(PHOENIX) — Republican Kari Lake’s election lawsuit will go to trial this week after an Arizona judge dismissed most — but not all — counts she put forward contesting her loss in the governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson dismissed eight out of 10 claims late Monday but allowed two counts to proceed pertaining to alleged intentional misconduct affecting ballot printers and ballot chain of custody on Election Day.
The two-day trial will begin Wednesday at 11 a.m. ET.
A fired-up Lake reacted Tuesday at the Turning Point USA AmericaFest event in Phoenix to what she deemed a “huge win” for her legal team and appeared giddy when talking about how Hobbs and other election officials would have to take the witness stand.
“Christmas came early yesterday, woo!” Lake said to applause. “We got great news. We’re taking these b******* to trial!”
“She can’t duck out from taking the stand in our trial. She will have to take the stand. Katie Hobbs is gonna have to put her hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth,” she added.
But in a reversal later in the day, a spokesperson from the secretary of state’s office confirmed that Lake’s attorneys withdrew their subpoena for Hobbs to testify and will not call her to appear, even after Judge Thompson denied a request from Hobbs’ attorneys to block the subpoena’s enforcement.
Lake’s attorney, Kurt Olsen, who reportedly talked to then-President Donald Trump on Jan. 6 and pushed conspiracy theories to justify overturning the 2020 election, still has the chance to call Maricopa County Elections Recorder Stephen Richer and Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chair Bill Gates as witnesses.
To win her case, Lake has an extremely high bar in proving that Maricopa County election workers intentionally interfered with printers to change the results of the election and intentionally violated the chain of custody rules, resulting in her losing enough votes to sway the election.
She’s hailed the decision to move forward with a trial as a victory, tweeting, “Buckle up, America. This is far from over.”
Lake has “alleged intentional misconduct sufficient to affect the outcome of the election and thus has stated an issue of fact that requires going beyond the pleadings,” Thompson wrote in the ruling. “Accordingly, Plaintiff must show at trial that the BOD printer malfunctions were intentional, and directed to affect the results of the election, and that such actions did actually affect the outcome.”
Since falling 17,000 votes short of Hobbs, the TV news anchor turned self-described “ultra-MAGA mama bear” has continued to model Trump, embracing claims her election was rigged after never agreeing to accept the results if she lost. She’s frequented Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in recent weeks, blasting election workers and the media to dinner guests, according to videos posted on social media. She’s also asked supporters on Twitter to pray for Judge Thompson to allow her a revote while blasting fundraising links to help with her case.
Lake’s lawsuit, filed earlier the month and filled with distorted allegations that echo Trump’s failed legal challenges, seeks extraordinary relief of fully overturning the state’s election and certifying her as the winner instead of Hobbs.
Democratic attorney Marc Elias, whose firm is representing Hobbs, expressed confidence Lake won’t meet her bar despite the case going to trial.
“Proving intentional wrongdoing and that it affected the outcome of the election will be impossible for Lake,” Elias tweeted. “This is a careful judge, but the conclusion seems not in doubt.”
Lake claims “thousands of voters, disproportionately Republican, gave up voting due to the long wait times or simply avoided the polls after seeing the chaos reported” on Election Day in Maricopa County, home to more than half of Arizona voters. County officials have maintained there was no nefarious behavior and no voters were disenfranchised as other voting options were presented despite the printer issues impacting 60% of Election Day locations.
A report from Maricopa County found that some printers produced ballots with ink that was too light to be read by tabulation machines. Impacted voters were given the option to put their ballots in a secure box known as “Door 3” to be counted after Election Day at Maricopa County’s main tabulation center.
“All voters were still provided reasonable, lawful options for voting,” Maricopa County attorney Thomas Liddy, a lifelong Republican, wrote in a letter accompanying the report.
With election challenges in Arizona on an accelerated timeline, Thompson will have five days from the end of the two-day trial to issue his ruling. It’s expected to be appealed.
(WASHINGTON) — As Republicans gear up to retake power in the House next year, incoming chairs of the two top investigative committees in the House of Representatives have rolled out a laundry list of planned investigations – but top Republican investigators appear to have little appetite to use their newfound subpoena power in one area: Jan. 6.
Despite pressure from far-right figures, and even signals from leadership and members inside the Republican caucus, incoming chairs of the House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee told ABC News they are more focused on probes into COVID-19 funding, the border, and President Joe Biden’s family rather than relitigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol or investigating the investigators.
“Right now that’s not anywhere on my list,” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the incoming chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, told ABC News when asked if he planned to use his power in the upcoming Congress to investigate Jan 6.
Comer’s comments come as some members of the Republican conference continue to call for an investigation of Democrats and the Capitol attack following the more than a year-long House Jan. 6 committee probe that’s set to release its final report on Wednesday.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, D-Ga., who sources have said will likely have a seat on Comer’s Oversight committee in the new year, recently called for investigations into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others and said she expects Republicans to launch probes related to Jan. 6.
“I do believe that’s going to happen,” Greene told former White House adviser and Trump ally Steve Bannon on his internet show when he asked if House Republicans would hold hearings probing into Jan. 6. Greene added she didn’t believe Republicans would do “everything” that Trump allies like Bannon have been calling for, including releasing all the security footage from that day.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has signaled Republicans planned to investigate the Jan. 6 panel’s work, sending a letter to the House select committee investigating the attack to preserve all its documents.
“Although your Committee’s public hearings did not focus on why the Capitol complex was not secure on January 6, 2021, the Republican majority in the 118 Congress will hold hearings that do so,” McCarthy, R-Calif., wrote in a letter to Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.
McCarthy has also released a roadmap for the investigations Republicans will pursue, including the border crisis, “big tech,” China, and COVID origins. There was no direct mention of Jan. 6 or the committee, but the more than 2,000-word press release made one reference to probing “security failures and ongoing vulnerabilities in the U.S. Capitol.”
At a news conference last week McCarthy said Republicans do plan to look into the committee’s work, but did not elaborate on what that would look like.
It’s possible the Committee on House Administration could probe matters related to Jan. 6. The committee’s current Ranking Member, Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., has said security issues must be addressed and sent a letter to the Jan. 6 committee right before their first public hearing asking they preserve all records so that Republicans can investigate their work.
But according to Comer, Republican leadership has no interest in relitigating the insurrection.
“No one from leadership has said anything about that to me,” Comer told ABC News when asked about Greene’s comment calling for Jan. 6 probes. “We’ve got a pretty lengthy list of investigations and probes and that’s not on the list.”
The incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said his committee plans to focus “on the politics of DOJ” and that a probe into Jan. 6 could fall into that. But when asked if that would be a part of the committee’s main priorities, Jordan said it wasn’t a “specific” target.
In the weeks since Republicans captured the House, Comer and Jordan have been busy putting their investigative targets on notice. The pair held a news conference the day after Republicans clinched the House laying out their probes into President Biden’s family, including his son Hunter.
