votes. >> by the way, that was kelly ward in that video from arizona, but that was mike pence closing out the 2020 election. the scheme didn't work but now it's under criminal investigation. pam? >> right. as you noted two states, at least two sent fake certificates to the national archives. thank you. thank you for joining me this evening. i'm pamela brown, the cnn special report "trumping democracy an american coup" is next. >> announcer: the following is a cnn special report. the violence at the capitol on january 6th, 2021 was just the most visible part of donald trump's attempt to hold on to power. tonight, we talk to those who witnessed the whole plot unfold and tried to stop it. the lies.

>> this election was stolen from you, from me, and from the country. >> if you ask how many republican congressmen believe donald trump was reelected, i'd say maybe a couple but 60% of our base does. >> conspiracy theories. >> that could have been mickey mouse. >> watching. this is the craziest thing i've ever seen and people bought it. >> lawsuits. >> they tried to not have your votes counted. they did not want your vote to count. >> potentially illegal pressure campaigns. >> i just want to find 11,780 votes. >> what he was asking for wasn't supported by the facts, wasn't supported by the constitution. >> extraordinary scheming. >> let's talk about it. >> just breathtaking you would have laid out such a clear game plan that so clearly violated the constitution. >> and all too many in the republican party. >> do you believe this was a free and fair election?

>> and maga media who followed along. >> unverifiable dumps of votes. >> we will never give up. we will never concede. >> stop the steal! stop the steal! >> it all might have worked if not for a few people in key places notably among them, brave republicans. >> in the moments of truth, you need the right people to pass the most difficult tests. we had just enough people on january 6th pass the test. >> pursuant to the constitution and the laws of the united states. >> do you think donald trump attempted to stage a coup? >> i don't know what you could call it other than a coup. >> i have real concerns about the future of this democracy. >> i'm deeply afraid for our country. >> tonight, a cnn special report "trumping democracy" an american coup.

you'll never take back our country with weakness. you have to show strength. >> january 6th was the line that can't be crossed. january 6th was an unconstitutional attempt led by the president of the united states to overturn an american election and reinstall himself in power. that's third world country territory. my family left cuba to avoid that fate. i don't let it happen here. >> that is anthony gonzalez of ohio. >> i rise today in support of the cuban people. >> grandson of an immigrant, he has an american success story. a talented wide receiver that played three years for ohio state, five more in the nfl and when injuries sidelined him, he got a business degree from stanford. all this before age 34 when

gonzalez felt called to run for congress. >> i got into this because, look, my family came here from cuba. my father's family came here from cuba. we come from a country that has fallen. we come from a failed nation and we see what happens when the rule of law is dismantled, when a strong man is allowed to take hold. >> now the conservative republican has a warning for all of us about what trump and his minions tried to do when they tried to steal the election. >> this country has been through a lot. we fought through it and we've persevered. as much as i despise almost every policy of the biden administration, the country can survive a round of bad policy. the country can't survive torching the constitution. that's the one thing the country can't survive. >> it's going to be fraud

>> reporter: donald trump's plan to undermine began months before the votes started. >> what are they going? the ballots? >> a lie telling for years. 2012, more reports of voting machines switching romney votes to obama. pay close attention to the machines. don't let your vote be stolen. not true. in 2016, "ted cruz didn't win iowa. he stole it." not true. and this after he won the electoral college, hence the presidency, in 2016. "i won the popular vote if you duct the millions of people who voted illegally." also not true. >> president trump started a commission to look for that in 2017. he could find nothing. they disbanded before they could even file a report. >> reporter: in 2020, mail-in

ballots which were going to be more prevalent because of the pandemic, became a perfect new foil for trump's old claim. >> voting by mail is rot with fraud and abuse. when you do all mail-in voting ballots, you're asking for fraud. >> reporter: alyssa pharon griffin the white house director forethen president trump to december 2020. >> pulled him into the oval reminding her many senior citizens would vote by mail and deterring people from turning out and from voting in the way they would. >> reporter: all of this caught the attention of congresswoman liz cheney. a rock red conservative and daughter of former vice president dick cheney. at the time number three in house republican leadership. the conference chair. it concerned me, because we wanted people to be able to vote as republicans. i wasn't concerned about it from a constitutional perspective at

all. those concerns clearly came later on. >> millions of missing ballots -- >> reporter: cheney's constitutional concerns came about five weeks before election day. >> then president trump was asked if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power. >> rin, lose or draw in this election, will you commit here today for a peaceful transferral of power after the election? >> well, we're going to have to see what happens. i've been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster. >> you tweeted a response to that. you wrote, the peaceful power of transfer is fundamental to survival of our republic. american leader swear an oath to the constitution. we will uphold that both that suggests to me you were worried? >> i was. such a basic, fundamental thing. every president really responsible for safeguarding peaceful transfer of power. >> we're going to have to see what happened. >> so for president trump not to be willing to make that

commitment was stunning. >> reporter: that was september 2020. when donald trump also stunned republican al schmidt. >> we needed to get them onboard or move the polling place. >> reporter: at the time schmidt was one of three city commissioners philadelphia. his job, oversees elections. >> a big problem. philadelphia went in to watch. poll watchers. they were thrown out. weren't allowed to watch. you know why? because bad things happen in philadelphia. bad things. >> reporter: watching the debate. president trump said bad things happen in philadelphia. what goes through your mind? >> i think i -- said out loud -- i see what you're doing. we had the sitting president trying to discredit the results coming from the city of philadelphia before a single vote was cast in the city. >> watch those ballots. i don't like it. >> thousands of ballots all over the country are being reported. some thrown in garbage cans with my name on them.

>> oh, did you see today? there was a big mishap with the ballots. another one. >> reporter: not only was trump spreading distrust of the electoral process. >> did you see they found 50,000 ballots in, like, a river? >> reporter: he was doing it in states such as pennsylvania and michigan where the margins are expected to be tight and the wait for results expected to be unusually long. >> in most of america, there is a big traditional skew between early votes and election day votes. the republicans usually win election day, and the democrats usually one early voting and absentee voting. >> all this vote flowing in daunte wright part of fox news 2020 decision desk. >> the question is do republicans do well enough on election day to offset it? >> reporter: in 2020 set to be more pronounced and that usual because trump telling them not

to trust the delegates. this prompted misleading early vote counts. >> people call a red mirage. trump's numbers may be highest on election night then a long tail called the blue wave as nor votes absentees come in overwhelming will come in democrat. big caveat, never had early voting like this. >> we all nigh some tats would show him up and then get closer. >> reporter: did he not know that? >> no. told that repeatedly and he didn't care. he decided before the summer, frankly when it was clear that the pandemic was going to change the way by mail voting worked a days expanded he started laying groundwork for this cannot be trusted. >> this is not right. >> reporter: everyone who followed the elections closely knew. >> breaking news to talk about. >> reporter: right before the actual election day a convenient alternative explanation.

