and the most reliable 5g network. want me to keep going? i can... whether your small business is starting or growing, you need comcast business. technology solutions that put you ahead. get a great offer on internet and security, now with more speed and more bandwidth. plus find out how to get up to a $650 prepaid card with a qualifying bundle. >> announcer: the following is a cnn special report. the violence at the capitol on january 6, 2021, was just the most visible part of donald trump's attempt to hold onto power. tonight we talk to those who witnessed the whole plot unfurl and tried to stop it.

the lies. >> if you ask how many republican congressmen believe trump was re-elected i'd say maybe a couple but 60% of our base does. >> conspiracy theories. >> that could have been mickey mouse. >> i'm watching this is the craziest thing i've ever seen, and then people just 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 the memo. >> just breathtaking that 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. >> stop the steal! >> and 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 re-install himself in power illegitimately. that's fallen nation territory. that's third world country territory. my family left cuba to avoid that fate. i i will not let it happen here. >> that's republican congressman anthony gonzalez of ohio, grandson of an immigrant he has a quintessentially american success story. a talented wide receiver who played three years for ohio state, five more in the nfl. and when injuries side lined 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've seen what happens when the rule of law is dismantled, when a strongman is allowed to take hold and democratic norms cease to exist. >> and 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've fought through it, and we've persevered. as much as i despise almost every policy of the biden administration, the country can survive around a bad policy. the country can't survive torching the constitution. that's the one thing the country can't survive.

>> a rigged election. there's going to be fraud. >> donald trump's plan to undermine american democracy began months before the voting started. >> what's he going to do with these ballots? where are they going? >> with the return to lies he'd been telling for years. in 2012 he tweeted, quote, 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 deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." also not true. >> president trump started a commission to look for that in 2017. they could find nothing. they disbanded before they could even file a report.

>> 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 wrought with fraud and abuse. when you do all mail-in voting ballots, you're asking for fraud. >> alissa farah griffon was the white house communications director for then-president trump from april through december 2020. >> we actually had to pull together a meeting in the oval to remind him many of our voters particularly senior citizens were going to vote by mail, and that we were deterring people from turning out and from voting in the way that they would. >> all this caught the attention of congresswoman liz cheney, a rock red conservative and daughter of former vice president tdick cheney. at the time she was number three in-house republican leadership. >> it concerned me because we wanted people to be able to vote as republican.

i wasn't concerned about it from a constitutional perspective at all. those concerns clearly came later on. >> there are going to be millions of missing ballots. >> cheney's constitutional concerns came about five weeks before election day. >> then-president trump was asked if he'd commit to a peaceful transfer of power. >> will you commit here today for a peaceful transfer of power after the election? >> well, we're going to have to see what happens. you know that 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 transfer of power is enshrined in our constitution and fundamental to the survival of our republic. america's leaders swear an oath to the constitution. we will uphold that oath." that suggests to me that you were worried. >> i was. it's just a basic fundamental thing. every president is really responsible for safeguarding the peaceful transfer of power. >> we're going to have to see

what happens. >> and so for president trump not to be able to make that commitment was stunning. >> that was september of 2020 when donald trump also stunned republican alschmidt. >> we either need to get them onboard or move the polling place. >> at the time schmidt was one of three city commissioners in philadelphia. his job was to oversee the city's elections. >> there was a big problem. in philadelphia they went in to watch. they're called poll watchers. they were thrown out. they weren't allowed to watch. you know why? because bad things happen in philadelphia. >> so you're watching the debate and president trump says 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. so did you see today? there was a big mishap with the ballots, another one. >> not only was trump spreading distrust of the electoral process -- >> did you see they found 50,000 ballots in like a river? >> -- he was doing it in states such as pennsylvania and michigan where the margins were expected to be tight, and the wait for results was expected to be unusually long. >> in most of america there's a big traditional skew between early votes and election day votes. the republicans usually win election day, and the democrats usually win early voting and absentee voting. >> chris stier wall was part of fox news 2020 decision desk. >> question is do republicans do well enough on election day to offset it? >> in 2020 the divide was expected to be more pronounced than usual because trump had been telling republicans not to

trust mail-in ballots. this set the stage for what experts predicted would prompt misleading early vote counts. >> the they be what some folks call a red miraj so that trump's numbers may be highest on election night, and there's a long tail called a blue wave as absentee votes come in that in the last decades have come in overwhelmingly democrat. the big caveat is we never had early voting like this. >> we all knew some states were going to show him up and it was going to get closer. did he not know that? >> no, he'd pin told that repeatedly and he didn't care. he had decided before the summer, frankly, when it was clear the pandemic was going to change the way by mail voting worked in a number of states and expanded, he started laying the groundwork for this can't be trusted. >> this is not right. what they're doing is not right. >> everyone who followed the elections closely knew about this. but then right before the actual

election day, a convenient alternative explanation. >> this project or the system called hammer. >> a false conspiracy theory popped up in right-wing media. >> it's going to look good for president trump, but they're going to change. >> 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. >> we're keeping an eye on voting under way across the country especially in those key battlegrounds. >> projects president trump will win the state of florida. >> former president trump was in his residence. he had people coming up and down, there were staffers, aides, hangers on, all sorts of people in the east room munching on, you know, 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 move until fox called arizona for