Comer’s House Oversight Committee minority has also sent letters re-requesting documentation and declassification of materials from multiple agencies involved in President Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal as well as requesting testimony on COVID origins and funding.
Jordan and Republicans on House Judiciary have signaled how they will ramp up investigations in the majority, issuing letters to White House chief of staff Ron Klain, and multiple top agencies informing them to “anticipate requiring testimony, either in hearings or transcribed interviews” when they regain power in the new Congress.
Comer told ABC News to expect the first two Oversight Committee hearings in the new year to be on the border and COVID-19 funding and fraud.
“We’re gonna bring people in for interviews. We’ve been sending letters out, some of them we’ve made public, and some of them we haven’t. So we expect to start doing transcribed interviews early on,” Comer said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to make public six years’ worth of information about former President Donald Trump’s tax returns — a move Trump has long fought.
The committee is expected to meet at 3 p.m. to consider whether to release data from Trump’s tax returns from 2015-2020.
The committee obtained the information from the Treasury Department last month, after the U.S. Supreme Court denied Trump’s request to block an appears court order that he surrender his tax returns and other financial records to the committee.
It marked the fourth time Trump had lost a high court appeal related to requests for his taxes.
It’s not immediately clear what significant new information might be in the committee’s possession. Prosecutors in New York have already been able to access some of the data, but some of the data the committee has could be more recent.
Tuesday’s expected vote comes a day after the House Jan. 6 committee voted to make criminal referrals about Trump to the Justice Department.
The committee had requested six years’ worth of Trump’s returns as part of what it said was an investigation into IRS audit practices of presidents and vice presidents.
In his petition to the Supreme Court, Trump accused the committee of seeking his taxes under false pretenses.
Any potential release would require a majority vote of the committee. It’s not clear whether the committee would release all the documents it’s obtained pursuant to its original subpoena, or just some of the documents.
In November, it was revealed that Trump reported nearly $1 billion in operating losses over a two-year period about a decade ago when an accountant testified at the criminal trial of the Trump Organization, spilling into public tax information that the former president has tried repeatedly to keep private.
If the Ways and Means Committee votes Tuesday to release the information, it’s not clear when that information would become public, but it comes just two weeks before House Republicans are set to take majority control.
The Supreme Court offered no explanation for its decision and there was no noted dissent or vote breakdown.
“We knew the strength of our case, we stayed the course, followed the advice of counsel, and finally, our case has been affirmed by the highest court in the land,” Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., said at the time. “Since the Magna Carta, the principle of oversight has been upheld, and today is no different. This rises above politics, and the Committee will now conduct the oversight that we’ve sought for the last three and a half years.”
While Trump has claimed the subpoena is a politically motivated fishing expedition, the committee said the documents were critical for drafting “legislation on equitable tax administration, including legislation on the President’s tax compliance.”
The top Republican on the committee, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, accused Democrats of making a major mistake in a “rush to target” Trump.
“Ways and Means Democrats are unleashing a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond President Trump, and jeopardizes the privacy of every American,” Brady said in a statement.
“Going forward, partisans in Congress have nearly unlimited power to target political enemies by obtaining and making public their private tax returns to embarrass and destroy them. This is not limited to public officials, but can target private citizens, business and labor leaders, and Supreme Court justices,” he said.
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky, Devin Dwyer and Tal Axelrod contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee’s 18-month-long investigation into the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, came to a dramatic close Monday when members voted unanimously to make multiple criminal referrals to the Justice Department over former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
In a sweeping 160-page summary released after the meeting to explain its findings, the committee labeled Trump as the “central cause” of the attack and listed four charges they recommended be brought against him.
The Justice Department is not obligated to act on such referrals to charge Trump, or even to acknowledge them. But the public hearings outlining Trump’s “multi-part scheme” to overturn the 2020 presidential election have amped up pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland to bring criminal charges against Trump — which would be the first in history against a former president.
“We have every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a roadmap to justice and that the agencies and institutions responsible for ensuring justice under law will use the information we provided to aid in their work,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in his opening statement.
Anticipating critics will deem any committee action as political, members emphasized how the referrals, while historic, follow the first time in history an American president refused a peaceful transfer of power.
“We understand the gravity of each and every referral we are making today, just as we understand the magnitude of the crime against democracy that we describe in our report,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. “But we have gone where the facts in the law lead us, and inescapably, they lead us here.”
Here are some key takeaways from the final business meeting:
Committee refers Trump to DOJ on 4 criminal charges
After the committee’s nine members took turns describing what they said they uncovered in hours of interviews and thousands of documents, Raskin was the one to announce that the evidence “warrants a criminal referral, of former president Donald J. Trump, John Eastman and others.”
He listed four federal criminal statutes Trump and others allegedly violated: Obstruction of an Official Proceeding (18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)), conspiracy to defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. § 371), conspiracy to make a false statement (18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1001) and to “incite,” “assist” or “aid and comfort” an insurrection (18 U.S.C. § 2383).
“We propose to the committee advancing referrals where the gravity of the specific offense, the severity of its actual harm and the centrality of the offender to the overall design of the unlawful scheme to the overall election compel to us speak,” Raskin said. “Ours is not a system of justice where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass.”
Raskin pointedly said that “the starting point” of the committee’s analysis was how a federal judge in March already found Trump’s and Eastman’s pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct the congressional count of electoral votes “more likely than not” violated two of the statutes: obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
ABC News Chief Legal Analyst Dan Abrams, after the committee acted, said he would argue that Justice Department investigators doesn’t really want to deal with the criminal referrals “in an effort to remain apolitical.”
“They’re not going to take the legal conclusions of the committee and run with it,” Abrams said. “From their [the DOJ] perspective, if they were deciding, they might have said, ‘Don’t refer anything to us, please. You guys do your thing, we’re going to do our thing. We don’t want anyone to claim that the two are intertwined.'”
Highlight reel of Jan. 6 hearings
For Americans who might have missed some of the committee’s previous work, members played a montage of highlights from previous hearings and closed-door videotaped depositions to hammer home their findings that Trump was told he lost the election but pushed forward with an attempt to remain in power anyway.
That included a deposition from former Attorney General Bill Barr, who told the committee that he thought Trump’s claims of fraud were “bull****.” Also featured was deposition from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who told the committee he described Trump’s last-ditch plan to install a loyalist to be acting attorney general as a “murder-suicide pact.”
Moments from Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony were also played, including her comments about Trump’s desire to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Footage of rioters breaching the Capitol obtained by the the committee was aired, along with photographs showing then-Vice President Mike Pence sheltering-in-place in the Capitol complex as the violence unfolded.
Cheney deems Trump ‘unfit for office’
Co-chair Rep. Liz Cheney focused on how Trump was the first president in American history to refuse a peaceful transfer of power and was blunt in belief that he should never be allowed to hold office again.