>> this project of a system called hammer. >> reporter: a false conspiracy theory popped up in right-wing media. >>s going to look good for president trump, but they're going to change it. >> reporter: there would be many, many more conspiracy theories in the days ahead. >> voters are in the final hours of making a monumental decision for this country. >> keeping an eye on voting under way across the country. >> and predicts president trump will win the state of florida. a wig bin -- >> former president trump was in his residence. he had people cominging up and down but there were staffers, aides, friends, all sorts of people in the east room munching on mini burgers, and celebrating what they believed, once the state of florida was called for trump, was going to be a repeat of 2016. >> a big win for president trump in florida. >> trump was in a decent mood until fox called arizona for biden. >> fox news decision desk is

calling arizona for joe biden. that is a big get for the biden campaign. >> he believed told by advisers after winning florida, this is looking good for us. just like 2016. the states supposed to go for biden are going for you and then got to the arizona call and it all fell apart. >> a significant victory for joe biden as i say. the first flip of the night in the presidential race. >> reporter: the fox news decision desk made that call hours before the associated press, and days before the major news networks. >> people were sending me what people were saying on social media. a sort of, you know, psychotic murderous rage about us and we don't do anything. we're just lettermen. i'm telling you where the storm is going. i don't make the weather. >> he started calling talent at fox and urging them to retract. >> as though it was the call that made that true not the votes cast.

♪ >> he had made up his mind weeks before he would go to the podium if election night showed he was losing and say hoe won. that's exactly what he did. >> 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. [ cheers ] we did win this -- >> reporter: then he said this -- >> we want all voting to stop. we don't want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list. okay? >> reporter: but nobody was voting. they were just counting. the focus at this point was mostly on mail-in ballots. in 2020 more democrats voted this way than republicans. >> we were winning everything, and all of a sudden it was just called off. >> reporter: what an ideal time

to stop the counting if you're a republican president who wants to hold on to office no matter what the voters actually want. >> i've been saying this from the day i heard they were going to send out tens of millions of ballots. i said -- real good. all of knorr's high quality pasta and rice sid are now made with no artificial flavors preservatives. knorr. taste for good. so this is the meta portal plus. a smart video calling device that makes working from home, work. it syncs with your favorite vc apps so you'll never miss a meeting. and neither will she. meta portal, make working from home work for you. we have to be able to repair the enamel on a daily basis. with pronamel repair toothpaste, we can help actively repair enamel in its weakened state. it's innovative. my go to toothpaste is going to be pronamel repair. (music) who said you have to starve yourself to lose weight?

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three times the electorlytes and half the sugar. ♪ pedialyte powder packs. feel better fast. >> i love this country. i love this democracy, and it makes me very sad to see what many in my party are doing. >> reporter: bill gates is a conservative republican who worked on voter integrity issues for the arizona republican party for years. >> i'm one of these kind of alex

p. keaton kids from the '80s. i've been a republican my whole life. >> thank you so much. >> reporter: nowadays chairman of the mayorricopa board of governors, arizona's most populous. among the board's responsibilities, running elections. >> this election was run well. there was no fraud involved in this. no corruption. why do i feel confident about that? because this has been the most scrutinized election we'vin run. >> my job was to make sure there wasn't anything improper or fraudulent that was going on. >> reporter: you weren't discounting anything? >> no. my job is to investigate what was being brought to me. so i followed up on those with our elections officials. >> reporter: and -- >> and there was nothing to it. >> good morning, sir. >> reporter: for gates and his colleagues the madness began in the hours after the polls

closed. >> as far as i'm concerned we already have won. >> reporter: before the tally was finished -- [ chanting ] supporters who believing president trump arizona began flocking to the site. >> it was lollapalooza and outside of the election center which is, i mean, really off the beaten path. >> reporter: across the u.s. local election officials were scrambling to get a record number of mail-in ballots counted. among them in philadelphia was al schmidt. at the time one of three city commissioners. the only republican. he ran for office promising to protect election integrity. >> one of the things i was involved in as part of the republican party in the city and republican party in the state was election integrity. since coming into office in 2012 i've referred more than two dozen cases for investigation to

city, state and federal law enforcement. our election operations were centered in the pennsylvania convention center in centre city, philadelphia, and there was one tv on that i happened to walk past -- ♪ and the president saying, why are they still counting? we already got the results. >> we're winning pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes. >> reporter: i want to be very clear what then president trump was calling for. he wanted millions of americans to be disenfranchised. >> which is completely at odds with democracy. it was pretty upsetting to see that. >> a key race alert in some battleground states. >>when lahalf your voters, 323,0 vote by mail takes days to counts the ballots. you can't begin processing the envelopes they came in until 7:00 wednesday morning.

>> reporter: that's the law? >> republicans made and refused to change. >> reporter: a key point. especially in pennsylvania. >> this is the most significant modernization of our elections, elections code in decades. >> reporter: expanded vote by mail legislation passed before the pandemic. in 2019. by the republican legislature. these were republican rules. >> the refusal to count those mail votes early and be prepared really hurt the country. and if you can't get the ballots counted accurately, efficiently, expeditiously you create this space for trump and his squad and these goons to go out there and plant lies, to try to steal this election. >> we're going to prove to the american people that arizona is trump country! [ cheers ] >> reporter: it was happening most notably in swing states. in arizona, there was

sharpie-gate. the trump campaign falsely alleged sharpie markers on the ballots made them unreadable by the counting machines. >> that was the beginning of this. let's start -- and throw chum out in the water for boats that would try to overturn this election. >> reporter: in georgia big lie that spread on the internet was that this legal case of ballot was actually a secret suitcase of false biden votes being added to the count. >> i saw four suitcases come out from underneath the table. >> reporter: something the republican lieutenant governor geoff duncan and colleagues looked into and found completely without merit. >> cut and spliced. take the time to watch from beginning to end, a sequenced pattern that can be explained all the way through there. those weren't suitcases. those were actually pre-approved cases already used all over the state. >> reporter: in philadelphia, trump did better than he had in

2016. better than romney in 2012, or mccain in 2008. he was losing pennsylvania, because he did so much worse in the philadelphia suburbs. [ chanting ] nonetheless because trump decided discrediting business cities was ones his false political attacks. in philadelphia trump's lawyers falsely claimed republican observers had been barred from counting rooms. >> one of the attorneys for trump asks a jump, judge diamond, for an emergency order to stop the counting, and they're claiming that he they had no people in the room. claiming outside the courtroom, but news the courtroom this trump lawyer concedes that there were a "non-zero" number of their own observers in the room, and essentially the case is laughed out of court. >> short of that lawyer lying to the judge, and committing perjury, clearly went as far as

it could. we had republican observers there every minute of every day that we were operating ant counting votes, right in front of us. >> this is rampant corruption. >> reporter: despite this. >> awaiting more votes to come into pennsylvania. >> reporter: that counting ending quite momenomentously. >> ultimately the final decision came down to philly, and after philly was decided and announced. >> cnn pronounced joseph r. biden jr. is elected the 46th president of the united states. >> joe biden declared victory. what was that like? >> to have our voters votes result in the election being called was an incredible thing to watch. [ cheers and applause ] while all of that is happening, we're also aware that rudy giuliani is coming to philadelphia. >> wow. what a beautiful day. thank you. >> he's going to the four

seasons landscaping place to say that our voters votes shouldn't be counted. >> i was about to bring up four season landscaping because. >> in philadelphia. >> it was. >> keep the votes of dead people secret. >> the most -- >> suspect methods of voting. >> degrading. >> there was no security. zero. >> pathetic. >> people of this country have no assurance at all that those ballots were actually cast. >> farcical moment in my view of this postelection day challenge of this all. >> reporter: and appropriate? >> have to have been almost unanimously cast for joe biden to catch up. >> obviously did not mean to have this at four seasons, industrial area across from a crematorium and next to a sex shop. >> reporter: the day trump got the news he did not want to hear. >> told by two of his top political advisers basically it was over.

