the lies -- >> this election was stolen from you, from me, and from the country. >> if you ask how many republican congressmen believe donald trump was elected, i would say a couple. but 60% of our base does. >> that could have been mickey mouse. >> this is craziest thing i've ever seen, and then people bought it hook line. >> lawsuits. >> they tried to try to not have your votes count. they did not want your vote to count. >> reporter: potentially illegal pressure campaigns. >> i just want to find 11,780 votes. >> what he was asking for wasn't supported by the facts, wasn't supported by the constitution. >> reporter: extraordinary scheming. >> let's talk about it. >> just breath taking you would have laid out such a clear game plan that's so clearly violated the constitution. >> reporter: and all too many in the republican party. >> sure do you believe this was a free and fair election? >> reporter: and maga media who followed along. >> unverifiable dumps of votes. >> we will never give up. we will never concede. >> stop the steal! stop the steal! >> reporter: and it all might have worked, if it not were for a few people in key places, notably among them, brave republicans. >> in the moments of truth, you need the right people to pass the most difficult tests. we had just enough people on january 6th pass the test. >> pursuant to the constitution and the laws of the united states -- >> do you think donald trump attempted to stage a coup? >> i don't know what you could call it other than a coup. >> i have real concerns about the future of this democracy. >> hang mike pence! >> i'm deeply afraid for our country. >> reporter: tonight a cnn special report, trumping democracy: an american coup." >> you'll never take back our country with weakness. you have to show strength. >> january 6th was the line that can't be crossed. january 6th was an unconstitutional attempt led by the president of the united states to overturn an american election and reinstall himself in power . >> i will not let it happen here. >> reporter: that's anthony gonzalez of ohio. >> i rise today in support of the cuban people -- >> >> grandson of immigrant, a talented wide receiver who played three years for ohio state, five more in the nfl, and when injuries sidelined him, he got a business degree from stanford. all this before age 34 when gonzalez felt called to run for congress. >> i got into this because, look, my family came here from cuba. my father's family came here from cuba. we come from a country that has fallen a failed nation, and we've seen what happens when the rule of law is dismantled, when a straw man is allowed to take hold, and democratic norms cease to exist. >> reporter: now there's a warning for all of us about what trump and his minions dorado when they tried to steal election. >> this country has been through a lot. we fought through it and persevered. as much as i despise almost every policy of the biden administration, the country can survive around " round of bad p. the country can't survive torching of the constitution. that's the one thing the country can't survive. >> reporter: donald trump's plan to undermine american democracy began months before the voting started. >> what's he going to do with these ballots? where are they going? >> with a return to lies he had been telling for years. in 2012 he tweeted, quote, more reports of voting machines switching romney votes to back home. pay close attention to the machines. don't let your vote be stolen. not true. in 2016, quote, ted cruz didn't win iowa, he stole it. not true. and this after he won the electoral college, hence the presidency, in 2016. quote, i won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. also not true. >> president trump started a commission to look for that in 2017. they could find nothing. they disbanded before they could even file a report. >> reporter: in 2020, mail-in ballots, which were going to be more prevalent because of the pandemic, became a perfect new foil for trump's old claim. >> voting by mail is wrought with fraud and abuse. when you do all mail-in voting ballots, you're asking for fraud. >> reporter: alyssa fer ra was the white house communications director for then-president trump from april through december 2020. >> we actually had to pull together a meeting in the oval to remind him that many of our voters, particularly senior citizens, were going to vote by mail, and that we were deterring people from turning out and from voting in the way that they would. >> >> all this caught the attention of congresswoman liz cheney, a conservative and daughter of former vice president dick cheney. at the time she was number three, the conference chair. >> it concerned me because we wanted people to be able to vote as republicans. i wasn't concerned about it from a constitutional perspective at all. those concerns clearly came later on. >> there are going to be millions of missing ballots. >> reporter: cheney's constitutional concerns came five weeks before election day. >> then president trump was asked if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power. >> win, lose, or draw in this election, will you commit here today for a peaceful transfer of power after the election? >> we're going to have to see what happens. you know that. i've been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster. >> you tweeted a response to that. you wrote the peaceful transfer of power is enshrined in our constitution and fundamental to the survival of our republic. america's leaders swear an oath to the constitution we will uphold that oath. that suggests to me that you were worried. >> i was. it is such a