. 5, 2022), https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/
05/politics/jan-6-capitol-riot-lancaster-republicans/index.html.
    \193\ In Bid for Control of Elections, Trump Loyalists Face Few 
Obstacles, N.Y. Times (Dec. 11, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/
11/us/politics/trust-in-elections-trump-democracy.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition, many of the election deniers who participated in the 
events of January 6 in some respect are now following up on those 
efforts by running for positions that would allow them to administer 
elections. One is Doug Mastriano, the Pennsylvania State senator who 
quickly jumped on the anti-democracy bandwagon. He is now the 
Republican nominee in the race for Governor of Pennsylvania, at the 
encouragement of Trump.\194\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \194\ Frontrunning Pa. Governor candidate still focused on unproven 
election fraud claims, Penn Live Patriot-News (Mar. 20, 2022); https://
www.pennlive.com/news/2022/03/leading-candidate-for-pa-governor-
amplifies-false-unproven-stolen-election-narrative.html How a Trump 
ally rode Trump's election fraud lie to political prominence, Politico 
(June 16, 2021), https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/17/doug-
mastriano-trump-pennsylvania-494796; Doug Mastriano has won the GOP 
primary for Pa. Governor after a campaign fueled by election lies, The 
Philadelphia Inquirer (May 18, 2022), https://www.inquirer.com/
politics/election/doug-mastriano-wins-pa-republican-primary-governor-
20220517.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem is running to be 
Arizona's secretary of state--and he has Trump's endorsement.\195\ It 
is not surprising, then, that he has made the Big Lie a central tenet 
of his campaign.\196\ So too has Tim Ramthun, who is running for 
Governor of Wisconsin and states on his campaign website that he ``will 
call for an independent full forensic physical cyber audit for the 
November 2022 election, beginning with my race regardless of the 
outcome.''\197\ He has Mike Lindell's endorsement.\198\ In Texas, Ken 
Paxton won the Republican run-off in his bid for another term as 
Attorney General and is now the party's nominee.\199\ Ron Hanks is 
running to be a United States Senator from Colorado.\200\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \195\ Mark Finchem, election conspiracy promoter, gets Trump's 
endorsement for secretary of state, AZCentral (Sept. 13, 2021), https:/
/www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/09/13/trump-
endorses-mark-finchem-arizona-secretary-state-election/8322839002/.
    \196\ Trump followers zero in on secretary of state campaigns, 
Politico (Jan. 24, 2022), https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/24/
trump-secretary-of-state-campaigns-00000473.
    \197\ Wisconsin Is Ground Zero for the MAGA Effort to Steal the 
Next Election, Rolling Stone (Feb. 6, 2022), https://
www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-wisconsin-
eastman-election-decertification-1295191/; Ramthun for Governor, 
https://www.ramthunforgovernor.com/.
    \198\ Wisconsin Is Ground Zero for the MAGA Effort to Steal the 
Next Election, Rolling Stone (Feb. 6, 2022), https://
www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-wisconsin-
eastman-election-decertification-1295191/.
    \199\ Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton easily defeats George P. 
Bush in GOP primary runoff, The Texas Tribune (May 24, 2022), https://
www.texastribune.org/2022/05/24/texas-attorney-general-runoff-results-
ken-paxton-george-p-bush/.
    \200\ Controversial Republican State Rep. Ron Hanks files to run 
for U.S. Senate in 2022, Colorado Sun (Oct. 1, 2021), https://
coloradosun.com/2021/10/01/ron-hanks-announces-senate-bid/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Big Lie has also been fully incorporated into the dogma of the 
QAnon movement, which, in turn, has promoted the candidacies of 
election deniers. The Guardian reported earlier this year that QAnon 
``played a critical role in steering far-right candidates toward the 
secretary of state races as part of what appears to be a calculated 
Nation-wide assault on American democracy.''\201\ Jim Marchant, a 
candidate for Nevada secretary of State, revealed last year that the 
idea for him to run was not his own; he was approached by a QAnon 
figure known as Juan O Savin,\202\ who is involved in a QAnon 
``project'' to ``help[] candidates across the country.''\203\ In 
addition, Ron Watkins, who is widely believed to be ``Q'' (or one of 
possibly two ``Qs'')\204\ wrote a baseless affidavit used in 2020 
election litigation stating that voting machines used software 
``designed . . . to facilitate digital ballot stuffing via simple vote 
result manipulation.''\205\ Sidney Powell filed the affidavit in her 
Georgia lawsuit targeting the State's use of Dominion Voting Systems' 
voting machines.\206\ Watkins has since announced he is running for 
Congress in Arizona as his ``next step'' in getting ``really involved 
in election integrity issues.''\207\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \201\ `We have a project': QAnon followers eye swing State election 
official races, The Guardian (Feb. 11, 2022), https://
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/11/qanon-donald-trump-big-lie-
elections-swing-states.
    \202\ Id.
    \203\ Id.
    \204\ Who is Behind QAnon? Linguistic Department Finds 
Fingerprints, N.Y. Times (Feb. 19, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/
02/19/technology/qanon-messages-authors.html.
    \205\ Former Trump Lawyer Sidney Powell Cites QAnon Promoter in 
Voter Fraud Lawsuit, Daily Beast (Dec. 1, 2020), https://
www.thedailybeast.com/former-trump-lawyer-sidney-powell-cites-qanon-
backer-ron-watkins-in-voter-fraud-lawsuit-affidavit; To boost voter-
fraud claims, Trump advocate Sidney Powell turns to unusual source: The 
longtime operator of QAnon's Internet home, Wash. Post (Dec. 1, 2020), 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/01/powell-cites-
qanon-watkins/.
    \206\ To boost voter-fraud claims, Trump advocate Sidney Powell 
turns to unusual source: The longtime operator of QAnon's Internet 
home, Wash. Post (Dec. 1, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/
technology/2020/12/01/powell-cites-qanon-watkins/; Setting the Record 
Straight: Facts & Rumors, Dominion Voting (Apr. 12, 2022), https://
www.dominionvoting.com/strs-georgia/; Pearson v. Kemp, No. 1:20-cv-
04809-TCB (N.D. Ga.).
    \207\ QAnon figure says he's running for Congress to secure 
elections, Arizona Capitol Times (Oct. 18, 2021), https://
azcapitoltimes.com/news/2021/10/18/qanon-figure-says-hes-running-for-
congress-to-fix-elections/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Our studies have concluded that election deniers are attempting to 
take steps to be able to control administration of future elections 
across the United States. Our findings also illustrate a related, and 
important, point: Many of the efforts to replace existing officials 
with election deniers do not involve replacing a Democrat with a 
Republican. Rather, we find that it is often non-election-denying 
Republicans who face challenges from election deniers.\208\ Especially 
in light of the many Republicans who have stood up to the Big Lie and 
supported the rule of law, the attempted takeover of our election 
system is not a partisan issue; it is a question of one's commitment to 
democracy and the rule of law as opposed to embracing the anti-
democracy notion that voters should not determine the outcome of 
elections.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \208\ Secretary of State Races in 2022, States United Democracy 
Center (Mar. 1, 2022), https://statesuniteddemocracy.org/wp-content/
uploads/2022/03/sos_deniers-2.html#3_Secretary_of_State_Races_in_2022 
(example: Georgia).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
c. Anti-Democracy Pressures Today
    Where candidates who publicly embrace the Big Lie have seen their 
political fortunes soar, others who refuse to accede to this anti-
democracy movement have faced substantial backlash, including from 
members of their own party. As the Associated Press aptly explained, 
signing onto the Big Lie is a ``litmus test,'' and former President 
Trump and his supporters will ``shame--and potentially remove--members 
of their party'' who do not pass the test.\209\ For example, U.S. 
Senator Mitt Romney was booed by a crowd, even as he reminded them that 
he was once the Republican Party's nominee for President. In Texas, the 
only anti-Trump Republican in a special election for a Congressional 
seat finished in ninth place.\210\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \209\ Whose `Big Lie'? Trump's proclamation a new GOP litmus test, 
AP (May 3, 2021), https://apnews.com/article/politics-campaign-2016-
election-2020-government-and-politics-f3428d42d4d3fdfe59c560b6fadbbc70.
    \210\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In perhaps the clearest sign of the split within the Republican 
Party between pro-and anti-democracy factions, Republicans who refuse 
to embrace the Big Lie have been censured. At the Georgia Republican 
Party's 2021 convention, Raffensperger was censured for ``dereliction 
of his constitutional duty,'' and the censure called for him to 
``commit [himself] to securing Georgia's elections.''\211\ In Arizona, 
the Republican Party censured Cindy McCain, former Senator Jeff Flake, 
and Governor Doug Ducey, all of whom refused to support the effort to 
overturn the 2020 Presidential election.\212\ As you are well aware, 
just a couple of months ago, the Republican National Committee censured 
Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the only two House Republicans who 
agreed to join this Select Committee.\213\ The censure resolution 
famously denounced this committee for supposedly persecuting ``ordinary 
citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.''\214\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \211\ Kemp booed and Raffensperger censured at Georgia GOP 
convention, CNN Politics (June 5, 2021), https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/
05/politics/brad-raffensperger-brian-kemp-georgia-republican-
convention/index.html.
    \212\ Arizona Republicans censure Cindy McCain, GOP Governor, AP 
(Jan. 23, 2021), https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-race-and-
ethnicity-censures-arizona-lawsuits-a50165b9d5c4468d5d1bb434c5e9c80a; 
Arizona GOP censures Flake, Ducey and McCain, signaling a fractured 
party in a key swing state, CNN Politics (Jan. 24, 2021), https://
www.cnn.com/2021/01/23/politics/arizona-gop-censure-mccain-flake-ducey/
index.html.
    \213\ RNC votes to censure Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger over 
work with Jan. 6 panel, NPR (Feb. 4, 2022), https://www.npr.org/2022/
02/04/1078316505/rnc-censure-liz-cheney-adam-kinzinger-jan-6-committee-
capitol.
    \214\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Meanwhile, threats of violence against election officials have 
exploded in number, against both Democrats and Republicans. According 
to Reuters, ``[s]ome of the most severe threats'' were those directed 
at Republican officials in Georgia,\215\ including Raffensperger. 
Threats were also made against Philadelphia's two Democratic city 
commissioners, Lisa Deeley and Omar Sabir.\216\ Philadelphia's third 
city commissioner, Republican Al Schmidt, who tweeted at Trump on the 
morning after the 2020 election, also received multiple death threats. 
They were so serious that police officers were stationed outside his 
home and his family received a security detail.\217\ He has since 
resigned.\218\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \215\ U.S. election workers get little help from law enforcement as 
terror threats mount Reuters (Sept. 8, 2021), https://www.reuters.com/
investigates/special-report/usa-election-threats-law-enforcement/.
    \216\ Id.
    \217\ Id.
    \218\ Al Schmidt resigns as city commissioner to lead Committee of 
Seventy PhillyVoice (Nov. 30, 2021), https://www.phillyvoice.com/al-
schmidt-philadelphia-city-commissioners-committee-of-seventy/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A survey commissioned by the Brennan Center for Justice found that 
``one in three election officials feel unsafe because of their job,'' 
and ``nearly one in five listed threats to their lives as a job-related 
concern.''\219\ Reuters conducted a separate investigation and found 
``hundreds of incidents of intimidation and harassment of election 
workers and officials Nation-wide.''\220\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \219\ Election Officials Under Attack, Brennan Center for Justice 
(June 16, 2021), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-
solutions/election-officials-under-attack.
    \220\ U.S. election workers get little help from law enforcement as 
terror threats mount, Reuters (Sept. 8, 2021), https://www.reuters.com/
investigates/special-report/usa-election-threats-law-enforcement/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The threats have been directed not only at public officials, but 
also voters. According to a recently filed lawsuit, an organization 
called ``United States Election Integrity Plan'' is ``deploying its 
agents, who are sometimes armed, to go door-to-door around Colorado to 
intimidate voters.''\221\ The individual defendants, who are founders 
of USEIP, are employed and paid by Mike Lindell,\222\ and USEIP thanks 
Lindell in its organizing manual.\223\ One of the defendants appeared 
on Steve Bannon's podcast to discuss the organization, which he said 
would ``help coordinate the election integrity efforts of citizens 
across the country.''\224\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \221\ Colorado Montana Wyoming State Area Conference of the NAACP, 
et al. v. United States Election Integrity Plan, et al., Case No. 1:22-
cv-00581 (D. Colo. Mar. 9, 2022), ECF No. 1; Colorado election deniers 
sued by civil rights groups over door-to-door ``intimidation,'' The 
Durango Herald (Mar. 15, 2022), https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/
colorado-election-deniers-sued-by-civil-rights-groups-over-door-to-
door-intimidation/.
    \222\ Id.
    \223\ Lawsuit seeks to stop group's door-to-door voter fraud hunt, 
AP (Mar. 9, 2022), https://apnews.com/article/voting-rights-2022-
midterm-elections-biden-steve-bannon-colorado-
63beba2f69226f53ed305457c47a83ea.
    \224\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    According to Ipsos research, 24 percent of Americans agree that 
``sometimes it is okay to engage in violence to protect American 
democracy.''\225\ And as we described, the dissemination of the Big Lie 
by election deniers and the menacing threats directed at government 
officials and election workers have contributed substantially to this 
trend toward intimidation, threats, and violence.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \225\ Seven in ten Americans say the country is in crisis, at risk 
of failing Ipsos (Jan. 3, 2022), https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/seven-ten-
americans-say-country-crisis-risk-failing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Perhaps most alarming, it is not as if dissemination of the Big Lie 
is relegated to shadowy corners of the internet. To the contrary, in 
fact, it has infiltrated major news media outlets. For example, Fox 
Nation, Fox News Channel's streaming service, presented a three-part 
``documentary'' series about the January 6 insurrection produced by Fox 
host Tucker Carlson.\226\ PolitiFact found that the series ``attempted 
to rewrite the events of the insurrection'' by ``float[ing] several 
conspiracies . . . including that the violence was instigated by left-
wing activists, that it may have been an FBI-led false flag, and that 
the government is using it to strip millions of Trump voters of their 
Constitutional rights.''\227\ These theories have been repeatedly and 
definitively debunked.\228\ Chris Wallace, a former Fox News host, 
recently confirmed that he had complained to Fox News management about 
the series and that the network's treatment of the broadcast 
contributed to his departure.\229\ These events demonstrate the 
critical role that the press and news media must play in combatting 
false and baseless statements by anti-democracy activists--and the 
concomitant risks when they are co-opted as part of the anti-democracy 
movement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \226\ Tucker Carlson Is Stirring Up Hatred of America The Atlantic 
(Nov. 2, 2021), https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/
patriot-purge-tucker-carlson-documentary/620589/.
    \227\ Tucker Carlson's `Patriot Purge' film on Jan. 6 is full of 
falsehoods, conspiracy theories, Politifact (Nov. 5, 2021), https://
www.politifact.com/article/2021/nov/05/tucker-carlsons-patriot-purge-
film-jan-6-full-fals/.
    \228\ No, there is no evidence that the F.B.I. organized the Jan. 6 
capitol riot, N.Y. Times (June 18, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/
06/18/technology/misinformation-unindicted-co-conspirators-capitol-
riot.html; How Pro-Trump Forces Pushed a Lie About Antifa at the 
Capitol Riot, N.Y. Times (Mar. 1, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/
03/01/us/politics/antifa-conspiracy-capitol-riot.html; Tucker Carlson's 
`Patriot Purge' film on Jan. 6 is full of falsehoods, conspiracy 
theories, Politifact (Nov. 5, 2021), https://www.politifact.com/
article/2021/nov/05/tucker-carlsons-patriot-purge-film-jan-6-full-
fals/.
    \229\ Chris Wallace Says Life at Fox News Became `Unsustainable', 
N.Y. Times (Mar. 27, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/
business/media/chris-wallace-cnn-fox-news.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Last, election deniers' rampant spreading of anti-democracy 
disinformation has shaped the opinions of the American public to an 
almost unimaginable extent. According to Ipsos, around a third of 
Americans now ``believe there was fraudulent voting in the [2020] 
election,'' and a fifth ``say they are unsure--meaning under half of 
respondents unequivocally state[d] there was no, or very little, 
fraudulent voting in the election.''\230\ That is consistent with a CNN 
poll \231\ showing that 36 percent of Americans do not believe 
President Biden won the election, as well as an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist 
poll \232\ finding that 75 percent of Republicans believe there were 
``real cases of fraud that changed the results.'' Similarly, a November 
2021 Monmouth University survey found that ``one-third of the public 
continues to believe voter fraud determined the outcome of the 2020 
election, a finding that has been consistent over the past year.''\233\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \230\ Seven in ten Americans say the country is in crisis, at risk 
of failing, Ipsos (Jan. 3, 2022), https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/seven-
ten-americans-say-country-crisis-risk-failing.
    \231\ CNN (Sept. 15, 2021), http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2021/images/09/
15/rel5e.-.elections.pdf.
    \232\ NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll: Trust in Elections, 
Threat to Democracy, November 2021, MaristPoll (Nov. 1, 2021), https://
maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/npr-pbs-newshour-marist-national-poll-
trust-in-elections-threat-to-democracy-biden-approval-november-2021/.
    \233\ National: Doubt in American System Increases Monmouth 
University (Nov. 15, 2021), https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/
documents/monmouthpoll_us_111521.pdf/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Because such a substantial number of Americans don't believe the 
results of the 2020 Presidential election, election deniers can point 
to those Americans' lack of confidence as justification for new, 
restrictive voting laws. As Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos 
put it, ``we have to improve the process when literally hundreds of 
thousands of people in Wisconsin doubt that the election was held in a 
way that didn't have substantial charges of fraud.''\234\ Left unsaid 
was that it was election deniers' concerted efforts--first to sow doubt 
in the election before it happened, then to lead efforts to reject the 
certification of the election on January 6, and finally to continue to 
spread disinformation about the election after the fact--that caused 
such ``doubts.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \234\ `A Perpetual Motion Machine': How Disinformation Drives 
Voting Laws, N.Y. Times (May 13, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/
05/13/us/politics/disinformation-voting-laws.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            iii. conclusion
    We close by thanking you for the opportunity to provide this 
important context around the January 6 attack on the Capitol. We hope 
that our statement helps show that the attack was no isolated incident. 
For years before, former President Trump and his allies had sown doubt 
about the integrity of American elections. After the American people 
cast their ballots in 2020, those same people, along with additional 
allies, pursued a multi-pronged strategy to overturn an electoral 
result that they did not like. The strategy involved baseless 
litigation, menacing protests, targeted political pressure, wide-spread 
disinformation, and corrupt legislative schemes.
    Those efforts failed because certain public servants, devoted to 
the rule of law, stood up against the attempted coup and defended our 
republican form of government. Judges dismissed lawsuits that 
threatened our system of free elections. State and local officials--
Republicans and Democrats--spoke truth to power and, despite threats 
against their lives and families, pushed ahead to count every vote. And 
a Vice President, under tremendous pressure to deliver victory to his 
own political tribe, refused to seize a power that was not his. As he 
wrote on January 6, ``my oath to support and defend the Constitution 
constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which 
electoral votes should be counted and which should not.''\235\ Our 
democracy was saved by the courage of people who made the choice to do 
right, in positions where those choices made all the difference.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \235\ Read Pence's Full Letter Saying he Can't Claim `Unilateral 
Authority' to Reject Electoral Votes, AP (Jan. 6, 2021), https://
www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-pences-full-letter-saying-he-cant-
claim-unilateral-authority-to-reject-electoral-votes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    But the anti-democracy movement has adapted and is acting today to 
ensure that people with courage and devotion to the rule of law are not 
in positions to safeguard elections in the coming years. The same group 
that stoked fears of voter fraud in 2020, that sought to undermine the 
electoral process and overturn the results, that incited the mob that 
stormed the Capitol--Trump, Giuliani, Powell, Eastman, Stone, Bannon, 
Lindell, Flynn, Paxton, Ward, Finchem, Mastriano, Ramthun, Alexander, 
Watkins, Chase, Kaardal, Hanks, and many more in Statehouses and on 
county boards or city councils across the country--are working now to 
change the game and replace the refs. They are working to ensure that 
2020 was the last time that they will ever be denied control over 
Government in this country--regardless of what the voters say.
    In short, the movement against American democracy did not begin or 
end on January 6, 2021. It is strong and growing today, and it requires 
a profound and powerful response. Thank you.
Joint Statement of Renee DiResta, Technical Research Manager, Stanford 
   Internet Observatory, Stanford University and Kate Starbird, PhD, 
   Associate Professor, Human-Centered Design & Engineering, and Co-
  Founder and Director, Center for an Informed Public, University of 
                               Washington

[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                HEARING ON THE JANUARY 6TH INVESTIGATION

                              ----------                              

                        Thursday, June 16, 2022

                     U.S. House of Representatives,
 Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on 
                                 the United States Capitol,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:02 p.m., in 
room 390, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Bennie G. Thompson 
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Thompson, Cheney, Lofgren, Schiff, 
Aguilar, Murphy, Raskin, Luria, and Kinzinger.
    Chairman Thompson. The Select Committee to Investigate the 
January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol will be in 
order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare the 
Committee in recess at any point.
    Pursuant to House Deposition Authority Regulation 10, the 
Chair announces the Committee's approval to release the 
deposition material presented during today's hearing.
    Good afternoon.
    ``There is no idea more un-American than the notion that 
any one person could choose the American President.''
    ``No idea more un-American.'' I agree with that--which is 
unusual because former Vice President Mike Pence and I don't 
agree on much.
    These are his words, spoken a few months ago about Donald 
Trump's attempt to pressure the former Vice President--pressure 
him into going along with an unlawful and un-Constitutional 
scheme to overturn the 2020 election and give Donald Trump a 
second term in office that he did not win.
    Today, the Select Committee is going to reveal the details 
of that pressure campaign.
    But what does the Vice President of the United States even 
have to do with a Presidential election? The Constitution says 
that the Vice President of the United States oversees the 
process of counting the electoral college votes, a process that 
took place on January 6, 2021.
    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.
    Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it 
was illegal. He knew it was wrong. We are fortunate for Mr. 
Pence's courage on January 6th. Our democracy came dangerously 
close to catastrophe.
    That courage put him in tremendous danger. When Mike Pence 
made it clear that he wouldn't give in to Donald Trump's 
scheme, Donald Trump turned a mob on him--a mob that was 
chanting ``Hang Mike Pence,'' a mob that had built a hangman's 
gallows just outside the Capitol.
    Thanks in part to Mike Pence, our democracy withstood 
Donald Trump's scheme and the violence of January 6th. But the 
danger hasn't receded. Led by my colleague Mr. Aguilar, today 
we will lay out the facts for the American people.
    But, first, I will recognize my colleague from Wyoming, Ms. 
Cheney, for any opening statement she would care to offer.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Let me take just a few minutes today to put the topic of 
our hearing in broader context.
    In our last hearing, we heard unequivocal testimony that 
President Trump was told his election fraud allegations were 
complete nonsense. We heard this from members of the Trump 
campaign. We heard this from President Trump's campaign 
lawyers. We heard this from President Trump's former Attorney 
General, Bill Barr. We heard this from President Trump's former 
Acting Attorney General, Jeff Rosen. We heard this from 
President Trump's former Acting Deputy Attorney General, 
Richard Donoghue. We heard from members of President Trump's 
White House staff as well.
    Today, we are focusing on President Trump's relentless 
effort to pressure Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral 
votes on January 6th.
    Here, again, is how the former Vice President phrased it in 
a speech before the Federalist Society, a group of conservative 
lawyers.

    Vice President Pence. I heard this week that President Trump said I 
had the right to overturn the election. But President Trump is wrong. I 
had no right to overturn the election. 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.

    Vice Chair Cheney. What the President wanted the Vice 
President to do was not just wrong; it was illegal and un-
Constitutional.
    We will hear many details in today's hearing, but please 
consider these two points:
    First, President Trump was told repeatedly that Mike Pence 
lacked the Constitutional and legal authority to do what 
President Trump was demanding he do.
    This is testimony from Marc Short, the Vice President's 
chief of staff, who served in the Trump administration in 
multiple positions over 4 years.

    Mr. Heaphy. But just to pick up on that, Mr. Short, is it--was it 
your impression that the Vice President had directly conveyed his 
position on these issues to the President, not just to the world 
through a Dear Colleague letter, but directly to President Trump?
    Mr. Short. Many times.
    Mr. Heaphy. And he'd been consistent in conveying his position to 
the President?
    Mr. Short. Very consistent.
    Mr. Heaphy. Okay.

    Vice Chair Cheney. But President Trump plotted with a 
lawyer named John Eastman to pressure Pence to do so anyway.
    As a Federal court has explained, ``Based on the evidence, 
the Court finds that it is more likely than not that President 
Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the 
Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.''
    What exactly did President Trump know? When exactly did 
President Trump know that it would be illegal for Mike Pence to 
refuse to count electoral votes?
    Here is one sample of testimony given by one of the 
witnesses before us today, the Vice President's general 
counsel.

    Mr. Wood. Did John Eastman ever admit, as far as you know, in front 
of the President that his proposal would violate the Electoral Count 
Act?
    Mr. Jacob. I believe he did on the 4th.

    Vice Chair Cheney. That was January 4th, 2 days before the 
attack on Congress.
    A second point: Please listen to testimony today about all 
of the ways that President Trump attempted to pressure Vice 
President Pence, including Donald Trump's tweet at 2:24 p.m. 
condemning Vice President Mike Pence when President Trump 
already knew a violent riot was under way at the Capitol.
    In future hearings, you will hear from witnesses who were 
present inside the White House, who were present inside the 
West Wing on that day. But, today, we focus on the earnest 
efforts of Mike Pence, who was determined to abide by his oath 
of office.
    As Vice President Pence prepared a statement on January 5th 
and 6th explaining that he could not illegally refuse to count 
electoral votes, he said this to his staff:

    Mr. Jacob. I mean, the Vice President had said, ``This may be the 
most important thing I ever say.''
    Mr. Heaphy. ``This,'' meaning the statement?
    Mr. Jacob. The statement. And he really wanted to make sure that it 
was just so.

    Vice Chair Cheney. You will hear today that President 
Trump's White House Counsel believed that the Vice President 
did exactly the right thing on January 6th, as did others in 
the White House, as did Fox News Host Sean Hannity.
    Vice President Pence understood that his oath of office was 
more important than his loyalty to Donald Trump. He did his 
duty. President Trump unequivocally did not.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, I recognize the 
gentleman from California, Mr. Aguilar, for an opening 
statement.
    Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Today we intend to show the American people that January 
6th was not an isolated incident. In the weeks culminating 
before, it was a legal scheme and deception.
    We have already learned that President Trump knew he lost 
the 2020 election. Shortly after, he began to look for a way to 
circumvent our country's most fundamental civic tradition: The 
peaceful transfer of power.
    The President latched on to a dangerous theory and would 
not let go, because he was convinced it would keep him in 
office.
    We witnessed first-hand what happened when the President of 
the United States weaponized this theory. The Capitol was 
overrun. Police officers lost their lives. The Vice President 
was taken to a secure location because his safety was in 
jeopardy.
    Let's take a look at the effect of Donald Trump's words and 
actions. I want to warn our audience that the video contains 
explicit content.

    President Trump. Mike Pence is going to have to come through for 
us. And if he doesn't, that will be a--a sad day for our country.
    And Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our 
Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm 
going to be very disappointed in you, I will tell you right now.
    Voice. I'm telling you what, I'm hearing that Pence--hearing that 
Pence just caved.
    Voice. No.
    Voice. Is that true?
    Voice. I didn't hear it.
    Voice. I'm hear--I'm hearing reports that Pence caved.
    Voice. No way.
    Voice. I'm telling you, if Pence caved, we're going to drag 
motherfuckers through the streets. You fucking politicians are going to 
get fucking drug through the streets.
    Voice. Yes.
    Voice. I guess the hope is that there's such a show of force here 
that Pence will decide to----
    Voice. Just do his job.
    Voice [continuing]. Do the right thing, according to Trump.
    Crowd. Where is Pence? Bring him out! Bring out Pence! Bring him 
out! Bring out Pence! Bring him out! Bring out Pence!
    Crowd. Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike 
Pence! Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike 
Pence! Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!

    Mr. Aguilar. How did we get to this point? How did we get 
to the point where President Trump's most radical supporters 
led a violent attack on the Capitol and threatened to hang 
President Trump's own Vice President?
    You will hear from witnesses that Donald Trump pressured 
Mike Pence to adopt a legally and morally bankrupt idea that 
the Vice President could choose who the next President can be.
    You will hear about how the Vice President, the White House 
Counsel, and others told Donald Trump that the Vice President 
had no such authority, but President Trump would not listen.
    You will hear how Vice President Pence withstood an 
onslaught of pressure from President Trump, both publicly and 
privately--a pressure campaign that built to a fever pitch with 
a heated phone call on January 6th.
    You will also hear that the President knew there was a 
violent mob at the Capitol when he tweeted at 2:24 p.m. that 
the Vice President did not have the ``courage'' to do what 
needed to be done.
    Let me be clear: Vice President Pence did the right thing 
that day. He stayed true to his oath to protect and defend the 
Constitution.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses this 
afternoon.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Aguilar.
    We are honored to have two distinguished witnesses who 
advised the Vice President regarding his role on January 6th.
    Judge J. Michael Luttig is one of the leading conservative 
legal thinkers in the country. He served in the administrations 
of President Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He was 
appointed by the latter to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals 
for the Fourth Circuit, where he served from 1991 to 2006.
    He provided critical advice for Vice President Pence 
regarding the role of the Vice President in the joint session 
of Congress shortly before that fateful moment.
    He has written that the Vice President does not have the 
power to select the next President of the United States. He has 
also written that the contrary theory, espoused by one of his 
own former law clerks, was ``incorrect at every turn.''
    We are also joined today by one of the people who was with 
Vice President Pence on January 6th. Greg Jacob was counsel to 
Vice President Pence.
    He conducted a thorough analysis of the role of the Vice 
President in the joint session of Congress under the 
Constitution, the Electoral Count Act, and 230 years of 
historical practice.
    But he also has first-hand information about the attack on 
the Capitol because he lived through it. He was with the Vice 
President, and his own life was in danger.
    I will now swear in our witnesses. The witnesses will 
please stand and raise their right hands.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. You may be seated.
    Let the record reflect the witnesses answered in the 
affirmative.
    I now recognize myself for questions.
    In the United States, the people choose our 
representatives, including the highest official in the land, 
the President of the United States. The American people did 
this on November 3, 2020.
    But President Trump did not like the outcome. He did 
everything he could to change the result of the election.
    He tried litigation--62 cases, in fact--and that failed.
    He tried to pressure State legislatures to reverse the 
results of the election in their States, but they refused.
    He tried to enlist the Department of Justice in his efforts 
to overturn election results, but officials leading the 
Department refused to comply.
    So, eventually, he latched on to a completely nonsensical 
and antidemocratic theory that one man, his own Vice President, 
could determine the outcome of the election. He wanted the Vice 
President to unilaterally select the President.
    This theory, that the Vice President could unilaterally 
select the President, runs completely contrary to our 
Constitution, our laws, and the entirety of our American 
experience. But that didn't matter to President Trump.
    I would now like to explore how President Trump came to 
latch onto this ridiculous legal theory that the Vice President 
can select the President of the United States.
    Mr. Jacob, how did this theory first come to your 
attention?
    Mr. Jacob.\1\ The first time that I had a conversation with 
the Vice President about the 12th Amendment and the Electoral 
Count Act was in early December, around December 7th.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Jacob has been included in the 
Appendix and may be found on page 653.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Vice President called me over to his West Wing office 
and told me that he had been seeing and reading things that 
suggested that he had a significant role to play on January 6th 
in announcing the outcome of the election.
    He told me that he had been first elected to Congress in 
2000 and that one of his earliest memories as a Congressman was 
sitting in on the 2001 certification, and he recalled that Al 
Gore had gaveled down a number of objections that had been 
raised to Florida.
    He asked me, ``Mechanically, how does this work at the 
joint session? What are the rules?''
    I told the Vice President that, in fact, I had a fairly 
good idea of how things worked, that actually there aren't 
rules that govern the joint session, but what there is is a 
provision of the Constitution that is just one sentence long 
and then an Electoral Count Act that had been passed in 1887.
    I told the Vice President that I could put a memo together 
for him overnight that would explain the applicable rules.
    Chairman Thompson. So, Mr. Jacob, when you looked at this 
theory, what did you conclude?
    Mr. Jacob. So, we concluded that what you have is a 
sentence in the Constitution that is inartfully drafted. But 
the Vice President's first instinct, when he heard this theory, 
was that there was no way that our Framers, who abhorred 
concentrated power, who had broken away from the tyranny of 
George III, would ever have put one person--particularly not a 
person who had a direct interest in the outcome because they 
were on the ticket for the election--in a role to have decisive 
impact on the outcome of the election.
    Our review of text, history, and, frankly, just common 
sense, all confirmed the Vice President's first instinct on 
that point. There is no justifiable basis to conclude that the 
Vice President has that kind of authority.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Jacob.
    We will hear more today about how, despite this conclusion 
by you and other top legal advisors, the former President used 
this discredited theory in his campaign to pressure the Vice 
President to decide the outcome of the Presidential election.
    I now recognize the gentlewoman from Wyoming, Ms. Cheney, 
for questions.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Judge Luttig, thank you, as well, for being here with us 
today.
    You issued a very important statement earlier today, which 
I urge all Americans to read. I would like to ask you, Judge, 
about one of the sentences in your statement and ask if you 
could explain to us the significance of it.
    You say, ``Had the Vice President of the United States 
obeyed the President of the United States, America would 
immediately have been plunged into what would have been 
tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing Constitutional 
crisis.''
    Would you elaborate on that for us, Judge?
    Judge Luttig.\2\ Thank you, Madam Vice Chair.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ The prepared statement of Judge Luttig has been included in the 
Appendix and may be found on page 655.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    That passage in my statement this morning referenced the 
most foundational concept in America, which is the rule of law. 
Thus, as I interpret your question, you are asking about that 
foundational truth of these United States which we call 
``America.''
    The foundational truth is the rule of law. That 
foundational truth is, for the United States of America, the 
profound truth.
    But it is not merely the profound truth for the United 
States; it is also the simple truth, the simple foundational 
truth of the American Republic.
    Thus, in my view, the hearings being conducted by this 
Select Committee are examining that profound truth--namely, the 
rule of law in the United States of America.
    The specific question, of course, before you and before the 
Nation--not before me--is whether that foundational rule of law 
was supremely violated on January 6, 2021.
    Now, to the question specifically that you asked, Madam 
Vice Chair, I believe that had Vice President Pence obeyed the 
orders from his President--and the President of the United 
States of America--during the joint session of the Congress of 
the United States on January 6, 2021, and declared Donald Trump 
the next President of the United States, notwithstanding that 
then-President Trump had lost the electoral college vote as 
well as the popular vote in the 2020 Presidential election, 
that declaration of Donald Trump as the next President would 
have plunged America into what I believe would have been 
tantamount to a revolution within a Constitutional crisis in 
America, which, in my view--and I am only one man--would have 
been the first Constitutional crisis since the founding of the 
Republic.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Judge, for your 
solemn attention to these issues and for your appearance here 
today.
    We are going to describe and discuss in detail what 
happened, and, as we do, I am going to describe a few of the 
details now of some of the actions taken by a gentleman named 
Kenneth Chesebro.
    After the electoral college met and cast their votes on 
December 14th--actually, the day before they met--Kenneth 
Chesebro sent a memo to Rudy Giuliani, the President's lead 
outside counsel.
    Mr. Chesebro wrote to Mayor Giuliani that the Vice 
President is charged with, ``making judgments about what to do 
if there are conflicting votes.''
    Mr. Chesebro wrote that, when the joint session of Congress 
got to Arizona in the alphabetical list of States, the Vice 
President should not count the Biden votes, ``because there are 
two slates of votes.''
    His justification, which we will learn more about in our 
next hearing, was that a group of Trump supporters in Arizona 
and other swing States decided to proclaim themselves the true 
electors for the State, creating two sets of electors--the 
official electors selected by the State and a group of fake 
electors.
    This document was ordered to be produced to the Select 
Committee by a Federal district court judge. As you will see on 
the screen shortly, Judge David Carter wrote, ``The draft memo 
pushed a strategy that knowingly violated the Electoral Count 
Act . . . ''
    The judge concluded that ``the memo is both intimately 
related to and clearly advanced the plan to obstruct the joint 
session of Congress on January 6, 2021.''
    A few days later, Professor John Eastman took up this 
cause. Eastman was at the time a law professor at Chapman 
University Law School.
    He prepared a memo outlining the nonsensical theory that 
the Vice President could decide the outcome of the election at 
the joint session of Congress on January 6th. You will see 
portions of this memo on the screen.
    In the first line, he wrote, ``7 States have transmitted 
dual slates of electors to the President of the Senate.''
    But Dr. Eastman goes on to rely on those so-called ``dual 
slates of electors'' to say that Vice President Pence could 
simply declare President Trump the winner of the 2020 election.
    Mr. Jacob, were there, in fact, dual slates of electors 
from 7 States?
    Mr. Jacob. No, there were not.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Just a few days after that, Dr. Eastman 
wrote another memo, this one ``war gaming'' out several 
scenarios. He knew the outcome he wanted, and he saw a way to 
go forward if he simply pretended that fake electors were real.
    You will see that memo up on the screen now.
    Here, Dr. Eastman says the Vice President can reject the 
Biden electors from the States that he calls ``disputed.'' 
Under several of the scenarios, the Vice President could 
ultimately just declare Donald Trump the winner, regardless of 
the vote totals that had already been certified by the States.
    However, this was false. Dr. Eastman knew it was false. In 
other words, it was a lie.
    In fact, on December 19, 2020, just 4 days before Dr. 
Eastman sent this memo, Dr. Eastman himself admitted in an 
email that the fake electors had no legal weight, referring to 
the fake electors as ``dead on arrival in Congress,'' because 
they did not have a certification from their States.
    Judge Luttig, did the Trump electors in those 7 States, who 
were not certified by any State authority, have any legal 
significance?
    Judge Luttig. Congresswoman, there was no support 
whatsoever in either the Constitution of the United States nor 
the laws of the United States for the Vice President, frankly, 
ever to count alternative electoral slates from the States that 
had not been officially certified by the designated State 
official in the Electoral Count Act of 1887.
    I did notice in the passage from Mr. Eastman's memorandum, 
and I took a note on it. Correct me if I am wrong, but he said 
in that passage that there was both legal authority as well as 
historical precedent.
    I do know what Mr. Eastman was referring to when he said 
that there was historical precedent for doing so. He was 
incorrect. There was no historical precedent from the beginning 
of the founding in 1789, even as mere historical precedent, as 
distinguished from legal precedent, that would support the 
possibility of the Vice President of the United States 
``counting'' alternative electoral slates that had not been 
officially certified to the Congress pursuant to the Electoral 
Count Act of 1887.
    I would be glad to explain that historical precedent if the 
Committee wanted, but it would be a digression.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Judge. I know my 
colleagues will be pursuing that issue in more depth.
    Now I would like to yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much.
    Pursuant to section 5(c)(8) of House Resolution 503, the 
Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Aguilar, 
and staff counsel, Mr. John Wood, for questioning.
    Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    We are fortunate to have a bipartisan staff. Senior 
Investigative Counsel John Wood previously served as United 
States attorney in Missouri under President George W. Bush. He 
and I will share today's lines of questioning.
    Mr. Wood.
    Mr. Wood. Thank you, Mr. Aguilar.
    Judge Luttig, I had the incredible honor of serving as one 
of your law clerks. Another person who did was John Eastman.
    You have written that Dr. Eastman's theory that the Vice 
President could determine who the next President of the United 
States is is, in your words, ``incorrect at every turn.''
    Could you please explain briefly your analysis?
    Judge Luttig. It was my honor, Mr. Wood, to have you serve 
as my law clerk.
    I could answer that question perfectly if I had at my 
disposal either Mr. Eastman's tweet or my own analytical tweet 
of September 21st, but I don't.
    But, that said, let me try to remember Mr. Eastman's 
analysis.
    Mr. Wood. Judge, I can read to you and to the audience I 
think what was really a key passage from your very insightful 
analysis, when you wrote, ``I believe(d) that Professor Eastman 
was incorrect at every turn of the analysis in his January 2 
memorandum, beginning with his claim that there were 
legitimate, competing slates of electors presented from 7 
States.''
    You have already addressed that issue.
    But your next sentence said: `` . . . continuing to his 
conclusion that the Vice President could unilaterally decide 
not to count the votes from the 7 States from which competing 
slates were allegedly presented.''
    So, what was your basis for concluding that Dr. Eastman was 
incorrect in his conclusion that the Vice President could 
unilaterally decide not to count the votes from these disputed 
States?
    Judge Luttig. I understand.
    As I previously stated in response to Congresswoman Cheney, 
there was no basis in the Constitution or laws of the United 
States at all for the theory espoused by Mr. Eastman--at all. 
None.
    With all respect to my co-panelist, he said, I believe in 
partial response to one of the Select Committee's questions, 
that the single sentence in the 12th Amendment was, he thought, 
inartfully written.
    That single sentence is not inartfully written. It was 
pristine clear that the President of the Senate on January 6th, 
the incumbent Vice President of the United States, had little 
substantive Constitutional authority, if any at all.
    The 12th Amendment, the single sentence that Mr. Jacob 
refers to, says in substance that, following the transmission 
of the certificates to the Congress of the United States and, 
under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the Archivist of the 
United States, that the presiding officer shall open the 
certificates in the presence of the Congress of the United 
States in joint session.
    It then says, unmistakably, not even that the Vice 
President himself shall count the electoral votes. It clearly 
says merely that the electoral count votes shall then be 
counted.
    It was the Electoral Count Act of 1887 that filled in, if 
you will, the simple words of the 12th Amendment in order to 
construct for the country a process for the counting of--the 
sacred process for the counting of--the electoral votes from 
the States that neither our original Constitution nor even the 
12th Amendment had done.
    The irony, if you will, is that, from its founding until 
1887, when Congress passed the Electoral Count Act, the Nation 
had been in considerable turmoil during at least 5 of its 
Presidential elections, beginning as soon thereafter from the 
founding as 1800. So, it wasn't for almost 100 years later 
until the Electoral Count Act was passed.
    So that is why, in my view, that piece of legislation is 
not only a work in progress for the country but, at this moment 
in history, an important work in progress that needs to take 
place.
    That was long-winded, I understand.
    Mr. Wood. Well, Judge Luttig, at the risk of 
oversimplifying for the non-lawyers who are watching, is it 
fair to say that the 12th Amendment basically says two things 
happen: the Vice President opens the certificates, and the 
electoral votes are counted.
    Is it that straightforward?
    Judge Luttig. I would not want that to be my testimony 
before the Congress of the United States. The language of the 
12th Amendment is that simple.
    Mr. Wood. Thank you, Judge.
    Mr. Jacob, I have a question for you. I believe during your 
deposition before this Committee you said something to the 
effect of you had read every word written about the 12th 
Amendment, the Electoral Count Act, and historical practice.
    I know in response to the Chairman's earlier question you 
gave your bottom-line conclusion, but can you tell us a little 
bit about the process that you and your colleagues went through 
of researching this issue and what conclusion you came to after 
your thorough research?
    Mr. Jacob. So, as a lawyer who is analyzing a 
Constitutional provision, you start with the Constitutional 
text, you go to structure, you go to history.
    So, we started with the text. We did not think that the 
text was quite as unambiguous as Judge Luttig indicated. In 
part, we had a Constitutional crisis in 1876 because, in that 
year, multiple slates of electors were certified by multiple 
States, and, when it came time to count those votes, the 
antecedent question of which ones had to be answered.
    That required the appointment of an independent commission. 
That commission had had to resolve that question. The purpose 
of the Electoral Count Act of 1887 had been to resolve those 
latent ambiguities.
    Now, I am in complete agreement with Judge Luttig; it is 
unambiguous that the Vice President does not have the authority 
to reject electors. There is no suggestion of any kind that it 
does. There is no mention of rejecting or objecting to electors 
anywhere in the 12th Amendment. So the notion that the Vice 
President could do that certainly is not in the text.
    But the problem that we had, and that John Eastman raised 
in our discussions was, we had all seen that in Congress, in 
2000, in 2004, in 2016, there had been objections raised to 
various States, and those had even been debated in 2004. So 
here you have an amendment that says nothing about objecting or 
rejecting and yet we did have some recent practice of that 
happening within the terms of the Electoral Count Act.
    So, we started with that text. I recall, in my discussion 
with the Vice President, he said, ``I can't wait to go to 
heaven and meet the Framers and tell them, `The work that you 
did in putting together our Constitution is a work of genius. 
Thank you. It was divinely inspired. There is one sentence that 
I would like to talk to you a little bit about.' ''
    So, then we went to structure. Again, the Vice President's 
first instinct here is so decisive on this question. There is 
just no way that the Framers of the Constitution, who divided 
power and authority, who separated it out, who had broken away 
from George III and declared him to be a tyrant--there was no 
way that they would have put in the hands of one person the 
authority to determine who was going to be President of the 
United States.
    Then we went to history. We examined every single electoral 
vote count that had happened in Congress since the beginning of 
the country. We examined the Electoral Count Act. We examined 
practice under the Electoral Count Act.
    Critically, no Vice President in 230 years of history had 
ever claimed to have that kind of authority, hadn't claimed 
authority to reject electoral votes, had not claimed authority 
to return electoral votes back to the States. In the entire 
history of the United States, not once had a joint session ever 
returned electoral votes back to the States to be counted.
    In the crisis of 1876, Justice Bradley of the U.S. Supreme 
Court, who supplied the decisive final vote on that commission, 
had specifically looked at that question and said, first, the 
Vice President clearly doesn't have authority to decide 
anything and, by the way, also does not have authority to 
conduct an investigation by sending things back out for a 
public look at things.
    So, the history was absolutely decisive.
    Again, part of my discussion with Mr. Eastman was, if you 
were right, don't you think Al Gore might have liked to have 
known in 2000 that he had authority to just declare himself 
President of the United States? Did you think that the Democrat 
lawyers just didn't think of this very obvious quirk that he 
could use to do that? Of course, he acknowledged Al Gore did 
not and should not have had that authority at that point in 
time.
    But so text, structure, history. I think what we had was 
some ambiguous text that common sense and structure would tell 
you the answer cannot possibly be that the Vice President has 
that authority--as the Committee already played the Vice 
President's remarks, there is almost no idea more un-American 
than the notion that any one person would choose the American 
President--and then unbroken historical practice for 230 years 
that the Vice President did not have such an authority.
    Mr. Wood. Thank you.
    I reserve the remainder of my time.
    Mr. Aguilar. Mr. Jacob, you weren't the only one who knew 
that the legal theory was wrong, though. Here is what various 
advisors to the President thought about that theory.

    Mr. Heaphy. Had you been clear repeatedly with Mr. Meadows about 
you and the Vice President having a different view about his authority 
on January 6th?
    Mr. Short. I believe I had.
    Mr. Heaphy. Did Mr. Meadows ever explicitly or tacitly agree with 
you, or say, ``Yeah, that makes sense, okay''?
    Mr. Short. I believe that--that Mark did agree.
    Mr. Heaphy. What makes you say that?
    Mr. Short. I believe that's what he told me. But, as I mentioned, I 
think Mark had told so many people so many different things that it was 
not something that--that I would necessarily accept as okay, well, that 
means that's resolved.
    Mr. Heaphy. I see. Tell me more what--what he told you on this 
topic.
    Mr. Short. Well, I think it was that, you know, the Vice President 
doesn't have any broader role. I think he was understanding of that.
    Mr. Heaphy. So, despite the fact that he may have said other things 
to the President or others, to you he said he understands the Vice 
President has no role.
    Mr. Short. Yes.
    Mr. Heaphy. Okay. Did he say that to you several times?
    Mr. Short. A couple of times, um-hmm.
    Mr. Heaphy. Before January 6th?
    Mr. Short. Yes.
    Mr. Jason Miller. The way it was communicated to me was that Pat 
Cipollone thought the idea was--was nutty and had at one point 
confronted Eastman basically with the same sentiment.
    Mr. Short. Pat expressed his admiration for the Vice President's 
actions on the day of the 6th and said that he concurred with the legal 
analysis that--that our team had--had put together to reach that point.
    Mr. Herschmann. It made no sense to me that, in all the protections 
that were built into the Constitution for a President to get elected 
and steps that had to be taken, that the--or to choose the next 
President would be sitting at--with the Vice President.
    Mr. George. Do you know if Mr. Clark or Mr. Morgan--is it Morgan--
viewed about that--thought about that, Mr. Eastman's advice?
    Mr. Jason Miller. Yeah, they thought he was crazy.
    Mr. George. Do you know if they ever expressed an opinion on 
whether they thought the Vice President had the power that John Eastman 
said he did?
    Mr. Jason Miller. I know for a fact I heard both say that his 
theory was crazy, that there was no validity to it in any way, shape, 
or form.
    Mr. George. And did they express that before January 6th?
    Mr. Jason Miller. Yes.
    Mr. George. To whom?
    Mr. Jason Miller. I think anyone who would listen.
    Mr. Wood. Okay. What were your prior interactions with Eastman?
    Mr. Herschmann. He described for me what he thought the ambiguity 
was in the statute, and he was walking through it at that time. And I 
said, ``Hold on a second. I want to understand what you're saying. 
You're saying that you believe the Vice President, acting as President 
of the Senate, can be the sole decision maker as to, under your theory, 
who becomes the next President of the United States.''
    And he said, ``Yes.''
    And I said, ``Are you out of your effing mind?'' Right? And I--you 
know, that was pretty blunt.
    I said, ``You're completely crazy.''
    I said, ``You're going to turn around and tell 78-plus million 
people in this country that your theory is this is how you're going to 
invalidate their votes, because you think the election was stolen?''
    And I said, ``They're not going to tolerate that.'' Said: ``You're 
going to cause riots in the streets.''
    And he said words to the effect of: There has been violence in the 
history of our country, Eric, to protect the democracy or protect the 
Republic.

    Mr. Aguilar. In fact, there was a risk that the lawyers in 
the White House Counsel's Office would resign.
    For example, Fox News Host Sean Hannity expressed concern 
that the entire White House Counsel's Office could quit. As you 
can see from these texts, Mr. Hannity wrote to White House 
Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that, ``we can't lose the entire WH 
counsels office. I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is 
being told.''
    A few days later, on January 5th, Mr. Hannity wrote to Mr. 
Meadows that, ``I'm very worried about the next 48 hours.'' 
``Pence pressure. WH counsel will leave.''
    While Sean Hannity was apparently very concerned about the 
possibility that the White House Counsel would resign in 
protest of the President's effort to force the Vice President 
to violate the Constitution, some others close to the President 
were more dismissive of the White House Counsel's position.
    Here is what Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared 
Kushner, said during his deposition regarding White House 
Counsel Pat Cipollone's threats to resign.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Jared, are you aware of instances where Pat 
Cipollone threatened to resign?
    Mr. Kushner. I--I kind-of--like I said, my interest at that time 
was on trying to get as many pardons done. And I know that, you know, 
he was always--to him and the team were always saying, Oh, we're going 
to resign. We're not going to be here if this happens, if that happens. 
So, I kind-of took it up to just be whining to be honest with you.

    Mr. Aguilar. The President's own lead outside counsel, Rudy 
Giuliani, also seemed to concede that the Vice President did 
not have the authority to decide the outcome of the election or 
send it back to the States.
    Here is what White House attorney Eric Herschmann said 
about his call with Mayor Giuliani on the morning of the 6th.

    Mr. Herschmann. The morning of January 6th, I think he called me 
out of the blue, right? And I was like getting dressed. And we had an 
intellectual discussion that--about Eastman's--I don't know if it's 
Eastman's theory per se, but the VP's role. And, you know, he was 
asking me my view and analysis and then the practical implications of 
it. And when we finished, he said, like, ``I believe that, you know, 
you're probably right.''
    I think he thought, when we were done, that it would be something 
he'd have to consider if he was sitting on the bench, but he'd probably 
come down in that, you know, you couldn't interpret it or sustain the 
argument long-term.

    Mr. Aguilar. Of course, the fact that Mayor Giuliani seemed 
to admit that the theory was wrong did not stop him from going 
before the crowd just a few hours later on January 6th and 
saying the exact opposite.
    Here is Mayor Giuliani's speech at the Ellipse rally on 
January 6th.

    Mr. Giuliani. We're here just very briefly to make a--very 
important two points. No. 1, every single thing that has been outlined 
as the plan for today is perfectly legal. I have Professor Eastman here 
with me to say a few words about that. He's one of the preeminent 
constitutional scholars in the United States.
    It is perfectly appropriate, given the questionable 
constitutionality of the Election Counting Act of 1887, that the Vice 
President can cast it aside, and he can do what a President called 
Jefferson did when he was Vice President. [applause]
    He can decide--he can decide on the validity of these crooked 
ballots, or he can send it back to the legislatures, give them 5 to 10 
days to finally finish the work.

    Mr. Aguilar. Here is what Dr. Eastman said in his speech at 
the Ellipse on January 6th.

    Mr. Eastman. And all we are demanding of Vice President Pence is 
this afternoon at 1 o'clock he let the legislatures of the State look 
into this, so we get to the bottom of it and the American people know 
whether we have control of the direction of our Government or not. 
[applause]

    Mr. Aguilar. Even Dr. Eastman knew his theory didn't hold 
water.
    Mr. Jacob, you discussed and even debated this theory at 
length with Dr. Eastman. Did Dr. Eastman ever tell you what he 
thought the U.S. Supreme Court would do if it had to decide 
this issue?
    Mr. Jacob. Yes. We had an extended discussion, an hour-and-
a-half to 2 hours, on January 5th. When I pressed him on the 
point, I said, ``John, if the Vice President did what you are 
asking him to do, we would lose 9 to nothing in the Supreme 
Court, wouldn't we?''
    He initially started, ``Well, I think maybe you would lose 
only 7-2,'' and after some further discussion acknowledged, 
``Well, yes, you are right, we would lose 9-nothing.''
    Mr. Aguilar. I appreciate that.
    In our investigation, the Select Committee has obtained 
evidence suggesting that Dr. Eastman never really believed his 
own theory. Let me explain.
    On the screen, you can see a draft letter to the President 
from October 2020. In this letter, an idea was proposed that 
the Vice President could determine which electors to count at 
the joint session of Congress. But the person writing in blue 
eviscerates that argument.
    The person who wrote the comments in blue wrote, ``The 12th 
Amendment only says that the President of the Senate opens the 
ballots in the joint session and then, in the passive voice, 
that the votes shall then be counted.''
    The comments in blue further state, ``Nowhere does it 
suggest that the President of the Senate gets to make the 
determination on his own.''
    Judge Luttig, does it surprise you that the author of those 
comments in blue was, in fact, John Eastman?
    Judge Luttig. Yes, it does, Congressman.
    But let me--watching this unfold, let me try to unpack what 
was at the root of what I have called ``the blueprint to 
overturn the 2020 election,'' and it is this. I foreshadowed 
this answer in my earlier testimony to Congresswoman Cheney.
    Mr. Eastman, from the beginning, said to the President that 
there was both legal as well as historical precedent for the 
Vice President to overturn the election. What we have heard 
today, I believe, is what happened within the White House and 
elsewhere as all the players, led by Mr. Eastman, got wrapped 
around the axle by the ``historical evidence'' claim by Mr. 
Eastman.
    Let me explain very simply. This is what I have said would 
require a digression that I would be glad to undertake if you 
wish.
    In short, if I had been advising the Vice President of the 
United States on January 6th, and even if then-Vice President 
Jefferson and even then-Vice President John Adams and even 
then-Vice President Richard Nixon had done exactly what the 
President of the United States wanted his Vice President to do, 
I would have laid my body across the road before I would have 
let the Vice President overturn the 2020 election on the basis 
of that historical precedent.
    But what this body needs to know--and now America needs to 
know--is that that was the centerpiece of the plan to overturn 
the 2020 election. It was the historical precedent in the years 
and with the Vice Presidents that I named, as Congressman 
Raskin understands well.
    The effort by Mr. Eastman and others was to drive that 
historical precedent up to and under that single sentence, 
single pristine sentence, in the 12th Amendment to the United 
States Constitution, taking advantage of, if you will, what 
many have said is the inartful wording of that sentence in the 
12th Amendment.
    Scholars before 2020 would have used that historical 
precedent to argue not that Vice President Pence could overturn 
the 2020 election by accepting noncertified State electoral 
votes, but they would have made arguments as to some 
substantive, not merely procedural, authority possessed by the 
Vice President of the United States on the statutorily 
prescribed day for counting the electoral college votes.
    This is Constitutional mischief.
    Mr. Aguilar. Judge, I think that is a good point. I think 
it kind-of begs the question that if the Vice President had 
this power to determine the outcome of a Presidential election, 
why hasn't it ever been used before? Why hasn't that ever 
happened? Why hasn't a Vice President simply rejected the 
outcome of an election and declared someone else the winner?
    Instead, as the Chairman mentioned in his opening, for over 
two centuries Vice Presidents have presided over the joint 
sessions of Congress in a purely ceremonial role.
    This even includes, as Mr. Jacob mentioned, Vice President 
Al Gore. For those of us who are old enough to remember, the 
2000 election came down to one State: Florida. There were weeks 
of recounts and litigation after the election, and Al Gore 
conceded.
    Of course, Al Gore was the Vice President at the time, but 
he never suggested that he could simply declare himself the 
winner of the 2000 election when he presided over the counting 
of the electoral votes.
    Let's hear what Vice President Gore said when he described 
the situation he faced in 2000.

    Vice President Gore. [I]mportance of the United States of America 
in all of human history, in Lincoln's phrase, we still are the last 
best hope of humankind. And the choice between one's own disappointment 
in your personal career and upholding the--the noble traditions of 
America's democracy, it's a pretty easy choice when it comes down to 
it.

    Mr. Aguilar. Mr. Jacob, did Dr. Eastman say whether he 
would want other Vice Presidents, such as Al Gore after the 
2000 election, or Kamala Harris after the 2024 election, to 
have the power to decide the outcome of the election?
    Mr. Jacob. So, this was one of the many points that we 
discussed on January 5th. He had come into that meeting trying 
to persuade us that there was some validity to his theory. I 
viewed it as my objective to persuade him to acknowledge he was 
just wrong.
    I thought this had to be one of the most powerful 
arguments: ``I mean, John, back in 2000, you weren't jumping up 
and saying Al Gore had this authority to do that. You would not 
want Kamala Harris to be able to exercise that kind of 
authority in 2024 when I hope Republicans will win the 
election, and I know you hope that too, John.''
    He said, ``Absolutely. Al Gore did not have a basis to do 
it in 2000. Kamala Harris shouldn't be able to do it in 2024. 
But I think you should do it today.''
    Mr. Aguilar. Marc Short told the Select Committee that Vice 
President Pence consulted with one of his predecessors, Vice 
President Dan Quayle, regarding the role of the Vice President. 
Vice President Quayle confirmed Pence's view that the role was 
purely ceremonial.
    Mr. Short also told the Committee that he, Mr. Short, 
received a call from former House Speaker Paul Ryan. Here is 
Mr. Short's description of his conversation with Speaker Ryan.

    Mr. Short. Speaker Ryan wanted to call and say, ``You know, you 
don't have any greater authority.'' And I--I said to him, ``Mr. Speaker 
you--you know, Mike, you know he doesn't--you know, he recognizes 
that.'' And we sort-of laughed about it, and he said, ``I get it.'' And 
he later spoke to the Vice President, too, to I think have the same 
conversation.

    Mr. Aguilar. Fortunately for the fate of our Republic, Vice 
President Pence refused to go along with President Trump's 
demands that he determine the outcome of the Presidential 
election.
    Mr. Jacob, what was the Vice President's reaction when you 
discussed with him the theory that the Vice President could 
decide the outcome of the election?
    Mr. Jacob. Congressman, as I have testified, the Vice 
President's first instinct was that there was no way that any 
one person, particularly the Vice President, who is on the 
ticket and has a vested outcome in the election, could possibly 
have the authority to decide it, by rejecting electors, or to 
decisively alter the outcome by suspending the joint session 
for the first time in history in order to try to get a 
different outcome from State legislatures.
    Mr. Aguilar. Despite the fact that the Vice President had a 
strongly held and correct view that he could not decide the 
outcome of the election, President Trump launched a multi-week 
campaign of both public and private pressure to get Vice 
President Mike Pence to violate the Constitution.
    Here are some examples of the intense pressure the Vice 
President faced from all sides and what his chief of staff 
thought of it.

    President Trump. And I hope Mike Pence comes through for us. I have 
to tell you. [applause] I hope that our great Vice President--our great 
Vice President comes through for us. He's a great guy. Of course, if he 
doesn't come through, I won't like him quite as much. [laughter]
    Mr. Heaphy. Was it your impression that the Vice President had 
directly conveyed his position on these issues to the President, not 
just to the world through a Dear Colleague letter, but directly to 
President Trump?
    Mr. Short. Many times.
    Mr. Heaphy. And he'd been consistent in conveying his position to 
the President?
    Mr. Short. Very consistent.
    Mr. Giuliani. I am--I am aware of the fact that the President was 
upset with the way Pence acted.
    Mr. Bannon. Are we to assume that this is going to be a climactic 
battle?
    Mr. Eastman. Well, I think a lot of that depends on the courage and 
the spine of the individuals involved.
    Mr. Bannon. That would be a nice way to say a guy named Mike--Vice 
President Mike Pence?
    Mr. Eastman. Yes.
    Mr. Short. I think we'd been clear as to what the Vice President's 
role was. I think the Vice President made clear with the President. And 
I think I'd been clear with Mark Meadows.
    Mr. Jason Miller. I think the Vice President is going to throw down 
tomorrow and do the right thing because, Lou, like I said before, this 
is a time for choosing. People are going to look back at this moment 
tomorrow and remember where every single one of their elected officials 
were.
    Did they vote for the rule of law in getting these elections right? 
Or did they give it away to the Democrats and the people who cheated 
and stole their way through this election?
    Definitely the--you know, I got back into town approximately like 
the 5th and the 6th. The President was, you know, all the attention was 
on what Mike would do or what Mike wouldn't do.
    Mr. Short. The Vice President really was not wavering in his 
commitment to what he--what his responsibility was. And so, yeah, was 
it--was it painful? Sure.

    Mr. Aguilar. The President's pressure campaign started in 
December. For example, although the Vice President made his 
views clearly and unmistakably known to the President and 
others in the White House on December 23rd, President Trump 
retweeted a memo from an individual named Ivan Raiklin, 
entitled ``Operation Pence Card,'' that called on the Vice 
President to refuse the electoral college votes from certain 
States that had certified Joe Biden as the winner.
    President Trump started his pressure campaign in December, 
but he dialed up the pressure as January 6th approached.
    The testimony we have received in our investigation 
indicates that by the time January 4th arrived, President Trump 
had already engaged in a ``multi-week campaign'' to pressure 
the Vice President to decide the outcome of the election.
    This had included private conversations between the two 
leaders, Trump's tweets, and at least one meeting with Members 
of Congress.
    We understand that the Vice President started his day on 
January 4th with a rally in Georgia for the Republican 
candidates in the U.S. Senate runoff.
    When the Vice President returned to Washington, he was 
summoned to meet with the President regarding the upcoming 
joint session of Congress.
    Mr. Jacob, who attended that meeting?
    Mr. Jacob. The attendees were the Vice President, the 
President, Marc Short, the chief of staff to the Vice 
President, myself, and John Eastman. There was about a 5-minute 
period where Mark Meadows came in on a different issue.
    Mr. Aguilar. Let's show a photo of that meeting.
    Mr. Jacob, during that meeting between the President and 
the Vice President, what theories did Dr. Eastman present 
regarding the role of the Vice President in counting the 
electoral votes?
    Mr. Jacob. During the meeting on January 4th, Mr. Eastman 
was opining that there were two legally viable arguments as to 
authorities that the Vice President could exercise 2 days later 
on January 6th.
    One of them was that he could reject electoral votes 
outright. The other was that he could use his capacity as 
presiding officer to suspend the proceedings and declare 
essentially a 10-day recess, during which States that he deemed 
to be disputed--there was a list of 5 to 7 States that the 
exact number changed from conversation to conversation--but 
that the Vice President could sort-of issue a demand to the 
State legislatures in those States to reexamine the election 
and declare who had won each of those States.
    So, he said that both of those were legally viable options. 
He said that he did not recommend, upon questioning, he did not 
recommend what he called the more aggressive option, which was 
reject outright, because he thought that that would be less 
politically palatable, that the imprimatur of State legislature 
authority would be necessary to ultimately have public 
acceptance of an outcome in favor of President Trump.
    So, he advocated that the preferred course of action would 
be the procedural route of suspending the joint session and 
sending the election back to the States.
    Mr. Aguilar. Mr. Jacob, I know you won't discuss the direct 
conversations between the President and the Vice President, so 
rather than asking you what the Vice President said in that 
meeting, I will ask you a more general question.
    Did the Vice President ever waver in his position that he 
could not unilaterally decide which electors to accept?
    Mr. Jacob. The Vice President never budged from the 
position that I have described as his first instinct, which was 
that it just made no sense, from everything that he knew and 
had studied about our Constitution, that one person would have 
that kind of authority.
    Mr. Aguilar. Did the Vice President ever waver in his 
position that he could not delay certification and send it back 
to the States?
    Mr. Jacob. No, he did not.
    Mr. Aguilar. Did Dr. Eastman admit in front of the 
President that his proposal would violate the Electoral Count 
Act?
    Mr. Jacob. So, during that meeting on the 4th, I think I 
raised the problem that both of Mr. Eastman's proposals would 
violate several provisions of the Electoral Count Act.
    Mr. Eastman acknowledged that that was the case, that even 
what he viewed as the more politically palatable option would 
violate several provisions, but he thought that we could do so 
because in his view the Electoral Count Act was 
unconstitutional.
    When I raised concerns that that position would likely lose 
in court, his view was that the court simply wouldn't get 
involved. They would invoke the political question doctrine and 
therefore we could have some comfort proceeding with that path.
    Mr. Aguilar. Mr. Wood.
    Mr. Wood. But just to reiterate, he told you--maybe this 
was in a later conversation--but he told you at some point that 
if, in fact, the issue ever got to the Supreme Court, his 
theory would lose 
9-0, correct?
    Mr. Jacob. The next morning, starting around 11 or 11:30, 
we met for an hour-and-a-half to 2 hours. In that meeting, I 
have already described the text, structure, history 
conversation, but we started walking through all of that.
    I said, ``John, basically what you have is some texts that 
may be a little bit ambiguous, but then nothing else that would 
support it, including the fact that nobody would ever want that 
to be the rule. Wouldn't we lose 9 to nothing in the Supreme 
Court?''
    Again, he initially started, ``Well, maybe you would only 
lose 
7-2,'' but ultimately acknowledged that, no, we would lose 9-0, 
no judge would support his argument.
    Mr. Aguilar. After his meeting with the Vice President, 
Donald Trump flew to Georgia for a rally in support of the 
Republican candidates in the U.S. Senate runoff.
    Even though the Vice President had been steadfast in 
resisting the President's pressure, President Trump continued 
to publicly pressure Vice President Pence in his Georgia 
speech.
    Rather than focusing exclusively on the Georgia Senate 
runoff, Trump turned his attention to Mike Pence. Here is what 
the President said during that rally in Georgia.

    President Trump. [P]ence comes through for us. I have to tell you. 
[applause] I hope that our great Vice President--our great Vice 
President comes through for us. He's a great guy. Of course, if he 
doesn't come through, I won't like him quite as much. [laughter]

    Mr. Aguilar. So, the President had been told multiple times 
that the Vice President could not affect the outcome of the 
election, but he nonetheless publicly pressured Mike Pence to 
do exactly that by saying, ``If he doesn't come through, I 
won't like him as much.''
    Let's turn now to January 5th.
    Mr. Wood.
    Mr. Wood. Thank you.
    That morning, meaning January 5th, the President issued a 
tweet expressly stating that the Vice President had the power 
to reject electors.
    Let's look at what the President wrote. ``The Vice 
President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen 
electors.''
    Mr. Jacob, you have already told us about your meeting with 
Dr. Eastman and the President on January 4th, and you briefly 
made reference to the meeting you had with Dr. Eastman the next 
day, January 5th.
    Can you tell us a little bit more about that meeting with 
Dr. Eastman on January 5th? For example, where was the meeting? 
Who was there?
    Mr. Jacob. So, at the conclusion of the meeting on the 4th, 
the President had asked that our office meet with Mr. Eastman 
the next day to hear more about the positions he had expressed 
at that meeting, and the Vice President indicated that--offered 
me up as his counsel to fulfill that duty.
    So, we met in Marc Short's office in the Executive Office 
Building across the way from the White House. Dr. Eastman had a 
court hearing by Zoom that morning, so it didn't start first 
thing, but rather started around 11.
    That meeting went for about an hour-and-a-half, 2 hours. 
Chief of Staff Marc Short was at that meeting most of the time. 
There were a few times that he left. Essentially, it was an 
extended discussion.
    What most surprised me about that meeting was that when Mr. 
Eastman came in, he said, ``I am here to request that you 
reject the electors.''
    So on the 4th, that had been the path that he had said, ``I 
am not recommending that you do that,'' but on the 5th, he came 
in and expressly requested that.
    I grabbed a notebook because I was heading into the 
meeting. I didn't hear much new from him to record, but that 
was the first thing I recorded in my notes, was, ``Request that 
the VP reject.''
    Mr. Wood. Just to be clear, you are saying that Dr. Eastman 
urged the Vice President to adopt the very same approach that 
Dr. Eastman appeared to abandon in the Oval Office meeting with 
the President the day before. Is that correct?
    Mr. Jacob. He had recommended against it the evening 
before, and then on the 5th came in--and I think it was 
probably his first words after introductions and as we sat down 
were, ``I am here to request that you reject the electors in 
the disputed States.''
    Mr. Wood. You referenced a moment ago some handwritten 
notes, which you have provided to the Select Committee. I would 
now like to show you those notes.
    As you can see, you wrote there at the top--the writing is 
a little bit faint in the copy--but you wrote, ``Requesting VP 
reject.''
    Does that accurately reflect what Dr. Eastman asked of you 
in your meeting on January 5th?
    Mr. Jacob. Yes.
    Mr. Wood. What was your reaction when Dr. Eastman said on 
January 5th that he was there to ask the Vice President of the 
United States to reject electors at the joint session of 
Congress?
    Mr. Jacob. I was surprised, because I had viewed it as one 
of the key concessions that we had secured the night before 
from Mr. Eastman, that he was not recommending that we do that.
    Mr. Wood. So what did you say to him?
    Mr. Jacob. Well, as I indicated, to some extent it 
simplified my task because there are more procedural 
complexities to the ``send it back to the States'' point of 
view. I actually had spent most of my evening the night before 
writing a memorandum to the Vice President explaining all of 
the specific provisions of the Electoral Count Act that that 
plan would violate.
    So instead, since he was pushing the sort-of robust 
unilateral power theory--I have already walked the Committee 
through the discussions that we had--again, I started out with 
our points of commonality--or what I thought were our points of 
commonality--we are conservatives, we are small government 
people, we believe in originalism as the means by which we are 
going to interpret this.
    So we walked through the text, we walked through the 
history. The Committee has shown footage of Mr. Eastman on the 
stage on the 6th claiming that Jefferson supported his position 
in a historical example of Jefferson.
    In fact, he conceded in that meeting Jefferson did not at 
all support his position, that in the election of 1800 there 
had been some small technical defect with the certificate in 
Georgia. It was absolutely undisputed that Jefferson had won 
Georgia.
    Jefferson did not assert that he had any authority to 
reject electors. He did not assert that he had any authority to 
resolve any issue during the course of that.
    So, he acknowledged by the end that there was no historical 
practice whatsoever that supported his position. He had 
initially tried to push examples of Jefferson and Adams.
    He ultimately acknowledged they did not work, as we have 
covered. He acknowledged it would lose 9-0 in the Supreme 
Court.
    He again tried to say, ``But I don't think the courts will 
get involved in this. They will invoke the political question 
doctrine. So if the courts stay out of it, that will mean that 
we will have the 10 days for the States to weigh in and resolve 
it. Then they will send back the Trump slates of electors, and 
the people will be able to accept that.''
    I expressed my vociferous disagreement with that point. I 
did not think that this was a political question.
    Among other things, if the courts did not step in to 
resolve this, there was nobody else to resolve it. You would be 
in a situation where you have a standoff between the President 
of the United States and, counterfactually, the Vice President 
of the United States, saying that we have exercised authorities 
that, Constitutionally, we think we have by which we have 
deemed ourselves the winners of the election.
    You would have an opposed House and Senate disagreeing with 
that. You would have State legislatures that, to that point, I 
mean, Republican leaders across those legislatures had put 
together--had put out statements--and we collected these for 
the Vice President as well--that the people had spoken in their 
States and that they had no intention of reversing the outcome 
of the election.
    We did receive some signed letters that Mr. Eastman 
forwarded us by minorities of leaders in those States, but no 
State had any legislative house that indicated that it had any 
interest in it.
    So, you would have had just an unprecedented Constitutional 
jump ball situation with that stand-off. As I expressed to him, 
that issue might well then have to be decided in the streets. 
Because if we can't work it out politically, we have already 
seen how charged up people are about this election. So, it 
would be a disastrous situation to be in.
    So, I said I think the courts will intervene. I do not see 
a commitment in the Constitution of the question whether the 
Vice President has that authority to some other actor to 
resolve. There are arguments about whether Congress and the 
Vice President jointly have a Constitutional commitment to 
generally decide electoral vote issues.
    I don't think that they have any authority to object or 
reject them. I don't see it in the 12th Amendment. But 
nonetheless.
    I concluded by saying, ``John, in light of everything that 
we have discussed, can't we just both agree that this is a 
terrible idea?''
    He couldn't quite bring himself to say yes to that, but he 
very clearly said, ``Well, yes, I see we are not going to be 
able to persuade you to do this.''
    That was how the meeting concluded.
    Mr. Wood. You just described a terrifying scenario. It 
sounds like there could have been chaos under the Eastman 
approach. You have described it as it potentially could be 
decided in the streets. You described several concessions that 
Dr. Eastman made throughout that discussion or even debate that 
you had with him.
    At some point during that meeting on January 5th, did Dr. 
Eastman seem to admit that both of the theories that he had 
presented to the United States the day before--so the theory 
that the Vice President could reject electors outright and 
declare Donald Trump the winner, and his less aggressive theory 
that the Vice President could simply send it back to the 
States--at some point in that conversation on the 5th, did Dr. 
Eastman seem to admit that both of these theories suffered from 
similar legal flaws?
    Mr. Jacob. So I had at least one, possibly two other 
conversations with Dr. Eastman later that day.
    In the earlier meeting, we really were focused, because his 
request that he made had been reject the electors outright, on 
why that theory was wrong, and why we certainly would not be 
doing that.
    Later that day, he pivoted back to, ``Well, we hear you 
loud and clear, you are not going to reject. But remember last 
night, I said that there was this more prudent course where you 
could just send it back to the States. Would you be willing to 
do that?''
    During the course of our discussion about his renewed 
request that we consider that option, he acknowledged to me--he 
put it--both Mr. Eastman and myself are graduates of the 
University of Chicago Law School, and he said, ``Look, as 
graduates of that august institution, you and I will mutually 
understand that the underlying legal theory of plenary Vice 
Presidential authority is what you have to have to get there.''
    Because this new theory, as I was pointing out to him--or 
the procedural theory--still violates several provisions of the 
Electoral Count Act, as he acknowledged. The only way that you 
could ever be able to ignore several provisions of statutory 
law is if it was pretty clear that they were unconstitutional.
    The only way they could be unconstitutional is if the Vice 
President had the plenary authorities that formed the basis for 
the reject the votes as well.
    So, he acknowledged in those conversations that the 
underlying legal theory was the same. He just thought that the 
``send it back to the States'' option would be more politically 
palatable and he hoped more palatable to the Vice President for 
that reason.
    Mr. Wood. In fact, when Dr. Eastman made this concession 
during that meeting, according to your earlier deposition, Dr. 
Eastman said, ``Just between us University of Chicago 
chickens.'' Is that right?
    Mr. Jacob. I don't think that the University of Chicago is 
going to start a Chicago chickens fundraising fund. But, yes, 
that is the terminology that he used. He said, you know, ``Just 
between us Chicago chickens, we will understand, as lawyers who 
have studied the Constitution, that the underlying basis really 
is the same.''
    Mr. Wood. I reserve the remainder of my time.
    Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Wood.
    Mr. Jacob, the President and the Vice President meet again 
on that same topic the next day, January 5th, correct?
    Mr. Jacob. After my extended meeting with Mr. Eastman that 
morning, during that time the Vice President had been back at 
his residence working on his statement to the Nation that we 
released the next day.
    He got down to the White House some point between 1 o'clock 
and 2 o'clock as my meeting with Mr. Eastman was wrapping up. 
When we, Marc Short and I, went over to meet with the Vice 
President and--actually, we thought maybe we had good news. We 
felt like we had sort-of defeated Mr. Eastman. He was sort-of 
acknowledging that there was no ``there'' there.
    But the Vice President was then asked down to the Oval 
Office, and he went down to the Oval Office while Marc and I 
stayed back in the Vice President's office.
    Mr. Aguilar. You weren't in that meeting?
    Mr. Jacob. I was not.
    Mr. Aguilar. In the book ``Peril'' journalists Bob Woodward 
and Robert Costa write that the President said, ``If these 
people say you have the power, wouldn't you want to?''
    The Vice President says, ``I wouldn't want any one person 
to have that authority.''
    The President responds, ``But wouldn't it almost be cool to 
have that power?''
    The Vice President is reported to have said, ``No. Look, I 
have read this, and I don't see a way to do it. We have 
exhausted every option. I have done everything I could and then 
some to find a way around this. It is simply not possible. My 
interpretation is no.''
    To which the President says, ``No, no, no, you don't 
understand, Mike. You can do this. I don't want to be your 
friend anymore if you don't do this.''
    We asked Marc Short about this during his deposition.

    Mr. Short. [A]n understanding that I would have. In other 
conversations with the Vice President, he articulated to me that, no, 
he wouldn't want that power bestowed upon any one person.

    Mr. Aguilar. Mr. Jacob, did you, Mr. Short, and the Vice 
President have a call later that day again with the President 
and Dr. Eastman?
    Mr. Jacob. So, yes, we did.
    Mr. Aguilar. What did Dr. Eastman request on that call?
    Mr. Jacob. On that phone call, which I believe was around 5 
o'clock that afternoon, Mr. Eastman stated that he had heard us 
loud and clear that morning, we were not going to be rejecting 
electors, but would we be open to considering the other course 
that we had discussed on the 4th, which would be to suspend the 
joint session and request that State legislatures reexamine 
certification of the electoral votes.
    Mr. Aguilar. That same day, January 5th, The New York Times 
ran a story about the disagreement between the President and 
the Vice President about whether the Vice President could 
determine the outcome of the election.
    Even though The New York Times story was indisputably 
correct, Donald Trump denied it. Trump issued a statement 
claiming that the Vice President had agreed that he could 
determine the outcome of the election, despite the fact that 
the Vice President had consistently rejected that position.
    Let's look at what the President said in his statement. 
``The New York Times report regarding comments Vice President 
Pence supposedly made to me today is fake news. He never said 
that. The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the 
Vice President has the power to act.''
    Mr. Jacob, how did the Vice President's team react to this 
statement from the President that the Vice President could take 
an active role in determining the winner of the Presidential 
election?
    Mr. Jacob. So, we were shocked and disappointed, because 
whoever had written and put that statement out, it was 
categorically untrue.
    Mr. Aguilar. The Vice President's Chief of Staff, Marc 
Short, had an angry phone call with Trump campaign senior 
advisor Jason Miller about this statement. Here is what Mr. 
Short and Mr. Miller told the Committee about that call.

    Mr. Heaphy. Okay. Tell me about the conversation you had with 
Jason.
    Mr. Short. It was brief. I was irritated and expressed displeasure 
that a statement could have gone out that misrepresented the Vice 
President's viewpoint without consultation.
    Mr. Heaphy. The statement says the Vice President and I are in 
total agreement, that the Vice President has the power to act. Is that 
incorrect?
    Mr. Short. I think the record shows that that's incorrect.
    Mr. Heaphy. Yeah.
    Mr. Short. I mean, we've--we've been through many documents that 
clarify that this is not where the Vice President was.
    Mr. Heaphy. Right. So, essentially, the President is sending out a 
baldly false statement about being in alignment, purported alignment, 
with the Vice President despite all of the predicate that you indicated 
had gone before about their respective positions. Is that effectively 
what happened?
    Mr. Short. I interpret the statement is false. I'll let you figure 
out who sent it out.
    Mr. George. When Marc Short contacted you, he--he was upset. Is 
that what you said?
    Mr. Jason Miller. He clearly was not pleased.
    Mr. George. Tell us what he said.
    Mr. Jason Miller. What's the process for putting out a statement 
for a meeting where only two people were in the room?
    Mr. George. Did he ask you to retract the statement?
    Mr. Jason Miller. No, he just--I think it went right to what's the 
process for putting out a statement for a meeting when only two people 
were in the room.
    Mr. George. And he clearly disagreed with the substance though, 
right, because he said that--he said the Vice President doesn't agree 
with this.
    Mr. Jason Miller. I'm trying to think what exactly he said. I mean, 
the--the tone was very clearly that he'd--that he'd used some language 
to strongly infer that the Vice President disagreed with--with that 
take, but I don't remember what that language was.
    Mr. Heaphy. Did he dictate this statement?
    Mr. Jason Miller. We--he dictated--he dictated most of it. I mean, 
typically on these--typically on these, I might have a couple of 
wording suggestions, or maybe I'd, you know, have a--a sense or a rough 
framework or something of that. But I--I know with--specifically on 
this one that it was me and him on the phone talking through it, and 
ultimately the way this came out was the way that he wanted to.

    Mr. Aguilar. The dispute between the President and the Vice 
President had grown to the point where the Vice President's 
Chief of Staff, Marc Short, was concerned that the President 
could, in Mr. Short's words, ``lash out'' at the Vice President 
on January 6th.
    In fact, Mr. Short was so concerned about it that he talked 
with the head of the Vice President's Secret Service detail on 
January 5th. Here is Mr. Short.

    Mr. Short. Concern was for the Vice President's security, and so I 
wanted to make sure the head of the Vice President's Secret Service was 
aware that--that likely, as these disagreements became more public, 
that the President would lash out in some way.

    Mr. Aguilar. After the recess, we will hear that Marc 
Short's concerns were justified. The Vice President was in 
danger.
    Mr. Chairman, I reserve.
    Chairman Thompson. Pursuant to the order of the Committee 
of today, the Chair declares the Committee in recess for a 
period of approximately 10 minutes.
    [Accordingly, at 2:41 p.m., the Committee recessed until 
2:53 p.m., when it was called to order by the Chairman.]
    Chairman Thompson. The gentleman from California, Mr. 
Aguilar, is recognized.
    Mr. Aguilar. I would now like to turn to the events of 
January 6, 2021, which turned out to be a fateful day in our 
Nation's history.
    Despite the fact that the Vice President consistently told 
the President that he did not have and would not want the power 
to decide the outcome of the Presidential election, Donald 
Trump continued to pressure the Vice President, both publicly 
and privately.
    As you will hear, things reached a boiling point on January 
6th, and the consequences were disastrous.
    In the middle of the night on January 5th, into the morning 
of the 6th, around 1 a.m., President Trump tweeted ``at'' the 
Vice President, meaning that the comments in response to the 
President's tweet would also show up on the Vice President's 
Twitter feed.
    The tweet stated that the Vice President could ``come 
through for us'' and ``send it back'' to the States.
    Then, around 8 a.m. on January 6th, President Trump again 
tweeted, this time to say that the Vice President could send it 
back to the States and ``We win,'' and that ``this is the time 
for extreme courage.''
    Mr. Short told us during his deposition that the Vice 
President started a meeting on January 6th in prayer. Here is 
what Mr. Short said.