he listened and decided he wanted to keep fighting. >> reporter: so -- >> trump decided to put giuliani in charge and exactly what he did. giuliani was willing to do what he wanted. >> reporter: that is what led to this infamous press conference mid-november 2020 featuring rudy giuliani and another lawyer named sidney powell. >> the dominion counting systems wered ed in venezuela. >> only thing left, could have been the same person 30 times. >> characteristic feature, its ability to flip votes. >> thank you. >> reporter: ben ginsburg, preeminent party election attorney battled with democrats on many recounts and recalls was watching. >> when i first heard that press conference i said, oh, my god. can that really be true? because if there was nothing there, they wouldn't just be

making it up, and then went through the entire press conference, and i sort of remember looking out the window and saying, they just made all that up. >> reporter: they did. this campaign memo from six days before the press conference first reported by the "new york times" says, dominion has no company ties to venezuela. dominion and one of its former many employees later sues giuliani and powell for more than $1 billion. a court document filed by powell's lawyer said, "no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact." someone should that he to the republican national committee, because they still have powell's lies in its social media feed. in a deposition for another related case, giuliani said he got his information about a former dominion employee having antifa ties from social media. >> social media posts get all --

facebook, instagram. twitter. >> social media postings? >> or something else. i think it was facebook. >> reporter: also admitted he didn't "have the time" to investigate the claims himself. alyssa ferret griffin was white house communications director when these lies were fed to then president trump. you're saying in november there seemed to be a tacit acknowledgement by the president he lost. but then something changed? >> yes. something did change. i think this was when the -- the more conspiracy theorists individuals started getting access to the president. the sidney powells, mike lendells, michael flynns and steve bannon in his ear. had did take a turn. i think he believes it. >> this election was a fraud. >> the former president believes that he won the election. that's scary. and the other thing, though, that your viewers need to know is the people around the president, the same ones, know

that he did not win, and they are lying to you and they are lying to him when they suggest that the election was stolen. >> reporter: more than 60 lawsuits timed by the trump campaign or its supporters. they only prevailed in one case from pennsylvania. but the number of ballots affected was too small to change the results from the state. >> none of the claims he made were found meritorious by any court. in any way that would have reversed the results of the election. >> reporter: georgia faced more than a dozen of these suits. >> these lawsuits, wanted to throw out the results. then have the general assembly pick their own set of electors. >> reporter: brad rafsenberger georgia the secretary of state a conservative fought with democrats on election issues ordered a state-wide hand count. that hand count confirmed there was no widespread fraud involved with the machine count, no. never saw enough fraud that

would ever turned results of the election. >> reporter: still then president trump hate tweeted about him. both rachbsburger and his wife threatened. >> people threatening her sendal sexualize texts, intimidations. >> reporter: bill gates got threats, too. so did al schmidt who testified about them in congress. >> tell the truth or your three kids -- will be fatally shot. included our address. included my children's names, included a picture of our home. cops can't help you. heads on spikes, treasonous schmidts. >> we've not had any credible incidents raised it our level yet. an interesting time when that started to happen. a pattern is a better way to put it. i would go on tv. speak the truth. >> an issue we want to understand it, investigate it.

>> within minutes send out a tweet say something derogatory or inflammatory. >> latest target is lieutenant governor geoff duncan. "georgia lieutenant governor is a rino never trumper. too dumb or corrupt to recognize massive evidence of fraud in georgia and should be replaced. >> within minutes me or my wife would start to get threats on our phone. blood-curdling threats from the most all of sounding individuals and deep meaning that would know things about you and your family intentionally trying to scare and intimidate us to try to get us to sit down and be quiet. >> reporter: president trump wanted some republicans to sit down. others he invited to washington. >> starts bringing in state legislators from pennsylvania. >> yes. >> party leaders from michigan. >> uh-huh. having them come to the white house, yes, to visit with him. part of the sales job he thinks he's doing. he's telling them really he won and they ought to consider and

that and consider how they submit electors and go ahead certifying elections in their states but none went along with him end of the day. >> joe biden ahead by 61,000 votes. >> reporter: in michigan despite losing to joe biden by 154,000 votes, trump waged as fierce fight to keep the results from being certified. [ chanting ] >> reporter: it might have worked if one of the two republicans on the state canvassing board had not resisted intense pressure and voted with the democrats to certify. >> we must not attempt to exercise power we simply don't have. >> reporter: after that act of courage state republicans replaced hillm on the board. all part of a presidential push for legislators to disenfranchise their own constituents based on lies. there was no credible evidence of widespread fraud.

perhaps the president's most shocking push was in georgia. >> so then president trump asks governor kemp to call a special session of the legislature so the legislators to appoint their own electors instead of the ones for biden that the voters had picked? >> you play that out and you disenfranchise 2.5 million people's votes in state, i don't care if their ds or rs. we would have had rioting in every community. an absolute attack on democracy. >> reporter: a version of that, of course, came ". >> all: fight for trump! >> freedom! get a whole lot of something with farmers policy perks. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ only at vanguard you're more than just an investor you're an owner.

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as court losses piled um and inauguration day came closer trump hoped us dow jones industrial bill barr with the might 69 justice department behind him would back him and add credence to his fraudulent claims. >> where is the doj and fbi in all of this, mr. president? is the doj investigating? >> missing in action. can't tell you where they are. >> reporter: barr was investigated. >> bill barr issue add memo that told prosecutors around the

country they could take over steps to look into allegations of fraud. this is something the department traditionally didn't do until the votes were certified. it was absolutely seen as putting pressure on prosecutors around the country to at least say publicly or have signs that they were investigating voter fraud. bill barr was looking for it. and the truth was it just wasn't there and he eventually came to realize that. >> reporter: in an interview with the associated press bar pub luckily contributed trump's baseless assertions saying, "to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election." >> the president is furious. he calls barr over to meet with him and the two of them get into a shouting match. >> barr told trump they had looked into these things that trump was asking about and there was nothing there. trump got very agitated and barr

kept saying, this is not real, sir, and at one point barr described giuliani and his ilk as clowns, and trump sort of listened and said, maybe, but he wouldn't get off of it. >> reporter: it was not just characters like rudy giuliani peddling the false claims. there were others stepping in to aid with the dirty work of trying to subvert the election. >> ken paxton, texas attorney general, big supporter of president trump brings a lawsuit battling four states, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin and georgia should be thrown out, because those states had not followed their own laws in allowing mail-in balloting and in the way that they carried out their elections. he was arg uing that millions o ballot should be thrown out. >> reporter: the legal filing was so constitutionally unhinged and bereft the texas attorney general did not allow his name on the suit.

