MADAME PRESIDENT:

In the weeks that followed, the Trump campaign launched 62 lawsuits over the outcome and lost 61, winning only a technical victory that had no effect on the vote count. The committee established that when the Supreme Court refused to turn over the electoral counts of four states to state legislatures, rather than the states' voters, Trump was livid. Cassidy Hutchinson, who was the top aide to Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified that Trump was "raging." He said: "I don't want people to know that we lost. This is embarrassing...." 

So Trump launched a pressure campaign against state officials to get them to assign their states' electoral votes to him rather than to Biden. He pressured Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, telling him "I just want to find 11,780 votes" to put him over the top to take the state's electoral votes. Trump pressured officials in other states. He also pressured Department of Justice officials: "Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and to the Republican congressmen." When that effort failed, Trump tried to replace acting attorney general Jeff Rosen with loyalist Jeff Clark, stopping only when the leadership of the Department of Justice threatened a mass resignation.

Thwarted, Trump turned to the idea of false electoral slates from the states, working with loyalists in the states to send to Washington a fake set of electoral votes in favor of him rather than the Biden electors voters had chosen. Even lawyer John Eastman, who pushed the plan, admitted it was illegal, violating the 1887 Electoral Count Act. 

When that plan, too, failed, Trump fell back on his last resort: a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers were counting the electoral votes. Trump had primed a mob by repeating the lie that the election had been stolen, and today the committee revealed that Jason Miller, senior advisor to the Trump campaign, forwarded a link from a pro-Trump website to Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows less than a week before January 6, saying, "I GOT THE BASE FIRED UP." The linked web page was about the upcoming session of Congress to count electoral votes, and it had comments like "Gallows don't require electricity." "If the filthy commie maggots try to push their fraud through, there will be hell to pay." "Our lawmakers in Congress can leave one of two ways; one, in a body bag, two, after rightfully certifying Trump the winner."

The committee today released new information gleaned from Secret Service communications, showing that the service had extensive information that there was an attack on the Capitol planned for January 6 and that testimony suggesting otherwise was "not credible." The committee said its investigation of the Secret Service is ongoing.

On January 6, members of the crowd at the Ellipse rally were armed, and Trump knew it. Nonetheless, he urged them to march on the Capitol. When his handlers refused to let him join them, he retreated to the private dining room in the White House and watched the violence unfold on television, ignoring pleas from congressional leaders, advisors, staff, and family to call off the rioters. Instead, at the very moment Vice President Mike Pence's life was most in danger from the mob, Trump tweeted that Pence had let him down, energizing the rioters.

Meanwhile, other lawmakers stepped into the breach left by Trump's refusal to act. Today's hearing had previously unseen footage captured by Alexandra Pelosi, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) daughter, of congressional leaders working the phones to get law enforcement officers to clear the Capitol. The footage is chilling, as our elected leaders beg for help that is not coming. Pelosi took over the functions of the president, calm in the chaos as she worked to restore order and demonstrate that our government could still function.

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