    Mr. Heaphy. You arrived at the Vice President's residence.
    Mr. Short. As would often be the case, I recall, that knowing it 
would be an important day, we gathered in prayer. And often that would 
be something the staff member would--would lead. So, it would have just 
been at that time, I believe, the Vice President, myself, Greg, and 
Chris.
    And we would have just asked for guidance and wisdom, knowing that 
the day was going to be a challenging one.

    Mr. Aguilar. Mr. Jacob, did you go to the Vice President's 
Residence on the morning of January 6th?
    Mr. Jacob. Yes.
    Mr. Aguilar. Who else was with you?
    Mr. Jacob. Marc Short, Devin O'Malley, our communications 
director, and Chris Hodgson, our legislative affairs director.
    Mr. Aguilar. Did the Vice President have a call with the 
President that morning?
    Mr. Jacob. He did.
    Mr. Aguilar. Were you with the Vice President during the 
call?
    Mr. Jacob. So, we had been putting--the Vice President had 
finalized his statement overnight. We were in the process of 
proofing it so that we could get that out. We were told that a 
call had come in from the President. The Vice President stepped 
out of the room to take that call, and no staff went with him.
    Mr. Aguilar. The President had several family members with 
him in the Oval that morning for that call. I would like to 
show you what they and others told the Select Committee about 
that call, along with never-before-seen photographs of the 
President on that call from the National Archives.

    Mr. Herschmann. When I got in, somebody called me and said that the 
family and others were in the Oval. And do I want to come up. So I--I 
went upstairs.
    Mr. Wood. And who do you recall being in the Oval Office?
    Mr. Herschmann. Don, Jr., Eric, Lara, Kimberly. I believe Meadows 
was there. At some point, Ivanka came in.
    Ms. Trump. It wasn't a specific, formal discussion. It was very 
sort-of loose and casual.
    Mr. Wood. So, then you said at some point there's a telephone 
conversation between the President and the Vice President. Is that 
correct?
    Mr. Herschmann. Yes.
    Ms. Trump. When I entered the office the second time, he was on the 
telephone with who I later found out to be was the--the Vice President.
    Mr. Wood. Could you hear the Vice President or only hear the 
President's end?
    Mr. Herschmann. Only hear the President's end. And at some point, 
it started off as a calmer tone, and everything, and then it became 
heated.
    Ms. Trump. The conversation was--was pretty heated.
    Mr. Herschmann. I think 'til it became somewhat, you know, louder 
tone, I don't think anyone was paying attention to it initially.
    Mr. George. Did you hear any part of the phone call, even if just 
this--the end that the President was speaking from?
    Mr. Luna. I did. Yes.
    Mr. George. All right. And what did you hear?
    Mr. Luna. So, as I was dropping off the note, I--my memory--I 
remember hearing the word ``wimp.''
    Either he called him a wimp--I don't remember if he said, ``You are 
a wimp,'' ``You'll be a wimp.'' ``Wimp'' is the word I remember.
    Mr. George. It's also been reported that the President said to the 
Vice President that--something to the effect of, ``You don't have the 
courage to make a hard decision.''
    General Kellogg. Worse. I don't remember exactly either, but it was 
something like that. Yeah.
    Mr. George. Do you----
    General Kellogg [continuing]. Being--you're--you're not tough 
enough to make the call.
    Ms. Trump. It was a different tone than I'd heard him take with the 
Vice President before.
    Mr. Tonolli. Did Ms. Trump share with you any more details about 
what had happened or any details about what had happened in the Oval 
Office that morning?
    Ms. Radford. That her dad had just had an upsetting conversation 
with the Vice President.
    Mr. Roselman. Do you recall anything about her demeanor either 
during the meeting or when you encountered her in Dan Scavino's office?
    Mr. Herschmann. I don't remember specifically. I mean, I think she 
was uncomfortable over the fact that there was obviously that type of 
interaction between the two of them.
    Mr. Luna. Something to the effect this is--the wording is wrong. I 
made the wrong decision 4 or 5 years ago.
    Mr. Tonolli. And the--the word that she related to you that the 
President called the Vice President, I apologize for being impolite, 
but do you remember what she said her father called him?
    Ms. Radford. The P-word.

    Mr. Aguilar. Mr. Jacob, how would you describe the demeanor 
of the Vice President following that call with the President?
    Mr. Jacob. When he came back into the room, I would say 
that he was steely, determined, grim.
    Mr. Aguilar. Of course, the most dangerous part of what 
Donald Trump did on January 6th was what he did himself. As 
will be discussed in detail in a future hearing, our 
investigation found that early drafts of the January 6th 
Ellipse speech prepared for the President included no mention 
of the Vice President. But the President revised it to include 
criticism of the Vice President and then further ad-libbed.
    Here is what the President said on January 6th after his 
call with Vice President Pence.

    President Trump. I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope 
so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the 
election.
    All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the States to 
recertify, and we become President. And you are the happiest people. 
And I actually--I just spoke to Mike.
    I said, ``Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to 
do nothing.'' That takes courage. And then we're stuck with a President 
who lost the election by a lot, and we have to live with that for 4 
more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
    And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. And if he 
doesn't, that will be a--a sad day for our country.
    And they want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But 
the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back.
    So, I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope 
he doesn't listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he's 
listening to.

    Mr. Aguilar. Of course, we all know what happened next. The 
President's words had an effect. President Trump's supporters 
became angry. When the Vice President issued his public letter, 
the crowd at the Capitol erupted in anger. The rioters, who had 
erected makeshift gallows, began chanting, ``Hang Mike Pence!''
    Testimony in our investigation has made clear what the 
target of the rioters' ire was: Vice President Mike Pence.
    The rioters breached the Capitol at 2:13 p.m.
    [Video shown.]
    Mr. Aguilar. Now, let's take a look at what was going on at 
the White House at this time.
    We received testimony that the President's Chief of Staff, 
Mark Meadows, was notified of the violence at the Capitol by 2 
p.m. and likely earlier.
    The testimony further establishes that Mr. Meadows quickly 
informed the President and that he did so before the President 
issued his 2:24 p.m. tweet criticizing Vice President Pence for 
not having ``courage'' to do what needed to be done.
    Here is what the President wrote in his 2:24 p.m. tweet 
while the violence at the Capitol was going on. Here is what 
the rioters thought.

    Voice. [N]othing but a traitor, and he deserves to burn with the 
rest of `em.
    Voice. So this--so this all escalated after Pence--what--what 
happened? Did Pence--Pence, yeah, Pence didn't do what we wanted.
    Voice. Pence voted against Trump.
    Voice. Okay. And that's when all this started?
    Voice. Yup. That's when we marched on the Capitol. We've been shot 
at with rubber bullets, tear gas.
    Mr. Fuentes. We just heard that Mike Pence is not going to reject 
any fraudulent electoral votes.
    Crowd. Boo!
    Voice. You're a traitor!
    Mr. Fuentes. That's right. You've heard it here first. Mike Pence 
has betrayed the United States of America.
    Crowd. Boo!
    Voice. Fuck you, Mike Pence!
    Mr. Fuentes. Mike Pence has betrayed this President, and he has 
betrayed the people of the United States, and we will never, ever 
forget.
    Voice. It's real simple. Pence betrayed us, which apparently 
everybody knew he was going to, and the President mentioned it like 
five times when he talked. You can go back and watch the President's 
video.
    Voice. This is our Capitol. Let's be respectful to it.
    Voice. There's four million people coming in. So, there's a lot 
of----
    Voice. We love you guys. We love the cops.
    Voice. [inaudible]
    Voice. It's only a matter of time. Justice is coming.

    Mr. Aguilar. Although the President's Chief of Staff, Mark 
Meadows, has refused to testify before this Committee, Mr. 
Meadows's aide, Ben Williamson, and White House Deputy Press 
Secretary Sarah Matthews testified that Mr. Meadows went to the 
dining room near the Oval Office to tell the President about 
the violence at the Capitol before the President's 2:24 p.m. 
tweet.
    In future hearings you will hear more about exactly what 
was happening in the White House at that time. But here is what 
some White House staff told the Select Committee.

    Mr. George. Do you know where he went?
    Mr. Williamson. Yes, I followed him down the hallway, and I 
followed him into the Outer Oval corridor, which is the hallway between 
the Oval Office hallway and the Outer Oval section of the Oval Office. 
I followed him into that little corridor hallway. I saw him walk into 
Outer Oval. I maybe took a step into Outer Oval and then left. And I 
don't know where he went outside of that, but it looked like he was 
headed in the direction of the Oval Office.
    Ms. Matthews. You know, we had all talked about--at that point--
about how it was bad and the, you know, situation was getting out of 
hand. And I--I know Ben Williamson and I were conferring, and we 
thought that the President needed to tweet something and tweet 
something immediately. And I think when Kayleigh gave us that order of 
don't say anything to the media, I told her that I thought the 
President needed to tweet something.
    And then I remember--then I remember getting a notification on my 
phone. And I was sitting in a room with Roma and Ben, and we all got a 
notification. So, we knew it was a tweet from the President, and we 
looked down and it was a--a--a tweet about Mike Pence.
    Mr. Williamson. I believe I had sent him a text saying that we may 
want to put out some sort of statement because the situation was--was 
getting a little hairy over at the Capitol. And then it was common for 
after I would text him, I would just go down and--and see him in 
person.
    Mr. George. You went down to speak with Mark Meadows after this. 
What was that conversation?
    Mr. Williamson. Very brief. I went down and told him the same thing 
I have in the text that I can recall. And I--I don't remember anything 
that was said between us other than I told him that and to my 
recollection he immediately got up and--and left his office.

    Mr. Aguilar. Our investigation found that immediately after 
the President's 2:24 p.m. tweet, the crowds, both outside the 
Capitol and inside the Capitol, surged.
    The crowds inside the Capitol were able to overwhelm the 
law enforcement presence, and the Vice President was quickly 
evacuated from his ceremonial Senate office to a secure 
location within the Capitol complex.

    Crowd. Whose house?
    Crowd. Our house!
    Mr. Aguilar. By 2:24 p.m., the Secret Service had moved Vice 
President Pence from the Senate Chamber to his office across the hall.
    Mr. Hodgson. The noise from the rioters became audible, at which 
point we recognized that maybe they had gotten into the building.
    Mr. Aguilar. Then President Trump tweeted, ``Mike Pence didn't have 
the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and 
our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of 
facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to 
previously certify. USA demands the truth!''
    Voice. Bring out Pence!
    Voice. Bring him out!
    Ms. Matthews. It was clear that it was escalating and escalating 
quickly.
    Crowd. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence.
    Ms. Matthews. So then when that tweet--the Mike Pence tweet--was 
sent out, I remember us saying that that was the last thing that needed 
to be tweeted at that moment. The situation was already bad, and so it 
felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that.
    Mr. Aguilar. Thirty seconds later, rioters already inside the 
Capitol opened the East Rotunda door just down the hall. And just 30 
seconds after that, rioters breached the Crypt one floor below the Vice 
President.
    Mr. Hodgson. The Secret Service couldn't control the situation and 
do their job of keeping him safe.
    Mr. Aguilar. At 2:26 p.m., Secret Service rushed Vice President 
Pence down the stairs.
    Mr. Jacob. I think they had been trying to figure out whether they 
had a clear route to get us to where they--it was that they wanted to 
move us to.
    Mr. Hodgson. We moved pretty quickly down the stairs and through 
various hallways and tunnels to the secure location. Upon arriving 
there, there was further discussion as to whether or not we were going 
to leave the Capitol complex or stay where we were.
    Mr. Aguilar. Vice President Pence and his team ultimately were led 
to a secure location where they stayed for the next 4\1/2\ hours, 
barely missing rioters a few feet away.

    Mr. Aguilar. Approximately 40 feet, that is all there was, 
40 feet between the Vice President and the mob.
    Mr. Jacob, you were there. Seeing that for the first time, 
does it surprise you to see how close the mob was to the 
evacuation route that you took? Forty feet is the distance from 
me to you, roughly.
    Mr. Jacob. I could hear the din of the rioters in the 
building while we moved, but I don't think I was aware that 
they were as close as that.
    Mr. Aguilar. Make no mistake about the fact that the Vice 
President's life was in danger. A recent court filing by the 
Department of Justice explains that a confidential informant 
from the Proud Boys told the FBI that the Proud Boys would have 
killed Mike Pence if given a chance.
    This witness, whom the FBI affidavit refers to as ``W-1,'' 
``stated that other members of the group talked about things 
they did that day, and they said that anyone they got their 
hands on they would have killed, including Nancy Pelosi.''
    W-1 further stated that members of the Proud Boys said that 
they would have killed Mike Pence if given a chance.
    We understand that Congressional leaders and others were 
evacuated from the Capitol complex during the attack. We would 
like to show you what happened after the Vice President was 
evacuated from the Senate.

    Mr. Aguilar. The Select Committee has obtained never-before-seen 
photos from the National Archives that show Vice President Pence 
sheltering in a secure, underground location as rioters overwhelmed the 
Capitol.
    At 4:19 p.m., Vice President Pence is seen looking at a tweet the 
President had just sent, a tweet asking the rioters to leave the 
Capitol.
    After 4\1/2\ hours spent on working to restore order, the Vice 
President returned to the Senate floor to continue the certification of 
electors.

    Mr. Aguilar. So, Vice President Pence was a focus of the 
violent attack.
    Mr. Jacob, did the Vice President leave the Capitol complex 
during the attack?
    Mr. Jacob. He did not.
    Mr. Aguilar. Could you please explain why the Vice 
President refused to leave the Capitol complex?
    Mr. Jacob. When we got down to the secure location the 
Secret Service directed us to get into the cars, which I did. 
Then I noticed that the Vice President had not. So, I got out 
of the car that I had gotten into, and I understood that the 
Vice President had refused to get into the car.
    The head of his Secret Service detail, Tim, had said, ``I 
assure you; we are not going to drive out of the building 
without your permission.'' The Vice President had said 
something to the effect of, ``Tim, I know you, I trust you, but 
you are not the one behind the wheel.''
    The Vice President did not want to take any chance that the 
world would see the Vice President of the United States fleeing 
the United States Capitol. He was determined that we would 
complete the work that we had set out to do that day that it 
was his Constitutional duty to see through, and that the 
rioters who had breached the Capitol would not have the 
satisfaction of disrupting the proceedings beyond the day on 
which they were supposed to be completed.
    Mr. Aguilar. Let me see if I understand this right. You 
were told to get in the cars. How many of the Vice President's 
staff got in the cars while he did not?
    Mr. Jacob. Most of us.
    Mr. Aguilar. During our investigation, we received 
testimony that while the Vice President was in a secure 
location within the Capitol complex, he continued the business 
of Government.
    We understand that the Vice President reached out to 
Congressional leaders, like the Acting Secretary of Defense and 
others, to check on their safety and to address the growing 
crisis.
    In addition, the Vice President's Chief of Staff, Marc 
Short, made several calls to senior Government officials.
    Here is Mr. Short's testimony regarding his call with 
Representative Kevin McCarthy.

    Mr. Short. He indicated that he had had some conversation. I don't 
recall whether it was with the President or somebody at the White 
House, but I think he expressed frustration that--not taking the 
circumstances seriously as they should at that moment.
    Mr. Heaphy. So, Mr. McCarthy indicated he'd been in touch with 
someone at the White House, and he conveyed to you that they weren't 
taking this as seriously as they should. You have to answer. Yes or no?
    Mr. Short. Yes, yes.
    Mr. Heaphy. Okay.

    Mr. Aguilar. While the Vice President made several calls to 
check on the safety of others, it was his own life that was in 
great danger.
    Mr. Jacob, did Donald Trump ever call the Vice President to 
check on his safety?
    Mr. Jacob. He did not.
    Mr. Aguilar. Mr. Jacob, how did Vice President Pence and 
Mrs. Pence react to that?
    Mr. Jacob. With frustration.
    Mr. Wood. Mr. Jacob, immediately before you and the Vice 
President were evacuated to a secure location within the 
Capitol, you hit ``send'' on an email to John Eastman 
explaining why his legal theory about the Vice President's role 
was wrong.
    You ended your email by stating that, ``thanks to your 
bullshit, we are now under siege.'' We will take a look at that 
email.
    Dr. Eastman replied--and this is hard to believe--but his 
reply back to you was, ``The `siege' is because you and your 
boss,'' presumably referring to the Vice President of the 
United States, ``did not do what was necessary to allow this to 
be aired in a public way so the American people could see for 
themselves what happened.''
    Mr. Jacob, later that day you wrote again to Dr. Eastman. 
Let's show that email on the screen.
    In that email you wrote, and I quote, ``Did you advise the 
President that in your professional judgement the Vice 
President DOES NOT have the power to decide things 
unilaterally?'' You ended that email saying, ``[I]t does not 
appear that the President ever got the memo.''
    Dr. Eastman then replied, ``He has been so advised.'' He 
ends his email with, ``But you know him. Once he gets something 
in his head, it is hard to get him to change course.''
    Mr. Jacob, when Dr. Eastman wrote, ``Once he gets something 
in his head, it is hard to get him to change course,'' did you 
understand the ``he'' in that email to refer to the President 
of the United States?
    Mr. Jacob. I did.
    Mr. Wood. Mr. Jacob, did you hear from Dr. Eastman further 
after the riot had been quelled? If so, what did he ask?
    Mr. Jacob. Late that evening, after the joint session had 
been reconvened, the Vice President had given a statement to 
the Nation saying that violence was not going to win, freedom 
wins, and that the people were going to get back to doing their 
work.
    Later that evening, Mr. Eastman emailed me to point out 
that, in his view, the Vice President's speech to the Nation 
violated the Electoral Count Act, that the Electoral Count Act 
had been violated because the debate on Arizona had not been 
completed in 2 hours--of course, it couldn't be, since there 
was an intervening riot of several hours--and that the speeches 
that the Majority and Minority leaders had been allowed to make 
also violated the Electoral Count Act, because they hadn't been 
counted against the debate time.
    Then he implored me: Now that we have established that the 
Electoral Count Act isn't so sacrosanct as you have made it out 
to be, I implore you one last time, can the Vice President 
please do what we have been asking him to do these last 2 days, 
suspend the joint session, send it back to the States?
    Mr. Wood. We will show you the text of that email, which 
Dr. Eastman wrote at 11:44 p.m. on January 6th.
    So, after the attack on the Capitol and after law 
enforcement had secured the Capitol, he still wrote, as you 
described, ``So now that the precedent has been set that the 
Electoral Count Act is not quite so sacrosanct as was 
previously claimed, I implore you to consider one more 
relatively minor violation and adjourn for 10 days to allow the 
legislatures to finish their investigations . . . ''
    So, even after the attack on the Capitol had been quelled, 
Dr. Eastman requested, in writing no less, that the Vice 
President violate the law by delaying the certification and 
sending the question back to the States.
    Is that correct, Mr. Jacob?
    Mr. Jacob. It is.
    Mr. Wood. Did you eventually share Dr. Eastman's proposal 
with Vice President Pence?
    Mr. Jacob. Not right at that time, because the Vice 
President was completing the work that it was his duty to do. 
But a day or two later, back at the White House, I did show him 
that final email from Mr. Eastman.
    Mr. Wood. What was Vice President Pence's reaction when you 
showed him the email where Dr. Eastman, after the attack on the 
Capitol, still asked that the Vice President delay 
certification and send it back to the States?
    Mr. Jacob. He said, ``That's rubber room stuff.''
    Mr. Aguilar. I am sorry, Mr. Wood.
    He said it is ``rubber room stuff''?
    Mr. Jacob. Yes, Congressman.
    Mr. Aguilar. What did you interpret that to mean?
    Mr. Jacob. I understood it to mean that, after having seen 
play out what happens when you convince people that there is a 
decision to be made in the Capitol legitimately about who is to 
be the President and the consequences of that, that he was 
still pushing us to do what he had been asking us to do for the 
previous 2 days, that that was certifiably crazy.
    Mr. Aguilar. We know that the Vice President did not do 
what Dr. Eastman requested, because he presided over the 
completion of the counting of electoral votes late in that 
evening.

    Vice President Pence. The number of electors appointed to vote for 
President of the United States is 538. Within that whole number, a 
majority is 270. The votes for President of the United States are as 
follows: Joseph R. Biden, Jr., of the State of Delaware has received 
306 votes. Donald J. Trump of the State of Florida has received 232 
votes.
    The whole number of electors appointed to vote for Vice President 
of the United States is 538. Within that whole number, a majority is 
270. The votes for Vice President of the United States are as follows: 
Kamala D. Harris of the State of California has received 306 votes. 
Michael R. Pence of the State of Indiana has received 232 votes.
    The announcement of the state of the vote by the President of the 
Senate shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons elected 
President and Vice President of the United States, each for the term 
beginning on the 20th day of January, 2021, and shall be entered, 
together with the list of the votes, on the Journals of the Senate and 
the House of Representatives.

    Mr. Aguilar. Mr. Jacob, we heard earlier that you and the 
Vice President and the team started January 6th with a prayer. 
You faced a lot of danger that day. This is a personal 
question, but how did your faith guide you on January 6th?
    Mr. Jacob. My faith really sustained me through it. I, down 
in the secure location, pulled out my Bible, read through it, 
and just took great comfort.
    Daniel 6 was where I went. In Daniel 6, Daniel has become 
the second in command of Babylon, a pagan nation that he 
completely faithfully serves. He refuses an order from the king 
that he cannot follow, and he does his duty, consistent with 
his oath to God. I felt that that is what had played out that 
day.
    Mr. Aguilar. It spoke to you.
    Mr. Jacob. Yes.
    Mr. Aguilar. At the end of the day, Marc Short sent the 
Vice President a text message with a Bible verse. Here is what 
he told the Select Committee.

    Mr. Short. At 3:50 in the morning, when we finally adjourned and 
headed our ways, I remember texting the Vice President a passage from 2 
Timothy, chapter 4, verse 7 about, ``I fought the good fight, I 
finished the race, I have kept the faith.''

    Mr. Aguilar. He started his day with a prayer and ended his 
day with a Bible verse: ``I have fought the good fight, I have 
finished the race, I have kept the faith.''
    White House attorney Eric Herschmann testified that the 
next day, January 7th, he received a call from Dr. Eastman. 
Here is Mr. Herschmann's account of that call.

    Mr. Herschmann. The day after, Eastman--I don't remember why--he 
called me--or he texted me or called me, wanted to talk with me, and he 
said he couldn't reach others. And he started to ask me about something 
dealing with Georgia and preserving something potentially for appeal.
    And I said to him, ``Are you out of your f-ing mind?''
    I said--I said I only want to hear two words coming out of your 
mouth from now on, ``Orderly transition.'' And I said I don't want to 
hear any other f-ing words coming out of your mouth no matter what 
other than ``orderly transition.'' Repeat those words to me.
    Mr. Wood. What did he say?
    Mr. Herschmann. Eventually he said, ``Orderly transition.''
    I said, ``Good, John. Now I'm going to give you the best free legal 
advice you're ever getting in your life. Get a great f-ing criminal 
defense lawyer. You're going to need it.'' And then I hung up on him.

    Mr. Aguilar. In fact, just a few days later, Dr. Eastman 
emailed Rudy Giuliani and requested that he be included on a 
list of potential recipients of a Presidential pardon. Dr. 
Eastman's email stated, ``I've decided that I should be on the 
pardon list, if that is still in the works.''
    Dr. Eastman did not receive his Presidential pardon. So, 
let's see what Dr. Eastman did as a result when he was deposed 
by this Committee.

    Mr. Eastman. I assert my Fifth Amendment right against being 
compelled to be a witness against myself.
    Mr. Wood. Did the Trump legal team ask you to prepare a memorandum 
regarding the Vice President's role in the counting of electoral votes 
at the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021?
    Mr. Eastman. Fifth.
    Mr. Wood. Dr. Eastman, did you advise the President of the United 
States that the Vice President could reject electors from 7 States and 
declare that the President had been reelected?
    Mr. Eastman. Fifth.
    Mr. Wood. Dr. Eastman, the first sentence of the memo starts off by 
saying 7 States have transmitted dual slates of electors to the 
President of the Senate. Is that statement in this memo true?
    Mr. Eastman. Fifth.
    Mr. Wood. Has President Trump authorized you to discuss publicly 
your January 4, 2021, conversation with him?
    Mr. Eastman. Fifth.
    Mr. Wood. Are--so, is it your position that you can discuss in the 
media direct conversations you had with the President of the United 
States, but you will not discuss those same conversations with this 
Committee?
    Mr. Eastman. Fifth.

    Mr. Aguilar. Dr. Eastman pled the Fifth 100 times.
    Finally, let's hear from a Federal court judge, the only 
one to date who has opined on whether the President was 
involved in criminal activity.
    Page 36 of Judge Carter's ruling says, ``Based on the 
evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that 
President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint 
Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.''
    Page 40 of the ruling says, ``Based on the evidence, the 
Court find that it is more likely than not that President Trump 
and Dr. Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint 
Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.''
    Page 44: ``Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a 
campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action 
unprecedented in American history. Their campaign was not 
confined to the ivory tower--it was a coup in search of a legal 
theory.''
    Mr. Jacob, what would have happened to our democracy if 
Vice President Pence had gone along with this plan and 
certified Donald Trump as the winner of the 2020 election?
    Mr. Jacob. So, there would have been short-term and long-
term effects.
    The short term I have previously described: A 
Constitutional jump-ball situation, political chaos in 
Washington, lawsuits, and who knows what happening in the 
streets. You would have had the Vice President of the United 
States having declared that the outcomes of these State 
elections were incorrect.
    So, for all of those reasons, there would have been 
significant short-term consequences.
    But in the long term, we would have established a situation 
where a Vice President would have asserted that one person 
could have the authority to determine the outcome of an 
election--which is antithetical to everything in our democracy, 
antithetical to the rule of law.
    So, it would have been significant impacts both in the 
short and the long term.
    Mr. Aguilar. Judge Luttig, in the statement you released 
earlier today, you wrote that the efforts by President Trump to 
overturn the 2020 election were, ``the most reckless, 
insidious, and calamitous failures in both legal and political 
judgment in American history.''
    What did you mean by that?
    Judge Luttig. Exactly what I said, Congressman.
    Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Judge.
    Thank you, Mr. Jacob.
    Mr. Chairman, this was an informative hearing, a powerful 
hearing. I am grateful for your leadership and the leadership 
of the distinguished Vice Chair.
    Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, but he could 
not bring himself to participate in the peaceful transfer of 
power. So, he latched on to a scheme that, once again, he knew 
was illegal. When the Vice President refused to go along with 
it, he unleashed a violent mob against him.
    When we began, I asked how we got to this place. I think 
the answer to that question starts with the fact that people in 
positions of power put their political party before their 
country. It cannot be allowed to continue.
    I will yield back now, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much.
    Without objection, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman 
from Wyoming, Ms. Cheney, for a closing statement.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you to my colleague, Representative Aguilar.
    Thank you very much to our witnesses today, Mr. Jacob and 
Judge Luttig. Thank you for being here with us.
    We have seen so far in our hearings that President Trump 
knew that his claims of a stolen election were false. You have 
seen that he knew that Mike Pence could not legally refuse to 
count electoral votes. You have seen what President Trump did 
to pressure Mike Pence into taking illegal action.
    Over the course of our next hearings, you will see 
information about President Trump's efforts, John Eastman's 
efforts, the Trump legal team's efforts to apply pressure to 
Republican State legislatures, State officials, and others.
    Judge Carter has recently written, ``Dr. Eastman's actions 
in these few weeks indicate that his and President Trump's 
pressure campaign to stop the electoral count did not end with 
Vice President Pence. It targeted every tier of Federal and 
State elected officials.''
    We will examine all of those threats. We will examine the 
Trump team's determination to transmit materially false 
electoral slates from multiple States to officials of the 
Executive and Legislative branches of our Government. We will 
examine the pressures put on State legislatures to convene to 
reverse lawful election results.
    An honorable man receiving the information and advice that 
Mr. Trump received from his campaign experts and his staff, a 
man who loved his country more than himself, would have 
conceded this election. Indeed, we know that a number of 
President Trump's closest aides urged him to do so.
    This Committee will address all of these issues in greater 
detail in the coming weeks.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentlelady yields back.
    Judge Luttig and Mr. Jacob, our Nation owes you a great 
debt for your knowledge, integrity, and your loyalty to our 
Constitution. You and Vice President Pence are exactly the 
people our Nation needed at a critical time. You had the 
courage to do what was right.
    In the weeks leading up to January 6th, many people failed 
this test when they had to choose between their oath to the 
country or the demands of Donald Trump. But there were others 
who, like you, stood tall in the face of intimidation and put 
our democracy first.
    They include the judges who rejected the bogus claims of 
election fraud, the senior Justice Department officials who 
stood up to Donald Trump, and the State officials whom we will 
hear from at our next hearing.
    We are deeply grateful for your courage and devotion to our 
country.
    There are some who think the danger has passed, that even 
though there was violence and a corrupt attempt to overturn the 
Presidential election, the system worked. I look at it another 
way: Our system nearly failed and our democratic foundation 
destroyed but for people like you.
    Judge Luttig, I want to give you an opportunity to share 
your thoughts on the on-going threat.
    You have written, ``The clear and present danger to our 
democracy now is that former President Donald Trump and other 
political allies appear prepared . . . to seize the Presidency 
in 2024 if Mr. Trump or one of his anointed candidates is not 
elected by the American people.''
    What do you mean by this?
    Judge Luttig. Mr. Chairman, I am honored beyond words by 
your words. I was honored on January 6, 2021, then also honored 
beyond words, to have been able to come to the aid of Vice 
President Mike Pence.
    I prayed that day, just like the Vice President prayed that 
day. I believe we may have prayed the same prayer to the same 
God. I prayed that same prayer with my wife this morning before 
I came into these hearings.
    I have written, as you said, Chairman Thompson, that, 
today, almost 2 years after that fateful day in January 2021, 
that, still, Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a 
clear and present danger to American democracy.
    That is not because of what happened on January 6th. It is 
because, to this very day, the former President, his allies and 
supporters pledge that, in the Presidential election of 2024, 
if the former President or his anointed successor as the 
Republican Party Presidential candidate were to lose that 
election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 
election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 
2020 election but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020.
    I don't speak those words lightly. I would have never 
spoken those words ever in my life except that that is what the 
former President and his allies are telling us.
    As I said in that New York Times op-ed wherein I was 
speaking about the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the former 
President and his allies are executing that blueprint for 2024 
in open and plain view of the American public.
    I repeat: I would have never uttered one single one of 
those words unless the former President and his allies were 
candidly and proudly speaking those exact words to America.
    Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear here 
today for these proceedings.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you again, Judge Luttig.
    As a part of the Select Committee's charge to make 
recommendations that are informed by other investigative 
findings, we will be reviewing the views shared by Judge Luttig 
and other experts on potential improvements to the Electoral 
Count Act, among a range of other initiatives.
    I know the information we have presented over the last week 
is shocking--the idea that a President of the United States 
would orchestrate a scheme to stay in power after the people 
have voted him out of office.
    We are able to present this information because so many 
witnesses have cooperated with our probe. But the fact is, 
there are more people with direct knowledge, with evidence 
germane to our investigation. I ask those who might be on the 
fence about cooperating to reach out to us.
    The Committee's website address is being displayed behind 
me: january6th.house.gov. There, you can view the evidence we 
presented in our hearings and find a tip line to submit any 
information you might think would be helpful for our 
investigation. Despite how you might not think it is important, 
send us what you think.
    I thank those who have sent us evidence for their bravery 
and patriotism.
    Without objection, Members will be permitted 10 business 
days to submit statements for the record, including opening 
remarks and additional questions for the witnesses.
    The Chair requests those in the hearing room remain seated 
until the Capitol Police have escorted Members from the room.
    Without objection, the Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 3:45 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]


                            A P P E N D I X

                              ----------                              

                 Prepared Statement of Gregory F. Jacob
                             June 16, 2022
    It was the honor of a lifetime to serve a Vice President whose 
devotion to the Constitution, and whose commitment to his Oath before 
God to uphold it, were the cornerstone by which he daily faithfully 
discharged the duties of his Office.
    I first spoke to Vice President Pence about the Twelfth Amendment 
and the Electoral Count Act in early December 2020. The Vice 
President's first instinct was that the Framers of our Constitution, 
who abhorred concentrated power, would never have entrusted any one 
person with the unilateral authority to alter the outcome of a 
Presidential election--particularly not a person who is on the ticket. 
The Vice President never wavered from that view.
    I will briefly summarize the legal work my office performed at the 
Vice President's direction in December 2020 and January 2021. We 
analyzed the various theories of unilateral Vice Presidential power 
that were presented to us, and we explained the reasons those theories 
were inconsistent with the Constitution and the law. We successfully 
resisted, with the assistance of the United States Department of 
Justice, two lawsuits filed against the Vice President that sought to 
compel him to exercise imagined extraconstitutional authority to 
personally determine whether duly ascertained electoral votes should be 
counted. We engaged with the Senate Parliamentarian to revise the 
parliamentary scripts for the January 6, 2021 Joint Session to ensure 
that they complied fully with all requirements of the Electoral Count 
Act, and transparently explained to the viewing public that only one 
duly ascertained slate of electors had been received from each State. 
We also assisted the Vice President with drafting the statement he 
released prior to the electoral vote count explaining to Congress and 
to the American people the basis for his firm conclusion that the Vice 
President's role in counting electoral votes is purely ministerial.
    By the time the first lawsuit was filed against the Vice President 
on December 23, and well before John Eastman appeared on our radar 
screen on January 4, my legal team had pulled together and analyzed the 
records for every electoral vote count in our nation's history, the 
history of the disputed Election of 1876 and the Electoral Commission 
that was created to resolve it, the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and its 
legislative history, and every law review article written on the 
subject of the Electoral Count Act's constitutionality. Our office was 
determined that no one would ever be able to say that the Vice 
President's conclusion about the limits of his constitutional authority 
was the result of a failure to examine relevant law, history, or 
practice. I want to thank Matt Sheehan, Lindsay Pickell, Devin 
Petricca, and Ugonna Eze for their service to the Vice President and 
our country. Thanks to their diligent work through late nights and 
holidays, no lawsuit or lawyer was ever able to confront us with a 
legal argument or an asserted account of history with which we were not 
already intimately familiar, which proved critical in the fast-paced 
days leading up to January 6.
    I hope the Vice President found the legal advice my staff and I 
provided him helpful as he handled a charged constitutional moment, but 
it was not determinative of the outcome. Vice President Pence loves the 
Constitution. He studied the law and history, he read law review 
articles, he ably rebutted John Eastman's arguments. He concluded that 
although the relevant text of the Twelfth Amendment is inartfully 
drafted, the Framers could not possibly have intended to empower the 
Vice President to reject duly ascertained electoral votes, or to 
unilaterally suspend the constitutionally mandated vote counting 
proceedings. When asked last year by a student at an event at the 
University of Iowa to name the person who told him that he was required 
to certify the 2020 election, the Vice President accurately answered: 
James Madison.
    This Committee is considering changes to our statutory laws to 
prevent a recurrence of January 6. I agree that changes should be made. 
The truth is, however, that our enacted laws were already clear that 
the Vice President did not possess the extraordinary powers others 
urged upon him. New statutes will make little difference if we do not 
first inculcate in our citizens and demand in our leaders unfailing 
fidelity to our Constitution and the rule of law. That means you always 
follow them, even when it hurts. You stand up for them, even where 
there is a cost.
    We are losing--I pray we have not lost--a common devotion to the 
first principles that have bound our people together for more than two 
centuries, and have made America a beacon of hope and freedom in the 
world. Our Declaration of Independence recognizes as a self-evident 
truth that our God-given and unalienable rights to life and liberty 
depend for their security on the just administration of the laws in 
accordance with the consent of the governed.
    The law is not a plaything for Presidents or judges to use to 
remake the world in their preferred image. Our Constitution and our 
laws form the strong edifice within which our heartfelt policy 
disagreements are to be debated and decided. When our elected and 
appointed leaders break, twist, and fail to enforce our laws in order 
to achieve their partisan ends, or to accomplish frustrated policy 
objectives they consider existentially important, they are breaking 
America. We should not feign surprise when our citizens treat the law 
and the Constitution with the same level of respect that our leaders 
do.
    So in considering changes to our laws governing the counting of 
electoral votes, I respectfully suggest that Congress should with 
humility study and acknowledge how it has fulfilled its own 
constitutionally prescribed role over the last 20 years. Memories of 
the 2020 election are fresh, but history records that in four of the 
last six Presidential elections--a majority of the Presidential 
elections in the last two decades--efforts were made in Congress to 
reverse election outcomes. On January 6, 2001, several Members objected 
to counting the electoral votes of Florida. On January 6, 2005, a 
broader effort was made to reject Ohio's electoral votes. There was no 
evidence of fraud in Ohio. Yet dozens of Members voted to 
disenfranchise Ohio's voters, and more than 120 others abstained from 
that vote, placing political self-interest ahead of the rights of 
Ohio's voters to have their votes counted. On January 6, 2017, Members 
lodged objections to counting the electoral votes of Alabama, Florida, 
Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and 
Wisconsin.
    The objectors to the elections of 2000, 2004, and 2016 likely did 
not believe their efforts to reverse State outcomes would succeed. They 
were simply using the Joint Session and the Electoral Count Act for 
purposes of political theater, without giving much thought to their 
constitutionally appropriate role. But by the time January 2021 
arrived, John Eastman was able to point to a well-worn road suggesting 
that momentous decisions about the outcome of Presidential elections 
can legitimately be made in the United States Capitol on January 6.
    The events of January 6, 2021 have, I hope, settled any lingering 
questions about the Vice President's constitutionally appropriate role 
in certifying the results of Presidential elections. The text, 
structure, and history of the Twelfth Amendment, comprehensively and 
fairly considered, supply a decisive answer, as does the Electoral 
Count Act of 1887. As Vice President Pence has said: ``Frankly, there 
is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person 
could choose the American President.''
    As this Committee considers recommending legislative changes 
concerning Congress's own role in certifying Presidential elections, I 
commend to it the text of the Twelfth Amendment, and the specific and 
limited duties that Congress is assigned. I also commend to it 
Federalist No. 68. There Alexander Hamilton wrote that the Constitution 
does ``not ma[ke] the appointment of President to depend on any 
preexisting bodies of men,'' which he warned might be subject ``to 
cabal, intrigue, and corruption.'' For precisely this reason, the 
Constitution prohibits Senators and Representatives from serving as 
electors. Hamilton also warned that any body meeting in one location to 
choose the President would be exposed to ``heats and ferments'' that 
could ``convulse the community with [] extraordinary or violent 
movements.''
    How prescient.
    I'll close by borrowing a few words that were used by James Madison 
210 years ago when he endorsed a national call to prayer at the outset 
of the War of 1812: May Almighty God guide our councils, animate our 
patriotism, and inspire our nation with a love of justice and concord.
                                 ______
                                 
             Prepared Statement of Hon. J. Michael Luttig *
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    * With my respect to the Select Committee, I did not submit this 
statement prior to my testimony today pursuant to the Rules of the U.S. 
House of Representatives, so to avoid any appearance or suggestion that 
my testimony is that of an interested political party partisan or is on 
behalf of the Select Committee or any person involved with, on, or 
after January 6, or is that of a witness in any other way 
``interested'' in these hearings.
    I testify today only as a private citizen, and as a non-partisan, 
disinterested, independent former Federal Judge on the United States 
Court of Appeals who happens to have been a fact witness to the events 
surrounding January 6. The views, the thoughts, and the words herein 
are mine and mine alone, submitted to the Select Committee on my own 
behalf and no one else's.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                             June 16, 2022
    Honorable Members of the House Select Committee----
    A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on 
January 6, 2021, and our democracy today is on a knife's edge.
    America was at war on that fateful day, but not against a foreign 
power. She was at war against herself. We Americans were at war with 
each other--over our democracy.
    January 6 was but the next, foreseeable battle in a war that had 
been raging in America for years, though that day was the most 
consequential battle of that war even to date. In fact, January 6 was a 
separate war unto itself, a war for America's democracy, a war 
irresponsibly instigated and prosecuted by the former president, his 
political party allies, and his supporters. Both wars are raging to 
this day.
    A peaceful end to these wars is desperately needed. The war for our 
democracy could lead to the peaceful end to the war for America's 
cultural heart and soul. But if a peaceful end to the war for America's 
democracy is not achievable, there is little chance for a peaceful end 
to that war. The settlement of this war over our democracy is necessary 
to the settlement of any war that will ever come to America, whether 
from her shores or to her shores. Though disinclined for the moment, as 
a political matter of fact only the party that instigated this war over 
our democracy can bring an end to that war.
    Like our war from a distant time, these twin wars are ``testing 
whether th[is] nation or any nation . . . so conceived in Liberty . . . 
can long endure.'' We must hope that January 6 was the final battle of 
at least the deadly war for America's democracy.
                                 ______
                                 
    These senseless wars are of our own making, and they are now being 
waged throughout the land, in our city centers and town squares, in our 
streets and in our schools, where we work and where we play, in our 
houses of worship--even within our own families. These wars were 
conceived and instigated from our Nation's Capital by our own political 
leaders collectively and they have been cynically prosecuted by them to 
fever pitch, now to the point that they have recklessly put America 
herself at stake.
    America is now the stake in these unholy wars.
    Serious thinkers about the American experiment who are not given to 
apocalyptic prophesying question whether America is on the verge of a 
literal civil war. But is even this figurative civil war to be our 
generation's legacy to posterity?
    These wars that we are waging against each other are immoral wars, 
not moral ones, being immorally waged over morality itself. We 
Americans no longer agree on what is right or wrong, what is to be 
valued and what is not, what is acceptable behavior and not, and what 
is and is not tolerable discourse in civilized society. Let alone do we 
agree on how we want to be governed or by whom, or where we go from 
here and with what shared national ideals, values, beliefs, purposes, 
goals, and objectives--if any at all.
    America is adrift. We pray that it is only for this fleeting moment 
that she has lost her way, until we Americans can once again come to 
our senses.
                                 ______
                                 
    The war on democracy instigated by the former president and his 
political party allies on January 6 was the natural and foreseeable 
culmination of the war for America. It was the final fateful day for 
the execution of a well-developed plan by the former president to 
overturn the 2020 Presidential election at any cost, so that he could 
cling to power that the American People had decided to confer upon his 
successor, the next president of the United States instead. Knowing 
full well that he had lost the 2020 Presidential election, the former 
president and his allies and supporters falsely claimed and proclaimed 
to the Nation that he had won the election, and then he and they set 
about to overturn the election that he and they knew the former 
president had lost.
    The treacherous plan was no less ambitious than to steal America's 
democracy.
    Called to Washington D.C. that day by the president, the president 
himself, and the president's followers, supporters, and allies gathered 
near The White House for a ``Stop the Steal'' rally. The president 
maintained at that rally that the 2020 Presidential election had been 
``fraudulently stolen'' from him. The president addressed his faithful 
followers thus: ``We're going to the Capitol . . . We're going to try 
and give them [the Republicans in the Congress, presumably] the kind of 
pride and boldness that they need to take back our country . . . We 
will never give up. We will never concede.''
    Inflamed, the gathered mob marched up the hill from The White House 
to the United States Capitol to protest, disrupt and prevent the 
counting of the electoral votes for the presidency, which the president 
falsely charged were wrongly about to be counted by the Congress in his 
political opponent's winning favor and in his own losing favor.
    Once staged at the Capitol, the mob soon erected gallows on the 
United States Capitol grounds, chanting that Vice President Mike Pence 
should be hanged. Hanged, the mob chanted, for ``cowardly'' refusing 
the president's lawless entreaties that his Vice President declare 
their president reelected, against the will of the American People, 
though he had lost both the Electoral College and the popular vote for 
the presidency.
    There were many coward on the battlefield on January 6. The Vice 
President was not among them.
    Soon thereafter, the rioters stormed the Capitol itself, breaching, 
occupying, and ransacking the temple of our democracy for seemingly 
endless wrenching hours--at the precise democratic moment when the 
Congress of the United States convened in Joint Session to begin the 
constitutional counting of the votes for the presidency of the United 
States.
    Not until over 3 hours after the riot had begun, and then only 
after the siege had achieved what by that time was its truncated 
objective to interrupt and indefinitely delay the counting of the vote, 
did the president finally yield to the pleas and prayers from his own 
family, friends, and political allies, and grudgingly ask his 
supporters in a hastily forced video tweet to disperse and return to 
their homes.
    The Nation wept during the evening of January 6, as the Capitol 
police began to clear and resecure the Capitol at day's end. Finally, 
at 8 o'clock p.m. on January 6, 7 hours after the siege on the Capitol 
had begun, Vice President Pence gaveled the Joint Session back into 
order with measured, understated resolve: ``Today was a dark day in the 
history of the United States Capitol . . . Let's get back to work.''
    January 6 was a dark day in the history of the United States, too.
    It was not until the next day, January 7, 2021, at 3:42 a.m. in the 
morning--almost 15 hours after the Joint Session had first been gaveled 
into session by Speaker Nancy Pelosi--that the Vice President finally 
declared that Joe Biden had been elected the 46th President of the 
United States.
    On January 6, 2021, the prescribed day for choosing the American 
president, there was not to be a peaceful transfer of power--for the 
first time in the history of our Republic.
                                 ______
                                 
    Over a year and a half later, in continued defiance of our 
democracy, both the former president and his political party allies 
still maintain that the 2020 Presidential election was ``stolen'' from 
him, despite all evidence--all evidence now--that that is simply false. 
All the while, this false and reckless insistence that the former 
president won the 2020 Presidential election has laid waste to 
Americans' confidence in their national elections. More alarming still 
is that the former president pledges that his reelection will not be 
``stolen'' from him next time around, and his Republican Party allies 
and supporters obeisantly pledge the same.
    False claims that our elections have been stolen from us corrupt 
our democracy, as they corrupt us. To continue to insist and persist in 
the false claim that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen is 
itself an affront to our democracy and to the Constitution of the 
United States--an affront without precedent.
    Those who think that because America is a republic, theft and 
corruption of our national elections and electoral process are not 
theft and corruption of our democracy are sorely mistaken. America is 
both a republic and a representative democracy, and therefore a 
sustained attack on our national elections is a fortiori an attack on 
our democracy, any political theory otherwise notwithstanding.
    Accordingly, if, and when, one of our national elections is 
actually stolen from us, our democracy will have been stolen from us. 
To steal an election in the United States of America is to steal her 
democracy.
                                 ______
                                 
    As in all things, the essence of our participation in democracy is 
not knowledge, but judgment--studied, discerning judgment. No more so 
is this true than in the Constitution and in the Law.
    Very few ever have the honor of counseling the President of the 
United States of America. That highest of honors carries with it the 
highest of obligations. Counsel provided to the President of the United 
States must be the product of not only exquisite, penetrating legal 
analysis but also profound, insightful legal judgment. These two 
combined are so far from mere technical legal competence as almost to 
be its polar opposite. The President and the country deserve nothing 
less from those who counsel the President, so consequential are the 
stakes for the Nation when the President acts upon the advice of his or 
her Counsel.
    Whatever else, the President of the United States did not receive 
such counsel during his sustained effort to overturn the 2020 
Presidential election. It is as much the former president's fault as 
anyone's that he did not.
    Irrespective of the merits of the legal arguments that fueled the 
former president's efforts to overturn that election--irrespective of 
them, though there were none--those arguments, and therefore those 
efforts, by the former president were the product of the most reckless, 
insidious, and calamitous failures in both legal and political judgment 
in American history.
    From their inception, the legal arguments that underlaid the 
efforts to overturn the 2020 election were, in that context, little 
more than beguiling and frivolous, perhaps appropriate for academic 
classroom debate, but singularly inappropriate as counsel to the 
President of the United States of America in his effort to overturn the 
Presidential election--an election he had lost fair and square and as 
to which there was not then, and there is not to this day, evidence of 
fraud.
    It is breathtaking that these arguments even were conceived, let 
alone entertained by the President of the United States at that 
perilous moment in history.
    Had the Vice President of the United States obeyed the President of 
the United States, America would immediately have been plunged into 
what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing 
constitutional crisis.
    The former president's accountability under the law for the riot on 
the United States Capitol on January 6 is incidental to his 
responsibility and accountability for his attempt to steal the 2020 
Presidential election from the American People and thereby steal 
America's democracy from America herself. This said, willful ignorance 
of law and fact is neither excuse nor defense in law. Willful 
ignorance, thus, is neither political nor legal excuse or defense 
available to the former President of the United States, his allies, and 
his supporters.
                                 ______
                                 
    On January 6, 2021, revolutionaries, not patriots, assaulted 
America and American democracy. The walls of all three of our 
institutions of democracy were scaled and breached on that appalling 
day. And almost 2 years thence, one of America's two political parties 
cannot even agree whether that day was good or bad, right or wrong. 
Worse, it cannot agree over whether January 6 was needed, or not. 
Needed or not. Pause for a moment and reflect on that. The former 
president and his party cannot decide whether the revolt at the United 
States Capitol to disrupt and prevent the constitutional counting of 
the votes for the presidency was needed, and therefore whether another 
revolt might be needed at a future date to accomplish that which the 
previous revolt failed to accomplish.
    If one of our national political parties--one of the two political 
guardians of our democracy--cannot agree even as to whether the violent 
riot and occupation of the United States Capitol, inspired by the 
President of the United States and carried out by his followers to 
prevent Congress from counting the votes for the presidency of those 
same United States, was reprehensible insurrection or needed, 
legitimate political discourse, we all can agree on nothing.
    Nor should we.
    The former president's party cynically and embarrassingly 
rationalizes January 6 as having been something between hallowed, 
legitimate public discourse and a visitors tour of the Capitol that got 
out of hand. January 6, of course, was neither, and the former 
president and his party know that. It was not legitimate public 
discourse by any definition. Nor was it a civics tour of the Capitol 
Building--though that day proved to be an eye-opening civics lesson for 
all Americans.
    January 6 was, rather, a defining, and a redefining, day in 
American history--defining and redefining of America itself. On that 
day, America finally came face to face with the raging war that it had 
been waging against itself for years. So blood-chilling was that day 
for our democracy, that America could not believe her eyes and she 
turned them away in both fear and shame. Even so, many have already 
forgotten, and many more have chosen to forget. Some who rioted and 
occupied the Capitol that day had already decided how this war for our 
democracy must end, while others of their compatriots, upon sober 
reflection afterward, decided that no, no, this war must end now, 
before there is further bloodshed.
    As did we, these latter saw how this war ends, and they realized 
that no one should want for such end.
    For their part, the former president and many of his party remain 
to this day undecided as to which end of this war they will commit 
themselves--undecided, that is, as to which end they want to commit 
themselves. To be undecided today as to whether to end this war over 
our democracy is to have decided how one wants this war to end.
    Thus, for the rest of us Americans, the time has come for us to 
decide whether we allow this war over our democracy to be prosecuted to 
its catastrophic end or whether we ourselves demand the immediate 
suspension of this war and insist on peace instead.
    We must make this decision because our political leaders are 
unwilling and unable, even as they recklessly prosecute this war in our 
name. We Americans begin to make this consequential decision this week, 
when Congress, rightly if painfully, takes us back to that day in 
January we want so much to forget but mustn't, and reminds us of what 
was at stake that day and still, in what is this most unholy of wars.
                                 ______
                                 
    America is at a perilous crossroads. Who is it that we have become 
and what is it that America has become? Is this who we want to be and 
what we want America to be? And if not, just who is it that we 
Americans want to be? And just what is it that we want our America to 
be?
    Many will again turn their eyes away, miscalculating that this is 
the last time they must see, and thus remember. The partisan 
mercenaries, who have no interest in either understanding or peace, 
will be the first who turn away and, in their determined ignorance, 
ignore. The mercenaries know better than we that what we forcibly put 
out of our minds or what we forget, we are destined to repeat.
    No American ought to turn away from January 6, 2021, until all of 
America comes to grips with what befell our country that day, and we 
decide what we want for our democracy from this day, forward.
    The genius that is America's democracy is this. The Constitution 
vests all power in ``We the People.'' We agreed in the Constitution to 
delegate our power to our representatives, only during their time in 
our service, and at that, exclusively for the purpose of representing 
our interests in the Nation's Capital, not theirs. Our democracy is the 
process through which our representatives, using the power that we have 
delegated to them, in turn and in trust, govern us. We choose in our 
national elections those who we want to represent us, including most 
importantly the President of the United States. It is for this simple 
reason that to steal an election for the presidency from us is to steal 
our democracy from us.
    America's democracy was almost stolen from us on January 6.
    Our democracy has never been tested like it was on that day and it 
will never be tested again as it was then if we learn the lessons of 
that fateful day. On the other hand, if we fail to learn the lessons 
that are there to be learned, or worse, deny even that there are 
lessons there to be learned, we will consign ourselves to another 
January 6 in the not-too-distant future, and another after that, and 
another after that. While for some, that is their wish, that cannot be 
our wish for America.
                                 ______
                                 
    America can withstand attacks on her democracy from without. She is 
helpless to withstand them from within. The relentless assaults on 
America and its democracy from within, such as January 6, which 
designedly call into question the very legitimacy of the institutions 
and instrumentalities of our democracy, are simply not contemplated by 
the Constitution of the United States and are therefore not provided 
for by that Great Charter for our governance.
    America is not in constitutional crisis until and unless the 
Constitution and the institutions and instrumentalities of our 
democracy are under withering, unsustainable, and unendurable attack 
from within. Then, and only then, is the constitutional order in 
hopeless constitutional disorder. Only then is America in peril. Today, 
America is in constitutional crisis--and at a foreboding crossroads 
with disquieting parallels to the fateful crossroads we came to over a 
century and a half ago.
                                 ______
                                 
    It is no wonder that America is at war over her democracy. Every 
day for years now we have borne witness to vicious partisan attacks on 
the bulwarks of that democracy--our institutions of government and 
governance and the institutions and instrumentalities of our 
democracy--by our own political leaders and fellow citizens. Every day 
for years now we have witnessed vicious partisan attacks on our 
Institutions of Law themselves, our Nation's Judiciary, and our 
Constitution and the Laws of the United States--the guardians of that 
democracy and of our freedom. For years, we have been told by the very 
people we trust, and entrust, to preserve and to protect our American 
institutions of democracy and law that these institutions are no longer 
to be trusted, no longer to be believed in, no longer deserving of 
cherish and protection.
    If that is true, then it is because those with whom we entrusted 
these institutions have themselves betrayed our sacred trust.
    And, indeed, it does seem at the moment that we no longer agree on 
our democracy. Nor do we any longer seem to agree on the ideals, 
values, and principles upon which America was founded and that were so 
faithfully nurtured and protected by the generations and generations of 
Americans that came before us. Yet we agree on no other foundational 
ideals, values, and principles, either.
    All of a sudden it seems that we are in violent disagreement over 
what has made America great in the past and over what will make her 
great in the future. In poetic tragedy, political campaign slogan has 
become divisive political truth. And there is no reason to believe that 
agreement about America by we Americans is anywhere on the horizon, if 
for no other reason than that none of us is interested in agreement. In 
the moral catatonic stupor America finds itself in today, it is only 
disagreement that we seek, and the more virulent that disagreement, the 
better.
    This is not who we Americans are or who we want to be. Nor is this 
America or what we want America to be.
                                 ______
                                 
    Reeling from twin wars, leaderless, and rudderless, America is in 
need of help. Our polarized political leaders have shamefully and 
shamelessly failed us. They have summoned our worst demons at the very 
moment when we needed summoned our better angels.
    As a consequence, America finds itself in desperate need of either 
a reawakening and quickening to the vision, truths, values, principles, 
beliefs, hopes, and dreams upon which the country was founded and that 
have made America the greatest nation in the world--a revival of 
America and the American spirit.
    Or, if it is to be, we are in need of a revival around a new 
vision, new truths, new values, new principles, new beliefs, new hopes 
and dreams that hopefully could once again bind our divided nation 
together into the more perfect union that ``We the People'' originally 
ordained and established it to be.
    We cannot hobble along much longer, politically paralyzed and 
hopelessly divided, directionless and undecided as to which revival it 
will be--if any at all.
    Where do we begin? This is the easier question. Who has the 
patriotic and political courage to go first? This is the harder 
question.
    As to the first question, we begin where the reconciliation of all 
broken human relationships, be they broken from war, anger, betrayal, 
or love, begins--by talking with each other, and listening to one 
another again, as human beings and fellow citizens who share the same 
destiny and the same belief in America and hope for her future. For 
years now, taking the lead from our politicians, we Americans have 
spoken only coarse, desensitizing, dehumanizing political vile at each 
other, which enables us to speak to each other without guilt or regret. 
For too many years now, we have spoken to each other as charlatanic 
political gladiators in an arena that today has become annihilative of 
America's future, not promising of that future.
    By constitutional order, We the People of this great Nation confer 
upon our elected representatives the power that they are then, by 
solemn constitutional obligation, directed to wield on our behalf and 
on America's behalf. But today our politicians live in a different 
world from the rest of us, and in a different world than that ordained 
by the Constitution. They live in a fictional world of divided 
loyalties between party and country, a world of their own unfaithful 
making.
    Today's politicians believe that they never have to choose between 
partisan party politics and country, when in fact they are obliged by 
oath to choose between the two every day, and every day they defiantly 
refuse to choose. For today's politicians, never the twain shall meet 
between partisan ambition and country, and never the latter before the 
former, either. The politicians in today's America only sponsor 
partisan incitement and only traffic in the same, rather than sponsor 
bi-partisan reason and lead in thoughtful deliberation. They have 
purposely led us down the road not in the direction toward the bridging 
of our differences, but in the direction away from the bridging of 
those differences. They have proven themselves incapable of leading us.
    But still, all it would take to turn America around is a consensus 
among some number of these political leaders who possess the combined 
necessary moral authority and who would agree to be bound together by 
patriotic covenant, to stand up, step forward, and acknowledge to the 
American People that America is in peril.
    In order to end these wars that are draining the lifeblood from our 
country, a critical mass of our two parties' political leaders is 
needed, to whom the remainder would be willing to listen, at least 
without immediate partisan recrimination. The logic for reconciliation 
of these wars being waged in America today dictates that this number 
needs to include a critical mass of leaders from the former president's 
political party and that those leaders need to go first. All of these 
leaders then need to summon first the moral courage and then the 
political courage, the strength, and the patriotic will to extend their 
hands, and ask of the others--and of all Americans--``Can we talk? 
America needs us.''
    While Memorial Day is still fresh in our minds, we would all do 
well to remind ourselves of the immortal words spoken to the West Point 
cadets at the United States Military Academy a half century ago: 
``Duty, Honor, Country.'' Those three sacred words of profound American 
obligation were spoken on that occasion to reassure those who had given 
their lives for their country in the past, and who would give them in 
the future, that their sacrifice would not be in vain. Those words are 
as apt today for this occasion as they were on that day for that 
occasion, if not more.
    Then we need to get back to work, and quickly. We need to get back 
to the solemn business of preserving, protecting, and defending the 
Constitution of the United States and the United States of America.
    The hour is late. God is watching us.

                HEARING ON THE JANUARY 6TH INVESTIGATION

                              ----------                              

                         Tuesday, June 21, 2022

                     U.S. House of Representatives,
 Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on 
                                 the United States Capitol,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:01 p.m., in 
room 390, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Bennie G. Thompson 
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Thompson, Cheney, Lofgren, Schiff, 
Aguilar, Murphy, Raskin, Luria, and Kinzinger.
    Chairman Thompson. The Select Committee to Investigate the 
January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol will be in 
order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare the 
Committee in recess at any point.
    Pursuant to House Deposition Authority Regulation 10, the 
Chair announces the Committee's approval to release the 
deposition material presented during today's hearing.
    Good afternoon. In our last hearing, we told the story of a 
scheme driven by Donald Trump to pressure former Vice President 
Mike Pence to illegally overturn the election results. We 
showed that, when the pressure campaign failed and Mike Pence 
fulfilled his Constitutional obligation, Donald Trump turned a 
violent mob loose on him. We showed that the mob came within 
roughly 40 feet of the Vice President.
    Today, we will show that what happened to Mike Pence wasn't 
an isolated part of Donald Trump's scheme to overturn the 
election. In fact, pressuring public servants into betraying 
their oath was a fundamental part of the playbook.
    A handful of election officials in several key States stood 
between Donald Trump and the upending of American democracy.
    As we began today, it is important to remember, when we 
count the votes for President, we count the votes State by 
State. For the most part, the candidates who win the popular 
vote in a State wins all the State's electoral college votes. 
Whoever wins a majority of the electoral college votes wins the 
Presidency.
    So, when Donald Trump tried to overturn the election 
results, he focused on just a few States. He wanted officials 
at the local and State level to say the vote was tainted by 
wide-spread fraud and throw out the results, even though, as we 
showed last week, there wasn't any voter fraud that could have 
overturned the election results.
    Like Mike Pence, these public servants wouldn't go along 
with Donald Trump's scheme. When they wouldn't embrace the Big 
Lie and substitute the will of the voters with Donald Trump's 
will to remain in power, Donald Trump worked to ensure they'd 
face the consequences. Threats to people's livelihood and 
lives. Threats of violence that Donald Trump knew about and 
amplified.
    In our other hearings, we can't just look backward at what 
happened in late 2020 and early 2021 because the danger hasn't 
gone away. Our democracy endured a mighty test on January 6th 
and in the days before. We say our institutions held. But what 
does that really mean? Democratic institutions aren't 
abstractions or ideas. They are local officials who oversee 
elections, secretaries of state, people in whom we have placed 
our trust that they will carry out their duties. But what if 
they don't?
    Two weeks ago, New Mexico held its primary elections. One 
county commission refused to certify the results, citing vague, 
unsupported claims dealing with Dominion voting machines. The 
courts stepped in, saying New Mexico law required the 
commission to certify the results.
    Two of the three members of the commission finally 
relented. One still refused, saying his vote, ``isn't based on 
any evidence. It's not based on any facts. It's only based on 
my gut feeling and my own intuition, and that's all I need.'' 
By the way, a few months ago, this county commissioner was 
found guilty of illegally entering the Capitol Grounds on 
January 6th.
    This story reminds us of a few things. First, as we have 
shown in our previous hearings, claims that wide-spread voter 
fraud tainted the 2020 Presidential election have always been a 
lie. Donald Trump knew they were a lie, and he kept amplifying 
them anyway.
    Everything we describe today, the relentless, destructive 
pressure campaign on State and local officials, was all based 
on a lie. Donald Trump knew it. He did it anyway.
    Second, the lie hasn't gone away. It is corrupting our 
democratic institutions. People who believe that lie are now 
seeking positions of public trust. As seen in New Mexico, their 
oath to the people they serve will take a backseat to their 
commitment to the Big Lie. If that happens, who will make sure 
our institutions don't break under the pressure? We won't have 
close calls. We will have a catastrophe.
    My distinguished colleague from California, Mr. Schiff, 
will present much of the Select Committee's findings on this 
matter. First, I am pleased to recognize our Vice Chair, Ms. 
Cheney of Wyoming, for any opening statement she would care to 
offer.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Today we will begin examining President Trump's effort to 
overturn the election by exerting pressure on State officials 
and State legislatures.
    Donald Trump had a direct and personal role in this effort, 
as did Rudy Giuliani, as did John Eastman. In other words, the 
same people who were attempting to pressure Vice President Mike 
Pence to reject electoral votes illegally were also 
simultaneously working to reverse the outcome of the 2020 
election at the State level.
    Each of these efforts to overturn the election is 
independently serious. Each deserves attention, both by 
Congress and by our Department of Justice. But, as a Federal 
court has already indicated, these efforts were also part of a 
broader plan. All of this was done in preparation for January 
6th.
    I would note two points for particular focus today. First, 
today you will hear about calls made by President Trump to 
officials of Georgia and other States. As you listen to these 
tapes, keep in mind what Donald Trump already knew at the time 
he was making those calls. He had been told over and over again 
that his stolen election allegations were nonsense. For 
example, this is what former Attorney General Bill Barr said to 
President Trump about allegations in Georgia.

    Attorney General Barr. We took a look--a hard look--at this 
ourselves. And based on our review of it, including the interviews of 
the key witnesses, the Fulton County allegations were--had no merit. 
The ballots under the table were legitimate ballots. They weren't in a 
suitcase. They had been pre-opened for eventually feeding into the 
machine. All the stuff about the water leak and that there was some 
subterfuge involved--we felt there was some confusion, but there was no 
evidence of a subterfuge to create an opportunity to feed things into 
the count. And so, we didn't see any evidence of fraud in the Fulton 
County episode.

    Vice Chair Cheney. And Acting Deputy Attorney General 
Richard Donoghue told Donald Trump this.

    Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue. And I said something to 
the effect of, ``Sir, we've done dozens of investigations, hundreds of 
interviews. The major allegations are not supported by the evidence 
developed.''

    Vice Chair Cheney. Mr. Trump was told by his own advisors 
that he had no basis for his stolen election claims. Yet he 
continued to pressure State officials to change the election 
results.
    Second, you will hear about a number of threats and efforts 
to pressure State officials to reverse the election outcome. 
One of our witnesses today, Gabriel Sterling, explicitly warned 
President Trump about potential violence on December 1, 2020, 
more than a month before January 6th. You will see excerpts 
from that video repeatedly today.

    Mr. Sterling. It's all gone too far. All of it. Joe diGenova today 
asked for Chris Krebs, a patriot who ran CISA, to be shot. A 20-
something tech in Gwinnett County today has death threats and a noose 
put out saying he should be hung for treason because he was 
transferring a report on batches from an EMS to a county computer, so 
he could read it.
    It has to stop. Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions 
or this language. Senators, you have not condemned this language or 
these actions. This has to stop. We need you to step up, and if you're 
going to take a position of leadership, show some.
    My boss, Secretary Raffensperger--his address is out there. They 
have people doing caravans in front of their house. They've had people 
come on to their property . . . 
    It has to stop. This is elections. This is the backbone of 
democracy. And all of you who have not said a damn word are complicit 
in this.

    Vice Chair Cheney. The point is this: Donald Trump did not 
care about the threats of violence. He did not condemn them. He 
made no effort to stop them. He went forward with his fake 
allegations anyway.
    One more point: I would urge all of those watching today to 
focus on the evidence the Committee will present. Don't be 
distracted by politics. This is serious. We cannot let America 
become a Nation of conspiracy theories and thug violence.
    Finally, I want to thank our witnesses today, for all of 
your service to our country. Today all of America will hear 
about the selfless actions of these men and women who acted 
honorably to uphold the law, protect our freedom, and preserve 
our Constitution.
    Today, Mr. Chairman, we will all see an example of what 
truly makes America great.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, the Chair recognizes 
the gentleman from California, Mr. Schiff, for an opening 
statement.
    Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Madam Vice Chair.
    On November 3, 2020, Donald Trump ran for reelection to the 
Office of the Presidency, and he lost. His opponent, Joe Biden, 
finished ahead in the key battleground States of Arizona, 
Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and elsewhere.
    Nevertheless, and for the first time in history, the losing 
Presidential candidate fought to hold on to power. As we have 
seen in previous hearings, he did so through a variety of 
means.
    On election day, he sought to stop the counting of the 
vote, knowing that the millions of absentee ballots elections 
officials would be counting on election day and thereafter 
would run strongly against him and deliver a victory to Joe 
Biden.
    Next, and when he could not stop the counting, he tried to 
stop State legislatures and Governors from certifying the 
results of the election. He went to court and filed dozens of 
frivolous lawsuits, making unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
    When that too failed, he mounted a pressure campaign 
directed at individual State legislators to try to get them to 
go back into session and either declare him the winner, 
decertify Joe Biden as the winner, or send two slates of 
electors to Congress, one for Biden and one for him, and 
pressure Vice President Pence to choose him as the winner.
    But the State legislatures wouldn't go along with this 
scheme, and neither would the Vice President. None of the 
legislatures agreed to go back into special session and declare 
him the winner. No legitimate State authority in the States 
Donald Trump lost would agree to appoint fake Trump electors 
and send them to Congress.
    But this didn't stop the Trump campaign either. They 
assembled groups of individuals in key battleground States and 
got them to call themselves electors, created phony 
certificates associated with these fake electors, and then 
transmitted these certificates to Washington and to the 
Congress to be counted during the joint session of Congress on 
January 6th.
    None of this worked. But, according to Federal District 
Judge David Carter, former President Trump and others likely 
violated multiple Federal laws by engaging in this scheme, 
including conspiracy to defraud the United States. You will 
hear evidence of the former President and his top advisers' 
direct involvement in key elements of this plot, or what Judge 
Carter called a ``coup in search of a legal theory.''
    For, as the judge explained, ``President Trump's pressure 
campaign to stop the electoral count did not end with Vice 
President Pence--it targeted every tier of federal and state 
elected officials. Convincing state legislatures,'' he said, 
``to certify competing electors was essential to stop the count 
and ensure President Trump's reelection.''
    As we have seen in our prior hearings, running through this 
scheme was a Big Lie that the election was plagued with massive 
fraud and somehow stolen.
    You will remember what the President's own Attorney 
General, Bill Barr, said he told the President about these 
claims of massive fraud affecting the outcome of the election.

    Attorney General Barr. And I told him that the stuff that his 
people were shoveling out to the public were bull--was bullshit. I mean 
that the claims of fraud were bullshit.

    Mr. Schiff. The President's lie was and is a dangerous 
cancer on the body politic. If you can convince Americans that 
they cannot trust their own elections, that any time they lose 
it is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to 
determine who should govern?
    This brings us to the focus of today's hearing. When State 
elections officials refused to stop the count, Donald Trump and 
his campaign tried to put pressure on them. When State 
executive officials refused to certify him the winner of States 
he lost, he applied more pressure. When State legislatures 
refused to go back into session and appoint Trump electors, he 
amped up the pressure yet again. Anyone who got in the way of 
Donald Trump's continued hold on power after he lost the 
election was the subject of a dangerous and escalating campaign 
of pressure.
    This pressure campaign brought angry phone calls and texts, 
armed protests, intimidation, and, all too often, threats of 
violence and death. State legislators were singled out. So too 
were State-wide elections officials. Even local elections 
workers diligently doing their jobs were accused of being 
criminals and had their lives turned upside down.
    As we will show, the President's supporters heard the 
former President's claims of fraud and the false allegations he 
made against State and local officials as a call to action.

    Crowd. Stop-the-steal! Stop-the-steal! Stop-the-steal! [inaudible]
    Voice. You're a threat to democracy! [inaudible] You're a threat to 
free and honest elections.
    Voice. We love America. We love our rights and our freedoms. 
[inaudible]
    Voice. You are a tyrant. You are a felon. And you must turn 
yourself into authorities immediately. [inaudible]
    Michigan Secretary of State Benson. And then about 45 minutes 
later, we started to hear the noises outside my home, and that's when 
my stomach sunk. And I thought, ``It's me.'' And there--and then it's 
just--we don't know what's going on--the uncertainty of that was what--
was the fear. Like, are they coming with guns? Are they going to attack 
my house? I'm in here with my kid. You know, I'm trying to put him to 
bed. And so, it was--yeah, that was the scariest moment just not 
knowing what was going to happen.

    Mr. Schiff. This pressure campaign against State and local 
officials spanned numerous contested States, as you will see in 
this video produced by the Select Committee.

    Mr. Roselman. My name is Josh Roselman. I'm an investigative 
counsel for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th 
Attack on the United States Capitol.
    Beginning in late-November 2020, the President and his lawyers 
started appearing before State legislators urging them to give their 
electoral votes to Trump even though he lost the popular vote.
    Mr. Giuliani. I represent President Trump along with Jenna Ellis. 
And this is our fourth or fifth hearing.
    President Trump. This election has to be turned around because we 
won Pennsylvania by a lot, and we won all of these swing States by a 
lot.
    Mr. Roselman. This was a strategy with both practical and legal 
elements. The Select Committee has obtained an email from just 2 days 
after the election in which a Trump campaign lawyer named Cleta 
Mitchell asked another Trump lawyer, John Eastman, to write a memo 
justifying the idea.
    Mr. George. When do you remember this coming up as an option in the 
post-election period for the first time?
    Ms. Mitchell. Right after the election. It might have been before 
the election.
    Mr. Roselman. Eastman prepared a memo attempting to justify this 
strategy, which was circulated to the Trump White House, Rudy 
Giuliani's legal team, and State legislators around the country. And he 
appeared before the Georgia State Legislature to advocate for it 
publicly.
    Mr. Eastman. You could also do what the Florida legislature was 
prepared to do, which is to adopt a slate of electors yourselves. And 
when you add in the mix of the significant statistical anomalies, and 
sworn affidavits, and video evidence of outright election fraud, I 
don't think it's just your authority to do that. But quite frankly, I 
think you have a duty to do that, to protect the integrity of the 
election here in Georgia.
    Mr. Roselman. But Republican officials in several States released 
public statements recognizing that President Trump's proposal was 
unlawful. For instance, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp called the proposal 
``unconstitutional,'' while Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers wrote 
that the idea would undermine the rule of law. The pressure campaign to 
get State legislators to go along with the scheme intensified when 
President Trump invited delegations from Michigan and Pennsylvania to 
the White House.
    Mr. Harris. Either you or Speaker Chatfield, did you make the point 
to the President that you were not going to do anything that violated 
Michigan law?
    Mr. Shirkey. I believe we did. Whether or not--was those exact 
words or not, we're--I think the words that I would have more likely 
used is, ``We are going to follow the law.''
    Mr. Roselman. Nevertheless, the pressure continued. The next day 
President Trump tweeted, ``Hopefully the Courts and/or Legislatures 
will have . . . the COURAGE to do what has to be done to maintain the 
integrity of our Elections, and the United States of America itself. 
THE WORLD IS WATCHING!!!'' He posted multiple messages on Facebook, 
listing the contact information for State officials and urging his 
supporters to contact them to, ``Demand a vote on decertification.'' In 
one of those posts, President Trump disclosed Mike Shirkey's personal 
phone number to his millions of followers.
    Mr. Shirkey. All I remember is receiving over--just shy of 4,000 
text messages over a short period of time calling to take action . . . 
    It was a loud noise--loud consistent cadence of, ``You know, we 
hear that--that the Trump folks are calling and asking for changes in 
the electors, and you guys can do this.'' Well, you know, they were--
they were believing things that were untrue.
    Mr. Roselman. These efforts also involved targeted outreach to 
State legislators----
    Ms. McCallum. Hi, Representative. My name is Angela McCallum. I'm 
calling from Trump campaign headquarters in Washington, DC. You do have 
the power to reclaim your authority and send a slate of electors that 
will support President Trump and Vice President Pence.
    Mr. Roselman [continuing]. From President Trump's lawyers and from 
Trump himself.
    President Trump. And I've become friendly with legislators that I 
didn't know 4 weeks ago.
    Mr. Roselman. Another legislator, Pennsylvania House Speaker Bryan 
Cutler, received daily voicemails from Trump's lawyers in the last week 
of November.
    Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Speaker, this is Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis. 
We're calling you together because we'd like to discuss obviously the 
election.
    Ms. Ellis. Hello, Mr. Speaker. This is Jenna Ellis and I'm here 
with Mayor Giuliani.
    Mr. Giuliani. Hey, Bryan. It's Rudy. I really have something 
important to call to your attention that I think really changes things.
    Mr. Roselman. Cutler felt that the outreach was inappropriate and 
asked his lawyers to tell Rudy Giuliani to stop calling. But Giuliani 
continued to reach out.
    Mr. Giuliani. I understand that you don't want to talk to me now. I 
just want to bring some facts to your attention and talk to you as a 
fellow Republican.
    Mr. Roselman. On December 30th, Trump ally Steve Bannon announced a 
protest at Cutler's home.
    Mr. Bannon. We're getting on the road, and we're going down to 
Cutler. We're going to start going to offices. And if we have to, we're 
going to go to homes, and we're going to let them know what we think 
about them.
    Pennsylvania Speaker Cutler. There were multiple protests. I 
actually don't remember the exact number. There was at least three, I 
think, outside of either my district office or my home. And you're 
correct, my son--my then-15-year-old son was home by himself for the 
first one . . . 
    All of my personal information was doxxed on-line. It was my 
personal email, my personal cell phone, my home phone number. In fact, 
we had to disconnect our home phone for about 3 days because it would 
ring all hours of the night and would fill up with messages.
    Voice. Bryan Cutler, we are outside.
    Voice. Clerks facing felony charges in Michigan. Poll watchers 
denied access in Pennsylvania----
    Mr. Roselman. These ads were another element in the effort. The 
Trump campaign spent millions of dollars running ads on-line and on 
television.
    Voice. The evidence is overwhelming. Call your Governor and 
legislators. Demand they inspect the machines and hear the evidence.
    Mr. Roselman. Public pressure on State officials often grew 
dangerous in the lead-up to January 6th.
    Crowd. Let-us-in. Let-us-in. Let-us-in. Let-us-in.
    Crowd. Special session. Special session. Special session.
    Mr. Alexander. We'll light the whole shit on fire.
    Mr. Fuentes. What are we going to do? What can you and I do to a 
State legislator besides kill him? Although, we should not do that. I'm 
not advising that, but I mean, what else can you do? Right?
    Voice. The punishment for treason is death.