speculative allegations and some down-right lies. >> it said that philadelphia's vote shouldn't be counted, because it used dominion voting machines. philadelphia doesn't use dominion voting machines. bake facts like that. it was completely absurd to read. >> reporter: another abo absurd given president trump's early lead is less than 1 in a quadrillion. >> the vote to swing much as it did the probability of that in one state is 1 in 1 quadrillion. that's 1, comma, 15 zeros. to happen in all four -- >> reporter: it was none sense. a lie. the analysis completely ignored what everyone including the trump campaign knew. because of vote by mail and when states counted early ballot, some states were going to show an early lead for trump that

would not hold. despite the man dasty of the lawsuit, 17 other republican state attorneys general signed a legal brief backing it, and overwhelming number of house republicans were drawn into that effort as well. at trump's request, congressman mike johnson of louisiana circulated an email to his republican colleagues asking them to sign on to the brief, supporting paxton's lawsuit. >> as the amicus brief was being prepared i was urging my colleagues preparing the brief not to do t. i didn't sign it because i thought it was just wrong, frankly. and that's when i started getting some phone calls from people going, hey, wait a minute. weren't you going to fight this thing? this election was stolen. >> reporter: in the end, 126 house republicans signed their names to it. adam kinzinger a republican congressman from illinois, did not. >> how many people that signed on to it do you think actually

believed the nonsense in it? >> i had to guess i'd say five to ten. >> i think there was a sense among those who did sign it that at least some of them was sort of, well, we're just going to do this to placate president trump, and i thought that was not doing our duty. kevin mccarthy told me directly he wasn't going to sign it. i said good. it this is not a brief to be associated with and a few hours later he signed it. >> the brief went out without kevin mccarthy's name and the next day saying he was inadvertently left off and he signed on to it. that was bad. didn't want to sign it and then realized ltzed pressure. people sign on to something they don't believe to avoid political pressure. leaders afraid of their base and not leading their base. >> reporter: the supreme court declined to even hear the suit. >> majority of house republicans, two-thirds of them, literally saying, i don't want

any of the votes from pennsylvania. i don't want any of them to count. based on this lie? i mean -- i'll just say for me personally as a pennsylvanian, trying to disenfranchise my mom and dade based on lies. >> i don't know why everyone doesn't take that personally. they did not want nor vote to count. based on nothing whatsoever. that is so mind bending and so difficult to comprehend. so what's going to happen next presidential election? how many people will sign some brief that says, overthrow this to the supreme court? that becomes bottom line standard. that happens every time in d.c. and a lot of those standards were broken in this season, and i'm worried we'll giver get them back. >> reporter: up next, donald trump's phone call to a top election official in georgia. >> i just want to find 11,780 votes. >> reporter: was he telling him to break the law? >> certainly felt like it. real good.

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before the 2020 election you were perceived as a rising star

in the republican party in georgia but out in not running for re-election. so what happened? >> funny. talking a rising star. i don't know if i would agree with that but one of the biggest knocks against me running for lieutenant governor too conserve div to actually about state-wide candidate. >> georgia, it's geoff duncan conservative candidate for lieutenant governor. >> reporter: in 2018 in the increasingly purple state of georgia geoff duncan ran as a long shot on conservative values, and he won. >> so no one actually can question your conservative bona fide? no question social, economic, foreign policy. no way in which you're squishy or a liberal? >> yeah. i'm a conservative because i believe in the principles of it not because it gets me elected in georgia. i'm wired that way. raised that way. businesses i run or conservative. it's just who i am. >> reporter: but in 2020 after

duncan pushed back against a wave of false claims? >> disheartening to watch folks willing to put their character and their morals out there just so they can spread a half truth or a lie, in the efforts to maybe flip an election. >> all: we want trump! >> reporter: duncan found him on the receiving end of republican fury just like brad raffensperger. his office flooded with urging to change the election. >> i want to talk to brad raffensperger. i want to talk to this piece of [ bleep ] for not going the right thing. this election was [ bleep ] stolen! >> we could build the angst building in the air over nothing. over a mirage. over a shiny object to reflect from the fact that donald trump had lost the election fair and squarely. >> reporter: you could have very easily kept your mouth shut, not said anything. gone along.

was all of this worth it? putting it all on the line -- for the truth? >> the answer's, absolutely it was worth it. >> reporter: the lieutenant governor found himself among the few to speak the truth fellow georgia republican gabe sterling also became a vocal critic of the public lies. >> i remember we had our warehouse manager at our center for elections was taking the trash out. this is a young guy been working for us for a few years and all these people with cameras surrounding him going you're going to prison, you're going to prison. he's just a warehouse guy. no one should have to go through that. >> sterling gave a blistering warning directed at the most powerful man in the world. >> two minutes before he was going to go up there, one of my friends called and said gabe's

about ready to go have a press conference and you might want to watch. >> mr. president, you have not condemned these actions or this language. this is elections. this is the backbone of democracy, and all of you who have not said a damn word are complicit in this. someone's going to get hurt, someone's going to get shot, someone's going to get killed. >> felt like me saying all those words. he said everything i wanted to say, heartfelt. >> this is the backbone of elections. this stuff getting done, that level i thought i'm doing something that's vitally important. i just want all americans to understand their vote is counted. >> despite sterling's pleas to tone down the rhetoric, president trump continued his pressure campaign. >> your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing.

he could stop it. >> just days later he publicly scoriated governors such as bryan kemp for not helping him overturn the election, something kemp could not legally do and had no grounds to do. >> so far we've not been able to find the people with the courage to do the right thing. >> and here he was calling us into question only because we wouldn't lie in front of a national audience for donald trump. >> and trump leaned on the state's chief elections investigator. >> the people of georgia are so angry what happened to me. it wasn't close. whatever you can do, it would be a great thing. it's an important thing for the country. >> the surprising part to me was how granular of a level donald trump was actually personally engaged in trying to overturn the election in georgia. certainly we started, you know, hearing about phone calls he was making, and of course we all heard the unfortunate 60 plus minute call with brad

raffensperger. >> they are sledhredding ballot. in my opinion you have out-of-state voters. they voted in georgia but they were from out-of-state. >> that was just a complete disaster and embarrassment to anybody that cares about democracy. >> after repeating a litany of false allegations trump said he was, quote, notifying georgia secretary of state raffensperger that in his view the secretary was breaking the law by ignoring his false conspiracy theories. >> you're not reporting it. that's the thing. that's a criminal -- that's a criminal offense. and, you know, you can't let that happen. that's a big risk to you. >> did you feel like he was threatening you? >> i think he could take that as a form of pressure. >> of everything he said to you on that call what sticks to you the most ? >> well, he continued to circle back on all i need is -- >> i just want to find 11,780

votes. >> he wanted to somehow find additional votes. we had all the ballots. there were no ballots we could add, and all those had been tabulated time and time again. >> was he telling you to break the law? >> it certainly felt like it. it's embarrassing as an american to hear the u.s. president having that type of conversation. there's just no setting where that call is appropriate. >> what he was asking for wasn't something that was supported by state law, wasn't supported by the facts, wasn't supported by the constitution. >> that phone call is now key evidence in an ongoing investigation by prosecutors in georgia who are looking into whether donald trump broke the law in his efforts to overturn the election. but raffensperger's steadfastedness to the law notwithstanding, trump was not even close to done in his efforts to overturn the election. ahead, a memo that could

