it s a long held tradition in this country, and fact, the absentee voting system has been in place since as far back as the civil war and 18 hundreds. in fact, take a look at these images. these are american soldiers learning about absentee ballots while stationed in the united states and korea and the 1940s and 50s. as long been available to the military. some states have had it in place for some time. the popularity and availability of that absentee voting exploded in 2020 because of the pandemic. people didn t want to go to public places like polling booths. more than 40%, 40%, to voters nationwide submitted mail ballots. this is an unmitigated success. there is no way to look at this except good. more people were able to vote because they were able to vote in the comfort of their own home. however, access to free and fair elections just got a lot tougher to come by in wisconsin. on friday, the wisconsin
the committee will interview a lot of people, they talked to a number of people familiar with the oath keepers. there s reporting out there that the person who will testify, is a former member of the oath keepers, who actually had stewart rhodes live with him for a while, has connections to the group, and he will present sort of an overview of the organization at large. i think that those connections and you, know remember that there are these legal efforts, this time between the election and january six who overturned the election, and we saw that crack in the group come out of that. and a lot of those individuals have a lot of connections to the oath keepers. subsequently, we had some fundraising which was done in the aftermath of january 6th, for a lot of these defendants, who stormed the capitol by those very same individuals who had been trying to legally overturn the election in those few months between the election and january 6th. so there s just a ton of overlap over here.
of the fact that what trump did, whether it was his actions or his inaction over that 187 minutes contributed to the outcome. it s sort of parallel things that were going on in the convergence between them as opposed to the connection between them. give me a little clarity on that. yeah, i think that s right. i don t have any reason to expect that there is going to be direct evidence shown that the oath keepers of the proud boys were directly in contact with donald trump. certainly, donald trump had to have been aware of the existence of groups like this. they were extremists to were following his orders. he nevertheless went out on january six, shortly before the joint session of congress, and was really inflammatory rhetoric that i think directly contributed to the attack on the capitol. i think you see at least that and the hearing on tuesday. i want to ask you about something you said last week when you are talking about it. you said that the focus has been, so far, a lot on do
continues its vital work in investigating that insurrection. and this morning, we are getting a first view of some of the potential evidence that the select committee has seen via a new, multi part documentary called unprecedented, which captures footage of the field for a president, his family and his minions before, during and after the election, and the attack. and yes, there was a film crew invited to document the attempted overthrow of the u.s. government. the footage, and by that i mean all that was shot, not just what was used for unprecedented, was subpoenaed last month by the select committee. all three parts of unprecedented were released, just hours ago, at 4 am eastern time on discovery plus. and there is a lot to unpack. here is one of the many notable moments. can we talk for a minute on