basic, fundamental thing. every president really is responsible for safe guarding peaceful transfer of power. >> we're going to have to see what happens. >> and so for president trump not to be willing to make that commitment was stunning. >> that was september 2020 when donald trump also stunned republican al schmidt. >> i need to get them on board or move the polling place. >> reporter: he was one of three city commissioners in philadelphia. his job is to oversee the city's elections. >> there was a big problem. in philadelphia they went into watch. they were called poll watchers. they were thrown out. they weren't allowed to watch. you know why? because bad things happen in philadelphia, bad things. >> so you're watching the debate and president trump says bad things happen in philadelphia. what goes through your mind? >> i think i said out loud, i see what you're doing. we had the sitting president trying to discredit the results coming from the city of philadelphia before a single vote was cast in the city. >> watch those ballots. i don't like it. >> thousands of ballots all over the country are being reported, some thrown in garbage cans with my name only them. >> does today? there was a big mishap with the ballots, another one. >> reporter: not only was trump spreading distrust of the electoral process -- >> did you see they found 50,000 ballots in like a river? >> reporter: he was doing it in states such as pennsylvania and michigan where the margins were expected to be tight, and the wait for results was expected to be unusually long. >> in most of america there's a big traditional skew between early votes and election day votes. the republicans usually win election day, and the democrats usually win early voting and absentee voting. >> we got all this vote flowing in -- >> reporter: chris sty wahl was part of fox news 2020 decision desk. >> the question is, do republicans do well enough on election day to offset it? >>?" >> reporter: in 2020 the divide was expected to be more pronounced than usual because trump was telling republicans not to trust mail-in ballots. this set the teenage for what experts predicted would prompt misleading early vote counts. >> there may be what some folks call a red mirage. trump's numbers may be highest on election night, and and know there's the blue wave as more votes come in in the last couple decades have come overwhelmingly democrat. the big caveat is we've never had early voting like this. >> we all knew that some states were going to show him up and then it was going to get closer. >> trump could be doing reasonably well on election night only to watch this thing shift over the coming days toward the democrats. >> did he not know that? >> no. he had been told that skprrepea and he didn't care. the summer before when it was clear the pandemic was going to change the way by-mail voting worked in a number of states and expanded, he started laying the groundwork for this can't be trusted. >> this is not right. what they're doing is not right. >> reporter: everyone who followed the elections closely knew about this. but then -- >> breaking news we got to talk about -- >> reporter: right before the actual election day, a convenient alternative explanation. >> this project or this system called hammer. >> reporter: a false conspiracy theory popped up in right-wing media. >> it's going to look good for president trump, but they're going to change it. >> reporter: there would be many, many more conspiracy theories in the days ahead. >> voters are in the final hours of making a monumental decision for this country. >> we're keeping an eye on voting across the country, especially in those key battleground states. >> projects president trump will twin state of florida. >> former president trump was in his residence. he had people coming up and down, but there were staffers, aides, friends, hangers on, all sorts of people in the east room munching on mini burgers. and celebrating what they believed once the state of florida was called for trump was going to be a repeat of 2016. >> a big win for president trump in florida. >> trump was in a, dean, decent move until fox news called arizona for zbbiden. >> that is a big get for the biden campaign. >> he believed that he was being told by some advisers after he won florida, which was this is looking good for us. this is looking just like 2016. these states that were supposed to go for biden are going for you. and then we got to the arizona call and it fell apart. >> it's a significant victory for joe biden. as i say the first flip of the night in the presidential race. >> the fox news decision desk made that call hours before the associated press, and days before the major news networks. >> people were sending me what people were saying on social media, and it was this sort of, you know, psychotic murderous rage and we didn't do anything. i'm just telling you where the storm is going. i don't make the weather. >> he started calling talent at fox and urging them to retract. >> right, show it was the call that made that true, not the votes that were cast. he had made up his mind weeks before he was going to go to the podium if election night said he was losing and he was going to say he won. and that's exactly what he did. >> this is a fraud on the american public. this is an embarrassment to our country. we were getting ready to win this election, frankly, we did win this election. [ cheers ] >> reporter: and then he said this. >> we want all voting to stop. we don't want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list, okay? >> reporter: but nobody was voting. they were just counting. the focus at this point was