biden. >> the fox news decision desk is calling arizona for joe biden. that is a big get for the biden campaign. >> he believed what he was being told by some advisers after he won florida, which was this is looking good for us, this is looking just like 2016. these states going for biden are going for you, and we got to the arizona call and it fell apart. >> it's a significant victory for joe biden, as i say the first flip of the night in the presidential race. >> 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. and it was this sort of, you know, psychotic murderous rage about us. and we don't do anything. we're just weather people. i'm just telling you where the storm is going. i don't make the weather. >> they started calling talent at fox and urging them to retract them. >> right, as though it was the call that made that true, not

the votes that were cast. >> he had made up his mind weeks before he was going to go to the podium if election night showed he was losing and he was going to say he won, and that's exactly what he did. >> this was 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. >> and 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? >> 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. >> what an ideal time to stop

the counting if you're a republican president who wants to hold onto 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. emerge tremfyant®. with tremfya®, most people saw 90% clearer skin at 16 weeks. the majority of people saw 90% clearer skin even at 5 years. serious allergic reactions may occur. tremfya® may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms or if you had a vaccine or plan to. emerge tremfyant®. with tremfya®... ask your doctor about tremfya® today.

researchers believe the first person to live to 150 has already been born. it could be you! wow. really? of course, you'll have to eat your greens, watch your stress, wear sunscreen... but to live to 150, we're developing solutions that help doctors listen to your heartbeat while they're miles away, or ai that knows what your body will do before you do. cool. introducing elevance health. where health can go.

♪ i love this country.

i love this democracy, and it makes me very sad to see what many in my party are doing. >> 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. >> nowadays he's chairman for the maricopa county board of supervisors. arizona's most populous. among the board's responsibilities, running elections. >> the selection 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've ever run. my job was to make sure that there wasn't anything improper or fraudulent that was going on. >> you weren't discounting

anything? >> no, my job was to investigate what was being brought to me, and so i followed up on those with our elections officials. >> and? >> and there was nothing to it. >> good morning, sir. >> 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. >> before the tally was finished supporters who believed then-president trump when he said he won arizona began flocking to the counting site. >> it was a circus. i mean it really was la la palooza for the alt right. and they were outside of the elections center, which is i mean really off the beaten path. >> 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 he was one of three city commissioners, the only

republican. he ran for office promising to protect election integrity. >> one of the things that 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 center city, philadelphia, and there was one tv on that i happened to be walking past. and the president sangying why e they still counting, we already got the results. >> we're winning pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes. >> i want to be 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. when half of your voters in our case 325,000 voters vote by mail, it takes days to count all those ballots because you can't even begin processing the envelopes they came in until 7:00 on election morning. >> because that's the law the republicans made. >> that is the law republicans made and refused to change. >> and this is a key point especially in pennsylvania. >> this is the most significant modernization of our elections code in decades. >> expanded vote by mail legislation had been 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, esh puditiously, 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. >> 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 thum unreadable by the counting machines. >> that was the beginning of this. let's start and throw, you know, chum out in the water for folks that want to try and overturn this election. >> in georgia a big lie that spread on the internet was that this legal case of ballots was actually a secret suitcase of false biden votes be added to the count. >> i saw four suitcases come out from underneath the table. >> something the republican lieutenant governor jeff duncan and his colleagues looked into and found completely without merit. >> it was cut and spliced.

to take the time to watch it from beginning to end there's a very sequenced pattern that can be explained all the way through there. and those weren't suitcases. those were actually pre-approved cases already used all over the state. >> 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. nonetheless, because trump decided discrediting big cities were going to be one of his false political attacks, in philadelphia trump's lawyers falsely claimed republican observers had been barred from the counting rooms. >> one of the attorneys for trump asked a judge, judge diamond, for an emergency order to stop the counting. and they're claiming that they had no people in the room. that's what they had been claiming outside the courtroom. but inside the courtroom this

trump lawyer concedes that there were, quote, nonzero number of their own observers in the room. and essentially the case was laughed out of court. >> short of that lawyer lying to the judge and committing perjury, he clearly went as far as he could. we had republican observers there every minute of every day that we were operating and counting votes right in front of us. >> despite this barrage from trump and his allies -- >> we will await more vote to come into pennsylvania. >> -- that counting ended quite mome sly the saturday after election. ultimately the final decision of this very long election week came down to philly. and after philly was decided and announced -- >> cnn projects 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. while all that is happening we're also aware that rudy giuliani's coming to philadelphia. >> wow, what a beautiful day, thank you. >> going to the four seasons landscaping place to say that our voters votes shouldn't be counted. >> i was about to bring up four seasons landscaping because it was the most -- >> very suspect method of voting. >> -- degrading. >> there was no security, zero. >> -- wuthetic. >> people in this country have no assurance at all those ballots were actually cast. >> -- farcical moment in my view of this post-election day challenge of this all.

