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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.

Today, the Justice Department indicted former Trump White House official Peter Navarro for contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the January 6th Select Committee. The former trade adviser was a leader in the Trump White House effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In April, Common Cause urged House Members to vote to certify criminal contempt citations against Navarro and fellow White House official Dan Scavino.

Today, the conservative majority of United States Supreme Court struck down a law that prevents potential corruption from arising when politicians make large personal loans to their own campaigns only to repay them with donations received after Election Day. Candidates will now be able to take out millions of dollars in personal loans for their campaigns that can be repaid after the election by special interest donors who are effectively depositing money into a politicians’ personal bank accounts. Common Cause filed an amicus brief in Federal Election Commission (FEC) v. Ted Cruz for Senate with the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and Democracy 21.