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in the weeks following the election the word from those

closest to donald trump was that he would eventually accept reality. >> there were people around trump, jared kushner, mark meadows, in particular who were telling, you know, senior republicans in congress that trump will concede. he was going to get there, he was going to accept it. and it's not clear how much of that was just wish casting. >> most republicans in congress spent those first few weeks telling reporters that trump had every right to pursue legal remedies, but the cases then failed. over and over the trump team had no credible evidence of significant fraud. but most republicans would not acknowledge reality, not wanting to poke the bear. that's partly because in 2021 there were georgia senate runoff elections coming up, but they needed trump to help them win. >> kelly fights for me, david fights for me, that i can tell you. >> and partly because they had giant spending bills they needed

him to sign. then -- >> breaking news biden has now received a majority of electoral votes needed to win the presidency. >> on december 14, 2020, the electoral college voted in all 50 states formalizing trump's loss. >> on january 20th -- >> on the 15th senate majority leader mitch mcconnell finally publicly embraced the truth. >> so today i want to congratulate president-elect joe biden. >> republicans who had spent the previous weeks trying to placate donald trump now found the vacuum their silence had left had been filled by trump's lies. trump lashed out at the few republicans who acknowledged his defeat, tweeting, quote, too soon to give up, republican party must learn to fight. privately the president was entertaining increasingly concerning paths forward. >> i got a tip from someone that there had been a really intense,

bizarre oval office meeting. sydney powell had been having a conversation about being made a special counsel within the white house to investigate election frauds. i also found out that mike flynn, the former lieutenant general and national security advisor who was fired very early on in the trump administration was talking about seizing the voting machines and rerunning the election. it was incredibly jarring that there was a conversation in the oval office with a former military leader talking about a seizure of voting machines. >> flynn publicly spoke about this. >> he said a version of it on news max the night before this meeting. >> -- these people out there talking about marshal law like it's something we've never done. marshal law has been instituted 64 times. >> he was told by officials this isn't legal, we do not have the authority to do this. >> trump was eventually convinced by advisers to pass on that idea, but he became fixated

on a new one, derailing the certification of electoral votes. >> once trump realizes that the fraud claims are going nowhere, he now has a new plan, which is for there to be enough doubt that he could maybe persuade some of these states, conservative states to send a separate set of electors. >> on december 19th trump sent his first tweet encouraging his supporters to come to washington, d.c. on january 6th to protest the election results at a rally organized by the group called "women for america first." with ties to controversial characters such as roger stone and steve bannon, that organization had become the de facto force for the false fraud claims after the election. even taking a bus tour across the country trying to sway members of congress to object to the election results.

while "women for america first" pushed conspiracy theories around the country, the president continued to his assault on democracy in the nation's capitol. >> the attorney general of the united states, bill barr, is leaving the administration. >> thus began a new daily pressure campaign on the department of justice. according to a sweeping report from the democrats on the senate judiciary committee, based on interviews with trump's top officials at the justice department, jeffrey rosen and richard donohue, trump directly asked the doj to undermine the outcome of the election. he did so nine times. and his chief of staff mark meadows broke with long-standing policy and pressured the doj to look into election fraud claims. >> the wildest theory was this thing called italy-gate. mark meadows sent an e-mail to the acting attorney general at

the time asking him to look into this theory that there was some italian contractor who was using satellites to change vote tallies on machines, voting machines in the united states. >> on a december 27th call with the new acting attorney general jeffrey rosen, trump pushed him to, quote, just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the republican congressmen. >> trump knows that, you know, if the justice department goes out and raises questions about corruption or fraud, just saying that they're investigating it or looking into it, that allows republican congressmen to go out there and do the rest of the work and put the pressure on the states to start their own audits, and again gives him room to operate between then and january 6th. >> the whole notion behind it was trump and his supporters saying don't worry about it,

we're going to make it up. don't pay attention to the facts, don't pay attention to the law. we're just going to make it up and forge ahead. >> trump continued to press rosen on the call saying, quote, this was an illegal krumt election. and according to acting deputy attorney general richard donohue's notes from the conversation, trump old rosen the doj was failing to respond to reports of crime. >> rosen stood firm on this call saying there's not much the justice department could do. >> trump also plotted with another justice official, jeffrey clark, to oust the acting attorney general after rosen's repeated refusals to go along with trump's fraudulent allegations. but that scheme imploded at the dramatic white house showdown on january 3, 2021. >> this was a scene straight up out of "apprentice." trump has rosen and clark vie for the job of attorney general of the united states.

and the president is told that if he replaces rosen with there are going to be huge consequences. a number of top officials of the justice department are going to resign. there were probably going to be hundreds of other resignations of political appointees across the country as a result of this. it was a murder-suicide pact is the way this was described during this meeting. >> trump decided that the effort would not be worth the embarrassment of mass resignations and abandoned the plot. he then pinned his hopes to overturn the election on mike pence based on a legal memo written by conservative attorney john eastman. let's talk about the eastman memo. what was your reaction when you first heard about it? >> just breathtaking that you would have laid out such a clear game plan that so clearly

violated the constitution. >> the eastman memo detailed a six-step plan for pence to throw the election to trump during the january 6th certification. it also called for pence to throw out all electors from seven states and gavel president trump as re-elected. eastman has since tried to publicly down-play his memo and his role in attempting a coup, but he told a very different story in undercover video from a progressive activist. >> met with 300 legislators on january 2nd via a zoom conference call, and they all spinelessly didn't do anything. >> and any appearances in right-wing media. >> are we to assume this is going to be a climatic battle going to take place this week? >> i think a lot of that depends on the courage and the spine of those involved. >> that would be a nice way to

say a guy named vice president mike pence? >> yes. >> this level of corruption just can't be allowed to stand, and i think that makes the exercise of the vice president's power here very compelling. >> it's quite dangerous. it is a blueprint for how to ignore the vote of the people. that would have cast aside all the legal foundations upon which the country and the democracy is based. >> we now know eastman's memo was not the only multistep plan to detail how vice president pence could use his role on january 6th to overturn the results of a fair and legal election. another one was written by a trump campaign lawyer named jenna ellis. according to betrayal, the final act of the trump show, a book by abc's jonathan carl karl, the former president's own chief of staff forwarded the memo to

trump's former aide. >> john eastman didn't even work at the white house. he was just some outside lawyer. but meadows is forwarding a document that basically outlines the efforts to essentially have a coup, a document written by a lawyer on the trump campaign payroll. >> publicly pence raised the hopes of trump supporters telling one georgia rally -- >> we'll have our day in congress. we'll hear the objections. we'll hear the evidence. >> pence reached out to others to see if there was some way he could carry out this unconstitutional move including according to "the washington post" journalists bob woodward and robert costa, former vice president and fellow hoosier dan quail, who convinced pence he had no constitutional power to throw out the election. also reported by woodward and costa was steve bannon's role in pushing the plan. on a phone call with the president bannon said, quote, you've got to call pence and get

him back here today. we're going to bury biden on january 6th, f-ing bury him. >> pence said he's talked to all the lawyers he can talk to, and he's decided that he can't, he doesn't have the power that the president says he has. and trump turns on him. he says that essentially he's betrayed him and the meeting doesn't end very well between the two men. >> but that did not stop the president from publicly pressuring the vice president on twitter ahead of the certification. up next -- >> we were on a conference call and i told kevin mccarthy when people are convinced that the election was stolen and there is a route out there's going to be violence. his response was simply operator, next caller. you worked hard to save for my future.