    Mr. Schiff. The State pressure campaign and the danger it 
posed to State officials and to State capitols around the 
Nation was a dangerous precursor to the violence we saw on 
January 6th at the U.S. Capitol.
    Today, you will hear from Rusty Bowers, the Republican 
speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives. He will tell 
us about his conversations with the President, Rudy Giuliani, 
and John Eastman, and what the President's team asked of him, 
and how his oath of office would not permit it.
    You will then hear from Brad Raffensperger, the Republican 
Secretary of State of Georgia, who Trump directed to ``find 
11,780 votes'' that did not exist but just the exact number of 
votes needed to overtake Joe Biden.
    You will also hear from Gabriel Sterling, his chief 
operating officer, about the spurious claims of fraud in the 
elections in Georgia and who, responding to a cascading set of 
threats to his elections team, warned the President to stop, 
that someone was going to get killed.
    You will hear from Wandrea ``Shaye'' Moss, a former local 
elections worker in Fulton County, Georgia, about how all the 
lies about the election impacted the lives of real people who 
administer our elections and still do.
    You will hear what they experienced when the most powerful 
man in the world, the President of the United States, sought to 
cling to power after being voted out of office by the American 
people.
    The system held, but barely. The system held because people 
of courage, Republicans and Democrats, like the witnesses you 
will hear today, put their oath to the country and Constitution 
above any other consideration. They did their jobs, as we must 
do ours.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. I now welcome our first panel of 
witnesses. We are joined today by a distinguished legislator 
from Arizona, Rusty Bowers, who is the Republican speaker of 
the Arizona House of Representatives.
    Mr. Bowers was first elected to the State legislature in 
1993 and has served as speaker since 2019.
    Welcome, Speaker Bowers.
    Brad Raffensperger is the 29th secretary of state of 
Georgia, serving in this role since 2019. As an elected 
official and a Republican, Secretary Raffensperger is 
responsible for supervising elections in Georgia and 
maintaining the State's public records.
    Welcome, Mr. Secretary.
    Gabriel Sterling is the chief operating officer in the 
Georgia Secretary of State's Office. Mr. Sterling was the 
State-wide voting systems implementation manager for the 2020 
election in Georgia, responsible for leading the secretary of 
state's response to the COVID pandemic and rolling out 
modernized voting equipment.
    I will swear in our witnesses.
    The witnesses will please stand and raise their right 
hands.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Thank you. Please be seated.
    Let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the 
affirmative.
    Speaker Bowers, thank you for being with us today. You are 
the speaker of the Arizona house and a self-described 
conservative Republican. You campaigned for President Trump and 
with him during the 2020 election.
    Is it fair to say that you wanted Donald Trump to win a 
second term in office?
    Mr. Bowers. Yes, sir.
    Chairman Thompson. Please.
    Mr. Bowers. Yes, sir. Thank you.
    Chairman Thompson. Is it your understanding that President 
Biden was the winner of the popular vote in Arizona in 2020?
    Mr. Bowers. Yes, sir.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    Pursuant to section 5(c)(8) of House Resolution 503, the 
Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Schiff, for 
questions.
    Mr. Schiff. Speaker Bowers, thank you for being with us 
today. Before we begin with the questions that I have prepared 
for you, I wanted to ask you about a statement that former 
President Trump issued, which I received just prior to the 
hearing. Have you had a chance to review that statement?
    Mr. Bowers. My counsel called from Arizona and read it to 
me. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Schiff. In that statement--I won't read it in its 
entirety--former President Trump begins by calling you a RINO, 
Republican in name only. He then references a conversation in 
November 2020 in which he claims that you told him that the 
election was rigged and that he had won Arizona.
    To quote the former President, ``During the conversation, 
he told me the election was rigged and that I won Arizona.''
    Did you have such a conversation with the President?
    Mr. Bowers. I did have a conversation with the President. 
That certainly isn't it. There were parts of it that are true, 
but there are parts that are not, sir.
    Mr. Schiff. The part that I read you. Is that false?
    Mr. Bowers. Anywhere, anyone, any time has said that I said 
the election was rigged, that would not be true.
    Mr. Schiff. When the former President in his statement 
today claimed that you told him that he won Arizona, is that 
also false?
    Mr. Bowers. That is also false.
    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Bowers, I understand that, after the 
election--and I don't know whether this is the conversation the 
former President is referring to--but, after the election, you 
received a phone call from President Trump and Rudy Giuliani, 
in which they discussed the results of the Presidential 
election in Arizona. If you would, tell us about that call and 
whether the former President or Mr. Giuliani raised allegations 
of election fraud.
    Mr. Bowers. Thank you. My wife and I had returned from 
attending our church meetings. It was on a Sunday. We were 
still in the driveway, and I had received a call from a 
colleague telling me that the White House was trying to get in 
touch with her and I, and that she said: ``Please, if you get a 
call, let's try to take this together.''
    Immediately, I saw that the White House on my Bluetooth was 
calling, and I took the call and was asked by the, I would 
presume, the operator at the White House if I would hold for 
the President, which I did. And Mr. Giuliani came on first, and 
niceties. Then Mr. Trump, President Trump, then-President 
Trump, came on, and we initiated a conversation.
    Mr. Schiff. During that conversation, did you ask Mr. 
Giuliani for proof of these allegations of fraud that he was 
making?
    Mr. Bowers. On multiple occasions, yes.
    Mr. Schiff. When you asked him for evidence of this fraud, 
what did he say?
    Mr. Bowers. He said that they did have proof. I asked him: 
``Do you have names?''
    For example, we have 200,000 illegal immigrants, some large 
number, 5,000 or 6,000 dead people, et cetera.
    I said: ``Do you have their names?''
    ``Yes.''
    ``Will you give them to me?''
    ``Yes.''
    The President interrupted and said: ``Give the man what he 
needs, Rudy.''
    He said: ``I will.''
    That happened on at least two occasions, that interchange 
in the conversation.
    Mr. Schiff. So, Mr. Giuliani was claiming in the call that 
there were hundreds of thousands of undocumented people and 
thousands of dead people who had purportedly voted in the 
election?
    Mr. Bowers. Yes.
    Mr. Schiff. You asked him for evidence of that?
    Mr. Bowers. I did.
    Mr. Schiff. Did you ever receive from him that evidence 
either during the call, after the call, or to this day?
    Mr. Bowers. Never.
    Mr. Schiff. What was the ask during this call? He was 
making these allegations of fraud, but he had something or a 
couple things that they wanted you do. What were those?
    Mr. Bowers. The ones I remember were, first, that we would 
hold, that I would allow an official committee at the capitol 
so that they could hear this evidence and that we could take 
action thereafter.
    I refused. I said, up to that time, the circus--I called it 
a circus--had been brewing with lots of demonstrations, both at 
the counting center, at the capitol, and other places, and I 
didn't want to have that in the house. I did not feel that the 
evidence, granted in its absence, merited a hearing. I didn't 
want to be used as a pawn if there was some other need that the 
committee hearing would fulfill. So, that was the first ask, 
that we hold an official committee hearing.
    Mr. Schiff. What was his second ask?
    Mr. Bowers. I said: To what end? To what end, the hearing?
    He said: ``Well, we have heard by an official high up in 
the Republican legislature that there is a legal theory or a 
legal ability in Arizona that you can remove the electors of 
President Biden and replace them. And we would like to have the 
legitimate opportunity through the committee to come to that 
end and remove that.''
    And I said: That is totally new to me. I have never heard 
of any such thing.
    And he pressed that point.
    And I said: ``Look, you are asking me do something that is 
counter to my oath when I swore to the Constitution to uphold 
it, and I also swore to the constitution and the laws of the 
State of Arizona. This is totally foreign as an idea or a 
theory to me, and I would never do anything of such magnitude 
without deep consultation with qualified attorneys.''
    And I said: ``I have got some good attorneys, and I am 
going to give you their names. But you are asking me do 
something against my oath, and I will not break my oath.''
    I think that was up to that point.
    Mr. Schiff. During the conversation--and you heard, I 
think, when we played a snippet of Mr. Giuliani calling other 
State legislators and saying he was calling as essentially a 
fellow Republican--did he make a similar appeal to you or bring 
up the fact that you shared a similar party?
    Mr. Bowers. Whether it was in that call or in a later 
meeting, he did bring that up more than once.
    Mr. Schiff. How would he bring that up?
    Mr. Bowers. He would say: ``Aren't we all Republicans here? 
I would think we would get a better reception. I mean, I would 
think you would listen a little more open to my suggestions--
that we are all Republicans.''
    Mr. Schiff. This evidence that you asked him for that would 
justify this extraordinary step, I think you said they never 
produced. Why did you feel, either in the absence of that 
evidence or with it, what they were asking you to do would 
violate your oath to the Constitution?
    Mr. Bowers. First of all, when the people--and in Arizona, 
I believe it is some 40-plus years earlier, the legislature had 
established the manner of electing our officials or the 
electors for the Presidential race.
    Once it was given to the people, as in Bush v. Gore, 
illustrated by the Supreme Court, it becomes a fundamental 
right of the people. So, as far as I was concerned, for someone 
to ask me in--I will call it a paucity. There was no evidence 
being presented of any strength. Evidence can be hearsay 
evidence. It is still evidence, but it is still hearsay. But 
strong judicial-quality evidence, anything that would say to 
me, you have a doubt, deny your oath. I will not do that. On 
more than one occasion throughout all this, that has been 
brought up. It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is 
divinely inspired, one of my most basic foundational beliefs.
    So, for me to do that because somebody just asked me to is 
foreign to my very being. I will not do it.
    Mr. Schiff. During that conversation, Speaker Bowers, did 
you ask him if what he was proposing had ever been done before?
    Mr. Bowers. I did.
    Mr. Schiff. What did he say?
    Mr. Bowers. He said: Well, I am not familiar with Arizona 
law or any other laws, but I don't think so.
    That also was brought up in other conversations, both with 
him and with John Eastman and others.
    Mr. Schiff. Speaker Bowers, I understand that, a week after 
that call, Mr. Giuliani appeared with others associated with 
President Trump's effort to overturn the result of the election 
at a purported legislative hearing in a hotel ballroom in 
Phoenix. Was this an official hearing of the State legislature?
    Mr. Bowers. It was not.
    Mr. Schiff. Why was it not a real or official hearing of 
the legislature?
    Mr. Bowers. A legislator can hold a group meeting; he can 
call it a hearing. But, when they asked me to have an official 
hearing, we establish it by protocols, public notice, et 
cetera. It is typically held at the capitol, but it doesn't 
need to be. We can authorize a hearing off-campus.
    In this case, I had been asked on several occasions to 
allow a hearing. I denied it but said, ``You are free to hold a 
meeting, any meeting you want,'' to the person who asked, and 
which he ultimately did. I think he was a little frustrated, 
but he ultimately did.
    Mr. Schiff. This meeting was the same day, I believe, that 
the Governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, certified Biden as the 
winner of the Presidential election in Arizona.
    Did you meet with Mr. Giuliani and his associates while 
they were in Phoenix sometime after that purported legislative 
hearing at the hotel?
    Mr. Bowers. Yes, I did, sir.
    Mr. Schiff. At that meeting, did Mr. Giuliani raise any 
specific allegations of election fraud again?
    Mr. Bowers. His initial comments were, again, the litany of 
groups of illegal individuals or people deceased, et cetera. He 
had brought that up. I wasn't alone in that meeting. There were 
others. Other members of the senate aggressively questioned 
him. Then I proceeded to question him on the proof that he was 
going to bring me, et cetera. But he did bring those up, yes.
    Mr. Schiff. These other legislators were also Republican 
members of the senate?
    Mr. Bowers. They were. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Schiff. Did they also press him for proof of those 
allegations?
    Mr. Bowers. They pressed him very strongly, two of them 
especially, very strongly.
    Mr. Schiff. At some point, did Mr. Giuliani ask one of the 
other attorneys on his team to help him out with the evidence?
    Mr. Bowers. He did. He asked Jenna Ellis, who was sitting 
to his right. One thing was that it was more to the point of, 
was there sufficient evidence or action that we could justify 
the recalling of the electors? But, at that part of the 
conversation, I know he referred to someone else. But he did 
ask, ``Do we have the proof,'' to Jenna, Ms. Ellis, and she 
said, ``Yes.''
    And I said: ``I want the names. Do you have the names?''
    ``Yes.''
    ``Do you have how they voted?''
    ``We have all the information.''
    I said: ``Can you get to me that information? Did you bring 
it with you?''
    She said: ``No.''
    Both Mr. Giuliani asked her and I asked generally if they 
had brought it with them.
    She said: ``No. It is not with me, but we can get it to 
you.''
    I said, ``Then you didn't bring me the evidence,'' which 
was repeated in different iterations for some period of time.
    Mr. Schiff. At some point, did one of them make a comment 
that they didn't have evidence, but they had a lot of theories?
    Mr. Bowers. That was Mr. Giuliani.
    Mr. Schiff. What exactly did he say, and how did that come 
up?
    Mr. Bowers. My recollection, he said: ``We've got lots of 
theories; we just don't have the evidence.''
    I don't know if that was a gaffe, or maybe he didn't think 
through what he said. But both myself and others in my group, 
the three in my group, and my counsel both remembered that 
specifically. Afterwards, we kind-of laughed about it.
    Mr. Schiff. Getting back to the ask in that phone call that 
preceded this meeting, he wanted you to have the legislature 
dismiss the Biden electors and replace them with Trump electors 
on the basis of these theories of fraud?
    Mr. Bowers. He did not say it in those exact words, but he 
did say that Arizona law, according to what he understood, that 
that would be allowed and that we needed to come into session 
to take care of that, which initiated a discussion about, 
again, what I can legally and not legally do. I can't go into 
session in Arizona unilaterally or on my sole prerogative.
    Mr. Schiff. This meeting or at any later time, did anyone 
provide you with evidence of election fraud sufficient to 
affect the outcome of the Presidential election in Arizona?
    Mr. Bowers. No one provided me ever such evidence.
    Mr. Schiff. The Select Committee has uncovered evidence in 
the course of our investigation that at ``stop the steal'' 
protests at State capitols across the country, there were 
individuals with ties to the groups or parties involved in the 
January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. One of those incursions 
took place in the Arizona House of Representatives building as 
you can see in this footage.
    [Arizona State Capitol video footage shown.]
    Mr. Schiff. This is previously undisclosed video of 
protestors illegally entering and refusing to leave the 
building. One of the individuals prominently shown in this 
video is Jacob Chansley. Perhaps better known as the ``QAnon 
Shaman,'' this rioter entered the Capitol on January 6th, was 
photographed leaving a threatening note on the dais in the U.S. 
Senate Chamber, and was ultimately sentenced to 41 months in 
prison after pleading guilty to obstruction of an official 
proceeding.
    Other protesters who occupied the Arizona House of 
Representatives building included Proud Boys, while men armed 
with rifles stood just outside the entrance.
    I understand these protestors were calling for you by name, 
Speaker Bowers. Is that correct?
    Mr. Bowers. That is correct.
    Mr. Schiff. Speaker Bowers, did the President call you 
again later in December?
    Mr. Bowers. He did, sir.
    Mr. Schiff. Did you tell the President in that second call 
that you supported him, that you voted for him, but that you 
were not going to do anything illegal for him?
    Mr. Bowers. I did, sir.
    Mr. Schiff. Nevertheless, his lawyer, John Eastman, called 
you some days later on January 4, 2021. He did have a very 
specific ask that would have required you to do just what you 
had already told the President you wouldn't do, something that 
would violate your oath. Is that correct?
    Mr. Bowers. That is correct. It wasn't just me. I had my 
counsel and others on the call.
    Mr. Schiff. What did Dr. Eastman want you to do?
    Mr. Bowers. That we would in fact vote, take a vote to 
overthrow--or I shouldn't say overthrow--that we would 
decertify the electors because we had plenary authority to do 
so. He cited Article II, section 1--I think it is clause 2--and 
said that, in his opinion, that gave us the authority if there 
was--I don't recall him saying sufficient evidence, but there 
was some call or some strong reason to do so that we--or 
justification to do so, that we could do that, and that he was 
asking that we--his suggestion was that we would do it.
    And I said: ``Again, I took an oath. For me to take that--
to do what you do would be counter to my oath.''
    I don't recall if it was in that conversation clearly that 
we talked more about the oath, but I said: ``What would you 
have me do?''
    He said: ``Just do it and let the courts sort it out.''
    I said: ``You are asking me to do something that has never 
been done in history--the history of the United States--and I 
am going to put my State through that without sufficient proof, 
and that is going to be good enough with me, that I would put 
us through that, my State, that I swore to uphold both in 
Constitution and in law? No, sir.''
    He said: Well, my suggestion would be just do it and let 
the courts figure it all out.
    He didn't use that exact phrase, but that is what his 
meaning was. I declined, and I believe that was close to the 
end of our phone call.
    Mr. Schiff. Again, this took place after you had recently 
spoken with President Trump and told him that you wouldn't do 
anything illegal for him. Is that right?
    Mr. Bowers. It wasn't days after--obviously, it was days 
after, but a few days had gone by.
    Mr. Schiff. But you had told President Trump you would not 
do anything illegal for him.
    Mr. Bowers. I did, both times.
    Mr. Schiff. You told Dr. Eastman that you did not believe 
there was legal support to justify what he was asking, but he 
still wanted you do it and effectively let the courts work it 
out.
    Mr. Bowers. I have been warned: Don't say things you think 
maybe he said. But I do remember him saying that the authority 
of the legislature was plenary and that you can do it.
    I said: ``Then you should know that I can't even call the 
legislature into session without a two-thirds majority vote. We 
are only 30 plus 1. There is no way that could happen.''
    Mr. Schiff. But, in your view, what he was asking you to do 
would have violated your oath to the Constitution, both the 
United States Constitution and the constitution of the State of 
Arizona?
    Mr. Bowers. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Schiff. Did you also receive a call from U.S. 
Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona on the morning of January 
6th?
    Mr. Bowers. I did.
    Mr. Schiff. What did Mr. Biggs ask you to do?
    Mr. Bowers. I believe that was the day that the vote was 
occurring to each State to have certification or to declare the 
certification of the electors. He asked if I would sign on both 
to a letter that had been sent from my State and/or that I 
would support the decertification of the electors. I said I 
would not.
    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Speaker, on December 4, 2020, shortly after 
your meeting with Rudy Giuliani and other allies of President 
Trump, you released a statement publicly addressing ``calls for 
the legislature to overturn the 2020 certified election 
results.'' The statement is very straightforward in explaining 
the ``breathtaking request,'' made by representatives of 
President Trump, ``that the Arizona legislature overturn the 
certified results of last month's election and deliver the 
State's electoral college votes to President Trump.'' Why did 
you believe, as you wrote in this statement, that the rule of 
law forbid you from doing what President Trump and his allies 
wanted you to do?
    Mr. Bowers. Representative--I am sorry; I should be saying, 
Mr. Chairman and Representative Schiff--there is two sides to 
the answer. One is, what am I allowed to do, and what am I 
forbidden to do? We have no legal pathway, both in State law 
nor, to my knowledge, in Federal law, for us to execute such a 
request. I am not allowed to walk or act beyond my authority. 
If I am not specifically authorized as a legislator--as a 
legislature--then I cannot act. To the point of calling us into 
session, some say that just a few legislators have plenary 
authority, and that has come as part of all of this discussion, 
I will call it.
    So, to not have authority and be forbidden to act beyond my 
authority on both counts, I am not authorized to take such 
action, and that would deny my oath.
    Mr. Schiff. In your statement, you included excerpts from 
President Ronald Reagan's inaugural address in 1981. The newly 
inaugurated President told the country, ``The orderly transfer 
of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes 
place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop 
to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the 
world, this every-4-year ceremony we accept as normal is 
nothing less than a miracle.''
    Tell us, if you would, Mr. Speaker, why did you include 
President Reagan's words in your public statement?
    Mr. Bowers. Mr. Chairman, Representative Schiff, because I 
have a lot of admiration for Ronald Reagan. I had the 
opportunity of going to his home with one other person and 
walking through. I have a lot of admiration for him.
    When he pointed out, which is--I have lived in another 
country for a period of time and have visited a few countries. 
During election times, the fact that we allow an election, 
support an election, and stand behind an election, even in the 
past when there have been serious questions about the election, 
and then move on, without disturbance and with acceptance; that 
we choose--we choose--to follow the outcome of the will of the 
people, that will--it means a lot to me, and I know it meant a 
lot to him, and so we included that.
    Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Speaker Bowers.
    I now want to look even more deeply at the fake electors 
scheme. Every 4 years, citizens from all over the United States 
go to the polls to elect their President. Under our 
Constitution, when we cast our votes for President, we are 
actually voting to send electors pledged to our preferred 
candidate to the electoral college.
    In December, the electors in each State meet, cast their 
votes, and send those votes to Washington. There is only one 
legitimate slate of electors from each State. On the 6th day of 
January, Congress meets in a joint session to count those 
votes, and the winner of the electoral college vote becomes the 
President.
    In this next segment, you will hear how President Trump and 
his campaign were directly involved in advancing and 
coordinating the plot to replace legitimate Biden electors with 
fake electors not chosen by the voters. You will hear how this 
campaign convinced these fake electors to cast and submit their 
votes through fake certificates telling them that their votes 
would only be used in the event that President Trump won his 
legal challenges. Yet, when the President lost those legal 
challenges, when courts rejected them as frivolous and without 
merit, the fake elector scheme continued.
    At this point, President Trump's own lawyers, so-called 
``Team Normal,'' walked away rather than participate in the 
planning. His own White House Counsel's Office said that the 
plan was not legally sound. Let's play the following video 
produced by the Select Committee.

    Ms. Lucier. My name is Casey Lucier. I'm an investigative counsel 
for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on 
the United States Capitol.
    On November 18th, a lawyer working with the Trump campaign, named 
Kenneth Chesebro, wrote a memo arguing that the Trump campaign should 
organize its own electors in the swing States that President Trump had 
lost. The Select Committee received testimony that those close to 
President Trump began planning to organize fake electors for Trump in 
States that Biden won in the weeks after the election.
    Mr. George. Who do you remember being involved in those early 
discussions around the Thanksgiving time regarding having alternate 
electors meet?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Mr. Giuliani, several of Mr. Giuliani's associates, 
Mr. Meadows, Members of Congress, although it's difficult to 
distinguish if the Members I'm thinking of were involved during 
Thanksgiving or if they're involved as we progressed through December.
    Ms. Lucier. At the President's direct request, the RNC assisted the 
campaign in coordinating this effort.
    Mr. Wood. What did the President say when he called you?
    Ms. McDaniel. Essentially, he turned the call over to Mr. Eastman 
who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the 
campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal 
challenges that were on-going changed the result of any of the States. 
I think more just helping them reach out and assemble them. But that--
my understanding is the campaign did take the lead, and we just were 
helping them in that--in that role.
    Ms. Lucier. As President Trump and his supporters continued to lose 
lawsuits, some campaign lawyers became convinced that convening 
electors in States that Trump lost was no longer appropriate.
    Mr. Justin Clark. I just remember--I either replied or called 
somebody--saying, Unless we have litigation pending this, like, in 
these States, like, I don't think this is appropriate or, you know, 
this isn't the right thing to do. I don't remember how I phrased it, 
but I got into a little bit of a back-and-forth and I think it was with 
Ken Chesebro, where I said, All right, you know, you just get after it, 
like, I'm out.
    Mr. Morgan. At that point, I had Josh Finley email Mr. Chesebro 
politely to say, ``This is your task. You are responsible for the 
electoral college issues moving forward.'' . . . 
    And this was my way of taking that responsibility to zero.
    Ms. Lucier. The Committee learned the White House Counsel's Office 
also felt the plan was potentially illegal.
    Mr. George. And so, to be clear, did you hear the White House 
Counsel's Office say that this plan to have alternate electors meet and 
cast votes for Donald Trump in States that he had lost was not legally 
sound?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Yes, sir.
    Mr. George. And who was present for that meeting that you remember?
    Ms. Hutchinson. It was in our offices. Mr. Meadows, Mr. Giuliani, 
and a few of Mr. Giuliani's associates.
    Ms. Lucier. The Select Committee interviewed several of the 
individual fake electors as well as Trump campaign staff who helped 
organize the effort.
    Mr. Sinners. We were just, you know, kind-of--kind-of useful idiots 
or rubes at that point. You know, a strong part of me really feels that 
it's just, kind-of, as the road continued and as that was failure, 
failure, failure that that got formulated as what we have on the table. 
Let's just do it.
    Ms. Lucier. And now, after what we've told you today about the 
Select Committee's investigation, about the conclusion of the 
professional lawyers on the campaign staff--Justin Clark, Matt Morgan, 
and Josh Finley--about their unwillingness to participate in the 
convening of these electors, how does that contribute to your 
understanding of these issues?
    Mr. Sinners. I'm angry. I'm angry because I think--I think in a 
sense, you know, no one really cared if--if people were potentially 
putting themselves in jeopardy.
    Ms. Lucier. Would you have not wanted to participate in this any 
further as well?
    Mr. Sinners. I absolutely would not have had I known that the three 
main lawyers for the campaign that I'd spoken to in the past and were 
leading up were not on board. Yeah.
    Mr. Hitt. I was told that these would only count if a court ruled 
in our favor. So, that would have been using our electors--well, it 
would have been using our electors in ways that we weren't told about, 
and we wouldn't have supported.
    Ms. Lucier. Documents obtained by the Select Committee indicate 
that instructions were given to the electors in several States that 
they needed to cast their ballots in ``complete secrecy.'' Because this 
scheme involved fake electors, those participating in certain States 
had no way to comply with State election laws, like where the electors 
were supposed to meet. One group of fake electors even considered 
hiding overnight to ensure that they could access the State capitol as 
required in Michigan.
    Mr. George. Did Mr. Norton say who he was working with at all on 
this effort to have electors meet?
    Ms. Cox. He said he was working with the President's campaign . . . 

    He told me that the Michigan Republican electors were planning to 
meet in the capitol and hide overnight, so that they could fulfill the 
role of casting their vote in--per law--in the Michigan chambers. And I 
told him in no uncertain terms that that was insane and inappropriate.
    Ms. Lucier. In one State, the fake electors even asked for a 
promise that the campaign would pay their legal fees if they got sued 
or charged with a crime.
    Ultimately, fake electors did meet on December 14, 2020, in 
Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, and 
Wisconsin. At the request of the Trump campaign, the electors from 
these battleground States signed documents falsely asserting that they 
were the ``duly elected electors,'' from their State and submitted them 
to the National Archives and to Vice President Pence in his capacity as 
President of the Senate.
    Here is what some of the fake electors' certificates look like as 
compared to the real ones. But these ballots had no legal effect. In an 
email produced to the Select Committee, Dr. Eastman told a Trump 
campaign representative that it did not matter that the electors had 
not been approved by a State authority.
    ``The fact that we have multiple slates of electors demonstrates 
the uncertainty of either. That should be enough.'' He urged that Pence 
``act boldly and be challenged.'' Documents produced to the Select 
Committee show that the Trump campaign took steps to ensure that the 
physical copies of the fake electors' electoral votes from two States 
were delivered to Washington for January 6th.
    Text messages exchanged between Republican Party officials in 
Wisconsin showed that on January 4th, the Trump campaign asked for 
someone to fly their fake electors' documents to Washington. A staffer 
for Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson texted a staffer for Vice President 
Pence just minutes before the beginning of the joint session. This 
staffer stated that Senator Johnson wished to hand-deliver to the Vice 
President the fake electors' votes from Michigan and Wisconsin. The 
Vice President's aide unambiguously instructed them not to deliver the 
fake votes to the Vice President.
    Even though the fake electors' slates were transmitted to Congress 
and the Executive branch, the Vice President held firm in his position 
that his role was to count lawfully submitted electoral votes.
    Vice President Pence. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., of the State of 
Delaware has received 306 votes. Donald J. Trump of the State of 
Florida has received 232 votes.
    Ms. Lucier.  . . . Which is what he did when the joint session 
resumed on January 6th after the attack on the Capitol.

    Mr. Schiff. What we just heard in that video was an aide to 
the White House Chief of Staff telling this Committee that the 
White House Counsel's Office felt that this ``fake electors'' 
plan was not legally sound.
    Nevertheless, the Trump campaign went forward with the 
scheme anyway.
    Speaker Bowers, were you aware that fake electors had met 
in Phoenix on December 14th and purported to cast electoral 
votes for President Trump?
    Mr. Bowers. I was not.
    Mr. Schiff. When you learned that these electors had met 
and sent their electoral votes to Washington, what did you 
think?
    Mr. Bowers. Well, I thought of the book ``The Gang That 
Couldn't Shoot Straight.'' I just thought, this is a tragic 
parody.
    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Bowers, I understand that as you flew from 
Phoenix to Washington yesterday you reflected upon some 
passages from a personal journal that you were keeping in 
December 2020 while all of this was taking place.
    With your permission, I am wondering if you would be 
willing to share one passage in particular with us?
    Mr. Bowers. Thank you very much.
    ``It is painful to have friends who have been such a help 
to me turn on me with such rancor. I may, in the eyes of men, 
not hold correct opinions or act according to their vision or 
convictions, but I do not take this current situation in a 
light manner, a fearful manner, or a vengeful manner. I do not 
want to be a winner by cheating.
    ``I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to, with any 
contrived desire toward deflection of my deep foundational 
desire to follow God's will as I believe He led my conscience 
to embrace. How else will I ever approach Him in the wilderness 
of life, knowing that I ask of this guidance only to show 
myself a coward in defending the course He led me to take?''
    Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Those are powerful 
words.
    I understand that taking the courageous positions that you 
did following the 2020 election in defense of the rule of law 
and protecting the voters of Arizona resulted in you and your 
family being subjected to protests and terrible threats.
    Can you tell us how this impacted you and your family?
    Mr. Bowers. Well, as others in the videos have mentioned, 
we received, my secretaries would say, in excess of 20,000 
emails and tens of thousands of voicemails and texts, which 
saturated our offices, and we were unable to work, or at least 
communicate.
    But at home, up till even recently, it is the new pattern, 
or a pattern, in our lives to worry what will happen on 
Saturdays, because we have various groups come by, and they 
have had video-panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to 
be a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician, and 
blaring loudspeakers in my neighborhood, and leaving literature 
both on my property and arguing and threatening with neighbors 
and with myself.
    I don't know if I should name groups, but there was one 
gentleman that had the three bars on his chest, and he had a 
pistol and was threatening at my neighbor--not with the pistol 
but just vocally. When I saw the gun, I knew I had to get 
close.
    At the same time, on some of these, we had a daughter who 
was gravely ill, who was upset by what was happening outside. 
And my wife is a valiant person, very, very strong, quiet, very 
strong woman.
    So, it was disturbing. It was disturbing.
    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you for your 
service to the State of Arizona and to the country.
    Mr. Chairman, at this point, I think it would be 
appropriate to take a short recess. Accordingly, I reserve the 
balance of my time.
    Chairman Thompson. The Chair requests that those in the 
hearing room remain seated until the Capitol Police have 
escorted Members and witnesses from the room.
    Pursuant to the order of the Committee of today, the Chair 
declares the Committee in recess for a period of approximately 
10 minutes.
    [Accordingly, at 2:11 p.m., the Committee recessed until 
2:25 p.m., when it was called to order by the Chairman.]
    Chairman Thompson. President Trump's pressure campaign 
against State officials existed in all the key battleground 
States that he lost, but the former President had a particular 
obsession with Georgia.
    Here is the President on the afternoon of January 6th after 
his own Attorney General warned him that the claims you are 
about to hear are patently false.

    President Trump. They should find those votes. They should 
absolutely find that. Just over 11,000 votes, that's all we need. They 
defrauded us out of a win in Georgia, and we're not going to forget it.

    Chairman Thompson. So, the State of Georgia is where we 
will turn our attention to next.
    I want to emphasize that our investigation into these 
issues is still on-going. As I stated in our last hearing, if 
you have relevant information or documentary evidence to share 
with the Select Committee, we welcome your cooperation. But we 
will share some of our findings with you today.
    Secretary Raffensperger, thank you for being here today.
    You have been a public servant in Georgia since 2015, 
serving first as a member of the Georgia House of 
Representatives and then, since January 2019, as Georgia's 
secretary of state.
    As a self-described conservative Republican, is it fair to 
say that you wanted President Trump to win the 2020 election?
    Mr. Raffensperger.\1\ Yes, it is.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Raffensperger has been included 
in the Appendix and may be found on page 701.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Thompson. Mr. Secretary, many witnesses have told 
the Select Committee that election day, November 3, 2020, was a 
largely uneventful day in their home States.
    In spite of the challenges of conducting an election during 
a pandemic, you wrote in The Washington Post that the election 
was ``successful.''
    Tell us, what was your impression of how election day had 
proceeded in Georgia?
    Mr. Raffensperger. On election day in November, our 
election went remarkably smooth.
    In fact, we meet at the GEMA headquarters--that is the 
Georgia Emergency Management Association meeting location--but 
we were following wait times in line. In the afternoon, our 
average wait time was 3 minutes State-wide that we were 
recording for various precincts. It actually got down to 2 
minutes.
    At the end of the day, we felt that we had a successful 
election from the standpoint of the administration and the 
operation of the election.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. 
Schiff.
    Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Secretary Raffensperger, did Joe Biden win the 2020 
Presidential election in Georgia and by what margin?
    Mr. Raffensperger. President Biden carried the State of 
Georgia by approximately 12,000 votes.
    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Secretary, as I understand it, your office 
took several steps to ensure the accuracy of the vote count in 
Georgia, reviewing the vote count in at least three different 
ways. These steps included a machine recount, a forensic audit, 
and full hand recount of every one of the 5 million ballots 
cast.
    Did these efforts, including a recount of literally every 
ballot cast in the State of Georgia, confirm the result?
    Mr. Raffensperger. Yes, they did.
    We counted the ballots where the first tabulation would be 
scanned.
    Then, when we did our 100 percent hand audit of all 5 
million ballots in the State of Georgia--all cast in place, all 
absentee ballots--they were all hand recounted, and they came 
remarkably close to the first count.
    Then, upon the election being certified, President Trump, 
because he was within a half-percent, could ask for a recount. 
Then we recounted them again through the scanners, and we got 
remarkably the same count.
    Three counts, all remarkably close, which showed that 
President Trump did come up short.
    Mr. Schiff. Nevertheless, as you will see, the President 
and his allies began making numerous false allegations of voter 
fraud--false allegations that you and Mr. Sterling, among 
others, had to address.
    Mr. Sterling, thank you also for being here today.
    Following the 2020 election, in addition to your normal 
duties, I understand that you became a spokesperson to try to 
combat disinformation about the election and the danger it was 
creating for elections officials, among others.
    In a December 1 press conference, you addressed some of 
your remarks directly to President Trump. Let's take a look at 
what you said that day.

    Mr. Sterling. Mr. President, it looks like you likely lost the 
State of Georgia. We're investigating. There's always a possibility--I 
get it, and you have the rights to go to the courts. What you don't 
have the ability to do, and you need to step up and say this, is stop 
inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.
    Someone's going to get hurt, someone's going to get shot, someone's 
going to get killed, and it's not right. I--I--it's not right.

    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Sterling, what prompted you to make these 
remarks?
    Mr. Sterling. Mr. Schiff, we had had a previously scheduled 
press conference that day, as we were in the habit of doing, 
trying to be as transparent as we could about the election and 
the counts going on.
    A little after lunch that day, lunchtime, I received a call 
from the project manager from Dominion Voting Systems, who was 
oddly audibly shaken. She is not the kind of person I would 
assume would be that way. She has a master's from MIT, a 
graduate of the Naval Academy, and was very much on the ball 
and pretty unflappable.
    She informed me about a young contractor they had who had 
been receiving threats from a video had been posted by some 
QAnon supporters. At that point, we had been sort-of steeping 
in this kind of stuff, so it was around us all the time, so I 
didn't take note of it more than adding to the pile of other 
stuff we were having to deal with.
    I did pull up Twitter, and I scrolled through it, and I saw 
the young man's name. It was a particular tweet that, for lack 
of a better word, was the straw that broke the camel's back. It 
had a young man's name. It was a very unique name. I believe it 
was a first-generation American. It said--had his name--``You 
committed treason. May God have mercy on your soul,'' with a 
slowly twisting GIF of a noose.
    For lack of a better word, I lost it. I just got irate. My 
boss was with me at the time, Deputy Secretary Jordan Fuchs, 
and she could tell that I was angry. I tend to turn red from 
here up when that happens, and that happened at that time. She 
called Secretary Raffensperger to say, ``We are seeing these 
kind of threats, and Gabe thinks we need to say something about 
it.'' The Secretary said, ``Yes.''
    That is what prompted me to do what I did. I lost my 
temper, but it seemed necessary at the time, because it was 
just getting worse. I could not tell you why that particular 
one was the one that put me over the edge, but it did.
    Mr. Schiff. Now, after you made this plea to the President, 
did Donald Trump urge his supporters to avoid the use of 
violence?
    Mr. Sterling. Not to my knowledge.
    Mr. Schiff. Now, as we know, the President was aware of 
your speech, because he tweeted about it later that day. Let's 
take a look at what the President said.
    In the tweet, Donald Trump claims that there was, ``massive 
voter fraud in Georgia.''
    Mr. Sterling, that was just plain false, wasn't it?
    Mr. Sterling. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Schiff. Nevertheless, the very next day, on December 
2nd, President Trump released a lengthy video again making 
false claims of election fraud in Georgia.
    Let's take a look at what he said this time.

    President Trump. They found thousands and thousands of votes that 
were out of whack--all against me.

    Mr. Schiff. In fact, the day after Donald Trump released 
that video--so, now we are talking just 2 days after the 
emotional warning that you gave that someone is going to get 
killed--representatives of President Trump appeared in Georgia, 
including Rudy Giuliani, and launched a new conspiracy theory 
that would take on a life of its own and threaten the lives of 
several innocent election workers.
    This story falsely alleges that, sometime during election 
night, election workers at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, 
Georgia, kicked out poll observers. After the observers left, 
the story goes, these workers pulled so-called ``suitcases of 
ballots'' from under a table and ran those ballots through 
counting machines multiple times.
    Completely without evidence, President Trump and his allies 
claimed that these suitcases contained as many as 18,000 
ballots, all for Joe Biden.
    None of this was true.
    But Rudy Giuliani appeared before a committee of the 
Georgia State Senate and played a surveillance video from State 
Farm Arena, falsely claiming that it showed this conspiracy 
taking place.
    Here is sample of what Mr. Giuliani had to say during that 
hearing.

    Mr. Giuliani. And when you look at what you saw on the video, which 
to me was a smoking gun, powerful smoking gun, well, I don't--don't 
have to be a genius to figure out what happened. And I--I don't have to 
be a genius to figure out that those votes are not legitimate votes. 
You don't put legitimate votes under a table----
    Voice. No.
    Mr. Giuliani [continuing]. Wait until you throw the opposition out 
and, in the middle of the night, count them. We would have to be fools 
to think that.

    Mr. Schiff. President Trump's campaign amplified Giuliani's 
false testimony in a tweet pushing out the video footage.
    Giuliani likewise pushed out his testimony on social media. 
As you can see in this tweet, Mr. Giuliani wrote that it was, 
``now beyond doubt,'' that Fulton County Democrats had stolen 
the election.
    Later in this hearing, we will hear directly from one of 
the election workers in this video about the effect these lies 
had on her and on her family.
    Mr. Sterling, did the investigators in your office review 
the entire surveillance tape from the State Farm Arena on 
election night?
    Mr. Sterling. They actually reviewed approximately 48 
hours, going over the time period where action was taking place 
at the counting center at State Farm Arena.
    Mr. Schiff. What did the tape actually show?
    Mr. Sterling. Depending on which time you want to start--
because, as was mentioned, this conspiracy theory took on a 
life of its own, where they conflated a water main break that 
wasn't a water main break, and throwing observers out, and a 
series of other things.
    What it actually showed was Fulton County election workers 
engaging in normal ballot processing.
    One of the specific things--one of the things that was very 
frustrating was the so-called ``suitcases of ballots'' from 
under the table. If you watched the entirety of the video, you 
saw that these were election workers who were under the 
impression they were going to get to go home around 10, 10:30. 
People are putting on their coats; they are putting ballots 
that are prepared to be scanned into ballot carriers that are 
then sealed with tamper-proof seals so that, you know, they are 
not messed with.
    It is an interesting thing, because you watch all of--there 
are four screens of the video, and, as you are watching it, you 
can see the election monitors in the corner with the press as 
they are taking these ballot carriers and putting them under 
the table. You see it there. One of the other hidden ones, if 
you looked at the actual tape, was on the outside of the table. 
Just from the camera angle, you couldn't see it originally.
    This goes under the ``no good deed goes unpunished.''
    We were told at--we were at GEMA, as the secretary pointed 
out--and we were told that it looked like they were shutting 
down the Fulton County counting. The secretary expressed some 
displeasure at that because we wanted everybody to keep 
counting so we could get to the results and know what was 
happening.
    So, our elections director called their elections director, 
who was at another election because this was election day; 
there was two different places where ballot things were being 
done by the Fulton County office. So, he called the elections 
director for Fulton, then called Ralph Jones, who was at the 
State Farm Arena, and said, ``What the heck are you doing? Go 
ahead and stay.''
    As you watch the video itself, you see him take the phone 
call as people are putting things away and getting ready to 
leave. You can tell, for about 15, 20 seconds, he does not want 
to tell these people they have to stay. He walks over, he 
thinks about it for a second, you see him come back to the 
corner of a desk and kind-of slumps his shoulders and says, 
``Okay, y'all, we gotta keep on counting.'' Then you see them 
take their coats off, get the ballots out.
    Then a secondary thing that you will see on there is, you 
will have people who are counting ballots who, a batch will go 
through, they will take them off and run that through again.
    What happens there is a standard operating procedure if 
there is a mis-scan, if there is a misalignment, if it doesn't 
read right. These are high-speed, high-capacity scanners, so 3 
or 4 will go through. After a mis-scan, you have to delete that 
batch and put it back through again.
    By going through the hand tally, as the secretary pointed 
out, we showed that if there had been multiple ballots scanned 
without a corresponding physical ballot, your counts would have 
been a lot higher than the ballots themselves.
    By doing the hand tally, we saw two specific numbers that 
were met. The hand tally got us to a .1053 percent off of the 
total votes cast and .0099 percent on the margin, which is 
essentially dead-on accurate. Most academic studies say on a 
hand tally you will have between 1 and 2 percent, but because 
we use ballot-marking devices, where it is very clear what the 
voter intended, it made it a lot easier for us to conduct that 
hand count and show that none of that was true.
    Mr. Schiff. Now, I understand that when you reviewed these 
tapes and did the analysis, it disproved this conspiracy 
theory, but you still had to take a lot of steps to try to make 
sure the public knew the truth about these allegations, and you 
did frequent briefings for the press.
    Let's take a look at one of those press briefings, Mr. 
Sterling, that you held on December 7th to make the point that 
you just did today.

    Mr. Sterling.  . . . move on to what I'm going to call, 
``Disinformation Monday.'' Out of the gate, many of you all saw the 
videotape from State Farm Arena. I spent hours with our POST-certified 
investigators. Justin Gray from WSB spent hours with us going over this 
video to explain to people that what you saw--the ``secret suitcases'' 
of magic ballots--were actually ballots that had been packed into those 
absentee ballot carriers by the workers in plain view of the monitors 
and the press . . . 
    And what's really frustrating is the President's attorneys had this 
same videotape. They saw the exact same things the rest of us could 
see. And they chose to mislead State senators and the public about what 
was on that video. I'm quite sure that they will not characterize the 
video if they try to enter into evidence because that is the kind of 
thing that can lead to sanctions because it's obviously untrue.
    They knew it was untrue, and they continue to do things like this.

    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Sterling, despite the efforts by your 
office to combat this misinformation by speaking out publicly 
and through local media, you were unable to match the reach of 
President Trump's platform and social media megaphone spreading 
these false conspiracy theories.
    What was it like to compete with a President who had the 
biggest bully pulpit in the world to push out these false 
claims?
    Mr. Sterling. For lack of a better word, it was 
frustrating. But oftentimes I felt our information was getting 
out but that there was a reticence of people, who needed to 
believe it, to believe it because the President of the United 
States, whom many looked up to and respected, was telling them 
it wasn't true, despite the facts.
    I have characterized it at one point, it was kind-of like a 
shovel trying to empty the ocean. Yes, it was frustrating. I 
even have, you know, family members who I had to argue with 
about some of these things. I would show them things--and the 
problem you have is, you are getting to people's hearts.
    I remember this one specific--an attorney that we know that 
we showed and walked him through: This wasn't true, ``Okay, I 
get that,'' this wasn't true, ``Okay, I get that,'' this wasn't 
true--five or six things, but at the end he goes, ``I just know 
in my heart they cheated.''
    So, once you get past the heart, the facts don't matter as 
much. Our job, from our point of view, was to get the facts 
out, do our job, tell the truth, follow the Constitution, 
follow the law, and defend the institutions. The institutions 
held.
    Mr. Schiff. Let's take a look at what you were competing 
with. This is the former President speaking in Georgia on 
December 5th.

    President Trump. But it's a fraud. It's overwhelming. And again, 
I'm going to ask you to look up at that very, very powerful and very 
expensive screen.
    Voice. Hidden cases of possible ballots are rolled out from under a 
table. Four people under a cloud of suspicion . . . 
    President Trump. So, if you just take the crime of what those 
Democrat workers were doing--and by the way, there was no water main 
break. You know, they said there--there was no water main break. That's 
ten times more than I need to win this State. Ten times more. That's 
ten times, maybe more than that, but it's ten times more because we 
lost by a very close number.

    Mr. Schiff. In this Committee's hearing last Monday, we 
heard from senior Federal law enforcement officials--from the 
senior-most Federal law enforcement official in Atlanta at the 
time, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District BJay Pak, as well 
as former Attorney General Bill Barr. They both testified that 
the allegations were thoroughly investigated and found to have 
no merit.
    Here is U.S. Attorney Pak.

    Mr. Pak. In particular to Attorney General Barr, I told him that we 
looked into it. We've done several things, including interviewing the 
witnesses. I listened to the tapes and reviewed the videotape myself 
and that there was nothing there. Giuliani was wrong in representing 
that this was a suitcase full of ballots.

    Mr. Schiff. Here is what Attorney General Bill Barr had to 
say about the same allegations.

    Attorney General Barr. Took a look--hard look--at this ourselves. 
And based on our review of it, including the interviews of the key 
witnesses, the Fulton County allegations were--had no merit.

    Mr. Schiff. We also have testimony from senior Department 
of Justice officials establishing that they specifically told 
President Trump that these allegations had been thoroughly 
investigated and were completely without merit.
    Here is Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue 
describing a phone conversation in which he specifically told 
President Trump that these allegations were false.

    Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue. The President kept 
fixating on this suitcase that supposedly had fraudulent ballots and 
that the suitcase was rolled out from under the table. And I said, 
``No, sir. There is no suitcase. You can watch that video over and 
over. There is no suitcase. There is a wheeled bin where they carry the 
ballots.''

    Mr. Schiff. `` . . . where they carry the ballots.''
    No matter how many times senior Department of Justice 
officials, including his own Attorney General, told the 
President that these allegations were not true, President Trump 
kept promoting these lies and putting pressure on State 
officials to accept them.
    On January 2nd, the President had a lengthy telephone 
conversation with Secretary Raffensperger. Prior to the 
President's call, though, I want to share a bit of important 
context.
    First, the White House, including the former President's 
Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, repeatedly called or texted the 
secretary's office some 18 times in order to set up this call. 
They were quite persistent.
    Second, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows took the extraordinary 
step of showing up at a signature audit site in Georgia, where 
he met with Secretary Raffensperger's chief investigator, 
Frances Watson, who was supervising that audit process.
    Behind me is a photograph from that visit.
    Third, the day after Meadows's Georgia visit, he set up a 
call between President Trump and Frances Watson. On the call 
between President Trump and Georgia investigator Frances 
Watson, the former President continued to push the false claim 
that he had won the State of Georgia.
    Let's listen to that part of the conversation.

    President Trump. You know, it's just--you have the most important 
job in the country right now, because if we win Georgia--first of all, 
if we win, you're gonna have two wins. They're not going to win right 
now, you know. They're down because the people of Georgia are so angry 
at what happened to me. They know I won--won by hundreds of thousands 
of votes. It wasn't close.

    Mr. Schiff. In this next clip, he told the State law 
enforcement official that she would be praised if she found the 
``right answer.''

    President Trump. Hopefully, you know, I will--when--when the right 
answer comes out, you'll be praised. I mean, I don't know why, you 
know, they made it so hard. And you--they will be praised. People will 
say, ``Great,'' because that's what it's about: That ability to check 
and to--and to make it right. Because everyone knows it's wrong. 
There's just no way.

    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Raffensperger, I know you weren't on this 
call but that you have listened to it. President Trump didn't 
win by hundreds of thousands of votes in Georgia, did he?
    Mr. Raffensperger. No, he did not.
    I have been traveling through the State of Georgia for a 
year now, and, simply put, in a nutshell, what happened in the 
fall of 2020 is that 28,000 Georgians skipped the Presidential 
race and yet they voted down-ballot in other races. The 
Republican Congressmen ended up getting 33,000 more votes than 
President Trump. That is why President Trump came up short.
    Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
    The President, on this call, doesn't stop here. Let's 
listen to another part of the conversation between President 
Trump and Ms. Watson.

    President Trump. Anyway, but whatever you can do, Frances, it would 
be--it's a great thing. It's an important thing for the country. So 
important. You have no idea, it's so important----
    Ms. Watson. Well, Mr.----
    President Trump [continuing]. And I very much appreciate it.

    Mr. Schiff. ``Whatever you can do, Frances.'' This is the 
President of the United States calling an investigator looking 
into the election in which he is a candidate and asking her to 
do ``whatever you can do.''
    Mr. Secretary, he placed this call to your chief 
investigator on December 23, 2020. The Select Committee has 
received text messages indicating that Mark Meadows wanted to 
send some of the investigators in her office, in the words of 
one White House aide, ``a shitload of POTUS stuff,'' including 
``coins, actual autographed MAGA hats, et cetera.'' White House 
staff intervened to make sure that didn't happen.
    It was clear at the time of this call that the former 
President had his sights set on January 6th. Listen to this 
portion, when he told Frances Watson about a ``very important 
date.''

    President Trump. Do you think you'll be working after Christmas to 
keep it going fast? Because, you know, we have that date of the 6th, 
which is a very important date.

    Mr. Schiff. That important date, of course, was the joint 
session of Congress, where Georgia's electoral votes would be 
counted for Joe Biden.
    A little over a week after this call to Frances Watson, the 
President was finally able to speak with you, Secretary 
Raffensperger.
    Bear in mind as we discuss this call today that, by this 
point in time, early January, the election in Georgia had 
already been certified, but, perhaps more important, the 
President of the United States had already been told repeatedly 
by his own top Justice Department officials that the claims he 
was about to make to you about massive fraud in Georgia were 
completely false.
    Mr. Secretary, the call between you and the President 
lasted 67 minutes--over an hour. We obviously can't listen to 
the entire recording here today, although it is available on 
the Select Committee's website. But we will listen to selected 
excerpts of it now so that we can get your insights.
    Let's begin with the President raising the thoroughly 
debunked allegations of suitcases of ballots.

    President Trump. They weren't in an official voter box. They were 
in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases, but they weren't 
in--in voter boxes.
    The minimum number it could be, because we watched it and they--
they watched it and certified in slow motion, instant replay, if you 
can believe it. But it had slow motion, and it was magnified many times 
over. And the minimum it was, was 18,000 ballots, all for Biden.

    Mr. Schiff. These are the allegations that the Department 
of Justice, the Attorney General, the Georgia Bureau of 
Investigation, and your office had all said were false. Is that 
right?
    Mr. Raffensperger. Correct.
    Even more importantly, when BJay Pak resigned as U.S. 
attorney of the Northern District, President Trump appointed as 
acting U.S. attorney of the Northern District Bobby Christine. 
Bobby Christine looked at that, and he was quoted in the AJC 
that he found nothing, and he dismissed that case early also.
    Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
    The President references suitcases or trunks. Mr. Sterling, 
were the objects seen in these videos suitcases or trunks, or 
were they just the ordinary containers that are used by 
election workers?
    Mr. Sterling. They are standard ballot carriers that allow 
for seals to be put on them so they are tamper-proof.
    Mr. Schiff. Finally, the President claims that there was a 
minimum of 18,000 ballots somehow smuggled in, all for Biden. I 
take it, gentlemen, that was also categorically false?
    Mr. Sterling. (A), there is no physical way you can know 
who those ballots are for.
    But, secondarily, Fulton County for years has been an issue 
in our State when it comes to elections. They had a very 
difficult time during the primary, in large part because of 
COVID. So, we had put them under a consent decree the secretary 
negotiated where we had a monitor on-site, and his name is 
Carter Jones.
    He took a notation. He had gone from State Farm to the 
English Street warehouse to look at election day activities, 
but before he left the State Farm Arena, he noted how many 
ballots had been counted on each one of the machines. When he 
came back after we found out they were working again, he took 
note again when they closed.
    I believe the final number was something around 8,900 total 
ballots were scanned from the time he left to the time--about 
12:30 or 1 o'clock in the morning, so way below 18,000.
    Mr. Schiff. Let's play the next clip.

    President Trump. I heard it was close, so I said, ``There's no 
way.'' But they dropped a lot of votes in there late at night. You know 
that, Brad.

    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Secretary, did somebody drop a lot of votes 
there late at night?
    Mr. Raffensperger. No. I believe that the President was 
referring to some of the counties when they would upload. But 
the ballots had all been accepted, and had to be accepted by 
State law, by 7 p.m. So, there were no additional ballots 
accepted after 7 p.m.
    Mr. Schiff. Let's play the next clip, in which the 
President makes claims about so-called ``dead voters.''

    President Trump. The other thing, dead people. So, dead people 
voted. And I think the--the number is close to 5,000 people. And they 
went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with 
an accurate number. And a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.

    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Secretary, did your office investigate 
whether those allegations were accurate? Did 5,000 dead people 
in Georgia vote?
    Mr. Raffensperger. No, it is not accurate. Actually, in 
their lawsuits, they allege 10,315 dead people.
    We had found 2 dead people when I wrote my letter to 
Congress that is dated January 6th, and subsequent to that we 
found 2 more. That is--1, 2, 3--4 people, not 4,000, but just a 
total of 4, not 10,000, not 5,000.
    Mr. Schiff. Let's play the next clip.

    President Trump. And there's nothing wrong with saying that, you 
know, that you've recalculated because it's 2,236 in absentee ballots. 
I mean, they're all exact numbers that were--were done by accounting 
firms, law firms, et cetera. And even if you cut them in half, cut them 
in half, and cut them in half again, it's more votes than we need.

    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Secretary, is there any way that you could 
have lawfully changed the result in the State of Georgia and 
somehow explained it away as a recalculation?
    Mr. Raffensperger. No. The numbers are the numbers, and 
numbers don't lie.
    We had many allegations, and we investigated every single 
one of them. In fact, I challenged my team, did we miss 
anything?
    They said that there was over 66,000 underage voters. We 
found that there was actually zero. You can register to vote in 
Georgia when you are 17\1/2\. You have to be 18 by election 
day. We checked that out, every single voter.
    They said that there was 2,423 nonregistered voters. There 
were zero.
    They said that there was 2,056 felons. We identified less 
than 74 or less that were actually still on felony sentence.
    Every single allegation we checked, we ran down the rabbit 
trail to make sure that our numbers were accurate.
    Mr. Schiff. So, there is no way you could have recalculated 
except by fudging the numbers?
    Mr. Raffensperger. The numbers were the numbers. We could 
not recalculate because we had made sure that we had checked 
every single allegation. We had many investigations; we had 
nearly 300 from the 2020 election.
    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Secretary, you tried to push back when the 
President made these unsupported claims, whether they were 
about suitcases or ballots or that Biden votes were counted 
three times.
    Let's play the next clip.

    Secretary of State Raffensperger. Mr. President, they did not put 
that. We--we--we did an audit of that, and we proved conclusively that 
they were not scanned three times . . . 
    Yes, Mr. President, we'll send you the link from WSB----
    President Trump. I don't care about a link. I don't need it. I have 
a much better--we're gonna have a much better link.

    Mr. Schiff. You told the President you would send him a 
link from WSB, which I understand is a local television station 
that had an unedited video from the State Farm Arena, but the 
President wasn't interested in that. He said he had a ``much 
better link.''
    Mr. Secretary, at the time that you were on the call with 
the President, as we have shown, both the FBI and the Georgia 
Bureau of Investigation had proven these claims to be nonsense. 
You told him about these investigations on the phone.
    Let's listen to what President Trump had to say about the 
State and Federal law enforcement officers who investigated 
these false claims.

    President Trump. There's no way they could--then they're 
incompetent. They're either dishonest----
    Ms. Mitchell. Well, what did they find?
    President Trump. Then there's only two answers: dishonesty or 
incompetence. There's just no way. Look, there's no way.

    Mr. Schiff. But the President didn't stop at insinuating 
that law enforcement officers were either dishonest or 
incompetent. He went on to suggest that you could be subject to 
criminal liability for your role in the matter.
    Before I play that portion of the conversation, I would 
like to show you something that the President retweeted a 
couple weeks before your call with him.
    Here is the President retweeting a post from one of his 
allies, a lawyer who was later sanctioned by a judge in 
Michigan for making false claims of election fraud. Let's take 
a look at that tweet.
    The tweet read, ``President Trump @realDonaldTrump is a 
genuinely good man. He does not really like to fire people. I 
bet he dislikes putting people in jail, especially 
``Republicans.'' He gave @BrianKempGA & @GASecofState every 
chance to get it right. They refused. They will soon be going 
to jail.''
    So, on your call, this was not the first time the President 
was suggesting you might be criminally liable. With that, let's 
listen to this portion of the call.

    President Trump. I think you're going to find that they are 
shredding ballots because they have to get rid of the ballots because 
the ballots are unsigned, the ballots are--are corrupt, and they're 
brand-new and they don't have seals and there's a whole thing with the 
ballots. But the ballots are corrupt and you're going to find that they 
are--which is totally illegal.
    It's--it's more illegal for you than it is for them because you 
know what they did, and you're not reporting it. That's a--you know, 
that's a criminal--that's a criminal offense. And you know, you can't 
let that happen. That's--that's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your 
lawyer. And that's a big risk.

    Mr. Schiff. Secretary Raffensperger, after making a false 
claim about shredding of ballots, the President suggested that 
you may be committing a crime by not going along with his 
claims of election fraud.
    After suggesting that you might have criminal exposure, 
President Trump makes his most explicit ask of the call. Let's 
play a part of that conversation.

    President Trump. So, look, all I want to do is this: I just want to 
find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the 
State.

    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Secretary, was the President here asking 
you for exactly what he wanted--one more vote than his 
opponent?
    Mr. Raffensperger. What I knew is that we didn't have any 
votes to find. We had continued to look. We investigated, like 
I just shared the numbers with you. There were no votes to 
find. That was an accurate count that had been certified. As 
our general counsel said, there was no shredding of ballots.
    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Secretary, after making this request, the 
President then goes back to the danger of having you deny these 
allegations of fraud.
    Let's listen to that part of the clip.

    President Trump. And I watched you this morning and you said, 
``Well, there was no criminality,'' but I mean, all of this stuff is--
is very dangerous stuff. When you talk about ``no criminality,'' I 
think it's very dangerous for you to say that.

    Mr. Schiff. Secretary Raffensperger, you wrote about this 
in your book, and you said, ``I felt then and still believe 
today that this was a threat. Others obviously thought so, too, 
because some of Trump's more radical followers have responded 
as if it was their duty to carry out this threat.''
    Please tell us what you, your wife, even your daughter-in-
law experienced regarding threats from Trump's more radical 
followers.
    Mr. Raffensperger. Well, after the election, my email, my 
cell phone was doxxed, and so I was getting texts all over the 
country. Then eventually my wife started getting a text, and 
hers typically came in as sexualized texts, which were 
disgusting.
    You have to understand that Trish and I, we met in high 
school. We have been married over 40 years now. So, they 
started going after her, I think, just to probably put pressure 
on me: ``Why don't you just quit; walk away?'' So, that 
happened.
    Then some people broke into my daughter-in-law's home. My 
son has passed, and she is a widow and has two kids. So, we are 
very concerned about her safety also.
    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Secretary, why didn't you just quit and 
walk away?
    Mr. Raffensperger. Because I knew that we had followed the 
law and we had followed the Constitution. I think sometimes 
moments require you to stand up and just take the shots. You 
are doing your job. That is all we did.
    You know, we just followed the law, and we followed the 
Constitution, and, at the end of the day, President Trump came 
up short. But I had to be faithful to the Constitution. That is 
what I swore an oath to do.
    Mr. Schiff. During the remainder of the call, the former 
President continued to press you to find the remaining votes 
that would ensure his victory in Georgia. Let's listen to a 
little more.

    President Trump. Why wouldn't you want to find the right answer, 
Brad, instead of keep saying that the numbers are right?
    So, look, can you get together tomorrow? And Brad, we just want the 
truth. It's simple. And--and everyone's going to look very good if the 
truth comes out. It's okay. It takes a little while, but let the truth 
come out. And the truth--the real truth is, I won by 400,000 votes, at 
least.
    So--so what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 
votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.

    Mr. Schiff. Four days after the President's call to 
Secretary Raffensperger was January 6th. The President whipped 
up the crowd in front of the Ellipse, once again promoting the 
allegation that Secretary Raffensperger and the President's own 
Attorney General had told him was false.
    Here he is on the Ellipse.

    President Trump. In Fulton County, Republican poll watchers were 
ejected, in some cases physically, from the room under the false 
pretense of a pipe burst--water main burst. Everybody leave. Which we 
now know was a total lie. Then election officials pulled boxes--
Democrats--and suitcases of ballots out from under a table--you all it 
saw on television--totally fraudulent, and illegally scanned them for 
nearly 2 hours, totally unsupervised. Tens of thousands of votes. This 
act coincided with a mysterious vote dump of up to 100,000 votes for 
Joe Biden, almost none for Trump. Oh, that sounds fair. That was at 
1:34 a.m.

    Mr. Schiff. Mr. Secretary, Mr. Sterling, I want to thank 
you for your service to the State of Georgia and to the 
country.
    Speaker Bowers, likewise, I want to thank you for your 
service to the State of Arizona and to the country.
    You have served not only your home States but our Nation 
and our democracy.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Schiff.
    I thank the witnesses for joining us today. You are now 
dismissed.
    I now welcome our final witness this afternoon, Wandrea 
``Shaye'' Moss.
    Ms. Moss worked in the Department of Registration and 
Elections in Fulton County, Georgia, from 2017 until 2022. In 
that job, Ms. Moss handled voter applications and absentee-
ballot requests and also helped to process the vote count for 
several elections.
    In December 2020, Ms. Moss and her mother, Ms. Ruby 
Freeman, became the target of nasty lies spread by President 
Trump and his allies as they sought to overturn the election 
results in Georgia.
    Ms. Moss and her mother, Ms. Freeman, are two of the unsung 
heroes in this country, doing the hard work of keeping our 
democracy functioning for every American.
    Ms. Moss, welcome. Thank you for your service, and I thank 
you for being here today.
    I will now swear you in. Please stand.
    [Witness sworn.]
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. Please be seated.
    Let the record reflect that the witness answered in the 
affirmative.
    Ms. Moss, thank you very much for being here today.
    I understand that you are here along with your mother 
today. Would you like to introduce your mama?
    Ms. Moss.\2\ Yes. My mama.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ The prepared statement of Ms. Moss has been included in the 
Appendix and may be found on page 702.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Thompson. Hi, ma.
    Ms. Moss, today we will be asking you about some of the 
threats that you received following the 2020 election.
    Since you have been an election worker for over 10 years, I 
wanted to ask you, in your decade of service, had you ever 
experienced threats like these before?
    Ms. Moss. No.
    Chairman Thompson. Don't be nervous. Just--I understand.
    So--and I want to make sure that the record reflects that 
you have done it for quite a while and you have never received 
a threat and your answer was, ``No.''
    Ms. Moss. Correct.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    Pursuant to section 5(c)(8) of House Resolution 503, the 
Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Schiff, for 
questions.
    Mr. Schiff. Good afternoon, Ms. Moss. Thank you for being 
here.
    I understand that you were employed by the Fulton County 
Registration and Elections Department for more than 10 years, 
and I understand that you loved that job.
    Please tell us what made you so fond of the work that you 
did.
    Ms. Moss. Well, I have always been told by my grandmother 
how important it is to vote and how people before me, a lot of 
people, older people in my family did not have that right.
    So, what I loved most about my job were the older voters. 
Younger people could usually do everything from their phone or 
go on-line, but the older voters like to call, they like to 
talk to you, they like to get my card, they like to know that 
every election I am here.
    Like, even college students. A lot of parents trust in me 
to make sure their child does not have to drive home. They will 
get an absentee ballot; they can vote.
    I really found pleasure in that. I liked being the one 
that--you know, if someone can't navigate My Voter Page or, you 
know, they want a new precinct card and they don't have a copy 
machine or a computer or all of that, I could put it in the 
mail for them.
    I was excited always about sending out all the absentee 
ballots for the elderly, disabled people. I even remember 
driving to a hospital to give someone her absentee application. 
That is what I loved the most.
    Mr. Schiff. So, you really enjoyed helping people vote and 
participate, and that was something, the right to vote, that 
your grandmother taught you was precious.
    Ms. Moss. Yes.
    Mr. Schiff. Well, I know the events that we are here to 
talk about today are incredibly difficult to relive.
    Your proud service as an election worker took a dramatic 
turn on the day that Rudy Giuliani publicized a video of you 
and your mother counting ballots on election night.
    President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and others claimed, on the 
basis of this video, that you and your mother were somehow 
involved in a plot to kick out observers, bring suitcases of 
false ballots for Biden into the arena, and then run them 
through the machines multiple times.
    None of that was true, was it?
    Ms. Moss. None of it.
    Mr. Schiff. I would like to show you some of the statements 
that Rudy Giuliani made in a second hearing before the Georgia 
State legislators a week after that video clip from State Farm 
Arena was first circulated by Mr. Giuliani and President Trump.
    I want to advise viewers that these statements are 
completely false and also deeply disturbing.

    Mr. Giuliani. Tape earlier in the day of Ruby Freeman and Shaye 
Freeman Moss and one other gentleman quite obviously surreptitiously 
passing around USB ports as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine. I 
mean, it's our--it's obvious to anyone who's a criminal investigator or 
prosecutor they are engaged in surreptitious illegal activity again 
that day, and that's a week ago, and they're still walking around 
Georgia lying.
    They should have been--they should have been--should have been 
questioned already. Their places of work, their homes, should have been 
searched for evidence of ballots, for evidence of USB ports, for 
evidence of voter fraud.

    Mr. Schiff. That video was from Rudy Giuliani's appearance 
at a Georgia State house hearing on December 10.
    How did you become aware--how did you first become aware 
that Rudy Giuliani, the President's lawyer, was accusing you 
and your mother of a crime?
    Ms. Moss. I was at work, like always. The former chief, Mr. 
Jones, asked me to come to his office. When I went to his 
office, the former director, Mr. Barron, was in there, and they 
showed me a video on their computer.
    It was just, like, a very short clip of us working at State 
Farm. It had someone on the video, like, talking over the 
video, just saying that we were doing things that we weren't 
supposed to do, just lying throughout the video.
    That is when I first found out about it.
    Mr. Schiff. Were there social media posts that they showed 
you responding to those false claims?
    Ms. Moss. Well, when I saw the video, of course the first 
thing that I said was, like, ``Why? Why are they doing this? 
What's going on?''
    They, you know, just told me that Trump and his allies were 
not satisfied with the outcome of the election, and they were 
getting a lot of threats and being harassed on-line, and asked 
me, you know, have I been receiving anything, and I need to 
check on my mom.
    I told them--you know, I was like, ``Where? Where have 
they--you know, where have you been getting these threats? I 
don't believe I have any.'' Mr. Jones told me, like, they are 
attacking his Facebook. I don't really use Facebook. I have 
one. So, I went to the Facebook app.
    I am just kind-of panicky at this point because this has 
never happened to me, and my mom is involved. I am, like, her 
only child.
    So, I am just asking him, like, ``Well, where are the 
messages? All I see is the feed. Like, how do you get to the 
messages?'' He said, ``It's another icon on your phone that 
says Messenger.''
    I went to that icon, and it was just a lot of horrible 
things there.
    Mr. Schiff. Those horrible things, did they include 
threats?
    Ms. Moss. Yes, a lot of threats, wishing death upon me, 
telling me that, you know, I will be in jail with my mother, 
and saying things like, ``Be glad it's 2020 and not 1920.'' 
That is--yes.
    Mr. Schiff. Were a lot of these threats and vile comments 
racist in nature?
    Ms. Moss. A lot of them were racist. A lot of them were 
just hateful. But, yes, sir.
    Mr. Schiff. In one of the videos we just watched, Mr. 
Giuliani accused you and your mother of passing some sort of 
USB drive to each other. What was your mom actually handing you 
on that video?
    Ms. Moss. A ginger mint.
    Mr. Schiff. It wasn't just Rudy Giuliani; we heard 
President Trump make these false allegations repeatedly during 
his call with Secretary Raffensperger.
    Let's listen to a portion of what he had to say about you 
and your mother.

    President Trump. We had at least 18,000. That's on tape. We had 
them counted very painstakingly. 18,000 voters having to do with Ruby 
Freeman. That's--she's a vote scammer, a professional vote scammer and 
hustler.

    Mr. Schiff. Donald Trump attacked you and your mother, 
using her name, 18 times on that call--18 times.
    Ms. Moss, can you describe what you experienced listening 
to former President Trump attack you and your mother in a call 
with the Georgia secretary of state?
    Ms. Moss. I felt horrible. I felt like it was all my fault, 
like if I would have never decided to be an elections worker--
like, I could have done anything else, but that is what I 
decided to do, and now people are lying and spreading rumors 
and lies and attacking my mom. I am her only child. Going to my 
grandmother's house--I am her only grandchild. And my kid. It 
is just--I felt so bad.
    I just felt bad for my mom, and I felt horrible for picking 
this job and being the one that always wants to help and always 
there, never missing out one election. I just felt like it was 
my fault for putting my family in this situation.
    Mr. Schiff. Well, it wasn't your fault.
    Your mother was kind enough to come speak with us earlier. 
Let's listen to her story in her words.

    Ms. Freeman. My name is Ruby Freeman. I've always believed it when 
God says that He'll make your name great, but this is not the way it 
was supposed to be. I could have never imagined the events that 
followed the Presidential election 2020. For my entire professional 
life, I was Lady Ruby. My community in Georgia, where I was born and 
lived my whole life, knew me as Lady Ruby.
    I built my own business around that name, LaRuby's Unique 
Treasures, a pop-up shop catering to ladies with unique fashions. I 
wore a shirt that proudly proclaimed that I was, and I am, Lady Ruby.
    Actually, I had that shirt on--I had that shirt in every color. I 
wore that shirt on election day 2020. I haven't worn it since, and I'll 
never wear it again.
    Now I won't even introduce myself by my name anymore. I get nervous 
when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my name. 
I'm worried about who's listening. I get nervous when I have to give my 
name for food orders. I'm always concerned of who's around me. I've 
lost my name, and I've lost my reputation.
    I've lost my sense of security, all because a group of people, 
starting with Number 45 and his ally, Rudy Giuliani, decided to 
scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye--to push their own lies about how 
the Presidential election was stolen.

    Mr. Schiff. Ms. Moss, how has this experience of being 
targeted by the former President and his allies affected your 
life?
    Ms. Moss. It has turned my life upside down. I no longer 
give out my business cards. I don't transfer calls. I don't 
want anyone knowing my name. I don't want to go anywhere with 
my mom because she might yell my name out over the grocery 
aisle or something. I don't go to the grocery store at all. I 
haven't been anywhere at all. I have gained about 60 pounds.
    I just don't do nothing anymore. I don't want to go 
anywhere. I second-guess everything that I do. It has affected 
my life in a major way, in every way, all because of lies, of 
me doing my job, same thing I have been doing forever.
    Mr. Schiff. Your mother also told the Select Committee 
about how she had to leave her own home for her safety and go 
into hiding after the FBI told her that it would not be safe 
for her there before January 6th and until the inauguration.
    Let's listen to a clip of her story in her own words.

    Ms. Freeman. Around the week of January 6th, the FBI informed me 
that I needed to leave my home for safety. And I left my home for 
safety around that time.
    Ms. Lucier. Understood. How--how long did you stay out, did you, 
you know, remain outside of your home for your own safety?
    Ms. Freeman. I--I stayed away from my home for approximately 2 
months . . . 
    It was horrible. I felt homeless. I felt, you know, I can't 
believe--I can't believe this person has caused this much damage to me 
and my family. To have to leave my home that I've lived there for 21 
years. And, you know, I'm having to have my neighbors watch out for me. 
You know, and I have to go and stay with somebody.
    It was hard. It was horrible.
    Ms. Lucier. And your conversation with the FBI about needing to 
leave your home for your own safety or perhaps recommending it. Do you 
remember was there a specific threat that prompted that or was it the 
accumulation of threats that you had received?
    Ms. Freeman. What prompted it was--was getting ready to--January 
6th was about to come. And they did not want me to be at home because 
of all the threats and everything that I had gotten. They didn't want 
me to be there in fear of, you know, that people were coming to my 
home. And I had a lot of that, so they didn't want me to be there just 
in case something happened.
    I asked, ``How long am I going to have to be gone?'' They said, 
``At least until the inauguration.''

    Mr. Schiff. Ms. Moss, I understand that people once showed 
up at your grandmother's house. Tell us about that experience.
    Ms. Moss. I received a call from my grandmother. This woman 
is my everything. I have never even heard her or seen her cry 
ever in my life. She called me, screaming at the top of her 
lungs, like, ``Shaye, Shaye, oh my God, Shaye,'' just freaking 
me out, saying that there were people at her home, and they, 
you know, they knocked on the door. Of course, she opened it 
and was seeing who was there, who it was. They just started 
pushing their way through, claiming that they were coming in to 
make a citizen's arrest. They needed to find me and my mom; 
they knew we were there. She was just screaming and didn't know 
what to do.
    I wasn't there, so, you know, I just felt so helpless and 
so horrible for her. She was just screaming. I told her to 
close the door; don't open the door for anyone. You know, she's 
a 70-something--I won't say--year-old woman, and she doesn't 
like having restrictions. She wants to answer the door. She 
likes to get her steps in walking around the neighborhood. I 
had to tell her, like: You can't do that. You have to be safe.
    You know, she would tell me that, at night, people would 
just continuously send pizzas over and over to her home, you 
know. They were expecting her to pay for these large amounts of 
pizzas. She went through a lot that she didn't have to. Once 
again, it made me just feel horrible.
    Mr. Schiff. In addition to the personal impact this 
experience has had on you and your family, one of the things 
that I find most disturbing is how these lies discourage long-
time election workers from continuing to do this important 
work. Tell us, if you would, of the other election workers 
shown in that State Farm Arena video and their supervisors, how 
many are still election workers in Fulton County?
    Ms. Moss. There is no permanent election worker or 
supervisor in that video that is still there.
    Mr. Schiff. Did you end up leaving your position as well?
    Ms. Moss. Yes, I left.
    Mr. Schiff. Ms. Moss, I want to thank you for coming in to 
speak with us and to thank you for service to our democracy. 
What we have just played is a truly horrible and appalling 
sample, but just a sample of the things that were said about 
you and your mother following the election.
    I want to say how very sorry I think we all are for what 
you have gone through, and, tragically, you are not alone. 
Other election workers around the country have also been the 
subject of lies and threats. No election worker should be 
subject to such heinous treatment just for doing their job.
    With your permission, I would like to give mother the last 
word.
    Ms. Moss. Yes.
    Mr. Schiff. We are just going to play the tape.

    Ms. Freeman. There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how 
it feels to have the President of the United States to target you? The 
President of the United States is supposed to represent every American, 
not to target one. But he targeted me, Lady Rudy, a small business 
owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stand up to help Fulton 
County run an election in the middle of the pandemic.

    Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Ms. Moss.
    Thank you, Ms. Freeman, or, as America now knows her, Lady 
Ruby, for your service to Fulton County, Georgia, our country, 
and our democracy.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Schiff.
    Ms. Moss.
    Ms. Moss. Yes, sir.
    Chairman Thompson. I want to thank you for sharing with us 
the very troubling story of what you and your mother 
experienced. The harassment of election workers like you for 
simply doing your duty as public servants poses a threat to our 
democratic process.
    Your testimony is an important contribution to the work of 
our Committee and serves as a reminder to all of us that the 
safety of local election officials is vital to ensuring that 
our elections are always free and fair.
    I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today. The 
Members of the Select Committee may have additional questions 
for today's witnesses. We ask that you respond expeditiously in 
writing to those questions.
    Without objection, Members will be permitted 10 business 
days to submit statements for the record, including opening 
remarks and additional questions for the witnesses.
    Without objection, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California, Mr. Schiff, for a closing statement.
    Mr. Schiff. For more than 200 years, our democracy has been 
distinguished by the peaceful transfer of power. When an 
American raises their right-hand and takes the Presidential 
oath of office, they are transformed from an ordinary citizen 
into the most powerful person in the world, the President.
    This is an awesome power to acquire. It is even more 
awesome when it is handed on peacefully.
    When George Washington relinquished the Office of the 
Presidency, it set a precedent that served as a beacon for 
other nations struggling against tyranny.
    When Ronald Reagan described it as a kind of miracle in the 
eyes of the world, he was exactly right. Other countries use 
violence to seize and hold power, but not in the United States, 
not in America.
    When Donald Trump used the power of the Presidency to try 
to stay in office after losing the election to Joe Biden, he 
broke that sacred and centuries-old covenant. Whether his 
actions were criminal will ultimately be for others to decide. 
But what he did was without a doubt un-Constitutional. It was 
unpatriotic, and it was fundamentally un-American. When he used 
the power of his Presidency to put the enormous pressure on 
State, local, and local elections officials, and his own Vice 
President, it became downright dangerous. On January 6th, that 
pressure became deadly.
    Ruby Freeman said that the President is supposed to protect 
every American, not target them. She is right. If the most 
powerful person in the world can bring the full weight of the 
Presidency down on an ordinary citizen, who was merely doing 
her job, with a lie as big and heavy as a mountain, who among 
us is safe? None of us is. None of us.
    In city councils and town councils, on school boards and 
election boards, from the Congress to the courts, dedicated 
public servants are leaving their posts because of death 
threats to them and to their families. This is not who we are. 
It must not become who we are.
    Our democracy held because courageous people like those you 
heard from today put their oath to the Constitution above their 
loyalty to one man or to one party. The system held, but 
barely. The question remains, will it hold again?
    If we are able to communicate anything during these 
hearings, I hope it is this: We have been blessed beyond 
measure to live in the world's greatest democracy. That is a 
legacy to be proud of and to cherish, but it is not one to be 
taken for granted. That we have lived in a democracy for more 
than 200 years does not mean we shall do so tomorrow.
    We must reject violence. We must embrace our Constitution 
with the reverence it deserves, take our oath of office and 
duties as citizens seriously, informed by the knowledge of 
right and wrong, and armed with no more than the power of our 
ideas and the truth carry on this venerable experiment in self-
governance.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, the Chair recognizes 
the gentlewoman from Wyoming, Ms. Cheney, for a closing 
statement.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Lady Ruby and Shaye, thank you for your courage. Thank you 
for your strength. Thank you for being here today. It means so 
much for everyone to hear your story. So, thank you for that.
    We have had tremendous testimony today. We have been 
reminded that we are a Nation of laws. We have been reminded by 
you and by Speaker Bowers and Secretary of State Raffensperger 
and Mr. Sterling that our institutions don't defend themselves; 
individuals do that.
    We are reminded that it takes public servants. It takes 
people who have made a commitment to our system to defend our 
system.
    We also have been reminded what it means to take an oath 
under God to the Constitution, and what it means to defend the 
Constitution. We were reminded by Speaker Bowers that our 
Constitution is indeed a divinely-inspired document.
    So, it has been an honor to spend time with you and with 
our previous witnesses here today.
    To date, more than 30 witnesses called before this 
Committee have not done what you have done but have invoked 
their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination: Roger 
Stone took the Fifth. General Michael Flynn took the Fifth. 
John Eastman took the Fifth.
    Others, like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, simply refuse 
to comply with lawful subpoenas, and they have been indicted.
    Mark Meadows has hidden behind President Trump's claims of 
executive privilege and immunity from subpoenas. We are engaged 
now in litigation with Mr. Meadows.
    The American people in our hearings have heard from Bill 
Barr, Jeff Rosen, Richard Donoghue, and many others who stood 
up and did what is right. They will hear more of that testimony 
soon.
    But the American people have not yet heard from Mr. Trump's 
former White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone. Our Committee is 
certain that Donald Trump does not want Mr. Cipollone to 
testify here. Indeed, our evidence shows that Mr. Cipollone and 
his office tried to do what was right. They tried to stop a 
number of President Trump's plans for January 6th.
    Today, and in our coming hearings, you will hear testimony 
from other Trump White House staff explaining what Mr. 
Cipollone said and did, including on January 6th.
    But we think the American people deserve to hear from Mr. 
Cipollone personally. He should appear before this Committee, 
and we are working to secure his testimony.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. People answer the call to public service 
in such different ways. Some run for office. Some volunteer to 
make sure their neighbors can get to their voting locations. 
Some work at polling sites to help election day go smoothly. 
Some look into problems to guarantee our elections are secure 
and accurate, just to name a few.
    As I mentioned at the start of this hearing, when we talk 
about our democratic institutions, we are talking about these 
individuals and many others who do these jobs across the 
country. They represent the backbone of our democracy at its 
most important moments: When the citizens cast their votes and 
when those votes are counted.
    We have heard the stories of their courage. They have 
earned the thanks of a grateful Nation.
    But, for Donald Trump, these witnesses and others like them 
were another roadblock to his attempt to cling to power.
    On Thursday, we will hear about another part of that 
scheme, his attempt to corrupt the country's top law 
enforcement body, the Justice Department, to support his 
attempt to overturn the election.
    Just as we heard today that Donald Trump was deeply 
involved in a scheme to pressure State officials to overturn 
the election results, we will hear on Thursday that Donald 
Trump was also the driving force behind an effort to corrupt 
the Justice Department. Listen to this clip from the former 
Acting Deputy Attorney General, Richard Donoghue.

    Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue. The President said, 
``Suppose I do this. Suppose I replace him,'' Jeff Rosen, ``with him,'' 
Jeff Clark. ``What do you do?'' And I said, ``Sir, I would resign 
immediately. There is no way I'm serving 1 minute under this guy.'' 
Jeff Clark.

    Chairman Thompson. You will hear from Mr. Donoghue in 
person on Thursday, as my colleague, Mr. Kinzinger, presents 
details about this plan.
    The Chair requests those in the hearing room remain seated 
until the Capitol Police have escorted Members from the room.
    Without objection, the Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 3:39 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]


                            A P P E N D I X

                              ----------                              

  Prepared Statement of Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State
    Thank you for inviting me today and the honor to speak before my 
fellow Americans. Our Founders chose a Constitution and the Rule of 
Law, and I cherish both. No one is above the law, and before the law we 
are all equal.
    After the 2020 election and the immediate charge of a stolen 
election due to voter fraud, I thought I had been transported back in 
time to 2018 when we heard the charge of a stolen election, that time 
due to voter suppression. Same coin--just the other side.
    Will this become a nationwide trend where we see every candidate 
who loses a major election refuse to accept the results, and instead 
set out to raise money and build support on unfounded claims of fraud 
and corruption? If America wants to avoid that prospect, we must come 
to grips with the scope of the problem, but I realize this won't be 
comfortable for either party. I say either party because, in Georgia, I 
have been battling myths of stolen election claims from both sides in 
both 2018 and 2020.
    On my first day in office in January 2019 I had nine lawsuits from 
the losing Gubernatorial candidate and her allied organizations in 
2018. The most striking aspect of the 2020 election claims was not its 
novelty, but the elevated assault on election integrity. In fact, many 
of the complaints following the 2020 election campaign lawsuits were 
nearly identical to complaints received following the 2018 election, 
and some 2020 lawsuits relied heavily on 2018 lawsuits to attempt to 
support their false claims.
    Stolen election claims destroy voter confidence, and yet America is 
remarkedly good at running elections. We have 50 States, and Georgia 
has 159 counties, who run our elections, and that effort is carried out 
in over 2,500 precincts in Georgia. Elections in Georgia, and indeed in 
our Nation, are both fairer and more secure than they have been at any 
point in our history. Today Georgia is recognized No. 1 in America for 
election integrity.
    Stolen election claims have no space in the State of Georgia. We 
have seen what these claims lead to, and we need to hold both extremes 
accountable.
    Briefly stated, here is what happened in Georgia in 2020--28,000 
Georgians skipped the Presidential race and didn't vote for anyone at 
the top--they didn't vote for Donald J. Trump, Joseph R. Biden or Jo 
Jorgensen. They left that part blank yet voted down-ballot on other 
races. The Republican Congressman collectively received 33,000 more 
votes than President Trump. That is why President Trump came up short 
in Georgia.
    There was never even close to enough illegal votes in Georgia to 
overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. The claims of voter 
suppression in the 2018 election were similarly false. I wrote a 10-
page letter to Congress dated January 6th, 2021, and a book titled 
Integrity Counts to set the record straight about Georgia's elections 
of 2018 and 2020.
    I believe what binds all Americans is our Declaration of 
Independence; our Constitution; and our fidelity to the Rule of Law and 
its commitment to freedom, integrity, and truth.
    Thank you.
                                 ______
                                 
     Prepared Statement of Wandrea ArShaye ``Shaye'' Moss, Former 
  Registration Officer, Fulton County Department of Registration and 
                   Elections, Fulton County, Georgia
                             June 21, 2022
    Thank you for inviting me to testify before the Select Committee to 
Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
    My name is Wandrea ArShaye Moss, but people call me Shaye. And I 
used to be an election worker. Almost everything else that people have 
heard about me is a lie.
    There is a lot that I could never have imagined about the last 2 
years. I certainly never imagined that I would be testifying before a 
congressional Committee because people spread lies about me and my 
family.
    I was born in Georgia, and I have lived there my whole life. My 
family has a long history of serving our community. I am the third 
generation in my family to sign up for public service.
    When I was growing up, my mom worked for Fulton County. My 
grandmother retired from DeKalb County. For as long as I can remember, 
I wanted to follow in their footsteps.
                       my work for fulton county
    My first and only job was working for Fulton County Voter 
Registration and Elections. I worked there for more than 10 years. I 
loved my job. And I was really good at it. I didn't just clock in every 
day--I gave it my all. I worked hard to ensure that every lawful vote 
counted. I even created new procedures to make our process faster and 
more accurate.
    I made sure Georgia residents were properly registered to vote. 
When I was young, my grandmother made sure I knew how important it was 
to vote, because it is an opportunity that a lot of members of my 
family before me did not have. I wanted to make sure that everyone had 
that opportunity.
    I especially loved helping older voters. Younger voters could 
usually figure out how to register and vote on their own. But older 
people sometimes needed help. I remember driving to the hospital once 
to help an elderly woman who wanted to request an absentee ballot.
    Registration forms and ballots aren't just pieces of paper to me. 
They represent real people: voters with disabilities, single parents, 
college students, and members of our military. I gave everyone my card 
so they would have an actual person to contact instead of an office.
    I wanted them to know I valued their votes as much as they did.
    My mom, Ruby, taught me that when you commit to a job, you do it 
well and you do it right. My job was not easy. It was work that 
required patience. It required commitment. It required checking, double 
checking, and focusing on the details--all on tight deadlines.
    I was used to doing my job quietly, but well, even if that meant 
waking up way too early and coming home late. I missed so many of my 
son's activities because I had to work. Whenever I missed something, I 
knew how lucky I was that my grandmother could fill in for me. I wanted 
to show my son that hard work pays off.
                                the lies
    Ever since December 2020, I have been under attack for just doing 
my job. My mom too.
    My mother signed up to work as a temporary election worker in my 
office in the 2020 Presidential election. In the 2 weeks before 
Election Day, we worked from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week. 
During election week, we worked even longer shifts. After the election, 
we were proud of a job well done. And my mom was proud of me.
    But in early December, former President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and 
their allies started spreading terrible lies about my mother and me.
    They said we snuck ballots into the State Farm Arena in a suitcase. 
That is a lie.
    They said we lied about a water main break to kick observers out. 
That is a lie.
    They said we counted ballots multiple times to try to steal the 
election. That is a lie.
    And they said we passed around flash drives to try to hack voting 
machines. That's a lie, too--the thing they got so worked up about my 
mom passing to me was a ginger mint. Her favorite candy.
    All of the accusations made against me and my mom were lies.
    As Mr. B. J. Pak testified before the Select Committee on June 13, 
2022, the Department of Justice and other State and Federal agencies 
investigated these accusations. Mr. Pak testified that the Attorney 
General of the United States asked him to ``make it a priority'' to 
``try to substantiate the allegation made by Mr. Giuliani'' about there 
being a suitcase full of ballots. As part of that process, 
investigators interviewed my mom and me, as well as all of us who 
appeared in a video that Rudy Giuliani and others claimed showed us 
engaging in this voter fraud. That official investigation confirmed 
what my mom and I knew to be true: that, as Mr. Pak said, ``nothing 
irregular happened in the counting and the allegations made by Mr. 
Giuliani were false.''
    But it didn't require a Federal investigation to know that these 
accusations were lies. They do not even make sense. Why do I say that? 
You cannot just walk suitcases full of fake ballots into a counting 
facility in Fulton County. There is a system to make sure that every 
vote counts.
    Information on envelopes has to match information from real voters. 
Information from precincts has to match total votes counted. You cannot 
just invent large numbers of voters or votes.
    Especially in a system with hand recounts, cameras everywhere, and 
campaign officials and State election officials monitoring your every 
move.
    We know we are watched. We expect it and welcome it.
    For the same reasons, you cannot just count ballots multiple times. 
The discrepancy would show up in the ultimate count.
    And as for the water leak, it was a real thing that happened, with 
dozens of witnesses. But what can you say to people willing to say that 
up is down?
    I helped count ballots in 2016 when President Trump won and 2018 
when Stacey Abrams lost. I was proud of our work in those elections. It 
did not matter to me who won or lost because I am not a political 
person. This job was never about politics for me. It was about counting 
every vote.
    But none of that mattered. Former President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, 
and their allies didn't like the outcome of the election, so they made 
up lies about us even though we were simply doing our jobs.
                                the harm
    As a result, I have been threatened and harassed. One stranger told 
me: ``be glad [it's] 2020 and not 1920.'' Others told me I should hang 
alongside my mom for committing treason.
    My son received some of those threats. They went after a child--my 
child. He heard horrible things about his mom, just because I did my 
job.
    People showed up at my grandmother's home trying to bust the door 
down and conduct a citizen's arrest of my mom and me.
    The threats followed me to work. People would email the general 
email address for our office so everyone could see their threats and 
the hateful messages directed at me.
    These were people who did not even know us. They did not care about 
our dedication to our work, or our lives. They denied our humanity. All 
because they refused to accept the outcome of the election.
    I have to live with these lies every single day. Before December 
2020, I was never scared of people knowing my name. But after, I 
stopped giving out my business cards to voters. Now I worry when I'm at 
the grocery store. I worry when I go shopping with my mom and she calls 
my name out across an aisle. I worry when I pick up the phone and a 
voice I don't recognize says my name.
    I feel responsible for what happened to my family. Like somehow it 
is all my fault because I chose to work as an election worker. I wanted 
to help. I never imagined it would cause so much hurt.
    Can you imagine what it's like to feel responsible for your 
grandmother, your mother, and your teenage son being threatened and 
lied about, over and over again? To be singled out as a criminal? To be 
accused of treason in the only country you've ever called home?
    I didn't realize how much I loved my job until it was taken away 
from me by a few people who decided that their lie was more important 
than my life.
                          why my story matters
    I am here today for more than myself and my family. I am here to 
speak for all the election workers out there who were, are, or will be 
threatened and attacked for just doing their jobs. I am here today 
because I want the truth to be heard.
    Nobody should have to go through what I've been through. Especially 
not our election workers who do the heavy lifting our democracy depends 
on. They do not receive the recognition or respect they deserve for the 
service they provide to this country.
    Yet they show up. I showed up. Every single day, every single 
election. I never missed one in ten years.
    I am here because this has to stop. The people responsible for the 
lies need to be held accountable.
    Congress needs to take action. Congress needs to protect our 
election workers and protect victims of disinformation like my family 
and me. If it doesn't, I know there will be many more just like me.
    Because of the lies, my son had to grow up way too quickly. Because 
of the lies, there are some days I don't want to get out of bed. There 
are some days I want to curl up under the covers and disappear. Because 
of the lies, I've lost who I was. I will never again be able to do the 
work I felt called to do. My life will never be the same.
    I have had to come to terms with the fact that there will always be 
people who believe these lies about me. There will always be someone 
who believes I should be in prison or that I should be dead. There is 
no way to fix what happened to me.
    And I'm here to tell my truth to help sure this never happens to 
anyone else. My loss has got to be for something.
    Thank you.