“January 6, 2021, was the first time one American president refused his constitutional duty to transfer power peacefully to the next,” she said in her opening remarks. “In our work over the last 18 months, the select committee has recognized our obligation to do everything we can to ensure this never happens again.”
Cheney said among the most “shameful” of the committee’s findings was that Trump sat in the dining room off the Oval Office watching the Capitol attack on television and resisted for hours issuing a public statement instructing his supporters to go home, despite urgent pleas from White House staff and lawmakers.
“During this time, law enforcement agents were attacked and seriously injured. The Capitol was invaded. The electoral count was halted, and the lives of those in the Capitol were put at risk,” Cheney said. “In addition to being unlawful, as described in our report, this was an utter moral failure and a clear dereliction of duty.”
“No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again,” she added. “He is unfit for any office.”
4 Republicans referred for ethics violations
The committee is also referring multiple House Republicans to the House Ethics Committee over failure to comply with lawful subpoenas.
Those lawmakers are top House Republican Kevin McCarthy and Reps. Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Andy Biggs.
“We asked multiple members of Congress to speak with us about issues critical to our understanding of this attack on the 2020 election, and our system of constitutional democracy. None agreed to provide that essential information,” Democratic Rep. Raskin said during the meeting.
“As a result, we took the significant step of issuing them subpoenas based on the volume of information particular members possessed about one or more parts of President Trump’s plans to overturn the election. None of the subpoenaed members complied,” Raskin continued.
There were a total five members who did not comply with their subpoena requests from the committee, the final being Rep. Mo Brooks. Brooks, who is leaving Congress, was not included in the list of referrals in the House Jan. 6 committee’s executive report.
But with Republicans taking control of the House and its committees in a matter of weeks, it’s unlikely the referrals will go far.
What’s next?
While this was the committee’s last big stand, a more comprehensive report of its findings and recommendations is due out on Wednesday.
“This committee is nearing the end of its work, but as a country we remain in strange and uncharted waters,” Thompson said. “We’ve never had a president of the United States stir up a violent attempt to block the transfer of power. I believe, nearly two years later, this is still a time of reflection and reckoning.”
“If we are to survive as a nation of laws and democracy, this can never happen again,” he added.
While the congressional committee disbanding at the end of the year, the Justice Department’s investigation into what happened on Jan. 6 will continue.
The department has separately conducted its own investigation for months, but it has not had access to the committee’s expansive evidence until this week.
While skeptical of the impact of the committee’s criminal referrals to DOJ, Abrams said the Jan. 6 committee’s work could be valuable going forward in what it documented via testimony and other materials from those around Trump and the Capitol rioters.
“So the referral aspect of this, I think, is much less significant than what the evidence has uncovered and the fact that now the special counsel seems to be moving so quickly,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — New York Rep.-elect George Santos on Monday sought to defend himself after a New York Times report detailed multiple discrepancies in his background, including contradictions about where he worked and went to school.
In a statement, Joseph Murray, an attorney for Santos, who is a Republican, claimed the Times was participating in a “smear” campaign against Santos by publishing its investigation, which Murray called a “shotgun blast of attacks.”
As the Times first reported, parts of Santos’ biography about his education, career and charity are being disputed by public records and the schools and companies he claims were involved.
Representatives for New York University and Baruch College confirmed to ABC News that they have no record of Santos attending their institutions.
However, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) website states he received degrees from NYU and Baruch. His campaign website also said he graduated from Baruch.
The same biography on the NRCC site claimed that Santos worked for companies such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. But a spokesperson for Goldman Sachs told ABC News that they have no record of Santos ever being employed there. Citigroup has not returned ABC’s request for comment.
According to an archived version of campaign website, Santos previously said he ran a 501(c)(3) charity called Friends of Pets United, but a search on the IRS’ website did not find a listing for a charity under that name.
The mention of Friends of Pets United appears to have been removed from Santos’ campaign website.
ABC News also reviewed Santos’ financial disclosure forms filed in the House, where he reported having a $750,000 income through the Devolder Organization — which his website previously called his “family firm,” where he oversaw $80 million in client assets as the managing principal.
However, following a search, ABC News could not find a website or LinkedIn page for the organization. Additionally, Santos did not identify any clients of the firm on his financial disclosure forms.
“George Santos represents the kind of progress that the Left is so threatened by – a gay, Latino, immigrant and Republican who won a Biden district in overwhelming fashion by showing everyday voters that there is a better option than the broken promises and failed policies of the Democratic Party,” Murray, Santos’ attorney, said in his statement.
The scrutiny surrounding Santos’ background comes a few weeks before he is supposed to be sworn in as a member of the House following his history-making win in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. Defeating Democrat Robert Zimmerman and flipping the seat from blue to red helped the GOP clinch their slim majority in the House.
In addition, the election marked the first time two openly gay men ran against each other.
ABC reached out to House GOP leadership, including Reps. Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise and Elise Stefanik, and has not received comment.
In August, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee pushed out a press release on Santos and his financial background, highlighting how his animal charity was not listed in the IRS database.
ABC News’ Lauren Peller and Trish Turner contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee examining the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol has held its final public meeting.
The panel voted to approve criminal referrals for former President Donald Trump regarding his failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Here’s how the story developed:
Dec 19, 6:36 PM EST
Trump responds to the Jan. 6 committee’s criminal referrals
Trump, in response to the criminal referrals, continued his criticism that the Jan. 6 committee is partisan and politically-motived.
“These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, the people who love freedom rally around me,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social statement on Monday. “It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”
Trump also repeated his familiar claim that he had “pushed for 20,000 troops to prevent violence on Jan 6” — an assertion the committee contradicted in the executive summary of its final report.
“The select committee found no evidence of this,” the panel said in the summary. “In fact, President Trump’s own acting secretary of defense Christopher Miller directly refuted this when he testified under oath.”
Trump’s campaign also released a statement, calling the committee’s action “a mockery of our democracy.”
“The January 6th Unselect Committee held show trials by Never Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history,” the campaign’s statement read.
Dec 19, 2:51 PM EST
Committee releases 160-page executive summary of final report
The House Jan. 6 committee, after its final public meeting on Monday, released a sweeping executive summary to explain its findings. In it, members point to Trump as the main instigator behind the Capitol attack.
“That evidence has led to an overriding and straight-forward conclusion: the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him,” the summary said.
Highlights from the executive summary can be read here.
The committee is expected to release a broader, more comprehensive final report later this week.
Dec 19, 2:42 PM EST
Who is John Eastman?
Attorney John Eastman was named with Trump as among those the committee is recommending for criminal charges to the Justice Department. Members described how Trump turned to Eastman as other allies asked for him to accept the election loss.
Eastman, the committee said, drafted a six-step plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject legitimate electors during the certification of the election on Jan. 6, even though Eastman admitted in advance that Pence could not lawfully do so.