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comcast business. powering possibilities. stop the steal, stop the steal! >> we have the power of numbers. >> january 6, 2021. where were you? do you remember that day? >> i remember that day crystal clear. there are some days that stick out 9/11, war, stuff like that. this is among those.

>> on the day congress was scheduled to certify the election for president-elect joe biden -- thousands of people descended on our nation's capitol. >> biden did not win this election. >> it's not made up. >> angry at what they falsely believed had been a stolen election. >> unquestionable that our votes were stolen. >> the supreme court is not helping us. no one's helping us! >> we're taking this country back. >> i wake up at 4:30. buses were everywhere. i mean you couldn't get a clear path into the office from where i was. >> this line wraps around the washington monument. >> and there's all kinds of traffic at 4:30 in the morning, 5:00 in the morning and there's strobe lights already on the national mall and a couple thousand people milling around. at that hour it just felt like something was off. >> when did you start becoming

worried about january 6th as a day? >> a couple days before january 6th we were on a conference call, all the house republicans. kevin mccarthy who at this point we did not know how he was going to go on certification. he says he was going to object. and i say, kevin, you have to understand there will be violence. when people are convinced that the election was stolen and there is a route out, there's going to be violence. his response was simply, operator, next call. so on january 6th it was obvious what was going to happen. >> they thought they could steal this election. >> the crowd had been told lies about the election not just by trump but by his supporters on capitol hill and in maga media. they were encouraged to take action. >> i don't know how all this is going to end, but if they want to fight, they better believe

they've got one. >> and told how to think about those republicans who acknowledged joe biden won, those who were grounded in reality. >> this is about as mindless as i've ever seen these republican rino establishment hacks behave. >> we're coming for you. >> many of the famous faces pedaling the big lie were there. >> we're going to take our country back. >> but not just to rev up the crowd at the rally. according to the book "peril" by bob woodward and robert costa on the day surrounding january 6 wrgt steve bannon, john eastman, rudy giuliani and others gathered at a hotel just two blocks from the white house discussing plans to delay the certification. >> i'll tell you this, it's not going to happen like you think it's going to happen. >> just the day before on january 5th bannon ominously teased what was to come on his podcast "warroom."

>> it's going to be quite extraordinarily different. you have made this happen, and tomorrow it's game day, so strap in. let's get ready. >> everything points to bannon was very closely associated with anything the campaign was doing. >> i think an overwhelming majority of that crowd was there to try to overturn democracy at that point or the democratic process. >> i knew that i was kind of the face of so-called the deep state and the republican party, so i didn't want to be out in public too much, so i never bring my gun into the capitol complex. i prbrought it that day. >> i was sort of nervous for the morning. i was sort of curious to see what the rally was. i was hoping not to hear some of the speeches i ultimately heard, some of the more inflammatory ones. >> speakers at the rally included john eastman, the author of that memo detailing how pence could violate the constitution and keep trump in

office. as well as many other republican officials who saw opportunity in joining in on the big lie. >> are you willing to do what it takes to fight for america? start taking down names and kicking ass. >> let's have trial by combat. >> but as he preferred it -- the marquee speaker was the president himself. >> president donald j. trump. >> meanwhile inside the chambers of congress the certification of the votes paused. >> i would object to further reading. >> with objections from republican senators and some republican house members. >> i rise today to object. >> i rise to support the objection. >> i rise to support the objection. >> earlier that day vice president pence had put out a statement saying he was not going to follow trump's

instructions. which upset the president, as he conveyed to the massive crowd. >> 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. >> trump continued to rile up the crowd, demanding they take action. >> you'll never take back our country with weakness. you have to show strength, and you have to be strong. >> many at the rally took his words literally. and we all watched as the effort to overturn the election. >> it's over! >> came to a violent, bloody crescendo. >> it was so unimaginable.

that you would have a mob having broken into the capitol and attacked police officers attempting to break into the floor of the chamber of the house of representatives. you just couldn't compute that that was happening because it's so fundamentally un-american. >> un-american yet very close to happening in america. this video shows utah republican senator mitt romney, someone the angry mob considered an enemy, unknowingly walking toward the rioters. capitol police officer eugene goodman tells romney to get out of harms way. and then runs to confront the

insurrectionists, leading them from the senate chamber. vice president pence, the man many rioters called to be hanged that day was inside the chamber and had to be rushed to safety with his family from the senate floor. minutes after rioters breached the capitol. according to reporting from "the washington post" one of the vice president's aides, greg jacob, who was with pence during the insurrection sent an e-mail to john eastman after they were escorted off the senate floor. >> he said in the e-mail thanks to your bullshit we're now under siege. >> eastman fired back blaming the riots on the vice president and his staff. >> then eastman responded by saying it was actually the vice president's fault and mr. jacob's fault for the quote-unquote siege.

he said if you'd have done what needed to be done, if you'd been transparent, you would have had a debate, if you'd gone forward the way we asked you to go it wouldn't be happening to you right now. >> the conversation you had with your wife, you'd been off to war before having conversations with loved ones. was it like that? >> this was different, you know. i never really had a sense i might not survive this. there was a real sense that if they're in the capitol complex and they've already overrun two or three lines of police barricades there is nothing to stop them from the rest of the complex. yeah, it was an emotional conversation. it was nothing i've ever had before. i hope to never have to have that conversation again. >> we have two young kids, and i didn't want to alarm my wife. at the time it felt like anything was possible because you're seeing the bomb threats.

you're tracking it on twitter. i'm seeing messages on telegram and some of these other platforms coming through about organized militia groups going to storm the capitol and some folks saying they're going to kill whoever they find and those sorts of things, so at the time you don't know how it's going to end. >> on the other end of pennsylvania avenue at the white house trump watched things unfold on television. when he found out about what was going on, the violence, his supporters attacking policemen, beating policemen, members of congress hiding, running for their lives -- what was his response sph. >> kevin mccarthy had a conversation with him telling him just how bad it was, people breaking into my office, they're doing this. and trump's response was i get

they're no more upset about the election than you are. >> there were some on the biden team genuinely worried there would be no transition, sources told cnn, that trump and his mob had successfully disrupted the counting of electors and might find a way to cling to power. >> thank god that there weren't more people killed. at the time you don't know that. you know there's an angry, violent mob who believes the election was stolen in the united states of america. you're seeing even members of congress saying this is our 1776 moment, which as a reminder that's a bloody, violent revolution.