                HEARING ON THE JANUARY 6TH INVESTIGATION

                              ----------                              

                        Thursday, June 23, 2022

                     U.S. House of Representatives,
 Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on 
                                 the United States Capitol,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:02 p.m., in 
room 390, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Bennie G. Thompson 
(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
    Present: Representatives Thompson, Cheney, Lofgren, Schiff, 
Aguilar, Murphy, Raskin, Luria, and Kinzinger.
    Chairman Thompson. The Select Committee to Investigate the 
January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol will be in 
order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare the 
Committee in recess at any point.
    Pursuant to House Deposition Authority Regulation 10, the 
Chair announces the Committee's approval to release the 
deposition material presented during today's hearing.
    Good afternoon.
    In our previous hearings, the Select Committee showed that 
then-President Trump applied pressure at every level of 
government, from local election workers up to his own Vice 
President, hoping public servants would give in to that 
pressure and help him steal an election he actually lost.
    Today, we will tell the story of how the pressure campaign 
also targeted the Federal agency charged with enforcement of 
our laws: The Department of Justice.
    We have already covered part of Mr. Trump's effort. We 
heard Attorney General Bill Barr tell the Committee about the 
baseless claims Mr. Trump wanted the Justice Department to 
investigate and that Mr. Barr viewed those claims as nonsense.
    Today, we will hear from Jeffrey Rosen, the person Mr. 
Trump appointed to run the Justice Department after Attorney 
General Barr resigned. We will hear from other senior Justice 
Department officials also.
    Together, these public servants resisted Mr. Trump's effort 
to misuse the Justice Department as part of his plan to hold 
onto power. We will show that Trump's demands that the 
Department investigate baseless claims of election fraud 
continued into January 2021.
    But Donald Trump didn't just want the Justice Department to 
investigate; he wanted the Justice Department to help 
legitimize his lies, to baselessly call the election corrupt, 
to appoint a special counsel to investigate alleged election 
fraud, to send a letter to six State legislatures urging them 
to consider altering the election results.
    When these and other efforts failed, Donald Trump sought to 
replace Mr. Rosen, the Acting Attorney General, with a lawyer 
who he believed would inappropriately put the full weight of 
the Justice Department behind the effort to overturn the 
election.
    Let's think about what that means.
    Wherever you live in the United States, there is probably a 
local government executive--a mayor or a county commissioner. 
There is also an official responsible for enforcing the laws--a 
district attorney or a local prosecutor.
    Imagine if your mayor lost a reelection bid but, instead of 
conceding the race, they picked up the phone, called the 
district attorney and said, ``I want you to say this election 
was stolen. I want you to tell the board of elections not to 
certify the results.''
    That is essentially what Donald Trump was trying to do with 
the election for President of the United States. It was a 
brazen attempt to use the Justice Department to advance the 
President's personal political agenda.
    Today, my colleague from Illinois, Mr. Kinzinger, and our 
witnesses will walk through the Select Committee's findings on 
these matters.
    But, first, I will recognize our distinguished Vice Chair, 
Ms. Cheney of Wyoming, for any opening statement she would care 
to offer.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    At this point, our Committee has just begun to show America 
the evidence that we have gathered. There is much more to come, 
both in our hearings and in our report. But I would like to 
take just a moment to put everything we have seen in context.
    We have already seen how President Trump falsely declared 
victory on November 3, 2020; how he and his team launched a 
fraudulent media campaign that persuaded tens of millions of 
Americans that the election was stolen from him.
    Donald Trump intentionally ran false ads on television and 
social media featuring allegations that his advisors and his 
Justice Department repeatedly told him were untrue.
    We have also seen how Donald Trump launched a fraudulent 
fundraising campaign that raised hundreds of millions of 
dollars--again--based on those same false election fraud 
allegations.
    We have seen how President Trump and his allies corruptly 
attempted to pressure Vice President Pence to refuse to count 
lawful electoral votes and obstruct Congress's proceedings on 
January 6th and how he provoked a violent mob to pursue the 
Vice President and others in our Capitol.
    We have seen how the President oversaw and personally 
participated in an effort in multiple States to vilify, 
threaten, and pressure election officials and to use false 
allegations to pressure State legislators to change the outcome 
of the election.
    We have seen how President Trump worked with and directed 
the Republican National Committee and others to organize an 
effort to create fake electoral slates and, later, to transmit 
those materially false documents to Federal officials--again--
as part of his planning for January 6th.
    We have seen how President Trump persuaded tens of 
thousands of his supporters to travel to Washington, DC, for 
January 6th. We will see in far more detail how the President's 
rally and march to the Capitol were organized and 
choreographed.
    As you can tell, these efforts were not some minor or ad 
hoc enterprise concocted overnight. Each required planning and 
coordination. Some required significant funding. All of them 
were overseen by President Trump. Much more information will be 
presented soon regarding the President's statements and actions 
on January 6th.
    Today, as Chairman Thompson indicated, we turn to yet 
another element of the President's effort to overturn the 2020 
election, this one involving the Department of Justice.
    A key focus of our hearing today will be a draft letter 
that our witnesses here today refused to sign. This letter was 
written by Mr. Jeff Clark with another Department of Justice 
lawyer, Ken Klukowski, and the letter was to be sent to the 
leadership of the Georgia State legislature. Other versions of 
the letter were intended for other States.
    Neither Mr. Clark nor Mr. Klukowski had any evidence of 
widespread election fraud, but they were quite aware of what 
Mr. Trump wanted the Department to do. Jeff Clark met privately 
with President Trump and others in the White House and agreed 
to assist the President, without telling the senior leadership 
of the Department who oversaw him.
    As you will see, this letter claims that the U.S. 
Department of Justice's investigations have ``identified 
significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the 
election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.''
    In fact, Donald Trump knew this was a lie. The Department 
of Justice had already informed the President of the United 
States repeatedly that its investigations had found no fraud 
sufficient to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
    The letter also said this: ``In light of these 
developments, the Department recommends that the Georgia 
General Assembly should convene in special session'' and 
consider approving a new slate of electors.
    It indicates that a separate, fake ``slate of electors 
supporting Donald Trump'' has already been ``transmitted to 
Washington, DC.''
    For those of you who have been watching these hearings, the 
language of this draft Justice Department letter will sound 
very familiar. The text is similar to what we have seen from 
John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, both of whom were coordinating 
with President Trump to overturn the 2020 election.
    When one of our witnesses today, Mr. Donoghue, first saw 
this draft letter, he wrote this: ``This would be a grave step 
for the Department to take, and it could have tremendous 
constitutional, political, and social ramifications for the 
country.''
    This Committee agrees. Had this letter been released on 
official Department of Justice letterhead, it would have 
falsely informed all Americans, including those who might be 
inclined to come to Washington on January 6th, that President 
Trump's election fraud allegations were likely very real.
    Here is another observation about this letter. Look at the 
signature line. It was written by Jeff Clark and Mr. Klukowski 
not just for Clark's signature but also for our witnesses 
today, Jeff Rosen and Richard Donoghue.
    When it became clear that neither Mr. Rosen nor Mr. 
Donoghue would sign this letter, President Trump's plan 
necessarily changed. As you will hear today, Donald Trump 
offered Mr. Clark the job of Acting Attorney General, replacing 
Mr. Rosen, with the understanding that Clark would send this 
letter to Georgia and other States and take other actions the 
President requested.
    One other point: Millions of Americans have seen the 
testimony of Attorney General Barr before this Committee. At 
one point in his deposition, the former Attorney General was 
asked why he authorized the Department of Justice to 
investigate fraud in the 2020 election at all; why not just 
follow the regular course of action and let the investigations 
occur much later in time, after January 6th?
    Here is what he said.

    Attorney General Barr. I felt the responsible thing to do was to 
be--to be in a position to have a view as to whether or not there was 
fraud. And, frankly, I think the fact that I put myself in the position 
that I could say that we had looked at this and didn't think there was 
fraud was really important to moving things forward. And I--I sort-of 
shudder to think what the situation would have been if the--if the 
position of the Department was, ``We're not even looking at this until 
after Biden's in office.'' I'm not sure we would have had a transition 
at all.

    Vice Chair Cheney. I want to thank each of our witnesses 
before us today for your role in addressing and rebutting the 
false allegations of fraud at the root of January 6th. Thank 
you for standing up for the Constitution and for the rule of 
law.
    Of course, not all public officials behaved in the 
honorable way our witnesses did. At the close of today's 
hearing, we will see video testimony by three members of Donald 
Trump's White House staff. They will identify certain of the 
Members of Congress who contacted the White House after January 
6th to seek Presidential pardons for their conduct.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, the Chair recognizes 
the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Kinzinger, for an opening 
statement.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and 
thank you to our witnesses for being here.
    I would like to start with a personal story.
    So, in May 2009, I returned from service in Iraq and I 
announced my intention to run for Congress. A big reason I 
decided to run for Congress was my motivation to ensure freedom 
and democracy were defended overseas.
    I remember making a commitment--out loud a few times and in 
my heart repeatedly, even to today--that if we are going to ask 
Americans to be willing to die in service to our country, we as 
leaders must at least be willing to sacrifice our political 
careers when integrity and our oath requires it. After all, 
losing a job is nothing compared to losing your life.
    Within the halls of power, in the face of a President, that 
commitment can easily be forgotten. Presidential pressure can 
be really hard to resist.
    Today, we will focus on a few officials who stood firm 
against President Trump's political pressure campaign. When the 
President tried to misuse the Department and install a loyalist 
at its helm, these brave officials refused and threatened to 
resign. They were willing to sacrifice their careers for the 
good of our country.
    The Department of Justice is unique in the executive 
branch. The President oversees the Department of Justice, yet 
the President's personal or partisan interests must not shape 
or dictate the Department's actions.
    The President cannot and must not use the Department to 
serve his own personal interest, and he must not use its people 
to do his political bidding, especially when what he wants them 
to do is to subvert democracy.
    The President cannot pervert justice, nor the law, to 
maintain his power. Justice must, both in fact and law, be 
blind. That is critical to our whole system of self-governance.
    During this hearing, you will hear time and time again 
about the President's request to investigate claims of 
widespread fraud. Our witnesses--Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue, and 
Mr. Engel--stood firm in the face of overbearing political 
pressure because they understood that their oath was to the 
Constitution and not to the personal or political interests of 
the President.
    The President and his allies became keenly aware that, with 
legal challenges exhausted and electoral votes certified, their 
only hope would be a last-ditch scheme to prevent Congress from 
certifying the win, thus throwing the entire system into 
constitutional chaos.
    The President wanted the Department to sow doubt in the 
legitimacy of the election to empower his followers and Members 
of Congress to take action. If the Department could just lend 
its credibility to the conspiracies, people would have the 
justification they needed to spread the big lie.
    So President Trump ultimately wanted the Department of 
Justice to say the election was ``corrupt'' and ``leave the 
rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.''
    As you will hear today, the Department's top leadership 
refused.
    Not surprisingly, President Trump didn't take ``no'' for an 
answer. He didn't accept it from Attorney General Barr, and he 
wouldn't accept it from Mr. Rosen either. So he looked for 
another Attorney General--his third in 2 weeks. He needed to 
find someone who was willing to ignore the facts. That is not 
the norm.
    Let's look at what Attorneys General, Democrats and 
Republicans alike, have said about upholding their oath to the 
Constitution.

    Attorney General Sessions. The Attorney General ultimately owes his 
loyalty to the integrity of the American people and to the fidelity to 
the Constitution and the legitimate laws of the country. That's what 
he's ultimately required to do.
    Attorney General Holder. I will be an independent Attorney General. 
I will be the people's lawyer. If, however, there were an issue that I 
thought were that significant that would compromise my ability to serve 
as Attorney General in the way that I have described it as ``the 
people's lawyer,'' I would not hesitate to resign.
    Attorney General Mukasey. As you and I discussed, if the President 
proposed to undertake a course of conduct that was in violation of the 
Constitution, that would present me with a--a difficult, but not a 
complex, problem. I would have two choices. I could either try to talk 
him out of it or leave. Those are the choices.
    Attorney General Lynch. The Attorney General's position as a 
Cabinet member is perhaps unique from all of the Cabinet members. Yes, 
a member of the President's Cabinet, but the Attorney General has a 
unique responsibility to provide independent and objective advice to 
the President or any agency when it is sought and sometimes, perhaps, 
even when it is not sought.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Everyone in that video, from Eric Holder to 
Jeff Sessions, spoke as one about the independence of the 
Department. It is a point of pride at Justice to apply the law 
without the President's political self-interest tainting its 
actions or dictating how it uses its authorities.
    But President Trump did find one candidate at Justice who 
seemed willing to do anything to help him stay in power. Let's 
hear what President Trump's own lawyer, Eric Herschmann, had to 
say about Jeff Clark's plan to overturn the election.
    I would like to advise viewers, this video contains some 
strong language.

    Mr. Herschmann. And when he finished discussing what he planned on 
doing, I said good, fucking--excuse me, sorry--F'ing A-hole, 
congratulations. You just admitted your first step or act you take as 
Attorney General would be committing a felony and violating rule 6(e). 
You're clearly the right candidate for this job.

    Mr. Kinzinger. So who is Jeff Clark? An environmental 
lawyer, with no experience relevant to leading the entire 
Department of Justice.
    What was his only qualification? That he would do whatever 
the President wanted him to do, including overthrowing a free 
and a fair democratic election.
    President Trump's campaign to bend the Justice Department 
to his political will culminated in a showdown on January 3rd. 
Today, we will take you inside that early evening Oval Office 
meeting, where top Justice Department officials met with the 
President. At stake: The leadership and integrity of the 
Department of Justice.

    Mr. Donoghue. The meeting took about another 2\1/2\ hours from the 
time I entered. It was entirely focused on whether there should be a 
DOJ leadership change. I was sitting directly in front of the 
President. Jeff Rosen was to my right. Jeff Clark was to my left.
    Acting Attorney General Rosen. He looked at me, and I underscored, 
``Well, the one thing we know is you're not going to do anything. You 
don't even agree that the concerns that are being presented are--are 
valid. And here's someone who has--has a different view. So why 
shouldn't I do that?'' You know, that's how the discussion then 
proceeded.
    Mr. Herschmann. Jeff Clark was proposing that--uh--Jeff Rosen be 
replaced by Jeff Clark, and I thought the proposal was asinine.
    Mr. Heaphy. What were Clark's purported bases for why it was in the 
President's interest for him to step in? What would he do? What would--
how would things change according to Mr. Clark in the meeting?
    Mr. Donoghue. He repeatedly said to the President that, if he was 
put in the seat, he would conduct real investigations that would, in 
his view, uncover widespread fraud. He would send out the letter that 
he had drafted and that this was a last opportunity to sort-of set 
things straight with this defective election and that he could do it 
and he had the intelligence and the will and the desire to pursue these 
matters in the way that the President thought most appropriate.
    Mr. Herschmann. And he was making a pitch, and every time he'd get 
clobbered over the head. He would, like, say, like, you know, he would 
call to order, you know, the President--``your decision. You get the 
chance to make this decision, and, you know, you've heard everybody, 
and you can make your determination.'' And then we jump back in, and, 
you know, they would clobber him.
    Mr. Donoghue. I made the point that Jeff Clark is not even 
competent to serve as the Attorney General. He's never been a criminal 
attorney. He's never conducted a criminal investigation in his life. 
He's never been in front of a grand jury, much less a trial jury. And 
he kind of retorted by saying, ``Well, I've done a lot of very 
complicated appeals in civil litigation, environmental litigation, and 
things like that.'' And I said, ``That's right. You're an environmental 
lawyer. How about you go back to your office and we'll call you when 
there's an oil spill.'' And Pat Cipollone weighed in at one point. I 
remember saying, ``You know, that letter that this guy wants to send, 
that letter is a murder-suicide pact. It's going to damage everyone who 
touches it, and we should have nothing to do with that letter. I don't 
ever want to see that letter again.'' And so we went along those lines.
    Mr. Herschmann. I thought Jeff's proposal--Clark's proposal was 
nuts. I mean, this guy--at a certain point, ``Listen, the best I can 
tell is the only thing you know about environmental and elections 
challenges is they both start with E, and based on your answers 
tonight, I'm not even certain you know that.''
    Mr. Donoghue. The President said, ``Suppose I do this. Suppose I 
replace him, Jeff Rosen, with him, Jeff Clark. What do you do?''

    Mr. Kinzinger. Well, we know these men before us did the 
right thing.
    But think about what happens if these Justice officials 
make a different decision. What happens if they bow to the 
pressure? What would that do to us as a democracy? As a Nation?
    Imagine a future where the President could screen 
applicants to the Justice Department with one question: Are you 
loyal to me or to the Constitution? It wouldn't take long to 
find people willing to pledge their loyalty to the man.
    We know many of President Trump's vocal supporters on 
January 6th also wanted the Justice Department to do whatever 
he asked as long as it meant he could stay in power. They made 
sure Justice Department officials heard his message as they 
protested loudly in front of the Department on their way to the 
Capitol on January 6th.

    Crowd. Do your job! Do your job! Do your job! Do your job! Do your 
job!
    Voice. Live in DC, we're marching to the Capitol. We are at the 
Department of Justice right now telling these cowards to do their job!
    Voice. We're going to take the Capitol.

    Mr. Kinzinger. I want to take a moment now to speak 
directly to my fellow Republicans.
    Imagine the country's top prosecutor--with the power to 
open investigations, subpoena, charge crimes, and seek 
imprisonment--imagine that official pursuing the agenda of the 
other party instead of that of the American people as a whole.
    If you are a Democrat, imagine it the other way around.
    Today, President Trump's total disregard for the 
Constitution and his oath will be fully exposed.
    Now let's get this hearing under way so we can do our part 
to protect the freedoms that we often take for granted, so that 
we can see how close we came to losing it all.
    I now yield back to the Chairman.
    Chairman Thompson. We are joined today by three 
distinguished witnesses who each served in the Trump 
administration in the months preceding January 6th.
    Mr. Jeffrey Rosen served at the Department of Justice from 
May 2019 until January 2021. With President Trump's nomination 
and the confirmation of the U.S. Senate, he became the United 
States Deputy Attorney General. In December 2020, he took the 
mantle of Acting Attorney General.
    Mr. Richard Donoghue has served in the Department of 
Justice for over 14 years. Mr. Donoghue was a United States 
attorney for the Eastern District of New York; then became Mr. 
Rosen's Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General; and, 
finally, Acting Deputy Attorney General. Mr. Donoghue also 
served more than 20 years in the United States military, 
including the 82nd Airborne and the Judge Advocate General's 
Corps.
    We are also joined by Mr. Steven Engel, the former 
Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. He 
was nominated by the former President and confirmed by the 
Senate during the Trump administration. He served from November 
2017 to January 2021 and has now returned to private practice.
    I will now swear in our witnesses. The witnesses will 
please stand and raise their right hands.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. You may be seated.
    Let the record reflect the witnesses all answered in the 
affirmative.
    I now recognize myself for questions.
    First of all, gentlemen, thank you for being here today.
    All of you served at former President Trump's pleasure at 
the Department of Justice in top leadership positions with 
tremendous responsibilities.
    Former Attorney General Bill Barr told the Select Committee 
that, before he left the Department in December 2020, he told 
President Trump, on at least three occasions, there was no 
evidence of widespread election fraud that would have changed 
the results of the Presidential election and refuted numerous 
specific claims of election fraud the President was making.
    Mr. Rosen, after Mr. Barr announced his resignation, did 
Donald Trump continue to demand that the Department of Justice 
investigate his claims of election fraud?
    Mr. Rosen.\1\ Yes. He asserted that he thought the Justice 
Department had not done enough.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Rosen has been included in the 
Appendix and may be found on page 747.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    From the time you took over from Attorney General Barr 
until January 3rd, how often did President Trump contact you or 
the Department to push allegations of election fraud?
    Mr. Rosen. So, between December 23rd and January 3rd, the 
President either called me or met with me virtually every day, 
with one or two exceptions, like Christmas Day.
    Before that--because it had been announced that I would 
become the Acting Attorney General before the date I actually 
did--the President had asked that Rich Donoghue and I go over 
and meet with him, I believe on December 15th, as well.
    Chairman Thompson. So, after you had some of these meetings 
and conversations with the President, what things did the 
President raise with you?
    Mr. Rosen. So the common element of all of this was the 
President expressing his dissatisfaction that the Justice 
Department, in his view, had not done enough to investigate 
election fraud.
    But, at different junctures, other topics came up at 
different intervals. So, at one point, he had raised the 
question of having a special counsel for election fraud. At a 
number of points, he raised requests that I meet with his 
campaign counsel, Mr. Giuliani.
    At one point, he raised whether the Justice Department 
would file a lawsuit in the Supreme Court. At a couple of 
junctures, there were questions about making public statements 
or about holding a press conference.
    At one of the later junctures was this issue of sending a 
letter to State legislatures in Georgia or other States.
    So there were different things raised at different parts 
of--or different intervals, with the common theme being his 
dissatisfaction about what the Justice Department had done to 
investigate election fraud.
    I will say that the Justice Department declined all of 
those requests that I was just referencing because we did not 
think that they were appropriate, based on the facts and the 
law as we understood them.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    So, Mr. Donoghue, on December 15th, the day after Attorney 
General Barr announced his resignation, the President summoned 
you and Mr. Rosen to the White House.
    At this meeting with the President, what did he want to 
discuss?
    Mr. Donoghue. There were a number of topics of discussion 
that day, Mr. Chairman.
    Much of the conversation focused on a report that had been 
recently released relating to Antrim County in Michigan. I 
believe on December 13th an organization called the Allied 
Security Group issued a report that alleged that the Dominion 
voting machines in that county had a 68 percent error rate.
    The report was widely covered in the media. We were aware 
of it. We obtained a copy of it on the 14th of December, the 
day prior. We circulated it to the U.S. attorneys in Michigan 
for their awareness. We had a number of discussions internally.
    But the conversation with the President on that day, the 
15th, was largely focused on that, and he was essentially 
saying, ``Have you seen this report?'' He was adamant that the 
report must be accurate, that it proved that the election was 
defective, that he, in fact, won the election, and the 
Department should be using that report to basically tell the 
American people that the results were not trustworthy.
    He went on to other theories as well, but the bulk of that 
conversation on December 15th focused on Antrim County, 
Michigan, and the ASOG report.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    Mr. Engel, we know that Attorney General Barr announced on 
December 1, 2020, that the Department of Justice had found no 
evidence of widespread fraud that could have changed the 
outcome of the election.
    So, from December 1, 2020, until today, as you sit here, 
have you ever doubted that top-line conclusion?
    Mr. Engel.\2\ No, I have never had any reason to doubt 
Attorney General Barr's conclusion.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ The prepared statement of Mr. Engel has been included in the 
Appendix and may be found on page 764.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    Pursuant to section 5(c)(8) of House Resolution 503, the 
Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. 
Kinzinger, for questions.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    In the weeks leading to January 6th, the Department of 
Justice was fielding almost daily requests from the President 
to investigate claims of election fraud. Each claim was refuted 
time and time again--an effort Attorney General Barr described 
as ``Whack-A-Mole.''
    When each of the President's efforts failed, he resorted to 
installing a new Attorney General to say the election was 
illegal and corrupt simply so he could stay in power.
    President Trump started leaning on the Justice Department 
the first chance he got, on November 29th, his first television 
interview after the election.

    Ms. Bartiromo. Where is the DOJ and the FBI in all of this, Mr. 
President? You have laid out some serious charges here. Shouldn't this 
be something that the FBI is investigating?
    President Trump. Missing in action.
    Ms. Bartiromo. Are they? Is the DOJ investigating?
    President Trump. Missing in action. Can't tell you where they are.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Republican Congressmen echoed the President 
just 2 days later. They wrote a letter to Attorney General 
Barr, laying into the Justice Department for a ``shocking lack 
of action'' in investigating the claims of election fraud.
    That same day, Attorney General Barr stated publicly that 
President Trump's claims had no merit.
    Ignoring the top law enforcement officer in the country, 
Republican Congressmen amplified the ``stolen election'' 
message to the American public. Let's listen.

    Mr. Gohmert. And so there's widespread evidence of fraud 'cause 
people haven't done their jobs. Durham and Barr will deserve a big 
notation in history when it's written of the rise and fall of the 
United States if they don't clean up this mess, clean up the fraud, do 
your jobs, and save this little experiment in self-government.
    Mr. Biggs. Again, I join my colleagues in calling on Attorney 
General Ball--Barr to immediately let us know what he's doing.
    Mr. Gosar. We're already working on challenging the certified 
electors. And then what about the courts? How pathetic are the courts? 
[Crowd Boos]
    Mr. Gaetz. January 6th, I'm joining with the fighters in the 
Congress, and we are going to object to electors from States that 
didn't run clean elections. [Applause] Democracy is left undefended if 
we accept the results of a stolen election without fighting with every 
bit of vigor we can muster.
    Mr. Jordan. The ultimate date of significance is January 6. This is 
how the process works. The ultimate arbiter here, the ultimate check 
and balance, is the U.S. Congress. And when something is done in an 
unconstitutional fashion, which happened in several of these States, we 
have a duty to step forward and have this debate and have this vote on 
the 6th of January.
    Mr. Brooks. Today is the day American patriots start taking down 
names and kicking ass.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, on December 27th, you had a 
90-minute conversation with the President where he raised false 
claim after false claim with you and Mr. Rosen.
    How did you respond to what you called a ``stream of 
allegations''?
    Mr. Donoghue. The December 27th conversation was, in my 
mind, an escalation of the earlier conversations. As the former 
Acting AG indicated, there were a lot of communications that 
preceded that. As we got later in the month of December, the 
President's entreaties became more urgent; he became more 
adamant that we weren't doing our job, we needed to step up and 
do our job.
    He had this arsenal of allegations that he wanted to rely 
on. So I felt in that conversation that it was incumbent upon 
me to make it very clear to the President what our 
investigations had revealed and that we had concluded, based on 
actual investigations, actual witness interviews, actual 
reviews of documents, that these allegations simply had no 
merit.
    I wanted to try to cut through the noise, because it was 
clear to us that there were a lot of people whispering in his 
ear, feeding him these conspiracy theories and allegations. I 
felt that being very blunt in that conversation might help make 
it clear to the President these allegations were simply not 
true.
    So, as he went through them--in what for me was a 90-minute 
conversation or so and what for the former Acting AG was a 2-
hour conversation as the President went through them, I went 
piece by piece to say, ``No, that's false, that is not true,'' 
and to correct him really in a serial fashion as he moved from 
one theory to another.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Can you give me an example of one or two of 
those theories?
    Mr. Donoghue. So one that was very clear at that point was 
the Antrim County, the ASOG report that I mentioned earlier. 
Allied Security Operations Group released this report that said 
68 percent error rate.
    There was, in fact, in Antrim County a hand recount. It had 
nothing to do with the Department. The Department did not 
request that. That was pursuant to litigation brought by other 
parties. But there was a hand recount. So they were able to 
compare the hand recount to what the machines had reported.
    For the ballots that were actually counted by machine, more 
than 15,000, there was 1 error, 1 ballot. I did a quick 
calculation and came up with .0063 percent error rate, which is 
well within tolerance.
    So I made it very clear to the President, because he was so 
fixated on the ASOG report in the December 15th conversation, 
that, in fact, our investigation revealed that the error rate 
was .0063 percent. ``So that, Mr. President, is an example of 
what people are telling you that is not true and that you 
cannot and should not be relying on.''
    So that was one very explicit one, and I think you see that 
reflected in my notes.
    We went through a series of others. The truck driver who 
claimed to have moved an entire tractor trailer of ballots from 
New York to Pennsylvania, that was also incorrect. We did an 
investigation with the FBI, interviewed witnesses at the front 
end and the back end of that trailer's transit from New York to 
Pennsylvania. We looked at loading manifests. We interviewed 
witnesses, including, of course, the driver. We knew it wasn't 
true. Whether the driver believed it or not was never clear to 
me, but it was just not true. So that was another one that I 
tried to educate the President on.
    There were a series of others, mostly in swing States. Of 
course, he wanted to talk a great deal about Georgia, the State 
Farm Arena video, which he believed for various reasons was, as 
he said it, ``fraud staring you right in the face.''
    Mr. Kinzinger. Were any of the allegations he brought up 
found credible? Did you find any of them credible?
    Mr. Donoghue. No.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So, during this conversation, did you take 
handwritten notes directly quoting the President?
    Mr. Donoghue. I did.
    To make it clear, Attorney General Rosen called me on my 
Government cell phone, said he had been on the phone with the 
President for some time, the President had a lot of these 
allegations. I was better versed in what the Department had 
done, just because I had closer contact with the 
investigations, and the AG asked me to get on the call. Of 
course, I agreed.
    I begin taking notes only because, at the outset, the 
President made an allegation I had not heard. I had heard many 
of these things; I knew many of them were investigated. But 
when the President, at least when I came to the conversation, 
when he began speaking, he brought up an allegation I was 
completely unaware of. Of course, that concerned us. So I 
simply reached out and grabbed a notepad off my wife's 
nightstand and a pen, and I started jotting it down.
    That had to do with an allegation that more than 200,000 
votes were certified in the State of Pennsylvania that were not 
actually cast. Sometimes the President would say it was 205; 
sometimes he would say it was 250. But I had not heard this 
before, and I wanted to get the allegation down clearly so that 
we could look into it, if appropriate.
    That is why I started taking those notes. Then, as the 
conversation continued, I just continued to take the notes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Let's take a look at the notes, if we could, 
right now.
    As we can see on the screen, you actually quote President 
Trump asking, ``Where's DOJ?'', just like we heard him say in 
his first television interview.
    How did you respond to that?
    Mr. Donoghue. So both the Acting AG and I tried to explain 
to the President, on this occasion and on several other 
occasions, that the Justice Department has a very important, 
very specific, but very limited role in these elections. States 
run their elections. We are not quality control for the States.
    We are obviously interested in and have a mission that 
relates to criminal conduct in relation to Federal elections. 
We also have related civil rights responsibilities. So we do 
have an important role, but the bottom line was, if a State ran 
their election in such a way that it was defective, that is to 
the State or Congress to correct. It is not for the Justice 
Department to step in.
    I certainly understood the President, as a layman, not 
understanding why the Justice Department didn't have at least a 
civil role to step in and bring suit on behalf of the American 
people. We tried to explain that to him.
    The American people do not constitute the client for the 
United States Justice Department. The one and only client of 
the United States Justice Department is the U.S. Government.
    The U.S. Government does not have standing, as we were 
repeatedly told by our internal teams--OLC, led by Steve Engel, 
as well as the Office of the Solicitor General researched it 
and gave us thorough, clear opinions that we simply did not 
have standing. We tried to explain that to the President on 
numerous occasions.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Let's take a look at another one of your 
notes. You also noted that Mr. Rosen said to Mr. Trump, ``DOJ 
can't and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the 
election.''
    How did the President respond to that, sir?
    Mr. Donoghue. He responded very quickly and said, 
essentially, ``That's not what I'm asking you to do. What I'm 
just asking you to do is just say it was corrupt, and leave the 
rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.''
    Mr. Kinzinger. So let's now put up the notes where you 
quote the President, as you were speaking to that.
    You said the President said, ``Just say the election was 
corrupt, and leave the rest to me and the Republican 
Congressmen.''
    So, Mr. Donoghue, that is a direct quote from President 
Trump, correct?
    Mr. Donoghue. That is an exact quote from the President, 
yes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. The next note shows that the President kept 
pressing.
    Even though he had been told that there was no evidence of 
fraud, did the President keep saying that the Department was 
``obligated to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt 
election''?
    Mr. Donoghue. That is also an exact quote from the 
President, yes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Let me just be clear. Did the Department 
find any evidence to conclude that there was anything illegal 
or corrupt about the 2020 election?
    Mr. Donoghue. There were isolated instances of fraud. None 
of them came close to calling into question the outcome of the 
election in any individual State.
    Mr. Kinzinger. How would you describe the President's 
demeanor during that call?
    Mr. Donoghue. He was more agitated than he was on December 
15th. The President, throughout all of these meetings and 
telephone conversations, was adamant that he had won and that 
we were not doing our job. But it did escalate over time until 
ultimately the meeting on January 3rd, which was sort-of the 
most extreme of the meetings and conversations.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So I want to make sure we don't gloss this 
over: ``Just say it was corrupt, and leave the rest to us.''
    The President wanted the top Justice Department officials 
to declare that the election was corrupt, even though, as he 
knew, there was absolutely no evidence to support that 
statement.
    The President didn't care about actually investigating the 
facts. He just wanted the Department of Justice to put its 
stamp of approval on the lies.
    Who was going to help him? Well, Jeff Clark.
    Mr. Rosen, on Christmas Eve, your first official day as the 
Acting Attorney General, President Trump called you. What did 
he want to talk about?
    Mr. Rosen. The same things he was talking about publicly. 
He wanted to talk about that he thought the election had been 
stolen or was corrupt and that there was widespread fraud. I 
had told him that our reviews had not shown that to be the 
case.
    So we had an extended discussion, probably 15, maybe 20 
minutes, something like that, with him urging that the 
Department of Justice should be doing more with regard to 
election fraud.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did he mention Jeff Clark's name?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes. It was just in passing. He made what I 
regarded as a peculiar reference. I don't remember the exact 
quote, but it was something about, did I know Jeff Clark, or 
did I know who he was, or something like that. I told him I 
did, and then the conversation just moved on.
    But when I hung up, I was quizzical as to, how does the 
President even know Mr. Clark? I was not aware that they had 
ever met or that the President had been involved with any of 
the issues in the Civil Division.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So it was a bit of a surprise when he 
brought his name up?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So Mr. Clark was the acting head of the 
Civil Division and head of Environmental and Natural Resources 
Division at the Department of Justice.
    Do either of those divisions have any role whatsoever in 
investigating election fraud, sir?
    Mr. Rosen. No. And, to my awareness, Jeff Clark had had no 
prior involvement of any kind with regard to the work that the 
Department was doing that Attorney General Barr has talked 
about to this Committee.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So let's take a minute and explain why the 
President mentioned Jeff Clark's name to Mr. Rosen here on 
Christmas Eve.
    On December 21st, some Republican Members of Congress met 
with President Trump in the White House to talk about 
overturning the 2020 election.
    Let's hear Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene talk about 
how this meeting got set up.

    Mrs. Greene of Georgia. I was the only new Member at the meeting. I 
called President Trump on Saturday and--and said, ``We've got to have a 
meeting. There's many of us that feel like this election has been 
stolen.''

    Mr. Kinzinger. So, on the screen, you will see that 
President Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, tweeted about 
that meeting right after it happened.
    He said, ``Several Members of Congress just finished a 
meeting in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump, 
preparing to fight back against mounting evidence of voter 
fraud. Stay tuned.''
    On the same day he met with these Republican Members of 
Congress, President Trump called into a conservative political 
convention, and he used the opportunity to pressure the 
Department of Justice to investigate his bogus claims.

    President Trump. The problem is we need a party that's going to 
fight, and we have some great Congressmen and--women that are doing it. 
And we have others, some great fighters. But we won this in a 
landslide. They know it, and we need backing from, like, the Justice 
Department. And other people have to finally step up.

    Mr. Kinzinger. The Select Committee obtained records from 
the National Archives that show that Scott Perry was one of the 
Congressmen who joined that meeting.
    We learned from White House records--that you will now see 
on the screen--that, the very next day, Representative Perry 
returned to the White House. This time, he brought a Justice 
Department official named Jeffrey Clark.
    Representative Perry provided the following statement to 
his local TV affiliate. He said, ``Throughout the past 4 years, 
I've worked with Assistant Attorney General Clark on various 
legislative matters. When President Trump asked if I would make 
an introduction, I obliged.''
    But why Jeff Clark? Let's hear Mr. Giuliani explain the 
kind of person that he and the President wanted at the top of 
Justice.

    Mr. George. Do you remember ever recommending to anybody that Mr. 
Clark, meaning Jeffrey Clark, at DOJ be given election-related 
responsibilities?
    Mr. Giuliani. You mean beyond the President?
    Mr. George. Correct.
    Mr. Giuliani. Well, beyond the President, I do recall saying to 
people that somebody should be put in charge of the Justice Department 
who isn't frightened of what's going to be done to their reputation 
because the Justice Department was filled with people like that.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Should put somebody that is not frightened 
of what is going to be done to their reputation.
    Mr. Donoghue, when you told the President that you wouldn't 
pursue baseless claims of fraud, was it because you were 
worried about your reputation?
    Mr. Donoghue. No. Not at all.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Clark's name was also mentioned in White 
House in late December and early January, as described by a top 
aide to Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson.

    Mr. George. Was it your understanding that Representative Perry was 
pushing for a specific person to take over the Department?
    Ms. Hutchinson. He wanted Mr. Clark--Mr. Jeff Clark to take over 
the Department of Justice.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Rosen, after your call with President 
Trump on December 24th, you spoke with Mr. Clark on December 
26th about his contact with the President.
    Can you tell us about that conversation?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes.
    Because I had been quizzical about why his name had come 
up, I called him, and I tried to explore if he would share if 
there was something I ought to know. After some back-and-forth, 
he acknowledged that shortly before Christmas he had gone to a 
meeting in the Oval Office with the President.
    That, of course, surprised me. I asked him, how did that 
happen? He was defensive. He said it had been unplanned, that 
he had been talking to someone he referred to as ``General 
Perry'' but I believe is Congressman Perry, and that, 
unbeknownst to him, he was asked to go to a meeting, and he 
didn't know it but it turned out it was at the Oval--he found 
himself at the Oval Office. He was apologetic for that.
    I said, well, you didn't tell me about it, it wasn't 
authorized, and you didn't even tell me after the fact. You 
know, this is not appropriate.
    But he was contrite and said it had been inadvertent and it 
would not happen again and that if anyone asked him to go to 
such a meeting he would notify Rich Donoghue and me.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Is there a policy that governs who can have 
contact directly with the White House?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes. So, across many administrations, for a long 
period of time, there is a policy that, particularly with 
regard to criminal investigations, restricts at both the White 
House end and the Justice Department end those more sensitive 
issues to the highest ranks.
    So, for criminal matters, the policy for a long time has 
been that only the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney 
General, from the DOJ side, can have conversations about 
criminal matters with the White House, or the Attorney General 
and the Deputy Attorney General can authorize someone for a 
specific item with their permission.
    But the idea is to make sure that the top rung of the 
Justice Department knows about it and is in the thing to 
control it and make sure only appropriate things are done.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Engel, from your perspective, why is it 
important to have a policy like Mr. Rosen just discussed?
    Mr. Engel. Well, it is critical that the Department of 
Justice conducts its criminal investigations free from either 
the reality or any appearance of political interference.
    So people can get in trouble if people at the White House 
are speaking with people at the Department. That is why--the 
purpose of these policies is to keep these communications as 
infrequent and at the highest levels as possible, just to make 
sure that people who are less careful about it, who don't 
really understand these implications, such as Mr. Clark, don't 
run afoul of those contact policies.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you.
    So the Select Committee conducted an informal interview 
with the White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, and his deputy, 
Pat Philbin, about their contact with Mr. Clark, though neither 
has yet agreed to sit for transcribed and videotaped 
interviews.
    But Pat Cipollone told the Select Committee that he 
intervened when he heard Mr. Clark was meeting with the 
President about legal matters without his knowledge, which was 
strictly against White House policy.
    Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Philbin, like Mr. Rosen, told Mr. 
Clark to stand down, and he didn't.
    On the same day Acting Attorney General Rosen told Mr. 
Clark to stop talking to the White House, Representative Perry 
was urging Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to elevate Clark within 
the Department of Justice.
    You can now see on the screen behind me a series of texts 
between Representative Perry and Mr. Meadows. They show that 
Representative Perry requested that Mr. Clark be elevated 
within the Department.
    Representative Perry tells Mr. Meadows on December 26th 
that, ``Mark, just checking in as time continues to count down. 
Eleven days to January 6th and 25 days to inauguration. We've 
got to get going.''
    Representative Perry followed up and says, ``Mark, you 
should call Jeff. I just got off the phone with him, and he 
explained to me why the principal deputy won't work, especially 
with the FBI. They will view it as not having the authority to 
enforce what needs to be done.''
    Mr. Meadows responds with, ``I got it. I think I 
understand. Let me work on the deputy position.''
    Representative Perry then texts, ``Roger. Just sent you 
something on Signal. Just sent you an updated file. Did you 
call Jeff Clark?''
    Mr. Donoghue, Representative Perry called you the next day, 
on December 27th. Who told him to call you?
    Mr. Donoghue. My understanding is the President did. At the 
outset of the call, Congressman Perry told me that he was 
calling at the behest of the President.
    Mr. Kinzinger. What did he want to talk about?
    Mr. Donoghue. He wanted to talk about Pennsylvania in 
particular. He gave me some background about, you know, why he 
in particular doesn't trust the FBI and why the American people 
don't necessarily trust the FBI.
    Then he went into some allegations specific to 
Pennsylvania, which included, amongst others, this allegation 
that the secretary of state had certified more votes than were 
actually cast.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did you direct the local U.S. attorney's 
office to investigate that claim?
    Mr. Donoghue. So Mr. Perry said that he had a great deal of 
information, that investigations had been done, that there was 
some sort of forensic-type report that would be helpful to me.
    I didn't know Congressman Perry. I had never heard of him 
before this conversation. But I said, ``Sir, if you've got 
something that you think is relevant to what the Justice 
Department's mission is, you should feel free to send it to 
me.'' He did.
    I was en route from New York to Washington. I got it. I 
looked at it on my iPhone. Obviously, I couldn't read the whole 
thing in transit like that, but I looked at it to get a feel 
for what it was. Then I forwarded it to the United States 
attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did they get back to you? What did they 
conclude?
    Mr. Donoghue. Scott Brady looked at it. He was the Western 
District of Pennsylvania U.S. attorney. Took him a couple days, 
but he got back in relatively short order with a pretty clear 
explanation for why there was no foundation for concern.
    The secretary of state had not certified more votes than 
were actually cast. The difference between the 5.25 that was 
actually certified by the secretary of state and the 5 million 
that was on a public-facing website was that the information on 
the website was incomplete because 4 counties had not uploaded 
their data.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So no credibility to that claim?
    Mr. Donoghue. There was zero to that, right.
    Mr. Kinzinger. During that call, did Scott Perry mention 
Mr. Clark? What did he say about him, if so?
    Mr. Donoghue. He did; he mentioned Mr. Clark. He said 
something to the effect of, ``I think Jeff Clark is great, and 
I think he is the kind of guy who could get in there and do 
something about this stuff.''
    This was coming on the heels of the President having 
mentioned Mr. Clark in the afternoon call earlier that day.
    Mr. Kinzinger. I would like to yield to the gentlewoman 
from Wyoming, Vice Chair Cheney.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Kinzinger. I 
thank the gentleman for yielding.
    As we discussed earlier, at the center of Mr. Clark's plan 
to undo President Trump's election loss was a letter.
    Mr. Donoghue, on December 28th, Mr. Clark emailed you and 
Mr. Rosen a draft letter that he wanted you to sign and send to 
Georgia State officials. You testified that this could have 
``grave constitutional consequences.''
    Mr. Donoghue, can you tell us what you meant by that?
    Mr. Donoghue. Well, I had to read both the email and the 
attached letter twice to make sure I really understood what he 
was proposing because it was so extreme to me I had a hard time 
getting my head around it initially.
    But I read it, and I did understand it for what he 
intended, and I had to sit down and sort-of compose what I 
thought was an appropriate response.
    I actually initially went next door to the Acting AG's 
office, but he was not there. We were both on that email. I 
knew we would both have probably a very similar reaction to it.
    He was not in his office, so I returned to my office, and I 
sat down to draft a response because I thought it was very 
important to give a prompt response rejecting this out of hand.
    In my response I explained a number of reasons this is not 
the Department's role to suggest or dictate to State 
legislatures how they should select their electors. But more 
importantly, this was not based on fact. This was actually 
contrary to the facts as developed by Department investigations 
over the last several weeks and months.
    So I responded to that. For the Department to insert itself 
into the political process this way I think would have had 
grave consequences for the country. It may very well have 
spiraled us into a constitutional crisis. I wanted to make sure 
that he understood the gravity of the situation because he 
didn't seem to really appreciate it.
    Vice Chair Cheney. What was Mr. Clark's reaction when you 
sent this email to him?
    Mr. Donoghue. He didn't respond directly to the email, but 
we met shortly after that. After I sent the email, the Acting 
AG returned. I went to his office. He had just read it. He had 
a very similar reaction to me. He was exasperated. He told me 
that he had told one of his administrative assistants to get 
Jeff Clark up here, we want to him talk face to face about 
this.
    So the three of us then had a meeting probably around 1800 
that night in the Deputy Attorney General's conference room.
    Vice Chair Cheney. One of the things that you said to Mr. 
Clark is, ``What you are doing is nothing less than the United 
States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a 
Presidential election.''
    I assume you conveyed that to him as well in your meeting 
that evening?
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes, in those very words. It was a very 
contentious meeting. But, yes, that was said, amongst other 
things.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Despite this contentious meeting and 
your strong reaction to the letter, did Mr. Clark continue to 
push his concept in the coming days?
    Mr. Donoghue. He did, yes. We had subsequent meetings and 
conversations. The Acting AG probably had more contact with him 
than I did.
    But between the 28th and the 2nd, when we had another in-
person meeting, he clearly continued to move down this path. He 
began calling witnesses and apparently conducting 
investigations of his own.
    He got a briefing from DNI about purported foreign 
intelligence interference. We thought perhaps once it was 
explained to him that there was no basis for that part of his 
concern, that he would retreat.
    But instead, he doubled down and said, ``Well, okay, so 
there is no foreign interference. I still think there are 
enough allegations out there that we should go ahead and send 
this letter,'' which shocked me even more than the initial one 
because you would think after a couple days of looking at this, 
he, like we, would have come to the same conclusion that it was 
completely unfounded.
    Vice Chair Cheney. When you learned that he had been 
calling witnesses and conducting investigations on his own, did 
you confront him?
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes.
    Vice Chair Cheney. What was his reaction?
    Mr. Donoghue. He got very defensive. You know, as I said, 
there were a series of conversations through that week. I 
certainly remember very specifically the conversation and the 
meeting on January 2nd. That got even more confrontational.
    But he was defensive. You know, similar to his earlier 
reaction when I said this is nothing less than Justice 
Department meddling in an election, his reaction was, ``I think 
a lot of people have meddled in this election.''
    So he kind-of clung to that, and then spewed out some of 
these theories, some of which we had heard from the President, 
but others which were floating around the internet and media, 
and just kept insisting that the Department needed to act and 
needed to send those letters.
    Vice Chair Cheney. The Committee has also learned that Mr. 
Clark was working with another attorney at the Department named 
Ken Klukowski, who drafted this letter to Georgia with Mr. 
Clark.
    Mr. Klukowski had arrived at the Department on December 
15th with just 36 days left until the inauguration. He was 
specifically assigned to work under Jeff Clark.
    Mr. Klukowski also worked with John Eastman, who we showed 
you at our hearing last week was one of the primary architects 
of President Trump's scheme to overturn the election.
    The Georgia letter that we have been discussing 
specifically talks about some of Dr. Eastman's theories, 
including, ``The purpose of the special session the Department 
recommends would be for the General Assembly to determine 
whether the election failed to make a proper and valid choice 
between the candidates, such that a General Assembly could take 
whatever action is necessary to ensure that one of the slates 
of electors cast on December 14th will be accepted by Congress 
on January 6th.''
    The Committee has also learned that the relationship 
between Dr. Eastman and Mr. Klukowski persisted after Mr. 
Klukowski joined the Justice Department.
    Let's take a look at an email recommending that Mr. 
Klukowski and Dr. Eastman brief Vice President Pence and his 
staff. Other recipients of this email included the chief of 
staff to Congressman Louie Gohmert.
    The email says, ``As stated last week, I believe the Vice 
President and his staff would benefit greatly from a briefing 
by John and Ken. As I also mentioned, we want to make sure we 
don't overexpose Ken given his new position.''
    This email suggests that Mr. Klukowski was simultaneously 
working with Jeffrey Clark to draft the proposed letter to 
Georgia officials to overturn their certified election and 
working with Dr. Eastman to help pressure the Vice President to 
overturn the election.
    I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today 
and for answering our questions about this letter and other 
issues.
    We asked Mr. Clark some of the same questions that we have 
asked you, and here is how he answered.

    Mr. Wood. Did you discuss this draft letter to Georgia officials 
with the President of the United States?
    Mr. Clark. Fifth and executive privilege. Again, just restated for 
the abundance of caution.
    Mr. Wood. Okay. If you look again at the draft letter, in the first 
paragraph, second sentence says, ``The Department will update you as we 
are able on investigatory progress, but at this time, we have 
identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of 
the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.'' 
Isn't that, in fact, contrary to what Attorney General Barr had said on 
December 1, 2020?
    Mr. Clark. Fifth.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Chairman, I reserve.
    Chairman Thompson. Pursuant to the order of the Committee 
of today, the Chair declares the Committee in recess for a 
period of approximately 10 minutes.
    [Accordingly, at 4:08 p.m., the Committee recessed until 
4:20 p.m., when it was called to order by the Chairman.]
    Chairman Thompson. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Chairman, around the time Mr. Clark was pushing for the 
Department to send the Georgia letter, the President and his 
supporters were pressuring the Justice Department to take other 
actions to change the outcome of the 2020 election.
    Mr. Engel, you were the head of the Office of Legal 
Counsel. Can you first off explain your role? What is that?
    Mr. Engel. Sure. One of the Attorney General's most 
important responsibilities is to provide legal advice to the 
President and to the executive branch.
    As a practical matter, given the responsibilities of the 
Attorney General, the Assistant Attorney General for the Office 
of Legal Counsel exercises that job on a day-to-day basis.
    So, in addition, the head of OLC often functions as a 
general counsel essentially to the Attorney General, and so is 
often the chief legal adviser to the AG as well as the White 
House and the executive branch more broadly.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So given that role, can you kind-of describe 
your relationship with the President?
    Mr. Engel. Well, in connection with my role at OLC, over 
the course of my tenure there there were a number of instances 
in which folks at the White House would seek to bring me in to 
provide legal advice to the President, sometimes discussing the 
legal options that could be pursued among various policy--to 
reach various policy objectives, sometimes to advise the 
President that a course of action that they had been discussing 
was not legally available.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So I want to ask you about two things the 
President asked you and the Department to do. The first is 
reflected in this email that we are going to put on the screen.
    The President sent a draft lawsuit to be filed by the 
Department and the Supreme Court. He wanted you, Mr. Rosen, and 
Mr. Cipollone specifically to review it. You and the Department 
opposed filing it.
    We see on the screen here the talking points that you 
actually drafted on that. So you stated that, ``There is no 
legal basis to bring this lawsuit. Anyone who thinks otherwise 
simply doesn't know the law, much less the Supreme Court.''
    Why was this the Department's position?
    Mr. Engel. Well, I mean, I think the memo sort-of speaks to 
this.
    But essentially this was a draft lawsuit that apparently 
was prepared by people outside the Department. It would be 
styled as brought by the United States and by the Acting 
Solicitor General as an original jurisdiction matter in the 
Supreme Court.
    It was a meritless lawsuit that was not something that the 
Department could or would bring. You know, somebody obviously 
prepared it, handed it to the President, and he forwarded it on 
for our review.
    But that memo explains why the Department of Justice, as 
Mr. Donoghue said earlier, doesn't have any standing to bring 
such a lawsuit. The lawsuit would have been untimely. The 
States had chosen their electors. The electors had been 
certified. They had cast their votes. They had been sent to 
Washington, DC.
    Neither Georgia nor any of the other States on December 
28th, or whenever this was, was in a position to change those 
votes. Essentially, the election had happened. The only thing 
that hadn't happened was the formal counting of the votes.
    So, obviously, the person who drafted this lawsuit didn't 
really understand, in my view, you know, the law and/or how the 
Supreme Court works or the Department of Justice.
    So it was just not something we were going to do. The 
Acting Attorney General asked me to prepare a memo with talking 
points so that he could explain our reasons when he spoke with 
the President about this.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So would you say it was an unusual request?
    Mr. Engel. Certainly. The request that the Department file 
a lawsuit from--drafted by outside lawyers--was certainly an 
unusual request.
    Mr. Kinzinger. There was another issue you were asked to 
look into. In mid-December, did the White House ask Attorney 
General Barr to consider whether a special counsel could be 
appointed to look into election fraud issues?
    Mr. Engel. Yes. I mean, I think the President was probably 
vocal at the time that he believed that a special counsel was 
something that should be considered to look into election 
fraud. There is a specific, you know, request where the 
Attorney General sought my legal advice in the middle of 
December.
    Mr. Kinzinger. What was your conclusion? What conclusion 
did you reach?
    Mr. Engel. So this request was whether the Attorney General 
could appoint as a special counsel a State attorney general to 
conduct an investigation.
    I mean, as a legal matter, under Federal law the Attorney 
General actually has fairly wide discretion to delegate 
prosecutorial authority, including to State prosecutors, which 
happens to assist the Department, you know, and not uncommonly. 
Obviously, a State attorney general exercising prosecutorial 
authority on behalf of the Department of Justice would be 
fairly uncommon.
    When we looked at the issue, what we saw is actually that 
the State law--the State was Louisiana--that the State law 
precluded the Louisiana attorney general from accepting any 
position, any official position on behalf of the U.S. 
Government. So that answered the question, that it was not 
legally available.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So during your time at the Department, was 
there ever any basis to appoint a special counsel to 
investigate President Trump's election fraud claims?
    Mr. Engel. Well, neither Attorney General Barr nor Acting 
Attorney General Rosen did appoint a special counsel. You would 
appoint a special counsel when the Department--when there is a 
basis for the investigation and the Department essentially has 
a conflict of interest.
    It is important to get someone who is independent outside 
of the Department to handle such an investigation. Neither 
Attorney General Barr nor Acting Attorney General Rosen ever 
believed that that was appropriate or necessary in this case.
    Mr. Kinzinger. In fact, Attorney General Barr had already 
told the President that there was no need for the special 
counsel. He actually stated that publicly, and we will see that 
here in a video from December 21st.

    Attorney General Barr. To the extent that there's an investigation, 
I think that it's being handled responsibly and professionally 
currently within the--the Department, and to this point, I have not 
seen a reason to appoint a Special Counsel, and I have no plan to do so 
before I leave.

    Mr. Kinzinger. So remember that December 21st was the same 
day President Trump met with Republican Members at the White 
House to strategize about how to overturn the election while 
his Attorney General is out telling the public, again, that 
there was no widespread evidence of election fraud. Yet, 2 days 
later, we have President Trump tweeting, again publicly 
pressuring the Department to appoint a special counsel.
    He said, ``After seeing the massive voter fraud in the 2020 
Presidential election, I disagree with anyone that thinks a 
strong, fast, and fair special counsel is not needed 
immediately. This was the most corrupt election in the history 
of our country, and it must be closely examined.''
    The Select Committee's investigation revealed that 
President Trump went as far as to promise the job of special 
counsel to now discredited former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney 
Powell at a late-night meeting December 18th.

    Ms. Powell. I know on--on Friday he had asked me to be Special 
Counsel to address the election issues and to collect evidence, and he 
was extremely frustrated with the lack of, I would call it, law 
enforcement by any of the government agencies that are supposed to act 
to protect the rule of law in our republic.

    Mr. Kinzinger. So let's think here. What would a special 
counsel do? With only days to go until election certification, 
it wasn't to investigate anything. An investigation led by a 
special counsel would just create an illusion of legitimacy and 
provide fake cover for those who would want to object, 
including those who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. All of 
President Trump's plans for the Justice Department were being 
rebuffed by Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue, Mr. Engel, and others.
    The President became desperate entering into the New Year 
with January 6th fast approaching. President Trump rushed back 
early from Mar-a-Lago on December 31st and called an emergency 
meeting with the Department's leadership.
    Here is Mr. Donoghue describing the last-minute meeting 
held at the White House on New Year's Eve.

    Mr. Donoghue. The President was a little more agitated than he had 
been on the meeting--in the meeting on the 15th. He discussed a variety 
of election matters. He did say, ``This sounds like the kind of thing 
that would warrant appointment of a Special Counsel.'' There was a 
point at which the President said something about, ``Why don't you guys 
seize machines?''

    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Rosen, the President asked you to seize 
voting machines from State governments. What was your response 
to that request?
    Mr. Rosen. That we had seen nothing improper with regard to 
the voting machines. I told him that the real experts at that 
had been at DHS, and they had briefed us that they had looked 
at it and that there was nothing wrong with the voting 
machines. So that was not something that was appropriate to do.
    Mr. Kinzinger. There would be no factual basis to seize 
machines?
    Mr. Rosen. I don't think there was legal authority either.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, can you explain what the 
President did after he was told that the Justice Department 
would not seize voting machines?
    Mr. Donoghue. The President was very agitated by the Acting 
Attorney General's response. To the extent that machines and 
the technology was being discussed, the Acting Attorney General 
said that the DHS, Department of Homeland Security, has 
expertise in machines and certifying them and making sure that 
the States were operating them properly.
    Since DHS had been mentioned, the President yelled out to 
his secretary, ``Get Ken Cuccinelli on the phone.'' She did in 
very short order.
    Mr. Cuccinelli was on the phone. He was No. 2 at DHS at the 
time. I was on the speaker phone. The President essentially 
said, ``Ken, I am sitting here with the Acting Attorney 
General. He just told me it is your job to seize machines, and 
you are not doing your job.'' Mr. Cuccinelli responded.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Rosen, did you ever tell the President 
that the Department of Homeland Security could seize voting 
machines?
    Mr. Rosen. No, certainly not.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, during this meeting, did the 
President tell you that he would remove you and Mr. Rosen 
because you weren't declaring there was election fraud?
    Mr. Donoghue. Toward the end of the meeting the President, 
again, was getting very agitated, and he said, ``People tell me 
I should just get rid of both of you, I should just remove you 
and make a change in the leadership, put Jeff Clark in, maybe 
something will finally get done.''
    I responded as I think I had earlier in the December 27th 
call: ``Mr. President, you should have the leadership that you 
want. But understand the United States Justice Department 
functions on facts, evidence, and law, and those are not going 
to change. So you can have whatever leadership you want, but 
the Department's position is not going to change.''
    Mr. Kinzinger. The President's White House Counsel, Pat 
Cipollone, was also present. Do you remember what his position 
was?
    Mr. Donoghue. Pat was very supportive. Pat Cipollone 
throughout these conversations was extremely supportive of the 
Justice Department. He was consistent. I think he had an 
impossible job at that point, but he did it well. He always 
sided with the Justice Department in these discussions.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So let's pause for a second. It is New 
Year's Eve. President Trump is talking about seizing voting 
machines and making the same demands that had already been shot 
down by former Attorney General Barr on at least three 
occasions and by Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue on multiple other 
occasions. Claim after claim knocked down, but the President 
didn't care.
    The next day, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sent a flurry of 
emails to you, Mr. Rosen, asking that the Department look into 
a new set of allegations. We are going to put those emails here 
on the screen.
    Here we see three requests made on January 1st. One email 
is a request from Mr. Meadows to you, Mr. Rosen, to send Jeff 
Clark to Fulton County.
    What did you do with this request?
    Mr. Rosen. Well, really nothing. Certainly didn't send Mr. 
Clark to Fulton County. But that email was the first 
corroboration I had seen of--Mr. Clark had told me at that 
point that the President was considering making the change by 
Monday, January 4th.
    So Mr. Meadows' email was something of a corroboration that 
there were discussions going on that I had been--not been 
informed about by Mr. Clark or anybody else.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Interesting.
    The second request that you have is to have the Department 
of Justice lawyers investigate allegations of fraud related to 
New Mexico.
    Mr. Rosen, did you have concern about these emails?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes. Really two concerns about that one. One was 
that it was coming from a campaign or political party, and it 
was really not our role to function as, you know, an arm of any 
campaign for any party or any campaign. That wasn't our role. 
That is part of why I had been unwilling to meet with Mr. 
Giuliani or any of the campaign people before.
    The other part was it was another one of these ones where 
lots of work had already been done and I thought it was a 
rehash of things that had been debunked previously.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So the final email here included a 
completely baseless conspiracy theory that an Italian defense 
contractor uploaded software to a satellite that switched votes 
from Trump to Biden.
    The Select Committee investigation found that this wild, 
baseless conspiracy theory made it from the recesses of the 
internet to the highest echelons of our Government. On December 
31st, Mr. Meadows received this internet conspiracy theory from 
Representative Perry.
    On the screen now is the text that Representative Perry 
sent to Mr. Meadows, copying a YouTube link with the message, 
``Why can't we just work with the Italian government?''
    The next day, the President's chief of staff sent the 
YouTube link to Mr. Rosen, who forwarded it to Mr. Donoghue.
    Mr. Donoghue, did you watch this video?
    Mr. Donoghue. I did, Congressman.
    Mr. Kinzinger. How long was the video?
    Mr. Donoghue. Approximately 20 minutes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Let's just take a look at an excerpt of that 
video, if we may.

    Mr. Johnson. What's being said out of Rome, out of Italy is that 
this was done in the U.S. Embassy, that there was a certain State 
Department guy whose name I don't know yet. I guess this is probably 
going to come out in Italy at some point. And he was the mastermind--
not the mastermind, but the--but anyway, the guy running the operation 
of changing the votes. And that he was doing this in conjunction with 
some support from MI6, the CIA, and this Leonardo group.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, what was your reaction when 
you watched that entire 20-minute video?
    Mr. Donoghue. I emailed the Acting Attorney General and I 
said, ``pure insanity,'' which was my impression of the video, 
which was patently absurd.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Rosen, you were asked by Mr. Meadows to 
meet with Mr. Johnson, who is the person in that video. What 
was your reaction to that request?
    Mr. Rosen. So, ordinarily, I would get an email like this 
and there was no phone call. It would just come over the 
transom.
    But this one, he called me, Mr. Meadows, and asked me to 
meet with Mr. Johnson. I told him this whole thing about Italy 
had been debunked and that should be the end of that, and I 
certainly wasn't going to meet with this person.
    He initially seemed to accept that. He said, ``You know, 
well, why won't you meet with him?''
    I said, ``Because if he has real evidence, which this video 
doesn't show, he can walk into an FBI field office anywhere in 
the United States. There are 55 of them.''
    He said, ``Okay.''
    But then he called me back a few minutes later and 
complained and said, ``I didn't tell you, but this fellow, 
Johnson, is working with Rudy Giuliani, and Mr. Giuliani is 
really offended that you think they have to go to an FBI field 
office. That is insulting. So couldn't you just have the FBI or 
you meet with these guys?''
    By then, I was somewhat agitated, and told him that there 
was no way on Earth that I was going to do that. I wasn't going 
to meet with Mr. Johnson. I certainly wasn't going to meet with 
Mr. Giuliani. I had made that clear repeatedly. So that is the 
end of that, you know, don't raise this with me again.
    So because Mr. Donoghue and I had been exchanging our views 
about this--I think it was, yes, 7:13 on a Friday night of New 
Year's Day--had run out of patience. I sent the email that you 
are talking about where I made pretty clear that I had no 
interest in doing anything further with this.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Just to button this up, Mr. Donoghue. Did 
you receive a follow-up call from a Department of Defense 
official about this conspiracy?
    Mr. Donoghue. I did. I believe it was that same day.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Can you give details on that at all?
    Mr. Donoghue. I received a telephone call from Kash Patel, 
who I know was a DOD official at that time, worked for, I 
believe, Acting Secretary of Defense Miller, and he didn't know 
much about it. He basically said, ``Do you know anything about 
this Italy thing and what this is all about?''
    I informed him that the chief of staff had raised the issue 
with us in his office on December 29th, that we had looked into 
it a little bit. We had run the name that was provided to us by 
the chief of staff.
    I learned that that individual was in custody in Italy. He 
had been arrested for a cyber offense of some sort in Italy. 
The allegation was that he had been exfiltrating data from his 
company. He was either an employee or a contractor of that 
company, and he was in custody. That the whole thing was very, 
very murky at best, and the video was absurd. But that we, the 
Department, were not going to have anything do with it and DOD 
should make up its own mind as to what they are going to do. 
But I made it clear to him that I didn't think it was anything 
worth pursuing.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So you called the video absurd, and despite 
the absurdity of that conspiracy theory we learned that Mr. 
Meadows discussed it frequently in the White House.
    Mr. Meadows didn't let the matter go. The request went from 
the Department of Justice to the Secretary of Defense, 
Christopher Miller. As you will hear, Secretary Miller actually 
reached out to a high-ranking official based in Italy to follow 
up on this claim.

    Acting Secretary of Defense Miller. The ask for him was, ``Can you 
call out the Defense Attache Rome and find out what the heck's going on 
because I'm getting all these weird, crazy reports and probably the guy 
on the ground knows more than anything?''

    Mr. Kinzinger. The Select Committee confirmed that a call 
was actually placed by Secretary Miller to the attache in Italy 
to investigate the claim that Italian satellites were switching 
votes from Trump to Biden.
    This is one of the best examples of the lengths to which 
President Trump would go to stay in power--scouring the 
internet to support his conspiracy theories shown here, as he 
told Mr. Donoghue in that December 27th call, ``You guys may 
not be following the internet the way I do.''
    President Trump's efforts to this point had failed. 
Stonewalled by Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue, President Trump had 
only one option: He needed to make Clark Acting Attorney 
General.
    Mr. Rosen, during a January 2nd meeting with Mr. Clark, did 
you confront him again about his contact with the President? If 
so, can you describe that?
    Mr. Rosen. So at this point Mr. Clark had told us that the 
President had asked him to consider whether he would be willing 
to replace me, supposedly on a time table by Monday the 4th.
    So I had told Mr. Clark I thought he was making a colossal 
error in judgment, but I also hoped to persuade him to be more 
rational and to understood what we had understood, that there 
is not a factual basis for the fraud assertions that are being 
made.
    So at this meeting, Mr. Donoghue and I met with Mr. Clark, 
and I guess my hopes were disappointed in that Mr. Clark 
continued to express a view that he thought there was fraud, 
even though he had not been a participant in the Department's 
review of that, and that he was dissatisfied that we knew what 
we were doing.
    But he had acknowledged that he had had further--I don't 
know if it was a meeting or phone calls or what--but further 
discussion with the President despite having a week earlier 
said that he, (A), wouldn't do that, and if did, if he got an 
invitation to do that, he would let Rich Donoghue or me know.
    So we had--it was a contentious meeting where we were 
chastising him that he was insubordinate, he was out of line, 
he had not honored his own representations of what he would do. 
He raised, again, that he thought that letter should go out and 
we were not receptive to that.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did he tell you in that that the President 
had offered him the job of Acting Attorney General?
    Mr. Rosen. That was a day later. On the 2nd, he said that 
the President had asked him to let him know if he would be 
willing to take it.
    Subsequently, he told me that--on Sunday, the 3rd--he told 
me that the time line had moved up and that the President had 
offered him the job and that he was accepting it.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Let me ask you about that.
    What was your reaction to that?
    Mr. Rosen. Well, on the one hand, I wasn't going to accept 
being fired by my subordinate, so I wanted to talk to the 
President directly.
    With regard to--the reason for that is I wanted to try to 
convince the President not to go down the wrong path that Mr. 
Clark seemed to be advocating.
    It wasn't about me. There are only 17 days left in the 
administration at that point. I would have been perfectly 
content to have either of the gentleman on my left or right 
replace me if anybody wanted to do that.
    But I did not want for Department of Justice to be put in a 
posture where it would be doing things that were not consistent 
with the truth, were not consistent with its own appropriate 
role, or were not consistent with the Constitution.
    So I did four things as soon as Mr. Clark left my office on 
that Sunday, the 3rd.
    No. 1, I called Mark Meadows and said I need to see the 
President right away. He was agreeable and set up a meeting for 
6:15 that Sunday, so about 2 hours away.
    No. 2, I called Pat Cipollone, the White House Counsel, 
told him what was going on, and he said he would go into the 
White House to make sure he was at the meeting, and he would be 
supporting the Justice Department's position as he had been 
doing consistently.
    No. 3, I called Steve Engel, who was--I was at the 
Department. It was a Sunday, but there had been some reasons I 
needed to be there. Mr. Engel I called at home and asked him if 
he would come in and go to the meeting, which he did and proved 
to be quite helpful.
    Then, No. 4, I asked Rich Donoghue and Pat Hovakimian, who 
had previously been my chief of staff, to get the Department's 
senior leadership on a call and let them know what was going 
on, which they did.
    Then Eric Herschmann called me to tell me that he was going 
to go to the meeting and that he would be supporting the 
Department of Justice position as well.
    So I knew that the meeting was on course and that I would 
have a number of people supportive of the Department of 
Justice's approach and not supportive of Mr. Clark's approach.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did Mr. Clark ask you to continue to stay at 
the Department?
    Mr. Rosen. At that Sunday meeting when he told me that he 
would be replacing me, he said he had asked to see me alone, 
because usually he had met with me and Mr. Donoghue, because he 
thought it would be appropriate in light of what was happening 
to at least offer me that I could stay on as his deputy.
    I thought that was preposterous, told him that was 
nonsensical, and that there is no universe where I was going to 
do that, to stay on and support someone else doing things that 
were not consistent with what I thought should be done.
    So I didn't accept that offer, if I can put it that way.
    Mr. Kinzinger. During that meeting, did Mr. Clark ask you 
to sign the Georgia letter?
    Mr. Rosen. That was on the Saturday meeting, January 2nd, 
that Mr. Donoghue and I had with him. He again raised with both 
of us that he wanted us both to sign that letter actually.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So in that meeting, did Mr. Clark say he 
would turn down the President's offer if you reversed your 
position and signed the letter?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did Mr. Clark--so you still refused to sign 
and send that letter, I take it?
    Mr. Rosen. That is right. I think Mr. Donoghue and I were 
both very consistent that there was no way we were going to 
sign that letter. It didn't matter what Mr. Clark's proposition 
was in terms of his own activities, we were not going to sign 
that letter as long as we were in charge of the Justice 
Department.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you for that, by the way.
    Mr. Donoghue, were you expecting to have to attend a 
meeting at the White House on Sunday, January 3rd?
    Mr. Donoghue. No. As the Acting AG indicated, we had a 
meeting that afternoon that related to preparations for January 
6th.
    So I was at the Department, but I had no expectation of 
leaving the Department. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was 
there in civilian clothes, as we both were, and expected to 
have that meeting, do some other work.
    But I had no expectation of going to the White House that 
day.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So let's ask, so prior to that Oval Office 
meeting, did you set up a conference call with senior 
leadership at the Department? If so, tell us about that call.
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes. So, obviously, it was a bit of a 
scramble that afternoon to prepare for the Oval Office meeting. 
We had discussed on several occasions, the Acting Attorney 
General and I, whether we should expand the circle of people 
who knew what was going on.
    It was very important that Steve Engel know, and that is 
why I reached out to Steve on December 28th, because if Mr. 
Rosen were removed from the seat and the President did not 
immediately appoint someone else to serve as Attorney General, 
just by function of the Department's change of succession Mr. 
Engel would be in the seat. We wanted to make sure he knew what 
was going on should that occur.
    So the three of us knew. We also brought Pat Hovakimian in. 
So the four of us knew. But no one else, aside from Jeff Clark, 
of course, knew what was going on until late that Sunday 
afternoon. We chose to keep a close hold because we didn't want 
to create concern or panic in the Justice Department 
leadership.
    But at this point, I asked the Acting AG, ``What else can I 
do to help prepare for this meeting at the Oval Office?''
    He said, ``You and Pat should get the AAGs on the phone and 
it is time to let them know what is going on. Let's find out 
what they may do if there is a change in leadership, because 
that will help inform the conversation at the Oval Office.''
    Pat Hovakimian subsequently set up that meeting. We got 
most, not all, but most of the AAGs on the phone. We very 
quickly explained to them what the situation was.
    I told them, ``I don't need an answer from you right now. I 
don't need an answer on this phone call. But if you have an 
answer, I need it in the next few minutes. So call me, email, 
text me, whatever it is, if you know what you would do if Jeff 
Clark is put in charge of the Department.''
    Immediately Eric Dreiband, who was the AAG of the Civil 
Rights Division, said, ``I don't need to think about it. There 
is no way I am staying.''
    Then the other AAGs began to chime in in turn and all 
essentially said they would leave. They would resign en masse 
if the President made that change in the Department leadership.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Incredible.
    I would like to look at the Assistant Attorney Generals on 
the screen, if we can pull that up, have their pictures.
    Did every Assistant Attorney General that you spoke to, as 
you said, agree to resign?
    Mr. Donoghue. Makan Delrahim was not on the call only 
because we had some difficulty reaching him.
    But, yes, the other people on the screen were on the call 
and all without hesitation said that they would resign.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So as part of the Select Committee's 
investigation we found that while Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue, and 
Mr. Engel were preparing for their meeting at the White House, 
Jeff Clark and the President were in constant communication, 
beginning at 
7 a.m.
    White House call logs obtained by the Committee show that 
by 4:19 p.m. on January 3rd, the White House had already begun 
referring to Mr. Clark as the Acting Attorney General. As far 
as the White House was concerned, Mr. Clark was already at the 
top of the Justice Department.
    Two hours later, DOJ leadership arrived at the White House. 
The Select Committee interviewed every person who was inside 
the room during this Sunday evening Oval Office meeting.
    Mr. Cipollone told the Committee that he was ``unmistakably 
angry'' during the meeting and that he, along with Eric 
Herschmann and Mr. Donoghue ``forcefully challenged'' Mr. Clark 
to produce evidence of his election fraud theories.
    Mr. Rosen, can you describe how that meeting started?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes.
    So after some preliminaries--so we--Mr. Meadows had ushered 
us all in, and then he left. So Mr. Cipollone did some 
introductions.
    So after some preliminaries, the President turned to me, 
and he said, ``Well, one thing we know is you, Rosen, you 
aren't going to do anything. You don't even agree with the 
claims of election fraud. This other guy at least might do 
something.''
    Then I said, ``Well, Mr. President, you are right that I am 
not going to allow the Justice Department to do anything to try 
to overturn the election. That is true. But the reason for that 
is because that is what is consistent with the facts and the 
law and that is what is required under the Constitution. So 
that is the right answer and a good thing for the country. 
Therefore, I submit it is the right thing for you, Mr. 
President.''
    That kicked off another 2 hours of discussion in which 
everyone in the room was in one way or another making different 
points, but supportive of my approach for the Justice 
Department and critical of Mr. Clark.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So at some point, Mr. Donoghue comes in the 
room. Can you explain what led to him coming in the room?
    Mr. Rosen. Oh, I forgot about that.
    So initially, in part I think because he was underdressed, 
and we had not arranged--we had not yet told the President that 
he was going to come in--the White House had a list of who 
would be there that did include Mr. Engel, and the White House 
Counsel, and the Deputy White House Counsel, Mr. Herschmann.
    We went in, and then we told the President, maybe 10 
minutes into the meeting or something, I forget how far in, Mr. 
Donoghue was outside. He said, ``Well, bring him in.'' Then Mr. 
Donoghue came in and joined the meeting.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So, Mr. Donoghue, you enter that room. Can 
you set the scene for us and describe the tone you walked into?
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes. But if I could just back up one moment, 
Congressman, because you put the pictures up on the screen of 
the AAGs.
    I just want to make clear, one of the AAGs who was not on 
the screen was John Demers. John was the National Security 
Division AAG.
    John was on the call. But I prefaced the call by saying, 
``John, we need you to stay in place. National security is too 
important. We need to minimize the disruption. Whether you 
resign is entirely up to you. Obviously, we will respect your 
decision either way. But I am asking you, please stay in 
place.''
    He did. So I don't want to leave the impression that he was 
not willing to resign, because I think he was.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Great. Thank you for that.
    Mr. Donoghue. So with regard to entering the Oval Office, I 
was sitting in the hallway. An administrative assistant passed 
by.
    She asked me, ``Are you supposed to be in this meeting with 
the President?''
    I said, ``No. I am simply here in case questions come up 
that other people don't have the answer to.''
    She walked away and then came back probably 30 seconds 
later and said, ``The President wants you in the meeting.''
    I proceeded into the Oval Office. I took probably two or 
three steps in and I stopped, because I was, as the AG said, 
not exactly properly attired. I was wearing jeans and muddy 
boots and an Army T-shirt, and I never would arrive in the Oval 
Office this way.
    I said, ``Mr. President, I apologize. I am sorry. I didn't 
know I was going to be here.''
    He said, ``No, no, no. Just come in, come in, come in.''
    So I went in. I attempted to take a seat on one of the 
couches that are behind the chairs arrayed in front of the 
President's desk. He said, ``Oh, no, no, no. You are going to 
be up here.''
    Everyone kind-of laughed. They moved the chairs a little 
bit. Someone from the White House Counsel's Office picked up a 
spare chair and put it directly in front of the President and I 
took that seat.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Was there discussion about Mr. Clark? Can 
you kind-of enlighten some of what that discussion was?
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes. So the conversation at this point had 
moved beyond the specific allegations, whether it was State 
Farm Arena or Antrim County or Pennsylvania or whatever. We had 
discussed those repeatedly, and that was backdrop to the 
conversation.
    But the conversation at this point was really about whether 
the President should remove Jeff Rosen and replace him with 
Jeff Clark. Everyone in the room, I think, understood that that 
meant that letter would go out.
    So that was the focus. It was about a 2\1/2\-hour meeting 
after I entered. So there were discussions about the pros and 
cons of doing that.
    Early on, the President said, ``What do I have to lose?''
    It was actually a good opening, because I said, ``Mr. 
President, you have a great deal to lose.''
    I began to explain to him what he had to lose and what the 
country had to lose and what the Department had to lose, and 
this was not in anyone's best interest.
    That conversation went on for some time. Everyone 
essentially chimed in with their own thoughts, all of which 
were consistent about how damaging this would be to the 
country, to the Department, to the administration, to him 
personally.
    At some point the conversation turned to whether Jeff Clark 
was even qualified, competent to run the Justice Department, 
which in my mind he clearly was not.
    It was a heated conversation. I thought it was useful to 
point out to the President that Jeff Clark simply didn't have 
the skills, the ability, and the experience to run the 
Department.
    So I said, ``Mr. President, you are talking about putting a 
man in that seat who has never tried a criminal case, who has 
never conducted a criminal investigation. He is telling you 
that he is going to take charge of the Department, 115,000 
employees, including the entire FBI, and turn the place on a 
dime and conduct nationwide criminal investigations that will 
produce results in a matter of days. It is impossible. It is 
absurd. It is not going to happen. It is going to fail.''
    ``He has never been in front of a trial jury, a grand jury. 
He has never even been to Chris Wray's office.''
    I said at one point, ``If you walk into Chris Wray's 
office, No. 1, would you know how to get there? No. 2, if you 
got there, would he even know who you are? Do you really think 
that the FBI is going to suddenly start following your 
orders?''
    ``It is not going to happen. He is not competent.''
    That is the point at which Mr. Clark tried to defend 
himself by saying, ``Well, I have been involved in very 
significant civil and environmental litigation. I have argued 
many appeals in appellate courts and things of that nature.''
    Then I pointed out that, yes, he was an environmental 
lawyer, and I didn't think that was appropriate background to 
be running the United States Justice Department.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did anybody in there support Mr. Clark?
    Mr. Donoghue. No one.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Rosen, it was you he was going to 
replace. So what was your view about the President's plan to 
appoint Mr. Clark?
    Mr. Rosen. Well, as I alluded to earlier, the issue really 
wasn't about me. It was--it would have been fine, as I said, to 
have had Rich Donoghue replace me. I would have said, ``Great, 
I get 17 days vacation,'' or something.
    But the issue was the use of the Justice Department. It is 
just so important that the Justice Department adhere to the 
facts and the law.
    That is what it is there to do, and that is what our 
constitutional role was. So if the Justice Department gets out 
of the role that it is supposed to play, that is really bad for 
our country, and I don't know of a simpler way to say that. 
When you damage our fundamental institutions, it is not easy to 
repair them.
    So I thought this was a really important issue--to try to 
make sure that the Justice Department was able to stay on the 
right course.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, did you eventually tell the 
President that mass resignations would occur if he installed 
Mr. Clark and what the consequences would be?
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes. So this was in line with the President 
saying, ``What do I have to lose?'' Along those lines, he said, 
``So suppose I do this, suppose I replace him, Jeff Rosen, with 
him, Jeff Clark. What would you do?''
    I said, ``Mr. President, I would resign immediately. I am 
not working 1 minute for this guy,'' who I had just declared 
was completely incompetent.
    So the President immediately turned to Mr. Engel, and he 
said, ``Steve you wouldn't resign, would you?''
    He said, ``Absolutely I would, Mr. President. You leave me 
no choice.''
    Then I said, ``And we are not the only ones. No one cares 
if we resign. If Steve and I go, that is fine. It doesn't 
matter. But I am telling you what is going to happen. You are 
going to lose your entire Department leadership. Every single 
AAG will walk out on you. Your entire Department leadership 
will walk out within hours. I don't know what happens after 
that. I don't know what the United States attorneys are going 
to do.''
    We have U.S. attorneys in districts across the country, and 
my guess would be that many of them would have resigned, and 
that would then have led to resignations across the Department 
in Washington.
    I said, ``Mr. President, within 24, 48, 72 hours, you could 
have hundreds and hundreds of resignations of the leadership of 
your entire Justice Department because of your actions. What is 
that going to say about you?''
    Mr. Kinzinger. Wow.
    Mr. Engel, what was--can you describe what your reaction 
was to that?
    Mr. Engel. Yes. No, I think when the President--my 
recollection is that when the President turned to me and said, 
``Steve, you wouldn't leave, would you?'' I said, ``Mr. 
President, I have been with you through four Attorneys General, 
including two Acting Attorneys General, but I couldn't be part 
of this.''
    Then the other thing that I said was that, you know, 
``Look, all anyone is going to sort-of think about when they 
see this--no one is going to read this letter. All anyone is 
going to think is that you went through two Attorneys General 
in 2 weeks until you found the environmental guy to sign this 
thing.''
    ``So the story is not going to be that the Department of 
Justice has found massive corruption that would have changed 
the results of the election. It is going to be the disaster of 
Jeff Clark.''
    I think at that point Pat Cipollone said, ``Yes, this is a 
murder-suicide pact, this letter.''
    Mr. Donoghue. I would note too, Congressman, that it was in 
this part of the conversation where Steve pointed out that Jeff 
Clark would be left leading a graveyard. That comment clearly 
had an impact on the President. The leadership will be gone. 
Jeff Clark will be left leading a graveyard.
    Mr. Engel. Again, the premise that--which Mr. Donoghue had 
said--but that Mr. Clark could come in and take over the 
Department of Justice and do something different was just an 
absurd premise. All he was doing, Mr. Clark, by putting himself 
forward, was blowing himself up. If the President were to have 
gone that course, you know, it would have been a grievous error 
for the President as well.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Cipollone, the White House Counsel, told 
the Committee that Mr. Engel's response had a noticeable impact 
on the President, that this was a turning point in the 
conversation.
    Mr. Donoghue, toward the end of this meeting, did the 
President ask you what was going to happen to Mr. Clark?
    Mr. Donoghue. He did. When we finally got to, I would say, 
the last 15 minutes of the meeting, the President's decision 
was apparent. He announced it. Jeff Clark tried to scrape his 
way back and asked the President to reconsider. The President 
doubled down and said, ``No, I have made my decision. That is 
it. We are not going to do it.''
    Then he turned to me and said, ``So what happens to him 
now?'' meaning Mr. Clark, and he understood that Mr. Clark 
reported to me.
    I didn't initially understand the question. I said, ``Mr. 
President?''
    He said, ``Are you going to fire him?''
    I said, ``I don't have the authority to fire him. He is a 
Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General.''
    He said, ``Well who has the authority to fire him?''
    I said, ``Only you do, sir.''
    He said, ``Well, I am not going to fire him.''
    I said, ``All right. Well, then, we should all go back to 
work.''
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did you get a call from the President later 
that night?
    Mr. Donoghue. I did, I don't know, probably 90 minutes 
later or something like that.
    Mr. Kinzinger. What was that about?
    Mr. Donoghue. The President at this point--we left the 
White House, reconvened at the Department. I left the 
Department. I was back in my apartment. My cell phone rang, it 
was the President, and he had information about a truck 
supposedly full of shredded ballots in Georgia that was in the 
custody of an ICE agent whose name he had.
    I told him that ICE was part of Department of Homeland 
Security. I hadn't heard about this. If Department of Homeland 
Security needed our assistance, we, of course, would provide 
it. But it was really up to DHS to make a call if their agent 
was involved.
    He said, ``Fine, I understand. Can you just make sure that 
Ken,'' meaning Ken Cuccinelli, ``knows about this?''
    I said fine, I would pass that along to him. I eventually 
contacted Ken Cuccinelli later that evening, and I said, ``This 
is what the President told me. If you guys have anything you 
think should be brought to our attention, let me know.''
    He said, ``Thank you.'' That was it.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Cipollone left the meeting convinced the 
President would not appoint Mr. Clark, but he didn't think the 
President had actually accepted the truth about the election. 
Sure enough, all the same debunked theories appeared in his 
speech at the Ellipse 3 days later.