>> and appropriate. >> it would have to be unanimously cast for joe biden to catch up. >> in an industrial area right across the street from a crematorium and next to a sex shop. and it was the day trump got the news he did not want to hear. >> he was told by two of his top political advisers that basically it was over, and he listened and he decided he wanted to keep fighting. >> so -- >> trump decided he wanted to put giuliani in charge and that's exactly what he did. giuliani was going to do what he wanted. >> and that is what led to this now infamous press conference in november 2020 featuring rudy giuliani and another lawyer named sydney powell. >> the dominion voting systems were created in venezuela at the direction of hugo chavez to make sure he never lost an election. >> the only thing left is the vote. that could have been the same person 30 times. >> one of its most characteristic features is its

ability to flip votes. >> thank you. >> ben ginsburg, the preeminent republican party election attorney who has 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 they went through the entire press conference, and i sort of remember looking out the window and saying they just made all that up. >> 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 employees would later sue giuliani and powell for more than a billion dollars. a court document filed by powell's lawyers said, quote, no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact. someone should tell that 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. >> those social media posts -- facebook, instagram, twitter. >> social media. >> or something else. i think it was facebook. >> he also admitted he didn't, quote, have the time to investigate the claims himself. alissa farah griffon was the white house communications director when all these lies were being fed to then-president trump. you say that in november there seemed to be a tacit acknowledgement by the president that he lost, but then something changed. >> yeah, so something did change. and i think this was when the more conspiracy theorist individuals started getting access to the president. the sydney powells, the mike

lindells, michael flynns and even steve bannon was in his here. >> this election was a fraud. >> the former president believes he won the election, and that's scary. and the other thing, though, that your viewers need to know is the people around the president, the sane 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. >> there are more than 60 lawsuits filed 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. >> georgia faced more than a dozen of these suits. >> many of these lawsuits just wanted to throw out the results and then have the general assembly pick their own set of

electors. >> brad raffensperger, georgia's republican secretary of state, a conservative republican who supported trump and has fought with democrats on election issues, ordered a statewide hand count. that hand count confirmed there was no widespread fraud involved with the machine count. >> no, we never saw enough fraud that would have ever turned the results of the election. >> still then-president trump hate tweeted about him. and both raffensperger and his wife were threatened. >> people started threatening her, sending her sexualized threats, those intimidations. >> bill gates got threats, too, so did al schmidt who typhed 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 sort of credible incidents raised to our level yet. >> there was an interesting time line that started to happen, a pattern is a better way to put it. so i would go on tv i would speak the truth and within minutes he would send a tweet out that would say something derogatory or inflammatory. >> his latest target is the lieutenant governor. quote, jeff duncan georgia is a rino, never trumper, two dumb or corrupt and should be replaced. >> and within minutes after that me or my wife would start to get threats which would show up on our phone. i mean bloodcurdling threats from the most awful sounding individuals in deep meaning that would know things about you and your family. it was all to try to get us to sit down and be quiet. >> then president trump wanted some republicans to sit down, others he invited to washington.

he starts bringing in state legislators from pennsylvania, party leaders from michigan. >> he starts having them come to the white house to visit with him. and again this is part of the sales job he's doing. he's telling them he won and they ought to consider that and ought to consider how they submit electors and go ahead and certifying the elections in their states. >> joe biden ahead now by 61,000 votes. >> in michigan despite losing to joe biden by more than 154,000 votes, trump waged a fierce fight to keep the results from being certified. 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. >> after that act of courage state republicans replaced him on the board. it was 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 asked governor kemp to call a special session of the legislature so the legislators could 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 a state. i don't care if they're d's or r's. it would have been an absolute attack on democracy. >> a version of that, of course, came later. >> fight for trump!

fight for trump! ey customize your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. woah! look out! [sfx: submarine rising out of water ] [ sfx: minion spits bobber ] minions are bitin' today. [ sfx: submarine hatch closes, submarine dives ] ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ hello! minions: the rise of gru, only in theaters. hey! my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis...

the itching... the burning. the stinging. my skin was no longer mine. emerge tremfyant®. with tremfya®, most people saw 90% clearer skin at 16 weeks. the majority of people saw 90% clearer skin even at 5 years. tremfya® is the first medication of its kind also approved for adults with active psoriatic arthritis... and it's 6 doses a year after 2 starter doses. serious allergic reactions may occur. tremfya® may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms or if you had a vaccine or plan to. emerge tremfyant®. with tremfya®... ask your doctor about tremfya® today.

(announcer) enough with the calorie counting,

carb cutting, diet fatigue, and stress. just taking one golo release capsule with three balanced meals a day has been clinically proven to repair metabolism, optimize insulin levels, and balance the hormones that make weight loss easy. release works with your body, not against it, so you can put dieting behind you and go live your life. head to golo.com now to join the over 2 million people who have found the right way to lose weight and get healthier with golo. ♪ oz court losses piled up and inauguration day crept closer, trump hoped that u.s. attorney general bill barr with the might of the department of justice behind him would back him and

add credence to his fraudulent claims. >> where is the doj and the fbi in all of this, mr. president? is the doj investigating? >> missing in action. can't tell you where they are. >> barr was investigating. >> bill barr issued a memo that told prosecutors around the country that they could take overt 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 that it just wasn't there. and he eventually came to realize that. >> in an interview with the associated press, barr publicly contradicted trump's baseless assertions saying, quote, to date we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected 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 trump was asking about and there was nothing there, and 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 he would not get off of it. >> it was not just characters like rudy giuliani peddling the false claims. >> kim paxton, a big supporter of donald trump, brings a lawsuit arguing that the ballots from four states, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin and georgia, should be thrown out because those states had not followed their own laws in allowing

