Hello readers!
In August last year, Donald Trump said “The only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
We know what followed: A months-long conspiracy to subvert the will of the people. On Saturday, as new voting restrictions washed over the country, he repeated nearly the same line in Arizona, a pioneer this year in pushing a politicized “audit” of the 2020 results in order to prop up Trump’s fantasy world. “There is no way they win elections without cheating,” the former President said, bookending nearly a year of the Big Lie.
As the Jan. 6 committee -- the “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol” -- prepares to meet for the first time Tuesday, congressional observers I spoke to said they hoped the committee would investigate the whole story that unfolded in the months ahead of the insurrection, not just the events and failures of one day.