    President Trump. In the State of Arizona, over 36,000 ballots were 
illegally cast by non-citizens, 11,600 more ballots than votes were 
counted, more than there were actual voters. You see that? In 
Wisconsin, corrupt Democrat-run cities deployed more than 500 illegal, 
unmanned, unsecured drop boxes, which collected a minimum of 91,000 
unlawful votes.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, Mr. Rosen, Mr. Engel, and 
others stopped President Trump's efforts at least temporarily. 
Yet the message President Trump and his Republican allies 
pushed throughout December made its way to his supporters 
anyway. They kept up the pressure campaign on the way to 
storming the Capitol on January 6th.
    Mr. Rosen, were you at the Department of Justice on January 
6th?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes, I was there all day.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Once the Capitol was under attack, I 
understand that you communicated with fellow Cabinet members 
and Capitol Hill leadership. Can you tell us who you spoke to?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes. I was basically on the phone virtually 
nonstop all day, some calls with our own DOJ folks, some with 
Cabinet counterparts at DHS and Defense and Interior, some with 
senior White House officials and with a number of congressional 
leaders.
    I received calls from Speaker Pelosi, from Leader McCarthy, 
from Leader Schumer. I believe Leader McConnell's chief of 
staff called; a number of other Members of Congress as well.
    You know, the basic thrust of the calls with the Members of 
Congress was, ``There is a dire situation here, and can you 
help?'' I reported to them that we were on a very urgent basis 
sending help from the Department.
    We wound up sending over 500 agents and officers from FBI, 
ATF, and the U.S. Marshals to assist with restoring order at 
the Capitol.
    So had a number of calls. As I say, it was more or less 
nonstop all afternoon.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did you speak to the Vice President that 
day?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes. Twice. The----
    Mr. Kinzinger. No. Please, go ahead.
    Mr. Rosen. Well, I was going to say the first call was a 
one-on-one discussion, somewhat akin to the congressional 
leadership calls, updating him on what we were doing to assist.
    The second call was a conference call around 7 o'clock with 
the Vice President, congressional leaders, senior White House 
staff, some other Cabinet officials, to address that order 
appeared to be close to being restored or restored, but 
security is still being determined, and the question being what 
time could the Congress reassemble. The answer was 8 o'clock. 
Thankfully Congress did reassemble and complete its 
constitutional duty.
    There was one highlight of that second call with the Vice 
President, which is Mr. Donoghue had gone to the Rotunda of the 
Capitol to be able to give a first-hand account and was able to 
tell the folks on the call, including the Vice President, that 
we thought 8 o'clock would work.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did you speak to the President on January 
6th?
    Mr. Rosen. No. I spoke to a number of senior White House 
officials, but not the President.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, on January 6th, we know from 
Mr. Rosen that you helped in the effort to reconvene the joint 
session. Is that correct?
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Kinzinger. We see here in a video that we are going to 
play now you arriving with your security detail to help secure 
the Capitol.
    Mr. Donoghue, 30 minutes after you arrived to the Capitol, 
did you lead a briefing for the Vice President?
    Mr. Donoghue. I am not sure exactly what the time frame 
was, but I did participate in the call and participate in 
briefing the Vice President as well as the congressional 
leadership that night, yes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Where did you conduct that call at?
    Mr. Donoghue. I was in an office. I am not entirely sure 
where it was. My detail found it, because the acoustics in the 
rotunda were such that it wasn't really conducive to having a 
call. So they found an office. We went to that office. I 
believe I participated in two phone calls, one at 1800 and one 
at 1900, that night from that office.
    Mr. Kinzinger. What time did you actually end up leaving 
the Capitol?
    Mr. Donoghue. I waited until the Senate was back in 
session, which I believe they were gaveled in a few minutes 
after 8 p.m. Once they were back in session and we were 
confident that the entire facility was secured and cleared, 
that there were no individuals hiding in closets or under 
desks, that there were no IEDs or other suspicious devices left 
behind, I left minutes later. I was probably gone by 8:30.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, did you ever hear from 
President Trump that day?
    Mr. Donoghue. No. Like the AAG, the Acting AG, I spoke to 
Pat Cipollone and Mark Meadows and the Vice President and the 
congressional leadership, but I never spoke to the President 
that day.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So today's hearing showcased the efforts of 
the Americans before us to stand up for democracy. Mr. Rosen 
and Mr. Donoghue stayed steadfastly committed to the oath they 
take as officials in the Department of Justice. On January 6th 
itself, they assisted during the attack while our Commander-in-
Chief stayed silent. Their bravery is a high moment in the 
sordid story of what led to January 6th.
    My colleagues and I up here also take an oath. Some of them 
failed to uphold theirs and, instead, chose to spread the big 
lie.
    Days after the tragic events of January 6th, some of these 
same Republican Members requested pardons in the waning days of 
the Trump administration.
    Five days after the attack on the Capitol, Representative 
Mo Brooks sent the email on the screen now. As you see, he 
emailed the White House, ``pursuant to a request from Matt 
Gaetz,'' requesting a pardon for Representative Gaetz, himself, 
and unnamed others.
    Witnesses told the Select Committee that the President 
considered offering pardons to a wide range of individuals 
connected to the President. Let's listen to some of that 
testimony.

    Mr. Wood. And was Representative Gaetz requesting a pardon?
    Mr. Herschmann. I believe so. The--the general tone was we may get 
prosecuted because we were defensive of, you know, the President's 
positions on these things. The pardon that he was discussing--
requesting was as broad as you can describe, from beginning--I remember 
he's--from the beginning of time up until today for any and all things. 
Then he mentioned Nixon, and I said, ``Nixon's pardon was never nearly 
that broad.''
    Vice Chair Cheney. And are you aware of any Members of Congress 
seeking pardons?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I guess Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Brooks, I know, have both 
advocated for there'd be a blanket pardon for Members involved in that 
meeting and a--a handful of other Members that weren't at the December 
21st meeting as the preemptive pardons. Mr. Gaetz was personally 
pushing for a pardon, and he was doing so since early December. I'm not 
sure why Mr. Gaetz reached out to me to ask if he could have a meeting 
with Mr. Meadows about receiving a Presidential pardon.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Did they all contact you?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Not all of them, but several of them did.
    Vice Chair Cheney. So you mentioned Mr. Gaetz, Mr. Brooks.
    Ms. Hutchinson. Mr. Biggs did. Mr. Jordan talked about 
congressional pardons, but he never asked me for one. It was more for 
an update on whether the White House was going to pardon Members of 
Congress. Mr. Gohmert asked for one as well. Mr. Perry asked for a 
pardon, too, I'm sorry.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Mr. Perry? Did he talk to you directly?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Yes, he did.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Did Marjorie Taylor Greene contact you?
    Ms. Hutchinson. No, she didn't contact me about it. I heard that 
she had asked White House Counsel's Office for a pardon from Mr. 
Philbin, but I didn't frequently communicate with Ms. Greene.
    Mr. Wood. Are you aware of any conversations or communications 
regarding the possibility of giving Congressman Matt Gaetz a pardon?
    Mr. McEntee. I know he had asked for it, but I don't know if he 
ever received one or what happened with it.
    Mr. Wood. How do you know that Congressman Gaetz asked for a 
pardon?
    Mr. McEntee. He told me.
    Mr. Wood. Tell us about that.
    Mr. McEntee. He told me he'd asked Meadows for a pardon.
    Mr. Wood. Were you involved in or did you witness any conversations 
about the possibility of a blanket pardon for everyone involved in 
January 6th?
    Mr. McEntee. I had heard that mentioned, yeah.
    Mr. Wood. Do you know whether the President had any conversations 
about potentially pardoning any family members?
    Mr. McEntee. I know he had hinted at a blanket pardon for the 
January 6th thing for anybody, but I think he had for all the staff and 
everyone involved, not with January 6th, but just before he left 
office, I know he had talked about that.

    Mr. Kinzinger. The only reason I know to ask for a pardon 
is because you think you have committed a crime.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. I want to thank our witnesses for 
joining us today.
    The Members of the Select Committee may have additional 
questions for today's witnesses, and we ask that you respond 
expeditiously in writing to these questions.
    Without objection, Members will be permitted 10 business 
days to submit statements for the record, including opening 
remarks and additional questions for the witnesses.
    Without objection, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois for a closing statement.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Justice Department lawyers are not the President's 
personal lawyers. We count on them to be on the side of the law 
and to defend the best interests of the United States, not the 
best interests of any political campaign. That is how it has 
been since the Department was founded soon after the Civil War. 
Justice Department lawyers are supposed to play it 100 percent 
straight.
    President Trump tried to erase his loss at the ballot box 
by parachuting an unqualified man into the top job at Justice. 
It was a power play to win at all costs, with no regard for the 
will of the American people. It was about ignoring millions of 
votes. Ignore them, throw them out, label them fraudulent, 
corrupt, illegal, whatever. Facts were clearly just an 
inconvenience.
    From the Oval Office, President Trump urged others to bring 
his big lie to life. He begged, ``Just say the election was 
corrupt, and leave the rest to me and the Republican 
Congressmen.'' He didn't care what the Department's 
investigations proved. What good were facts when they would 
only confirm his loss?
    It is no surprise that all the far-out, fully fabricated, 
whack-job conspiracy theories collapsed under even the 
slightest scrutiny. That insanity went from the internet to the 
highest levels of Government in no time.
    The bottom line? The most senior leadership of the Justice 
Department, from Attorney General Bill Barr to Jeff Rosen, his 
successor, and his deputy, Rich Donoghue--everyone except Jeff 
Clark--was telling President Trump the very same thing: The 
conspiracy theories were false. The allegation of a stolen 
election was a lie. The data left no room for doubt, nothing to 
question. The Constitution left no room for President Trump to 
change the outcome of the election.
    But we are here today because the facts were irrelevant to 
President Trump. It was about protecting his very real power 
and very fragile ego, even if it required recklessly 
undermining our entire electoral system by wildly casting 
baseless doubt upon it.
    In short, he was willing to sacrifice our Republic to 
prolong his Presidency. I can imagine no more dishonorable act 
by a President.
    We owe a great debt of gratitude to these men you have 
heard from here today. Real leaders who stood for Justice when 
it was in grave peril, who put their country first when the 
leader of the free world demanded otherwise. They threatened to 
resign rather than corrupt our democracy. Thanks largely to 
each of them, President Trump's coup failed.
    Contrast that to Jeff Clark, who would do exactly what the 
President wanted: Say there was massive fraud, forget the 
facts, and leave the rest to President Trump's congressional 
friends.
    Mr. Clark refused to cooperate with this Committee. He pled 
the Fifth over 125 times. Why risk self-incrimination?
    President Trump's congressional friends--some of them are 
angling for pardons? They knew that every bit of what they did 
was a lie and it was wrong.
    That is all the more reason to respect those who came here 
to testify today. We thank them for their unflinching service 
in the face of incredible pressure.
    As it is said, ``The only thing necessary for evil to 
succeed is good men to do nothing.'' Thankfully, there were 
good people in the Department of Justice.
    You heard from other good people, too, on Tuesday. They, 
too, defended us.
    But I am still worried that not enough has changed to 
prevent this from happening again.
    The oath that we take has to mean something. It has to cut 
to the core of who we are and be the driving force of our 
service to this Nation.
    We on this Committee, we may be able to shine light on the 
darkness, but that is not enough. It is now up to every 
American, now and in the future, to stand for truth, to reject 
the lies, wherever we confront them--in our towns, in our 
capitals, in our friendships, in our families, and at the 
ballot box, and within our own minds and hearts.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, the Chair recognizes 
the gentlewoman from Wyoming, Ms. Cheney, for a closing 
statement.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    I again want to thank the witnesses for being here today.
    After today, I suspect that there will be some who label 
you agents of the deep state or something else conspiratorial 
or nonsensical meant to justify ignoring what you have said 
today, ignoring the facts.
    That may be the short-term cost of acting honorably and 
telling the truth, but your actions should have an important 
long-term impact. They will help keep us on the course set by 
the Framers of our Constitution.
    Let me paraphrase the words of John Adams and others: 
Whether ours shall continue to be a Government of laws and not 
of men is ultimately for the American people to decide.
    Let me also today make a broader statement to millions of 
Americans who put their trust in Donald Trump.
    In these hearings so far, you have heard from more than a 
dozen Republicans who have told you what actually happened in 
the weeks before January 6th. You will hear from more in the 
hearings to come. Several of them served Donald Trump in his 
administration; others, in his campaign. Others have been 
conservative Republicans for their entire careers.
    It can be difficult to accept that President Trump abused 
your trust, that he deceived you. Many will invent excuses to 
ignore that fact. But that is a fact. I wish it weren't true, 
but it is.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Again, I thank our witnesses and thank 
my colleagues for this hearing.
    As we conclude our fifth hearing in this series, I want to 
remind the American people of a few things the Committee has 
shown.
    Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Top Republican 
officials who supported Trump knew that he lost and told him he 
lost. Trump knew he lost.
    Those who say the election was affected by widespread voter 
fraud are lying. They were lying in 2020, they were lying in 
2021, and, indeed, they are lying today.
    Donald Trump went to court. That is the right of any 
candidate seeking to challenge the outcome of an election. 
Donald Trump lost in court dozens and dozens of times.
    He lost in part because there was no evidence that voter 
fraud had any impact on the results of the election. To borrow 
a phrase from our witness earlier this week, Mr. Bowers, all he 
had was theories and no evidence.
    As I have said, if you are running for office in the United 
States, that is the end of the line. You accept the court's 
judgment. You concede the race. You respect the rule of law and 
the will of the voters.
    But for Donald Trump, that wasn't the end of the line. Not 
even close.
    The voters refused to keep him in office. The courts 
refused to keep him in office. But he continued to lie. He went 
in search of anyone who would go along with his scheme.
    As we have shown today, he pressured the Justice Department 
to act as an arm of his reelection campaign. He hoped law 
enforcement officials would give the appearance of legitimacy 
to his lies so he and his allies had some veneer of credibility 
when they told the country that the election was stolen.
    Earlier this week, we showed how Donald Trump brought the 
weight of the Presidency down on local and State officials who 
were trying to do their jobs--and ultimately did. They 
investigated his claims and found them to be false. Then they 
endured Trump's pressure campaign, at great risk to themselves 
and their loved ones.
    Of course, there was the scheme to get the former Vice 
President, Mike Pence, to violate the law and the Constitution 
by rejecting the electoral college votes on January 6th and 
blocking the peaceful transfer of power.
    I mention the former Vice President last because, as we 
showed, when he refused to bow to the pressure in those 
critical moments on January 6th, there was a back-up plan for 
stopping the transfer of power: The mob and their vile threats.
    Up to this point, we have shown the inner workings of what 
was essentially a political coup--an attempt to use the powers 
of the Government, from the local level all the way up, to 
overturn the results of the election.
    Find me the votes. Send fake electors. Just say the 
election was corrupt.
    Along the way, we saw threats of violence; we saw what some 
people were willing to do. In service of the Nation? Of the 
Constitution? No. In service of Donald Trump.
    When the Select Committee continues this series of 
hearings, we are going to show how Donald Trump tapped into the 
threat of violence; how he summoned the mob to Washington; and 
how, after corruption and political pressure failed to keep 
Donald Trump in office, violence became the last option.
    Our investigation is ongoing. Those hearings have spurred 
an influx of new information that the Committee and our 
investigators are working to assess. We are committed to 
presenting the American people with the most complete 
information possible. That will be our aim when we reconvene in 
the coming weeks.
    The Chair requests those in the hearing room remain seated 
until the Capitol Police have escorted Members from the room.
    Without objection, the Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 5:28 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                            A P P E N D I X

                              ----------                              

 Prepared Statement of Jeffrey A. Rosen, Former Acting Attorney General
                             June 15, 2022
    Chairman Thompson and Vice Chair Cheney, thank you for inviting me 
to appear here today with my former colleagues Richard Donoghue and 
Steven Engel. Serving alongside them and the many other dedicated 
employees of the Justice Department was an extraordinary honor. They 
were and are an exceptional team of public servants who always put the 
best interests of our Country first. In the interest of time, I have 
submitted a copy of my prior opening statements to the House Oversight 
Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee, and would ask that both be 
entered into the public record.
    With respect to my tenure at the Department of Justice, my priority 
was to ensure the Department would always proceed on the basis of the 
facts and the legal merits, to enforce the Constitution and preserve 
the rule of law. We did that with unfailing fidelity under sometimes 
very challenging circumstances.
    During my tenure as Acting Attorney General, the Justice Department 
maintained the position that the Department had been presented with no 
evidence of widespread voter fraud at a scale sufficient to change the 
outcome of the 2020 election. We thus held firm to the position that 
the Department would not participate in any campaign's or political 
party's legal challenges to the certification of the Electoral College 
votes. We also insisted that there must be an orderly and peaceful 
transfer of power under the Constitution. In particular, during my 
tenure, we appointed no special prosecutors; sent no letters to States 
or State legislators disputing the election outcome; and made no public 
statements saying the election was corrupt and should be overturned. We 
initiated no Supreme Court actions, nor filed or joined any other 
lawsuits, calling into question the legitimacy of our election and 
institutions. To the contrary, the only time the Department filed a 
brief in court, it was to say that a Congress Member's lawsuit to 
overturn the election should be dismissed, as it was.
    Some argued to the former President and public that the election 
was corrupt and stolen. That view was wrong then and it is wrong today, 
and I hope our presence here today helps reaffirm that fact.
    Thank you and I am happy to answer your questions.
                                 ______
                                 
Hearing Before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight 
                               and Reform
                              May 12, 2021
  Testimony of Jeffrey A. Rosen, Former Acting United States Attorney 
                  General and Deputy Attorney General
    Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member Comer, and Members of the 
Committee, good morning and thank you for the opportunity to join this 
hearing today. Because this is my first appearance before this 
Committee since June 2005, please allow me to introduce myself again. I 
am Jeff Rosen, and from December 24, 2020 to January 20, 2021, I had 
the honor and privilege of serving as the Acting Attorney General of 
the United States. Since graduating from law school in 1982, I have 
lived and worked in our nation's capital region, including more than 9 
years of public service at three different Federal agencies. My first 
position was as General Counsel of the Department of Transportation 
under Secretary Norman Mineta, followed by service as General Counsel 
and Senior Advisor at the Office of Management & Budget under then-
Director, now-Senator Rob Portman. After several years back in private 
practice, I was Deputy Secretary of Transportation under Secretary 
Elaine Chao, and after that I became Deputy Attorney General at the 
Department of Justice (``DOJ'') under William Barr. After Attorney 
General Barr's departure in December 2020, I became the Acting Attorney 
General, leading the Department until the end of the Trump 
Administration. My testimony today relates to my time as Acting 
Attorney General, and I appreciate this opportunity to discuss the 
actions taken by DOJ on January 6, 2021, to help restore order at the 
Capitol and enable the completion of Congress' certification of the 
2020 Electoral College vote.
                              introduction
    The events of January 6 were a national travesty and an intolerable 
attack on our representative democracy. To those who risked their 
safety to protect everyone at the Capitol: I honor your bravery. To the 
families of the Capitol Police officers who were injured that day or 
died in the wake of the attack: I extend my deepest sympathy. And to 
all of you and your staff who lived through that day: I share the 
justified anger at what the violent mob of attackers put you through.
    Although the storming of the Capitol was a tragic episode in our 
nation's history, I take some comfort in the resilience of our 
institutions in the face of such an attack, as demonstrated by 
Congress's ability to reconvene and fulfill its constitutional duties 
just hours after the breach. I am also proud of the efforts of DOJ, 
which urgently deployed more than 500 agents and officers from the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation (``FBI''); the Bureau of Alcohol, 
Tobacco, and Firearms (``ATF''); and the US Marshals Service (``USMS'') 
to assist in restoring order at the Capitol. These outstanding men and 
women moved with urgency to assist the Capitol Police and others in the 
midst of an unprecedented security breach, and helped to clear and 
secure the hallowed epicenter of representative government.
    I am also proud of the swift action taken thereafter by DOJ 
personnel in the FBI and the DC US Attorney's Office to investigate and 
work to hold accountable those responsible for the disgraceful attack 
on the Capitol. As I said publicly on January 7, 2021: ``Yesterday, our 
Nation watched in disbelief as a mob breached the Capitol Building and 
required Federal and local law enforcement to help restore order. The 
Department of Justice is committed to ensuring that those responsible 
for this attack on our Government and the rule of law face the full 
consequences of their actions under the law. Our criminal prosecutors 
have been working throughout the night with special agents and 
investigators from the U.S. Capitol Police, FBI, ATF, Metropolitan 
Police Department and the public to gather the evidence, identify 
perpetrators, and charge Federal crimes where warranted. Some 
participants in yesterday's violence will be charged today, and we will 
continue to methodically assess evidence, charge crimes and make 
arrests in the coming days and weeks to ensure that those responsible 
are held accountable under the law.'' (attached as Ex. A).
    I appreciate the importance of today's oversight hearing, and I 
welcome the opportunity to share with you what I know about the January 
6 events in light of my prior roles at the DOJ. The Justice Department 
plays a special role in our government, and must be guided by our 
Constitution and the rule of law. I can tell you that is what guided 
me. My focus was consistently on following the rule of law and enabling 
the orderly transition of power in the manner contemplated in our 
Constitution and laws. Upon learning of the events at the Capitol on 
January 6, my priorities were threefold: securing the Capitol following 
the breach, supporting the Congress as it sought to fulfill its duty to 
certify the Electoral College vote, and beginning the critical work of 
holding accountable those who committed wrongful acts at the Capitol.
    I want to note as a threshold matter that there are some 
unavoidable limitations on the testimony I can provide today. For one, 
my access to information is limited because I am no longer with DOJ. 
Further, while the events of that day will be with me forever, my 
memory is unlikely to be perfect, as some aspects are seared in memory 
and others have become a blur. Moreover, I have only been authorized by 
DOJ to testify on certain topics, as I am bound to maintain certain 
information in confidence and must avoid making any statements that 
could interfere with the numerous ongoing investigations and 
prosecutions of individuals involved in the events of January 6. I 
appreciate your patience and understanding as to those, as I do my best 
to answer your questions.
                   i. doj actions prior to january 6
    On December 24, 2020, with the departure of William Barr, I became 
Acting Attorney General. During my tenure, DOJ maintained the position 
publicly announced previously that the Department had been presented 
with no evidence of widespread voter fraud at a scale sufficient to 
change the outcome of the 2020 election, that it would not participate 
in any campaign's or political party's legal challenges to the 
certification of the Electoral College votes, and that there would be 
an orderly and peaceful transfer of power under the Constitution. 
During my tenure, no special prosecutors were appointed, whether for 
election fraud or otherwise; no public statements were made questioning 
the election; no letters were sent to State officials seeking to 
overturn the election results; no DOJ court actions or filings were 
submitted seeking to overturn election results, and the only time DOJ 
did file a brief it was to seek a dismissal of Representative Gohmert's 
lawsuit aiming to decertify the electoral count--and that lawsuit was 
dismissed, as DOJ had urged.
    In the days and weeks leading up to Congress's January 6 vote to 
certify the results of the Electoral College, DOJ, FBI, and other law 
enforcement agencies learned that there would likely be rallies and 
protests in Washington D.C. on that day, including near the Ellipse and 
the US Capitol, among other possible locations. By itself, that was not 
unusual: the National Capital Region periodically and with some 
regularity hosts protests, rallies, and other demonstrations that can 
pose safety or security threats. The District of Columbia Metropolitan 
Police Department (``MPD''), Park Police, and Capitol Police are all 
experienced at dealing with such events. For example, they had dealt 
with protest disturbances related to the election results as recently 
as November and December 2020, and the Capitol Police (which are a part 
of the legislative branch) handled days of protests pledging to ``flood 
the Capitol'' during the nomination hearing of now-Justice Kavanaugh in 
October 2018.
    As you know, the police departments are not a part of DOJ, and DOJ 
does not have authority to control their activities. But as an 
investigative and prosecutorial agency, DOJ--primarily through the 
FBI--would normally focus on gathering intelligence about potential 
threats of violence and sharing information with police and Federal 
partner agencies about those threats, while the Department of Homeland 
Security (``DHS'') Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the police 
were likewise gathering available intelligence as well.
    From a leadership standpoint, my role was to ensure that the DOJ 
organization was appropriately fulfilling its functions. I fulfilled 
that obligation. Formal information coordination activities among DOJ, 
various police departments--including the Capitol Police and MPD--and 
various Federal agencies accelerated during the week of December 28. 
MPD initiated a Joint Operations Command Center. The FBI's Washington 
Field Office (``WFO'') set up a regular command post to share 
information among the FBI, ATF, DHS, and each of the various police 
organizations in the District (including the Capitol Police who are 
part of the legislative branch and report to Congress). And the 
District of Columbia US Attorney's Office arranged a number of 
conference calls to coordinate among local and Federal law enforcement. 
On January 5, the FBI took the added step of setting up a national 
coordination center at its Strategic Information and Operations Center 
(``SIOC''). Located at FBI headquarters, the SIOC was geared toward 
facilitating better coordination and sharing of information, among the 
Federal agencies, including DHS, the Department of the Interior 
(``DOI''), and the Department of Defense (``DOD''). Each of these 
Federal agencies supplied personnel to staff the SIOC 24/7 beginning on 
January 5 and 6, and continuing for a period thereafter. It was my 
understanding that the SIOC also coordinated closely with the WFO post, 
and thus the partners located there as well.
    I am aware that FBI Director Wray and Assistant Director Sanborn 
have testified publicly about the FBI's work regarding the events of 
January 6, and the work the FBI did, along with others, to gather 
intelligence about the planned events and the risk of violence. Based 
on the updates I received, I was confident that very substantial 
efforts were undertaken by DOJ personnel in advance of January 6 to 
understand and prepare for the potential threats, and share that 
information with law enforcement partners. During the week of December 
28, I received reports that MPD and others estimated that between 
10,000 and 30,000 people would be coming for the rallies or protests on 
January 6--a sizable, but not unprecedented number. Crowd size remained 
a continuing topic of conversation during the ensuing week, but, based 
on what was reported to me, projections did not materially change.
    As is generally the case with large protests or demonstrations in 
the National Capital Region, it was expected that experienced police 
departments like the Capitol Police, the Park Police, and MPD would 
bear responsibility for crowd control and security in their respective 
jurisdictions.\1\ The Department of Defense, which includes the Army 
National Guard, provided 340 personnel to assist MPD and placed others 
on standby. On January 4, MPD arrested the leader of the Proud Boys 
militia group for prior violent acts, and prosecutors obtained a 
judicial order barring him from the city on January 6. District of 
Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser wrote to Acting Defense Secretary Miller 
and me that MPD ``is prepared for this week's First Amendment 
Activities,'' and that other than the logistical support of unarmed 
members of the DC National Guard, DC ``has not requested personnel from 
any other Federal law enforcement agencies.'' (attached as Ex. B.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ In these types of situations, DOJ performs intelligence-
gathering, information-sharing, and after-the-fact investigation and 
prosecution where warranted.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Nonetheless, although not specifically requested by MPD, Capitol 
Police, or any other agencies, my office directed various DOJ entities 
to take cautionary steps to alert or pre-position tactical teams if 
needed for support on January 6. For example, the FBI's Hostage Rescue 
team and Render Safe teams were activated; an additional FBI SWAT team 
from Baltimore was repositioned to Washington, DC.; ATF Special 
Response Teams were pre-positioned in Virginia for activation if 
needed; and USMS Special Operations Group personnel were also pre-
positioned in Virginia for deployment if needed.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ Additionally, as it was conceivable that some protesters might 
be unhappy with DOJ's not having filed court actions regarding the 
election outcome, DOJ arranged for tactical support from Bureau of 
Prisons personnel to supplement existing security at its own RFK 
Building.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I believe that DOJ reasonably prepared for contingencies ahead of 
January 6, understanding that there was considerable uncertainty as to 
how many people would arrive, who those people would be, and precisely 
what purposes they would pursue. Unlike the police, DOJ had no 
frontline role with respect to crowd control. The FBI, ATF, DEA, and 
U.S. Attorneys' offices, as investigative and prosecuting agencies, are 
generally not equipped for crowd control. But DOJ took appropriate 
precautions to have tactical support available if contingencies led to 
them being called upon.
                     ii. doj's actions on january 6
    The demonstrations and protests expected for January 6 had been a 
significant focus of attention for DOJ and FBI leadership in the week 
prior, and they continued to be so on the day of the events. On the 
morning of January 6, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General 
Richard Donoghue \3\ and I met with FBI leadership for the latest 
updates and preparation. I continued to talk to Principal Associate 
Deputy Attorney General Donoghue and FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich 
throughout the day and their proactive engagement and decisionmaking 
were simply invaluable.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ During this time, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General 
Donoghue was performing the functions of the Deputy Attorney General, 
due to my taking the position of Acting Attorney General.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In the early afternoon, as President Trump was speaking to an 
audience at the Ellipse, I contacted the Acting US Attorney for the 
District of Columbia, Michael Sherwin, in part to inquire if the crowd 
size there was consistent with or larger than the forecasts. He was 
personally in the vicinity of the event and reported that the size of 
the crowd was on the lower side of the forecast and conceivably might 
have been below the lower end of the range. He also indicated that the 
crowd at the Ellipse did not appear to be violent or unruly.
    Reports after that conversation were more negative. ATF was 
notified of potential explosive devices having been placed at the 
Republican and Democratic National Committee offices. ATF promptly sent 
a team of experts to deal with the explosive devices, in coordination 
with the Capitol Police and MPD. Subsequently, I observed on television 
the events as the crowd moved from the Ellipse, up Constitution Avenue, 
and then to the US Capitol. During that time, I recall receiving 
updates from Acting US Attorney Sherwin and others.
    Sometime around 2 o'clock p.m., I was horrified and dismayed as I 
saw on television the crowd breaching the Capitol. I soon learned that 
ATF and FBI, among others, had just received requests for assistance 
from the Capitol Police and were beginning to respond. My office asked 
ATF, FBI, and the USMS to provide as much help as possible as quickly 
as possible, including deploying the pre-positioned resources. I also 
recall receiving phone calls from White House staff requesting that DOJ 
provide as much help as we could; I reported to them that we were doing 
so. I also received calls from multiple Members of Congress and staff, 
including members of leadership in both the House and Senate. I 
informed them that DOJ was sending help as quickly as possible. As I 
monitored the continuing events, I spoke multiple times with DOJ 
personnel who were onsite and coordinated with my counterparts across 
the Federal government.
    My understanding is that ATF had some personnel arrive to the 
Capitol very quickly, with sizable numbers following by 2:40 p.m. FBI 
personnel, including from the Hostage Rescue and SWAT teams, and 
personnel from the USMS Special Operations Group also deployed urgently 
to the Capitol. In total, more than 500 DOJ personnel surged to the 
Capitol to help clear the building and secure it so that the Congress 
could resume its business. It is my understanding that DHS likewise 
sent personnel from the Federal Protective Service and from Immigration 
and Customs Enforcement and that MPD and other local police departments 
also sent officers to assist the Capitol Police that afternoon.
    My original plan had been to go to the FBI SIOC for the afternoon, 
which was at the FBI headquarters just across the street from my 
office, but the urgency of the phone discussions and the need to 
coordinate with my DOJ staff in responding to the attack on the Capitol 
complex prevented my doing so. Instead, Principal Associate Deputy 
Attorney General Donoghue went to the SIOC and provided me with ongoing 
updates. As the attack continued, he and FBI Deputy Director Bowdich 
personally went to the Capitol building, to the Rotunda, and continued 
to provide me with situation reports from inside the building as 
efforts to restore order remained underway. I shared information with 
others and sometimes facilitated others talking directly with Principal 
Associate Deputy Attorney General Donoghue and Deputy Director Bowdich. 
I also took steps to let the public know where DOJ stood with respect 
to the attacks: I directed my staff to begin drafting a statement 
condemning the attacks. After internal review at DOJ, this statement 
was released later that same afternoon (attached as Ex. B).
    It is my understanding that by approximately 5 o'clock to 5:30 
p.m., the efforts at the Capitol to clear out the attackers had largely 
succeeded in doing so with the help of the more than 500 DOJ agents and 
officers who had deployed, but work remained, as those DOJ personnel 
were then working with the Capitol Police and others to check for 
explosives and to otherwise secure the offices and chambers in the 
Capitol building, so that Congress could return that same day and 
complete the electoral count.
    At 7 o'clock p.m., I, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General 
Donoghue, and others from DOJ participated in a conference call that 
included congressional leaders and representatives from DHS and DOD, as 
well as others. Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Donoghue 
provided a situation report, and congressional leaders wanted to know 
if it would be feasible for the Congress to return and complete its 
business that evening. Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General 
Donoghue told them he expected Congress could return by 8 o'clock p.m., 
which is what happened, with Vice President Pence reconvening the 
Senate at 8:06 p.m.
    Accordingly, Congress returned and completed its constitutional 
role in certifying the votes of the Electoral College that evening. 
With the achievement of the twin objectives of restoring order at the 
Capitol and enabling Congress to fulfill its electoral count obligation 
under the Constitution, I was and remain extremely appreciative for the 
work done that afternoon and into the night by the women and men of the 
FBI, ATF, and USMS, as well as others at the DC US Attorney's Office 
and elsewhere in DOJ. They, and all the others from DHS, DOD, DOI, and 
the various police departments who went to that Capitol that afternoon 
to help restore order, accomplished a vital feat for our country, and 
we owe them our deepest gratitude.
                   iii. doj's actions after january 6
    DOJ also immediately began work to ensure that those responsible 
for the attack on the Capitol would face the full consequences of their 
actions under the law. Acting US Attorney Sherwin and his team, along 
with the FBI and police counterparts, began charging participants in 
the violence as early as January 7. Within the first week after the 
attack, more than 70 individuals had been criminally charged, and DOJ 
had opened more than 170 investigations and gathered over 100,000 
digital tips.
    DOJ also sent the clear message that further violence would not be 
tolerated in the lead up to President-Elect Biden's inauguration. In a 
January 13 video message, I expressed DOJ's support for the exercise of 
constitutional rights but also strongly warned that ``I want to send a 
clear message to anyone contemplating violence, threats of violence, or 
other criminal conduct: We will have no tolerance whatsoever for any 
attempts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power on January 20th that 
our Constitution calls for . . . [t]he Department of Justice will seek 
to hold any violators accountable to the fullest extent of the law.''
    The work of investigating and prosecuting those who attacked the 
Capitol on January 6 continues to this day and is now in the capable 
hands of my former DOJ colleagues and the new DOJ leadership team. To 
avoid interfering in these ongoing matters, I must leave it to others 
to answer any questions regarding them as they deem appropriate.
                             iv. conclusion
    January 6 was a dark and harrowing day for America. And though I 
remain saddened by the events of that day, I am nonetheless grateful 
that physical harm to Members of Congress was avoided and that, because 
of the prompt work that was done to clear and secure the Capitol, 
Congress was able to complete its work that same evening. I am also 
proud of the role DOJ played in helping to restore order and all we 
were able to accomplish alongside our partners from various police 
forces, Federal departments and law enforcement agencies, and the 
National Guard.
    What the attackers did that day was terrible in its violence, the 
loss of life, and injuries suffered. But it was also terrible because 
it constituted an assault on a building that is a fundamental symbol of 
our democracy, on the institution of Congress itself, and on an 
electoral process required by our Constitution. As a society, we need 
to restore greater respect and appreciation for our Constitution, our 
representative democracy, and the rule of law. As I have said before, 
violence and senseless criminal conduct are not the right way to 
resolve differences or promote change in our country. And they will not 
carry the day.
    In closing, I would like to publicly thank my former DOJ colleagues 
and everyone who played a role in bringing order to chaos on January 6. 
I will leave it to others to assess why the security at the Capitol was 
not sufficient to protect the building that afternoon in the first 
instance, but the assistance that was provided after the breach 
occurred is something that deserves appreciation. I will also leave it 
to appropriate authorities to assess responsibility for what happened 
and determine any precipitating causes.
    Finally, if any valuable lesson could come out of the disturbing 
events from the Capitol riots, perhaps it might be that Americans of 
all backgrounds and political affiliations could agree that we cannot 
have anything like that happen again. Our Constitution, our traditions, 
and our ideals as a nation must be respected and revered. I know that 
all of you share that wish as well.

[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
                                 
   Prepared Statement of Steven A. Engel, Former Assistant Attorney 
      General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice
                             June 15, 2022
    Good morning, Chairman Thompson, Vice Chairwoman Cheney, and 
Members of the committee. I appear this morning at the Committee's 
request, and I thank you for the opportunity to make an opening 
statement.
    Although the topics to be discussed involve Presidential 
communications and the deliberative processes within the executive 
branch, the U.S. Department of Justice has authorized me to provide 
testimony on the particular subjects identified by the Committee, and 
former President Trump previously authorized Department officials to 
discuss these matters with the committees of Congress. I will therefore 
seek to answer the Committee's questions to the best of my ability.
    I was privileged to serve as the Assistant Attorney General of the 
Office of Legal Counsel from November 2017 through January 2021. In 
that role, I served as the chief counsel to the Attorney General and 
the principal legal adviser to the executive branch. During that 
period, we sought to ensure that our legal advice would assist the 
President and his cabinet secretaries in discharging their 
responsibilities within the boundaries of the Constitution and laws of 
the United States, and in the interest of the people of the United 
States. Our commitment to that work remained the same both before and 
after the election of November 2020.
    Following the November 2020 election, in an effort to promote 
confidence in the election results, Attorney General Barr authorized 
the Department to review and, where appropriate, to investigate reports 
of fraud and irregularities as they came in. The Department's senior 
officials ultimately concluded that there was no evidence of widespread 
voter fraud on a scale sufficient to change the outcome of the 
election, and Attorney General Barr reported that publicly in early 
December.
    Although I was not personally responsible for these investigations, 
I did not doubt the judgment of the Attorney General and the 
Department's senior leadership. As a Presidential candidate, President 
Trump and his campaign had every right to pursue litigation in 
contesting the election results in the various Federal and State 
courts. But absent credible evidence of a violation of Federal law, the 
Department did not have any role to play in these election contests.
    This view was widely shared among the Department's senior 
leadership, including by Acting Attorney General Rosen. Yet we 
discovered in late December that one of the Assistant Attorneys 
General, Jeff Clark, took a different view. Mr. Clark believed that the 
Department should publicly assert that the election results had been 
marred by fraud and should urge several of the States to replace their 
previously certified electors. Mr. Clark's views came to the attention 
of President Trump, who considered whether Mr. Clark should replace the 
Acting Attorney General at the helm of the Department of Justice.
    The Department's senior leadership, as well as the White House 
Counsel, believed that Mr. Clark's plan lacked any factual or legal 
basis. On January 3, we met with the President and with Mr. Clark to 
explain why the Clark plan should not be pursued. We also made clear 
that the Department's leadership could not remain if the President 
chose to pursue that course. Following that discussion, President Trump 
agreed with us, and he retained Acting Attorney General Rosen through 
the end of his Administration.
    It was a great honor to serve at the Department of Justice, and I 
was privileged during my time to work with many lawyers of integrity 
and honor, including those sitting beside me today. The Department's 
leadership clearly understood our responsibility to ensure the neutral 
enforcement of the law, to protect our Constitution, and to assist in 
the peaceful transfer of power.
    Thank you for the opportunity to make this statement, and I will 
seek to answer the Committee's questions today to the best of my 
ability.

               HEARING ON THE JANUARY 6TH INVESTIGATION

                              ----------                              

                         Tuesday, June 28, 2022

                     U.S. House of Representatives,
 Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on 
                                 the United States Capitol,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:01 p.m., in 
room 390, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Bennie G. Thompson 
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Thompson, Cheney, Lofgren, Schiff, 
Aguilar, Murphy, Raskin, Luria, and Kinzinger.
    Chairman Thompson. The Select Committee to Investigate the 
January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol will be in 
order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare the 
Committee in recess at any point.
    Pursuant to House Deposition Authority Regulation 10, the 
Chair announces the Committee's approval to release the 
deposition material presented during this hearing.
    Good afternoon. In our hearings over the previous weeks, 
the Select Committee has laid out the details of a multi-part 
pressure campaign driven by the former President aimed at 
overturning the results of the 2020 Presidential election and 
blocking the transfer of power. We have shown that this effort 
was based on a lie, a lie that the election was stolen, tainted 
by wide-spread fraud. Donald Trump's Big Lie.
    In the weeks ahead, the Committee will hold additional 
hearings about how Donald Trump summoned a mob of his 
supporters to Washington, spurred them to march on the Capitol, 
and failed to take meaningful action to quell the violence as 
it was unfolding on January 6th.
    However, in recent days, the Select Committee has obtained 
new information dealing with what was going on in the White 
House on January 6th and in the days prior, specific detailed 
information about what the former President and his top aides 
were doing and saying in those critical hours, first-hand 
details of what transpired in the Office of the White House 
Chief of Staff, just steps from the Oval Office, as the threats 
of violence became clear, and indeed violence ultimately 
descended on the Capitol in the attack on American democracy.
    It is important that the American people hear that 
information immediately. That is why, in consultation with the 
Vice Chair, I have recalled the Committee for today's hearing.
    As you have seen and heard in our earlier hearings, the 
Select Committee has developed a massive body of evidence, 
thanks to the many hundreds of witnesses who have voluntarily 
provided information relevant to our investigation. It hasn't 
always been easy to get that information because the same 
people who drove the former President's pressure campaign to 
overturn the election are now trying to cover up the truth 
about January 6th.
    But, thanks to the courage of certain individuals, the 
truth won't be buried; the American people won't be left in the 
dark.
    Our witness today, Ms. Cassidy Hutchinson, has embodied 
that courage.
    I won't get into a lot of detail about what Ms. 
Hutchinson's testimony will show. I will allow her words to 
speak for themselves. I hope everyone at home will listen very 
closely.
    First, I will recognize our distinguished Vice Chair, Ms. 
Cheney of Wyoming, for any opening statements she would care to 
offer.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    In our first five hearings, the Committee has heard from a 
significant number of Republicans, including former Trump 
administration Justice Department officials, Trump campaign 
officials, several members of President Trump's White House 
staff, a prominent conservative judge, and several others.
    Today's witness, Ms. Cassidy Hutchinson, is another 
Republican and another former member of President Trump's White 
House staff.
    Certain of us in the House of Representatives recall that 
Ms. Hutchinson once worked for House Republican Whip Steve 
Scalise. But she is also a familiar face on Capitol Hill 
because she held a prominent role in the White House 
Legislative Affairs Office and later was the principal aide to 
President Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
    Ms. Hutchinson has spent considerable time up here on 
Capitol Hill representing the Trump administration, and we 
welcome her back.
    Up until now, our hearings have each been organized to 
address specific elements of President Trump's plan to overturn 
the 2020 election. Today, we are departing somewhat from that 
model because Ms. Hutchinson's testimony touches on several 
important and cross-cutting topics, topics that are relevant to 
each of our future hearings.
    In her role working for the White House chief of staff, Ms. 
Hutchinson handled a vast number of sensitive issues. She 
worked in the West Wing, several steps down the hall from the 
Oval Office. Ms. Hutchinson spoke daily with Members of 
Congress, with high-ranking officials in the administration, 
with senior White House staff, including Mr. Meadows, with 
White House counsel lawyers, and with Mr. Tony Ornato, who 
served as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff. She also 
worked on a daily basis with members of the Secret Service who 
were posted in the White House. In short, Ms. Hutchinson was in 
a position to know a great deal about the happenings in the 
Trump White House.
    Ms. Hutchinson has already sat for four videotaped 
interviews with Committee investigators, and we thank her very 
much for her cooperation and for her courage. We will cover 
certain but not all relevant topics within Ms. Hutchinson's 
knowledge today. Again, our future hearings will supply greater 
detail, putting the testimony today in a broader and more 
complete context.
    Today, you will hear Ms. Hutchinson relate certain first-
hand observations of President Trump's conduct on January 6th. 
You will also hear new information regarding the actions and 
statements of Mr. Trump's senior advisors that day, including 
his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and his White House counsel. 
We will begin to examine evidence bearing on what President 
Trump and members of the White House staff knew about the 
prospect for violence on January 6th, even before that violence 
began.
    To best communicate the information the Committee has 
gathered, we will follow the practice of our recent hearings, 
playing videotaped testimony from Ms. Hutchinson and others and 
also posing questions to Ms. Hutchinson live.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much.
    Our witness today is Ms. Cassidy Hutchinson, who served in 
the Trump administration in the White House Office of 
Legislative Affairs from 2019 to 2020 and as a special 
assistant to the President in the White House Chief of Staff's 
Office from March 2020 through January 2021.
    I will now swear in our witness.
    The witness will please stand and raise her right hand.
    [Witness sworn.]
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. You may be seated.
    Let the record reflect the witness answered in the 
affirmative.
    I now recognize myself for questions.
    Ms. Hutchinson, I would like to start with a few questions 
about your background. These are some photographs we have 
obtained highlighting your career.
    These show you with Members of Congress, including Steve 
Scalise, as well as the White House with Leader Kevin McCarthy 
and Jim Jordan. Others show you with the President and Members 
of Congress aboard Air Force One.
    Before you worked in the White House, you worked on Capitol 
Hill for Representative Steve Scalise, the Republican Whip, and 
Senator Ted Cruz. Then, in 2019, you moved to the White House 
and served there until the end of the Trump administration in 
2020.
    When you started at the White House, you served in the 
Office of Legislative Affairs. We understand that you were 
initially hired as a staff assistant but were soon promoted to 
a position of greater responsibility. Can you explain your role 
for the Committee?
    Ms. Hutchinson. When I moved over to the White House Chief 
of Staff's Office with Mr. Meadows, when he became the fourth 
chief of staff, it is difficult to describe a typical day. I 
was a special assistant to the President and an advisor to the 
chief of staff. The days depended on what the President was 
doing that day, and that is kind-of how my portfolio was 
reflected.
    I had a lot of outreach with Members of Congress, senior 
Cabinet officials. We would work--I would work on policy issues 
with relevant internal components and Members on the Hill, as 
well as security protocol at the White House complex for Mr. 
Meadows and the President.
    Chairman Thompson. Then you received another promotion in 
March 2020. At that time, you became the principal aide to the 
new White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Is that right?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is correct, sir.
    Chairman Thompson. What did a typical day look like for you 
in your work with Mr. Meadows?
    Ms. Hutchinson. It varied with what was going on. We spent 
a lot of time on the Hill. I spent time on the Hill 
independently too, as I was his liaison for Capitol Hill. We 
did a lot of Presidential travel engagements, but mostly I was 
there to serve what the chief of staff needed, and a lot of 
times what the chief of staff needed was a reflection of what 
the President's schedule was detailed to do that day.
    Chairman Thompson. So is it fair to say that you spoke 
regularly in your position both with Members of Congress and 
with senior members of the Trump administration?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is correct. That is a fair assessment, 
sir.
    Chairman Thompson. Would you say that, in your work with 
Mr. Meadows, you were typically in contact with him and others 
in the White House throughout the day?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is correct, sir. Mr. Meadows and I 
were in contact almost pretty much throughout every day 
consistently.
    Chairman Thompson. Although so much of grave importance 
happens in the West Wing of the White House, it is quite a 
small building.
    Above me on the screen, you can see a map of the first 
floor of the West Wing of the White House. On the right, you 
can see the President's Oval Office; on the left, the chief of 
staff's office suite. Within the chief of staff's office suite, 
in the heart of the West Wing, was your desk, which was between 
the Vice President's office, Mr. Kushner's office, and the Oval 
Office.
    Ms. Hutchinson, is this an accurate depiction of where you 
were located?
    Ms. Hutchinson. It is accurate. It is a lot smaller than it 
looks.
    Chairman Thompson. Absolutely.
    Ms. Hutchinson, this is a photo that shows the short 
distance between your office and the President's Oval Office. 
It only takes 5 to 10 seconds or so to walk down the hall from 
your office to the Oval Office. Is that right?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is correct.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    Pursuant to section 5(c)(8) of House Resolution 503, the 
Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Wyoming, Ms. Cheney, for 
questions.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Chairman, we will begin today with an exchange that 
first provided Ms. Hutchinson a tangible sense of the on-going 
planning for the events of January 6th.
    On January 2nd, 4 days before the attack on our Capitol, 
President Trump's lead lawyer, Mr. Giuliani, was meeting with 
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and others.
    Ms. Hutchinson, do you remember Mr. Giuliani meeting with 
Mr. Meadows on January 2, 2021?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I do. He met with Mr. Meadows in the 
evening of January 2, 2021.
    Vice Chair Cheney. We understand that you walked Mr. 
Giuliani out of the White House that night, and he talked to 
you about January 6th. What do you remember him saying?
    Ms. Hutchinson. As Mr. Giuliani and I were walking to his 
vehicle that evening, he looked at me and said something to the 
effect of: ``Cass, are you excited for the 6th? It is going to 
be a great day.''
    I remember looking at him, saying: ``Rudy, would you 
explain what is happening on the 6th?''
    He responded something to the effect of: ``We are going to 
the Capitol. It is going to be great. The President's going to 
be there. He is going to look powerful. He is going to be with 
the Members. He is going to be with the Senators. Talk to the 
chief about it. Talk to the chief about it. He knows about 
it.''
    Vice Chair Cheney. Did you go back then up to the West Wing 
and tell Mr. Meadows about your conversation with Mr. Giuliani?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I did. After Mr. Giuliani had left the 
campus that evening, I went back up to our office, and I found 
Mr. Meadows in his office on the couch. He was scrolling 
through his phone. I remember leaning against the doorway and 
saying: ``I had an interesting conversation with Rudy, Mark. It 
sounds like we are going to go to the Capitol.''
    He didn't look up from his phone and said something to the 
effect of: ``There is a lot going on, Cass, but I don't know; 
things might get real, real bad on January 6th.''
    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, Mr. Meadows is engaged 
in litigation with the Committee to try to avoid testifying 
here. What was your reaction when he said to you ``things might 
get real, real bad''?
    Ms. Hutchinson. In the days before January 2nd, I was 
apprehensive about the 6th. I had heard general plans for a 
rally. I had heard tentative movements to potentially go to the 
Capitol.
    But, when hearing Rudy's take on January 6th and then 
Mark's response, that was the first--that evening was the first 
moment that I remember feeling scared and nervous for what 
could happen on January 6th. I had a deeper concern for what 
was happening with the planning aspects of it.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you, Ms. Hutchinson.
    Today, we are going to be focusing primarily on the events 
of January 5th and 6th at the White House.
    But, to begin and to frame the discussion, I want to talk 
about a conversation that you had with Mr. John Ratcliffe, the 
Director of National Intelligence. You had this conversation in 
December 2020.
    Mr. Ratcliffe was nominated by President Trump to oversee 
U.S. intelligence--or U.S. intelligence community. Before his 
appointment, Mr. Ratcliffe was a Republican Member of Congress.
    As you will see on this clip, Director Ratcliffe's comments 
in December 2020 were prescient.

    Ms. Hutchinson. My understanding was Mr.--Director Ratcliffe didn't 
want much to do with the post-election period. Director Ratcliffe felt 
that it wasn't something that the White House should be pursuing. He 
felt it was dangerous to the President's legacy. He had expressed to me 
that he was concerned that it could spiral out of control and 
potentially be dangerous, either for our democracy or the way that 
things were going for the 6th.
    Mr. George. When you say, ``It wasn't something the White House 
should be pursuing,'' what is the ``it''?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Trying to fight the results of the election, 
finding missing ballots, pressuring--filing lawsuits in certain States 
where there didn't seem to be significant evidence and reaching out to 
State legislatures about that. So pretty much the way that the White 
House is handling the post-election period, he felt that there could be 
dangerous repercussions in terms of precedents set for elections, for 
our democracy, for the 6th. You know, he was hoping that we would 
concede.

    Vice Chair Cheney. So, Ms. Hutchinson, now we are going to 
turn to certain information that was available before January 
4th and what the Trump administration and the President knew 
about the potential for violence before January 6th.
    On the screen, you will see an email received by Acting 
Deputy Attorney General Donoghue on January 4th from the 
National Security Division of the Department of Justice.
    Mr. Donoghue testified in our hearings last week. The email 
identifies apparent planning by those coming to Washington on 
January 6th to ``occupy Federal buildings,'' and discussions of 
``invading the Capitol Building.''
    Here is what Mr. Donoghue said to us.

    Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue. And we knew that if you 
have tens of thousands of very upset people showing up in Washington, 
DC, that there was potential for violence.

    Vice Chair Cheney. U.S. Secret Service was looking at 
similar information and watching the planned demonstrations. In 
fact, their Intelligence Division sent several emails to White 
House personnel like Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato, and the 
head of the President's protective detail, Robert Engel, 
including certain materials listing events like those on the 
screen.
    The White House continued to receive updates about planned 
demonstrations, including information regarding the Proud Boys 
organizing and planning to attend events on January 6th. 
Although Ms. Hutchinson has no detailed knowledge of any 
planning involving the Proud Boys or January 6th, she did note 
this:

    Ms. Hutchinson. I recall hearing the word ``Oath Keeper'' and 
hearing the word ``Proud Boys'' closer to the planning of the January 
6th rally when Mr. Giuliani would be around.

    Vice Chair Cheney. On January 3rd, the Capitol Police 
issued a special event assessment.
    In that document, the Capitol Police noted that the Proud 
Boys and other groups plan to be in Washington, DC, on January 
6th and indicated that, ``Unlike previous post-election 
protests, the targets of the pro-Trump supporters are not 
necessarily the counter protesters as they were previously, but 
rather Congress itself is the target on the 6th.''
    Of course, we all know now that the Proud Boys showed up on 
January 6th, marched from the Washington Monument to the 
Capitol that day, and led the riotous mob to invade and occupy 
our Capitol.
    Ms. Hutchinson, I want to play you a clip of one of our 
meetings when you described the call on January 4th that you 
received from National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien on the 
same topic: Potential violence on January 6th.

    Ms. Hutchinson. I received a call from Robert O'Brien, the National 
Security Advisor. He had asked if he could speak with Mr. Meadows about 
potential violent--words of violence that he was hearing that were 
potentially going to happen on the Hill on January 6th. I had asked if 
he connected with Tony Ornato because Tony Ornato had a conversation 
with him--with Mark about that topic. Robert had said, ``I will talk to 
Tony,'' and then, you know, I don't know if Robert ever connected with 
Mark about the issue.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, can you describe for us 
Mr. Ornato's responsibilities as deputy chief of staff?
    Ms. Hutchinson. The deputy chief of staff's position at the 
White House for operations is arguably one of the most 
important positions that somebody can hold. They are in charge 
of all security protocol for the campus and all Presidential 
protectees, primarily, the President and the First Family, but 
anything that requires security for any individual that has 
Presidential protection. So, the chief of staff or the National 
Security Advisor, as well as the Vice President's team too, 
Tony would oversee all of that. He was the conduit for security 
protocol between White House staff and United States Secret 
Service.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you.
    You also described a brief meeting between Mr. Ornato and 
Mr. Meadows on the potential for violence. The meeting was on 
January 4th. They were talking about the potential for violence 
on January 6th. Let's listen to a clip of that testimony.

    Ms. Hutchinson. I remember Mr. Ornato had talked to him about 
intelligence reports. I just remember Mr. Ornato coming in and saying 
that we had intel reports saying that there could potentially be 
violence on the--on the 6th.

    Vice Chair Cheney. You also told us about reports of 
violence and weapons that the Secret Service were receiving on 
the night of January 5th and throughout the day on January 6th. 
Is that correct?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is correct.
    Vice Chair Cheney. There are reports that police in 
Washington, DC, had arrested several people with firearms or 
ammunition following a separate pro-Trump rally in Freedom 
Plaza on the evening of January 5th. Are those some of the 
reports that you recall hearing about?
    Ms. Hutchinson. They are.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Of course, the world now knows that the 
people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th had many 
different types of weapons.
    When a President speaks, the Secret Service typically 
requires those attending to pass through metal detectors, known 
as magnetometers or mags for short. The Select Committee has 
learned that people who willingly entered the enclosed area for 
President Trump's speech were screened so they could attend the 
rally at the Ellipse. They had weapons and other items that 
were confiscated: Pepper spray, knives, brass knuckles, tasers, 
body armor, gas masks, batons, blunt weapons. Those were just 
from the people who chose to go through the security for the 
President's event on the Ellipse, not the several thousand 
members of the crowd who refused to go through the mags and 
watched from the lawn near the Washington Monument.
    The Select Committee has learned about reports from outside 
the magnetometers and has obtained police radio transmissions 
identifying individuals with firearms, including AR-15s, near 
the Ellipse on the morning of January 6th. Let's listen.

    MPD Radio Transmission. There's an individual who's entering, gonna 
be a white male, about 6 feet tall, thin build, brown cowboy boots. 
He's got blue jeans and a blue jean jacket, and underneath the blue 
jean jacket, complainants both saw stock of an AR-15. He's gonna be 
with a group of individuals--about five to eight--five to eight other 
individuals. Two of the individuals in that group at the base of the 
tree near the porta potties were wearing green fatigues--green olive 
dress-style fatigues, about 5'8'', 5'9'', skinny--skinny White males, 
brown cowboy boots. They had Glock-style pistols in their waistbands.
    MPD Radio Transmission. 8736 with a message. That subject's weapon 
on his right hip--that's a negative. He's in the tree.
    MPD Radio Transmission. Motor 1, make sure PPD knows they have an 
elevated threat in the trees south side of Constitution Avenue. Look 
for the ``Don't Tread On Me'' flag, American flag facemask, cowboy 
boots, weapon on the right--right side hip.
    MPD Radio Transmission. I've got three men walking down the street 
in fatigues carrying AR-15. Copy at 14th and Independence.

    Vice Chair Cheney. AR-15s at 14th and Independence. As you 
saw in those emails, the first report that we showed we now 
know was sent in the 8 o'clock hour on January 6th. This talked 
about people in the crowd wearing ballistic helmets and body 
armor, carrying radio equipment and military-grade backpacks.
    The second report we showed you on the screen was sent by 
the Secret Service in the 11 a.m. hour, and it addressed 
reports of a man with a rifle near the Ellipse.
    Ms. Hutchinson, in prior testimony, you described for us a 
meeting in the White House around 10 a.m. in the morning of 
January 6th, involving Chief of Staff Meadows and Tony Ornato. 
Were you in that meeting?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I was.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Let's listen to your testimony about 
that meeting, and then we will have some questions.

    Mr. George. I think the last time we talked you mentioned that some 
of the weapons that people had at the rally included flag poles--
oversized sticks or flag poles, bear spray. Is there anything else that 
you recall hearing about the people who had gathered [inaudible]?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I recall Tony and I having a conversation with Mark 
probably around 10 a.m., 10:15 a.m., where I remember Tony mentioning 
knives, guns in the form of pistols and rifles, bear spray, body armor, 
spears, and flag poles. Spears were one item. Flag poles were one item. 
But then Tony had relayed to me something to the effect of ``and 
these''--``I think people are fastening spears on to the ends of flag 
poles.''

    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, here's a clip of your 
testimony regarding Mr. Meadows's response to learning that the 
rally attendees were armed that day.

    Vice Chair Cheney. What was Mark's reaction--Mr. Meadows' reaction 
to this list of weapons that people had in the crowd?
    Ms. Hutchinson. When Tony and I went in to talk to Mark that 
morning, Mark was sitting on his couch on his phone, which is something 
typical. I remember Tony just got right into it, like, ``Sir, I just 
want to let you know,'' and informed him, like, ``This is how many 
people we have outside the mags right now. These are the weapons that 
we are known to have.'' It's possible he listed more weapons off that I 
just don't recall and gave him a brief, but inconcise, explanation but 
also fairly--fairly thorough. And I remember distinctly Mark not 
looking up from his phone. All right. I remember Tony finishing his 
explanation and it taking a few seconds for Mark to say something, to 
the point I almost said, ``Mark, did you hear him?'' And then Mark 
chimed in and was, like, ``All right. Anything else?'' still looking 
down at his phone. And Tony looked at me and I looked at Tony, and Tony 
said, ``No, sir. Do you have any questions?'' He was, like, ``What are 
you hearing?'' And I looked at Tony, and I was, like, ``Sir, he just 
told you about what was happening down at the rally.'' And then he was, 
like, ``Yeah, yeah, I know.'' And then he looked up and said, ``Have 
you talked to the President?'' And Tony said, ``Yes, sir. He is aware, 
too.'' And then he said, ``All right. Good.''
    Vice Chair Cheney. He asked Tony if Tony had informed the 
President?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Yes.
    Vice Chair Cheney. And Tony said, yes, he had?

    Vice Chair Cheney. So, Ms. Hutchinson, is it your 
understanding that Mr. Ornato told the President about weapons 
at the rally on the morning of January 6th?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is what Mr. Ornato relayed to me.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Here's how you characterized Mr. 
Meadows's general response when people raised concerns about 
what could happen on January 6th.

    Mr. George. So, at the time in the days leading up to the 6th, 
there were lots of public reports about how things might go bad on the 
6th, even the potential for violence. If I'm hearing you correctly, 
what stands out to you is that Mr. Meadows did not share those concerns 
or at least didn't act on those concerns?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Did not act on those concerns would be accurate.
    Mr. George. But other people raised them to him? Like, in this 
exchange, you mention that Mr. Ornato pulled him aside.
    Ms. Hutchinson. That's correct.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, we are going to show now 
an exchange of texts between you and Deputy Chief of Staff 
Ornato.
    These text messages were exchanged while you were at the 
Ellipse. In one text, you write: ``But the crowd looks good 
from that vantage point. As long as we get the shot. He was 
F'ing furious.''
    The text messages also stress that President Trump kept 
mentioning the OTR, an off-the-record movement. We are going to 
come back and ask you about that in a minute.
    But could you tell us, first of all, who it is in the text 
who was furious?
    Ms. Hutchinson. The ``he'' in that text that I was 
referring to was the President.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Why was he furious, Ms. Hutchinson?
    Ms. Hutchinson. He was furious because he wanted the arena 
that we had on the Ellipse to be maxed out at capacity for all 
attendees. The advance team had relayed to him that the mags 
were free flowing. Everybody who had wanted to come in had 
already come in, but he still was angry about the extra space 
and wanted more people to come in.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Did you go to the rally in the 
Presidential motorcade?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I was there, yes, in the motorcade.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Were you backstage with the President 
and other members of his staff and family?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I was.
    Vice Chair Cheney. You told us, Ms. Hutchinson, about 
particular comments that you heard while you were in the tent 
area.

    Ms. Hutchinson. When we were in the off-stage announce area tent 
behind the stage, he was very concerned about the shot, meaning the 
photograph that we would get because the rally space wasn't full. One 
of the reasons, which I've previously stated, was because he wanted it 
to be full and for people to not feel excluded because they had come 
far to watch him at the rally, and he felt the mags were at fault for 
not letting everybody in. But another leading reason, and likely the 
primary reason, is because he wanted it full, and he was angry that we 
weren't letting people through the mags with weapons--what the Secret 
Service deems as weapons and are--are weapons.
    Ms. Hutchinson. But when we were in the off-stage announce tent, I 
was part of a conversation--I was in the vicinity of a conversation 
where I overheard the President say something to the effect of, ``You 
know, I don't F'ing care that they have weapons. They're not here to 
hurt me. Take the F'ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to 
the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the F'ing mags away.''

    Vice Chair Cheney. Just to be clear, Ms. Hutchinson, is it 
your understanding that the President wanted to take the mags 
away and said that the armed individuals were not there to hurt 
him?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That's a fair assessment.
    Vice Chair Cheney. The issue wasn't with the amount of 
space available in the official rally area only but, instead, 
that people did not want to have to go through the mags.
    Let's listen to a portion of what you told us about that.

    Ms. Hutchinson. In this particular instance, it wasn't the capacity 
of our space. It was the mags and the people that didn't want to come 
through, and that's what Tony had been trying to relay to him that 
morning: ``You know, it's not the issues that we encounter on the 
campaign. We have enough space, sir. They don't want to come in right 
now. They have weapons they don't want confiscated by the Secret 
Service, and they're fine on the Mall. They can see you on the Mall, 
and they want to march straight to the Capitol from the Mall.''

    Vice Chair Cheney. The President apparently wanted all 
attendees inside the official rally space and repeatedly said, 
``They are not here to hurt me.''

    Vice Chair Cheney. And--and just to be clear, so he was told again 
in--in that conversation--or was he told again in that conversation 
that people couldn't come through the mags because they had weapons?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Correct.
    Vice Chair Cheney. And that people--and his response was to say, 
``They can march to the Capitol from--from the Ellipse?''
    Ms. Hutchinson. Something to the effect of ``take the F'ing mags 
away. They're not here to hurt me. Let them in. Let my people in. They 
can march to the Capitol after the rally is over. They can march from--
they can march from the Ellipse. Take the F'ing mags away. Then they 
can march to the Capitol.''

    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, what we saw when those 
clips were playing were photos provided by the National 
Archives showing the President in the offstage tent before his 
speech on the Ellipse. You were in some of those photos as 
well. I just want to confirm that that is when you heard the 
President say the people with weapons weren't there to hurt him 
and that he wanted the Secret Service to remove the 
magnetometers.
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is correct. In the photos that you 
displayed, we were standing toward the front of the tent with 
the TVs really close to where he would walk out to go onto the 
stage. These conversations happened 2 to 3 minutes before he 
took the stage that morning.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Let's reflect on that for moment. 
President Trump was aware that a number of the individuals in 
the crowd had weapons and were wearing body armor. Here is what 
President Trump instructed the crowd to do.

    President Trump. We're gonna walk down--and I'll be there with you. 
We're gonna walk down--we're gonna walk down--anyone you want but I 
think right here--we're gonna walk down to the Capitol.

    Vice Chair Cheney. The crowd, as we know, did proceed to 
the Capitol. It soon became apparent to the Secret Service, 
including the Secret Service teams in the crowd, along with 
White House staff that security at the Capitol would not be 
sufficient.

    Ms. Hutchinson. I'd had two or three phone conversations with Mr. 
Ornato when we were at the Ellipse, and then I had four men on Mr. 
Meadows' detail with me in between those individuals and then a few 
other bodies on the ground, just Secret Service doing advance. They 
were getting notifications through their radios, and Mr. Ornato in one 
phone conversation had called me and said, ``Make sure the chief knows 
that they are getting close to the Capitol. They are having trouble 
stacking bodies.''

    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, when you said they were 
having trouble stacking bodies, did you mean that law 
enforcement at the Capitol needed more people to defend the 
Capitol from the rioters?
    Ms. Hutchinson. It was becoming clear to us and to the 
Secret Service that Capitol Police officers were getting 
overrun at the security barricades outside of the Capitol 
Building, and they were having short--they were short people to 
defend the building against the rioters.
    Vice Chair Cheney. You mentioned that Mr. Ornato was 
conveying this to you because he wanted you to tell Mr. 
Meadows. So did you tell Mr. Meadows that people were getting 
closer to the Capitol and that Capitol Police was having 
difficulty?
    Ms. Hutchinson. After I had the conversation with Mr. 
Meadows, Mr.--after I had the conversation with Ornato, I went 
to have the discussion with Mr. Meadows. He was in a secure 
vehicle at the time making a call. So, when I had gone over to 
the car, I went to open the door to let him know; he had 
immediately shut it. I don't know who he was speaking with. It 
wasn't something that he regularly did, especially when I would 
go over to give him information. So I was a bit taken aback, 
but I didn't think much of it and thinking that I was--I would 
be able to have the conversation with him a few moments later.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Were you able to have that conversation 
a few moments later?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Probably about 20 to 25 minutes later. 
There was another period in between where he shut the door 
again. Then, when he finally got out of the vehicle, we had the 
conversation. But, at that point, there was a backlog of 
information that he should have been made aware of.
    Vice Chair Cheney. So you opened the door to the control 
car, and Mr. Meadows pulled it shut?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is correct.
    Vice Chair Cheney. He did that two times.
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is correct.
    Vice Chair Cheney. When you finally were able to give Mr. 
Meadows the information about the violence at the Capitol, what 
was his reaction?
    Ms. Hutchinson. He almost had a lack of reaction. I 
remember him saying ``all right,'' something to the effect of: 
How much longer does the President have left in his speech?
    Vice Chair Cheney. Again, much of this information about 
the potential for violence was known or learned about the onset 
of the violence, early enough for President Trump to take steps 
to prevent it. He could, for example, have urged the crowd at 
the Ellipse not to march to the Capitol. He could have 
condemned the violence immediately once it began, or he could 
have taken multiple other steps.
    But, as we will see today and in later hearings, President 
Trump had something else in mind.
    One other question at this point, Ms. Hutchinson. Were you 
aware of concerns that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone or 
Eric Herschmann had about the language President Trump used in 
his Ellipse speech?
    Ms. Hutchinson. There were many discussions the morning of 
the 6th about the rhetoric of the speech that day. In my 
conversations with Mr. Herschmann, he had relayed that we would 
be foolish to include language that had been included at the 
President's request, which had lines along to the effect of: 
Fight for Trump. We are going to march to the Capitol. I will 
be there with you. Fight for me. Fight for what we are doing. 
Fight for the movement.
    Things about Vice President at the time too.
    Both Mr. Herschmann and the White House Counsel's Office 
were urging the speechwriters to not include that language for 
legal concerns and also for the optics of what it could portray 
the President wanting to do that day.
    Vice Chair Cheney. We just heard the President say that he 
would be with his supporters as they marched to the Capitol. 
Even though he did not end up going, he certainly wanted to.
    Some have questioned whether President Trump genuinely 
planned to come here to the Capitol on January 6th. In his 
book, Mark Meadows falsely wrote that, after President gave his 
speech on January 6th, he told Mr. Meadows that he was 
``speaking metaphorically about the walk to the Capitol.''
    As you will see, Donald Trump was not speaking 
metaphorically.
    As we heard earlier, Rudy Giuliani told Ms. Hutchinson that 
Mr. Trump planned to travel to the Capitol on January 6th. I 
want to pause for just a moment to ask you, Ms. Hutchinson, to 
explain some of the terminology you will hear today. We have 
heard you use two different terms to describe plans for the 
President's movement to the Capitol or anywhere else. One of 
those is a ``scheduled movement'' and another one is ``OTR.'' 
Could you describe for us what each of those mean?
    Ms. Hutchinson. A scheduled Presidential movement is on his 
official schedule. It is notified to the press and to a wide 
range of staff that will be traveling with him. It is known to 
the public, known to the Secret Service, and they are able to 
coordinate the movement days in advance.
    An off-the-record movement is confined to the knowledge of 
a very, very small group of advisors and staff. Typically, a 
very small group of staff would travel with him, mostly that 
are just included in the National Security package. You can 
pull an off-the-record movement together in less than an hour. 
It is a way to kind-of circumvent having to release it to the 
press, if that is the goal of it, or to not have to have as 
many security parameters put in place ahead of time to make the 
moment happen.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you.
    Let's turn back now to the President's plans to travel to 
the Capitol on January 6th. We know that White House Counsel 
Pat Cipollone was concerned about the legal implications of 
such a trip, and he agreed with the Secret Service that it 
shouldn't happen.
    Ms. Hutchinson, did you have any conversations with Pat 
Cipollone about his concerns about the President going to the 
Capitol on January 6th?
    Ms. Hutchinson. On January 3rd, Mr. Cipollone had 
approached me, knowing that Mark had raised the prospect of 
going up to the Capitol on January 6th. Mr. Cipollone and I had 
a brief private conversation where he said to me: ``We need to 
make sure that this doesn't happen. This would be legally a 
terrible idea for us. We have serious legal concerns if we go 
up to the Capitol that day.''
    He then urged me to continue relaying that to Mr. Meadows, 
because it is my understanding that Mr. Cipollone thought that 
Mr. Meadows was indeed pushing this along with the President.
    Vice Chair Cheney. We understand, Ms. Hutchinson, that you 
also spoke to Mr. Cipollone on the morning of the 6th, as you 
were about to go to the rally on the Ellipse. Mr. Cipollone 
said something to you like: ``Make sure the movement to the 
Capitol does not happen.''
    Is that correct?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is correct. I saw Mr. Cipollone right 
before I walked out onto West Exec that morning, and Mr. 
Cipollone said something to the effect of: ``Please make sure 
we don't go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. 
We are going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we 
make that movement happen.''
    Vice Chair Cheney. Do you remember which crimes Mr. 
Cipollone was concerned with?
    Ms. Hutchinson. In the days leading up to the 6th, we had 
conversations about potentially obstructing justice or 
defrauding the electoral count.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Let's hear about some of those concerns 
that you mentioned earlier in one of your interviews with us.

    Ms. Hutchinson. Having a private conversation with Pat late in the 
afternoon of the 3rd or 4th, that Pat was concerned it would look like 
we were obstructing justice or obstructing the electoral college 
count--and I apologize for probably not being very----
    Vice Chair Cheney. That's fine.
    Ms. Hutchinson [continuing]. Clear with my legal terms here--but 
that it would look like we were obstructing what was happening on 
Capitol Hill, and he was also worried that it would look like we were 
inciting a riot or encouraging a riot to erupt on the Capitol--at the 
Capitol.

    Vice Chair Cheney. In fact, in the days before January 6th 
and on January 6th itself, President Trump expressed to 
multiple White House aides that he wanted to go to the Capitol 
after his speech.
    Here is what various White House aides have told the 
Committee about the President's desire to go to the Capitol.

    Mr. George. Did the President tell you this, that he wanted to 
speak at the Capitol?
    Mr. Luna. Correct. Yes.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Tonolli. During the meeting in the dining room, did the idea of 
the President proceeding or walking to the Capitol on the 6th after his 
speech come up?
    Mr. Max Miller. Walking to the Capitol? No.
    Mr. Tonolli. Driving to the Capitol?
    Mr. Max Miller. It came up.
    Mr. Tonolli. OK. How did it come up and what was discussed?
    Mr. Max Miller. He brought it up. He said, ``I want to go down to 
the Capitol.''
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. George. What about him marching to the Capitol on the 6th?
    Mr. Luna. Yes.
    Mr. George. Tell us about that.
    Mr. Luna. So it's kind-of a general thing. I mean, to get into the 
specifics of it, I--I was aware of a desire of the President to 
potentially march to the--or--or accompany the rally attendees to the 
Capitol.
    Mr. George. When did you first hear about this idea of the 
President accompanying rally attendees to the Capitol on the 6th?
    Mr. Luna. This was at the 6th. This was during the--after he 
finished his remarks.

    Vice Chair Cheney. When the President said that he would be 
going to the Capitol during his speech on the Ellipse, the 
Secret Service scrambled to find a way for him to go. We know 
this from witnesses and the Secret Service, also from messages 
among staff on the President's National Security Council. The 
NSC staff were monitoring the situation in real time. You can 
see how the situation evolved in the following chat log that 
the Committee has obtained.
    As you can see, NSC staff believed that MOGUL--the 
President--was ``going to the Capitol,'' and ``they are finding 
the best route now.''
    From these chats, we also know the staff learned of the 
attack on the Capitol in real time. When President Trump left 
the Ellipse stage at 1:10, the staff knew that rioters had 
invaded the inaugural stage and Capitol Police were calling for 
all available officers to respond.
    When Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy heard the President 
say he was going to the Capitol, he called you, Ms. Hutchinson. 
Isn't that right?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is correct.
    Vice Chair Cheney. In this text message, you told Tony 
Ornato, ``McCarthy just called me too,'' and ``Do you guys 
think you are coming to my office?''
    Tell us about the call that day with Leader McCarthy during 
the President's speech on the Ellipse.
    Ms. Hutchinson. I was still in the tent behind the stage. 
When you are behind the stage, you can't really hear what is 
going on in front of you. So, when Mr. McCarthy called me with 
this information, I answered the call, and he sounded rushed 
but also frustrated and angry at me. I was confused because I 
didn't know what the President had just said.
    He then explained: ``The President just said he is marching 
to the Capitol. You told me this whole week you aren't coming 
up here. Why would you lie to me?''
    I said: ``I am not lying. I wasn't lying to you, sir. I--we 
are not going to the Capitol.''
    He said: ``Well, he just said it on stage, Cassidy. Figure 
it out. Don't come up here.''
    I said: ``I will run the traps on this now. I will shoot 
you a text. I can assure you we are not coming up to the 
Capitol. We have already made that decision.''
    He pressed a little bit more, believing me, but I think 
frustrated that the President had said that. We ended the phone 
conversation after that.
    I called Mr. Ornato to reconfirm that we weren't going to 
the Capitol, and--which is also in our text messages. I sent 
Mr. McCarthy another text telling him the affirmative, that we 
were not going up to the Capitol, and he didn't respond after 
that.
    Vice Chair Cheney. We understand, Ms. Hutchinson, that the 
plans for the President to come to the Capitol had included 
discussions at some point about what the President would do 
when he came up to the Capitol on January 6th.
    Let's look at a clip of one of your interviews discussing 
that issue with the Committee.

    Vice Chair Cheney. When you were talking about a scheduled 
movement, did anyone say what the President wanted to do when he got 
here?
    Ms. Hutchinson. No, not that I can specifically remember. I 
remember--I remember hearing a few different ideas discussed with--
between Mark and Scott Perry, Mark and Rudy Giuliani. I don't know 
which conversations were elevated to the President. I don't know what 
he personally wanted to do when he went up to the Capitol that day. You 
know, I know that there were discussions about him having another 
speech outside of the Capitol before going in. I know that there was a 
conversation about him going into the House Chamber at one point.

    Vice Chair Cheney. As we have all just heard, in the days 
leading up to January 6th, on the day of the speech, both 
before and during and after the rally speech, President Trump 
was pushing his staff to arrange for him to come up here to the 
Capitol during the electoral vote count. Let's turn now to what 
happened in the President's vehicle when the Secret Service 
told him he would not be going to the Capitol after his speech.
    First, here is the President's motorcade leaving the 
Ellipse after his speech on January 6th.
    Ms. Hutchinson, when you returned to the White House in the 
motorcade after the President's speech, where did you go?
    Ms. Hutchinson. When I returned to the White House, I 
walked upstairs toward the chief of staff's office, and I 
noticed Mr. Ornato lingering outside of the office. Once we had 
made eye contact, he quickly waved me to go into his office, 
which was just across the hall from mine.
    When I went in, he shut the door, and I noticed Bobby 
Engel, who was the head of Mr. Trump's security detail, sitting 
in a chair looking somewhat discombobulated, a little lost.
    I looked at Tony, and he had said: ``Did you F'ing hear 
what happened in the Beast?''
    I said: ``No, Tony, I just got back. What happened?''
    Tony proceeded to tell me that, when the President got in 
the Beast, he was under the impression from Mr. Meadows that 
the off-the-record movement to the Capitol was still possible 
and likely to happen but that Bobby had more information.
    So, once the President had gotten into the vehicle with 
Bobby, he thought that they were going up to the Capitol, and 
when Bobby had relayed to him ``we are not, we don't have the 
assets to do it, it is not secure, we are going back to the 
West Wing,'' the President had very strong, a very angry 
response to that.
    Tony described him as being irate. The President said 
something to the effect of: ``I am the F'ing President. Take me 
up to the Capitol now.''
    To which Bobby responded: ``Sir, we have to go back to the 
West Wing.''
    The President reached up toward the front of the vehicle to 
grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm and said: 
``Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We 
are going back to the West Wing. We are not going to the 
Capitol.''
    Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge toward Bobby 
Engel. When Mr. Ornato had recounted the story to me, he had 
motioned toward his clavicles.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Was Mr. Engel in the room as Mr. Ornato 
told you this story?
    Ms. Hutchinson. He was.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Did Mr. Engel correct or disagree with 
any part of the story from Mr. Ornato?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Mr. Engel did not correct or disagree with 
any part of the story.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Did Mr. Engel or Mr. Ornato ever after 
that tell you that what Mr. Ornato had just said was untrue?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Neither Mr. Ornato nor Mr. Engel told me 
ever that it was untrue.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Despite this altercation, this physical 
altercation during the ride back to the White House, President 
Trump still demanded to go to the Capitol.
    Here is what Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press 
secretary at the time, wrote in her personal notes and told the 
Committee about President Trump's desire to go the Capitol 
after returning to the White House.