Former Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann, in a taped deposition with committee members, said he told Eastman his plan was “completely crazy,” would “cause riots in the streets” and that he was “out of [his] effin’ mind.”
But even after the Capitol attack, Eastman pursued the plot, the committee said. Herschmann said he told Eastman: “‘Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re getting in your life: Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.'”
Soon after, Eastman emailed Rudy Giuliani to say, “I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” according to evidence obtained by the committee.
Dec 19, 2:39 PM EST
Panel refers four Republican lawmakers to the House Committee on Ethics
The Jan. 6 committee is also making referrals for four Republican lawmakers to the House Committee on Ethics for their failure to comply with subpoenas.
The members being referred, according to the executive summary of the committee’s report, are House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Reps. Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Andy Biggs.
“We asked multiple members of Congress to speak with us about issues critical to our understanding of this attack on the 2020 election, and our system of constitutional democracy. None agreed to provide that essential information,” Rep. Jamie Raskin said. “As a result, we took the significant step of issuing them subpoenas based on the volume of information particular members possessed about one or more parts of President Trump’s plans to overturn the election. None of the subpoenaed members complied.”
Dec 19, 2:29 PM EST
Committee votes to approve referrals, final report
After Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., outlined the criminal referrals it was making for Trump, John Eastman and others, the committee voted unanimously to transmit their referrals to the Justice Department.
“We understand the gravity of each and every referral we are making today, just as we understand the magnitude of the crime against democracy that we describe in our report — but we have gone where the facts in the law lead us, and inescapably, they lead us here,” Raskin said.
It is now up to the Justice Department to pursue the charges or even acknowledge them, but it’s not obligated to do.
“We have every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a roadmap to justice and that the agencies and institutions responsible for ensuring justice under law will use the information we provided to aid in their work,” Thompson said at the start of the meeting.
Dec 19, 2:19 PM EST
Committee approves four criminal referrals for Trump
Rep. Jamie Raskin announced four criminal referrals for Trump to the Department of Justice. Those referrals are: Obstruction of an Official Proceeding; Conspiracy to Defraud the United States; Conspiracy to Make a False Statement and “Incite,” “Assist” or “Aid and Comfort” an Insurrection.
Dec 19, 2:13 PM EST
Raskin details referrals against Trump, Eastman
In a dramatic climax, Rep. Jamie Raskin announced that the evidence obtained by the committee “warrants a criminal referral, of former president Donald J. Trump, John Eastman and others.”
“We propose to the committee advancing referrals where the gravity of the specific offense, the severely of its actual harm and the centrality of the offender to the overall design of the unlawful scheme to the overall election compel to us speak,” Raskin said. “Ours is not a skim of justice where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass.”
Raskin said “the starting point” of their analysis is how a federal judge already found Trump’s and John Eastman’s pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct the congressional count of electoral votes “more likely than not” violated two federal criminal statutes: obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
The announcement of the referrals is ongoing.
Dec 19, 2:07 PM EST
Trump’s pressure on Pence threatened VP’s life, Aguilar says
Rep. Pete Aguilar, in his opening remarks, focused on how Trump attempted to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally overturn his 2020 election loss.
Aguilar said Trump “embraced an illegal scheme” proposed by attorney John Eastman that claimed the vice president has the power to reject electoral votes during the joint session of Congress to certify the votes.
The scheme, Aguilar said, culminated in a “dangerous threat to Mr. Pence’s life on Jan. 6.”
“Rioters at the Capitol were heard chanting, ‘Hang Mike Pence’ through the afternoon,” Aguilar said. “As a result of this unrest, Vice President Pence was forced to flee to a secure location.”
Dec 19, 1:49 PM EST
Lofgren says lawyers, entities ‘linked’ to Trump contacted witnesses
Committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said the panel found evidence that Trump raised hundreds of millions of dollars on false elections claims, some of which was used to hire lawyers to “provide and offer employment to witnesses.”
Lofgren said that a female witness was offered a job from entities “linked” to Trump, and the offer was withdrawn once reports of her testimony circulated.
“We are concerned these efforts may have been a strategy to prevent the committee from finding the truth,” she said.
Lofgren also played a new clip of a recent interview with former Trump adviser Hope Hicks, who said she expressed concern Trump was damaging his legacy with false fraud claims.
Hicks recalled Trump saying, “‘Nobody will care about my legacy if I lose, so that won’t matter. The only thing that matters is winning.'”
“Donald Trump knowingly and corruptly repeated election fraud lies, which incited his supporters to violence on January 6,” Lofgren said. “He continues to repeat his meritless claim that the election was stolen even today.”
Dec 19, 1:46 PM EST
Committee plays montage of notable moments from its public hearings
For Americans who might have missed some of the hearings, the committee played a montage of highlights from its hearings and closed-door videotaped depositions to hammer home their findings that Trump was told he lost the election but pushed forward with an attempt to remain in power anyway.
That included deposition from former Attorney General Bill Barr, who told the committee that he thought Trump’s claims of fraud were “bull****.” Also played again Thursday was deposition from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who told the committee he described Trump’s plan to install a loyalist to be acting attorney general as a “murder-suicide pact.”
Moments from Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony were also played, including her comments about Trump’s desire to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Dec 19, 1:26 PM EST
Cheney says Trump ‘unfit for any office’
Co-chair Rep. Liz Cheney focused her opening remarks on how Donald Trump was the first president in American history to refuse a peaceful transfer of power and argued he should never be allowed to hold office again.
“January 6, 2021, was the first time one American president refused his constitutional duty to transfer power peacefully to the next,” she said. “In our work over the last 18 months, the select committee has recognized our obligation to do everything we can to ensure this never happens again.”
Cheney said among the most “shameful” of the committee’s findings was that Trump sat in the dining room off the Oval Office watching the Capitol attack on television and resisted for hours issuing a public statement instructing his supporters to disperse, despite urgent pleas from White House staff and lawmakers.
“During this time, law enforcement agents were attacked and seriously injured. The Capitol was invaded. The electoral count was halted, and the lives of those in the Capitol were put at risk,” Cheney said. “In addition to being unlawful, as described in our report, this was an utter moral failure and a clear dereliction of duty.”
“No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again,” she added. “He is unfit for any office.”
Dec 19, 1:21 PM EST
Committee’s work ‘to provide a roadmap to justice’: Thompson
Chairman Bennie Thompson, in his opening statement, said he believes committee’s work over the past 18 months can help hold those responsible for the Capitol attack accountable.
“We have every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a roadmap to justice and that the agencies and institutions responsible for ensuring justice under law will use the information we provided to aid in their work,” Thompson said.
“This committee is nearing the end of its work, but as a country we remain in strange and uncharted waters,” Thompson said. “We’ve never had a president of the United States stir up a violent attempt to block the transfer of power. I believe, nearly two years later, this is still a time of reflection and reckoning.”