mail-inn balloting and the way they'd carried out their elections. he was arguing millions of ballots should be thrown out. >> the legal filing was so constitutionally unhinged and substantively bereft the texas solicitor-general refused to allow his name on the suit. it cited convoluted and speculative allegations and some down right lies. >> philadelphia doesn't use dominion voting machines, like basic facts like that. it was completely absurd to read. >> another absurdity, the lawsuit cited a statistical analysis that claimed the probability of biden winning those four states, quote, given president trump's early lead in those states as of 3:00 a.m. november 4, 2020, is less than 1 in a quadrillion. >> for the vote to swing by as much as it did the probability of that in one state is 1 in 1

quadrillion, that's one, comma 15 zeros. to happen in all four -- >> it was nonsense, a law. the analysis completely ignored what everyone including the trump campaign knew. because of vote by mail and when states counted early ballots, some states were going to show an early lead for trump that would not hold. despite the mendacity of the lawsuit 17 other republican state attorneys general signed a legal brief backing it. an overwhelming number of house republicans were drawn into that effort as well. at trump's request congressman mike johnson of louisiana circulated an e-mail 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 colleague who was preparing the brief not to do it. >> 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, aren't you going to fight this thing? this election was stolen. >> 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 onto it do you think actually believed the nonsense in it? >> if i had to guess i'd say 5 to 10. >> i think there was a sense among those who did sign it, 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, this is not a brief we ought to be associated with. and then a free hours later he signed it. >> the brief went out without kevin mccarthy's name and then the next day claiming he was inadvertently left off and he signed onto it. that was bad. he initially didn't want to sign it and realized what the

pressure was. what you see there people sign-on to something they don't believe to avoid political pressure. it's leaders who are afraid of their base and not leading their base. >> the supreme court declined to even hear the suit. >> a majority of house republicans, like 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 base on this lie. i'll just say for me personally as a pennsylvanian, they were trying to disinenfranchise my m and dad based on lies. >> i don't know how everyone doesn't take that personally. they did not want your vote to count based on nothing whatsoever. that is so mind-bending and so difficult to comprehend. >> so what's going to happen the next presidential election? how many people are going to sign some brief that says overthrow this to the supreme court. that becomes the 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 never get etthem back. >> up next, donald trump's phone call to the top election official in georgia. >> i just want to find 11,780 votes. >> was he telling him to break the law? >> it certainly felt like it. and consumes, replacing thought with worry. but one thing can calm uncertainty. an answer. uncovered through exploration, teamwork, and innovation. an answer that leads to even more answers. mayo clinic. you know where to go. for people living with h-i-v, keep being you. and ask your doctor about biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in certain adults. it's not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to and stay undetectable.

that's when the amount of virus is so low it cannot be measured by a lab test. research shows people who take h-i-v treatment every day and get to and stay undetectable can no longer transmit h-i-v through sex. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. rare, life-threatening side effects include a buildup of lactic acid and liver problems. do not take biktarvy if you take dofetilide or rifampin. tell your doctor about all the medicines and supplements you take, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you have kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis. if you have hepatitis b, do not stop taking biktarvy without talking to your doctor. common side effects were diarrhea, nausea, and headache. if you're living with hiv, keep loving who you are. and ask your doctor if biktarvy is right for you. researchers believe the first person to live to 150

has already been born. it could be you! wow. really? of course, you'll have to eat your greens, watch your stress, wear sunscreen... but to live to 150, we're developing solutions that help doctors listen to your heartbeat while they're miles away, or ai that knows what your body will do before you do. cool. introducing elevance health. where health can go.

before the 2020 election you

were perceived as a rising star in the republican party in georgia. but now you're not running for re-election, so what happened? >> yeah, it's funny. and talk about rising star, i don't know if i would agree with that. but one of the biggest knocks against me when i was running for lieutenant governor was that i was too conservative to actually be a statewide candidate. >> hey, georgia, it's jeff duncan again. >> in 2018 in the increasingly purple state of georgia jeff duncan ran as a long shot on his conservative values. >> please raise your right hand and place -- >> and he won. so no one actually can question your conservative bona fide. there's no issue when when it comes to social issues or economic issues or foreign policy. there's no way you're squishy or a liberal. >> yeah, i'm conservative because i believe in the principles of it. not because it gets me elected in georgia. i was raised that way. i think our family is conservative, the businesses that i run are conservative. that's just who i am.