    Mr. Wood. When you wrote, ``POTUS wanted to walk to the Capitol,'' 
was that based solely on what the President said during his speech or 
anything that he or anybody else said afterwards?
    Ms. McEnany. So, to the best of my recollection, I believe when we 
got back to the White House he said he wanted to physically walk with 
the marchers, and according to my notes, he then said he'd be fine with 
just riding the Beast. But to the best of my recollection, he wanted to 
be a part of the march in some fashion.
    Mr. Wood. And just for the record, ``the Beast'' refers to the 
Presidential limousine?
    Ms. McEnany. Yes.

    Vice Chair Cheney. President Trump did not go to the 
Capitol that day. We understand that he blamed Mark Meadows for 
that.

    Ms. Hutchinson. So, prior to leaving the rally site when he got off 
the stage and everybody was making the movement back to the motorcade, 
I'd overheard Mr. Meadows say to him then, as I had prior to Mr. Trump 
taking the stage that morning, that he was still working on getting an 
off-the-record movement to the Capitol. So, when Mr. Trump took the 
stage, he was under the impression by Mr. Meadows that it was still 
possible. So, when he got off the stage, I had relayed to Mr. Meadows 
that I had another conversation with Tony--the movement was still not 
possible. Mr. Meadows said, ``OK.'' And then as they proceeded to go to 
the motorcade and--Mr. Meadows had reiterated, ``We're gonna work on 
it, sir. Talk to Bobby. Bobby has more information.'' Mark got into his 
vehicle. To my understanding, Trump got into the Beast, and after we 
had all arrived back at the White House later in the day, it had been 
relayed to me via Mark that the President wasn't happy that Bobby 
didn't pull it off for him and that Mark didn't work hard enough to get 
the movement on the books.

    Vice Chair Cheney. The physical altercation that Ms. 
Hutchinson described in the Presidential vehicle was not the 
first time that the President had become angry about issues 
relating to the election.
    On December 1, 2020, Attorney General Barr said in an 
interview that the Department of Justice had not found evidence 
of wide-spread election fraud sufficient to change the outcome 
of the election.
    Ms. Hutchinson, how did the President react to hearing that 
news?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Around the time that I understand the AP 
article went live, I remember hearing noise coming from down 
the hallway. So I poked my head out of the office, and I saw 
the valet walking toward our office.
    He had said: Get the chief down to the dining room. The 
President wants him.
    So, Mark went down to the dining room, came back to the 
office a few minutes later. After Mark had returned, I left the 
office and went down to the dining room, and I noticed that the 
door was propped open, and the valet was inside the dining room 
changing a tablecloth off of the dining room table. He motioned 
for me to come in and then pointed toward the front of the room 
near the fireplace mantle and the TV, where I first noticed 
there was ketchup dripping down the wall and there was a 
shattered porcelain plate on the floor.
    The valet had articulated that the President was extremely 
angry at the Attorney General's AP interview and had thrown his 
lunch against the wall, which was causing them to have to clean 
up. So, I grabbed a towel and started wiping the ketchup off 
the wall to help the valet out.
    He said something to the effect of: ``He is really ticked 
off about this. I would stay clear of him for right now. He is 
really, really ticked off about this right now.''
    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, was this the only 
instance that you are aware where the President threw dishes?
    Ms. Hutchinson. It is not.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Are there other instances in the dining 
room that you recall where he expressed his anger?
    Ms. Hutchinson. There were several times throughout my 
tenure with the chief of staff that I was aware of him either 
throwing dishes or flipping the tablecloth to let all the 
contents of the table go onto the floor, and likely break or go 
everywhere.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, Attorney General Barr 
described to the Committee the President's angry reaction when 
he finally met with President Trump. Let's listen.

    Attorney General Barr. And I said, ``Look, I know that you're 
dissatisfied with me and I'm glad to offer my resignation.'' And he 
pounded the table very hard--everyone sort-of jumped--and he said 
``Accepted.''

    Vice Chair Cheney. Mr. Chairman, I reserve.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentlewoman reserves.
    The Chair requests those in the hearing room remain seated 
until the Capitol Police have escorted our witness from the 
room.
    Pursuant to the order of the Committee of today, the Chair 
declares the Committee in recess for a period of approximately 
10 minutes.
    [Accordingly, at 2:01 p.m., the Committee recessed until 
2:15 p.m., when it was called to order by the Chairman.]
    Chairman Thompson. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman 
from Wyoming, Vice Chair Cheney.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Before we turn to what Ms. Hutchinson saw and heard in the 
White House during the violent attack on the Capitol on January 
6th, let's discuss certain communications White House Chief of 
Staff Mark Meadows had on January 5th.
    President Trump's associate, Roger Stone, attended rallies 
during the afternoon and the evening of January 5th in 
Washington, DC.
    On January 5th and 6th, Mr. Stone was photographed with 
multiple members of the Oath Keepers who were allegedly serving 
as his security detail.
    As we now know, multiple members of that organization have 
been charged with or pled guilty to crimes associated with 
January 6th. Mr. Stone has invoked his Fifth Amendment 
privilege against self-incrimination before this Committee. 
General Michael Flynn has also taken the Fifth before this 
Committee.
    Mr. Stone previously had been convicted of other Federal 
crimes unrelated to January 6th. General Flynn had pleaded 
guilty to a felony charge also predating and unrelated to 
January 6th. President Trump pardoned General Flynn just weeks 
after the Presidential election. In July 2020, he commuted the 
sentence Roger Stone was to serve.
    The night before January 6th, President Trump instructed 
his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to contact both Roger Stone 
and Michael Flynn regarding what would play out the next day.
    Ms. Hutchinson, is it your understanding that President 
Trump asked Mark Meadows to speak with Roger Stone and General 
Flynn on January 5th?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is correct. That is my understanding.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, is it your understanding 
that Mr. Meadows called Mr. Stone on the 5th?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I am under the impression that Mr. Meadows 
did complete both a call to Mr. Stone and General Flynn the 
evening of the 5th.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Do you know what they talked about that 
evening, Ms. Hutchinson?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I am not sure.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Is it your understanding that Mr. 
Giuliani, Mr. Eastman, and others had set up what has been 
called a ``war room'' at the Willard Hotel on the night of the 
5th?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I was aware of that the night of the 5th.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Do you know if Mr. Meadows ever intended 
to go to the Willard Hotel on the night of the 5th?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Mr. Meadows had a conversation with me 
where he wanted me to work with Secret Service on a movement 
from the White House to the Willard Hotel so we could attend 
the meeting, or meetings, with Mr. Giuliani and his associates 
in the war room.
    Vice Chair Cheney. What was your view as to whether or not 
Mr. Meadows should go to the Willard that night?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I had made it clear to Mr. Meadows that I 
didn't believe it was a smart idea for him to go to the Willard 
Hotel that night. I wasn't sure everything that was going on at 
the Willard Hotel, although I knew enough about what Mr. 
Giuliani and his associates were pushing during this period. I 
didn't think that it was something appropriate for the White 
House chief of staff to attend or to consider involvement in. I 
made that clear to Mr. Meadows.
    Throughout the afternoon, he mentioned a few more times 
going up to the Willard Hotel that evening, and then eventually 
dropped the subject the night of the 5th and said that he would 
dial in instead.
    Vice Chair Cheney. So General Flynn has appeared before 
this Committee. When he appeared before our Committee, he took 
the Fifth. Let's briefly view a clip of General Mike Flynn 
taking the Fifth Amendment.

    Vice Chair Cheney. General Flynn, do you believe the violence on 
January 6th was justified?
    Mr. Warrington. Can we have a minute?
    Vice Chair Cheney. Yes.
    [1 minute, 36 seconds later.]
    Mr. Warrington. All right. I'm back. Congresswoman Cheney, could 
you repeat the question, please?
    Vice Chair Cheney. Yes. General Flynn, do you believe the violence 
on January 6th was justified?
    Mr. Warrington. Is that--can I get a clarification. Is that a moral 
question or a legal question?
    Vice Chair Cheney. I'm asking both.
    General Flynn. I said--I said the Fifth.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Do you believe the violence on January 6th was 
justified morally?
    General Flynn. Take the Fifth.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Do you believe the violence on January 6th was 
justified legally?
    General Flynn. Fifth.
    Vice Chair Cheney. General Flynn, do you believe in the peaceful 
transition of power in the United States of America?
    General Flynn. The Fifth.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Let's move on now to January 6th and the 
conduct of Donald Trump and Mark Meadows during the attack on 
the Capitol.
    Ms. Hutchinson, I would like now for us to listen to a 
description, your description of what transpired in the West 
Wing during the attack. For context, in this clip you describe 
the time frame starting at about 2 p.m.

    Ms. Hutchinson. So I remember Mark being alone in his office for 
quite some time. And, you know, I know we've spoken about Ben 
Williamson going in at one point, and I don't personally remember Ben 
going in. I don't doubt that he had gone in. But I remember him being 
alone in his office for most of the afternoon. Around 2 o'clock to 
2:05--around 2 o'clock to 2:05, you know, we were watching the TV, and 
I could see that the rioters were getting closer and closer to the 
Capitol.
    Mark still hadn't popped out of his office or said anything about 
it. So that's when I went into his office. I saw that he was sitting on 
his couch on his cell phone, same as the morning, where he was just 
kind-of scrolling and typing. I said, ``Hey, are you watching the TV, 
chief?'' Because his TV was small and I--you can see it, but I didn't 
know if he was really paying attention.
    I said, ``You watching the TV, chief?'' He was like, ``Yeah.'' I 
said, ``The rioters are getting really close. Have you talked to the 
President?'' And he goes, ``No, he wants to be alone right now''--still 
looking at his phone.
    So I start to get frustrated because, you know, I sort-of felt like 
I was watching a--this is not a great comparison--but a bad car 
accident that was about to happen where you can't stop it but you want 
to be able to do something.
    I just remember--I remember thinking, in that moment, Mark needs to 
snap out of this, and I don't know how to snap him out of this, but 
he--he needs to care. And I just remember I blurted out and I said, 
``Mark, do you know where Jim's at right now?'' And he looked up at me 
at that point and said, ``Jim?'' And I said, ``Mark, is--he was on the 
floor a little while ago giving a floor speech. Did you listen?'' He 
said, ``Yeah, it was real good. Did you like it?'' And I said, ``Yeah. 
Do you know where he's at right now?'' He said, ``No, I haven't heard 
from him.'' And I said, ``You might want to check in with him, Mark.'' 
And I remember pointing at the TV, and I said, ``The rioters are 
getting close. They might get in.'' And he looked at me and said 
something to the effect of, ``All right. I'll--I'll give him a call.''

    Vice Chair Cheney. Not long after the rioters broke into 
the Capitol, you described what happened with White House 
Counsel Pat Cipollone.

    Ms. Hutchinson. No more than a minute, minute and a half later, I 
see Pat Cipollone barreling down the hallway toward our office, and he 
rushed right in, looked at me, said, ``Is Mark in his office?'' And I 
said, ``Yes.'' He just looked at me and started shaking his head and 
went over, opened Mark's office door, stood there with the door propped 
open, and said something to--Mark is still sitting on his phone. I 
remember, like, glancing and he's still sitting on his phone.
    And I remember Pat saying to him something to the effect of, ``The 
rioters have gotten to the Capitol, Mark. We need to go down and see 
the President now.'' And Mark looked up at him and said, ``He doesn't 
want to do anything, Pat.'' And Pat said something to the effect of--
and very clearly had said this to Mark--something to the effect of, 
``Mark, something needs to be done or people are going to die, and the 
blood is going to be on your F'ing hands. This is getting out of 
control. I'm going down there.''
    And at that point, Mark stood up from his couch, both of his phones 
in his hand. He had his glasses on still. He walked out with Pat. He 
put both of his phones on my desk and said, ``Let me know if Jim 
calls.'' And they walked out and went down to the dining room.

    Vice Chair Cheney. A few minutes later Representative 
Jordan called back.

    Ms. Hutchinson. A couple minutes later, so likely around--between 
2:15 and 2:25--I know the tweet went out at 2:24. I don't remember if I 
was there when the tweet went out or if it happened right afterwards, 
but Jim had called. I answered the phone, said, ``One second.'' He knew 
it was--I guess he knew who it was and I introduced myself, but I--I 
don't remember if he called my cell phone or if he had called one of 
Mark's. But I answered the phone and said, ``One sec. Mark's down the 
hall. I'm going to go hand the phone to him.'' And he said, ``OK.''
    So I went down. I asked the valet if Mark was in the dining room. 
The valet said, ``Yes.'' I opened the door to the dining room, briefly 
stepped in to get Mark's attention. I showed him the phone, like 
flipped the phone his way so he could see it said Jim Jordan. He had 
stepped to where I was standing there holding the door open, took the 
phone, talking to Jim with the door still propped open.
    So I took a few steps back. So I probably was two feet from Mark. 
He was standing in the doorway going into the Oval Office dining room. 
They had a brief conversation. And in the crossfires--you know, I heard 
briefly, like, what they were talking about, but in the background, I 
had heard conversations in the Oval dining room with the--at that point 
talking about the ``hang Mike Pence'' chants.

    Vice Chair Cheney. That clip ended, Ms. Hutchinson, with 
you recalling that you heard the President, Mr. Meadows, and 
the White House counsel discussing the ``Hang Mike Pence'' 
chants, and then you described for us what happened next.

    Ms. Hutchinson. It wasn't until Mark hung up the phone, handed it 
back to me, I went back to my desk. A couple of minutes later, him and 
Pat came back, possibly Eric Herschmann, too. I'm pretty sure Eric 
Herschmann was there, but I'm--I'm confident it was Pat that was there. 
I remember Pat saying something to the effect of, ``Mark, we need to do 
something more. They're literally calling for the Vice President to be 
F'ing hung.''
    And Mark had responded something to the effect of, ``You heard him, 
Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn't think they're doing 
anything wrong,'' to which Pat said something, ``This is F'ing crazy. 
We need to be doing something more,'' briefly stepped into Mark's 
office.
    And when Mark had said something--when Mark had said something to 
the effect of ``he doesn't think they're doing anything wrong,'' 
knowing what I had heard briefly in the dining room, coupled with Pat 
discussing the ``hang Mike Pence'' chants in the lobby of our office 
and then Mark's response, I understood ``they're'' to be the rioters in 
the Capitol that were chanting for the Vice President to be hung.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Let me pause here on this point. The 
rioters chanted, ``Hang Mike Pence.''
    The President of the United States, Donald Trump, said that 
``Mike deserves it,'' and that, ``Those rioters were not doing 
anything wrong.''
    This is a sentiment that he has expressed at other times as 
well. In an interview with ABC News correspondent Jonathan 
Karl, President Trump was asked about the supporters chanting, 
``Hang Mike Pence,'' last year.
    Instead of condemning them, the former President defended 
them.

    Mr. Karl [continuing]. Saying ``hang Mike Pence.''
    President Trump. Because it's--it's common sense, Jon. It's common 
sense that you're supposed to protect--how can you--if you know a vote 
is fraudulent, right, how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to 
Congress?

    Vice Chair Cheney. President Trump's view that the rioters 
were not doing anything wrong, and that ``Mike deserved it,'' 
helps us to understand why the President did not ask the 
rioters to leave the Capitol for multiple hours. In fact, he 
put this tweet out at 
2:24 p.m.
    Ms. Hutchinson, do you recall seeing this tweet in which 
the President said the Vice President did not have the courage 
to do what needed to be done?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I do.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, what was your reaction 
when you saw this tweet?
    Ms. Hutchinson. As a staffer that works to always represent 
the administration to the best of my ability and to showcase 
the good things that he had done for the country, I remember 
feeling frustrated, disappointed. Really--it felt personal. I 
was really sad. As an American, I was disgusted.
    It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching 
the Capitol Building get defaced over a lie. It was something 
that was really hard in that moment to digest, knowing what I 
had been hearing down the hall and the conversations that were 
happening, seeing that tweet come up and knowing what was 
happening on the Hill. It is something that I--I still struggle 
to work through the emotions of that.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, we have also spoken to 
multiple other White House staff about their reaction to Donald 
Trump's 2:24 tweet, condemning Mike Pence for not having the 
courage to refuse to count electoral votes, an act that would 
have been illegal.
    Matthew Pottinger, a former Marine intelligence officer who 
served in the White House for 4 years, including as Deputy 
National Security Advisor, was in the vicinity of the Oval 
Office at various points throughout the day. When he saw that 
tweet, he immediately decided to resign his position.
    Let's watch him describe his reaction to the President's 
tweet.

    Mr. Pottinger. One of my staff brought me a printout of a tweet by 
the President, and the tweet said something to the effect that ``Mike 
Pence,'' the Vice President, ``didn't have the courage to do what'' 
he--``what should have been done.'' I--I read that tweet and made a 
decision at that moment to resign. That's where I knew that I was 
leaving that day once I read that tweet.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Ultimately, members of the White House 
staff, Sarah Matthews, Cabinet members Secretary Chao and 
Secretary DeVos resigned as well. Here is Secretary DeVos's 
resignation letter.
    As can you see, in resigning on January 6th, Secretary 
DeVos said to the President, ``There's no mistaking the impact 
your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection 
point for me.''
    Let's also look at Secretary Chao's resignation statement.
    When Secretary Chao resigned, she spoke of the January 6th 
attack. She said, ``As I am sure is the case with many of you, 
this has deeply troubled me in a way I simply cannot set 
aside.''
    Ms. Hutchinson, in our prior interviews, we have asked you 
about what the President's advisors were urging him to do 
during the attack. You have described roughly three different 
camps of thoughts inside the White House that day.
    Can you tell us about those?
    Ms. Hutchinson. There was a group of individuals that were 
strongly urging him to take immediate and swift action. I would 
classify the White House Counsel's Office, Mr. Herschmann, Ms. 
Ivanka Trump, in that category of really working to get him to 
take action and pleading with him to take action.
    There was a more neutral group where advisors were trying 
to toe the line, knowing that Mr. Trump didn't necessarily want 
to take immediate action and condemn the riots, but knowing 
something needed to be done.
    Then there was the last group which was deflect and blame. 
Let's blame Antifa. These aren't our people.
    It is my understanding that Mr. Meadows was in the deflect-
and-blame category. But he did end up taking a more neutral 
route, knowing that there were several advisors in the 
President's circle, urging him to take more action, which I 
think was reflected in the rhetoric released later that day in 
the videos.
    Vice Chair Cheney. You told us that the White House 
Counsel's Office was in the camp encouraging the President to 
tell the rioters to stop the attack and to leave the Capitol.
    Let's listen.

    Ms. Hutchinson. White House counsel's office wanted there to be a 
strong statement out to condemn the rioters. I'm confident in that.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Now let's look at just one example of 
what some senior advisors to the President were urging.
    Ms. Hutchinson, could you look at the exhibit that we are 
showing on the screen now?
    Have you seen this note before?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is a note that I wrote at the 
direction of the chief of staff on January 6th, likely around 3 
o'clock.
    Vice Chair Cheney. It's written on a chief of staff note 
card. But that is your handwriting, Ms. Hutchinson?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is my handwriting.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Why did you write this note?
    Ms. Hutchinson. The chief of staff was in a meeting with 
Eric Herschmann, potentially Mr. Philbin. They had rushed out 
of the office fairly quickly. Mark had handed me the note card 
with one of his pens, and sort-of dictating a statement for the 
President to potentially put out.
    Vice Chair Cheney. And--no. I am sorry. Go ahead.
    Ms. Hutchinson. No, that is okay.
    There were two phrases on there, one ``illegal'' and one 
``without proper authority''. The ``illegal'' phrase was the 
one that Mr. Meadows had dictated to me. Mr. Herschmann had 
chimed in and said also put ``without legal authority''. There 
should have been a slash between the two phrases. It was an 
``or,'' if the President had opted to put one of those 
statements out. Evidently, he didn't. Later that afternoon, 
Mark came back from the Oval dining room and put the palm card 
on my desk with ``illegally'' crossed out but said we didn't 
need to take further action on that statement.
    Vice Chair Cheney. So to your knowledge this statement was 
never issued.
    Ms. Hutchinson. It was--to my knowledge it was never 
issued.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, did you understand that 
Ivanka Trump wanted her father to send people home?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That is my understanding, yes.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Let's play a clip of you addressing that 
issue.

    Ms. Hutchinson. I remember her saying at various points, you know, 
she wants him--she wanted her dad to send them home. She wanted her dad 
to tell them to go home peacefully, and she wanted to include language 
that he necessarily wasn't on board with at the time.

    Vice Chair Cheney. You will hear more about this at our 
later hearings. But we have evidence of many others, imploring 
Donald Trump and Mark Meadows to take action. Here is some of 
that evidence, text messages sent to Mark Meadows during the 
attack.
    This is a text message at 2:32 from Laura Ingraham.
    ``Hey, Mark, the President needs to tell people in the 
Capitol to go home.''
    The next message: ``This is hurting all of us.''
    Then: ``He is destroying his legacy and playing into every 
stereotype. We lose all credibility against the BLM-Antifa 
crowd if things go south.''
    The President's son, Don Jr., also urgently contacted Mark 
Meadows.
    At 2:53, he wrote: ``He's got to condemn this shit ASAP. 
The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.''
    As you will see, these are just two of the numerous 
examples of Trump supporters and allies urging the President to 
tell his supporters to leave the Capitol. It would not have 
been hard for the President to simply walk down to the briefing 
room a few feet down the hall from the Oval Office, as Nora 
O'Donnell noted during an interview with House Republican 
Leader Kevin McCarthy, where Leader McCarthy said he believed 
the attack was un-American.

    Ms. O'Donnell. I want to quickly bring in Kevin McCarthy, the House 
Minority Leader. Leader McCarthy, do you condemn this violence?
    Mr. McCarthy. I completely condemn the violence in the Capitol. 
What we're currently watching unfold is un-American. I am--I'm 
disappointed. I'm sad. This is not what our country should look like. 
This is not who we are. This is not the First Amendment. This has to 
stop, and this has to stop now.
    Ms. O'Donnell. Leader McCarthy, the President of the United States 
has a briefing room steps from the Oval Office. It is--the cameras are 
hot 24/7, as you know. Why hasn't he walked down and said that now?
    Mr. McCarthy. I--I conveyed to the President what I think is best 
to do, and I'm hopeful the President will do it.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Republican House Member Mike Gallagher 
also implored the President to call off the attack.

    Mr. Gallagher. Mr. President, you have got to stop this. You are 
the only person who can call this off. Call it off. The election is 
over. Call it off. This is bigger than you. It's bigger than any Member 
of Congress. It is about the United States of America, which is more 
important than any politician. Call it off. It's over.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Despite the fact that many people close 
to Donald Trump were urging him to send people home, he did not 
do so until later, much later. At 4:17 p.m., Donald Trump 
finally told the rioters to go home, and that he loved them. 
Here is a portion of the video President Trump recorded from 
the White House.

    President Trump. We have to have peace, so go home. We love you. 
You're very special. You've seen what happens. You see the way others 
are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go 
home and go home in peace.

    Vice Chair Cheney. But as we will show in even greater 
detail in future hearings, Donald Trump was reluctant to put 
this message out. He still could not bring himself to condemn 
the attack. Ms. Hutchinson has told us that, too.

    Vice Chair Cheney. The one that he put out at 4:17?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I'm sure you've discussed it and just to elaborate 
if I hadn't already at that point. I recall him being reluctant to film 
the video on the 6th. I was not involved in any of the logistics or the 
planning for that video. I just remember seeing the video go out and 
feeling a little shocked after it went out.

    Vice Chair Cheney. On the evening of January 6th and the 
day after, the President's family and his senior staff and 
others tried to encourage the President to condemn the violence 
and commit to the peaceful transition of power. At 3:31 p.m. on 
January 6th, Sean Hannity of Fox News texted Mark Meadows.
    Mr. Hannity said, ``Can he make a statement? I saw the 
tweet. Ask people to leave the Capitol.''
    Later that evening Mr. Hannity sent another text message to 
Mark Meadows. This time he shared a link to a tweet.
    That tweet reported that President Trump's Cabinet 
Secretaries were considering invoking the 25th Amendment to 
remove President Trump from office.
    As you can see on the screen, the 25th Amendment to the 
Constitution creates a process for the transition of power if a 
President is unfit or unable to serve. The 25th Amendment has 
never been used to remove a President. But the Committee has 
learned that after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, this was 
being discussed by members of President Trump's Cabinet as a 
way of stripping the full power of the Presidency from Donald 
Trump.
    President Trump's supporters were worried. In addition to 
the tweet that he sent Mark Meadows after the attack, Sean 
Hannity apparently spoke with President Trump and warned him 
about what could happen.
    We understand that this text message that Sean Hannity sent 
to Kayleigh McEnany on January 7th shows what Mr. Hannity said 
to the President. First, no more stolen election talk. Second, 
impeachment and 25th Amendment are real. Many people will quit.
    Ms. Hutchinson, you told us that you were hearing about 
discussions related to the 25th Amendment. Here is part of what 
you said.

    Ms. Hutchinson. Mr. Pompeo reached out to have the conversation 
with Mr. Meadows in case he hadn't heard the discussions amongst 
Cabinet Secretaries. And from what I understand, it was more of a, 
``This is what I'm hearing. I want you to be aware of it, but I also 
think it's worth putting on your radar because you are the chief of 
staff. You're technically the boss of all the Cabinet Secretaries. And, 
you know, if the conversations progressed, you should be ready to take 
action on this. I'm concerned for you and your positioning with this. 
Reach out to me if you have any questions or, like, if I can be helpful 
with you at all.''

    Vice Chair Cheney. Inside the White House, the President's 
advisors, including members of his family, wanted him to 
deliver a speech to the country. Deputy White House Counsel Pat 
Philbin prepared the first draft of what would be the 
President's remarks on National healing delivered by a pre-
taped video on January 7th.
    When he arrived at the White House on the 7th, Mr. Philbin 
believed that more needed to be said. So, he sat down and 
started writing. He shared the draft with Pat Cipollone who 
also believed the President needed to say more. Mr. Cipollone 
agreed with the content, as did Eric Herschmann, who reviewed 
the draft. The Committee has learned that the President did not 
agree with the substance as drafted and resisted giving a 
speech at all.
    Ms. Hutchinson, do you recall discussions about the 
President's speech on January 7th?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I do.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Let's listen, Ms. Hutchinson, to what 
you told us about that and about the process of crafting those 
remarks.

    Ms. Hutchinson. I learned from a conversation with Mark and 
overhearing between him and White House Counsel and Eric Herschmann as 
well that Trump didn't necessarily think he needed to do anything more 
on the 7th than what he had already done on the 6th. When he was 
convinced to put out a video on the 7th, he--I understand that he had a 
lot of opinions about what the context of that announcement were to 
entail.
    I had original drafts of the speech where, you know, there were--
several lines didn't make it in there about prosecuting the rioters or 
calling them violent. He didn't want that in there. He wanted to put in 
there that he wanted to potentially pardon them. And this is just with 
the increased emphasis of his mindset at the time which was he didn't 
think that they did anything wrong.
    He--the people who did something wrong that day or the person who 
did something wrong that day was Mike Pence by not standing with him.

    Vice Chair Cheney. But the President's advisors urged him 
to give his speech.

    Mr. George. Who convinced him to do the video on the 7th?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I'm not sure who convinced him or if it was a group 
of people that convinced him.
    Mr. George. Who was in the group that you're aware of?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That I'm aware of: Mark, Ivanka, Jared Kushner, 
Eric Herschmann, Pat Cipollone, Pat Philbin. Those are the people that 
I'm aware of.
    Mr. George. Do you know why that group of people thought it was 
necessary for him to release a statement?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I believe Kayleigh McEnany as well. From what I 
understood at the time and from what the reports were coming in, there 
was a large concern of the 25th Amendment potentially being invoked, 
and there were concerns about what would happen in the Senate if it 
was--if the 25th was invoked. So the primary reason that I had heard 
other than, you know, we did not do enough on the 6th, we need to get a 
stronger message out there and condemn this is--otherwise this will be 
your legacy.
    The secondary reason to that was, you know, think about what might 
happen in the final 15 days of your Presidency if we don't do this. 
There's already talks about invoking the 25th Amendment. You need this 
as cover.

    Vice Chair Cheney. The President ultimately delivered the 
remarks. Unlike many of his other speeches, he did not ad lib 
much. He recited them without significant alteration, except 
one. Even then, on January 7, 2021, the day after the attack on 
the U.S. Capitol, the President still could not bring himself 
to say, ``But this election is now over.''
    One other point about the speech, Ms. Hutchinson, did you 
hear that Mr. Trump at one point wanted to add language about 
pardoning those who took part in the January 6th riot?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I did hear that, and I understand that Mr. 
Meadows was encouraging that language as well.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you.
    Here is what you told us previously about that.

    Mr. George. You said he was instructed not to include it. Who was 
instructing him not to include language about the pardon in that 
January 7th speech?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I understood from White House counsel's office 
coming to our office that morning that they didn't think that it was a 
good idea to include that in the speech.
    Mr. George. That being Pat Cipollone?
    Ms. Hutchinson. That's correct. And Eric Herschmann.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, did Rudy Giuliani ever 
suggest that he was interested in receiving a Presidential 
pardon related to January 6th?
    Ms. Hutchinson. He did.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, did White House Chief of 
Staff Mark Meadows ever indicate that he was interested in 
receiving a Presidential pardon related to January 6th?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Mr. Meadows did seek that pardon, yes, 
ma'am.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you, Ms. Hutchinson.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. I want to thank our witness for joining 
us today.
    The Members of the Select Committee may have additional 
questions for today's witness, and we ask that you respond 
expeditiously in writing to those questions.
    Without objection, Members will be permitted 10 business 
days to submit statements for the record including opening 
remarks and additional questions for the witness.
    Without objection, the Chair recognizes the Vice Chair for 
a closing statement.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    I want to begin by thanking Ms. Hutchinson for her 
testimony today. We are all in her debt. Our Nation is 
preserved by those who abide by their oaths to our 
Constitution. Our Nation is preserved by those who know the 
fundamental difference between right and wrong. I want all 
Americans to know that what Ms. Hutchinson has done today is 
not easy. The easy course is to hide from the spotlight, to 
refuse to come forward, to attempt to downplay or deny what 
happened.
    That brings me to a different topic. While our Committee 
has seen many witnesses, including many Republicans, testify 
fully and forthrightly, this has not been true of every 
witness. We have received evidence of one particular practice 
that raises significant concern. Our Committee commonly asks 
witnesses connected to Mr. Trump's administration or campaign 
whether they have been contacted by any of their former 
colleagues or anyone else who attempted to influence or impact 
their testimony.
    Without identifying any of the individuals involved, let me 
show you a couple of samples of answers we received to this 
question.
    First, here is how one witness described phone calls from 
people interested in that witness's testimony: ``What they said 
to me is, As long as I continue to be a team player, they know 
that I am on the right team. I am doing the right thing. I am 
protecting who I need to protect. You know, I will continue to 
stay in good graces in Trump World. And they have reminded me a 
couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just keep 
that in mind as I proceed through my interviews with the 
committee.''
    Here is another sample in a different context. This is a 
call received by one of our witnesses: ``A person let me know 
you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know 
he is thinking about you. He knows you are loyal, and you are 
going do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.''
    I think most Americans know that attempting to influence 
witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious 
concerns. We will be discussing these issues as a Committee 
carefully considering our next steps.
    Mr. Chairman, thank you.
    I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentlewoman yields back.
    Ms. Hutchinson, thank you. Thank you for doing your 
patriotic duty and helping the American people get a complete 
understanding of January 6th and its causes. Thank you for your 
courage in testifying here today. You have the gratitude of 
this Committee and your country. I know it wasn't easy to sit 
here today and answer these questions.
    But after hearing your testimony in all its candor and 
detail, I want to speak directly to the handful of witnesses 
who have been outliers in our investigation, the small number 
who have defied us outright, those whose memories have failed 
them again and again on the most important details, and to 
those who fear Donald Trump and his enablers.
    Because of this courageous woman and others like her, your 
attempt to hide the truth from the American people will fail. 
To that group of witnesses, if you have heard this testimony 
today and suddenly you remember things you couldn't previously 
recall, or there are some details you would like to clarify, or 
you discovered some courage you had hidden away somewhere, our 
doors remain open.
    The Select Committee will reconvene in the weeks ahead as 
we continue to lay out our findings to the American people.
    The Chair requests those in the hearing room remain seated 
until the Capitol Police have escorted the witness and Members 
from the room.
    Without objection, the Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 2:55 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                HEARING ON THE JANUARY 6TH INVESTIGATION

                              ----------                              

                         Tuesday, July 12, 2022

                     U.S. House of Representatives,
 Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on 
                                 the United States Capitol,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:01 p.m., in 
room 390, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Bennie G. Thompson 
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Thompson, Cheney, Lofgren, Schiff, 
Aguilar, Murphy, Raskin, Luria, and Kinzinger.
    Chairman Thompson. The Select Committee to Investigate the 
January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol will be in 
order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare the 
Committee in recess at any point.
    Pursuant to House Deposition Authority Regulation 10, the 
Chair announces the Committee's approval to release the 
deposition material presented during today's hearing.
    Good afternoon.
    When I think about the most basic way to explain the 
importance of elections in the United States, there is a phrase 
that always comes to mind. It may sound straightforward, but it 
is meaningful: We settle our differences at the ballot box.
    Sometimes my choice prevails; sometimes yours does. But it 
is that simple. We cast our votes. We count the votes. If 
something seems off with the results, we can challenge them in 
court. Then we accept the results.
    When you are on the losing side, that doesn't mean you have 
to be happy about it. In the United States, there is plenty you 
can do to say so. You can protest. You can organize. You can 
get ready for the next election to try to make sure your side 
has a better chance the next time the people settle their 
differences at the ballot box.
    But you can't turn violent. You can't try to achieve your 
desired outcome through force or harassment or intimidation.
    Any real leader who sees their supporters going down that 
path, approaching that line, has a responsibility to say, 
``Stop. We gave it our best. We came up short. We'll try again 
next time. Because we settle our differences at the ballot 
box.''
    On December 14, 2020, the Presidential election was 
officially over. The electoral college had cast its vote. Joe 
Biden was the President-elect of the United States.
    By that point, many of Donald Trump's supporters were 
already convinced that the election had been stolen, because 
that is what Donald Trump had been telling them. So what Donald 
Trump was required to do in that moment--what would have been 
required of any American leader--was to say, ``We did our best, 
and we came up short.''
    He went the opposite way. He seized on the anger he had 
already stoked among his most loyal supporters. As they 
approached the line, he didn't wave them off; he urged them on.
    Today, the Committee will explain how, as a part of his 
last-ditch effort to overturn the election and block the 
transfer of power, Donald Trump summoned a mob to Washington, 
DC, and ultimately spurred that mob to wage a violent attack on 
our democracy.
    Our colleagues Mrs. Murphy of Florida and Mr. Raskin of 
Maryland will lay out this story.
    First, I am pleased to recognize our distinguished Vice 
Chair, Ms. Cheney of Wyoming, for any opening comments she 
would care to offer.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Our Committee did not conduct a hearing last week, but we 
did conduct an on-the-record interview of President Trump's 
former White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone.
    If you have watched these hearings, you have heard us call 
for Mr. Cipollone to come forward to testify. He did. Mr. 
Cipollone's testimony met our expectations.
    We will save for our next hearing President Trump's 
behavior during the violence of January 6th. Today's hearing 
will take us from December 14, 2020, when the electoral college 
met and certified the results of the 2020 Presidential 
election, up through the morning of January 6th.
    You will see certain segments of Pat Cipollone's testimony 
today. We will also see today how President Trump summoned a 
mob to Washington and how the President's ``stolen election'' 
lies provoked that mob to attack the Capitol. We will hear from 
a man who was induced by President Trump's lies to come to 
Washington and join the mob and how that decision has changed 
his life.
    Today's hearing is our seventh. We have covered significant 
ground over the past several weeks. We have also seen a change 
in how witnesses and lawyers in the Trump orbit approach this 
Committee.
    Initially, their strategy in some cases appeared to be to 
deny and delay. Today, there appears to be a general 
recognition that the Committee has established key facts, 
including that virtually everyone close to President Trump--his 
Justice Department officials, his White House advisors, his 
White House Counsel, his campaign--all told him the 2020 
election was not stolen.
    This appears to have changed the strategy for defending 
Donald Trump. Now the argument seems to be that President Trump 
was manipulated by others outside the administration, that he 
was persuaded to ignore his closest advisors, and that he was 
incapable of telling right from wrong.
    This new strategy is to try to blame only John Eastman or 
Sidney Powell or Congressman Scott Perry or others and not 
President Trump. In this version, the President was ``poorly 
served'' by these outside advisors. The strategy is to blame 
people his advisors called ``the crazies'' for what Donald 
Trump did.
    This, of course, is nonsense.
    President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an 
impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, 
he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices.
    As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to 
more detailed and specific information showing that the 
election was not actually stolen than almost any other 
American, and he was told this over and over again.
    No rational or sane man in his position could disregard 
that information and reach the opposite conclusion. Donald 
Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind. 
Nor can any argument of any kind excuse President Trump's 
behavior during the violent attack on January 6th.
    As you watch our hearing today, I would urge you to keep 
your eye on two specific points.
    First, you will see evidence that Trump's legal team, led 
by Rudy Giuliani, knew that they lacked actual evidence of 
wide-spread fraud sufficient to prove that the election was 
actually stolen. They knew it. But they went ahead with January 
6th anyway.
    Second, consider how millions of American were persuaded to 
believe what Donald Trump's closest advisors in his 
administration did not. These Americans did not have access to 
the truth like Donald Trump did. They put their faith and their 
trust in Donald Trump. They wanted to believe in him. They 
wanted to fight for their country. He deceived them.
    For millions of Americans, that may be painful to accept, 
but it is true.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, the Chair recognizes 
the gentlewoman from Florida, Mrs. Murphy, and the gentleman 
from Maryland, Mr. Raskin, for opening statements.
    Mrs. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that then-President 
Donald Trump lost in a free and fair election. Yet President 
Trump insisted that his loss was due to fraud in the election 
process rather than to the democratic will of the voters.
    The President continued to make this claim despite being 
told again and again--by the courts, by the Justice Department, 
by his campaign officials, and by some of his closest 
advisors--that the evidence did not support this assertion.
    This was the Big Lie, and millions of Americans were 
deceived by it. Too many of our fellow citizens still believe 
it to this day. It is corrosive to our country and damaging to 
our democracy.
    As our Committee has shown in prior hearings, following the 
election, President Trump relentlessly pursued multiple, 
interlocking lines of effort, all with a single goal: To remain 
in power despite having lost.
    The lines of effort were aimed at his loyal Vice President, 
Mike Pence; at State election and elected officials; and at the 
U.S. Department of Justice.
    The President pressured the Vice President to obstruct the 
process to certify the election result. He demanded that State 
officials ``find'' him enough votes to overturn the election 
outcome in that State. And he pressed the Department of Justice 
to find wide-spread evidence of fraud. When Justice officials 
told the President that such evidence did not exist, the 
President urged them to simply declare that the election was 
corrupt.
    On December 14th, the electoral college met to officially 
confirm that Joe Biden would be the next President.
    The evidence shows that, once this occurred, President 
Trump and those who were willing to aid and abet him turned 
their attention to the joint session of Congress scheduled for 
January 6th, at which the Vice President would preside.
    In their warped view, this ceremonial event was the next, 
and perhaps the last, inflection point that could be used to 
reverse the outcome of the election before Mr. Biden's 
inauguration. As President Trump put it, the Vice President and 
enough Members of Congress simply needed to summon the 
``courage'' to act.
    To help them find that courage, the President called for 
backup. Early in the morning of December 19th, the President 
sent out a tweet urging his followers to travel to Washington, 
DC, for January 6th. ``Be there, will be wild!'' the President 
wrote. As my colleague Mr. Raskin will describe in detail, this 
tweet served as a call to action and, in some cases, as a call 
to arms for many of President Trump's most loyal supporters.
    It is clear the President intended the assembled crowd on 
January 6th to serve his goal. As you have already seen and as 
you will see again today, some of those who were coming had 
specific plans. The President's goal was to stay in power for a 
second term despite losing the election. The assembled crowd 
was one of the tools to achieve that goal.
    In today's hearing, we will focus on events that took place 
in the final weeks leading up to January 6th, starting in mid-
December. We will add color and context to evidence you have 
already heard about, and we will also provide additional new 
evidence.
    For example, you will hear about meetings in which the 
President entertained extreme measures designed to help him 
stay in power, like the seizure of voting machines.
    We will show some of the coordination that occurred between 
the White House and Members of Congress as it relates to 
January 6th. Some of these Members of Congress would later seek 
pardons.
    We will also examine some of the planning for the January 
6th protest, placing special emphasis on one rally planner's 
concerns about the potential violence.
    We will describe some of the President's key actions on the 
evening of January 5th and the morning of January 6th, 
including how the President edited and ad-libbed his speech 
that morning at the Ellipse, directed the crowd to march to the 
Capitol, and spoke off-script in a way that further inflamed an 
already angry crowd.
    I yield to the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Raskin.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mrs. Murphy.
    Mr. Chairman, Madam Vice Chair, four days after the 
electors met across the country and made Joe Biden the 
President-elect, Donald Trump was still trying to find a way to 
hang on to the Presidency.
    On Friday, December 18th, his team of outside advisors paid 
him a surprise visit in the White House that would quickly 
become the stuff of legend. The meeting has been called 
``unhinged,'' ``not normal,'' and the ``craziest meeting of the 
Trump Presidency.''
    The outside lawyers who had been involved in dozens of 
failed lawsuits had lots of theories supporting the Big Lie but 
no evidence to support it. As we will see, however, they 
brought to the White House a draft Executive Order that they 
had prepared for President Trump to further his ends.
    Specifically, they proposed the immediate mass seizure of 
State election machines by the U.S. military. The meeting ended 
after midnight with apparent rejection of that idea.
    In the wee hours of December 19th, dissatisfied with his 
options, Donald Trump decided to call for a large and ``wild'' 
crowd on Wednesday, January 6th, the day when Congress would 
meet to certify the electoral votes.
    Never before in American history had a President called for 
a crowd to come contest the counting of electoral votes by 
Congress or engaged in any effort designed to influence, delay, 
or obstruct the joint session of Congress in doing its work 
required by our Constitution and the Electoral Count Act.
    As we will see, Donald Trump's 1:42 a.m. tweet electrified 
and galvanized his supporters, especially the dangerous 
extremists in the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and other 
racist and White nationalist groups spoiling for a fight 
against the Government.
    Three rings of interwoven attack were now operating toward 
January 6th. On the inside ring, Trump continued trying to work 
to overturn the election by getting Mike Pence to abandon his 
oath of office as Vice President and assert the unilateral 
power to reject electoral votes. This would have been a 
fundamental and unprecedented breach of the Constitution that 
would promise Trump multiple ways of staying in office.
    Meanwhile, in the middle ring, members of domestic violent 
extremist groups created an alliance, both online and in 
person, to coordinate a massive effort to storm, invade, and 
occupy the Capitol. By placing a target on the joint session of 
Congress, Trump had mobilized these groups around a common 
goal, emboldening them, strengthening their working 
relationships, and helping build their numbers.
    Finally, in the outer ring, on January 6th there assembled 
a large and angry crowd--the political force that Trump 
considered both the touchstone and the measure of his political 
power. Here were thousands of enraged Trump followers, 
thoroughly convinced by the Big Lie, who traveled from across 
the country to join Trump's ``wild'' rally to ``stop the 
steal.''
    With the proper incitement by political leaders and the 
proper instigation from the extremists, many members of this 
crowd could be led to storm the Capitol, confront the Vice 
President and Congress, and try to overturn the 2020 election 
results.
    All of these efforts would converge and explode on January 
the 6th.
    Mr. Chairman, as you know better than any other Member of 
this Committee from the wrenching struggle for voting rights in 
your beloved Mississippi, the problem of politicians whipping 
up mob violence to destroy fair elections is the oldest 
domestic enemy of constitutional democracy in America.
    Abraham Lincoln knew it too. In 1837, a racist mob in 
Alton, Illinois, broke into the offices of an abolitionist 
newspaper and killed its editor, Elijah Lovejoy.
    Lincoln wrote a speech in which he said that no ``trans-
Atlantic military giant'' could ever crush us as a Nation, even 
with all of the fortunes in the world. But if downfall ever 
comes to America, he said, we ourselves would be its ``author 
and finisher.''
    If racist mobs are encouraged by politicians to rampage and 
terrorize, Lincoln said, they will violate the rights of other 
citizens and quickly destroy the bonds of social trust 
necessary for democracy to work. Mobs and demagogues will put 
us on a path to political tyranny, Lincoln said.
    As we will see today, this very old problem has returned 
with new ferocity today, as a President who lost an election 
deployed a mob, which included dangerous extremists, to attack 
the constitutional system of election and the peaceful transfer 
of power.
    As we will see, the creation of the internet and social 
media has given today's tyrants tools of propaganda and 
disinformation that yesterday's despots could only have dreamed 
of.
    I yield back to the gentlewoman of Florida, Mrs. Murphy.
    Mrs. Murphy. Article II of the United States Constitution 
establishes the electoral college. Each State's laws provide 
that electors are to be chosen by a popular vote. On December 
14, 2020, electors met in all 50 States and the District of 
Columbia to cast their votes.
    Joseph Biden won by a margin of 306 to 232. The election 
was over. Mr. Biden was the President-elect.
    Before the electoral college met, Donald Trump and his 
allies filed dozens of legal challenges to the election, but 
they lost over and over again, including in front of multiple 
judges President Trump had nominated to the bench.
    In many of these cases, the judges were highly critical of 
the arguments put forward, explaining that no genuine evidence 
of wide-spread fraud had been presented.
    For example, a Federal judge in Pennsylvania said:

[T]his Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without 
merit and speculative accusations . . . unsupported by evidence. In the 
United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of 
a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated 
State.

    On December 15th, after the electoral college certified the 
outcome, the Republican Majority leader in the Senate 
acknowledged Mr. Biden's victory.

    Senator McConnell. Yesterday, electors met in all 50 States. So as 
of this morning, our country has officially a President-elect and a 
Vice President-elect. Many millions of us had hoped the Presidential 
election would yield a different result. But our system of government 
has processes to determine who will be sworn in on January the 20th. 
The electoral college has spoken. So today, I want to congratulate 
President-elect Joe Biden.

    Mrs. Murphy. Even members of President Trump's Cabinet and 
his White House staff understood the significance of his losses 
in the courts and the absence of evidence of fraud. They also 
respected the constitutional certification by the electoral 
college.
    Many of them told President Trump that it was time to 
concede the election to Mr. Biden. For example, then-Secretary 
of Labor Gene Scalia, an accomplished lawyer and the son of 
late Justice Scalia, called President Trump in mid-December and 
advised him to concede and accept the rulings of the courts.

    Secretary Scalia. So, I had to put a call into the President. I 
might have called on the 13th. We spoke, I believe, on the 14th, in 
which I conveyed to him that I thought that it was time for him to 
acknowledge that President Biden had prevailed in the election.
    But I communicated to the President that when that legal process is 
exhausted and when the electors have voted, that that's the point at 
which that outcome needs to be expected.
    I told him that I did believe yes, that once those legal processes 
were run, if fraud had not been established that had affected the 
outcome of the election, then unfortunately, I believed that what had 
to be done was concede the outcome.

    Mrs. Murphy. As you have seen in prior hearings, President 
Trump's Justice Department, his White House staff, and his 
campaign officials were repeatedly telling him that there was 
no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the 
election.
    Last week, we conducted an 8-hour interview with President 
Trump's White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone. You will see a 
number of excerpts of that interview today and even more in our 
next hearing.
    Mr. Cipollone told us that he agreed with the testimony 
that there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to overturn the 
election.

    Mr. Heaphy. I want to start by asking if you agree, Mr. Cipollone, 
with the conclusions of Matt Morgan and Bill Barr, of all of the 
individuals who evaluated those claims, that there is no evidence of 
election fraud sufficient to undermine the outcome in any particular 
State?
    Mr. Cipollone. Yes, I agree with that.

    Mrs. Murphy. Mr. Cipollone also specifically testified that 
he believed that Donald Trump should have conceded the 
election.

    Mr. Heaphy. Did you believe, Mr. Cipollone, that the President 
should concede once you made the determination based on the 
investigations that you credited--DOJ did. Did you in your mind form 
the belief that the President should concede the election loss at a 
certain point after the election?
    Mr. Cipollone. Well, again, I was the White House Counsel. Some of 
those decisions are political. So, to the extent that--but--but if your 
question is, Did I believe he should concede the election at a point in 
time? Yes, I did.
    I believe Leader McConnell went on to the floor of the Senate, I 
believe in late December, and basically said, you know, the process is 
done. You know, that would be in line with my thinking on these things.

    Mrs. Murphy. As Attorney General Bill Barr testified, 
December 14th should have been the end of the matter.

    Attorney General Barr. December 14th was the day that the States 
certified their votes and sent them to Congress. And in my view, that 
was the end of the matter. I didn't see--you know, I thought that this 
would lead inexorably to a new administration.

    Mrs. Murphy. Mr. Cipollone also testified that the 
President's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said he shared this 
view.

    Mr. Heaphy. As early as that November 23rd meeting, we understand 
that there was discussion about the President possibly conceding the 
election. And specifically, we understand that Mark Meadows assured 
both you and Attorney General Barr that the President would eventually 
agree to a graceful exit. Do you remember Mr. Meadows making any such 
representation?
    Mr. Cipollone. Are you saying as part of that meeting or 
separately? Again, without--without getting into that meeting, I would 
say that that is a--that is a statement and a sentiment that I heard 
from Mark Meadows.
    Mr. Heaphy. I see. And again, do you know if it was on November 
23rd or some point?
    Mr. Cipollone. Again, I--it was probably, you know, around that 
time and it was probably subsequent to that time. It wasn't a one-time 
statement.

    Mrs. Murphy. Mr. Meadows has refused to testify, and the 
Committee is in litigation with him. But many other White House 
officials shared the view that, once the litigation ended and 
the electoral college met, the election was over.
    Here is President Trump's former press secretary.

    Vice Chair Cheney. I wanted to clarify, Ms. McEnany, so back to my 
previous question. It was your view then--or was it your view that the 
efforts to overturn the election should have stopped once the 
litigation was complete?
    Ms. McEnany. In my view, upon the conclusion of litigation was when 
I began to plan for life after the administration.

    Mrs. Murphy. This is what Ivanka Trump told us.

    Mr. Heaphy. December 14th was the day on which the electoral 
college met, when these electors around the country met and cast the 
electoral votes consistent with the--the popular vote in each State. 
And--and it was obviously a public proceeding or a series of 
proceedings that President Biden had obtained the requisite number of 
electors. Was that an important day for you? Did that affect sort-of 
your planning or your realization as to whether or not there was going 
to be an end of this administration?
    Ms. Trump. I think so. I think it was my--my sentiment probably 
prior as well.

    Mrs. Murphy. Judd Deere was a White House deputy press 
secretary. This was his testimony about what he told President 
Trump.

    Mr. Deere. I told him that my personal viewpoint was that the 
electoral college had met, which is the system that our country is--is 
set under to elect a President and Vice President. And I believed at 
that point that the means for him to pursue litigation was probably 
closed.
    Mr. Wood. And do you recall what his response, if any, was?
    Mr. Deere. He disagreed.

    Mrs. Murphy. We have also seen this testimony from Attorney 
General Barr reflecting a view of the White House staff in late 
November 2020.

    Attorney General Barr. And then at that point I left. And as I 
walked out of the Oval Office, Jared was there with Dan Scavino, who 
ran his--ran the President's social media and who I thought was a 
reasonable guy and believe is a reasonable guy. And I said, how long 
is--how long is he going to carry on with this stolen election stuff? 
Where is this going to go?
    And by that time, Meadows had caught up with me and--leaving the 
office, and caught up to me and--and said that--he said, ``Look, I--I 
think that he's becoming more realistic and knows that there's a limit 
to how far he can take this.'' And then Jared said, ``You know, yeah, 
we're working on this. We're working on it.''

    Mrs. Murphy. Likewise, in this testimony, Cassidy 
Hutchinson, an aide to Mark Meadows, described her 
conversations with President Trump's Director of National 
Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, a former Republican Congressman.

    Ms. Hutchinson. He had expressed that he was concerned that it 
could spiral out of control and potentially be dangerous, either for 
our democracy or the way that things were going for the 6th.

    Mrs. Murphy. Of course, underlying all of this is the 
fundamental principle that the President of the United States 
cannot simply disregard the rulings of State and Federal 
courts, which are empowered to address specific election-
related claims. The President cannot simply pretend that the 
courts had not ruled.

    Vice Chair Cheney. By that time, the President or his associates 
had brought--had lost 60 out of 61 cases that they had brought to 
challenge different aspects of the election in a number of States. They 
lost 60 out of 61 of those cases. So, by the time we get to January 
3rd, that's--that's been clear. I assume, Pat, that you would agree the 
President is--is obligated to abide by the rulings of the courts.
    Mr. Cipollone. Of course.
    Vice Chair Cheney. And I assume you also----
    Mr. Cipollone. Everybody is obligated to abide by rulings of 
courts.
    Vice Chair Cheney. And I assume you also would agree the President 
has a particular obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully 
executed.
    Mr. Cipollone. That is one of the President's obligations, correct.

    Mrs. Murphy. Yet President Trump disregarded these court 
rulings and the counsel from his closest advisors and continued 
his efforts to cling to power.
    In our prior hearings, you have heard considerable 
testimony about President Trump's attempts to corruptly 
pressure Vice President Pence to refuse to count electoral 
votes, to corrupt the Department of Justice, to pressure State 
officials and State legislatures, and to create and submit a 
series of fake electoral slates.
    Now we will show you what other actions President Trump was 
taking between December 14, 2020, and January 6th.
    I yield to the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Raskin.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mrs. Murphy.
    Throughout our hearings, you have heard how President Trump 
made baseless claims that voting machines were being 
manipulated by foreign powers in the 2020 election.
    You have also heard Trump's Attorney General, Bill Barr, 
describe such claims as ``complete nonsense,'' which he told 
the President. Let's review that testimony.

    Attorney General Barr. I saw absolutely zero basis for the 
allegations. But they were made in such a sensational way that they 
obviously were influencing a lot of people--members of the public--that 
there was this systemic corruption in the system and that their votes 
didn't count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were 
actually determining it, which was complete nonsense.
    And it was being laid out there. And I told them that it was--it 
was crazy stuff, and they were wasting their time on that. And it was 
doing a great, grave disservice to the country.

    Mr. Raskin. We have learned that President Trump's White 
House Counsel agreed with the Department of Justice about this.

    Mr. Heaphy. Attorney General Barr made a public announcement on 
December 1st, less than a month after the election, that he had seen no 
systemic fraud sufficient to undermine the outcome of the election. Is 
it fair to say that by December 1st, you had reached the same 
conclusion?
    Mr. Cipollone. It's fair to say that I agreed with Attorney 
General's--Attorney General Barr's conclusion on December 1st. Yes, I 
did. And I supported that conclusion.

    Mr. Raskin. However, the strong rejection of the Attorney 
General and the White House Counsel of these claims did not 
stop the President from trying to press them in public.
    But that is not all they did. Indeed, as you will see in 
this clip, the President asked Attorney General Bill Barr to 
have the Department of Justice seize voting machines in the 
States.

    Attorney General Barr. My recollection is the President said 
something like, ``Well, we could get to the bottom--you know, some 
people say we could get to the bottom of this if--if the Department 
seizes the machines.'' It was a typical way of raising a point. And I 
said, absolutely not. There's no probable cause, and I'm not going to 
seize any machines. And that was that.
    Mr. Heaphy. Yeah.

    Mr. Raskin. But this wasn't the end of the matter. On the 
evening of December 18, 2020, Sidney Powell, General Michael 
Flynn, and others entered the White House for an unplanned 
meeting with the President--the meeting that would last 
multiple hours and become hot-blooded and contentious.
    The Executive Order behind me on the screen was drafted on 
December the 16th, just 2 days after the electoral college 
vote, by several of the President's outside advisors over a 
luncheon at the Trump International Hotel.
    As you can see here, this proposed order directs the 
Secretary of Defense to seize voting machines ``effective 
immediately.''
    But it goes even further than that.
    Under the order, President Trump would appoint a Special 
Counsel with the power to seize machines and then charge people 
with crimes, with ``all resources necessary to carry out her 
duties.''
    The specific plan was to name Sidney Powell as Special 
Counsel, the Trump lawyer who had spent the post-election 
period making outlandish claims about Venezuelan and Chinese 
interference in the election, among others.
    Here is what White House Counsel Pat Cipollone had to say 
about Sidney Powell's qualifications to take on such expansive 
authority.

    Mr. Cipollone. I don't think Sidney--Sidney Powell would say that I 
thought it was a good idea to appoint her Special Counsel. I was 
vehemently opposed--I didn't think she should have been appointed to 
anything.

    Mr. Raskin. Sidney Powell told the President that these 
steps were justified because of her evidence of foreign 
interference in the 2020 election. However, as we have seen, 
Trump's allies had no such evidence and, of course, no legal 
authority for the Federal Government to seize State voting 
machines.
    Here is Mr. Cipollone again denouncing Sidney Powell's 
``terrible idea.''

    Mr. Cipollone. There was a real question in my mind and a real 
concern, you know, particularly after the Attorney General had reached 
a conclusion that there wasn't sufficient election fraud to change the 
outcome of the election when other people kept suggesting that there 
was. The answer is, what is it? And at some point, you have to put up 
or shut up. That was my view.
    Mr. Heaphy. Why was this, on a broader scale, a bad idea for the 
country?
    Mr. Cipollone. To have the Federal Government seize voting 
machines? That's a terrible idea for the country. That's not how we do 
things in the United States. There's no legal authority to do that. And 
there is a way to contest elections. You know, that--that happens all 
the time. But the idea that the Federal Government could come in and 
seize election machines, no. That--that's--I don't--I don't understand 
why we even have to tell you why that's a bad idea for the country. 
It's a terrible idea.

    Mr. Raskin. For all of its absurdity, the December 18th 
meeting was critically important, because President Trump got 
to watch up close for several hours as his White House Counsel 
and other White House lawyers destroyed the baseless factual 
claims and ridiculous legal arguments being offered by Sidney 
Powell, Mike Flynn, and others.
    President Trump now knew all these claims were nonsense, 
not just from his able White House lawyers but also from his 
own Department of Justice officials and, indeed, his own 
campaign officials.
    As White House Counsel Cipollone told us:

    Mr. Cipollone. With respect to the whole election fraud issue, it 
to me is sort of if you're going to make those kind of claims--and 
people were open to them early on because people were making all sorts 
of claims. And the real question is: show the evidence. Okay?

    Mr. Raskin. It wasn't just the Justice Department, the 
Trump Campaign, and the Trump White House lawyers who knew it. 
Even Rudy Giuliani's own legal team admitted that they did not 
have any real evidence of fraud sufficient to change the 
election result.
    Here is an email from Rudy Giuliani's lead investigator, 
Bernie Kerik, on December 28, 2020, to Chief of Staff Mark 
Meadows. Mr. Kerik did not mince any words. ``We can do all the 
investigations we want later, but if the President plans on 
winning, it's the legislators that have to be moved, and this 
will do just that.''
    Mr. Kerik wanted the President to win. What he didn't say 
in this email was what he would later tell the Select Committee 
in a letter that his lawyer wrote to us in November.
    The letter said, ``It was impossible for Mr. Kerik and his 
team to determine conclusively whether there was wide-spread 
fraud or whether that wide-spread fraud would have altered the 
outcome of the election.''
    In other words, even Rudy Giuliani's own legal team knew 
before January 6th that they hadn't collected enough actual 
evidence to support any of their ``stolen election'' claims.
    Here is what Trump Campaign Senior Advisor Jason Miller 
told the Committee about some of the so-called evidence of 
fraud that the campaign had seen from the Giuliani team.

    Mr. George. So do you know what the examples of fraud--numbers, 
names, and supporting evidence--was that you sent to Mo Brooks's 
office. And when I say you, I mean you or the campaign.
    Mr. Jason Miller. There are some very, very general documents as 
far as--as far as, say, for example, here are the handful of dead 
people in several different States. Here are explanations on a couple 
of the legal challenges as far as the saying that the--the rules were 
changed an unconstitutional manner. But it was--to say that it was spin 
is--is probably an understatement.

    Mr. Raskin. Here is how President Trump's deputy campaign 
manager described the evidence of fraud that the campaign had 
seen.

    Ms. Lucier. You never came to learn or understand that Mayor 
Giuliani had--had produced evidence of election fraud. Is that fair?
    Mr. Justin Clark. That's fair.

    Mr. Raskin. Here is testimony that we received from the 
speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, Rusty Bowers, 
about an exchange that he had with Rudy Giuliani after the 
election.

    Mr. Schiff. At some point, did one of them make a comment that they 
didn't have evidence but they had a lot of theories?
    Mr. Bowers. That was Mr. Giuliani.

    Mr. Raskin. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told people that he 
thought Trump should concede around the time the electoral 
college certified the result. But, nonetheless, he later worked 
to try to facilitate President Trump's wishes.
    Here is what Cassidy Hutchinson told us.

    Ms. Hutchinson. During this period, he--I perceived his goal with 
all of this to keep Trump in office. You know, he had very seriously 
and deeply considered the allegations of voter fraud. But when he began 
acknowledging that maybe there wasn't enough voter fraud to overturn 
the election, you know, I--I witnessed him start to explore potential 
constitutional loopholes more extensively, which I then connected with 
John Eastman's theories.

    Mr. Raskin. The startling conclusion is this: Even an 
agreed-upon complete lack of evidence could not stop President 
Trump, Mark Meadows, and their allies from trying to overturn 
the results of a free and fair election.
    So, let's return to that meeting at the White House on the 
evening of December 18th. That night, a group showed up at the 
White House, including Sidney Powell, retired Lieutenant 
General Michael Flynn, and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick 
Byrne.
    After gaining access to the building from a junior White 
House staffer, the group made their way to the Oval Office. 
They were able to speak with the President by himself for some 
time until White House officials learned of the meeting.
    What ensued was a heated and profane clash between this 
group and President Trump's White House advisors, who traded 
personal insults, accusations of disloyalty to the President, 
and even challenges to physically fight.
    The meeting would last over 6 hours, beginning here in the 
Oval Office, moving around the West Wing, and many hours later 
ending up in the President's private residence.
    The Select Committee has spoken with six of the 
participants, as well as staffers who could hear the screaming 
from outside the Oval Office. What took place next is best told 
in their own words, as you will see from this video.

    Mr. Harris. Did you believe that it was going to work, that you 
were going be able to get to see the President without an appointment?
    Ms. Powell. I had no idea.
    Mr. Harris. In fact, you did get to see the President without an 
appointment.
    Ms. Powell. We did.
    Mr. Harris. How much time did you have alone with the President? I 
say alone, you had other people with you----
    Ms. Powell. Right.
    Mr. Harris [continuing]. But, I think from his aides before the 
crowd came running.
    Ms. Powell. Probably no more than 10 or 15 minutes.
    Mr. Harris. Was in that----
    Ms. Powell [continuing]. I bet Pat Cipollone set a new land speed 
record.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Cipollone. I got a call either from Molly or from Eric 
Herschmann that I needed to get to the Oval Office.
                                 ______
                                 
    Ms. Hutchinson. So that was the first point that I had recognized, 
okay, there is nobody in there from the White House. Mark's gone. 
What's going on right now.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Cipollone. I opened the door, and I walked in. I saw General 
Flynn; I saw Sidney Powell sitting there. [ . . . ]
    I was not happy to see the people who were in the Oval Office.
    Mr. Heaphy. Explain why.
    Mr. Cipollone. Well, again, I--I don't think they were providing--
well, first of all, the Overstock person I--I've never met--never. I 
never knew who this guy was. Actually, the first thing I did, I walked 
in, I looked at him, and I said, who are you? And he told me. I don't 
think--I don't think any of these people were providing the President 
with good advice. And so, I--I--I didn't understand how they had gotten 
in.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Harris. In the short period of time that you had with the 
President, did he seem receptive to the presentation that you were 
making?
    Ms. Powell. He was very interested in hearing particularly about 
the CISA findings and the terms of 13848 that apparently nobody else 
had bothered to inform him of.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Herschmann. And I was asking, like, are you're claiming the 
Democrats were working with Hugo Chavez, Venezuelans, and whomever 
else. And at one point, General Flynn took out a diagram that 
supposedly showed IP addresses all over the world. And--or ISP--who 
was--who was communicating with whom via the machines and some comment 
about like Nest thermostats being hooked up to the internet.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. George. So, it's been reported that during this meeting Ms. 
Powell talked about Dominion voting machines and made various election 
fraud claims that involve foreign countries such as Venezuela, Iran, 
and China. Is that accurate?
    General Flynn. The Fifth.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. George. Was the meeting tense?
    Mr. Lyons. Oh yeah. I--it was not a casual meeting.
    Mr. George. Explain.
    Mr. Lyons. I mean, at times, there were people shouting at each 
other, hurling insults at each other. It wasn't just sort of people 
sitting around on the couch like chit-chatting.
                                 ______
                                 
    Ms. Lucier. Do you recall whether he raised to Ms. Powell the fact 
that she and the campaign had lost all of the 60 cases that they had 
brought in litigation?
    Mr. Cipollone. Yes. He raised that.
    Ms. Lucier. And what was the response?
    Mr. Cipollone. I don't remember what she said. I don't think it was 
a good response.
                                 ______
                                 
    Ms. Powell. Cipollone and Herschmann and whoever the other guy was 
showed nothing but contempt and disdain of the President.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Cipollone. I remember the three of them were really sort-of 
forcefully attacking me verbally. Eric, Derek, and we were pushing 
back, and we were asking one simple question as a--as a general matter: 
Where is the evidence? So----
    Mr. Heaphy. What response did you get when you asked Ms. Powell and 
her colleagues where's the evidence?
    Mr. Cipollone. A variety of responses based on my current 
recollection including, you know, I can't believe you would say 
something, like, you know, things like this. Like, ``What do you mean 
where's the evidence? You should know.'' Yeah, I--things like that or, 
you know, a disregard, I would say, a general disregard for the 
importance of actually backing up what you say with facts.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Lyons. And, you know, then there was discussion of, well, you 
know, we don't have it now, but we will have it or whatever.
                                 ______
                                 
    Ms. Powell. I mean, if--if it had been me sitting in his chair, I 
would have fired all of `em that night and had `em escorted out of the 
building.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Herschmann. Which Derek and I both challenged what she was 
saying. And she says, ``Well, the judges are corrupt.'' And I was like, 
every one? Every single case that you've done in the country you guys 
lost, every one of them is corrupt? Even the ones we appointed? And 
[inaudible] I'm being nice. I was much more harsh to her.
                                 ______
                                 
    Ms. Apecechea. So, one of the other things that's been reported 
that was said during this meeting was that President Trump told White 
House lawyers, Mr. Herschmann and Mr. Cipollone, that they weren't 
offering him any solutions, but Ms. Powell and others were. So, why not 
try what Ms. Powell and others were proposing? Do you remember anything 
along those lines being said by President Trump?
    Mr. Lyons. I do. That sounds right.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Herschmann. I think that it got to the point where the 
screaming was completely, completely out there. [ . . . ]
    I mean, you had people walk in, it was late at night, had been a 
long day. And what they were proposing, I thought, was nuts.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Giuliani. I'm gonna--I'm gonna categorically describe it as: 
You guys are not tough enough. Or maybe I put it another way: You're a 
bunch of pussies. Excuse the expression, but that--that's I--I'm almost 
certain the word was used.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Herschmann. Flynn screamed at me that I was a quitter and 
everything, kept on standing up and turning around and screaming at me. 
And at a certain point, I had it with him. So, I yelled back: Better 
come over, better sit your F'ing ass back down.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Giuliani. The President and the White House team went upstairs 
to the residence, but to the public part of the residence. You know, 
the big--the big parlor where you can have meetings in the conference 
room.
    Mr. Harris. Yellow oval. They call that the yellow oval.
    Mr. Giuliani. Yes, exactly. The yellow oval office. I always called 
it the upper. And I'm not exactly sure where the Sidney group went. I 
think maybe the Roosevelt Room. And I stayed in the Cabinet Room, which 
is kind of cool. I really liked that, all my--all by myself.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Lyons. At the end of the day, we landed where we started the 
meeting, at least from a structural standpoint, which was Sidney Powell 
was fighting. Mike Flynn was fighting. They were looking for avenues 
that would enable--that would result in President Trump remaining 
President Trump for a second term.

    Mr. Raskin. The meeting finally ended after midnight.
    Here are text messages sent by Cassidy Hutchinson during 
and after the meeting.
    As you can see, Ms. Hutchinson reported that the meeting in 
the West Wing was ``unhinged.''
    The meeting finally broke up after midnight, during the 
early morning of December 19th. Cassidy Hutchinson captured the 
moment of Mark Meadows escorting Rudy Giuliani off the White 
House grounds to ``make sure he didn't wander back to the 
mansion.''
    Certain accounts of this meeting indicate that President 
Trump actually granted Ms. Powell a security clearance and 
appointed her to a somewhat-ill-defined position of Special 
Counsel.

    Ms. Powell. He asked Pat Cipollone if he had the authority to name 
a Special Counsel, and he said yes. And then he asked him if he had the 
authority to give me whatever security clearance I needed, and Pat 
Cipollone said yes. And then the President said, ``Okay, you know, I'm 
naming her that, and I'm giving her security clearance.'' And then 
shortly before we left and it totally blew up, that's when Cipollone 
and/or Herschmann and whoever the other young man was said, ``You can 
name her whatever you want to name her, and no one's going to pay any 
attention to it.''
    Mr. Harris. How did he respond? How did the President respond to 
that?
    Ms. Powell. Something like, ``You see what I deal with. I deal with 
this all the time.''

    Mr. Raskin. Over the ensuing days, no further steps were 
taken to appoint Sidney Powell. But there is some ambiguity 
about what the President actually said and did during the 
meeting.
    Here is how Pat Cipollone described it.

    Mr. Cipollone. I don't know what her understanding of whether she 
had been appointed, what she had been appointed to, okay? In my view, 
she hadn't been appointed to anything and ultimately wasn't appointed 
to anything, because there had to be other steps taken. And that was my 
view when I left the meeting. But she may have a different view, and 
others may have a different view, and--and the President may have a 
different view.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Were any steps taken, including the President 
himself telling her she'd been appointed?
    Mr. Cipollone. Again, I'm not going to get into what the President 
said in the meeting. You know, my recollection is you're not appointed 
even--you're not appointed until--until steps are taken to get the 
paperwork done, get--and when I left the meeting, okay--I guess--I 
guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not going to get into what the 
President said or want--said he wanted.
    Mr. Raskin. Mr. Cipollone, when the matter continued to flare up 
over the next several days, was it your understanding that Sidney 
Powell was still seeking an appointment or that she was asserting that 
she had been appointed by the President at the December 18th meeting?
    Mr. Cipollone. You know, now that you mention it, probably both, 
you know, in--in terms of like I think she was--I think she may have 
been of the view that she had been appointed and was seeking to, you 
know, get--get that done, and--and--and that she should be appointed.

    Mr. Raskin. As you listen to these clips, remember that Ms. 
Powell, the person who President Trump tried to make Special 
Counsel, was ultimately sanctioned by a Federal court and sued 
by Dominion Voting Systems for defamation. In her own defense 
to that lawsuit, Sidney Powell argued that ``no reasonable 
person would conclude that the statements were truly statements 
of fact.''
    Not long after Sidney Powell, General Flynn, and Rudy 
Giuliani left the White House in the early hours of the 
morning, President Trump turned away from both his outside 
advisors' most outlandish and unworkable schemes and his White 
House Counsel's advice to swallow hard and accept the reality 
of his loss. Instead, Donald Trump issued a tweet that would 
galvanize his followers, unleash a political firestorm, and 
change the course of our history as a country.
    Trump's purpose was to mobilize a crowd. How do you 
mobilize a crowd in 2020? With millions of followers on 
Twitter, President Trump knew exactly how to do it.
    At 1:42 a.m. on December 19, 2020, shortly after the last 
participants left the unhinged meeting, Trump sent out the 
tweet with his explosive invitation.
    Trump repeated his Big Lie and claimed it was 
``statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election'' 
before calling for a ``Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be 
there, will be wild!''
    Trump supporters responded immediately.
    Women for America First, a pro-Trump organizing group, had 
previously applied for a rally permit for January 22nd and 23rd 
in Washington, DC, several days after Joe Biden was to be 
inaugurated. But in the hours after the tweet, they moved their 
permit to January 6th, 2 weeks before. This rescheduling 
created the rally where Trump would eventually speak.
    The next day, Ali Alexander, leader of the Stop the Steal 
organization and a key mobilizer of Trump supporters, 
registered WildProtest.com, named after Trump's tweet. 
WildProtest.com provided comprehensive information about 
numerous newly-organized protest events in Washington. It 
included event times, places, speakers, and details on 
transportation to Washington, DC.
    Meanwhile, other key Trump supporters, including far-right 
media personalities, began promoting the wild protest on 
January 6th.

    Mr. Jones. It's Saturday, December 19th. The year is 2020, and one 
of the most historic events in American history has just taken place. 
President Trump, in the early morning hours today, tweeted that he 
wants the American people to march on Washington, DC, on January 6, 
2021.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Pool. And now Donald Trump is calling on his supporters to 
descend on Washington, DC, January 6th.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Jones. He is now calling on we the people to take action and to 
show our numbers.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Bracken. We're going to only be saved by millions of Americans 
moving to Washington, occupying the entire area, if--if necessary, 
storming right into the Capitol. You know, they're--we know the rules 
of engagement. If you have enough people, you can push down any kind of 
a fence or a wall.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Pool. This could be Trump's last stand. And it's a time when he 
has specifically called on his supporters to arrive in DC. That's 
something that may actually be the big push Trump supporters need to 
say: This is it. It's now or never.
                                 ______
                                 
    Salty Cracker. Ya better understand something, son. Ya better 
understand something. Red wave, bitch. Red wed--there's gonna be a red 
wedding going down January 6th.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Pool. On that day, Trump says: Show up for a protest. It's 
gonna be wild. And based on what we've already seen from the previous 
events, I think Trump is absolutely correct.
                                 ______
                                 
    Salty Cracker. Motherfucker, you better look outside. You better 
look out--January 6th. Kick that fucking door open, look down the 
street. There're gonna be a million plus geeked up, armed Americans.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Jones. The time for games is over. The time for action is now. 
Where were you when history called? Where were you when you and your 
children's destiny and future was on the line?

    Mr. Raskin. In that clip, you heard one of Trump's 
supporters predict a ``red wedding,'' which is a pop culture 
reference to mass slaughter.
    But the point is that Trump's call to Washington 
reverberated powerfully and pervasively online.
    The Committee has interviewed a former Twitter employee who 
explained the effect that Trump had on the Twitter platform. 
This employee was on the team responsible for platform and 
content moderation policies on Twitter throughout 2020 and 
2021.
    The employee testified that Twitter considered adopting a 
stricter content moderation policy after President Trump told 
the Proud Boys to ``stand back and stand by'' from the lectern 
at the September 29th Presidential debate, but Twitter chose 
not to act.
    Here is the former employee, whose voice has been obscured 
to protect their identity, discussing Trump's ``stand back and 
stand by'' comment and the effect it had.

    Former Twitter Employee. My concern was that the former President, 
for seemingly the first time, was speaking directly to extremist 
organizations and giving them directives. We had not seen that sort-of 
direct communication before, and that concerned me.
    Mr. Glick. So, just to clarify further, you were worried, others at 
Twitter were worried, that the President might use your platform to 
speak directly to folks who might be incited to violence?
    Former Twitter Employee. Yes. I believe that Twitter relished in 
the knowledge that they were also the favorite and most used service of 
the former President and enjoyed having that sort of power within the 
social media ecosystem.
    Mr. Glick. If President Trump were anyone else, would it have taken 
until January 8, 2021, for him to be suspended?
    Former Twitter Employee. Absolutely not. If Donald--if former-
President Donald Trump were any other user on Twitter, he would have 
been permanently suspended a very long time ago.

    Mr. Raskin. Despite these grave concerns, Trump remained on 
the platform completely unchecked. Then came the December 19th 
tweet and everything it inspired.

    Former Twitter Employee. It was--it felt as if--if a mob was being 
organized, and they were gathering together their weaponry and their 
logic and their reasoning behind why they were prepared to fight.
    Prior to December 19th, again, it was--it was vague. It was--it was 
nonspecific but very clear that individuals were ready, willing, and 
able to take up arms. After this tweet on December 19th, again, it 
became clear not only were these individuals ready and willing, but the 
leader of their cause was asking them to join him in this cause and in 
fighting for this cause in DC on January 6th as well.
    I will also say what shocked me was the responses to these tweets, 
right? So, these were--a lot of the ``locked and loaded,'' ``stand 
back, stand by,'' those tweets were in response to Donald Trump saying 
things like this, right? So, there would be a response that said, ``Big 
protest in DC on January 6th, be there, be wild,'' and someone would 
respond and say, ``I'm locked and loaded and ready for civil war part 
two,'' right?
    I very much believe that Donald Trump posting this tweet on 
December 19th was essentially staking a flag in DC on January 6th for 
his supporters to come and rally.
    Mr. Glick. And you were concerned about the potential for this 
gathering becoming violent?
    Former Twitter Employee. Absolutely.

    Mr. Raskin. Indeed, many of Trump's followers took to 
social media to declare that they were ready to answer Trump's 
call.
    One user asked: ``Is the 6th D-Day? Is that why Trump wants 
everyone there?''
    Another asserted: ``Trump just told us all to come armed. 
Fucking A, this is happening.''
    A third took it even further: ``It `will be wild' means we 
need volunteers for the firing squad.''
    Jim Watkins, the owner of 8kun, the fringe online forum 
that was birthplace of the QAnon extremist movement, confirmed 
the importance of Trump's tweet.

    Mr. Glick. Why did you first decide to go to DC for January 6th?
    Mr. Watkins. When--when the President of the United States 
announced that he was going to have a rally, then I bought a ticket and 
went.

    Mr. Raskin. Watkins was at the Capitol on January 6th. Some 
who have since been indicted for their involvement in the 
attack on the Capitol also responded. One of them posted on the 
19th: ``Calling all patriots. Be in Washington, DC, January 
6th. This wasn't organized by any group. DJT has invited us, 
and it is going to be `wild.' ''
    Some of the online rhetoric turned openly homicidal and 
White nationalist.
    Such as: ``Why don't we just kill them? Every last 
Democrat, down to the last man, woman, and child?''
    And: ``It's time for the day of the rope. White revolution 
is the only solution.''
    Others realized that police would be standing in the way of 
their effort to overturn the election.
    So one wrote: ``I am ready to die for my beliefs. Are you 
ready to die police?''
    Another wrote on TheDonald.win: ``Cops don't have 
`standing' if they are laying on the ground in a pool of their 
own blood.''
    TheDonald.win was an openly racist and antisemitic forum.
    The Select Committee deposed that site's founder, Jody 
Williams. He confirmed how the President's tweet created a 
laser-like focus on the date of January the 6th.

    Mr. Williams. And people had been talking about going to DC since 
the election was over.
    Mr. Glick. And do you recall whether or not the conversation around 
those dates centered on the 6th after the President's tweet?
    Mr. Williams. Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean after it was announced that, 
you know, he was going to be there on the 6th to talk, yes. Then--then 
anything else was kind of shut out, and it was just gonna be on the 
6th.
    Mr. Glick. Okay. And that was pretty clearly reflected in the--the 
content on--on the site?
    Mr. Williams. Yeah. Yeah, sure.

    Mr. Raskin. On that site, many shared plans and violent 
threats.
    ``Bring handcuffs and wait near the tunnels,'' wrote one 
user.
    A commenter replied suggesting ``zip ties'' instead. One 
post encouraged others to come with ``body armor, knuckles, 
shields, bats, pepper spray, whatever it takes.'' All of those 
were used on the 6th.
    The post concluded: ``Join your local Proud Boys chapter as 
well.''
    TheDonald.win featured discussions of the tunnels beneath 
the Capitol Complex, suggestions for targeting Members of 
Congress, and encouragement to attend this once-in-a-lifetime 
event.
    While Trump supporters grew more aggressive online, he 
continued to rile up his base on Twitter.
    He said there was overwhelming evidence that the election 
was the ``biggest scam in our nation's history.''
    As you can see, the President continued to boost the event, 
tweeting about it more than a dozen times in the lead-up to 
January the 6th.
    Mr. Chairman, I reserve.
    Chairman Thompson. The Chair requests that those in the 
hearing room remain seated until the Capitol Police have 
escorted Members from the room.
    Pursuant to the order of the Committee of today, the Chair 
declares the Committee in recess for a period of approximately 
10 minutes.
    [Accordingly, at 2:08 p.m., the Committee recessed until 
2:33 p.m., when it was called to order by the Chairman.]
    Chairman Thompson. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland, Mr. Raskin.
    Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chairman, President Trump's tweet drew tens 
of thousands of Americans to Washington to form the angry crowd 
that would be transformed on January the 6th into a violent 
mob.
    Dr. Donell Harvin, who was the chief of Homeland Security 
and Intelligence for D.C., told the Committee how his team saw 
Trump's December 19th tweet unite violent groups across the 
spectrum on the far right.

    Dr. Harvin. We got derogatory information through OSINT suggesting 
that some very, very violent individuals were organizing to come to 
D.C.; and not only were they organizing to come to D.C., but they 
were--these groups, these nonaligned groups were aligning.
    And so all the red flags went up at that point, you know, when you 
have armed militia, you know, collaborating with White supremacy 
groups, collaborating with conspiracy theory groups online all toward a 
common goal, you start seeing what we call in, you know, terrorism, a 
blended ideology, and that's a very, very bad sign. [ . . . ]
    [T]hen, when they were clearly across--not just across one platform 
but across multiple platforms of these groups coordinating, not just 
like chatting, ``Hey, how's it going? What's the weather like where 
you're at?'' But like, ``What are you bringing? What are you wearing? 
You know, where do we meet up? Do you have plans for the Capitol?'' 
That's operational--that's like preoperational intelligence, right, and 
that is something that's clearly alarming.

    Mr. Raskin. The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers are two key 
groups that responded immediately to President Trump's call. 
The Proud Boys are a far-right street-fighting group that 
glorifies violence and White supremacy.
    The Oath Keepers are extremists who promote a wide range of 
conspiracy theories and sought to act as a private paramilitary 
force for Donald Trump. The Department of Justice has charged 
leaders of both groups with seditious conspiracy to overthrow 
the Government of the United States on January the 6th.
    Trump's December 19th tweet motivated these two extremists 
groups, which have historically not worked together, to 
coordinate their activities.
    December 19th, at 10:22 a.m., just hours after President 
Trump's tweet, Kelly Meggs, the head of the Florida Oath 
Keepers, declared an alliance among the Oath Keepers, the Proud 
Boys, and the Florida Three Percenters, another militia group. 
He wrote: ``We have decided to work together and shut this shit 
down.''
    Phone records obtained by the Select Committee show that, 
later that afternoon, Mr. Meggs called Proud Boys leader 
Enrique Tarrio, and they spoke for several minutes. The very 
next day, the Proud Boys got to work.
    The Proud Boys launched an encrypted chat called the 
Ministry of Self-Defense. The Committee obtained hundreds of 
these messages, which show strategic and tactical planning 
about January the 6th, including maps of Washington, DC, that 
pinpoint the location of police.
    In the weeks leading up to the attack, leaders in both the 
Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers worked with Trump allies. One 
such ally was Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump's former 
National Security Advisor and one of the participants in the 
unhinged meeting at the White House on December 18th.
    He also had connections to the Oath Keepers.
    This photo from December 12th shows Flynn and Patrick 
Byrne, another Trump ally, who was present at that December 
18th meeting, guarded by indicted Oath Keeper Roberto Minuta.
    Another view of the scene shows Oath Keepers leader Stewart 
Rhodes in the picture as well.
    Another central figure with ties to this network of 
extremist groups was Roger Stone, a political consultant and 
long-time confidant of President Trump. He pardoned both Flynn 
and Stone in the weeks between the election on November 3rd and 
January 6th.
    In the same time frame, Stone communicated with both the 
Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers regularly. The Committee 
obtained encrypted content from a group chat called Friends of 
Stone, FOS, which included Stone, Rhodes, Tarrio, and Ali 
Alexander. The chat focused on various pro-Trump events in 
November and December of 2020, as well as January 6th.
    As you can see here, Stewart Rhodes himself urged the 
Friends of Stone to have people go to their State capitols if 
they could not make it to Washington for the first Million MAGA 
March on November 14th.
    These Friends of Roger Stone had a significant presence at 
multiple pro-Trump events after the election, including in 
Washington on December the 12th. On that day, Stewart Rhodes 
called for Donald Trump to invoke martial law promising blood-
shed if he did not.