“If we are to survive as a nation of laws and democracy, this can never happen again,” he warned.
Dec 19, 1:16 PM EST
Trump ‘lost the 2020 election and knew it,’ chairman says
After gaveling in the committee’s meeting, Chairman Bennie Thompson said Donald Trump broke the “faith in our system” when he failed to accept the results of the 2020 election.
“He lost the 2020 election and knew it, but he chose to try to stay in office through a multi-part scheme, overturn the results and blocked the transfer of power,” Thompson said.
“In the end, he summoned the mob to Washington knowing they were armed and angry, pointed them to the Capitol and told them to fight like hell,” Thompson added. “There’s no doubt about this.”
Dec 19, 1:07 PM EST
Final committee meeting begins
The final business meeting of the Jan. 6 committee is underway, bringing members’ 18-month-long investigation to a dramatic and televised close.
After 10 public hearings and hundreds of hours of closed-door depositions on what led to the Capitol attack, the committee is meeting publicly one last time to present referrals and vote to approve its final report.
Members are expected to release an executive summary of their report following the meeting including details on expected criminal referrals as well as more information about witnesses who have appeared before the committee, according to a committee aide. Sources tell ABC News members are expected to recommend criminal charges against Trump.
Monday’s executive summary comes ahead of a fuller release of the committee’s final report on Wednesday. The select committee is set to expire on Dec. 31, 2022, just days before Republicans take back control of the House.
Dec 19, 1:02 PM EST
Panel to transmit criminal referrals ‘shortly’ after business meeting: Thompson
Going into the committee room on Monday, Chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters the committee plans to transmit the criminal referrals to the Department of Justice shortly after they “take care of business today.”
Thompson also said he has no plans to meet with Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the Justice Department’s major Jan. 6 cases as well as the department’s investigation into classified documents taken from the White House by Trump.
Dec 19, 12:00 PM EST
What it means for the committee to make criminal referrals
The Justice Department is not obligated to act on referrals, but public hearings outlining Trump’s “seven-point plan” to overturn the 2020 presidential election have amped up pressure on Garland to bring criminal charges against Trump — which would be the first in history against a former president.
The Justice Department for months has been conducting its own separate investigation into Jan. 6, which has included multiple former senior Trump White House staffers along with his close allies appearing before grand juries.
“The committee’s public hearings have raised the stakes enormously for the country, in the sense that the criminal activity shown to have gone on is so brazen, that if the Justice Department does not enforce the law in this case, it really does further erode the rule of law and democracy,” Ryan Goodman, a New York University School of Law professor, told ABC News.
Dec 19, 11:12 AM EST
What’s happened since the last Jan. 6 committee hearing
The committee last met in public on Oct. 13 when members voted unanimously to subpoena Donald Trump.
Since then, Trump has sued to block the subpoena from being enforced. Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said the panel was looking at paths forward after Trump’s lawsuit but it has yet to take any action in court.
The committee has also interviewed more witnesses since its last hearing, including former White House deputy chief of staff for operations and top Secret Service official Tony Ornato — the figure at the center of bombshell testimony involving an alleged physical confrontation between Trump and his security detail in the president’s vehicle on Jan. 6.
Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and former Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway also have met with the committee since its last public meeting.
Dec 19, 10:41 AM EST
Slight majority of Americans say Trump should be charged: Polling
Public attitudes on Donald Trump’s culpability surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol attack have been essentially steady over the past year, with a slight majority of Americans saying he should be charged with a crime, according to ABC News/Washington Post and ABC News/Ipsos polling.
A survey in April found 52% responding that Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the Capitol attack, while 42% said he should not. Polling in September showed those favoring a charge remained at 52%, while those opposed to charges fell slightly to 39%.
In January 2021, about a week after the Capitol attack, 54% of respondents said Trump should be charged with inciting a riot.
Dec 19, 10:08 AM EST
Criminal referrals the committee might make
Over a series of nine hearings this summer and fall, the committee outlined an alleged “sophisticated seven-point plan” it says Trump and his allies engaged in with the goal of stopping the peaceful transfer of power, including “corruptly” planning to replace federal and state officials with those who would support his fake election claims and pressuring Pence to violate his oath to uphold the Constitution.
Acting on a plan with the intent to stop the counting of electoral votes would likely violate 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), obstruction of an official proceeding, which makes it a felony to attempt to “corruptly obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding,” such as the certification of a presidential election, and comes with up to 20 years in prison.
Another statute raised by Rep. Liz Cheney over several hearings, 18 U.S.C. § 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States, criminalizes the agreement between two or more persons to “impair, obstruct or defeat the lawful government functions” and is punishable by up to five years in prison.
Dec 19, 9:50 AM EST
How Trump has responded to the Jan. 6 committee
The House Jan. 6 select committee in a matter of hours will consider its final report, which is expected to reveal how far it will go in accusing Trump of deep involvement in what it says was a plot to overturn the 2020 election.
Even before it began a series of high-profile public hearings in June, Trump repeatedly railed against the panel, dubbing it the “unselect” committee and casting it as a partisan “witch hunt,” attacking witnesses and denying wrongdoing, all while making false claims of widespread election fraud two years ago.
The committee, meanwhile, has interviewed scores of witnesses and heard their dramatic testimony in front of TV cameras, delivering a slate of bombshells about the inner workings of the Trump White House leading up to Jan. 6 and on the day itself.
Dec 19, 9:13 AM EST
Expect ‘five or six’ categories of referrals: Chairman
The most important business at hand when the select committee meets this afternoon is the committee’s highly anticipated decision on criminal referrals.
Sources familiar told ABC News the committee is preparing to urge the Department of Justice to prosecute Donald Trump for obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Another criminal charge under discussion is insurrection, the sources said.
Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., tasked a subcommittee to make recommendations on criminal referrals and to also explore enforcement options for the five Republican lawmakers who ignored subpoenas to testify: Reps. Kevin McCarthy, Andy Biggs, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Mo Brooks.
Thompson has said to expect “five or six” categories of referrals, which means there could be referrals to several different entities such as the Justice Department or the House Committee on Ethics.
The extent of the criminal referrals, and who will be targeted, will be made clear in a matter of hours when the committee releases a separate, shorter report on the matter. Any referrals would be a largely symbolic move, though, as it’s ultimately up to federal prosecutors whether to pursue charges.
-ABC News’ Katherine Faulders
Dec 19, 8:01 AM EST
Liz Cheney’s mission: Keep Donald Trump out of the White House
Rep. Liz Cheney will make a last high-profile stand against Donald Trump when the Jan. 6 committee holds its final public meeting in a matter of hours — as sources say it’s preparing to recommend the first-ever criminal charges against a former president.
It’s cost the Wyoming Republican her political career to take on Trump, but she’s said she has no regrets — making the case she has a higher mission: to keep him from ever regaining the White House.