>> but in 2020 after duncan pushed back against the wave of false claims -- >> it's certainly disheartening to watch folks willing to kind of 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. >> duncan found himself on the receiving end of republican fury. just like georgia's secretary of state brad raffensperger whose office was flooded with calls from voters urging him to change the results of the election. >> i want to talk to brad raffensperger. i want to talk to this piece of [ bleep ] for not [ bleep ] doing the right thing. this election was [ bleep ] stolen. >> we could feel the angst and hate building in the air over nothing, over a miraj, over a shiny object to deflect from the fact that donald trump had lost the election fair and squarely. >> 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 is absolutely it was worth it. >> the lieutenant governor found himself amongst the few willing to speak the truth, but he was not truth but he was not alone. disgusted by threats from misled trump supporters. gabe sterling also became a vocal critic of the publiclize. >> i remember we had a warehouse manager at our center for elections taking the trash out, a young guy, working for few years and all of these people swarming around him, you're going to prison, he's just a warehouse guy. >> good afternoon. >> on december 1st, 2020, 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 to go have a press conference, you might want to watch. >> mr. president, you have not condemned these actions or this language. this selection. this is the back bone of democracy and all of you who have not said a damn word are complicit in this. stop inspiring people to commit violence. someone's going to get hurt. someone's going to get shot. someone's going to get killed. >> felt like me saying those words. he said everything i wanted to say. it was heart felt. >> this is the back bone of elections. this stuff getting done. at that level, i thought, i'm doing something 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 very easily. >> just days later he said brian kemp wouldn't help him overturn the election something kemp couldn't legally do, that had no grounds to do. >> so far he haven't found is people with the courage to do the right thing. >> only because we wouldn't lie in front of a national audience for donald trump. >> and trump leaned on the state's chief investigator. >> the people of georgia are so angry. you know i won by hundreds and thousands of votes. it wasn't close. whatever you can do frances it's a great thing, 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 hearing ab phone calls he was making and we heard the unfortunate 60-plus

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

11,780 votes. >> he wanted us to somehow find additional votes. we had all of the ballots there were no more to add, all of those had been tabulated time and time again. >> was he telling you to break the law? >> it certainly felt like it. it's absolutely embarrassing as an american to hear a u.s. president having that type of conversation. >> 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 bit 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. >> hey good morning. >> but brad raffensperger stead fastness to the law, no with standing, trump was not even close to done in his efforts to overturn the election. ♪ >> ahead, a memo that could have

destroyed democracy. >> it is a blue print for how to ignore the vote of the people. ♪ discover is accepted at 99% of places in the u.s. ["only wanna be with you" by hootie & the blowfish] if you have type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure you're a target for chronic kidney disease. you can already have it and not know it. if you have chronic kidney disease your kidney health could depend on what you do today. ♪far-xi-ga♪ farxiga is a pill that works in the kidneys to help slow the progression of chronic kidney disease. farxiga can cause serious side effects including dehydration, urinary tract or genital yeast infections in women and men, and low blood sugar. ketoacidosis is a serious side effect that may lead to death. a rare, life-threatening bacterial infection

in the skin of the perineum could occur. stop taking farxiga and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms of this bacterial infection, an allergic reaction, or ketoacidosis. and don't take it if you are on dialysis. take aim at chronic kidney disease by talking to your doctor and asking about farxiga. if you can't afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. ♪far-xi-ga♪ you love rich, delicious ice cream. but your stomach doesn't. that disagreement ends right now.

lactaid ice cream is the creamy, real ice cream you love that will never mess with your stomach. lactaid ice cream. alright, limu, give me a socket wrench, pliers, and a phone open to libertymutual.com they customize your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need... and a blowtorch. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

in the weeks following the

election the word from those closest to donald trump is that he would eventually accept reality. >> there were people around trump, jared kushner, mark meadows in particular who were telling senior republicans in ig congress that he will -- trump will concede. he will 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 there were georgia senate runoff elections coming up but needed trump to help them win >> shelly 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 received the majority of electoral votes needed to win the presidency. >> on december 14th, 2020 the electoral college voted in all 50 states formalizing trump's loss. >> on january the 20th. >> on the 15th, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell finally publicly embraced the truth. >> today i want to congratulate president-elect joe biden. >> republicans who had spent the previous weeks trying to placate donald trump now found that the vacuum their silence left had been filled by trump's lies. trump lashed out at the few republicans that acknowledged his defeat, tweeting, quote, too soon to give up. the republican party must finally learn to fight. privately the president was entertaining 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 conservation about being made special counsel within the white house to investigate election fraud. i also found out that mike flynn, the former lieutenant general of 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. >> and flynn publicly spoke about this. >> he said a version of it on "news max" the night before this meeting. >> there are people talking about martial law like something we have never done. we did -- martial law has been instituted 64 times. >> he was told by officials, this isn't legal. we don't 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 supporters to come to washington d.c. on january 6th to protest the election results at a rally organized by a 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 -- >> if you still love america! >> the president continued his assault in the capital. >> the attorney general of the united states bill barr is leaving administration. >> thus began a new near 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 donoghue, 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 email 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, on 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 the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the republican congressman. >> trump knows that 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 work and put pressure on the states to start 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 corrupt election and according to acting deputy attorney general richard donoghue's notes from the conversation, trump told rosen the doj was failing to respond to reports of crime. >> rosen stood firm on this call saying there is not much the justice department could do. >> trump also plotted with another justice department official jeffrey clark to oust the acting attorney general after rosen's refusals to go along with trump's fraudulent allegations, but that scheme imploded at a dramatic white house showdown on january 3rd. 2021 >> this was a scene straight 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 clark, there are going to be huge consequences. number of top officials at the justice department would 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 hopes to overturn the election on mike pence based of a legal memo written by conservative attorney john eastman. >> let's talk about the john 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 reelected. eastman has since publicly tried to downplay his memo and his role in attempting a coup, but he told a very different story in recent undercover video from a progressive activist. >> so giuliani and me met with 300 legislators on january 2nd via a zoom conference call. and they all spinelessly wouldn't do anything. >> and in appearances in past right wing media. >> are we to assume that this is going to be a climactic battle that will take place this week? >> it depends on the spine of the individuals involved.

