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Then-President Trump and his chief of staff Mark Meadows were warned repeatedly of anticipated violence on January 6th yet did nothing. They were informed of semi-automatic rifles and pistols - AR-15s and Glocks - being carried by members of the audience on the Ellipse, hours before his speech, yet Trump incited the crowd and called on his heavily armed audience to march on the Capitol and ‘fight like hell.’

Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, but he did not want to leave the White House and admit his loss publicly so he lied. He lied and he repeatedly tried to force the U.S. Department of Justice to back up those lies and “leave the rest to him.” He was asking his handpicked senior DOJ officials to participate in a criminal conspiracy orchestrated by Trump and his henchmen that at its heart was nothing short of a coup to illegally seize power and overturn the will and the vote of the American people.

Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, yet for months he continued to attempt to cajole and coerce state legislators and election officials into violating their oaths of office and overturn the 2020 election. Before he turned violent insurrectionists loose on the United States Capitol on January 6th, he turned mobs loose on the homes of local elections officials in an effort to intimidate those officials into breaking the law and falsifying election results to hand him an election he lost at the ballot box.  

Donald Trump and his attorneys knew that they were asking then-Vice President to violate the law and his oath of office by rejecting electoral votes on January 6th.   Testimony today before the January 6th Committee by Trump administration officials and attorneys made that abundantly clear. Former president-Trump and his attorney John Eastman showed their contempt for the rule of law and that they were willing to do almost anything to avoid the peaceful transfer of power after losing the 2020 presidential election. That is precisely why Eastman asked for a presidential pardon before Donald Trump eventually left office.  

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and he knew it. Evidence presented by the January 6 Committee made that very clear today. Trump’s hand-picked loyalists and legal experts from Attorney General Bill Barr on down told him repeatedly that there was absolutely no truth to the fraud allegations that he continued to repeat. Trump’s lies continued to stoke the anger of his staunchest supporters – anger that he would turn loose on the Capitol on January 6, in an effort to overturn the election he lost by force.   

On January 6, 2021, the American people witnessed a violent insurrection on live television. Tonight, we learned beyond a shadow of a doubt that the insurrection was planned, promoted, and pushed by Donald Trump and his cronies in an attempt to steal the election and ignore the will of the American people. The bipartisan committee laid out evidence gathered by non-partisan career investigators revealing the vast scope of the criminal conspiracy to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election. It was a wide-ranging and premeditated plot that began weeks before the deadly attack on the Capitol by a racist mob.