Four days after the electors met across the country and made Joe
Biden the president elect Donald Trump was still trying to find a
way to hang on to the presidency.
On Friday, December 18th. His team of outside advisers paid him a
surprise visit in the White House that would quickly become the stuff
of legend. The meeting has been called unhinged.
Not normal in the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency.
The outside lawyers who have been involved in dozens of failed lawsuits
had lots of theories supporting the big lie, but no evidence to support
it. As we will see, however, they brought to the White House, a draft
executive order that they had prepared for President Trump.
To further his ends. Specifically, they proposed the immediate mass
seizure of state election machines by the U. S military. The meeting
ended after midnight with apparent rejection of that idea.
In the wee hours of December. 19th dissatisfied with his options,
Donald Trump decided to call for a large and wild crowd on Wednesday.
January 6th.
The day when Congress would meet to certify the electoral votes.
Never before in American history had a president called for a crowd
to come contest the counting of electoral votes by Congress or engaged
in any effort designed to influence delay or obstruct the joint session
of Congress in doing its work required by our constitution.
In the Electoral Count Act.
As we'll see Donald Trump's 1 42 Am tweet electrified in galvanized
his supporters, especially the dangerous extremists in the oath keepers,
the proud boys and other racist and white nationalist groups spoiling
for a fight against the government.
Three rings of interwoven attack were now operating towards January.
6th.
On the inside ring. Trump continued trying to work to overturn the
election by getting Mike Pence to abandon his oath of office as vice
president and assert the unilateral power to reject electoral votes.
This would have been a fundamental and unprecedented breach of the
constitution that would promise Trump multiple ways of staying in
office.
Meanwhile, in the middle ring, members of domestic violent extremist
groups created an alliance both online and in person to coordinate
a massive effort to storm invade and occupy.
The capital.
By placing a target on the joint session of Congress. Trump had mobilized
these groups around a common goal, emboldening them, strengthening
their working relationships and helping build their numbers.
Finally in the outer ring. On January, 6th there assembled a large
and angry crowd, the political force that Trump considered both the
Touchstone and the measure of his political power.
Here were thousands of enraged Trump followers thoroughly convinced
by the big lie who traveled from across the country to join Trump's
wild rally to stop the steal.
With the proper incitement by political leaders in the proper instigation
from the extremists. Many members of this crowd could be led to storm
the capital.
Confront the vice president and Congress and try to overturn the
2020 election results.
All of these efforts would converge and explode on January, the sixth
Mr Chairman, as you know, better than any other member of this committee
from the wrenching struggle for voting rights in your beloved Mississippi.
The problem of politicians whipping up mob violence to destroy fair
elections is the oldest domestic enemy of constitutional democracy.
In America.
Abraham Lincoln knew it, too. In 18 37, a racist mob in Alton, Illinois,
broke into the offices of an abolitionist newspaper and killed its
editor, Elijah Lovejoy.
Lincoln wrote his speech in which he said
That no transatlantic military giant could ever crush us as a nation
even with all of the fortunes in the world.
But if downfall ever comes to America, he said, we ourselves would
be its author and finisher.
If racist mobs are encouraged by politicians to rampage and terrorized,
Lincoln said they will violate the rights of other citizens and quickly
destroy the bonds of social trust necessary for democracy to work.
Mobs and demagogues will put us on a path to political tyranny, Lykken
said.
As we'll see today this very old problem has returned with new ferocity
today as a president who lost an election deployed a mob which included
dangerous extremists.
To attack the constitutional system of election in the peaceful transfer
of power. And as we'll see the creation of the Internet and social
media has given today's tyrants, tools of propaganda and disinformation
that yesterday's despot's could only have dreamed of.