Republican MP Liz Cheney, vice chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurgency, said the same people who pressured former Vice President Mike Pence to reject election votes also worked to pressure state election officials.
“Donald Trump played a direct and personal role in this effort, as did Rudy Giuliani, as did John Eastman,” Cheney said in his opening remarks to today’s hearing. “In other words, the same people who tried to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject election votes illegally also worked simultaneously to reverse the outcome of the 2020 statewide election.”
“Each of these efforts to annul the election is independently serious,” he added.
“Each one deserves the attention of both Congress and our Department of Justice,” Cheney said.
At its third hearing last month, the committee tried to connect Trump’s pressure campaign against Pence with the January 6 violence by weaving testimonies from Pence’s aides, Trump’s public statements, and comments from rioters. at the Capitol. The committee showed that Trump was repeatedly told that his plan for Pence to cancel the election was illegal, but that he tried to do so anyway.
Cheney said these pressure campaigns were done for a broader purpose and “all of this was done in preparation for January 6.”
He reiterated the committee’s point that Trump had been told there was no basis for his allegations of election fraud.
Cheney played a clip of former Attorney General William Barr in a recorded statement saying the allegations “had no merit.”
“We took a look at this ourselves, and based on our review, including key witness interviews, Fulton County complaints were … they had no merit. The ballots under the table were legitimate ballots. they weren’t in a suitcase, ”Barr said in the video.
A bit of context: At a previous committee hearing, BJay Pak, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, stated that his office found the alleged “suitcase full of ballots” in Georgia a box. official security.