    Mr. Rhodes. He needs to know from you that you are with him--that 
if he does not do it now, when he is Commander in Chief, we're going to 
have to do it ourselves later in a much more desperate, much more 
bloody war. Let's get it on now while he is still the Commander in 
Chief. Hooah!

    Mr. Raskin. That night, the Proud Boys engaged in violence 
on the streets of Washington and hurled aggressive insults at 
the police.

    Voice. You're oath breakers. Do your fucking job! Give us 1 hour! 
One hour!

    Mr. Raskin. Just the previous night, the co-host of 
InfoWars issued an ominous warning at a rally alongside Roger 
Stone and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.

    Voice. I don't give a shit. [inaudible]
    Mr. Shroyer. We will be back in January! [applause]

    Mr. Raskin. Encrypted chats obtained by the Select 
Committee show that Kelly Meggs, the indicted leader of the 
Florida Oath Keepers, spoke directly with Roger Stone about 
security on January 5th and 6th. In fact, on January 6th, Stone 
was guarded by two Oath Keepers who have since been criminally 
indicted for seditious conspiracy.
    One of them later pleaded guilty and, according to the 
Department of Justice, admitted that the Oath Keepers were 
ready to use ``lethal force, if necessary, against anyone who 
tried to remove President Trump from the White House, including 
the National Guard.''
    As we have seen, the Proud Boys were also part of the 
Friends of Stone network. Stone's ties to the Proud Boys go 
back many years. He has even taken their so-called ``Fraternity 
Creed'' required for the first level of initialization to the 
group.

    Mr. Stone. Hi, I'm Roger Stone. I'm a Western chauvinist, and I 
refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.
    Voice. Thank you, Roger.

    Mr. Raskin. Kellye SoRelle, a lawyer who assists the Oath 
Keepers and a volunteer lawyer for the Trump Campaign, 
explained to the Committee how Roger Stone and other figures 
brought extremists of different stripes and views together.

    Mr. Childress. You mentioned that Mr. Stone wanted to start this 
Stop the Steal series of rallies. Who did you consider the leader of 
these rallies? It sounds like from what you just said it was Mr. Stone, 
Mr. Jones, and Mr. Ali Alexander. Is that correct?
    Ms. SoRelle. Those are the ones that became, like, the center point 
for everything.

    Mr. Raskin. We will learn more from Mrs. Murphy about these 
individuals and their involvement in the days leading up to the 
violent attack on January 6th. We will also hear how they were 
allowed to speak at a rally for President Trump the night 
before January 6th, even though organizers had expressed 
serious concerns about their violent and extremist rhetoric 
directly to Mark Meadows.
    You will hear testimony from White House aides who were 
with the President as he watched the crowd from the Oval Office 
and will testify about how excited he was for the following 
day.
    Let me note now that our investigation continues on these 
critical issues. We have only shown a small fraction of what we 
have found.
    I look forward to the public release of more of our 
findings later, Mr. Chairman.
    I now yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Florida, Mrs. 
Murphy.
    Mrs. Murphy. During our most recent hearing, the Committee 
showed some evidence of what President Trump, Chief of Staff 
Mark Meadows, and other White House officials knew about the 
potential for violence on January 6th. Despite this 
information, they made no effort to cancel the rally, halt the 
march to the Capitol, or even to lower the temperature among 
President Trump's supporters.
    Katrina Pierson, one of the organizers of January 6th rally 
and a former campaign spokeswoman for President Trump, grew 
increasingly apprehensive after learning that multiple 
activists had been proposed as speakers for the January 6th 
rally. These included some of the people we discussed earlier 
in this hearing: Roger Stone, a long-time outside advisor to 
President Trump; Alex Jones, the founder of the conspiracy 
theory website InfoWars; and Ali Alexander, an activist known 
for his violent political rhetoric.
    On December 30th, Ms. Pierson exchanged text messages with 
another key rally organizer about why people like Mr. Alexander 
and Mr. Jones were being suggested as speakers at the 
President's rally on January 6th.
    Ms. Pierson's explanation was: ``POTUS.''
    She remarks that the President ``likes the crazies.''
    The Committee asked Ms. Pierson about these messages, and 
this is what she said:

    Mr. Tonolli. So when you said that he likes the crazies, were you 
talking about President Trump?
    Ms. Pierson. Yes, I was talking about President Trump. He loved 
people who viciously defended him in public.
    Mr. Tonolli. But consistent in terms of the support for these 
people, at least with what the President likes, from what you could 
tell?
    Ms. Pierson. Yes. The--the people that would be very, very vicious 
in publicly defending him.

    Mrs. Murphy. On January 2nd, Ms. Pierson's concerns about 
the potential rally speakers had grown serious enough that she 
reached out to Mr. Meadows directly.
    She wrote: ``Good afternoon. Would you mind giving me a 
call regarding this January 6th event? Things have gotten 
crazy, and I desperately need some direction. Please.''
    According to phone records obtained by the Committee, Ms. 
Pierson received a phone call from Mr. Meadows 8 minutes later. 
Here is what Ms. Pierson said about that conversation.

    Mr. Tonolli. So what specifically did you tell him, though, about 
other--other events?
    Ms. Pierson. Just that there were a bunch of entities coming in. 
Some were very suspect, but they're going to be on other--on other 
stages, some on other days. A very, very brief overview of what was 
actually happening and why I raised red flags.
    Mr. Tonolli. And when you told him that people were very suspect, 
what--what did--did you tell him what you meant by that, or what did 
you convey to him about what you were--the problems with these folks?
    Ms. Pierson. I think I even texted him some of my concerns. But I 
did briefly go over some of the concerns that I had raised to everybody 
with Alex Jones or Ali Alexander and some of the rhetoric that they 
were doing. I probably mentioned to him that they had already caused 
trouble at the other capitols or at the previous event--the previous 
march that they did for protesting. And I just had a concern about it.

    Mrs. Murphy. Ms. Pierson was especially concerned about Ali 
Alexander and Alex Jones because, in November 2020, both men 
and some of their supporters, had entered the Georgia State 
Capitol to protest the results of the 2020 election.
    Ms. Pierson believed that she mentioned this to Mark 
Meadows on this January 2nd call. Notably, January 2nd is the 
same day on which, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, Mr. Meadows 
warned her of things--that things might get ``real, real bad'' 
on January 6th.
    After her January 2nd call with Mr. Meadows, Katrina 
Pierson sent an email to fellow rally organizers. She wrote: 
``POTUS expectations are to have something intimate at the 
Ellipse and call on everyone to march to the Capitol.''
    The President's own documents suggest that the President 
had decided to call on his supporters to go to the Capitol on 
January 6th but that he chose not to widely announce it until 
his speech on the Ellipse that morning.
    The Committee has obtained this draft, undated tweet from 
the National Archives. It includes a stamp stating: ``President 
has seen.''
    The draft tweet reads: ``I will be making a big speech at 
10 a.m. on January 6th at the Ellipse south of the White House. 
Please arrive early. Massive crowds expected. March to the 
Capitol after. Stop the Steal.''
    Although this tweet was never sent, rally organizers were 
discussing and preparing for the march to the Capitol in the 
days leading up to January 6th.
    This is a January 4th text message from a rally organizer 
to Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO. The organizer says: ``You 
know, this stays between us. We are having a second stage at 
the Supreme Court again after the Ellipse. POTUS is going to 
have us march there/the Capitol. It cannot get out about the 
second stage because people will try and set up another and 
sabotage it. It can also not get out about the march because I 
will be in trouble with the National Park Service and all the 
agencies. But POTUS is going to just call for it 
`unexpectedly.' ''
    The end of the message indicates that the President's plan 
to have his followers march to the Capitol was not being 
broadly discussed. Then, on the morning of January 5th, Ali 
Alexander, whose firebrand style concerned Katrina Pierson, 
sent a similar text to a conservative journalist.
    Mr. Alexander said: ``Tomorrow: Ellipse then U.S. Capitol. 
Trump is supposed to order us to the Capitol at the end of his 
speech, but we will see.''
    President Trump did follow through on his plan, using his 
January 6th speech to tell his supporters to march to the 
Capitol on January 6th. The evidence confirms that this was not 
a spontaneous call to action, but rather was a deliberate 
strategy decided upon in advance by the President.
    Another part of the President's strategy involves certain 
Members of Congress who amplified his unsupported assertions 
that the election had been stolen. In the weeks after the 
election, the White House coordinated closely with President 
Trump's allies in Congress to disseminate his false claims and 
to encourage members of the public to fight the outcome on 
January 6th.
    We know that the President met with various Members to 
discuss January 6th well before the joint session.
    The President's private schedule for December 21, 2020, 
shows a private meeting with Republican Members of Congress. We 
know that Vice President Pence, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, 
and Rudy Giuliani also attended that meeting. We obtained an 
email that was sent from Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama to 
Mark Meadows setting up that meeting.
    The subject line is: ``White House meeting December 21st 
regarding January 6th.''
    In his email, Congressman Brooks explained that he had not 
asked anyone to join him in the ``January 6th effort,'' because 
in his view ``only citizens can exert the necessary influence 
on Senators and Congressmen to join this fight against massive 
voter fraud and election theft.''
    At this point, you may also recall testimony given in our 
earlier hearing by Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard 
Donoghue, who said that the President asked the Department of 
Justice to ``Just say that the election was corrupt and leave 
the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.''
    According to White House visitor logs obtained by the 
Committee, Members of Congress present at the White House on 
December 21st included Congressmen Brian Babin, Andy Biggs, 
Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Andy Harris, Jody Hice, 
Jim Jordan, and Scott Perry. Then-Congresswoman-elect Marjorie 
Taylor Greene was also there.
    We heard testimony in an early hearing that a pardon was 
ultimately requested by Congressman Mo Brooks and other Members 
of Congress who attended this meeting. We have asked witnesses 
what happened during the December 21st meeting, and we have 
learned that part of the discussion centered on the role of the 
Vice President during the counting of the electoral votes.
    These Members of Congress were discussing what would later 
be known as the Eastman theory, which was being pushed by 
attorney John Eastman. In one of our earlier hearings, you 
heard in great detail that President Trump was trying to 
convince Vice President Pence to do something illegal.
    His White House counsel confirmed all of that in testimony 
last week.

    Mr. Heaphy. And tell us your view, Mr. Cipollone, upon those 
discussions with Mr. Philbin, with Greg Jacob, what was your assessment 
as to what the Vice President could or could not do at the joint 
session?
    Mr. Cipollone. What was my assessment----
    Mr. Heaphy. Yes.
    Mr. Cipollone [continuing]. About what he could or couldn't do?
    Mr. Heaphy. Yes, your view of the issue.
    Mr. Cipollone. My view was that the Vice President didn't have the 
legal authority to do anything except what he did.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Heaphy. They have both told us, Mr. Philbin and Mr. Jacob, that 
they looked very closely at the Eastman memos, the Eastman theory, and 
thought that it had no basis, that it was not a strategy that the 
President should pursue. It sounds like that's consistent with your 
impression as well.
    Mr. Cipollone. My impression would've been informed, certainly, by 
them.

    Mrs. Murphy. Campaign senior advisor Jason Miller told us 
that Mr. Cipollone thought John Eastman's theories were nutty. 
Something Mr. Cipollone wouldn't refute.

    Mr. Heaphy. We've received testimony from various people about 
this. One was Jason Miller, who was on the campaign. He said that, 
``The way it was communicated to me was that Pat Cipollone thought the 
idea was nutty, and at one point, confronted Eastman basically with the 
same sentiment.''
    Mr. Cipollone. I don't have any reason to contradict what he said.

    Mrs. Murphy. On January 4th, John Eastman went to the White 
House to meet with the President and Vice President. Mr. 
Cipollone tried to participate in this meeting, but he was 
apparently turned away.

    Mr. Heaphy. You didn't go to the meeting in the Oval Office where 
Eastman met with the President and Vice President. Do you remember why 
you didn't personally attend?
    Mr. Cipollone. I did walk to that meeting, and I did go into the 
Oval Office with the idea of attending that meeting. And then, I 
ultimately did not attend that meeting.
    Mr. Heaphy. Why not?
    Mr. Cipollone. The reasons for that are privileged.
    Mr. Heaphy. Okay. Were you asked to not attend the meeting, or did 
you make a personal decision not to attend the meeting?
    Mr. Cipollone. Again, without getting into.
    Mr. Purpura. Privilege.

    Mrs. Murphy. Recall that Greg Jacob, the Vice President's 
counsel, stated that Mr. Eastman acknowledged he would lose 9 
to 0 if his legal theory were challenged in the Supreme Court. 
Mr. Cipollone had reviewed Mr. Eastman's legal theory and 
expressed his view repeatedly that the Vice President was 
right. He even offered to take the blame for the Vice 
President's position.

    Mr. Cipollone. I thought that the Vice President did not have the 
authority to do what was being suggested under a proper reading of the 
law. I conveyed that. Okay? I think that I had actually told somebody 
that, you know, in the Vice President's--just blame me, I'm not a 
politician. And, you know, I just said, ``I'm a lawyer. This is my 
legal opinion.''
    But, let me tell you this, can I say a word about the Vice 
President?
    Mr. Heaphy. Please.
    Mr. Cipollone. I think the Vice President did the right thing. I 
think he did the courageous thing. I have a great deal of respect for 
Vice President Pence. I worked with him very closely. I think he 
understood my opinion. I think he understood my opinion afterwards as 
well. I think he did a great service to this country, and I think I 
suggested to somebody that he should be given the Presidential Medal of 
Freedom for his actions.

    Mrs. Murphy. Earlier this year, a Federal district court 
judge concluded that President Trump and Mr. Eastman relying on 
Mr. Eastman's theory more likely than not violated multiple 
Federal criminal laws in their pressure campaign against the 
Vice President.
    Also, recall earlier in this hearing, we saw that Rudy 
Giuliani's team did not have actual evidence of fraud 
sufficient to change the result of the election. That is 
important because, as January 6th approached, the Republican 
Members of the House and Senate were looking for reason to 
object to the electors. No real evidence was ever given to 
them.
    We know that Republican Members of the House received a 
memorandum from the Chairwoman of the House Republican 
Conference in the days before January 6th explaining in detail 
the many constitutional and legal problems with objections and 
describing the principal judicial rulings dismissing the claims 
of wide-spread fraud.
    But their plan to object to the certification of the 
election on January 6th went forward anyway. The next day on 
January 5th, the day before the attack on the Capitol, tens of 
thousands of people converged on Washington. While certain 
close associates of President Trump privately expressed 
concerns about what would occur on January 6th, other members 
of the President's inner circle spoke with great anticipation 
about the events to come.
    The Committee has learned from the White House phone logs 
that the President spoke to Steve Bannon, his close advisor at 
least twice on January 5th.
    The first conversation they had lasted for 11 minutes. 
Listen to what Mr. Bannon said that day, after the first call 
he had with the President.

    Mr. Bannon. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Bannon. It's all converging, and now we're on, as they say, the 
point of attack. Right? The point of attack tomorrow.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Bannon. l'll tell you this, it's not going to happen like you 
think it's going to happen. Okay? It's going to be quite 
extraordinarily different. And all I can say is, strap in . . . 

    Mrs. Murphy. From those same phone logs, we know that the 
President and Mr. Bannon spoke again on the phone that evening 
this time for 6 minutes.
    That same day, on the eve of January 6th, supporters of 
President Trump gathered in Washington, DC, at another rally. 
This rally was held at Freedom Plaza, which is located near the 
White House and featured some of the speakers who Katrina 
Pierson and others deemed too extreme to share the stage with 
the President the next morning.
    As this rally was under way, the President asked members of 
his staff to come to the Oval Office. Let's hear from the White 
House aides who were in the Oval Office that night.

    Mr. Luna. I was in the office--in the Oval Office--and he had asked 
me to open the door so that he could hear, I guess, there was a concert 
or a--or something going on.
    Mr. George. Did he say anything other than just, ``Open the door''?
    Mr. Luna. He--he made a comment, I don't remember specifically what 
he said, but there was a lot of energy.
                                 ______
                                 
    Ms. Matthews. When we walked in the staff was kind-of standing up 
and assembled along the wall, and the President was at the desk. And 
Dan Scavino was on the couch. And the President was dictating a tweet 
that he wanted Scavino to send out. Then, the President started talking 
about the rally the next day.
    He had the door of the Oval open to the Rose Garden because you 
could hear the crowd already assembled outside on the Ellipse. And they 
were playing music. And it was so loud that you could feel it shaking 
in the Oval.
                                 ______
                                 
    Ms. Matthews. He was in a very good mood. And I say that because he 
had not been in a good mood for weeks leading up to that. And then it 
seemed like he was in a fantastic mood that evening.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Deere. He asked if--if Members of Congress would be with him 
tomorrow.
    Mr. Wood. And what did you understand by--meaning voting in his 
favor, as opposed to physically with him or anything like that?
    Mr. Deere. Yeah, I took that to mean not voting to certify the 
election.
                                 ______
                                 
    Ms. Matthews. Then, he did look to the staff and asked for ideas of 
how, if I recall, he said that we could make the RINOs do the right 
thing, is the way he phrased it. And no one spoke up initially because 
I think everyone was trying to process what that--he meant by that.
                                 ______
                                 
    Ms. Craighead. The President was making notes--talking then about: 
``We should go up to the Capitol. What's the best route to go to the 
Capitol?''
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Deere. I said he should focus on policy accomplishments, and I 
didn't mention the 2020 election.
    Mr. Wood. What was his response?
    Mr. Deere. He acknowledged that and said, ``We've had a lot.'' 
Something along those lines. And then, he fairly quickly moved to how 
fired up the crowd is--was going to be.
    Mr. Wood. And what did he say about it?
    Mr. Deere. Just that they were--they were fired up. They were 
angry. They feel like the election's been stolen, that the election was 
rigged.
    Mr. Wood. Did he give you any indication of how he knew that the 
crowd was fired up or angry?
    Mr. Deere. He continued to reference being able to hear them 
outside.

    Mrs. Murphy. Through the open door of the Oval Office, the 
President could hear the sound of the crowd and the music at 
the rally at the Freedom Plaza. These are some of the things 
that they were saying there at the plaza just blocks from where 
the President sat that evening excited for the next day.

    Mr. Stone. This is nothing less than an epic struggle for the 
future of this country between dark and light. Between the godly and 
the godless. Between good and evil. And we will win this fight or 
America will step off into a thousand years of darkness.
    General Flynn. Tomorrow, tomorrow, trust me, the American people 
that are standing on the soil that we are standing on tonight--and 
they're gonna be standing on this soil tomorrow--this is soil that we 
have fought over, fought for, and we will fight for in the future.
    The Members, the Members of Congress, the Members of the House of 
Representatives, the Members of the United States Senate, those of you 
who are feeling weak tonight, those of you that don't have the moral 
fiber in your body, get some tonight because tomorrow, we the people 
are going to be here, and we want you to know that we will not stand 
for a lie. We will not stand for a lie.
    Mr. Alexander. I want them to know that 1776 is always an option. 
These degenerates in the deep state are going to give us what we want, 
or we are going to shut this country down.
    Mr. Jones. It's 1776! 1776! 1776! 1776!
    Crowd. 1776!

    Mrs. Murphy. At 5:05 p.m., as the Freedom Plaza rally was 
under way just blocks away, President Trump tweeted: 
``Washington is being inundated with people who don't want to 
see an election victory stolen by emboldened radical left 
Democrats. Our country has had enough. They won't take it 
anymore.''
    To the crowds gathering in D.C., he added: ``We hear you 
and love you from the Oval Office.''
    The Committee has learned that on January 5th, there were 
serious concerns at Twitter about the anticipated violence the 
next day. Listen to what the Twitter witness told us about 
their desperate efforts to get Twitter to do something.

    Mr. Jackson. What was your gut feeling on the night of January 5th?
    Former Twitter Employee. I believe I sent a Slack message to 
someone that said something along the lines of, ``When people are 
shooting each other tomorrow, I will try and rest in the knowledge that 
we tried.''
    And so, I went to--I don't know that I slept that night to be 
honest with you. I--I was on pins and needles. Because, again, for 
months, I had been begging and anticipating and attempting to raise the 
reality that if nothing--if we made no intervention into what I saw 
occurring, people were going to die.
    And on January 5th, I realized no intervention was coming. And even 
as hard as I had tried to create one or implement one, there was 
nothing. And we were--we were at the whims and mercy of a violent crowd 
that was locked and loaded.
    Mr. Jackson. And just for the record, this was content that was 
echoing Statements from the former President but also Proud Boys and 
other known violent extremist groups?
    Former Twitter Employee. Yes.

    Mrs. Murphy. There were also concerns among Members of 
Congress. We have a recently released recording of a 
conversation that took place among Republican Members in the 
U.S. Capitol on the eve of January 6th. This is Republican 
Congresswoman Debbie Lesko from Arizona, who led some of the 
unfounded objections to the election results.

    Mrs. Lesko. I also asked leadership to come up with a safety plan 
for Members. I'm actually very concerned about this because we have who 
knows how many hundreds of thousands of people coming here. We have 
Antifa. We also have, quite honestly, Trump supporters who actually 
believe that we are going to overturn the election. And when that 
doesn't happen--most likely will not happen, they are going to go nuts.

    Mrs. Murphy. That same evening, as President Trump listened 
to the rally from the Oval Office, he was also working on his 
speech to be delivered the next day. Based on documents we have 
received from the National Archives, including multiple drafts 
of the President's speech, as well as from witness testimony, 
we understand how that speech devolved into a call to action 
and a call to fight.
    One of the first edits President Trump made to his speech 
was to incorporate his 5:05 p.m. tweet, revising his speech to 
say: ``All of us here today do not want to see our election 
victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats. Our 
country has had enough. We will not take it anymore.''
    He also added: ``Together, we will Stop the Steal.''
    President Trump's edits continued into the morning of 
January 6th.
    As you can see from the President's daily diary here, the 
President spoke to his chief speechwriter Stephen Miller for 
over 25 minutes that morning. Following his call with Mr. 
Miller, President Trump inserted for the first time a line in 
his speech that said: ``And we will see whether Mike Pence 
enters history as a truly great and courageous leader. All he 
has to do is refer the illegally submitted electoral votes back 
to the States that were given false and fraudulent information 
where they want to recertify.''
    No prior version of this speech had referenced Vice 
President Pence or his role during the joint session on January 
6th. These last-minute edits by President Trump to his speech 
were part of the President's pressure campaign against his own 
Vice President.
    But not everyone wanted these lines regarding the Vice 
President included in the President's speech, including White 
House lawyer Eric Herschmann.

    Mr. George. Did you ever speak to anybody in the White House at the 
time about this disagreement between the President and the Vice 
President, other than the President, based on the objection from your 
counsel?
    Mr. Stephen Miller. Maybe had a brief conversation about it with 
Eric Herschmann.
    Mr. George. Tell me about that. What do you remember him saying to 
you about this disagreement?
    Mr. Stephen Miller. I just remember him saying that--that he had 
a--I'm trying to remember. I don't want to get this wrong. Sort-of 
something to the effect of thinking that it would be counterproductive, 
I think he thought to--to discuss the matter publicly.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. George. So it came up in the context of editing the President's 
speech on January the 6th?
    Mr. Stephen Miller. It just came up in the conversation where Eric 
knew it was in the speech, and so he had a--a sidebar with me about it.

    Mrs. Murphy. So the speechwriters took that advice and 
removed the lines about Vice President Pence. Later that 
morning at 11:20 a.m., President Trump had a phone call with 
the Vice President.
    As the Committee detailed in an earlier hearing, that phone 
call was, by all accounts, tense and heated.
    During this call, the Vice President told the President 
that he would not attempt to change the outcome of the 
election. In response, the President called the Vice President 
of the United States a ``wimp'' and other derogatory words.
    As you can see in this email, after Vice President Pence 
told President Trump that he would not unilaterally deliver him 
a second term in office, the speechwriters were directed to 
reinsert the Mike Pence lines. Here is how one of the 
speechwriters described President Trump's last-minute change to 
the speech.

    Mr. Haley. And as I recall, there was a very tough--a tough 
sentence about the Vice President that was--that was added.

    Mrs. Murphy. President Trump wanted to use his speech to 
attack Vice President Pence in front of a crowd of thousands of 
angry supporters who had been led to believe the election was 
stolen. When President Trump arrived at the Ellipse to deliver 
his speech, he was still worked up from his call with Vice 
President Pence. Although Ivanka Trump would not say so, her 
chief of staff gave the Committee some insight into the 
President's frustration.

    Mr. Heaphy. It's been reported that you ultimately decided to 
attend the rally because you hoped that you would calm the President 
and keep the event on an even keel. Is that accurate?
    Ms. Trump. No. I don't know who said that or where that came from.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Tonolli. What did she share with you about why it was 
concerning that her father was upset or agitated after that call with 
Vice President Pence in relation to the Ellipse rally? Why did that 
matter? Why did he have to be calmed down, I should say.
    Ms. Radford. Well, she shared that he had called the Vice President 
a not--an expletive word. I think that bothered her. And I think she 
could tell, based on the conversations and what was going on in the 
office, that he was angry and upset and people were providing 
misinformation. And she felt like she might be able to help calm the 
situation down, at least before he went onto stage.

    Mrs. Murphy. The President did go on stage, and then he 
gave the speech that he wanted to give. It included the formal 
changes he had requested the night before and in that morning, 
but also many important last-minute, ad-libbed changes.
    A single, scripted reference in the speech to Mike Pence 
became eight. A single, scripted reference to rally-goers 
marching to the Capitol became four, with President Trump ad-
libbing that he would be joining the protesters at the Capitol. 
Added throughout his speech were references to fighting and the 
need for people to have courage and to be strong. The word 
``peacefully'' was in the staff-written script and used only 
once.
    Here are some of these ad-libbed changes that the President 
made to his speech.

    President Trump. Because you'll never take back our country with 
weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.
                                 ______
                                 
    President Trump. So, I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has 
to do. And I hope he doesn't listen to the RINOs and the stupid people 
that he's listening to.
                                 ______
                                 
    President Trump. We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like 
hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
                                 ______
                                 
    President Trump. But we're going to try and give our Republicans--
the weak ones, because the strong ones don't need any of our help. 
We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that 
they need to take back our country. So, let's walk down Pennsylvania 
Avenue.

    Mrs. Murphy. White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his 
deputy did not attend the speech, and they were concerned that 
the statements in the speech about the election were false. In 
fact, the message that President Trump delivered that day was 
built on a foundation of lies. He lied to his supporters that 
the election was stolen. He stoked their anger. He called for 
them to fight for him. He directed them to the U.S. Capitol. He 
told them he would join them, and his supporters believed him, 
and many headed toward the Capitol.
    As a result, people died. People were injured. Many of his 
supporters' lives will never be the same.
    President Trump's former campaign manager Brad Parscale 
recognized the impact of the speech immediately, and this is 
what he said on January 6th in excerpts from text messages to 
Katrina Pierson.
    Mr. Parscale said: ``This is about Trump pushing for 
uncertainty in our country. A sitting President asking for 
civil war.''
    Then when he said, ``This week I feel guilty for helping 
him win,'' Katrina Pierson responded: ``You did what you felt 
right at the time, and, therefore, it was right.''
    Mr. Parscale added: ``Yeah, but a woman is dead.''
    And: ``Yeah. If I was Trump and I knew my rhetoric killed 
someone.''
    When Ms. Pierson replied, ``It wasn't the rhetoric,'' Mr. 
Parscale said: ``Katrina, yes, it was.''
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentlewoman yields back. We are 
joined today by Mr. Jason Van Tatenhove and Mr. Stephen Ayres. 
Mr. Tatenhove is an artist and journalist. He is a former 
spokesman of the Oath Keepers and a former close associate of 
Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the founder and president of the Oath 
Keepers, who has been charged with seditious conspiracy in 
relation to the Capitol attack.
    Mr. Van Tatenhove broke with the Oath Keepers and has since 
spoken out forcefully against the violent group.
    Mr. Ayres is a former supporter of President Trump. He 
answered the President's call to come to Washington, DC, on 
January 6th. He marched to the Capitol on the President's 
orders. He pleaded guilty last month to disorderly and 
disruptive conduct at the Capitol.
    Mr. Ayres, who no longer supports President Trump, came 
forward voluntarily to share his story as a warning.
    I will now swear in our witnesses.
    The witnesses will please stand and raise their right 
hands.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. You may be seated.
    Let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the 
affirmative.
    I recognize myself for questions.
    Today we have discussed how President Trump summoned an 
angry mob of supporters to Washington, DC, many of whom came 
prepared to do battle against police and politicians alike.
    We are fortunate enough to be joined by two witnesses who 
can help us understand who was in the mob that day, both hard-
core violent extremists like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys 
and average Trump supporters swept up in the fervor of the day.
    Mr. Van Tatenhove, can you help us understand who the Oath 
Keepers are?
    Mr. Van Tatenhove.\1\ I can. Thank you. My time with the 
Oath Keepers began back at Bundy Ranch at that first stand-off 
when I went to cover them as an independent journalist. I then 
subsequently covered two more stand-offs, the Sugar Pine Mine 
stand-off and the White Hope Mine stand-off. It was at that 
time that I was offered a job as national media director and an 
associate editor for the web page.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Van Tatenhove has been included 
in the Appendix and may be found on page 835.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    So I spent a few years with the Oath Keepers, and I can 
tell you that they may not like to call themselves a militia, 
but they are. They are a violent militia, and they are largely 
Stewart Rhodes. They--I think, rather than try to use words, I 
think the best illustration for what the Oath Keepers are 
happened January 6th when we saw that stacked military 
formation going up the stairs of our Capitol.
    I saw radicalization that started with the beginning of my 
time with them and continued over a period of time as the 
member base and who it was that Stewart Rhodes was courting 
drifted further and further right into the alt-right world, 
into White nationalists, and even straight-up racists.
    It came to a point where I could no longer continue to work 
for them, but the Oath Keepers are a dangerous militia that is 
in large part fed by the ego and drive of Stewart Rhodes, who, 
at times, seemed to see himself as this paramilitary leader. I 
think that drove a lot of it.
    So, in my opinion, the Oath Keepers are a very dangerous 
organization.
    Chairman Thompson. Well, thank you very much. You have 
talked a little bit about that danger. So what is the Oath 
Keepers' vision for America and why should Americans be 
concerned about it?
    Mr. Van Tatenhove. I think we saw a glimpse of what the 
vision of the Oath Keepers is on January 6th. It doesn't 
necessarily include the rule of law. It doesn't necessarily 
include--it includes violence. It includes trying to get their 
way through lies, through deceit, through intimidation, and 
through the perpetration of violence. The swaying of people who 
may not know better through lies and rhetoric and propaganda 
that can get swept up in these moments. I will admit I was 
swept up at one point as well, too.
    But I don't know if that answers the question.
    Chairman Thompson. Well, it does. You talk about being 
swept up. So at what point did you break with the Oath Keepers?
    Mr. Van Tatenhove. There came a point--there were many red 
flags, and I probably should have broke with them much earlier 
than I did, but the straw that broke the camel's back really 
came when I walked into a grocery store. We were living up in 
the very remote town of Eureka, Montana, and there was a group 
of core members of the group--of the Oath Keepers and some 
associates, and they were having a conversation at that public 
area where they were talking about how the Holocaust was not 
real.
    That was, for me, something I just could not abide. You 
know, we were not--we were not wealthy people at all. We were 
barely surviving, and it didn't matter. I went home to my wife 
and my kids, and I told them that I have got to walk away at 
this point. I don't know how we are going to survive or where 
we are going to go or what we are going to do, but I just can 
no longer continue, and I put in my resignation.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Ayres, there were many people in the crowd that day 
January 6th, including you, who were not part of an extremist 
group. I would like to start by having you tell the American 
people a little bit about yourself.
    Can you tell us about your life before January 6th?
    Mr. Ayres. Yeah. Basically nothing but a family man and a 
working man. Worked at the company, a cabinet company up in 
northeast Ohio for going on 20 years. You know, family is my 
life. You know, I was a supervisor there. So that took up a lot 
of my other--you know, a lot of my free time. Other than that, 
I'm with my family, camping, playing basketball, playing games 
with my son.
    Chairman Thompson. Just what any ordinary, American 
citizen, family man would do.
    Mr. Ayres. Yep, exactly.
    Chairman Thompson. So this Committee has reviewed thousands 
of hours of surveillance footage from January 6th. During this 
review, we identified you entering the Capitol, as we see in 
this video.
    Mr. Ayres, why did you decide to come to Washington on 
January 6th?
    Mr. Ayres. For me personally, you know, I was, you know, 
pretty hard core into the social media, Facebook, Twitter, 
Instagram. I followed, you know, President Trump, you know, on 
all the websites, you know. He basically put out, you know: 
Come to Stop the Steal rally.
    You know, and I felt like I needed to be down here.
    Chairman Thompson. So, you basically learned about the 
rally on social media and at some point made a decision to come 
to Washington?
    Mr. Ayres. Yep, yep. I had some friends I found out were 
coming down. I just hopped--you know, hopped on with them right 
at the tail end when I found out, and came down here with them.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much.
    The Chair recognizes the Vice Chair, Ms. Cheney of Wyoming, 
with any questions she may have.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Ayres, when you entered the Capitol last year, did you 
believe that the election had been stolen?
    Mr. Ayres. At that time, yeah. You know, everything that I 
was seeing online, I definitely believed that that is exactly 
what--that was the case.
    Vice Chair Cheney. When you heard from President Trump that 
the election was stolen, how did that make you feel?
    Mr. Ayres. Oh, I was very upset, as were most of his 
supporters. You know, that is basically what got me to come 
down here.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Do you still believe the election was 
stolen?
    Mr. Ayres. Not so much now. I got away from all the social 
media when January 6th happened, basically deleted it all. You 
know, I started doing my own research and everything. For me, 
for me--for something like that to be that--for that to 
actually take place, it is too big, you know. There is no way 
to keep something like that quiet, as big as something like 
that, you know. With all the--you know, all the lawsuits being 
shot down one after another, that was mainly what convinced me.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Well, and I think that is very 
important. We've also talked about today and in previous 
hearings the extent to which the President himself was told 
that the election hadn't been stolen, by his Justice 
Department, by his White House counsel, by his campaign.
    Would it have made a difference to you to know that 
President Trump himself had no evidence of wide-spread fraud?
    Mr. Ayres. Oh, definitely, you know. Who knows, I may not 
have come down here then, you know.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentlewoman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Florida, Mrs. 
Murphy.
    Mrs. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    You know, earlier today we showed how Donald Trump's 
December 19th tweet summoned both extremist groups as well as 
rank-and-file supporters of President Trump to come to 
Washington, DC, average Americans. He told them to ``Be there, 
Will be wild,'' and they came. We showed how President Trump 
repeatedly told them fight, fight, fight, and they marched to 
the Capitol.
    Mr. Ayres, you were in that crowd at the rally and then the 
crowd that marched to the Capitol. When you arrived on the 
Ellipse that morning, were you planning on going to the 
Capitol?
    Mr. Ayres. No, we didn't actually plan to go down there. 
You know, we went basically to see the Stop the Steal rally, 
and that was it.
    Mrs. Murphy. So why did you decide to march to the Capitol?
    Mr. Ayres. Well, basically, you know, the President, he had 
got everybody riled up, told everybody to head on down. So, we 
basically were just following what he said.
    Mrs. Murphy. After the President's speech, as you were 
marching down to the Capitol, how did you feel?
    Mr. Ayres. You know, I am angry, you know, after everything 
that was basically said in the speech. You know, a lot of the 
stuff he said he already put out in tweets. A lot of it I had 
already seen it and heard it before. So, I mean, I was already 
worked up, and so were most of the people there.
    Mrs. Murphy. So as you started marching, did you think 
there was still a chance the election would be overturned?
    Mr. Ayres. Yeah, at that time I did, because everybody was 
kind-of, like, in the hope that, you know, Vice President Pence 
was not going to certify the election. You know, also, the 
whole time on our way down there, we kept hearing about this 
big reveal I remember us talking about, and we kind-of thought 
maybe that was it. So that hope was there.
    Mrs. Murphy. Did you think that the President would be 
marching with you?
    Mr. Ayres. Yeah. I think everybody thought he was going to 
be coming down. You know, he said in his speech, you know, 
kind-of like he was going to be there with us. So, I mean, I 
believed it.
    Mrs. Murphy. I understand.
    We know that you illegally entered the Capitol that 
afternoon and then left the Capitol area later on. What made 
you decide to leave?
    Mr. Ayres. Basically when President Trump put his tweet 
out, we literally left right after that come out. You know, to 
me, if he would have done that earlier in the day, 1:30, you 
know, we wouldn't be in this--maybe we wouldn't be in this bad 
of a situation or something.
    Mrs. Murphy. Thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland, Mr. Raskin.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Van Tatenhove, in the run-up to January 6th, Stewart 
Rhodes publicly implored President Trump to invoke the 
Insurrection Act, the 1807 law that allows the President to 
call up militias to put down a rebellion against the United 
States. I want to get your thoughts about this in the context 
of your prior relationship with Stewart Rhodes.
    I understand that you had conversations with Rhodes about 
the Insurrection Act. Why was he so fixated on that and what 
did he think it would enable the Oath Keepers to do?
    Mr. Van Tatenhove. Well, I think it gave him a sense of 
legitimacy, that it was a path forward to move forward with his 
goals and agendas.
    I think we need to quit mincing words and just talk about 
truths. What it was going to be was an armed revolution. I 
mean, people died that day. Law enforcement officers died this 
day. There was a gallows set up in front of the Capitol. This 
could have been the spark that started a new civil war, and no 
one would have won there. That would have been good for no one.
    He was always looking for ways to legitimize what he was 
doing, whether by wrapping it in the trappings of it is not a 
militia, it is community preparedness team. We're not a 
militia, we're an educational outreach group. It is a veterans 
support group. But, again, we've got to stop with this 
dishonesty and the mincing of words and just call things for 
what they are. You know, he is a militia leader. He had these 
grand visions of being a paramilitary leader, and the 
Insurrection Act would have given him a path forward with that. 
You know, the fact that the President was communicating, 
whether directly or indirectly, messaging, you know, kind-of--
that gave him the nod. All I can do is thank the gods that 
things did not go any worse that day.
    Mr. Raskin. What did the Oath Keepers see in President 
Trump?
    Mr. Van Tatenhove. They saw a path forward that would have 
legitimacy. They saw opportunity I think, in my opinion, to 
become a paramilitary force, you know.
    Mr. Raskin. Last week the Department of Justice indicated 
that it has evidence of the Oath Keepers bringing not just 
firearms, but explosives to Washington, ahead of January 6th. 
The Committee has also learned that Stewart Rhodes stopped to 
buy weapons on his way to Washington and shipped roughly $7,000 
worth of tactical gear to a January 6th rally planner in 
Virginia before the attack.
    Did you ever hear Rhodes discuss committing violence 
against elected political leaders?
    Mr. Van Tatenhove. Yeah. I mean, that went back from the 
very beginning of my tenure. One of the first assignments that 
he brought to me wanting me to do as more of a graphic artist 
function was to create a deck of cards. You may remember back 
to the conflict in the Middle East where our own military 
created a deck of cards, which was a who's who of kind-of the 
key players on the other side that they wanted to take out. 
Stewart was very intrigued by that notion and influenced by it, 
I think, and he wanted me to create a deck of cards that would 
include different politicians, judges, including up to Hillary 
Clinton as the queen of hearts.
    This was a project that I refused to do, but from the very 
start, we saw that. There was always the push for military 
training, including there were courses in that community that 
went over explosives training. So, yeah, this all falls in 
line.
    Mr. Raskin. Mr. Van Tatenhove, you say in your very 
thoughtful written testimony that we received today that you 
fear what the next election cycle will bring, and you also say 
that we have been exceedingly lucky in that we have not seen 
more bloodshed so far. I wonder if you would elaborate on those 
two statements.
    Mr. Van Tatenhove. I think as far as the luck goes, we've 
had the potential from Bundy Ranch on, I mean, being boots on 
the ground at these stand-offs--and they were stand-offs--where 
there were firearms pointed across lines at Federal law 
enforcement agencies, you know, whatever it may be with that 
particular stand-off. But I do--I think we have gotten 
exceedingly lucky that more bloodshed did not happen because 
the potential has been there from the start, and we got very 
lucky that the loss of life was--and as tragic as it is, was 
that we saw on January 6th, the potential was so much more.
    Again, all we have to look at is the iconic images of that 
day with the gallows set up for Mike Pence, for the Vice 
President of the United States, you know. I do fear for this 
next election cycle because who knows what that might bring. If 
a President that is willing to try to instill and encourage to 
whip up a civil war amongst his followers using lies and 
deceit, and snake oil, and regardless of the human impact, what 
else is he going to do if he gets elected again? All bets are 
off at that point, and that is a scary notion. I have three 
daughters. I have a granddaughter. I fear for the world that 
they will inherit if we do not start holding these people to 
account.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Van 
Tatenhove.
    Mr. Ayres, I first want to ask you about what finally 
caused you to leave on January the 6th. We know that the 
medieval-style combat with our police, the occupation of the 
building, this was going on for several hours until the 
President issued at 4:17 a tweet, I believe, that included a 
video telling people to go home.
    Did you see that and did that have any effect on what you 
were doing?
    Mr. Ayres. Well, we were there. As soon as that come out, 
everybody started talking about it, and it seemed like it 
started to disperse, you know, some of the crowd. Obviously, 
you know, once we got back to the hotel room, we seen that it 
was still going on, but it definitely dispersed a lot of the 
crowd.
    Mr. Raskin. Did you leave at that point?
    Mr. Ayres. Yeah, we did. Yeah, we left.
    Mr. Raskin. So, in other words, that was the key moment 
when you decided to leave when President Trump told people to 
go home?
    Mr. Ayres. Yeah, yep. We left right when that come out.
    Mr. Raskin. You were not a member of an organized group 
like the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys as most of the crowd 
wasn't. I wonder, on January 6th, was it your view that these 
far-right groups, like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and 
Three Percenters and others were on your side? Did you have any 
reservations about marching with them and rallying with them?
    Mr. Ayres. Well, I definitely didn't have a problem, you 
know. I was probably following them online myself. You know, I 
liked--I thought, you know, hey they're on our team. Good. That 
is how I kind-of looked at it at the time, you know, like, I 
didn't have a problem with it. I thought it was a good thing.
    Mr. Raskin. I am interested in hearing about what has 
happened to you since the events of January 6th. You told the 
Vice Chair that you no longer believe Trump's Big Lie about the 
election, but that is what brought you originally to 
Washington. Looking back on it now, how do you reflect on the 
role that you played in the crowd that day and what is going on 
in your life?
    Mr. Ayres. Basically, you know, I lost my job since this 
all happened, you know, pretty much sold my house. So 
everything that happened with the charges, you know, thank God, 
a lot of them did get dismissed because I was just holding my 
phone, but at the same time I was there. So, I mean, it 
definitely--it changed my life, you know, and not for the good, 
definitely not for, you know, the better. Yeah, I mean, that is 
what I would say.
    Mr. Raskin. Well, President Trump is still promoting the 
Big Lie about the election. How does it make you feel?
    Mr. Ayres. It makes me mad because I was hanging on every 
word he was saying. Everything he was putting out, I was 
following it. I mean, if I was doing it, hundreds of thousands 
or millions of other people are doing it or maybe even still 
doing it. It is like he just said about that, you know, you 
have got people still following and doing that. Who knows, the 
next election could come out, you know, they could end up being 
down the same path we are right now. I mean, you just don't 
know.
    Mr. Raskin. Mr. Ayres, I see that your wife has joined you 
today, and welcome to Washington. We know this has been very 
difficult on you both and your family.
    What lessons finally do you want the American people to 
learn from the way you and your family have suffered as a 
result of these events?
    Mr. Ayres. The biggest thing is, I consider myself a family 
man, and I love my country. I don't think any one man is bigger 
than either one of those. I think that is what needs to be 
taken. You know, people dive into the politics, and for me, I 
felt like I had, you know, like, horse blinders on. I was 
locked in the whole time. The biggest thing for me is take the 
blinders off and make sure you step back and see what's going 
on before it is too late.
    Mr. Raskin. Well, I want to thank you for your testimony 
and for appearing, both of you, today.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back to you.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentleman yields back.
    I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today.
    The Members of the Select Committee may have additional 
questions for today's witnesses, and we ask that you respond 
expeditiously in writing to those questions.
    Without objection, the Members will be permitted 10 
business days to submit statements for the record, including 
opening remarks and additional questions for the witnesses.
    Without objection, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland, Mr. Raskin, for a closing statement.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    When Donald Trump sent out his tweet, he became the first 
President ever to call for a crowd to descend on the Capital 
City to block the constitutional transfer of power.
    He set off an explosive chain reaction amongst his 
followers. But no one mobilized more quickly than the dangerous 
extremists that we have looked at today. Seizing upon his 
invitation to fight, they assembled their followers for an 
insurrectionary showdown against Congress and the Vice 
President. On January 6th, Trump knew the crowd was angry. He 
knew the crowd was armed. He sent them to the Capitol anyway.
    You might imagine that our Founders would have been shocked 
to learn that an American President would one day come to 
embrace and excuse political violence against our own 
institutions or knowingly send an armed mob to attack the 
Capitol to usurp the will of the people.
    But, you know, Mr. Chairman, the Founders were pretty wise 
about certain things. At the start of the Republic, they 
actually warned everyone about Donald Trump, not by name, of 
course, but in the course of advising about the certain 
prospect that ambitious politicians would try to mobilize 
violent mobs to tear down our own institutions in service of 
their insatiable ambitions.
    In the very first Federalist Paper, Alexander Hamilton 
observed that history teaches that opportunistic politicians 
who desire to rule at all costs will begin first as demagogues 
pandering to the angry and malignant passions of the crowd but 
then end up as tyrants trampling the freedoms and the rights of 
the people.
    A violent insurrection to overturn an election is not an 
abstract thing as we've heard. Hundreds of people were 
bloodied, injured, and wounded in the process, including more 
than 150 police officers, some of them sitting in this room 
today.
    I want to give you an update on one officer who was badly 
wounded in the attack and is well-known to the Members of this 
Committee because he testified before us last year.
    Sergeant Aquilino Gonell is an Army veteran who spent a 
year on active combat duty in the Iraq War, and then 16 years 
on the Capitol force. Nothing he ever saw in combat in Iraq, he 
has said, prepared him for the insurrection where he was 
savagely beaten, punched, pushed, kicked, shoved, stomped, and 
sprayed with chemical irritants, along with other officers, by 
members of a mob carrying hammers, knives, batons, and police 
shields taken by force and wielding the American flag against 
police officers as a dangerous weapon.
    Last month, on June 28th, Sergeant Gonell's team of doctors 
told him that permanent injuries he has suffered to his left 
shoulder and right foot now make it impossible for him to 
continue as a police officer. He must leave policing for good 
and figure out the rest of his life.
    Sergeant Gonell, we wish you and your family all the best. 
We are here for you. We salute you for your valor, your 
eloquence, and your beautiful commitment to America.
    I wonder what former President Trump would say to someone 
like Sergeant Gonell who must now go about remaking his life. I 
wonder if he could even understand what motivates a patriot 
like Sergeant Gonell.
    In his inaugural address Trump introduced one commanding 
image, ``American carnage.'' Although that turn of phrase 
explained little about our country before he took office, it 
turned out to be an excellent prophecy of what his rage would 
come to visit on our people.
    Mr. Ayres just described how the trust he placed in 
President Trump as a camp follower derailed his life and nearly 
wrecked his reputation and his family.
    A few weeks ago, we heard Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby 
Freeman, Speaker Rusty Bowers from Arizona, and Georgia's 
secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, describe how hate-
filled intimidation campaigns by Trump and his followers made 
them prisoners in their homes and drove their stress and 
anxiety to soaring new heights when they refused to do Trump's 
bidding.
    American carnage, that is Donald Trump's true legacy. His 
desire to overthrow the people's election and seize the 
Presidency--interrupt the counting of electoral college votes 
for the first time in American history--nearly toppled the 
constitutional order, and brutalized hundreds and hundreds of 
people. The Watergate break-in was like a Cub Scout meeting 
compared to this assault on our people and our institutions.
    Mr. Chairman, these hearings have been significant for us 
and for millions of Americans, and our hearing next week will 
be a profound moment of reckoning for America. But the crucial 
thing is the next step: What this Committee, what all of us 
will do to fortify our democracy against coups, political 
violence, and campaigns to steal elections away from the 
people.
    Unlike Mr. Ayres and Mr. Van Tatenhove, people who have 
recovered and evolved from their descent into the hell of 
fanaticism, Donald Trump has only expanded his Big Lie to cover 
January 6th itself. He asserts the insurrection was the real 
election and the election was the real insurrection. He says 
his mob greeted our police officers on January 6th with hugs 
and kisses.
    He threatens to take one of America's two major political 
parties with him down the road to authoritarianism, and it is 
Abraham Lincoln's party, no less.
    The political scientists tell us that authoritarian parties 
have two essential features in common in history and around the 
world: They do not accept the results of democratic elections 
when they lose, and they embrace political violence as 
legitimate. The problem of incitement to political violence has 
only grown more serious in the internet age as we have just 
heard.
    But this is not the problem of one party. It is the problem 
of the whole country now. American democracy, Mr. Chairman, is 
a precious inheritance, something rare in the history of the 
world and even on earth today. Constitutional democracy is the 
silver frame, as Lincoln put it, upon which the golden apple of 
freedom rests. We need to defend both our democracy and our 
freedom with everything we have and declare that this American 
carnage ends here and now. In a world of resurgent 
authoritarianism and racism and antisemitism, let's all hang 
tough for American democracy.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentleman yields back.
    Without objection, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman 
from Florida, Mrs. Murphy, for a closing statement.
    Mrs. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    At one of our first hearings, Chairman Thompson explained 
that the Members of this Committee would not spend much time 
talking about ourselves. Rather, we would let the evidence play 
the leading role. The Chairman was right because this isn't 
about promoting ourselves as individuals. It is about 
protecting the country we love. It is about preserving what 
actually makes America great, the rule of law, free and fair 
elections, and the peaceful transfer of power from one elected 
leader to the next.
    But if I may say a word about myself, and why I am proud to 
serve on this Committee, I am the only Member of this Committee 
who is not blessed to be born an American. I was born in 
Vietnam after the Vietnam War, and my family and I fled a 
communist government, and were rescued by the U.S. Navy, and 
were given sanctuary in America. My patriotism is rooted in my 
gratitude for America's grace and generosity. I love this 
country.
    On January 6th, four decades after my family fled a place 
where political power was seized through violence, I was in the 
United States Capitol, fleeing my fellow Americans.
    Members of the angry mob had been lied to by a President 
and the other powerful people who tried to convince them 
without evidence that the election had been stolen from them. 
Some of them then tried to use physical violence to overturn 
the outcome of a free and fair election.
    Our Committee's overriding objective is to fight fiction 
with facts, to create a full account for the American people 
and for the historical record, to tell the truth of what 
happened and why it happened, to make recommendations so it 
never happens again, to defend our democracy. To me, there is 
nothing more patriotic than that.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. The gentlewoman yields back.
    Without objection, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman 
from Wyoming, Ms. Cheney, for a closing statement.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Chairman, let me put what you have seen today in a 
broader context. At the very outset of our hearings, we 
described several elements of President Trump's multi-part plan 
to overturn the 2020 election. Our hearings have now covered 
all but one of those elements: An organized campaign to 
persuade millions of Americans of a falsehood that the 2020 
election was stolen by wide-spread fraud; a corrupt effort to 
pressure Vice President Pence to refuse to count electoral 
votes; an effort to corrupt the U.S. Department of Justice; 
efforts to pressure State election officials and legislators to 
change State election results; a scheme to create and submit 
fake electoral slates for multiple States.
    Today, you saw how President Trump summoned a mob to 
Washington for January 6th, and then knowing that that mob was 
armed, directed that mob to the United States Capitol.
    Every one of these elements of the planning for January 6th 
is an independently serious matter. They were all ultimately 
focused on overturning the election, and they all have one 
other thing in common: Donald Trump participated in each 
substantially and personally. He oversaw or directed the 
activity of those involved.
    Next week, we will return to January 6th itself. As we have 
shown in prior hearings, Donald Trump and his legal team, led 
by Rudy Giuliani, were working on January 6th to delay or halt 
Congress's counting of electoral votes. The mob attacking and 
invading the Capitol on that afternoon of January 6th was 
achieving that result. For multiple hours, Donald Trump refused 
to intervene to stop it. He would not instruct the mob to leave 
or condemn the violence. He would not order them to evacuate 
the Capitol and disperse.
    The many pleas for help from Congress did no good. His 
staff insisted that President Trump call off the attack. He 
would not.
    Here are a few of the many things you will hear next week 
from Mr. Cipollone.

    Mr. Heaphy. My question's exactly that. It sounds like you, from 
the very onset of violence at the Capitol right around 2 o'clock, were 
pushing for a strong statement that people should leave the Capitol. Is 
that right?
    Mr. Cipollone. I was and others were as well.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Heaphy. Was it necessary for you to continue to push for a 
statement directing people to leave all the way through that period of 
time until it was ultimately issued after 4----
    Mr. Cipollone. I felt it was my obligation to continue to push for 
that, and others felt that it was their obligation as well.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Heaphy. Would it have been possible at any moment for the 
President to walk down to the podium in the briefing room and talk to 
the Nation at any time between when you first gave him that advice at 2 
o'clock and 4:17 when the video statement went out? Would that have 
been possible?
    Mr. Cipollone. Would that have been possible?
    Mr. Heaphy. Yes.
    Mr. Cipollone. Yes, it would have been possible.

    Vice Chair Cheney. You will hear that Donald Trump never 
picked up the phone that day to order his administration to 
help. This is not ambiguous. He did not call the military. His 
Secretary of Defense received no order. He did not call his 
Attorney General. He did not talk to the Department of Homeland 
Security. Mike Pence did all of those things; Donald Trump did 
not.
    We will walk through the events of January 6th next week 
minute by minute.
    One more item. After our last hearing, President Trump 
tried to call a witness in our investigation, a witness you 
have not yet seen in these hearings. That person declined to 
answer or respond to President Trump's call, and instead 
alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us, and 
this Committee has supplied that information to the Department 
of Justice.
    Let me say one more time, we will take any efforts to 
influence witness testimony very seriously.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. The gentlewoman yields back.
    In my opening, I mentioned how we look to our leaders to 
serve as a fail-safe if people in this country refuse to accept 
the results of an election. That is part of the way those in 
positions of public trust uphold their oath, how they show 
fidelity to the Constitution.
    In the run-up to January 6th, Donald Trump had an 
obligation to tell his supporters to accept the results of the 
election. Instead, he urged them further along the path toward 
mob violence.
    The idea of mob violence makes me think of another sort of 
fail-safe. All across this country, there are different ideas 
about what role the Federal Government should play in our 
lives. In fact, up here on this dais, there are plenty of 
different ideas. But there are moments when the institutions of 
our Federal Government are the fail-safe.
    I am from a part of the country where had it not been for 
the Federal Government and the Constitution, my parents and 
many more Americans like them would have continued to be 
treated as second-class citizens. The freedom to be able to 
vote without harassment, travel in relative safety, and dine 
and sleep where you choose is because we have a Government that 
looks over the well-being of its citizens.
    This is especially important in moments of crisis. When we 
have a natural disaster that State governments can't handle on 
their own, when there is an emergency that requires action by 
our public health services or our military, we have the Federal 
Government.
    What happened on January 6, 2021, was another one of those 
moments in history that tests the strength of our Federal 
Government. January 6th was an attack on our country. It was an 
attack on our democracy, on our Constitution. A sitting 
President with a violent mob trying to stop the peaceful 
transfer of power from one President to another, it still makes 
my blood boil to think of it.
    In a moment like that, what would you expect to see? You 
expect to see the President of the United States sitting behind 
the Resolute desk in the Oval Office assuring the American 
people that the attack would be repelled and the threat would 
be dealt with. You would expect to be reassured that there was 
a fail-safe.
    Instead, the President of the United States sent the mob. 
He disregarded the advice of the people who had taken an oath 
to the Constitution. He oversaw a scheme aided by people whose 
loyalty was only to Donald Trump.
    There is nothing we could compare that to. There is nothing 
in our great Nation's history that has ever come close to that 
sort of betrayal and dereliction. Thank goodness our system of 
government held in spite of a Commander-in-Chief who worked in 
opposition to what the Constitution designed.
    When this Committee reconvenes, we will tell the story of 
that supreme dereliction by the Commander-in-Chief, how close 
we came to a catastrophe for our democracy, and how we remain 
in serious danger.
    The Chair requests those in the hearing room remain seated 
until the Capitol Police have escorted witnesses and Members 
from the room.
    Without objection, the Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 3:57 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                            A P P E N D I X

                              ----------                              

   Prepared Statement of Jason Van Tatenhove, Former National Media 
                     Director for the Oath Keepers
                             July 12, 2022
    My name is Jason Van Tatenhove, and I am a journalist and author 
living in Colorado. I am here giving testimony to the Select Committee 
to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol 
because, for a short period, I had access to an inside view of both the 
inner workings of the Oath Keepers and its founder and president, 
Stewart Rhodes. From the beginning, I knew this would be a story that 
the world would someday need to hear. I am deeply saddened by how 
correct this intuition was.
    I come from a family of artists and writers and have always worked 
in some way as an artist and journalist. I am local to Colorado, where 
I have written for several outlets in Northern Colorado. It is 
important for me to be here today in front of the Select Committee 
because all Americans need to pay attention to the genuine danger that 
extremist groups like the Oath Keepers pose to us and our society. 
Because of the actions taken on January 6th and the increased political 
and ideological polarization in our society, I fear what the next 
election cycle will bring. We need to re-learn how to communicate with 
one another without guns, body armor, or standoffs. I am trying to make 
amends for what I did during my time with the Oath Keepers because I am 
remorseful for helping them push their dangerous propaganda. In light 
of the Select Committee's work and the truth they have uncovered, I am 
optimistic that this experience and my voice can help to shed light on 
these issues and to embolden others to walk away from extremist groups 
like the Oath Keepers.
    I want to note at the outset that my first-hand knowledge of the 
Oath Keepers stopped when I resigned, as I will describe. But given my 
insider access and close proximity to Stewart Rhodes--including during 
several months when he lived in my basement--I can help to paint a 
picture of the Oath Keepers, how they worked, how they operated, and 
how dangerous they are. I do not know about the planning or execution 
of events surrounding what happened at the Capitol on January 6th, 
2021. Still, from my experience with the ever-radicalizing 
organization, I know the troubling signs were there years before.
    My journey with the Oath Keepers began during the 2014 Bundy Ranch 
Standoff. I was embedded with Stewart Rhodes in his vehicle as he made 
his second trip down to the standoff in the desert of Nevada. I was 
given unprecedented access to Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers, 
including the organization's inner workings. This access continued as I 
covered the subsequent two standoffs: the Sugar Pine Mine standoff and 
the White Hope Mine standoff.
    This culminated in a job offer with the Oath Keepers after my name 
was included in a press release by the group, which led to my 
resignation from working for the State of Montana. I was offered a job 
as the National Media Director and Webpage Associate Editor for the 
organization. I worked closely with Stewart Rhodes for the next year 
and a half and often traveled with him to various events throughout the 
United States.
    During this period, I saw Stewart Rhodes courting members of the 
alt-right. Having issues with this radicalization, I knew I had to make 
a break with the group, even if it would be financially devastating to 
my family. There came the point when I walked in on a conversation in a 
local grocery store where long-standing, influential Oath Keeper 
members and associates were discussing their thoughts openly, denying 
that the Holocaust had ever actually happened. At that moment, I 
decided that no matter what, I would need to break ties with this ever-
radicalizing group. I am not a racist, I am not an anti-Semite, I am 
not a white supremacist, I am not violent, and I could no longer be 
associated with the Oath Keepers, whatever the consequences might have 
been.
    I now view it as my obligation to sound the alarm and raise public 
awareness about the Oath Keepers and to get my perspective on this 
paramilitary group into the public conversation. While this may come as 
a surprise to some, many of the true motivations of this group revolve 
around raising funds, and not the propaganda they push. Stewart Rhodes 
and the Oath Keepers insert themselves into crises, situations that 
they would not usually have any part of, and seek to make themselves 
relevant and fundraise on the back of these conflicts to increase the 
membership rolls.
    Recruitment is a crucial focus for the Oath Keepers, and a target 
demographic is people that feel marginalized. I have seen these 
individuals whipped up into dangerous action by the group's leadership, 
just as we saw on January 6th.
    This, combined with catering to the conspiracy theories of the day 
and an attempt to connect with ever-radicalizing communities within the 
alt-right, white nationalists, and even outright racists to gain more 
influence and money, is a dangerous proposition for our country. We 
cannot allow these groups to continue threatening our democracy. We 
must focus on understanding this reality and, most importantly, 
combating them.
    There have been times when I have personally discounted the reach 
of this group and its violent messaging. This was a mistake. Because in 
the end, they were able to muster a group of heavily armed and 
outfitted members who had been trained in modern warfare techniques, 
including those we now know had explosives, to storm the Capitol to 
stop the process of inaugurating the duly elected president.
    We have been exceedingly lucky in that we have not seen much more 
bloodshed. But luck is not a good strategy for a country looking for 
better ways to move forward.
    It is time to speak the truth about these groups and the violent 
influence they wield. It is time to show an exit ramp to others like me 
who may have been caught up in the rhetoric of these groups and used as 
pawns in a dishonest campaign to capture more money, influence, and 
power. I have been frightened by what I saw when I was associated with 
the Oath Keepers and even more so by what I saw on January 6th. I am 
honored to provide my perspective to the Select Committee and the 
American people.

               HEARING ON THE JANUARY 6TH INVESTIGATION

                              ----------                              

                        Thursday, July 21, 2022

                     U.S. House of Representatives,
 Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on 
                                 the United States Capitol,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 8:01 p.m., in 
room 390, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Liz Cheney (Vice 
Chair of the Committee) presiding.
    Present: Representatives Thompson, Cheney, Lofgren, Schiff, 
Aguilar, Murphy, Raskin, Luria, and Kinzinger.
    Vice Chair Cheney. The Committee will be in order.
    Chairman Thompson. Good evening. Earlier this week, I 
received a positive COVID diagnosis. Per CDC guidelines, I 
received the initial two shots and all of the boosters. Thus 
far, I have been blessed to experience very minimal symptoms. 
Because I am still quarantined, I cannot participate in person 
with my colleagues. I have asked our Vice Chair, Ms. Cheney, to 
preside over this evening's hearing, including maintaining 
order in the room and swearing in our witnesses.
    Over the last month and a half, the Select Committee has 
told the story of a President who did everything in his power 
to overturn an election. He lied. He bullied. He betrayed his 
oath. He tried to destroy our democratic institutions. He 
summoned a mob to Washington.
    Afterwards, on January 6th, when he knew that the assembled 
mob was heavily armed and angry, he commanded the mob to go to 
the Capitol, and he emphatically commanded the heavily-armed 
mob to ``fight like hell.'' For the weeks between the November 
election and January 6th, Donald Trump was a force to be 
reckoned with. He shrugged off the factually and legally 
correct sober advice of his knowledgeable and sensible 
advisers. Instead, he recklessly blazed a path of lawlessness 
and corruption, the cost of which democracy be damned.
    Then he stopped. For 187 minutes on January 6th, this man 
of unbridled, destructive energy could not be moved, not by his 
aides, not by his allies, not by the violent chants of rioters, 
or the desperate pleas of those facing down the riot. More 
tellingly, Donald Trump ignored and disregarded the desperate 
pleas of his own family, including Ivanka and Don, Jr. Even 
though he was the only person in the world who could call off 
the mob he sent to the Capitol, he could not be moved to rise 
from his dining room table and walk the few steps down the 
White House hallway into the Press Briefing Room where cameras 
were anxiously and desperately waiting to carry his message to 
the armed and violent mob, savagely beating and killing law 
enforcement officers, ravaging the Capitol, and hunting down 
the Vice President and various Members of Congress.
    He could not be moved. This evening, my colleagues Mr. 
Kinzinger of Illinois and Mrs. Luria of Virginia will take you 
inside the White House during those 187 minutes. We also remind 
you of what was happening at the Capitol minute by minute, as a 
final violent tragic part of Donald Trump's scheme to cling to 
power unraveled, while he ignored his advisers, stood by, and 
watched it unfold on television.
    Let me offer a final thought about the Select Committee's 
work so far. As we have made clear throughout these hearings, 
our investigation goes forward. We continue to receive new 
information every day. We continue to hear from witnesses. We 
will reconvene in September to continue laying out our findings 
to the American people.
    But, as that work goes forward, a number of facts are 
clear. There can be no doubt that there was a coordinated, 
multi-step effort to overturn an election, overseen and 
directed by Donald Trump. There can be no doubt that he 
commanded a mob, a mob he knew was heavily armed, violent and 
angry, to march on the Capitol to try to stop the peaceful 
transfer of power, and he made targets out of his own Vice 
President and the lawmakers gathered to do the people's work.
    These facts have gone undisputed. So there needs to be 
accountability, accountability under the law, accountability to 
the American people, accountability at every level, from the 
local precincts in many States where Donald Trump and his 
allies attacked election workers for just doing their jobs, all 
the way up to the Oval Office, where Donald Trump embraced the 
illegal advice of insurrectionists that a Federal judge has 
already said was ``a coup in search of a legal theory.''
    Our democracy withstood the attack on January 6th. If there 
is no accountability for January 6th for every part of this 
scheme, I fear that we will not overcome the on-going threat to 
our democracy. There must be stiff consequences for those 
responsible.
    Now, I will turn things over to our Vice Chair to start 
telling this story.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Without objection, the presiding officer is authorized to 
declare the Committee in recess at any point. Pursuant to House 
Deposition Authority Regulation 10, I announce that the 
Committee has approved the release of the deposition material 
presented during today's hearing.
    Let me begin tonight by wishing Chairman Thompson a rapid 
recovery from COVID. He has expertly led us through eight 
hearings so far, and he has brought us to the point we are 
today. In our initial hearing, the Chairman and I described 
what ultimately became Donald Trump's seven-part plan to 
overturn the 2020 Presidential election, a plan stretching from 
before election day through January 6th.
    At the close of today's hearing, our ninth, we will have 
addressed each element of that plan. But, in the course of 
these hearings, we have received new evidence, and new 
witnesses have bravely stepped forward. Efforts to litigate and 
overcome immunity and executive privilege claims have been 
successful, and those continue. Doors have opened, new 
subpoenas have been issued, and the dam has begun to break.
    Now, even as we conduct our ninth hearing, we have 
considerably more to do. We have far more evidence to share 
with the American people and more to gather. So, our Committee 
will spend August pursuing emerging information on multiple 
fronts before convening further hearings this September.
    Today, we know far more about the President's plans and 
actions to overturn the election than almost all Members of 
Congress did when President Trump was impeached on January 13, 
2021, or when he was tried by the Senate in February that year. 
Fifty-seven of 100 Senators voted to convict President Trump at 
that time, and more than 20 others said they were voting 
against conviction because the President's term had already 
expired. At the time, the Republican leader of U.S. Senate said 
this about Donald Trump:

    Senator McConnell. A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. 
These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and 
screaming their loyalty to him. It was obvious that only President 
Trump could end this. He was the only one.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Leader McConnell reached those 
conclusions based on what he knew then without any of the much 
more detailed evidence you will see today. Lawlessness and 
violence began at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, before 1 
p.m., and continued until well after darkness fell. What 
exactly was our Commander-in-Chief doing during the hours of 
violence? Today, we address precisely that issue.
    Everything you've heard in these hearings thus far will 
help you understand President Trump's motives during the 
violence. You already know Donald Trump's goal: To halt or 
delay Congress's official proceedings to count certified 
electoral votes. You know that Donald Trump tried to pressure 
his Vice President to illegally reject votes and delay the 
proceedings. You know he tried to convince State officials and 
State legislators to flip their electoral votes from Biden to 
Trump, and you know Donald Trump tried to corrupt our 
Department of Justice to aid his scheme.
    But, by January 6th, none of that had worked. Only one 
thing was succeeding on the afternoon of January 6th. Only one 
thing was achieving President Trump's goal. The angry armed mob 
President Trump sent to the Capitol broke through security, 
invaded the Capitol, and forced the vote counting to stop. That 
mob was violent and destructive, and many came armed.
    As you will hear, Secret Service agents protecting the Vice 
President were exceptionally concerned about his safety and 
their own. Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy was scared, as were 
others in Congress, even those who themselves helped to provoke 
the violence. As you will see today, Donald Trump's own White 
House Counsel, his own White House staff, members of his own 
family all implored him to immediately intervene to condemn the 
violence and instruct his supporters to stand down, leave the 
Capitol, and disperse.
    For multiple hours, he would not. Donald Trump would not 
get on the phone and order the military or law enforcement 
agencies to help. For hours, Donald Trump chose not to answer 
the pleas from Congress from his own party and from all across 
our Nation to do what his oath required. He refused to defend 
our Nation and our Constitution. He refused to do what every 
American President must.
    In the days after January 6th, almost no one of any 
political party would defend President Trump's conduct, and no 
one should do so today.
    Thank you. I now recognize the gentlewoman from Virginia.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair.
    Article II of our Constitution requires that the President 
swear a very specific oath every 4 years.
    Every President swears or affirms to faithfully execute the 
office of the President of the United States and, to the best 
of their ability, preserve, protect, and defend the 
Constitution of the United States. The President also assumes 
the constitutional duty to take care that our Nation's laws be 
faithfully executed, and as the Commander-in-Chief of our 
military.
    Our hearings have shown the many ways in which President 
Trump tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power in the days 
leading up to January 6th. With each step of his plan, he 
betrayed his oath of office and was derelict in his duty. 
Tonight, we will further examine President Trump's actions on 
the day of the attack on the Capitol.
    Early that afternoon, President Trump instructed tens of 
thousands of supporters at and near the Ellipse rally, a number 
of whom he knew were armed with various types of weapons, to 
march to the Capitol.
    After telling the crowd to march multiple times, he 
promised he would be with them, and finished his remarks at 
1:10 p.m. like this:

    President Trump. We're going to walk down and I'll be there with 
you. We're going to walk down--[applause]--we're going to walk down, 
anyone you want, but I think right here we're going to walk down to the 
Capitol. [applause] So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

    Mrs. Luria. At this time, the Vice President was in the 
Capitol. The joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden's 
victory was under way, and the Proud Boys and other rioters had 
stormed through the first barriers and begun the attack. Radio 
communications from law enforcement informed Secret Service and 
those in the White House Situation Room of these developments 
in real time.
    At the direction of President Trump, thousands more rioters 
marched from the Ellipse to the Capitol, and they joined the 
attack. As you will see in great detail tonight, President 
Trump was being advised by nearly everyone to immediately 
instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol, disperse, and 
halt the violence. Virtually everyone told President Trump to 
condemn the violence in clear and unmistakable terms, and those 
on Capitol Hill and across the Nation begged President Trump to 
help.
    But the former President chose not to do what all of those 
people begged. He refused to tell the mob to leave until 4:17, 
when he tweeted out a video statement filmed in the Rose Garden 
ending with this.

    President Trump. So go home. We love you. You're very special. 
You've seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are 
so bad and so evil. I know how you feel but go home and go home in 
peace.

    Mrs. Luria. By that time, two pipe bombs had been found at 
locations near the Capitol, including where the Vice President-
elect was conducting a meeting. Hours of hand-to-hand combat 
had seriously injured scores of law enforcement officers. The 
Capitol had been invaded. The electoral count had been halted 
as Members were evacuated. Rioters took the floor of the 
Senate. They rifled through desks and broke into offices. They 
nearly caught up to Vice President Pence. Guns were drawn on 
the House floor, and a rioter was shot attempting to infiltrate 
the Chamber.
    We know that a number of rioters intended acts of physical 
violence against specific elected officials. We know virtually 
all the rioters were motivated by President Trump's rhetoric 
that the election had been stolen, and they felt they needed to 
take their country back.
    This hearing is principally about what happened inside of 
the White House that afternoon.
    From the time when President Trump ended his speech until 
the moment when he finally told the mob to go home, was a span 
of 187 minutes, more than 3 hours. What you will learn is that 
President Trump sat in his dining room and watched the attack 
on television while his senior-most staff, closest advisers, 
and family members begged him to do what is expected of any 
American President.
    I served proudly for 20 years as an officer in the United 
States Navy. Veterans of our Armed Forces know first-hand the 
leadership that is required in a time of crisis, urgent and 
decisive action that puts duty and country first.
    But, on January 6th, when lives and our democracy hung in 
the balance, President Trump refused to act because of his 
selfish desire to stay in power.
    I yield to the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Kinzinger.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Luria.
    One week after the attack, Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy 
acknowledged the simple truth: President Trump should have 
acted immediately to stop the violence.
    During our investigation, General Mark Milley, the Chairman 
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also remarked on the President's 
failure to act.
    Let's hear what they had to say.

    Mr. McCarthy. The President bears responsibility for Wednesday's 
attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced 
the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate 
action by President Trump.
                                 ______
                                 
    General Milley. Yeah. You know, Commander in Chief, you got an 
assault going on on the Capitol of the United States of America, and 
there's nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?

    Mr. Kinzinger. Like my colleague from Virginia, I am a 
veteran. I served in the Air Force, and I serve currently in 
the Air National Guard. I can tell you that General Milley's 
reaction to President Trump's conduct is 100 percent correct, 
and so was Leader McCarthy's.
    What explains President Trump's behavior? Why did he not 
take immediate action in a time of crisis? Because President 
Trump's plan for January 6th was to halt or delay Congress's 
official proceeding to count the votes. The mob attacking the 
Capitol quickly caused the evacuation of both the House and the 
Senate. The count ground to an absolute halt and was ultimately 
delayed for hours. The mob was accomplishing President Trump's 
purpose, so of course he didn't intervene.
    Here is what will be clear by the end of this hearing: 
President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes 
between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home; he 
chose not to act.
    But there were hundreds that day who honored their oaths 
and put their lives on the line to protect the people inside 
the Capitol and to safeguard our democracy.
    Many of them are here tonight with us, and many more are 
watching from home. As you already know, and we will see again 
tonight, their service and sacrifice shines a bright light on 
President Trump's dishonor and dereliction of duty.
    I yield to the Vice Chair.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Kinzinger.
    I would like to begin by welcoming our witnesses this 
evening. Tonight, we are joined by Mr. Matthew Pottinger. Mr. 
Pottinger is a decorated former Marine intelligence officer who 
served this Nation on tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. He 
served in the Trump White House from the first day of the 
administration through the early morning hours of January 7, 
2021. The last role in which he served in the White House was 
as Deputy National Security Advisor to the President of United 
States.
    We are also joined by Sarah Matthews. Ms. Matthews started 
her career in communications working on Capitol Hill serving on 
the Republican staffs of several House committees. She then 
worked as Deputy Press Secretary for President Trump's 
reelection campaign before joining the Trump White House in 
June 2020. She served there as Deputy Press Secretary and 
Special Assistant to the President until the evening of January 
6, 2021.
    I will now swear in our witnesses. The witnesses will 
please stand and raise their right hands.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you. You may be seated. Let the 
record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative.
    Thank you, both, again for being here tonight.
    Mr. Pottinger, thank you for your service to the Nation as 
well as for joining us this evening.
    Can you please briefly explain what your responsibilities 
were as Deputy National Security Advisor to the President?
    Mr. Pottinger. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair.
    When I started at the White House, I was a senior director 
for Asia on the National Security Council staff. So that was a 
job that involved helping coordinate the President's Asia 
policy. I supported the President when he met or interacted 
with Asian leaders. Later, in 2019, I was promoted to the job 
of Deputy National Security Advisor. In that role, I was the 
chairman of the Deputies Committee. That is an NSC meeting of 
all of the Deputy Cabinet Secretaries. We would settle 
important matters of National policy related to our National 
security, and we would also tee up options for the President 
and for his Cabinet Members.
    It was--I felt then as I do now it was a privilege to serve 
in the White House. I am also very proud of President Trump's 
foreign policy accomplishments. We were able to finally compete 
with China. We were also able to broker peace agreements 
between Israel and three Arab states. I mean, those are some 
examples of the types of policies that I think made our country 
safer.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you, Mr. Pottinger.
    Were you in the White House during the attack on the 
Capitol on January 6th?
    Mr. Pottinger. For most of the day, I was in the White 
House. Although, when the President was speaking at the rally, 
I was actually offsite at a scheduled meeting with India's 
Ambassador to the United States. The National Security Council 
staff was not involved in organizing the security for what was 
a domestic event, the rally, but I did return to the White 
House at roughly 2:30 p.m.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you. I know my colleagues will 
have additional questions for you about that afternoon.
    Let me turn now to you, Ms. Matthews.
    How did you come to join President Trump's White House 
staff?
    Ms. Matthews. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair.
    As you outlined, I have been a lifelong Republican. I 
joined the Trump reelection campaign in June 2019. I was one of 
the first communication staffers actually on board for his 
reelection campaign. During that time, I traveled all around 
the country and met Kayleigh McEnany, who was also working on 
his reelection campaign.
    I worked there for a year, and I formed a close 
relationship with Ms. McEnany, and she moved over to the White 
House in April 2020 to start as White House Press Secretary, 
and she brought over a group of campaign staff with her. So I 
joined her over at the White House in June 2020 to start as her 
deputy.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Were you, Ms. Matthews, at work in the 
White House on January 6th?
    Ms. Matthews. Yes. I was working out of the West Wing that 
day.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you.
    Now I would like to recognize the gentlewoman from Virginia 
and the gentleman from Illinois.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair.
    As you have seen in our prior hearings, President Trump 
summoned the mob to D.C. on January 6th. Before he went on 
stage, he knew some of them were armed and prepared for combat. 
During his speech, he implored them to march to the Capitol, as 
he had always planned to do. By the time he walked off the 
stage, his supporters had already breached the outer perimeter 
of the Capitol at the foot of Capitol Hill.
    Since our last hearings, we have received new testimony 
from a security professional working in the White House complex 
on January 6th with access to relevant information and 
responsibility to report to National security officials. This 
security official told us that the White House was aware of 
multiple reports of weapons in the crowd that morning. We as a 
Committee are cognizant of the fear of retribution expressed by 
certain National security witnesses who have come forward to 
tell the truth. We have therefore taken steps to protect this 
National security individual's identity.
    Listen to that clip from their testimony.

    Ms. Dayananda. What was the consistent message from the people 
about this idea of the President to walk to the Capitol?
    Anonymous White House Security Official. To be completely honest, 
we were all in a state of shock.
    Ms. Dayananda. Because why?
    Anonymous White House Security Official. Because--because it just--
one, I think the actual physical feasibility of doing it, and then also 
we all knew what that implicated and what that meant; that this was no 
longer a rally; that this was going to move to something else if he 
physically walked to the Capitol. I--I don't know if you want to use 
the word ``insurrection,'' ``coup,'' whatever. We all knew that this 
would move from a normal, democratic, you know, public event into 
something else.
    Ms. Dayananda. What was--what was driving that sentiment 
considering this--this--this part of it, the actual breach of the 
Capitol, hadn't happened yet?
    Anonymous White House Security Official. Why were we alarmed?
    Ms. Dayananda. Right.
    Anonymous White House Security Official. The President wanted to 
lead tens of thousands of people to the Capitol. I think that was 
enough grounds for us to be alarmed.

    Mrs. Luria. Even though he understood many of his 
supporters were armed, the President was still adamant to go to 
the Capitol when he got off the stage at the Ellipse, but his 
Secret Service detail was equally determined to not let him go. 
That led to a heated argument with the detail that delayed the 
departure of the motorcade to the White House.
    We have evidence from multiple sources regarding an angry 
exchange in the Presidential SUV, including testimony we will 
disclose today from two witnesses who confirmed that a 
confrontation occurred. The first witness is a former White 
House employee with National security responsibilities. After 
seeing the initial violence at the Capitol on TV, the 
individual went to see Tony Ornato, the deputy chief of staff, 
in his office. Mr. Ornato was there with Bobby Engel, the 
President's lead Secret Service agent.
    This employee told us that Mr. Ornato said that the 
President was ``irate when Mr. Engel refused to drive him to 
the Capitol.'' Mr. Engel did not refute what Mr. Ornato said.
    The second witness is retired Sergeant Mark Robinson of the 
D.C. Police Department, who was assigned to the President's 
motorcade that day. He sat in the lead vehicle with the Secret 
Service agent responsible for the motorcade, also called the TS 
agent. Here is how Sergeant Robinson remembered the exchange.

    Ms. Dayananda. Was there any description of what--of what was 
occurring in the car?
    Sergeant Robinson. No. Only that on--the only description I 
received was that the President was upset and was adamant about going 
to the Capitol, and there was a heated discussion about that.
    Ms. Dayananda. And when you say ``heated,'' is that your word or is 
that the word that was described by the TS agent?
    Sergeant Robinson. No. The word described by the TS agent, meaning 
that the President was upset, and he was saying there was a heated 
argument or discussion about going to the Capitol.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Schiff. About how many times would you say you've been part of 
that motorcade with the President?
    Sergeant Robinson. Probably over a hundred times.
    Mr. Schiff. And in that hundred times, have you ever witnessed 
another discussion of--an argument or heated discussion with the 
President where the President was contradicting where he was supposed 
to go or what the Secret Service believed was safe?
    Sergeant Robinson. No.

    Mrs. Luria. Like other witnesses, Sergeant Robinson also 
testified that he was aware that individuals in the crowd were 
armed.

    Sergeant Robinson. Yes, I believe we was on special events channel, 
and I was monitoring the traffic. And so I could hear some of the units 
pointing out to individuals that there were individuals along 
Constitution Avenue that were armed, that were up in the trees, and I 
can hear the units responding to those individuals. So there's always a 
concern when there's a POTUS in the area.

    Mrs. Luria. Like other witnesses, Sergeant Robinson told us 
that the President still wanted to travel to the Capitol even 
after returning to the White House.

    Ms. Dayananda. So, at the end of the speech, what was the plan 
supposed to be?
    Sergeant Robinson. So, at the end of the speech, we do know that 
while inside the limo, the President was still adamant about going to 
the Capitol. That's been relayed to me by the TS agent. And so we did 
depart the Ellipse, and we responded back to the White House. However, 
we--the motorcade--POTUS motorcade was placed on standby. And so we 
were told to stand by on the West Exec until they confirmed whether or 
not the President was going to go to the Capitol. And so I may have 
waited, I would just estimate, maybe 45 to--45 minutes to an hour 
waiting for Secret Service to make that decision.