After voting to impeach Trump, and then accepting an invitation to serve on the select committee, she lost her No. 3 House GOP leadership position and ultimately, her congressional seat.
But in doing so, she also won unlikely supporters as she exposed what she called Trump’s seven-point plan to steal the election and admonished her Republican colleagues who, she said, lacked the courage to do the same.
Dec 19, 7:54 AM EST
Committee to release summary of final report
The Jan. 6 committee is expected to release an executive summary of its findings after Monday’s meeting concludes.
“Following the business meeting, the Select Committee is expected to release certain materials, including an executive summary of the report, details on referrals, and additional information about witnesses who have appeared before the committee,” a select committee aide said in a statement on Sunday.
Select committee members have not yet provided DOJ investigators with copies of the committee’s transcripts and witness interviews — with members opting to do so at the end of their investigation.
-ABC News’ Katherine Faulders
Dec 19, 7:43 AM EST
Committee expected to recommend criminal charges
Monday is the last public meeting of the Jan. 6 committee, with ABC News learning members are expected to recommend criminal charges be pursued against former President Donald Trump in connection with the Capitol attack nearly two years ago.
Sources familiar with the committee’s deliberations say the recommended charges will include conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding. The committee also is considering recommending Trump be charged with insurrection.
Members have been working against the clock to try to finish their work before Republicans take control of the House in the new year.
Any decision about whether to bring any charges against the former president would be left to the Department of Justice. DOJ has been conducting its own parallel investigation into the events of Jan. 6 and isn’t obligated to act on congressional referrals.
(WASHINGTON) — After months of political drama, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol holds its final public act Monday afternoon.
The meeting — the panel’s tenth televised one this year — is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. Eastern.
The most important business at hand: the committee’s decision on criminal referrals.
Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., tasked a subcommittee to make recommendations on criminal referrals and to explore enforcement options for the five Republican lawmakers who ignored subpoenas to testify: Reps. Kevin McCarthy, Andy Biggs, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Mo Brooks.
Sources familiar told ABC News the committee is preparing to urge the Department of Justice to prosecute former President Donald Trump for obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Another criminal charge under discussion is insurrection, the sources said.
Thompson has said to expect “five or six” categories of referrals, which means there could be referrals to several different entities such as the Justice Department or the House Committee on Ethics.
The extent of the criminal referrals, and who will be targeted, will be made clear on Monday as the committee is expected to release a separate, shorter report on the matter. Any referrals would be a largely symbolic move, though, as it’s ultimately up to federal prosecutors whether to pursue charges.
On Sunday evening, a select committee aide provided a short statement about the committee’s coming actions.
“Following the business meeting, the Select Committee is expected to release certain materials, including an executive summary of the report, details on referrals, and additional information about witnesses who have appeared before the committee,” the aide said.
The eventual complete report will be hundreds of pages long and is likely to closely follow the themes of each of the panel’s hearings.
Those included Trump’s pressure campaigns on Justice Department officials, local election officials and on former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election.
The panel also heard testimony from White House insiders who described Trump’s desire to join his supporters at the Capitol and his resistance to pleas from his advisers to quickly condemn the rioters.
The committee recapped its major findings during its last hearing on Oct. 13, just weeks before the midterm elections, but may do so again on Monday.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., recently said the committee’s comprehensive report will paint a “fulsome picture” of events surrounding the Capitol attack.
“This is all about telling the American people about what happened and leaving with them the opportunity to say, democracies can have bad days, but how we come back from those bad days is how we’ll be defined,” Kinzinger told ABC’s This Week.
The House select committee, formed in July 2021 after an effort to create an independent commission was ultimately blocked by Republicans, will expire at year’s end. But the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigations will continue despite the congressional committee being disbanded.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee examining the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol is holding its final public meeting on Monday.
The panel will meet at 1 p.m. ET and is expected to discuss criminal referrals for former President Donald Trump and other figures who played a role in the failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
This week, the committee, which will disbanded at the end of the year, is expected to also release a comprehensive report with findings and recommendations from its 18-month investigation. The report is expected to follow the themes presented in the series of nine public hearings held this summer and fall, which examined Trump’s pressure campaign on federal and state officials, and his response as the violence unfolded.
Please check back for updates. All times Eastern:
Dec 19, 9:13 AM EST
Expect ‘five or six’ categories of referrals: Chairman
The most important business at hand when the select committee meets this afternoon is the committee’s highly anticipated decision on criminal referrals.
Sources familiar told ABC News the committee is preparing to urge the Department of Justice to prosecute Donald Trump for obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Another criminal charge under discussion is insurrection, the sources said.
Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., tasked a subcommittee to make recommendations on criminal referrals and to also explore enforcement options for the five Republican lawmakers who ignored subpoenas to testify: Reps. Kevin McCarthy, Andy Biggs, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Mo Brooks.
Thompson has said to expect “five or six” categories of referrals, which means there could be referrals to several different entities such as the Justice Department or the House Committee on Ethics.
The extent of the criminal referrals, and who will be targeted, will be made clear in a matter of hours when the committee releases a separate, shorter report on the matter. Any referrals would be a largely symbolic move, though, as it’s ultimately up to federal prosecutors whether to pursue charges.
-ABC News’ Katherine Faulders
Dec 19, 8:01 AM EST
Liz Cheney’s mission: Keep Donald Trump out of the White House
Rep. Liz Cheney will make a last high-profile stand against Donald Trump when the Jan. 6 committee holds its final public meeting in a matter of hours — as sources say it’s preparing to recommend the first-ever criminal charges against a former president.
It’s cost the Wyoming Republican her political career to take on Trump, but she’s said she has no regrets — making the case she has a higher mission: to keep him from ever regaining the White House.
After voting to impeach Trump, and then accepting an invitation to serve on the select committee, she lost her No. 3 House GOP leadership position and ultimately, her congressional seat.
But in doing so, she also won unlikely supporters as she exposed what she called Trump’s seven-point plan to steal the election and admonished her Republican colleagues who, she said, lacked the courage to do the same.
Dec 19, 7:54 AM EST
Committee to release summary of final report
The Jan. 6 committee is expected to release an executive summary of its findings after Monday’s meeting concludes.
“Following the business meeting, the Select Committee is expected to release certain materials, including an executive summary of the report, details on referrals, and additional information about witnesses who have appeared before the committee,” a select committee aide said in a statement on Sunday.
Select committee members have not yet provided DOJ investigators with copies of the committee’s transcripts and witness interviews — with members opting to do so at the end of their investigation.
-ABC News’ Katherine Faulders
Dec 19, 7:43 AM EST
Committee expected to recommend criminal charges
Monday is the last public meeting of the Jan. 6 committee, with ABC News learning members are expected to recommend criminal charges be pursued against former President Donald Trump in connection with the Capitol attack nearly two years ago.
Sources familiar with the committee’s deliberations say the recommended charges will include conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding. The committee also is considering recommending Trump be charged with insurrection.