>> would that be a nice way to say a guy named vice president mike pence? >> yes. >> this level or corruption 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 multi-step plan to detail how vice president pence could use his role 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 book by jonathan karl the own chief of staff mark meadows forwarded the memo to

the top aid. >> there's so much talk about the memo that john eastman wrote and he was just an outside lawyer but meadows is forwarding a document that outlines the effort to essentially have a coup, a document written by a lawyer on the trump campaign payroll. >> publicly pence raises 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 someway he could carry out this unconstitutional move, including, according to "washington post" journalist bob woodward and rob costa fellow hoosier dan quayle 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 got to call pence and get him back here today.

we're going bury biden on january 6, f-ing bury him. >> pence says he's talked to all of the lawyers that he can talk to, and he has decided that he can't. he doesn't have the power that the president says he has. and trump turns on him. yells at him. 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 is stolen and there is a route out, there is going to be violence. his response was simply "operator, next caller."

lemons. lemons, lemons, lemons. look how nice they are. the moment you become an expedia member, you can instantly start saving on your travels. so you can go and see all those, lovely, lemony, lemons. ♪ and never wonder if you got a good deal. because you did. ♪

wanna help kids get their homework done? well, an internet connection's a good start. but kids also need computers. and sometimes the hardest thing about homework is finding a place to do it. so why not hook community centers up with wifi? for kids like us, and all the amazing things we're gonna learn. through projectup, comcast is committing $1 billion so millions more students can continue to get the tools they need to build a future of unlimited possibilities.

stop the steal! stop the steal! stop the steal! >> we have the power of numbers. >> fight for trump! >> january 6th, 2021. >> fight for trump! >> 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 joe biden -- >> usa! >> you will listen! >> usa! >> thousands of people descended on our nation's capitol. >> biden did not win this election. >> what do you think happened. >> fraud. 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 isn't helping us. nobody is helping us. >> we're taking this country back. >> i wake up at 4:30. buses were everywhere. you couldn't get a clear path into the office from where i was. >> this line wraps around the washington monument. >> and there is all kinds of traffic at 4:30 in the morning, 5:00 in the morning and strobe lights already on the national mall and couple thousand people milling around at that hour, just it just felt like something was off.

>> fight for america! fight for america! >> when did you start becoming worried as 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's 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 root out, there is going to be violence." his response was simply, "operator, next caller." so on january 6th, it was obvious what was going to happen. >> fight for trump! fight for trump! >> 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 this is going to end but if they want to

fight, they better believe they got one! >> and told how to think about those republicans who acknowledge 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 famous faces peddling the big lie were there. >> we are 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 days surrounding january 6, 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 the way you think it's going to happen. >> the day before on january 5th, bannon ominously teased what was to come on his podcast

"war room." >> it's going to be quite extraordinary different. you've 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. >> bull! bull! >> i knew 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 brought it that day. >> i was sort of nervous for the morning. i was curious to see what the rally was. i was hoping not to hear some of the speeches that i ultimately heard. some of the more inflammatory ones. >> we know there was fraud. >> 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 -- >> fight for trump! fight for trump! >> the marquee speaker was the president himself. >> president donald j. trump! [ cheers ] >> meanwhile inside the chambers of congress, the certification of the votes paused. >> i want to 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 put out a statement saying he would not

going to follow trump's instructions. >> usa! >> 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. >> treason! >> it was so unimaginable.

that you would have a mob having broken into the capitol and attacked police officers. >> treason! treason! treason! >> attempting to break into the floor of the chamber of the house of representatives. you just couldn't compute that was happening because so it's fundamentally un-american. >> un-american -- objection to counting the electoral votes. >> -- yet very close to happening in america. this video shows utah republican senator mitt romney, someone the angry mob considered an enemy

unknowingly walking towards the rioters. capitol police officer eugene goodman tells romney to get out of harm's way and runs to confront the insurrectionists. leading them from the senate chamber. vice president pence. >> president and vice president -- >> the man many rioters called to be hanged that day. >> hang mike pence! hang mike pence! >> 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 email to john eastman after they were escorted off the senate floor. >> he said in the email, "thanks to your bullshit, we're now under siege." >> eastman fired back blaming the riots on the vice president and his staff. >> he's been responded by saying that it was actually the vice president's fault and mr. jacob's fault for the quote unquote siege.

he said if you would have done what you needed to be done and been transparent and have a debate, if you would have gone forward like we asked you to go, it wouldn't be happening to you right now. >> he's got a gun! >> the conversation you had with your wife, you've 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 over run 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 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 come through about organized militia groups will storm the capitol and some folks saying they're going to kill whoever they find and all these sorts of things. and 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 remained isolated, watching the events 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? >> kevin mccarthy had a conversation with him telling him how bad it was, people breaking into my office and they're doing this. and his response was, well,

kevin, i guess they're more upset about the rules of the election than you are. >> it was chaos, when some on the biden team were genuinely worried there would be no transition, sources tell cnn, that trump and his mob had successfully disrupted the counting of electors and might find a way to cling to power. >> stop the steal! stop the steal! >> thank god that there weren't more people killed. at the time you don't know that. at the time you know there is 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. >> let's take a seat, people!