    Mrs. Luria. The motorcade waited at the White House for 
more than 45 minutes before being released. The Committee is 
also aware that accounts of the angry confrontation in the 
Presidential SUV have circulated widely among the Secret 
Service since January 6th. Recent disclosures have also caused 
the Committee to subpoena yet further information from the 
Secret Service, which we have begun to receive and will 
continue to assess. The Committee is also aware that certain 
Secret Service witnesses have now retained new private counsel. 
We anticipate further testimony under oath and other new 
information in the coming weeks.
    After the Secret Service refused to take President Trump to 
the Capitol, he returned to the White House.
    What you see on the screen is a photo of him inside the 
Oval Office immediately after he returned from the rally, still 
wearing his overcoat. A White House employee informed the 
President as soon as he returned to the Oval about the riot at 
the Capitol. Let me repeat that: Within 15 minutes of leaving 
the stage, President Trump knew that the Capitol was besieged 
and under attack.
    At 1:25, President Trump went to the private dining room 
off the Oval Office. From 1:25 until 4 o'clock, the President 
stayed in his dining room. Just to give you a sense where the 
dining room is situated in the West Wing, let's take look at 
this floor plan.
    The dining room is connected to the Oval Office by a short 
hallway. Witnesses told us that, on January 6th, President 
Trump sat in his usual spot, at the head of the table facing a 
television hanging on the wall. We know from the employee that 
the TV was tuned to Fox News all afternoon. Here you can see 
Fox News on the TV showing coverage of the joint session that 
was airing that day at 1:25.
    Other witnesses confirmed that President Trump was in the 
dining room with the TV on for more than 2\1/2\ hours. There 
was no official record of what President Trump did while in the 
dining room. On the screen is the Presidential call log from 
January 6th.
    As you can see, there is no official record of President 
Trump receiving or placing a call between 11:06 and 6:54 p.m.
    As to what the President was doing that afternoon, the 
Presidential daily diary is also silent. It contains no 
information from the period between 1:21 p.m. and 4:03 p.m.
    There are also no photos of President Trump during this 
critical period between 1:21 in the Oval Office and when he 
went outside to the Rose Garden after 4 o'clock. The chief 
White House photographer wanted to take pictures because it 
was, in her words, very important for his archives and for 
history, but she was told ``no photographs.''
    Despite the lack of photos or an official record, we have 
learned what President Trump was doing while he was watching TV 
in the dining room, but before we get into that, it is 
important to understand what he never did that day. Let's 
watch.

    Vice Chair Cheney. So are you aware of any phone call by the 
President of the United States to the Secretary of Defense that day?
    Mr. Cipollone. Not that I'm aware of, no.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Are you aware of any phone call by the President 
of the United States to the Attorney General of the United States that 
day?
    Mr. Cipollone. No.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Are you aware of any phone call by the President 
of the United States to the Secretary of Homeland Security that day?
    Mr. Cipollone. I--I'm not aware of that, no.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. George. Did you ever hear the Vice President--excuse me, the 
President ask for the National Guard?
    General Kellogg. No.
    Mr. George. Did you ever hear the President ask for a law 
enforcement response?
    General Kellogg. No.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. George. So, as somebody who works in the national security 
space and with the National Security Council, if there were going to be 
troops present or called up for a rally in Washington, DC, for example, 
is that something that you would have been aware of?
    General Kellogg. Yeah, I would have.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. George. Do you know if he asked anybody to reach out to any of 
those that we just listed off--National Guard, DOD, FBI, Homeland 
Security, Secret Service, Mayor Bowser, or the Capitol Police--about 
the situation at the Capitol?
    Mr. Luna. I am not aware of any of those requests. No, sir.

    Mrs. Luria. We have confirmed in numerous interviews with 
senior law enforcement and military leaders, Vice President 
Pence's staff and D.C. government officials, none of them--not 
one--heard from President Trump that day. He did not call to 
issue orders. He did not call to offer assistance. This week, 
we received additional testimony from yet another witness about 
why the President didn't make any efforts to quell the attack.
    The former White House employee with National security 
responsibilities told us about a conversation with senior 
advisor Eric Herschmann and Pat Cipollone, the top White House 
lawyer. This conversation was about a pending call from the 
Pentagon seeking to coordinate on the response to the attack.
    Mr. Herschmann turned to Mr. Cipollone and said the 
President didn't want to do anything.
    So, Mr. Cipollone had to take the call himself.
    So, if President Trump wasn't calling law enforcement or 
military leaders, what did President Trump spend his time doing 
that afternoon while he first settled into the dining room? He 
was calling Senators to encourage them to delay or object to 
the certification. Here is Kayleigh McEnany, his Press 
Secretary, to explain.

    Mr. Wood. All right. That says ``back there'' and ``he wants list 
of Senators,'' and then ``he's calling them one by one.'' Do you know 
which ones he called?
    Ms. McEnany. To the best of my recollection, no. As I say in my 
notes, he wanted a list of the Senators, and, you know, I left him at--
at that point.

    Mrs. Luria. Because the Presidential call log is empty, we 
do not yet know precisely which Senators President Trump was 
calling. But we do know from Rudy Giuliani's phone records that 
President Trump also called him at 1:39, after he had been told 
that the riot was under way at the Capitol.
    Mr. Giuliani was President Trump's lead election attorney. 
According to the phone records, the President's call with him 
lasted approximately 4 minutes. Recall that Fox News was on in 
the dining room. Let's take a look at what was airing as this 
call was ending.

    Fox News Reporter. The President, as we all saw, fired this crowd 
up. They've all--tens of thousands, maybe 100,000 or more, have gone 
down to the Capitol or elsewhere in the city, and they're very upset.
    Now, I jumped down as soon as we heard the news that Bret gave you 
about Mike Pence. I started talking to these people. I said, ``What do 
you think?'' One woman, an Air Force veteran from Missouri, said she 
was, quote, ``disgusted to hear that news and that it was his duty to 
do something.'' And I told her--I said, ``There's nothing in the 
Constitution unilaterally that Vice President Pence could do.'' She 
said, ``That doesn't matter. He should have fought for Trump.''

    Mrs. Luria. At 1:49, here is what was happening at the 
Capitol with President Trump's fired-up supporters.

    Metropolitan Police Department Transmission. We're going to give--
fire a warning. We're going to try to get compliance, but this is now 
effectively a riot.
    Metropolitan Police Department Transmission. 1349 hours declaring 
it a riot.

    Mrs. Luria. What did President Trump do at 1:49, as the 
D.C. Police at the same time were declaring a riot at the 
Capitol?
    As you can see on the screen, he tweeted out a link to the 
recording of his Ellipse speech. This was the same speech in 
which he knowingly sent an armed mob to the Capitol, but 
President Trump made no comment about the lawlessness and the 
violence.
    I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
    Mr. Kinzinger. The next action President Trump took was to 
tweet at 2:24 p.m. What happened during the 35 minutes between 
his last tweet at 1:49 and 2:24? His staff repeatedly came into 
the room to see him and plead that he make a strong public 
statement condemning the violence and instructing the mob to 
leave the Capitol. He did not relent until after 4 o'clock when 
he went out to go to the Rose Garden to film his now infamous 
``go home'' message.
    Pat Cipollone was a top White House lawyer. Here is what he 
told us about his reaction to seeing the violence and his 
advice throughout the afternoon.

    Mr. Heaphy. When did you first realize that there was actual 
violence or rioting?
    Mr. Cipollone. I--I first realized it may have been on television 
or it may have been Tony or it may have been Philbin. But I found out 
that people were--you know, they weren't in the Capitol yet, but they 
were, you know--and then I started watching it, and, you know, then I 
was aware.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Heaphy. What specifically did you think needed to be done?
    Mr. Cipollone. I think I was pretty clear there needed to be an 
immediate and forceful response statement--public statement that people 
need to leave the Capitol now.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Heaphy. My question is exactly that, that it sounds like you 
from the very onset of violence at the Capitol, right around 2 o'clock, 
were pushing for a strong statement that people should leave the 
Capitol. Is that right?
    Mr. Cipollone. I was, and others were as well.
                                 ______
                                 
    Vice Chair Cheney. Pat, you--you said that you expressed your 
opinion forcefully. Could you tell us exactly how you did that?
    Mr. Cipollone. Yeah, I can't--I don't have--you know, I have to--on 
the privilege issue, I can't talk about conversations with the 
President, but I can generically say that I said, you know, people need 
to be told--there needs to be a public announcement fast that they need 
to leave the Capitol.
    Vice Chair Cheney. And, Pat, could you let us know approximately 
when you said that?
    Mr. Cipollone. Approximately when? Almost immediately after I found 
out people were getting into the Capitol or approaching the Capitol in 
a way that was--was violent.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Heaphy. Do you remember any discussion with Mark Meadows with 
respect to his view that the President didn't want to do--was somehow 
resistant to wanting to say something along the lines that you 
suggested?
    Mr. Cipollone. Tony [inaudible]--just to be clear, many people 
suggested it, not just me. Many people felt the same way. I'm sure I 
had conversations with Mark about this during the course of the day and 
expressed my--my opinion very forcefully that this needs to be done.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Heaphy. So your advice was to tell people to leave the Capitol, 
and it took over 2 hours when there were subsequent statements made, 
tweets put forth, that in your view were insufficient. Did you 
continue, Mr. Cipollone, throughout the period of time up until 4:17--
continue, you and others, to push for a stronger statement?
    Mr. Cipollone. Yes.
    Mr. Heaphy. Were you joined in that effort by Ivanka Trump?
    Mr. Cipollone. Yes.
    Mr. Heaphy. Eric Herschmann?
    Mr. Cipollone. Yes.
    Mr. Heaphy. And Mark Meadows?
    Mr. Cipollone. Yes.
                                 ______
                                 
    Ms. Hutchinson. White House Counsel's Office wanted there to be a 
strong statement out to condemn the rioters. I'm confident in that. I'm 
confident that Ivanka Trump wanted there to be a strong statement to 
condemn the rioters. I don't know the private conversation she had with 
Mr. Trump, but I remember when she came to the office one time with 
White House counsel's office--when she came to the Chief of Staff's 
office with White House counsel's office, she was talking about the 
speech later that day and trying to get her dad on board with saying 
something that was more direct than he had wanted to at the time and 
throughout the afternoon.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Cipollone. I think Mark also wanted--got--I remember him 
getting Ivanka involved, because--said, ``Get Ivanka down here,'' 
because he thought that would be important. I don't think Jared was 
there in the morning, but I think he came later. I remember thinking it 
was important to get him in there, too.
    And--and of course, Pat Philbin, you know, was expressing the same 
things. I mean, Pat Philbin, you know, was very--as I said, I don't 
think there was one of these meetings where--there might have been, but 
for the most part, I remember the both of us going down together, going 
back, getting on phone calls. He was also very clearly expressing this 
view.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Pat Cipollone and Cassidy Hutchinson, an 
aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, also told us about the 
``hang Mike Pence'' chants. As you will see, Mr. Cipollone 
recalled conversations about those chants in the West Wing, but 
he relied on executive privilege to maintain confidentiality 
over his and others' direct communications with the President. 
Although Mr. Cipollone was unwilling to provide more detail, 
Ms. Hutchinson provided more explicit information filling in 
those blanks. See that for yourself.

    Ms. Hutchinson. It wasn't until Mark hung up the phone, handed it 
back to me, I went back to my desk. A couple of minutes later, him and 
Pat came back, possibly Eric Herschmann, too. I'm pretty sure Eric 
Herschmann was there, but I'm--I'm confident it was Pat that was there. 
I remember Pat saying something to the effect of, ``Mark, we need to do 
something more. They're literally calling for the Vice President to be 
F'ing hung.'' And Mark had responded something to the effect of, ``You 
heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn't think they're 
doing anything wrong.'' To which Pat said something, ``This is F'ing 
crazy. We need to be doing something more,'' and briefly stepped into 
Mark's office.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Heaphy. Do you remember any discussion at any point during the 
day about rioters at the Capitol chanting ``hang Mike Pence?''
    Mr. Cipollone. Yes, I remember--I remember hearing that--about 
that, yes. I don't know if I observed that myself on TV.
    Mr. Heaphy. I'm just curious. I understand the--the privilege line 
you've drawn, but do you remember what you can share with us about the 
discussion about those chants, the ``hang Mike Pence'' chants?
    Mr. Cipollone. I can tell you my view of that.
    Mr. Heaphy. Yes, please.
    Mr. Cipollone. My view of that is that is outrageous. And for 
anyone to suggest such a thing of the Vice President of the United 
States, for people in that crowd to be chanting that I thought was 
terrible. I thought it was outrageous and wrong, and I expressed that 
very clearly.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Schiff. With respect to your conversations with Mr. Meadows, 
though, did you specifically raise your concern over the Vice President 
with him, and--and how did he respond?
    Mr. Cipollone. I believe I raised the concern about the Vice 
President, and I--and I--again, the nature of his response, without 
recalling exactly, was he--you know, people were doing all that they 
could.
    Mr. Schiff. And what about the President, did he indicate whether 
he thought the President was doing what needed to be done to protect 
the Vice President?
    Mr. Purpura. Privilege.
    Mr. Heaphy. You have to assert it. That question would----
    [Crosstalk.]
    Mr. Cipollone [continuing]. I'm being instructed on privilege.
    Mr. Heaphy. I see.

    Mr. Kinzinger. In addition, Mr. Cipollone testified that it 
would have been feasible, as commentators on television were 
suggesting, for President Trump to immediately appear at the 
podium in the press room to address the Nation.

    Mr. Heaphy. Would it have been possible at any moment for the 
President to walk down to the podium in the Briefing Room and tell--
talk to the Nation at any time between when you first gave him that 
advice at 2 o'clock and 4:17 when the video statement went? Would that 
have been possible?
    Mr. Cipollone. Would it have been possible?
    Mr. Heaphy. Yes.
    Mr. Cipollone. Yes, it would have been possible.

    Mr. Kinzinger. We just heard Mr. Cipollone say that 
President Trump could have gone to the Press Briefing Room to 
issue a statement at any moment. To give you a sense of just 
how easy that would have been, let's take a look at a map of 
the West Wing.
    As we saw earlier, the President's private dining room is 
at the bottom of the map. The Press Briefing Room is at the top 
highlighted in blue, and the Rose Garden, where the President 
ultimately his ``go home'' video is on the right, next to the 
Oval Office, and that is highlighted in green.
    Ms. Matthews, how quickly could the President have gotten 
on camera in the Press Briefing Room to deliver a statement to 
the Nation?
    Ms. Matthews. So, as you outlined, it would take probably 
less than 60 seconds from the Oval Office dining room over to 
the Press Briefing Room. For folks that might not know, the 
Briefing Room is the room that you see the White House Press 
Secretary do briefings from with the podium and the blue 
backdrop. There is a camera that is on in there at all times. 
So, if the President had wanted to make a statement and address 
the American people, he could have been on camera almost 
instantly.
    Conversely, the White House Press Corps has offices that 
are located directly behind the Briefing Room. So, if he had 
wanted to make an address from the Oval Office, we could have 
assembled the White House Press Corps probably in a matter of 
minutes to get them into the Oval for him to do an on-camera 
address.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you. Other witnesses have given us 
their views on that question. For example, General Keith 
Kellogg told us that some staff were concerned that a live 
appearance by the President at the microphones at that moment 
could actually make matters worse. He told us he recommended 
against doing a press conference because, during his 4 years in 
the Trump administration: ``There wasn't a single clean press 
conference we had had.''
    President Trump's advisers knew his state of mind at that 
moment, and they were worried about what he would say in 
unscripted comments.
    I yield to the gentlewoman from Virginia.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you.
    As you've heard, by 2 o'clock, multiple staff members in 
the White House recognized that a serious situation was under 
way at the Capitol. Personally, I recall being evacuated from 
the House office building where we were sitting by--before this 
time, and it was due to the discovery of two pipe bombs in 
nearby buildings.
    Ms. Matthews, around the same time, you were watching the 
violence unfold on television and social media with colleagues, 
including with Ben Williamson, a senior aide to Mark Meadows 
and the acting director of communications.
    You told us before President Trump sent his next tweet at 
2:24, Mr. Williamson got up to go see Mr. Meadows, and you got 
up to go see Kayleigh McEnany.
    Why did you both do that?
    Ms. Matthews. So, Ben and I were watching the coverage 
unfold from one of the offices in the West Wing, and we both 
recognized that the situation was escalating, and it was 
escalating quickly, and that the President needed to be out 
there immediately to tell these people to go home and condemn 
the violence that we were seeing. So, I told him that I was 
going to make that recommendation to Kayleigh, and he said he 
was going to make the same recommendation to the Chief of Staff 
Mark Meadows.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you. One of your colleagues in the press 
office, Judd Deere, told us he also went to see Ms. McEnany at 
that time. Let's hear what he said about this critical period 
of time right as the rioters were getting into the Capitol.

    Mr. Wood. And why did you think it was necessary to say something?
    Mr. Deere. Well, I mean, it appears that individuals are storming 
the U.S. Capitol Building. They also appear to be supporters of Donald 
Trump who may have been in attendance at the rally. We're going to need 
to say something.
    Mr. Wood. Did you have a view as to what should be said by the 
White House?
    Mr. Deere. If I recall, I told Kayleigh that I thought that we 
needed to encourage individuals to stop, to respect law enforcement, 
and to go home.

    Mrs. Luria. Although President Trump was aware of the on-
going riot, he did not take any immediate action to address the 
lawlessness. Instead, at 2:03, he called Rudy Giuliani again, 
and that call lasted for over 8 minutes.
    Moments later, at 2:13, rioters broke into the Capitol 
itself. One of the Proud Boys charged with seditious 
conspiracy, Dominic Pezzola, used an officer's shield to smash 
a window and rioters flooded into the building.

    Crowd. Go, go, go, go. Go in the Capitol. Go, go, go.

    Mrs. Luria. As rioters were entering the building, the 
Secret Service held Vice President Pence in his office right 
off the Senate Chamber for 13 minutes as they worked to clear a 
safe path to a secure location.
    Now listen to some of that radio traffic and see what they 
were seeing as the protesters got just feet away from where the 
Vice President was holding.

    Secret Service Radio Transmission. They're taking the building. 
Hold.
    Harden that door up.
    If you are moving, we need to move now.
    Copy.
    If we lose any more time, we may have--we may lose the ability to--
to leave. So, if we're going to leave, we need to do it now.
    They've gained access to the second floor, and I've got public 
about 5 feet from me down here below.
    Okay. Copy.
    They are on the second floor moving in now. We may want to consider 
getting out and leaving now. Copy.
    Will we encounter the people once we make our way?
    Repeat.
    Encounter any individuals if we made our way to the--to the----
    There's six officers between us and the people that are 5 to 10 
feet away from me.
    Stand by. I'm going down to evaluate.
    Go ahead.
    We have a clear shot if we move quickly. We've got smoke 
downstairs. Stand by. Unknown smoke from downstairs. By the protesters?
    Is that route compromised?
    We have the--is secure. However, we will bypass some protesters 
that are being contained. There is smoke, unknown what kind of smoke it 
is. Copy.
    Clear. We're coming out now. All right? Make a way.

    Mrs. Luria. The President's National Security Council staff 
was listening to these developments and tracking them in real 
time.
    On the screen, you can see excerpts from the chat logs 
among the President's National Security Council staff. At 2:13, 
the staff learned that the rioters were kicking in the windows 
at the Capitol. Three minutes later, the staff said the Vice 
President was being pulled, which meant agents evacuated him 
from the Senate floor. At 2:24, the staff noted that the Secret 
Service agents at the Capitol did not ``sound good right now.''
    Earlier, you heard from a security professional who had 
been working in the White House complex on January 6th with 
access to relevant information and a responsibility to report 
to National security officials. We asked this person, what was 
meant by the comment that the Secret Service agents did not 
``sound good right now''?
    In the following clip of that testimony, which has been 
modified to protect the individual's identity, the professional 
discusses what they heard from listening to the incoming radio 
traffic that day.

    Ms. Dayananda. Okay. That last entry in the page is ``Service at 
the Capitol does not sound good right now.''
    Anonymous White House Security Official. Correct.
    Ms. Dayananda. What does that mean?
    Anonymous White House Security Official. Well, members of the VP 
detail at this time were starting to fear for their own lives. There 
were a lot of--there was a lot of yelling, a lot of--a lot of very 
personal calls over the radio. So it was disturbing. I don't like 
talking about it, but there were calls to say goodbye to family 
members, so on and so forth. It was getting--for whatever the reason 
was on the ground, the VP detail thought that this was about to get 
very ugly.
    Ms. Dayananda. And do--did you hear that over the radio?
    Anonymous White House Security Official. Correct.
    Ms. Dayananda. Okay. What was the response by the agents who were--
Secret Service agents who were there?
    Anonymous White House Security Official. Everybody kept saying--you 
know, at that point it was just reassurances or--I think there were 
discussions of reinforcements coming, but--but, again, it was just 
chaos, and they were just----
    Ms. Dayananda. Obviously, you've conveyed that's disturbing, but 
what--what prompted you to put it into an entry as it states there, 
``Service at the Capitol----
    Anonymous White House Security Official. They were running out of 
options, and they were getting nervous. It--it sounds like we're--that 
we came very close to either Service having to use lethal options or--
or worse. Like, at--at that point I don't know. Is the VP compromised? 
Is the detail--like, I--I don't know. Like, we didn't have visibility, 
but it doesn't--if they're screaming and--and saying things like say 
goodbye to the family, like, the floor needs to know this is going to 
on a whole `nother level soon.

    Mrs. Luria. As the next video shows, the rioters' anger was 
focused primarily on Vice President Mike Pence.

    Ms. Buhler. This woman came up to the side of us and she says, 
``Pence folded.'' So it was kind-of, like, okay, well--in my mind, I 
was thinking, well, that's it, you know. Well, my son-in-law looks at 
me and he says, ``I want to go in.''
                                 ______
                                 
    Stop the Steal Transmission. What percentage of the crowd is going 
to the Capitol?
    Ms. Watkins. 100 percent. It is--it has spread like wildfire that 
Pence has betrayed us, and everybody is marching on the Capitol, all 
million of us. It's insane.
                                 ______
                                 
    Voice. Mike Pence will not stick up for Donald Trump. Mike Pence, 
traitor.
    Voice. Mike Pence has screwed us in case you haven't heard yet.
    Voice. What happened? What happened?
    Voice. I keep hearing that Mike Pence has screwed us. That's the 
word. I keep hearing reports that Mike Pence has screwed us.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Childress. Did people appear angry as you were walking to the 
Capitol?
    Mr. Ayres. Yeah, a lot of people--a lot of people seemed like they 
were very upset.
    Mr. Childress. Tell us some of the things they were saying, if you 
recall.
    Mr. Ayres. Oh, there was--they were saying all type--you know, 
people were screaming all types of stuff. They were mad that Vice 
President Pence was going to accept the electorals. I mean, it was--I 
mean, it was a load of--if you can--if you can think it up, that's--you 
are hearing it.
                                 ______
                                 
    Voice. I believe that Vice President Pence was going to certify the 
electoral votes and--or not certify them. But I guess that's just 
changed. Correct? And it's a very big disappointment. I think there's 
several hundred thousand people here that are very disappointed.

    Mrs. Luria. President Trump did not try to calm his 
thousands of disappointed supporters. Instead, at almost the 
same moment violence was getting completely out of hand, Donald 
Trump sent his 2:24 tweet.
    The President said, ``Mike Pence didn't have the courage to 
do what should have been done to protect our Country and our 
Constitution.''
    Despite knowing the Capitol had been breached and the mob 
was in the building, President Trump called Mike Pence a coward 
and placed all the blame on him for not stopping the 
certification. He put a target on his own Vice President's 
back.
    Mr. Pottinger and Ms. Matthews, when we asked you about 
your reaction to seeing the 2:24 tweet in real time, you both 
used the same imagery to describe it: President Trump was 
adding fuel to the fire.
    Mr. Pottinger, you made the decision to resign after seeing 
this tweet. Can you please tell us why?
    Mr. Pottinger. Yes. So that was pretty soon after I--or 
shortly before I had gotten back to the White House. I had come 
from off-site. I began to see for the first time those images 
on TV of the chaos that was unfolding at the Capitol.
    One of my aides handed me a sheet of paper that contained a 
tweet that you just read. I read it and was quite disturbed by 
it. I was disturbed and worried to see that the President was 
attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional 
duty.
    So, the tweet looked to me like the opposite of what we 
really needed at that moment, which was a de-escalation. That 
is why I had said earlier that it looked like fuel being poured 
on the fire.
    So, that was the moment that I decided that I was going to 
resign, that that would be my last day at the White House. I 
simply didn't want to be associated with the events that were 
unfolding on the Capitol.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you.
    Ms. Matthews, what was your reaction to the President's 
tweet about Vice President Pence?
    Ms. Matthews. So, it was obvious that the situation at the 
Capitol was violent and escalating quickly. So, I thought that 
the tweet about the Vice President was the last thing that was 
needed in that moment.
    I remember thinking that this was going to be bad for him 
to tweet this, because it was essentially him giving the green 
light to these people, telling them that what they were doing 
at the steps of the Capitol and entering the Capitol was okay, 
that they were justified in their anger.
    He shouldn't have been doing that. He should have been 
telling these people to go home and to leave and to condemn the 
violence that we were seeing.
    I am someone who has worked with him, you know, I worked on 
the campaign, traveled all around the country, going to 
countless rallies with him, and I have seen the impact that his 
words have on his supporters. They truly latch onto every word 
and every tweet that he says.
    So, I think that in that moment for him to tweet out the 
message about Mike Pence, it was him pouring gasoline on the 
fire and making it much worse.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you both.
    Let's watch what others also told us about their reactions 
to this tweet.

    Mr. Cipollone. I don't remember when exactly I heard about that 
tweet, but my reaction to it is that's a--a terrible tweet, and I 
disagreed with the sentiment, and I thought it was wrong.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Wood. What was your reaction when you saw that tweet?
    Mr. Deere. Extremely unhelpful.
    Mr. Wood. Why?
    Mr. Deere. It--it--it wasn't the message that we needed at--at that 
time. It wasn't going to--the--the scenes at the U.S. Capitol were only 
getting worse at that point. This was not going to help that.
    Mr. Wood. Were you concerned it could make it worse?
    Mr. Deere. Certainly.
                                 ______
                                 
    Vice Chair Cheney. Ms. Hutchinson, what was your reaction when you 
saw this tweet?
    Ms. Hutchinson. As a staffer that works to always represent the 
administration to the best of my ability and to showcase the good 
things that he had done for the country, I remember feeling frustrated, 
disappointed, and really, it--it felt personal. I--I was really sad. As 
an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. 
We were watching the Capitol Building get defaced over a lie.

    Mrs. Luria. As you will see, at 2:26 the Vice President had 
to be evacuated to safety a second time and came within 40 feet 
of the rioters. The attack escalated quickly right after the 
tweet.

    Voices. [Unintelligible.]

    Mrs. Luria. During this chaos, what did President Trump do 
at that point? He went back to calling Senators to try to 
further delay the electoral count.
    While the Vice President was being evacuated from the 
Senate, President Trump called Senator Tommy Tuberville, one of 
his strongest supporters in the Senate. As Senator Tuberville 
later recalled, he had to end the call so that he could 
evacuate the Senate Chamber himself.
    Let's listen.

    Senator Tuberville. He called--didn't call my phone. Called 
somebody else and they handed it to me. And I--I basically told him--I 
said, ``Mr. President, we're--we're not doing much work here right now 
because they just took our Vice President out, and matter of fact, I'm 
gonna have to hang up on you. I've got to leave.''

    Mrs. Luria. Senator Josh Hawley also had to flee. Earlier 
that afternoon, before the joint session started, he walked 
across the East Front of the Capitol.
    As you can see in this photo, he raised his fist in 
solidarity with the protesters already amassing at the security 
gates.
    We spoke with the Capitol Police Officer who was out there 
at the time. She told us that Senator Hawley's gesture riled up 
the crowd. It bothered her greatly, because he was doing it in 
a safe space, protected by the officers and the barriers.
    Later that day, Senator Hawley fled after those protesters 
he helped to rile up stormed the Capitol.
    See for yourself.
    Think about had what we've seen: undeniable violence at the 
Capitol. The Vice President being evacuated to safety by the 
Secret Service. Senators running through the hallways of the 
Senate to get away from the mob.
    As the Commander-in-Chief, President Trump was oath- and 
duty-bound to protect the Capitol. His senior staff understood 
that.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Do--do you believe, Jared, that the President 
has an obligation to ensure a peaceful transfer of power?
    Mr. Kushner. Yes.
    Vice Chair Cheney. And do you think the President has an obligation 
to defend all three branches of our government?
    Mr. Kushner. I believe so.
                                 ______
                                 
    Vice Chair Cheney. And I assume you also would agree the President 
has a particular obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully 
executed.
    Mr. Cipollone. That is one of the President's obligations, correct.
                                 ______
                                 
    Vice Chair Cheney. No, I mean, I asked what his duty is.
    General Kellogg. Well, I mean, there's a--there's a constitutional 
duty--I--what he has--he's the Commander in Chief, and that was the--
the--that was my biggest issue with him as National Security Advisor.

    Mrs. Luria. Rather than uphold his duty to the 
Constitution, President Trump allowed the mob to achieve the 
delay that he hoped would keep him in power.
    I reserve.
    Vice Chair Cheney. The gentlewoman reserves.
    I request that those in the hearing room remain seated 
until the Capitol Police have escorted Members and witnesses 
from the room.
    I now declare the Committee in recess for a period of 
approximately 10 minutes.
    [Accordingly, at 9:11 p.m., the Committee recessed until 
9:24 p.m., when it was called to order by the Vice Chair.]
    Vice Chair Cheney. I now recognize the gentleman from 
Illinois.
    Mr. Kinzinger. We left at the recess just after President 
Trump's 2:24 tweet attacking the Vice President. By this time, 
the President had been in his dining room for an hour.
    I want you to just think of what you would have done if you 
were in his shoes and had the power to end the violence. You 
would have immediately and forcefully told the rioters to stop 
and leave, like, stop and leave, done.
    As you heard, that's exactly what his senior staff had been 
urging him do. But he resisted and he kept resisting for 
another almost 2 hours.
    In the mean time, all the President did was post two 
tweets, one at 2:38 and the other at 3:13. One said ``stay 
peaceful.'' The other said ``remain peaceful.''
    But the President already knew that the mob was attacking 
the police and had invaded the Capitol. Neither tweet condemned 
the violence or told the mob to leave the Capitol and disperse.
    To appreciate how obvious it was that President Trump was 
not meeting this moment, it is helpful to look at the real-time 
reactions of his own son, Don Jr., to the first tweet captured 
in a series of text messages with Mark Meadows. I warn the 
audience that these messages contain some strong language.
    As you can see, Don Jr. first texted Mr. Meadows at 2:53. 
He wrote, ``He's got to condemn this shit. ASAP. The Capitol 
police tweet is not enough.''
    Mr. Meadows replied, ``I am pushing it hard. I agree.''
    Don Jr. responded, ``This [is] one you go to the mattresses 
on. They will try to fuck his entire legacy on this if it gets 
worse.''
    Here's what Don Jr. told us he meant by ``go to the 
mattresses.''

    Mr. Tonolli. At 2:58 when you say that he need--that Mr. Meadows 
needs to go to the mattresses on this issue, when you say ``go to the 
mattresses,'' what does that mean?
    Mr. Trump, Jr. It's just a reference for going all in. I think it's 
a ``Godfather'' reference.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Sean Hannity agreed, and he also turned to 
Mark Meadows for help after the President's second tweet.
    As you can see, Mr. Hannity texted at 3:31 to say Trump 
needed to deliver a statement to the Nation telling the rioters 
to leave the Capitol. Mr. Meadows respond that he was ``on 
it.''
    Don Jr. and Sean Hannity were not the only ones who 
implored Mr. Meadows to get the President to speak to the 
Nation and tell the mob to leave, to go home, go home. 
Throughout the attack, Mr. Meadows received texts from 
Republican Members of Congress, from current and former Trump 
administration officials, from media personalities, and from 
friends. Like President Trump's staff, they knew President 
Trump had to speak publicly to get the mob to stop.
    Let's look at just a few of these text messages.
    Fox News personality Laura Ingraham said, ``The President 
needs to tell the people in the Capitol to go home.'' Former 
Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney urged, ``Mark, he needs to stop 
this now.'' Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade said, ``Please 
get him on TV. Destroying everything that you guys have 
accomplished.''
    When we interviewed White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, he 
told us that he knew that the President's two tweets were not 
enough.
    Let's listen to what he said.

    Mr. Heaphy. I think the question is, did you believe that the 
tweets were not anything about your advice to the President?
    Mr. Cipollone. No, I believe more needed to be done. I believed 
that a public statement needed to be made.
                                 ______
                                 
    Vice Chair Cheney. When you talk about others on the staff thinking 
more should be done or thinking that the President needed to tell 
people to go home, who--who would you put in that category?
    Mr. Cipollone. Well, I--I would put Pat Philbin, Eric Herschmann, 
overall Mark Meadows, Ivanka; once Jared got there, Jared; General 
Kellogg. I'm probably missing some, but those are--Kayleigh, I think, 
was--was there, but I don't--Dan Scavino.
    Vice Chair Cheney. And who on the staff did not want people to 
leave the Capitol?
    Mr. Cipollone. On the staff?
    Vice Chair Cheney. In the White House, how about?
    Mr. Cipollone. I don't--I--I can't think of anybody, you know, on 
that day who didn't want people to get out of the--the Capitol once 
the--you know, particularly once the violence started, no. I mean----
    Mr. Schiff. What about the President?
    Vice Chair Cheney. Yeah.
    Mr. Cipollone. She said the staff, so I answered.
    Vice Chair Cheney. No, I said in the White House.
    Mr. Cipollone. Oh, I'm sorry. I--I apologize. I thought you said 
who--who else on the staff. I--I--I can't reveal communications, but 
obviously, I think, you know--yeah.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Let's pause on that last statement. Although 
Pat Cipollone is being careful about executive privilege, there 
really is no ambiguity about what he said. Almost everybody 
wanted President Trump to instruct the mob to disperse. 
President Trump refused.
    To understand how inadequate the President's tweets were, 
let's examine his 2:38 tweet in more detail. For context, here 
is what was happening at that time.

    Voice. They broke the glass.
    Voice. Everybody, stay down. Get down.
                                 ______
                                 
    United States Capitol Police Transmission. Doors barricaded. 
There's people flooding the hallways outside. We have no way out.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Welch. We were just told that there has been tear gas in the 
rotunda, and we're being instructed to each of us get a gas mask.
                                 ______
                                 
    Fox News Host. We went from a peaceful protest, and this is a very 
dangerous situation right now. That there are--I'm being told these 
protesters on the inside are around both Chambers, and there is now 
tear gas inside the Capitol Rotunda. In fact, Members locked in the 
House are being instructed to put on masks.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Ms. Matthews, after President Trump's tweet 
about Vice President Pence, you told us you spoke to--
immediately you spoke to Kayleigh McEnany. What did you tell 
her and where did she go afterwards?
    Ms. Matthews. After the tweet about the Vice President, I 
found Kayleigh and told her that I thought the President needed 
to immediately send out a tweet that condemned the violence 
that we were seeing and that there needed to be a call to 
action to tell these people to leave the Capitol. She agreed 
and walked over to the Oval dining room to find the President.
    Mr. Kinzinger. We interviewed Ms. McEnany and others who 
were in the dining room with the President urging him to put 
out a statement.
    Ms. Matthews, Ms. McEnany told us she came right back to 
the press office after meeting with the President about this 
particular tweet. What did she tell you about what happened in 
that dining room?
    Ms. Matthews. When she got back, she told me that a tweet 
had been sent out. I told her that I thought the tweet did not 
go far enough, that I thought there needed to be a call to 
action and he needed to condemn the violence.
    We were in a room full of people, but people weren't paying 
attention. So, she looked directly at me and in a hushed tone 
shared with me that the President did not want to include any 
sort of mention of peace in that tweet and that it took some 
convincing on their part, those who were in the room.
    She said that there was a back-and-forth going over 
different phrases to find something that he was comfortable 
with. It wasn't until Ivanka Trump suggested the phrase ``stay 
peaceful'' that he finally agreed to include it.
    Mr. Kinzinger. The President resisted writing ``stay 
peaceful'' in a tweet. He told Mark Meadows that the rioters 
were doing what they should be doing. The rioters understood 
they were doing what President Trump wanted them to do.
    President Trump's message was heard clearly by Stop the 
Steal organizer Ali Alexander.
    At 2:38 he told another organizer, ``POTUS is not ignorant 
of what his words would do.''
    Rioters storming the Capitol also heard President Trump's 
message. In this video, you will see surveillance footage from 
the Rotunda that shows a group of Oath Keepers, including 
Jessica Watkins, who was been charged with seditious 
conspiracy.
    You will hear her walkie-talkie communications with others 
as they share intelligence and communicate about President 
Trump's 2:38 tweet in real time. Again, we warn the audience 
that this clip also contains strong language.

    Voice. CNN just said that they evacuated all Members of Congress 
into a safety room.
    Voice. There is no safe place in the United States for any of these 
motherfuckers right now, let me tell you.
    Voice. I hope they understand that we are not joking around.
    Voice. Military principle 105, military principle 105, cave means 
grave.
    Voice. Trump just tweeted, ``Please support our Capitol Police. 
They are on our side. Do not harm them.''
    Voice. That's saying a lot by what he didn't say. He didn't say not 
to do anything to the Congressmen.
    Voice. Well, he did not ask them to stand down. He just said stand 
by the Capitol Police. They are on our side and they are good people. 
So it's getting real down there. I got it on TV, and it's--it's looking 
pretty friggin' radical to me.
    Voice. CNN said that Trump has egged this on, that he is egging it 
on, and that he is watching the country burn 2 weeks before he leaves 
office. He is not leaving office. I don't give a shit what they say.
    Ms. Watkins. And we are in the mezzanine. We are in the main dome 
right now. We are rocking it. They're throwing grenades. They're 
frickin' shooting people with paintballs, but we're in here.
    Voice. Be safe, be safe. God bless and Godspeed and keep going.
    Voice. Get it, Jess. Do your shit. This is what we fucking lived up 
for, everything we fucking trained for.
    Voice. Took over the Capitol, overran the Capitol.
    Voice. We're in the fucking Capitol Complex.

    Mr. Kinzinger. We have now seen how President Trump's 
supporters reacted to his tweets.
    Mr. Pottinger, you told us that you consider the tweets 
sent to this point to be ``wholly inadequate . . . given the 
urgency of the crisis.''
    What, in your view, would have been needed?
    Mr. Pottinger. Yes. It was insufficient. I think what--you 
could count me among those who was hoping to see an unequivocal 
strong statement clearing out the Capitol, telling people to 
stand down, leave, go home. I think that's what we were hoping 
for.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So, something a lot more kind-of definitive 
and not ambiguous.
    Mr. Pottinger. Yes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Because he has that power over his folks.
    Ms. Matthews, you told us about a colleague who said during 
the attack that the President should not condemn the violence. 
Can you please tell us about that moment and your reaction?
    Ms. Matthews. Yes. So a conversation started in the press 
office after the President sent out those two tweets that I 
deemed were insufficient. A colleague suggested that the 
President shouldn't condemn the violence because they thought 
it would be ``handing a win to the media,'' if he were to 
condemn his supporters.
    I disagreed. I thought that we should condemn the violence 
and condemn it unequivocally. I thought that he needed to 
include a call to action and to tell these people to go home. A 
debate ensued over it.
    I became visibly frustrated and my colleagues were well 
aware of that. I couldn't believe that we were arguing over 
this in the middle of the West Wing, talking about the politics 
of a tweet, being concerned with handing the media a win, when 
we had just watched all of that violence unfold at the Capitol.
    So, I motioned up at the TV. I said, ``Do you think it 
looks like we're F'ing winning? Because I don't think it 
does.''
    I again reiterated that I thought that the President needed 
to condemn the violence, because it didn't matter if it was 
coming from the left or the right, that you should condemn 
violence 100 percent of the time.
    Mr. Kinzinger. We have heard this evening how everyone in 
the President's orbit was pushing him to do more, to tell the 
mob to leave the Capitol.
    One of these people--one of those people was Republican 
Leader Kevin McCarthy. He managed to get the President on the 
phone and told him to call off his supporters.
    As you will hear, the President refused. So, Leader 
McCarthy reached out for help to Ivanka Trump, who was at the 
White House, and Jared Kushner, who that afternoon had just 
arrived back on a flight from the Middle East.

    Ms. Lucier. So, at some point in the afternoon, Mr. McCarthy placed 
a phone call to Mr. Scavino's desk line, and it was transferred to the 
President. Is that correct?
    Ms. Michael. That's generally what I recall.
    Ms. Lucier. Okay. Were you involved in making that--transferring 
that call?
    Ms. Michael. I--I--yes.
    Ms. Lucier. Okay. Where was the President at the time that he took 
that call?
    Ms. Michael. He was in the dining room.
                                 ______
                                 
    Fox News Host. Would you personally reach out to the President for 
more support?
    Mr. McCarthy. I've already talked to the President. I called him. I 
think we need to make a statement, make sure that we can calm 
individuals down.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Heaphy. Did Mr. McCarthy indicate that he had been in touch 
with President Trump?
    Mr. Short. He indicated that he had had some conversation. I don't 
recall whether it was with the--with the President or with somebody at 
the White House. But I think he--he expressed frustration that--not 
taking the circumstance as seriously as they should in that moment.
                                 ______
                                 
    Ms. Herrera Beutler. You know, I asked Kevin McCarthy, who's the 
Republican Leader, about this, and--and he said he called Donald--he 
finally got through to Donald Trump, and he said, ``You have got to get 
on TV. You've got to get on Twitter. You've got to call these people 
off.'' You know what the President said to him? This is as it's 
happening. He said, ``Well, Kevin, these aren't my people. You know, 
these are--these are Antifa.''
    And Kevin responded and said, ``No, they're your people. They 
literally just came through my office windows, and my staff are running 
for cover. I mean, they're running for their lives. You need to call 
them off.'' And the President's response to Kevin, to me, was chilling. 
He said, ``Well, Kevin, I guess they're just more upset about the 
election, you know, theft than you are.''
    And that's--you know, you've seen widespread reports of--of Kevin 
McCarthy and the President having a--basically a swearing conversation. 
That's when the swearing commenced, because the President was basically 
saying, nah, I--I'm okay with this.
                                 ______
                                 
    CBS News Host. Leader McCarthy, the President of the United States 
has a Briefing Room steps from the Oval Office. It is--the cameras are 
hot 24/7, as you know. Why hasn't he walked down and said that now?
    Mr. McCarthy. I conveyed to the President what I think is best to 
do, and I'm hopeful the President will do it.
    CBS News Host. And have you spoken with his chief of staff?
    Mr. McCarthy. I've spoken to the President. I've spoken to other 
people in there and to the White House as well.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Tonolli. Who else reached out to Mr. Trump that you know of 
that afternoon about the attack on the Capitol?
    Ms. Radford. I believe at one point McCarthy did.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Kushner. So, my--I heard my phone ringing, turn the shower off, 
saw it was Leader McCarthy, who I had a good relationship with. He told 
me it was getting really ugly over at the Capitol and said, ``Please, 
you know, anything you could do to help, I would appreciate it.''
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Kushner. I don't recall a specific ask, just anything you could 
do. Again, I got the sense that, you know, they were--they were--you 
know, they were scared.
    Mr. Heaphy. ``They'' meaning Mr.--Leader McCarthy and people on the 
Hill because of the violence?
    Mr. Kushner. That he--he was scared, yes.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Think about that. Leader McCarthy, who was 
one of the President's strongest supporters, was scared and 
begging for help. President Trump turned him down. So, he tried 
to call the President's children.
    Republican House Member Mike Gallagher also implored the 
President to call off the attack.

    Mr. Gallagher. Mr. President, you have got to stop this. You are 
the only person who can call this off. Call it off. The election is 
over. Call it off.

    Mr. Kinzinger. President-elect Joe Biden also went live on 
TV to demand that President Trump tell the mob to leave.

    President-elect Biden. I call on President Trump to go on national 
television now, to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution, and 
demand an end to this siege.

    Mr. Kinzinger. There was a desperate scramble for everyone 
to get President Trump to do anything. All this occurred and 
the President still did not act.
    I yield to my friend from Virginia.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you, Mr. Kinzinger.
    President Trump finally relented to the pleas from his 
staff, his family, and from Capitol Hill for him to do 
something more at 4:17, 187 minutes, more than 3 hours after he 
stopped speaking at the Ellipse, after he stopped speaking to a 
mob that he had sent armed to the Capitol.
    That is when he tweeted a video telling the rioters to go 
home, while also telling them that they were special and that 
he loved them.
    By that time, although the violence was far from over, law 
enforcement had started to turn the tide, reinforcements were 
on the way, and elected officials were in secure locations. The 
writing was already on the wall: The rioters would not succeed.
    Here is what was showing on Fox News, the channel the 
President was watching all afternoon.

    Fox News Host. Back to Bret Baier with more information now. Bret, 
what do you have?
    Mr. Baier. You know, our Pentagon team--Jen Griffin, Lucas 
Tomlinson--confirming the Defense Department has now mobilized the 
entire D.C. National Guard, 1,800 troops. Takes several hours, as I was 
mentioning before, to get them up and running. The Army Secretary, Ryan 
McCarthy, is setting up a headquarters at the FBI. You just heard from 
David Spunt that the FBI is also sending troops to the Capitol.

    Mrs. Luria. It is no coincidence then that President Trump 
finally gave in and went out to the Rose Garden at 4:03. His 
staff had prepared a script for him to read, but he refused to 
use it.
    As you can see on the screen, you can see the script is 
stamped ``President Has Seen.'' The script said, ``I am asking 
you to leave the Capitol Hill region NOW and go home in a 
peaceful way.''
    The President was urged to stick to this script, but he 
spoke off the cuff.
    Eric Herschmann and Nick Luna went with the President to 
film the message in the Rose Garden. Let's hear what they had 
to say and see the never-before-seen raw footage of the 
President recording this video message.

    Mr. George. Ultimately, these remarks that we're looking at here in 
Exhibit 25 were not the remarks that the President delivered in the 
Rose Garden. Do you know why the President decided not to use these?
    Mr. Luna. I--I don't know, sir. No, I do not know why.
    Mr. George. Did the President use any written remarks, to your 
knowledge, or did he just go off the cuff?
    Mr. Luna. To my knowledge, it was off the cuff, sir.
                                 ______
                                 
    White House Staff [off-mic]. When you're ready, sir.
    President Trump. You tell me when.
    White House Staff. When you're ready, sir.
    President Trump. Who's behind me?
    White House Staff. He's gone. He's gone. We're all clear now.
    President Trump. I know your pain. I know you're hurt. We had a 
election--let me say. I know your pain. I know you're hurt. We had an 
election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and 
everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home 
now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to 
respect our great people in law and order.
    We don't want anybody hurt. It's a very tough period of time. 
There's never been a time like this where such a thing happened where 
they could take it away from all of us, from me, from you, from our 
country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can't play into the 
hands of these people.
    We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You're very 
special. You've seen what happens. You see the way others are treated 
that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel but go home and go 
home in peace.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Kushner. When I got there, basically the President just had 
finished filming the video, and I think he was basically retiring for 
the day.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Wood. Was there any discussion about the President releasing a 
second video that day?
    Mr. Herschmann. Not that I recall. When--when he finished his 
video, I think everyone was, like, day's over. People were pretty 
drained.
    Mr. Wood. Were pretty what?
    Mr. Herschmann. Drained.
    Mr. Wood. When we say day--day over are we--there were still people 
in the Capitol at that point, weren't there?
    Mr. Herschmann. There were people in the Capitol, but I believe by 
this stage law enforcement--I'd have to go back and look, but I believe 
law enforcement was either there or moving in or going to take charge. 
And I just think people were emotionally drained by the time that 
videotape was done.

    Mrs. Luria. Emotionally drained? At the White House?
    Here is what was happening at the same time at the Capitol. 
We warn the audience that this clip also contains strong 
language and violence.

    Voice. Keep pushing. Don't lose the momentum. [Indistinguishable.]
    Metropolitan Police Department Transmission. We've got another 
officer unconscious at the terrace. West Terrace.
    Voice. Everybody, we need gas masks. We need weapons. We need 
strong, angry patriots to help our boys. They don't want to leave.

    Mrs. Luria. While President Trump refused to even lift 
another finger to help, other leaders honored their oaths and 
acted to clear the Capitol and resume the joint session.
    For instance, here are never-before-seen photos and video 
of congressional leaders in action during the attack. The video 
is a portion of a call they had at approximately 4:45 with 
Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller.

    Senator McConnell. We're not going to let these people keep us from 
finishing our business. So we need you to get the building cleared. 
Give us the okay so we can go back in session and finish up the 
people's business as soon as possible.
    Acting Secretary Miller. Amen, sir.
    Senator Schumer. Mr. Secretary, it's Senator Schumer. Some people 
here in the Capitol Police believe it would take us several days to 
secure the building. Do you agree with that analysis?
    Acting Secretary Miller. I'm not on the ground, but I do not agree 
with that analysis.
    Senator Schumer. So what is the earliest that we could safely 
resume our proceedings in the Senate and House Chambers--the earliest 
we could safely resume?
    Acting Secretary Miller. I--here's my assessment, but I prefer to 
be on the ground, which I personally would prefer to be right now, but 
I need to be here. I would say, best case, we're looking at 4 to 5 
hours.

    Mrs. Luria. The Vice President also worked the phones from 
his own secure evacuation location, including conversations 
with Acting Secretary of Defense Miller and other military 
leaders--well past President Trump's 4:17 video.
    Let's look at some never-before-seen photographs of the 
Vice President during this critical time and hear about the 
Vice President's conversation with military leaders to secure 
the Capitol and ensure everyone was safe.

    General Milley. Vice President Pence? There were two or three calls 
with Vice President Pence. He was very animated, and he issued very 
explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders. There was no question about 
that. And he was--and I can get you the exact quotes, I guess, from 
some of our records somewhere, but he was very animated, very direct, 
very firm and--to Secretary Miller: ``Get the military down here, get 
the Guard down here, put down this situation,'' et cetera.

    Mrs. Luria. As you heard earlier in the hearing, the 
President did not call the Vice President or anyone in the 
military, Federal law enforcement, or D.C. government, not a 
single person.
    But General Milley did hear from Mark Meadows. The contrast 
between that call and his calls with Vice President Pence tells 
you everything you need to know about President Trump's 
dereliction of duty.
    Let's listen.

    General Milley. He said--this is from memory. He said, ``We have--
we have to kill the narrative that the Vice President is making all the 
decisions. We need to establish the narrative that, you know, that the 
President is still in charge and that things are steady or stable.'' Or 
words to that effect. I immediately interpret that as politics, 
politics, politics. Red flags for me personally, no action, but I 
remember it distinctly and--and I don't do political narratives.

    Mrs. Luria. So, while President Trump and his advisers were 
``drained,'' other leaders upheld their oaths to do the right 
thing. Maybe it was exhausting to get the President to put out 
that video, but think about the law enforcement officers who 
were attacked by the mob that day that President Trump had 
summoned them himself to Washington.
    What about President Trump? He watched TV, tweeted, called 
Senators to try to delay the count of electoral votes, called 
Rudy Giuliani, and argued with his staff who were insisting 
that he should call off the attack.
    Ms. Matthews, what was your reaction to President Trump's 
message to the mob at 4:17?
    Ms. Matthews. I was struck by the fact that he chose to 
begin the video by pushing the lie that there was a stolen 
election. As the video went on, I felt a small sense of relief 
because he finally told these people to go home.
    But that was immediately followed up by him saying, ``We 
love you. You're very special.'' That was disserving to me, 
because he didn't distinguish between those that peacefully 
attended his speech earlier that day and those that we watched 
cause violence at the Capitol.
    Instead, he told the people who we had just watched storm 
our Nation's Capitol with the intent on overthrowing our 
democracy, violently attack police officers, and chant heinous 
things like, ``Hang Mike Pence,'' ``We love you. You're very 
special.''
    As a spokesperson for him, I knew that I would be asked to 
defend that. To me, his refusal to act and call off the mob 
that day and his refusal to condemn the violence was 
indefensible.
    So, I knew that I would be resigning that evening. So, I 
finished out the workday, went home and called my loved ones to 
tell them of my decision, and resigned that evening.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you.
    Indefensible.
    Let's hear what some of your colleagues in the press office 
told us about their reaction to the same 4:17 message.

    Mr. Deere. I felt like it was the absolute bare minimum of 
what could have been said at that point for something on 
camera.
    Mr. Wood. What else do you think should have been said?
    Mr. Deere. So a more forceful--a more forceful dismissal of 
the violence, a more forceful command to go home, a more 
forceful respect for law enforcement, even a comparison to the 
respect that we had given law enforcement as it relates to what 
was done to them in the prior summer. And I thought it was 
important that an acknowledgment be given to the U.S. Capitol 
Building itself, what it's a symbol of, what it means, not only 
to the people that work there, but to the American people 
generally and the work of Congress that, by law, needed to be 
conducted that day.
                                ------                                

    Mr. Wood. Do you wish in hindsight that the President had 
asked the protesters to leave the Capitol earlier than he ended 
up asking them to do that?
    Ms. McEnany. Of course, I would have loved if the go home 
message would have happened earlier in the day.

    Mrs. Luria. The President's words matter. We know that many 
of the rioters were listening to President Trump.
    We heard from one last week, Stephen Ayres. Let's listen to 
what he had to say about the 4:17 message from the President 
and see how rioters reacted to the President's message in real 
time.

    Mr. Ayres. Well, when we were there, as soon as that come out, 
everybody started talking about it, and that's--it seemed like it 
started to disperse, you know, some of the crowd----
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Angeli. I'm here delivering the President's message. Donald 
Trump has asked everybody to go home.
    Voice. That's our order.
                                 ______
                                 
    Voice. He says, go home. He says, go home.
    Voice. Yeah, he said to go home.

    Mrs. Luria. But just as Mr. Ayres said, police were still 
fending off the last throes of the brutal assault.
    I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
    Mr. Kinzinger. While everyone else was working to get 
Congress back in session, what did President Trump do? At 6:01, 
just 1 minute after the city-wide curfew went into effect, he 
posted his last tweet of the day.
    After officers engaged in multiple hours of hand-to-hand 
combat, with over 100 of them sustaining injuries, President 
Trump tweeted at 6:01 and justified the violence as a natural 
response to the election.
    He said, ``These are the things and events that happen when 
a sacred landslide victory is so unceremoniously & viciously 
stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & 
unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. 
Remember this day forever!''
    He called the mob ``great patriots.'' He told people to 
remember the day forever. He showed absolutely no remorse.
    A few minutes later, at 6:27, the President left the dining 
room and he went up to the White House residence for the night.
    On the screen is the last photograph of the President that 
night as he went into the residence. As he was gathering his 
things in the dining room to leave, President Trump reflected 
on the day's events with a White House employee. This was the 
same employee who had met President Trump in the Oval Office 
after he returned from the Ellipse. President Trump said 
nothing to the employee about the attack. He said only, ``Mike 
Pence let me down.''
    Ms. Matthews, what was your reaction to President Trump's 
6:01 tweet?
    Ms. Matthews. At that point I had already made the decision 
to resign and this tweet just further cemented my decision. I 
thought that January 6, 2021, was one of the darkest days in 
our Nation's history and President Trump was treating it as a 
celebratory occasion with that tweet. So, it just further 
cemented my decision to resign.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Others agreed with your assessment of that 
tweet. Let's look at what they had to say.

    Mr. George. Who asked you about this tweet before it was sent?
    Mr. Luna. The President.
    Mr. George. Tell us about that conversation and everything that you 
said and he said to the best of your recollection.
    Mr. Luna. Sure. So he said, ``What do you think of this?'' And I 
believe I saw the text message or the--on his phone. And I--I remember 
saying to him the wording on the first sentence--I guess it's one long 
sentence. But the wording on the first sentence would lead some to 
believe that potentially he had something to do with the events that 
happened at the Capitol.
    Mr. George. And what did he say?
    Mr. Luna. I don't recall him saying anything in response to that, 
and I believe that was the end of the conversation.
    Mr. George. Did he change anything in light of your comments?
    Mr. Luna. No, sir, he did not.
    Mr. George. And what about this made you think that someone might 
perceive the President having a role in the violence at the Capitol?
    Mr. Luna. It--it was my interpretation of the words. I mean, I'm--
I'm not a--you know, I don't write speeches or anything, but the 
phrase, ``these are the things that happen,'' to me, sounded as if--as 
if culpability was associated with it. To me.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Murtaugh. I don't think it's a patriotic act to attack the 
Capitol, but I have no idea how to characterize the people other than 
they trespassed, destroyed property, and assaulted the U.S. Capitol. I 
think calling them ``patriots'' is, let's say, a stretch to say the 
least.
    Mr. Aganga-Williams. Is that all it is, a stretch? Or just flatly 
wrong?
    Mr. Murtaugh. I don't think it's a patriotic act to attack the U.S. 
Capitol.
    Mr. Aganga-Williams. Would you call it unpatriotic?
    Mr. Murtaugh. Criminal. Unpatriotic, sure.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Cipollone. What happened at the Capitol cannot be justified in 
any form or fashion. It was wrong and it was tragic and a lot--and it--
and it was a terrible day. It was a terrible day for this country.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Jacob. I thought it was inappropriate.
    Mr. Wood. Why?
    Mr. Jacob. To my mind, it was a day that should be remembered in 
infamy. That wasn't the tenor of this tweet.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Despite the violence of the day, the effort 
to delay the certification continued. That evening, Rudy 
Giuliani called several of President Trump's closest political 
allies in the hour before the joint session resumed--
Representative Jim Jordan and Senators Marsha Blackburn, Tommy 
Tuberville, Bill Haggerty, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, and Ted 
Cruz.
    We know why Mr. Giuliani was calling them, because at 7:02 
he left a voicemail for Senator Tuberville, which later became 
public.
    Let's listen to just the start of it.

    Mr. Giuliani. Hello. Senator Tuberville? Or I should say Coach 
Tuberville. This is Rudy Giuliani, President's lawyer. I'm calling you 
because I want to discuss with you how they're trying to rush this 
hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just 
slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information 
to you.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Giuliani did not even mention the attack 
on the Capitol. Instead, he was pushing on behalf of President 
Trump to get Members of Congress to further delay the 
certification.
    Even though some Members did proceed with objections, Vice 
President Pence and Congress stood firm and successfully 
concluded the joint session in the early morning hours of 
January 7th.
    Here is some of what members of the President's party said 
in the days and weeks after the attack.

    Senator McConnell. There's no question, none, that President Trump 
is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the 
day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building 
believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their 
President, and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the 
growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and 
reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the 
largest megaphone on planet Earth.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. McCarthy. The violence, destruction, and chaos we saw earlier 
was unacceptable, undemocratic, and un-American. It was the saddest day 
I've ever had as serving as a Member of this institution.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Roy. Madam Speaker, today the people's House was attacked which 
is an attack on the Republic itself. There is no excuse for it. A woman 
died, and people need to go to jail. And the President should never 
have spun up certain Americans to believe something that simply cannot 
be.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Well after 3 in the morning, Congress 
certified the 2020 election results. Soon after, this statement 
by President Trump was posted on Dan Scavino's Twitter account 
because the President's account by now had been suspended.
    As you can see, President Trump stuck with his Big Lie that 
the election was stolen. But he did say there would be an 
orderly transition. We learned, though, that the statement was 
not necessarily his idea.
    Jason Miller, a campaign adviser, told us that after the 
joint session started, he heard nothing from President Trump or 
the White House about assuring the Nation that the transfer of 
power would take place. So, Mr. Miller took it upon himself to 
draft a statement and called the President at 9:23 that night 
to convince him to put it out.
    Let's listen to what he had to say about the call.

    Mr. Heaphy. Did he disagree with something that you had put in the 
statement, some particular word or phrase that--that he did not want 
included?
    Mr. Jason Miller. I'd say just that he wanted to say ``peaceful'' 
transition, and I said that ship's kind-of already sailed so we're 
going to say ``orderly'' transition. That was--that was about the 
extent of disagreement or--or pushback from the conversation.

    Mr. Kinzinger. The last person President Trump spoke to by 
phone that night was Johnny McEntee, his head of personnel. Mr. 
McEntee told us that they talked about the events of the day 
and the multiple resignations by administration officials.
    The decision whether to resign was one that weighed heavily 
on people in the administration. On the one hand, people like 
Mr. Pottinger and Ms. Matthews here, as proud as they were to 
have served, refused to be associated with President Trump's 
dereliction of duty. But others were sincerely worried that 
leaving President Trump to his own devices would put the 
country at continued risk.
    Listen to what we heard about that tension from Pat 
Cipollone, from General Mark Milley, and Eugene Scalia, who was 
the Secretary of Labor.

    Mr. Cipollone. And then after that some people were resigning, 
obviously, over January 6th. We know who they--they were. Did I 
consider it? Yes. Did I do it? No.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Cipollone. Concerned about is if people in the counsel's office 
left, who would--who would replace me? And I had some concerns that it 
might be somebody who, you know, had been giving bad advice.
                                 ______
                                 
    Secretary Scalia. On the morning of the 7th, the decision I arrived 
at was that the most constructive thing I could think of was to seek a 
meeting of the Cabinet. You know, I thought that trying to work within 
the administration to steady the ship was likely to have, you know, 
greater value than simply resigning, after which point I would have 
been powerless to really affect things with the administration.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Cipollone. Eugene thought that there should be a Cabinet 
meeting.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Heaphy. Do you know why Mark thought it would not be 
productive?
    Mr. Cipollone. I--I--I don't remember why. I--I think it probably 
had something to do with Mark's view of how the President might react 
and that he--you know, but things like that.
                                 ______
                                 
    General Milley. There was a couple of the calls where, you know, 
Meadows and/or Pompeo, but more Meadows, you know, how--how is the 
President doing? Like, Pompeo might say, ``How's the President doing?'' 
And Meadows would say, ``Well, he's in a really dark place.'' Like 
here's one, for example, on the 7th of January. So this is a day after, 
right? ``POTUS is very emotional and in a bad place,'' Meadows.

    Mr. Kinzinger. As you heard Secretary Scalia wanted 
President Trump to convene a Cabinet meeting. He put his 
request in a memo to the President, and here is what it said.
    You can see that Secretary Scalia recommended that the 
President ``No longer publicly question the election results. 
After Wednesday, no one can deny this is harmful.''
    Secretary Scalia also highlighted the importance of the 
public knowing the President would invoke his Cabinet in 
decision making and not ``certain private individuals.''
    Though Secretary Scalia did not say it, he was referring to 
Rudy Giuliani and the rest of the so-called clown car working 
with President Trump to try to overturn the election. Secretary 
Scalia understood that the President needed to do more to 
reassure the public about the last few weeks of the Trump 
administration.
    Mr. Pottinger, when you made the decision to resign, did 
you walk out of the White House immediately?
    Mr. Pottinger. No. I wanted to first talk to my immediate 
boss that was the National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien. 
Robert O'Brien was traveling on the 6th. I reached him at about 
4:30 p.m. and told him that I was submitting my resignation. He 
accepted the resignation. But he also asked whether I could 
stay until he could get back to the White House, and I agreed 
to that. We both wanted to make sure that I was leaving in a 
responsible way.
    We still have foreign adversaries to worry about, you know, 
hackers, terrorists, nation-states, and I did not want to leave 
my chair empty given that I was the top National security 
staffer in the White House. So, I ended up staying at my desk 
through the night. When Robert O'Brien arrived back at the 
White House the next morning, the morning of the 7th, I 
debriefed with him and left for the last time.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So, you and I both share a passion for 
National security of our country. Can you share with me, what 
is your view on how January 6th impacted our National security?
    Mr. Pottinger. Well, when you have a Presidential 
transition, even under the best circumstances, it's a time of 
vulnerability. It's a time of vulnerability. For--when you have 
a contested election, I was certainly concerned that some of 
our adversaries would be tempted to probe or test U.S. resolve. 
As an example, in late December, the Iranian Government 
attacked the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. They did that using some 
of their terrorist proxies.
    President Trump did handle that. He sent a very clear 
warning to the ayatollah and his regime, which I think had a 
useful effect. I think that we would have handled other threats 
of that nature, and luckily no other threats materialized 
before the inauguration on the 20th.
    But our National security was harmed in a different way by 
the 6th of January, and that is that it--I think it emboldened 
our enemies by helping give them ammunition to feed a narrative 
that our system of government doesn't work, that the United 
States is in decline. China, the Putin regime in Russia, 
Tehran, they're fond of pushing those kinds of narratives.
    By the way, they're wrong. You know, we've been hearing for 
the entirety of U.S. history from kings and despots that the 
United States is in decline, and those kings and despots have 
been proven wrong every single time. But, nonetheless, January 
6th helped feed a perception that I think emboldens our 
adversaries.
    You know, the other part I think is simply our allies. I 
heard from a lot of friends in Europe, in Asia, allies, close 
friends and supporters of the United States, that they were 
concerned about the health of our democracy. So, I think it's 
incumbent upon us to put their minds at ease, to put our own 
hearts at ease by investigating what happened on the 6th and 
making sure that it never happens again.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Look, I've always said democracies are not 
defined by bad days; they're defined by how they recover from 
those bad days. That's what we're doing here, is to bring 
accountability to that so we can actually come back even 
stronger than when we went into January 6th.
    Ms. Matthews, as you left the White House for the last time 
that night on January 6th, what did you think Americans needed 
to hear from President Trump?
    Ms. Matthews. I think that the American people needed to 
hear and see him publicly commit to a peaceful or at least 
orderly transition of power. In the aftermath of the Capitol 
attack, it wasn't just enough for us to ask him to condemn the 
violence. He needed to agree that he would peacefully transfer 
power over to the incoming administration because that's one of 
our fundamentals in what it means to live in a democracy.
    So, that evening when I resigned, the resignation statement 
that I drafted, I referenced this, and I said our Nation needs 
a peaceful transfer of power in hopes that it would put some 
sort of public pressure on the White House and President Trump 
to publicly agree to an orderly transition.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you.
    I yield to my friend from Virginia.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you, Mr. Kinzinger.
    The staff who remained at the White House on the morning of 
January 7th knew the President needed to address the Nation 
again and they had a speech prepared for him that morning, but 
he refused for hours to give it.
    As you heard Cassidy Hutchinson testify previously, 
President Trump finally agreed to record an address to the 
Nation later that evening, the evening of January 7th, because 
of concerns he might be removed from power under the 25th 
Amendment or by impeachment. We know these threats were real. 
Sean Hannity said so himself in a text message that day to 
Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
    He wrote: ``No more stolen election talk. Yes, impeachment 
and 25th Amendment are real.''
    We obtained the never-before-seen raw footage of the 
President recording his address to the Nation that day on 
January 7th, more than 24 hours after the last time he had 
addressed the Nation from the Rose Garden. Let's talk a look.

    White House Staff. Whenever you're ready, sir.
    President Trump. I would like to begin by addressing the heinous 
attack yesterday----
                                 ______
                                 
    President Trump [continuing]. And to those who broke the law, you 
will pay. You do not represent our movement. You do not represent our 
country. And if you broke the law--I can't say that. I'm not gonna--I 
already said you will pay.
                                 ______
                                 
    President Trump. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have 
defied the seat of--it's defiled, right? See, I can't see it very well. 
I'll do this. I'm going to do this. Let's go.
                                 ______
                                 
    President Trump. But this election is now over. Congress has 
certified the results. I don't want to say the election's over. I just 
want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the 
election's over, okay?
    Ms. Trump. But Congress has--now Congress has----
    President Trump. Yeah, right.
    Ms. Trump. Now Congress----
    President Trump. I didn't say over. So, let--let me see. Go to the 
paragraph before.
                                 ______
                                 
    President Trump. Okay? I would like to begin by addressing the 
heinous attack yesterday. Yesterday is a hard word for me.
    Ms. Trump. Just take it out. Say ``heinous attack.''
    White House Staff. Say ``heinous attack on our Nation.''
    President Trump. Ah, good. Take the word ``yesterday'' out because 
it doesn't work. The heinous attack on our country. Say ``on our 
country.'' Want to say that?
    Ms. Trump. No, keep it.
                                 ______
                                 
    President Trump. My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the 
vote--my only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote.

    Mrs. Luria. On January 7th, 1 day after he incited an 
insurrection based on a lie, President Trump still could not 
say that the election was over.
    Mr. Pottinger, you've taken the oath multiple times in the 
Marines and as an official in the Executive branch.
    Can you please share with us your view about the oath of 
office and how that translates into accepting election results 
and a transfer of power?
    Mr. Pottinger. Sure. You know, this isn't the first time 
that we've had a close election in this country. President 
Trump certainly had every right to challenge in court the 
results of these various elections. But, once you've had due 
process under the law, you have to conform with the law, no 
matter how bitter the result. Once you've presented your 
evidence in court, judges have heard that evidence. Judges have 
ruled. If you continue to contest an election, you're not just 
contesting an election anymore; you're actually challenging the 
Constitution itself. You are challenging the societal norms 
that allow us to remain unified.
    I think that one example, for example, you've got Vice 
President Richard Nixon back in 1960 had lost the hard-fought 
election against Senator John F. Kennedy. There were 
irregularities in that vote according to a lot of the 
histories, and a lot of Vice President Nixon's supporters asked 
him to fight. Contest it. Don't concede. But, in one of his 
finest moments, Vice President Nixon said no. He said it would 
tear the country to pieces, and he conceded to Jack Kennedy and 
announced that he was going to support him as the next 
President.
    We have an example of a Democratic candidate for President, 
Vice President Al Gore, who faced a very similar dilemma. He 
strongly disagreed with the Supreme Court decision that lost 
his election bid and allowed President George W. Bush to take 
office, but he gave a speech of concession in late December--
mid- or late December 2000, where he said: This is for the sake 
of the unity of us as a people and for the strength of our 
democracy, I also am going to concede. I'm going to support the 
new President.
    His speech is actually a pretty good model, I think, for 
any candidate for any office up to and including the President 
and from any party to read, particularly right now. You know, 
the oath that our Presidents take, it's very similar to the 
oath of office I took as a U.S. Marine officer and the oath I 
took as a White House official. It is to support and defend the 
Constitution. It's to protect the Constitution, to bear truth, 
faith, and allegiance to the Constitution. It is a sacred oath. 
It's an oath that we take before our families. We take that 
oath before God.
    I think that we have an obligation to live by that oath. I 
do still believe that we have the most ingenious system of 
government on Earth, despite its imperfections. I don't envy 
countries that don't have this system that actually allows for 
a predictable, peaceful transfer of government every 4 to 8 
years, and it's not something that we should take for granted.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you.
    As we heard at the start of the hearing, in the immediate 
aftermath of January 6th, Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy 
understood that President Trump bore responsibility for that 
day and should have taken immediate action to stop the 
violence. He was even more candid in calls with Republican 
colleagues. As you'll hear in a moment, recordings of some of 
these calls that were made were later published by The New York 
Times, the context for these calls was that a resolution had 
been introduced in the House calling for Vice President Pence 
and the Cabinet to remove President Trump from power under the 
25th Amendment.
    Let's listen.

    Mr. McCarthy. I've had it with this guy. What he did is 
unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. McCarthy. The only discussions I would have with him is that I 
think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation he should 
resign. I mean, that would be my take, but I don't think he would take 
it, but I don't know.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. McCarthy. But let me be very clear to all of you, and I've been 
very clear to the President. He bears responsibility for his words and 
actions, no ifs, ands, or buts. I asked him personally today does he 
hold responsibility for what happened, does he feel bad about what 
happened. He told me he does have some responsibility for what 
happened, and he'd need to acknowledge that.

    Mrs. Luria. President Trump has never publicly acknowledged 
his responsibility for the attack. The only time he apparently 
did so was in that private call with Kevin McCarthy. There's 
something else President Trump has never acknowledged: The 
names and the memories of the officers who died following the 
attack on the Capitol.
    We're honored to be joined tonight by police and first 
responders who bravely protected us on January 6th. Your 
character and courage give us hope that democracy can and 
should prevail, even in the face of a violent insurrection. We 
on this dais can never thank you enough for what you did to 
protect our democracy.
    On January 9th, two of President Trump's top campaign 
officials texted each other about the President's glaring 
silence on the tragic death of Capitol Police Officer Brian 
Sicknick, who succumbed to his injuries the night of January 
7th.
    His campaign officials were Tim Murtaugh, Trump's director 
of communication, and one of his deputies, Matthew Wolking. 
Their job was to convince people to vote for President Trump, 
so they knew his heart, his mind, and his voice as well as 
anyone, and they knew how he connects with his supporters.
    Here's what they had to say about their boss:
    Murtaugh said: ``Also shitty not to have acknowledged the 
death of the Capitol Police Officer.''
    Wolking responded: ``That's enraging to me. Everything he 
said about supporting law enforcement was a lie.''
    To which Murtaugh replied: ``You know what this is, of 
course, if he acknowledged the dead cop, he'd be implicitly 
faulting the mob. And he won't do that because they're his 
people, and he would also be close to acknowledging that what 
he'd lit at the rally got out of control. No way he 
acknowledges something that could ultimately be called his 
fault. No way.''
    President Trump did not then and does not now have the 
character or courage to say to the American people what his own 
people know to be true. He is responsible for the attack on the 
Capitol on January 6th.
    Thank you, and I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mrs. Luria.
    Tonight's testimony and evidence is as sobering as it is 
straightforward. Within minutes of stepping off the Ellipse 
stage, Donald Trump knew about the violent attack on the 
Capitol. From the comfort of his dining room, he watched on TV 
as the attack escalated.
    He sent tweets that inflamed and expressed support for the 
desire of some to literally kill Vice President Mike Pence.
    For 3 hours, he refused to call off the attack. Donald 
Trump refused to take the urgent advice he received that day, 
not from his political opponents or from the liberal media, but 
from his own family, his own friends, his own staff, and his 
own advisers.
    In the midst of an attack, when there was no time for 
politics, the people closest to Trump told him the truth: It 
was his supporters attacking the Capitol, and he alone could 
get through to them. So, they pled for him to act, to place his 
country above himself. Still he refused to lead and to meet the 
moment to honor his oath.
    It was only once the Vice President and Members of Congress 
were in secure locations and the officers defending the Capitol 
began to turn the tide, that then-President Trump engaged in 
the political theater of telling the mob to go home. Even then, 
he told them all they were special and that he loved them.
    Whatever your politics, whatever you think about the 
outcome of the election, we as Americans must all agree on 
this: Donald Trump's conduct on January 6th was a supreme 
violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of 
his duty to our Nation. It is a stain on our history. It is a 
dishonor to all those who have sacrificed and died in service 
of our democracy.
    When we present our full findings, we will recommend 
changes to laws and policies to guard against another January 
6th. The reason that's imperative is that the forces Donald 
Trump ignited that day have not gone away. The militant, 
intolerant ideologies, the militias, the alienation and the 
disaffection, the weird fantasies and disinformation, they're 
all still out there ready to go. That's the elephant in the 
room.
    But, if January 6th has reminded us of anything, I pray it 
has reminded us of this: Laws are just words on paper. They 
mean nothing without public servants dedicated to the rule of 
law and who are held accountable by a public that believes 
oaths matter more than party tribalism or the cheap thrill of 
scoring political points.
    We the people must demand more of our politicians and 
ourselves. Oaths matter. Character matters. Truth matters. If 
we do not renew our faith and commitment to these principles, 
this great experiment of ours, our shining beacon on the hill, 
will not endure.
    I yield to the gentlewoman from Virginia.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you, Mr. Kinzinger.
    Throughout our hearings, we've provided many facts and 
painted a vivid picture of the events of January 6th: The 
violence; the human toll, both emotional and physical, 
including the tragic loss of life; the threats to our 
Constitution, the rule of law, and the danger to this Nation, a 
Nation we all love as Americans.
    In tonight's hearing, we've gone into great detail about 
the events inside the White House on January 6th. We've 
described how the President of the United States, who was bound 
by oath to the Constitution and by duty to ensure the laws are 
faithfully executed, took no action when the cornerstone of our 
democracy, a peaceful transition of power, was under attack.
    But it's more than that. Donald Trump summoned a violent 
mob and promised to lead that mob to the Capitol to compel 
those he thought would cave to that kind of pressure. When he 
was thwarted in his effort to lead the armed uprising, he 
instigated the attackers to target the Vice President with 
violence, a man who just wanted to do his constitutional duty. 
So, in the end, this is not as it may appear, a story of 
inaction in a time of crisis. But, instead, it was the final 
action of Donald Trump's own plan to usurp the will of the 
American people and remain in power.
    Not until it was clear that his effort to violently disrupt 
or delay the counting of the election results had failed did he 
send his message--a message to his supporters in which he 
commiserated with their pain and he told them affectionately to 
go home. That was not the message of condemnation and just 
punishment for those who broke the law that we expect from a 
President, whose oath and duty is to ensure the laws are 
faithfully executed. But, instead, it was his newest version of 
``stand back and stand by.''
    To me, this is personal. I first swore an oath to support 
and defend the Constitution against enemies, foreign and 
domestic, when I entered the U.S. Naval Academy at age 17. I 
spent two decades on ships at sea defending our Nation from 
known and identifiable foreign enemies who sought to do us 
harm. I never imagined that enemy would come from within. I was 
not as prescient as Abraham Lincoln, who 23 years before the 
Civil War said: ``If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves 
be its author and its finisher.''
    Donald Trump was the author, and we the people, for 
ourselves and our posterity, should not let Donald Trump be a 
finisher.
    Thank you. I yield to the Vice Chair.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mrs. Luria.
    I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today. The 
Members of the Select Committee may have additional questions 
for today's witnesses, and we ask that you respond 
expeditiously in writing to those questions.
    Without objection, Members will be permitted 10 business 
days to submit statements for the record, including opening 
remarks and additional questions from our witnesses.
    I'd now like to turn things to Chairman Thompson for a few 
closing words.
    Chairman Thompson. The Members of the Committee and I 
appreciate and thank all persons who have come forward 
voluntarily to provide information to help protect our 
democracy. Our work continues. As we made clear throughout 
these hearings, our investigation is going forward. We continue 
to receive new information every day. We are pursuing many 
additional witnesses for testimony. We will reconvene in 
September to continue laying out our findings to the American 
people and pushing for accountability.
    In the first hearing of this series, I asked the American 
people to consider the facts and judge for themselves. The 
facts are clear and unambiguous. I thank the American people 
for their attention over the past several weeks. I wish you all 
a pleasant evening.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Let me, again, thank our witnesses 
today. We've seen bravery and honor in these hearings.
    Ms. Matthews and Mr. Pottinger, both of you will be 
remembered for that, as will Cassidy Hutchinson. She sat here 
alone, took the oath and testified before millions of 
Americans. She knew all along that she would be attacked by 
President Trump and by the 50-, 
60-, and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive 
privilege. But, like our witnesses today, she has courage, and 
she did it anyway.
    Cassidy, Sarah, and our other witnesses including, Officer 
Caroline Edwards, Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, are 
an inspiration to American women and to American girls. We owe 
a debt to all of those who have and will appear here.
    That brings me to another point. This Committee has shown 
you the testimony of dozens of Republican witnesses, those who 
served President Trump loyally for years. The case against 
Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who 
were his political enemies. It is instead a series of 
confessions by Donald Trump's own appointees, his own friends, 
his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for 
years, and his own family. They have come forward, and they 
have told the American people the truth.
    For those of you who seem to think the evidence would be 
different if Republican Leader McCarthy had not withdrawn his 
nominees from this Committee, let me ask you this: Do you 
really think Bill Barr is such a delicate flower that he would 
wilt under cross-examination? Pat Cipollone? Eric Herschmann? 
Jeff Rosen? Richard Donoghue? Of course they aren't. None of 
our witnesses are.
    At one point in 2016, when he was first running for office, 
Donald Trump said this: ``I could stand in the middle of Fifth 
Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters.''
    That quote came to mind last week when audio from Trump 
adviser Steve Bannon surfaced from October 31, 2020, just a few 
days before the Presidential election. Let's listen.

    Mr. Bannon. And what Trump's going to do is declare victory, right? 
He's going to declare victory, but that doesn't mean he's a winner. 
He's just gonna say he's a winner.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Bannon. The Democrats--more of our people vote early that 
count. Theirs vote in mail. And so they're going to have a natural 
disadvantage and Trump's going to take advantage--that's our strategy. 
He's gonna declare himself a winner. So, when you wake up Wednesday 
morning, it's going to be a firestorm.
                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Bannon. Also--also, if Trump is--if Trump is losing by 10 or 11 
o'clock at night, it's going to be even crazier because he's gonna sit 
right there and say they stole it. If Biden's winning, Trump is going 
to do some crazy shit.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Of course, 4 days later, President Trump 
declared victory when his own campaign advisers told him he had 
absolutely no basis to do so. What the new Steve Bannon audio 
demonstrates is that Donald Trump's plan to falsely claim 
victory in 2020, no matter what the facts actually were, was 
premeditated. Perhaps worse, Donald Trump believed he could 
convince his voters to buy it, whether he had any actual 
evidence of fraud or not. The same thing continued to occur 
from election day onward until January 6th. Donald Trump was 
confident that he could convince his supporters the election 
was stolen, no matter how many lawsuits he lost, and he lost 
scores of them.
    He was told over and over again in immense detail that the 
election was not stolen. There was no evidence of widespread 
fraud. It didn't matter. Donald Trump was confident he could 
persuade his supporters to believe whatever he said, no matter 
how outlandish, and ultimately that they could be summoned to 
Washington to help him remain President for another term.
    As we showed you last week, even President Trump's legal 
team led by Rudy Giuliani, knew they had no actual evidence to 
demonstrate the election was stolen. Again, it didn't matter. 
Here's the worst part: Donald Trump knows that millions of 
Americans who supported him would stand up and defend our 
Nation were it threatened. They would put their lives and their 
freedom at stake to protect her. He is preying on their 
patriotism. He is preying on their sense of justice. On January 
6th, Donald Trump turned their love of country into a weapon 
against our Capitol and our Constitution.
    He has purposely created the false impression that America 
is threatened by a foreign force controlling voting machines or 
that a wave of tens of millions of false ballots were secretly 
ejected into our election system or that ballot workers have 
secret thumb drives and are stealing elections with them. All 
complete nonsense.
    We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and 
remain a free Nation. In late November 2020, while President 
Trump was still pursuing lawsuits, many of us were urging him 
to put any genuine evidence of fraud forward in the courts and 
to accept the outcome those cases. As January 6th approached, I 
circulated a memo to my Republican colleagues explaining why 
our congressional proceedings to count electoral votes could 
not be used to change the outcome of the election.
    But what I did not know at the time was that President 
Trump's own advisers, also Republicans, also conservatives, 
including his White House counsel, his Justice Department, his 
campaign officials, they were all telling him almost exactly 
the same thing I was telling my colleagues: There was no 
evidence of fraud or irregularities sufficient to change the 
election outcome. Our courts had ruled. It was over.
    Now we know that it didn't matter what any of us said 
because Donald Trump wasn't looking for the right answer 
legally or the right answer factually. He was looking for a way 
to remain in office.
    Let's put that aside for a moment and focus just on what we 
saw today. In our hearing tonight you saw an American President 
faced with a stark and unmistakable choice between right and 
wrong. There was no ambiguity. No nuance. Donald Trump made a 
purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the 
on-going violence against law enforcement to threaten our 
constitutional order. There is no way to excuse that behavior. 
It was indefensible.
    Every American must consider this: Can a President who is 
willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the 
violence of January 6th ever be trusted with any position of 
authority in our great Nation again?
    In this room, in 1918, the Committee on Women's Suffrage 
convened to discuss and debate whether women should be granted 
the right to vote. This room is full of history. We on this 
Committee know we have a solemn obligation not to idly squander 
what so many Americans have fought and died for.
    Ronald Reagan's great ally Margaret Thatcher said this: Let 
it never be said that the dedication of those who love freedom 
is less than the determination of those who would destroy it.
    Let me assure every one of you this: Our Committee 
understands the gravity of this moment, the consequences for 
our Nation. We have much work yet to do, and we will see you 
all in September.
    I request those in the hearing room remain seated until the 
Capitol Police have escorted witnesses and Members from the 
room.
    Without objection, the Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 10:45 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

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