Members have been working against the clock to try to finish their work before Republicans take control of the House in the new year.
Any decision about whether to bring any charges against the former president would be left to the Department of Justice. DOJ has been conducting its own parallel investigation into the events of Jan. 6 and isn’t obligated to act on congressional referrals.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, has advocated for the elimination of cash bail in his state, calling it a “step toward dismantling systemic racism.” – ABC News
(SPRINGFIELD, Ill.) — On Jan. 1, Illinois is set to become the first state to completely eliminate cash bail, a closely-watched bid to advance racial justice that has also raised concerns about public safety.
State lawmakers last year passed a sweeping overhaul of the criminal justice system – the SAFE-T Act – that includes dramatic changes to pretrial detainment protocols statewide.
The legislation makes presumption of release the default, ending any financial considerations in the decision of who should remain behind bars.
“The use of money as a determining factor in whether somebody is going to be in or out of jail before trial is really just an abhorrent practice,” said Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell.
Judges will have primary responsibility to decide who should be detained before a trial, but can require detention only if the state can prove that a defendant “poses a specific, real and present threat to a person, or has a high likelihood of flight,” or in the case of forcible felonies, like murder, battery, burglary or carjacking.
“In each individual case, we will now have an opportunity to make a better decision as a system,” Mitchell said, “along with returning those dollars to communities that are desperate to retain other things to keep them safe and healthy.”
More than 60% of defendants in U.S. jails – an estimated half a million Americans on any given day – are eligible for release but kept in custody before trial because they can’t afford to pay bail, according to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Since 1970, the numbers have soared 433%, the commission found in a report released earlier this year. Most are held on low-level offenses and are disproportionately people of color.
“I lost my business. I lost housing. I lost transportation, my vehicles. I lost everything just in the 571 days that I was incarcerated [awaiting trial],” said Lavette Mayes, a 52-year-old mother of two from Chicago’s South Side.
In 2015, Mayes was held in Cook County Jail awaiting trial after an altercation with her mother-in-law during a messy divorce landed both of them in the hospital. After more than 14 months, she negotiated a more affordable bail and – with help from her family and a charity organization – was released on home monitoring.
“They hit the gavel and said that my bond was assessed at $250,000, $25,000 to walk,” Mayes said. “It was shocking because I had no criminal record, and I didn’t understand it.”
The new approach in Illinois is expected to mean fewer defendants behind bars after arrest and awaiting trial. Several communities that have reduced the use of cash bail report minimal impact on public safety, but some top Illinois lawmakers remain unconvinced.
“We have a responsibility under the Constitution as lawmakers to keep people safe,” said Illinois state Rep. Jim Durkin, the House GOP leader. “There are some people who are a threat to society who should be detained at trial. Move slowly. Don’t take this national progressive approach.”
Durkin and other lawmakers have scrambled to amend parts of the law before they take effect. Gov. JB Pritzker signed a set of revisions passed earlier this month. Provisions eliminating cash bail remain in place.
“It’s okay until it touches you and your family — you, personally,” said Natalia Dagenhart, a freelance writer and Ukrainian immigrant who lives in Naperville, Illinois, outside of Chicago. She worries about a surge in crime.
When asked by ABC News if she feels that she will be less safe personally, she emphatically answered, “yes. Absolutely.” “More than that, I [already] don’t come to Chicago anymore,” she said.
The city, which has been gripped by rising crime and gun violence in recent years, has recently reported progress. Shootings are down 20% in Chicago through the end of summer and homicides have fallen 16%. That means 101 fewer people were shot this year than last, according to data reviewed by ABC News.
But critics warn the added responsibility for state judges could overwhelm the legal infrastructure to process detainees and result in dangerous people being allowed back on the street after arrest.
“Plus, it’s going to slow down the court system because when guys don’t show up, the case doesn’t go to trial,” said retired Illinois state judge and a former state attorney Wayne Meyer.
For decades, state courts have collected bail from defendants in exchange for their release as collateral – incentivizing them to show up on their court date and successfully completing legal proceedings, when the funds would be returned.
Criminal justice reform advocates and a number of nonpartisan research organizations say the practice has become inhumane and unfair. Statistics show cash bail keeps low-income community members and people of color disproportionately in jail.
“They should only be detained if something about the offense they are accused of suggests that they pose a real threat to others,” Illinois state Sen. Robert Peters, a Democrat, said during a general assembly session for the SAFE-T Act earlier this year.
Pritzker has called the end of cash bail a “step toward dismantling systemic racism.”
Cook County, which includes Chicago, instituted local bail reform five years ago to mixed results so far. “Some of it really good; some of it not good,” said Tom Dart, who has served 16 years as Cook County sheriff.
“I had about 11,000 people in custody when I started as sheriff — people who were just flat out poor,” Dart said. “The crime was insignificant, but they didn’t have $100. So, they sat there. I was like, We got to stop that.”
The changes implemented by the county made the system more sustainable, he said, but it remains far from perfect. The county has seen a higher degree of people committing new offenses while on home monitoring, for example.
Illinois has “to get it right.,” Dart said of the elimination of cash bail starting next year, “because [if] you get it wrong, there’ll be a reaction to it, and people say, ‘see what happened there? We can’t do this because look what happened there.'”
Several states — including New York and New Jersey — have largely ended the use of cash bail but still allow the practice in certain limited cases. A number of other states and local jurisdictions are exploring bail reform. All are watching Illinois closely.
“There’s a reason that I had to go through this,” said Mayes, who took a plea deal in 2016 and is now working as an advocate for people behind bars. The end of cash bail “will save other people. Unfortunately, it didn’t help me, but that’s okay.”
(WILMINGTON, Dela.) — Rep. Liz Cheney will make a last high-profile stand against Donald Trump when the House Jan. 6 committee holds its final public meeting Monday — as sources say it’s preparing to recommend the first-ever criminal charges against a former president.
It’s cost the Wyoming Republican her political career to take on Trump, but she’s said she has no regrets — making the case she has a higher mission: to keep him from ever regaining the White House.
After voting to impeach Trump, and then accepting an invitation to serve on the select committee, she lost her No. 3 House GOP leadership position and ultimately, her congressional seat.
But in doing so, she also won unlikely supporters as she exposed what she called Trump’s seven-point plan to steal the election and admonished her Republican colleagues who, she said, lacked the courage to do the same.
“In our country, we don’t swear an oath to an individual, or a political party. We take our oath to defend the United States Constitution — and that oath must mean something,” Cheney said to open the first prime-time public hearing in June. “Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
“The sacred obligation to defend this peaceful transfer of power has been honored by every American president — except one,” she added. “As Americans, we all have a duty to ensure what happened on Jan. 6 never happens again, to set aside partisan battles to stand together to perpetuate and preserve our great republic.”