>> 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. >> people, come on! >> 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 -- revolution. let's take this -- this is ours. coming up, will trump try to steal the election again? >> you think he will try to impose some form of autocracy? >> i think he absolutely would.

my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis... the tightness, stinging... the pain. emerge tremfyant®. with tremfya®, most people saw 90% clearer skin at 16 weeks. the majority of people saw 90% clearer skin even at 5 years. serious allergic reactions may occur.

tremfya® may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms or if you had a vaccine or plan to. emerge tremfyant®. with tremfya®. ask your doctor about tremfya® today.

hours after the last rioters had been pushed out of the capitol, 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. >> we reconvened that night. there was an opportunity for leadership from kevin mccarthy, 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. >> hearing valid concerns about election integrity. >> by the end of the night, two-thirds of republicans in the house of representatives including the current republican leadership voted not to certify the state of arizona. >> i object to the electoral votes. >> and not to certify the commonwealth of pennsylvania.

>> do you think kevin mccarthy and steve scalise all of whom voted to not count electors after blood had been shed, after this attack, do you think they actually believe this cause they've taken up? >> not a word of it. i don't think they believe any 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. when you think about the heroics on flight 93 on 9/11 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 rebuild capitol today and a lot of casualties. but they all decided to do it together. when you only have a few people speaking out, it's no doubt

that's not going to turn the ship. everybody 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 conspiracy theorists motivated just by lies. that's a bunch of non-sense people want to tell us. these are people that understand first principles and free markets. >> the house voted to impeach president trump for willful incitement of the january 6 insurrection. >> my vote to impeach the sitting president isn't fear based. >> there is no excuse for president trump's actions. >> while some republicans spoke in favor, the majority of house republicans sided with trump refusing to vote for impeachment. >> the ayes are 232. the nays are 197. >> ten republicans breaking ranks. >> 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 i had no choice in the matter. as conservative republicans, we are constitutionalists. we believe in the rule of law. >> were you surprised on ten republicans voted to impeach? >> it was a point a couple days before the vote maybe a day before i thought we hit 25. because i talked to 25 people. i look at those people that were going to vote for impeachment, and i recognized every one of them that ended up not voting that way, they always messaged a concern for what it meant for their reelection. >> hi, everyone. thanks. >> 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 had local officials who were getting death threats. you had 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, the security of their families. you know, 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. >> we'll have to fight much harder. >> this will remain a cancer on our constitutional republic. >> cheney has become a leading critic of those who engaged in the big lie and attempted to subvert democracy including house republican leader kevin mccarthy who said this two days after the election. >> president trump won this election so everyone listening, do not be quiet. [ applause ] >> in may, 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 election lies, and test. test. stefanik defeated cheney for the leadership position. >> it became increasingly clear that to stay in house republican leadership, i would have to be willing to perpetuate the big lie, and i just simply wasn't comfortable with that. >> how many of your republican colleagues that perpetuate the big lie either with their comments or with their votes, how many of them do you think actually believe it? >> very few. very few. too many are putting their 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 a political calculation, which is pretty craven if you think about it. >> what is the danger to elected officials that might know better acquiescing to these demands, to these requests, or winking and

nodding about the big lie? >> the danger is that once you do it on this issue, why wouldn't you do it on any other issue? this isn't about right and left at all. it's about right and wrong. >> the 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 equal number of people to continue to pass the test going forward. >> one of your colleagues said the guard rails held but barely and only because there were specific individuals at great risk to themselves professionally and personally who stood by those guardrail, people like the maricopa county board of supervisor, people like secretary of state raffensperger in georgia, people like commissioner al schmidt in philadelphia. do you think that ultimately a

dozen of these people replaced by other people, trump people and the guard rails don't hold and democracy falls under? >> oh, i certainly think that's a real threat. and, you know, any time you're driving on the highway and you see a guardrail that's been hit, it withheld, it wouldn't withstand a second impact. coming up next, that second impact lead by former president trump may becoming. >> he either wins legitimately, which he may do or loses again, just try to steal it. only two things are forever: love and liberty mutual customizing your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. if anyone objects to this marriage... (emu squawks) kevin, no! not today. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