>> this is our election, this is our house. >> well, of course you're going to have violence and of course you're going to have a riot at the capitol. >> and that's what all this was about. it wasn't just an attack on our symbols of democracy. it was an actual attack on the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another. >> after the insurrection was over hundreds had been injured, five dead. and the capitol had been breached for the first time in more than 200 years. >> it's a mother [ bleep ] revolution. let's take this shit. this is ours! >> coming up, will trump try to steal the election again? you think that he will try to impose some form of autocracy? >> i think that he absolutely would.

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hours after the last rioters had been pushed out of the capitol on january 6, 2021, while there was still glass on the floors and blood on the stairs, congress tried to get back to the business of

democracy. >> let's get back to work. >> they had a presidential election to certify. >> when we reconvened that night there was an opportunity for leadership from kevin mccarthy and an opportunity for him to stand up and say it's time for us to recognize that the election is over. it's over and we need to come together and heal. >> i rise to address what happened in this chamber today. >> as i sat on the floor and listened to his remarks they began like that, but then it became clear he was urging continued objection to the electoral votes, which i can't understand. >> we're hearing valid concerns about election integrity. >> by the end of the night two thirds of the republicans in the house of representatives including the current republican leadership voted not to certify the state of arizona and not to certify the commonwealth of pennsylvania.

>> do you think kevin mccarthy and steve scalise and elise stefanik all of whom voted not to count electors after this bloodshed, after this attack, do you think they believed this cause they'd taken up in. >> not a word of it. but i think you can convince yourself if you're determined to that i'll just play the game a little longer so that i'll be here to lead to a new direction. or i'll play the game because i don't have the power and influence to change the ship. you know when you think about the heroics on flight 93 on 9/11, you know, all those passengers standing up rushing the cockpit and saving the capitol, had todd beamer or any of those others alone charged the cockpit we would have probably a rebuilt capitol today and a lot of casualties. but they all decided to do it together. and when you only have a few people speaking out it's no doubt that that's not going to

turn the ship. everyone has to particularly the leaders of the party. >> hatred for donald trump. >> the lie continued on maga media where justifying the rioters anger became a common refrain. >> these are not adjust conspiracy theorists motivated by lies. that's a bunch of nonsense people want to tell us. they love freedom and love free markets. >> one week later the house voted to impeach president trump for willful incitement of the january 6th election. >> my vote to impeach the sitting president is not a fear-based decision. >> there's no excuse for president trump's actions. >> while some republicans spoke in favor once again the majority of house republicans sided with trump refusing to vote for impeachment. >> the ayes are 232. the nays are 193. >> but ten republicans did vote to impeach him, three of them you've heard from tonight. >> i voted to impeach him because i think it's very clear as has been public that he

provoked the violence that day. >> i felt like -- like i had no choice in the matter. as conservative republicans we are constitutionallists, we believe in the rule of law. >> were you surprised? >> there were a couple days before the vote of impeachment i thought we'd hit 25 because i'd talked to 25 people. i look at those people that were going to vote for impeachment and i recognize every one of them that ended naup not voting that way where, they always mentioned a concern what it meant for the real action. >> congresswoman liz cheney was the third ranking republican in the house when she voted for impeachment. because she was so concerned about where trump's big lie was leading the nation. >> you have local officials who were getting death threats. you have members of congress who said to me that they believed that the president should be impeached after the 6th but that

they were afraid to cast a vote that way because of their security and the security of their families. you know, that -- that is a place that we haven't been certainly since the civil war and never when that threat of violence comes from a sitting president. >> and we're going to have to fight much harder. >> this will remain a cancer on our constitutional republic. >> cheney has become a leading critic on those who attempt to subvert democracy. >> if president trump won this election so everyone who's listening do not be quiet. >> in may 2021 republican new york congresswoman elise stefanik challenged cheney for her leadership post. cheney is more conservative than stefanik. cheney had voted to support trump policies more often than stefanik. but stefanik supports trump's elections lies and stefanik

defeated cheney for the leadership position. >> it just became increasingly clear that to stay in-house republican leadership i would have to be willing to perpetuate the big lie, and i simply wasn't comfortable with that. >> how many of your republican colleagues that perpetuate the big lie either with their comments or votes, how many of them do you think actually believe it? >> very few. very few. too many people are putting their own political future and their political fortunes ahead of doing their duty. and so i think that, you know, in some instances there is fear, physical fear about what trump would do or the threats that might come. but in other cases i think it's -- it's a political calculation, which is pretty craven if you think about it. >> what is the danger do you think of elected officials who might know better aqueousing to

these demands, to the big lie. >> once you do it on this issue why wouldn't you do it on any other issue? this is not about right and left at all. it's about right and wrong. >> institutions don't hold themselves. in the moments of truth you need the right people to pass the most difficult tests. we had just enough people on january 6th pass the test. we have to make sure we have an equal number to continue going forward. >> when you're colleagues said it held only because there were specific individuals personally and professionally who stood by those guardrails people like the m maricopa county board of

supervisors, ra raffensperger i georgia. do you think the guardrails don't hold and tdemocracy falls over without these people? >> every time you see a guardrail bent it wouldn't withstand a second impact. >> coming up next the second impact is coming. >> or if he loses again just try to steal it. i started screening for colon cancer because of my late husband jay. i wish he could have seen our daughter ellie get married, on the best day of her life. but colon cancer took him from us,

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we are now just months away from the mid-term elections, which typically test the strength of the incumbent president. >> liz cheney, how about that? >> there was now growing evidence the mid-terms will also test the strength of former president trump. >> her poll numbers have dropped faster than any human being i've ever seen. >> who has been working to turn elected officials into loyalists or get them voted from office. >> get rid of them all. >> trump attorney john eastman made that clear while talking about state legislators in an

undercover investigation done by activists. >> these guys are spineless and now if we take a bunch of them out in the primaries in 2022 and the precondition for getting elected is we're going to fight this stuff then maybe we've got an opportunity but right now i just don't see it. >> donald trump's behavior has congressman anthony gonzalez worried. >> it looks to me that he has evaluated what went wrong on january 6th. why is it that he wasn't able to steal the election? who stood in his way. and he's going methodically state by state. state senate races all the way down to county commissioner races trying to get the people who the republicans, the rinos in his words who stopped him from stealing the election, he's trying to get them removed. >> what scares me is the secretary of state rolls, because those are extremely powerful in terms of dealing with elections. >> in georgia brad

raffensperger, the secretary of state who refused to find the votes trump needed to win georgia, faced challenge from republican congressman jody hice. raffensperger will be the republican candidate for secretary of state in november. in arizona mark fin chm wants the job which is being vacated by a democrat. >> arizona state representative mark fincham is with us tonight and what a job he's done. >> he's already received the endorsement of donald trump. he has said over and over again that this was a fraudulent election. he's called for decertification. he's got a decent chance to win this primary. if we have people like that in these key positions moving forward i think we are -- we are in danger. >> in pennsylvania the governor appoints the secretary of state, and this is the republican