Cheney is one of two Republicans on the nine-member panel, but unlike Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who announced last year he wouldn’t seek reelection, Cheney continued her campaign while serving on the committee, embracing her role as a key player. After her primary loss In August, she told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl that if had she wanted to save her career and keep the House seat she’d held for nearly six years, it would have required something she was unwilling to do: “Lie about the election,” she said.
While each of the committee’s nine members took turns leading the congressional hearings, it was Cheney’s clarity and conviction that often stole the spotlight, with her acting very much like a criminal prosecutor trying a case against Trump.
“Liz really was the star,” Norman Ornstein, political scientist and senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute told ABC News. “And she was the star first because the name, the intellect, the fact that you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody more conservative than her. All of that added to the impact of her power.”
“The fact that she has been fearless in this process, knowing it would very likely cost her her seat, as it did, knowing that she was going to get death threats and more, she made it very clear that the priority here for her was protecting democracy against people trying to destroy it, including Donald Trump,” he added. “All of that, plus the masterful way she handled the performance that she did on the committee, that’s quite a legacy.”
Former Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, a Republican and ABC News contributor who served in the House with Cheney and donated to her reelection campaign, believes the committee was able to secure witnesses they might otherwise have had difficulty with because of Cheney’s reputation.
“Because she knows all the players here, and had known them, she didn’t let them hide,” Comstock said. “I think she understood, at the end of the day, if we drag these people in, they aren’t going to fall on the sword for him.”
Here are some of Cheney’s most memorable moments:
Focus on Trump’s ‘premeditated’ action and inaction
Over the course of several hearings, Cheney was careful not to admonish the half of the country that supported the former president but to keep the focus on Trump himself as someone she said preyed on his supporters by feeding them lies. She said Trump knowingly created the false impression that America was threatened by an outside force, asking his supporters to fight for him, despite the fact that it was “all complete nonsense.”
“Donald Trump knows that millions of Americans who supported him would stand up and defend our nation were it threatened. They would put their lives and their freedom at stake to protect her. And he is preying on their patriotism,” she said. “And on Jan. 6, Donald Trump turned their love of country into a weapon against our Capitol and our Constitution.”
“President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” she said.
While exploiting his supporters, she said, Trump refused to answer calls to stop the Jan. 6 assault, even pleas from Republican allies, to do what she said his oath of office required.
“He refused to defend our nation and our Constitution. He refused to do what every American president must,” she said. “In the days after Jan. 6, almost no one of any political party would defend President Trump’s conduct. And no one should do so today.”
Cheney told her Republican colleagues who supported Trump that they, too, were deceived.
“It can be difficult to accept that President Trump abused your trust. That he deceived you. Many will invent excuses to ignore that fact. But that is a fact,” she said at the close of the committee’s sixth public hearing. “I wish it weren’t true. But it is.”
Argues Trump ‘not an impressionable child’ or ‘willfully blind’
Because intent needs to be proven in criminal prosecutions, Cheney repeatedly argued that Trump — as the nation’s most powerful person — was in a “unique position” as president to be “better informed about the absence of widespread election fraud than almost any other American.”
With this, she said, there can be no defense that Trump was “duped or irrational.”
“President Trump is a 76-year-old man, he is not an impressionable child,” she said in a hearing over the summer. “Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices … Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind. Nor can any argument of any kind excuse President Trump’s behavior during the violent attack on Jan. 6.”
Comstock also noted how Cheney relied on Trump’s inner circle to repeatedly establish he was told he had lost and told to do more on Jan. 6, potentially helpful to prosecutors in a trial.
“She’s a prosecutor, and she was prosecuting this case very carefully. She has established that all of those witnesses who told him he lost — who told him there was no legal case for him to pursue — they’re all Republicans,” Comstock said. “So, his campaign manager [Bill Stepien], [former Attorney General] Bill Barr, [former Trump adviser] Kellyanne Conway, his daughter [Ivanka Trump], all of these witnesses who are going to testify to this when there is a trial, they’re all Republicans.”
She repeated at the committee’s last hearing in October that their evidence has shown Trump to be the central cause of Jan. 6, despite having had countless chances to acknowledge the facts presented to him.
“He had all of this information, but still he made the conscious choice to claim fraudulently that the election was stolen, to pressure state officials to change election results, to manufacture fake electoral slates, to attempt to corrupt our Department of Justice, to summon tens of thousands of supporters to Washington,” she said. “The vast weight of evidence presented so far has shown us that the central cause of Jan. 6 was one man, Donald Trump, who many others followed. None of this would have happened without him.”
Praises witnesses as braver than ’50-, 60- and 70-year-old men’
Throughout the hearings, Cheney made a point to thank the live witnesses for appearing, noting they might have been under immense pressure to not comply. She took particular time to praise the women who showed up.
“She understood, maybe in a way the men on the committee might not have, the misogyny of Donald Trump,” Comstock told ABC News. “She knew that Trump was going to attack these women witnesses in a different way than he attacks men. She knew how dangerous that was for them, having seen it herself too, so she took care in protecting those witnesses, but also praising their bravery and really recognizing how difficult this was for them.”
After the committee heard from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows who was 25 when she testified, Cheney praised Hutchinson and the other women who she said showed more courage than a tranche of older men who should know better.
“She sat here alone, took the oath and testified before millions of Americans,” Cheney said of Hutchinson. “She knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump and by the 50-, 60- and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege. But like our witnesses today, she has courage and she did it anyway. Cassidy, Sarah and our other witnesses, including Officer Caroline Edwards, Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, are an inspiration to American women and to American girls.”
“The fact that Cassidy had testified in the first place,” Comstock added, “I think, largely is because of how the hearings were being run, because she trusted Liz — and Liz, once she had testified, basically called out Pat Cipollone since he hadn’t yet.”
At the close of the committee’s following hearing, Cheney appeared to issue a warning directly to Trump.
“After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation — a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call, and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice,” Cheney said. “Let me say one more time: we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously.”
“I think most Americans know that attempting to influence witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns,” Cheney said at another point.
Warns it could happen again
Cheney hammered home to the American public watching that the reason the committee put thousands of hours into investigating the attack was not for partisan political purposes but to prevent another Jan. 6.
And it could very well happen again, she said.
“Our institutions only hold when men and women of good faith make them hold regardless of the political cost. We have no guarantee that these men and women will be in place next time. Any future president inclined to attempt what Donald Trump did in 2020 has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way,” she said at the last hearing in October. “What happens when the president disregards the court’s rulings as illegitimate, when he disregards the rule of law? That, my fellow citizens, breaks our republic.”
Speaking directly to the camera in the committee’s hearing in October, she echoed the warning attributed to founding father Ben Franklin when asked whether America was a monarchy or a republic: “a republic, if you can keep it.”
“Consider whether we can survive for another 246 years. Most people in most places on Earth have not been free. America is an exception,” she said. “And America continues only because we bind ourselves to our founders’ principles, to our Constitution.”
