At a Thursday afternoon hearing of the House panel investigating January 6, vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) laid out the threat of Trump’s actions around the last presidential election and the guilt he holds for what has unfolded.
“We’ve received new and voluminous documentation from the Secret Service, which we continue to analyze,” Cheney said. “We’ve received new witness testimony, including about efforts to obstruct our investigation and conceal key facts… Our committee may ultimately decide to make a series of criminal referrals to the Department of Justice… A key element of this committee’s responsibility is to propose reforms to prevent January 6 from ever happening again… The vast weight of evidence presented so far has shown us that the central cause of January 6 was one man: Donald Trump, who many others followed. None of this would have happened without him. He was personally and substantially involved in all of it. Exactly how did one man cause all of this? Today we will focus on President Trump’s state of mind, his intent, his motivations, and how he spurred others to do his bidding, and how another January 6 could happen again if we do not take necessary action to prevent it.”
“President Trump had a premeditated plan to declare that the election was fraudulent and stolen before Election Day, before he knew the election results,” Cheney added. “Many of those who stepped forward to help, including Rudy Giuliani, knew they never had real evidence sufficient to change the election results, and on the evening of January 5, they admitted they were still trying to find that phantom evidence.”
Cheney subsequently emphasized the information documenting the security of the election to which Trump had access, making any argument of ignorance on the former president’s part even more difficult to reasonably entertain. “President Trump’s own campaign experts told him that there was no evidence to support his claims,” Cheney observed, also noting push-back from within the Justice Department. Bill Barr, who is certainly no secret liberal, was among the dissenters from Trump’s plots. “Any future president inclined to attempt what Donald Trump did in 2020 has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way,” Cheney warned.
There were comprehensive investigations into the security of the results of the last presidential election, and no credible probe found any indication of widespread fraud, although Trump is still insisting that fraud swung the outcome of the election. He isn’t acting in ignorance; he is actively pushing back the readily available reality in front of him. “There is no defense that Donald Trump was duped or irrational,” Cheney concluded. “No president can defy the rule of law and act this way in a constitutional republic, period.” Trump has pushed for action on the 2020 presidential election results this year, years after the election concluded. He called the leader of a state legislative chamber in Wisconsin to push for the invalidation of the 2020 results there after a state Supreme Court ruling against ballot drop boxes, and he has repeatedly raised the idea of authorities declaring him the 2020 winner — this year, two years later.