mostly on mail-in ballots. in 2020, more democrats voted this way than republicans. >> we were winning everything and all of a sudden it was just called off. >> reporter: what an ideal time to stop the counting if you're a republican president who wants to hold on to office no matter what the voters actually want. >> i've been saying this from the day i heard they were going to send out tens of millions of ballots. i said exactly -- ♪ ♪ ♪ it may not be music to your ears, but as long as it's music to theirs. bring the volume back to the venue with exclusive ticket access to unmissable events. one of the many reasons you're with amex platinum. in 2016, i was working at the amazon warehouse when my brother passed away. and a couple of years later, my mother passed away. after taking care of them, i knew that i really wanted to become a nurse. amazon helped me with training and tuition. today, i'm a medical assistant and i'm studying to become a registered nurse. in filipino: you'll always be in my heart. [uplifting music playing] ♪ i had a dream that someday ♪ ♪ i would just fly, fly away ♪ growing up in a little red house, on the edge of a forest in norway, there were three things my family encouraged: kindness, honesty and hard work. over time, i've come to add a fourth: be curious. be curious about the world around us, and then go. go with an open heart, and you will find inspiration anew. viking. exploring the world in comfort. i love this country. i love this democracy. and it makes me very sad to see what many in my party are doing. >> bill gates is a conservative republican who worked on voter integrity issues for the arizona republican party for years. >> i am one of these kind of alex keaton kids from the '80s, i've been a republican my whole life. >> nowadays he's the vice chair of the maricopa county board of supervisors, the governing board for the county, which is arizona's most populist. among the board's responsibilities, running elections. >> this election was run well. there was no fraud involved in this. no corruption. why do i feel confident about that? because this has been the most scrutinized election we have ever run. >> my job was to make sure there wasn't anything improper or fraudulent that was going on. >> you were not discounting anything? >> no, my job is to investigate what was being brought to me and i followed up on those with the election officials. >> and? >> and there was nothing to it. >> hey, ken. >> good morning, sir. >> grandmother gates and his colleagues, the madness began hours after the polls closed. >> as far as i'm concerned we already have won it. >> before the tally was finished supporters who believed then president trump that they had won arizona began flocking there. >> usa! usa! >> it was a circus. i mean, it really was lollapalooza for the alt-right. and they were outside of the election center, which is, i mean, really off the beaten path. >> across the united states, local election officials were scrambling to get a record number of mail-in ballots counted. among them in philadelphia was al schmidt, one of three city commissioners and the only republican. he ran for office promising to protect election integrity. >> one of the things that i was involved in as part of the republican party in the city and republican party in the state was election integrity. since coming to office, in 2012, i referred more than two dozen cases for investigation to city, state, and federal law enforcement. our election operations were centered in the pennsylvania convention center in center city philadelphia, and there was one tv on that i happened to be walking past.city, philadelphia, and there was one tv on that i happened to be walking past. and the president saying why are they still counting? we already got the results. >> we are winning pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes. >> and i want to be very clearer about what then president trump was calling for. he wanted millions americans to be disenfranchised. >> which is completely at on odds with democracy. it was pretty upsetting to see that. >> let's get a key race alert in some of the battleground states. >> when half of your voters, in our case, 325,000 voters vote by mail, it takes days to count all those ballots because you can't even begin processing the envelopes they came in until 7:00 on election morning. >> because that's the law that the republicans made. >> that is the law the republicans made and refused to change. >> and this is a key point, especially in pennsylvania. >> this is the most significant modernization of our election code in decades. >> expanded vote by mail legislation had been passed before the pandemic. in 2019 by the republican legislature. these were republican rules. >> the refusal to count those mail votes early and be prepared really hurt the country. and if you can't get the ballots counted accurately, efficiently, expeditiously, you create the space for trump and his squad and the goons to go out there and plant lies, to try to steal the election. >> we are going to prove to the american people that arizona is trump country. >> it was happening most notably in swing states. in arizona, there was sharpie gate, the trump campaign alleged that sharpie markers made them unreadable by the counting machines. >> that was sort of the beginning of this, let's start and throw, you know, chum in the water for folks that want to try and overturn this election. >> in georgia, big lie that spread on the internet was that this legal case of ballots was actually a secret suitcase of false biden votes being added to the count. >> i saw four suitcases come from underneath