nominee for governor, doug mastriano who was protesting outside the capitol on january 6th. >> as governor i get to decertify any and all machines in the state. and obviously i have my eye on several counties who have machines i believe are part compromised. >> six of the house ten republicans are facing primary challenges this year in states endorsed by trump or energized by him. one has already lost, another appears to eke out a victory. these four face races this summer including liz cheney. donald trump is vocally supporting your defeat. are you worried? >> no. i intend to win. >> you could lose. i mean, you're saying you won't but anything's possible. if you lose your career because of this position you're taking will it have been worth it? >> well, i will no matter what happens never stop fighting for

the constitution, never stop fighting for the rule of law. to me there's not even really a choice or a calculation. it's just what is the right thing here and what has to be done. >> four other republican congressmen who voted to impeach trump have decided to not run for re-election including adam kinzinger who said he wants to fight against the politics of division instead of running for re-election in a newly drawn district in which he'd have to run against an incumbent republican. and anthony gonzalez who decided to retire after two terms. >> this lifestyle, the constant travel, the constant fund-raising if it wasn't working prior to impeachment it's pretty clear nows the time to get out of this. >> the exits are happening at the state level, too. jeff duncan, the lieutenant governor in georgia, is not running for re-election. >> i don't want to have the do and say the things i have to do and say right now to win the

primary donald trump has been playing. >> he's written a book about it called gop 2.0. and it's not just elected officials who are stepping out of or being pushed from public view. remember chris stierwalt, the fox political editor who correctly called the state of arizona for biden? he was fired in january 2021. fox blames restructuring. desire walt's boss retired. >> a source at fox news told "the washington post" that i was fired because my ratings weren't as good as don bangino's and that audiences were not responding to me as favorably as they were to dan bongino, which made me laugh because that's not my job. my job is not to tell you what you want to hear. >> bongino is a conservative pundit, not a reporter. on top of all this a number of states are issuing so-called

election integritiy laws that tighten access to the ballot to prevent widespread voter fraud, you know, the kind that did not happen. at least 19 states have new laws. >> it's trying to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist. some people say voter fraud never occurs. it does occur. it occurs infrequently. >> but beyond efforts making it more difficult to vote are efforts making it easier to undo the results of an election. for instance, in georgia some of the power that used to belong to the secretary of state, brad raffensperger, someone committed to upholding the rule of law now lies with the republican controlled state legislature. >> a number of states have tried to take running of elections away from professionals and giving it to politicians. so in state legislatures like georgia give power to the state legislature to potentially overturn results, that's very worrisome. >> in 2021 there was no better

example of a politicized counting process than the so-called audit of ballots in maricopa county, arizona, by a group calling themselves the cyber ninjas. >> they have no experience at all in election audits. they're headed by this doug logan who has been in that trump orbit ever since the election. >> people saw images of the cyber ninjas looking at ballots through ultraviolet light. what were they looking for with the ultraviolet light in the ballots >> they were actually looking for bamboo on the ballots because there was one of these conspiracy theories that thousands of ballots had been sent in nefariously from somewhere from asia, and if there was bamboo that would indicate these were in fact these ballots. >> if you buy into conspiracy theories or believe the falsehood the election was

stolen from donald trump, the so-called audit made you more suspicious of the ballot counting process. in the end the ninjas concluded biden did win maricopa county, arizona, which is what the county had certified. all of this happened in the aftermath of the 2020 election. a planned attempt to undo the will of the american people with dozens of events, maneuvering, pressure campaigns, threats of violence, actual violence carried out over months and continuing to this day. do you think that what president trump and his minions were attempting was a coup? >> well, when you're trying to not count voters' votes, when you're trying to overturn the will of the people, i wouldn't know how else to describe that. you know, it's hard for me to even attach the words coup in america, right? that sounds like such a third world notion. i don't know what you could call

it other than a coup. >> i think there are a number of different things you could call it, but no president in history has ever done it before, and we have to make sure no president ever does it again. >> republican liz cheney is now vice chair of the committee which spent a year interviewing more than 1,000 witnesses and is publicly laying out much of what we've detailed this evening. >> president trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack. >> the january 6th committee hearings are also complexplainie pressure campaign waged by the president which failed the first time around. but if donald trump manages to replace enough opponents with loyalists and enough laws are changed, he could try the tactic again. and this time it might work. >> if we rerun the scenario with people holding the most powerful positions in key institutions being more beholden to him than

their oath, i think it's all pushing towards one of two outcomes. he either wins legitimately, which he may do. or if he loses again, could just try to steal it. should he be the nominee or should he run again? i'll do everything i can to stop him. i believe as a citizen of this country who loves this country and respects the constitution, that's my responsibility. >> the nightmare scenario is this, and it's not too far-out of the realm of possibility, which is donald trump's running for president again, he'll likely be the nominee of the republican party assuming no one attempts to challenge him credibly. joe biden is going to be 82 years old by 2024. many around him don't think he's going to run again. there's very much a scenario where donald trump could be president again, and this is a man who's challenged our institutions near to the breaking point. >> and for those who have worked with trump the fear is not just his undermining american democracy but once back in the white house, also undoing the american experiment. you think that he will try to

impose some form of autocracy? >> i think that he absolutely would. there are things he wanted to do when he was in power the first time that were well-beyond the scope of what the u.s. president should be able to do but oftentimes it was simply the motivation of hoping to win re-election that kept him from doing things. it's very different the second term and i think that's what scares me the most. >> can you give me an example? >> whether it's weaponizing the justice department against political opponents, whether it's going after the free press? he'd certainly be open to using the military for political reasons as well. >> that's terrifying. >> it's a warning we're bringing you from conservative republican. you might have noticed that other than a few journalists the voices you've heard tonight have been exclusive gop because there's nothing partisan, nothing liberal about supporting democracy. >> the american experiment is an

experiment. it's not guaranteed. i mean when ben franklin said a republic if you can keep it he wasn't being cheeky. he meant that this democracy has to be fought for. how worried are you? >> i have real concerns about the future of this democracy, and i never thought that i would. i didn't think we had this sort of pull towards authoritarianism in our democracy. >> i'm deeply afraid for our country. yeah, i'm afraid that the kind of political violence, the kind of abandonment of the rule of law, the kind of abandonment of the constitution that we watched does threaten the foundations of democracy, the foundations of our system. and the fact that so many in my party are willing to be silent, are complicit, are enabling it, adds very much to the peril

because it's a very dangerous for the country to be. >> i was discussing with a friend of mine the subject of our documentary tonight, the erosion of american democracy, the continued undermining of basic rule of law and respect for facts. stay sane he said to me, and then alluding to that famous quote that demagogue republican senator joe mckarkty in 1954 saying someone has to sit up and say at long last have you no decency. the thing is a bunch of folks have been saying this, journalists, politicians, conservative republicans that you heard from tonight terrified about the end of the american experiment. they have been shouting have you no decency at trump. and the problem is trump has answered, and the answer is, no, he does not. and his supporters do not seem

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every day people each changing the world in their own way. these are the extraordinary men and women we honor as cnn heroes, but tonight we salute the not so everyday individuals who are dedicated to doing the same. celebrities and public figures making a difference by shining a light on important issues and working to find solutions. >> right here. >> everything will be better. >> chef jose andres feeding those in