♪ baby got back by sir mix-a-lot ♪ unlimited cashback match... only from discover. 1

hi, i'm denise. i've lost over 22 pounds with golo in six months and i've kept it off for over a year. i was skeptical about golo in the beginning because i've tried so many different types of diet products before. i've tried detox, i've tried teas, i've tried all different types of pills, so i was skeptical about anything working because it never did. but look what golo has done. look what it has done. i'm in a size 4 pair of pants. go golo. (soft music)

we are now about a year away from the midterm elections, which typically tests the strength of an incumbent president. >> liz cheney, how about that? >> there is now growing evidence the midterms 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 a progressive activist. >> these guys are spineless. if we take a bunch out of the primaries in 2022, then the precondition for getting elected is we're going to fight this stuff and maybe we 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 6. why is it that he wasn't able to steal the election? who stood in his way? and he is going methodically, state by state at races, you know, 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 is trying to get them removed. >> what scares me is that the secretary of state rolls, because those are extremely

powerful in terms of dealing with elections. >> the focus for our office. >> in georgia the secretary of state that refused to quote find the votes trump needed to win georgia is facing a challenge from republican congressman jody hice. hice has been all in on trump's election lie and endorsed by donald trump. in arizona, a state representative named mark finchum wants the job. >> arizona state representative mark finchum is with us tonight, and what a job he's done. mark? >> 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 descent chance to win this primary. if we have people like that in these key positions moving forward, i think we are in danger. >> eight of the ten house

republicans who voted for impeachment are now facing primary challenges from a of as governor i get to decertify any of the states that i believe were can of compromised. >> six offal ten republicans facing challenges by those endorsed by trump or energized by him. one has already loss and another with victory. republicans endorsed by trump or energized by him, including liz cheney. >> donald trump is very vocally supporting your defeat. are you worried? >> no. i intend to win. >> you could lose. you're saying you won't but anything is 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 is not even really a choice or a calculation. it's just what is the right thing here and what has to be done. >> two of the ten decided not to run for reelection. one of them is congressman gonzalez. he's retiring after two terms. >> this lifestyle, the constant travel, the constant fund raising, it wasn't working prior to impeachment. it's pretty clear now is the time to get out of this. the other one is congressman adam kinzinger who without saying trump's name announced he wanted to fight against the politics of division instead of for reelection. it's pretty clear now is 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 reelection. >> i don't want to have to do and say the things i have to say and do right now with donald

trump playing the games he's playing. >> duncan began speaking about the republican party after trump and wrote a book called "gop 2.0." and it's not just elected officials stepping out of or being pushed from public view. remember chris stirewalt, the fox political editor who correctly called the state of arizona for biden? he was fired in january. 2021. fox blamed restructuring. stirewalt's boss retired. >> a source told "the washington post" that i was fired because my ratings weren't as good as dan bongino's and that audiences were not responding to me as favorably as they were to dan bongino, which really made me laugh, because that's not my job. right? my job is not to tell you what you want to hear. >> bongino is a conservative pun did, not a reporter.

on top of this, integrity laws that tighten access to the ballot to prevent widespread voter fraud, you know, the kind that did not happen. 19 states have new laws. >> it's trying to solve a problem that doesn't exactly exist. some people say voter fraud never occurs. it does occur. it occurs infrequently. >> beyond efforts making it more difficult to vote are efforts making it easier to undo the results of an election. ? georgia some of the power that used to belong to secretary of state brad raffensperger used to have now lies with the republican state legislature. >> a number of states have tried to take running of elections away from professionals in 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 no better example of the politicized counting process than the so-called audit of ballots in maricopa county, arizona. 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 this trump orbit ever since the election. >> people saw images of these cyber ninjas looking at ballots through ultraviolet lights. what were they looking for with the ultraviolet light in the ballot box? 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 in asia. and if there was bamboo, that would indicate that these were in fact those ballots. >> if you buy into conspiracy theories or believe the falsehood that 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 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. it's hard for me to each attach

the words "coup" in america. 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 one thousand 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 explaining the pressure campaign waged by the former 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, 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 donald trump is running for president again. he'll likely be the nominee of the republican party, assuming nobody attempts to challenge him credibly. joe biden is going to be 82 years old by 2024. many around him don't think he is going run again. there is very much a scenario where donald trump could be president again. and this is a man whose channeled 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 were 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, and oftentimes it was simply the motivation of hoping to win reelection that kept him from doing things. it's very different in the second term, and 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 would certainly be open to using the military for political reasons as well. >> that's terrifying. >> it is a warning we are bringing you from conservative republicans. you might have noticed that other than a few journalists, the voices you've heard tonight have been exclusively gop because there is 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 place for the country to be. >> i was discussing with an older 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 shamed demagogue republican senator mccarthy in 1954, somebody has to sit up and say at long last have you no decency? on the other hand, my friend said, somebody has to be listening when he says it. 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 to care. and if the vast majority of republican elected officials do care, as they should, well, they're not acting that way. ♪ it's a storm that crashes, and consumes, replacing thought with worry. but one thing can calm uncertainty. an answer. uncovered through exploration, teamwork, and innovation. an answer that leads to even more answers. mayo clinic. you know where to go.

good evening. i'm wolf blitzer in washington sitting in for anderson. tonight two major new developments in the wake of cassidy hutchinson's bombshell testimony before the house january 6th select committee. one appears to bolster a disputed piece she told the panel. the other concerns potential witness tampering concerns raised by liz cheney in her closing remarks on tuesday. >> our committee commonly asks witnesses connected to mr. trump's administration or campaign whether they have been contac a