the table. >> something the republican lieutenant governor and his colleagues looked into and found completely without merit. >> it was cut and spliced to take the time to watch it from beginning to end. there's a sequenced pattern that can be explained all the way through there, those were not suitcases, they were preapproved cases already used all over the state. >> in philadelphia, trump did better than he had in 2016. better than romney in 2012 or mccain in 2008. he was losing pennsylvania because he did so much worse in the philadelphia suburbs. >> count every vote! >> nonetheless, because trump decided discrediting big cities was going to be one of his false political attacks. in philadelphia, trump's lawyers falsely claimed republican observers had been barred from the counting rooms. >> one of the attorneys for trump asks a judge, judge diamond burr for an emergency order to stop the counting. and they were claiming they had no people in the room. that's what they had been claiming outside the courtroom. but inside the courtroom, this trump lawyer concedes that there were a, quote, nonzero number of their own observers in the room. and essentially the case was laughed out of court. >> short of that lawyer lying to the judge and committing perjury, clearly went as far as he could. we had republican observers there every minute of every day that we were operating and counting votes right in front of us. >> this is rampant corruption are. >> despite barrage from trump and his allies -- >> we will await more vote to come into pennsylvania -- >> that ended the saturday after the election. >> ultimately the final decision of this very long election week came down to philly, and after philly was decided and announced -- >> cnn projects joseph r. biden jr. is elected the 46th president of the united states. >> joe biden declared victory. what was that like? >> to have our voters votes result in the election being called was an incredible thing to watch.' votes result in the election being called was an incredible thing to watch. while all that is happening, we are also aware that rudy giuliani is coming to philadelphia. >> wow, what a beautiful day, thank you. >> going to the four seasons landscaping place to say that our voters' votes shouldn't be counted. >> i was about to bring up four seasons total landscaping because it was -- >> in philadelphia, they keep the votes of dead people secret. >> the most -- >> very suspect method of voting -- >> degrading. >> there was o no security, zero. >> pathetic. >> people have no assurance at all that those ballots were cast -- >> farcical moment in my view of this post-election day challenge of this all. and appropriate. >> there would have to be anonymously cast for joe biden in order to catch up. >> they obviously didn't mean to have it at four seasons landscaping in an industrial area next to a creme tore yum and a sex shop. >> it was the day trump got the news he did not want to hear. >> he was told by his top political advisers that basically it was over, and he listened and he decided that he wanted to keep fighting. >> so? >> trump decided to put giuliani in charge and that's what he did. giuliani was willing to do what he wanted. >> and that is what led to this now-infamous press conference mid-november featuring rudy giuliani and another lawyer named sydney powell. >> the dominion voting systems were created in venezuela at the direction of hugo chavez to make sure that he never lost an election. >> the only thing left was to vote. that could have been the same person 30 times. >> one of the most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes. >> thank you. >> ben ginsberg, the republican party election attorney who has battled with democrats on many re-counts and recalls were watching. >> when i first heard the press conference, i said, oh, my god, can that really be true? because if there was nothing there, they would not just be making it up and then they went through the entire press conference and i sort of remember looking out the window and saying they just made all that up. >> they did. this campaign memo from six days before the press conference first reported by "the new york times" says dominion has no company ties to venezuela. dominion and one of its former employees would later sue giuliani and powell for more than $1 billion. a court document filed by powell's lawyer said, quote, no reasonable person would conclude the statements were truly statements of fact. someone should tell that to the republican national committee because they still have powell's lies in its social media feed. in a deposition for another related case, giuliani said he got the information about a former dominion employee having antifa ties from social media. >> those social media posts get, -- facebook, instagram, twitter -- >> social media postings. >> or something else. i think it was facebook. >> he also admitted that he did not have the time, he said, to investigate the claims himself. alyssa fer ra was the courthouse communications director when all these lies were being fed to then-president trump. >> you are saying in november, that there seemed to be an acknowledgment by the president that he lost, but then something changed. >> something did change. this was when the more conspiracy theorists got access to the president. the sidney powells, the mike lindells, michael flynns and even steve bannon was in his ear. it did take a turn. i think herb believes it. the former president believes he won the election. and that's scary. and the other thing though that your viewers need to know, the people around the president, the sane ones know that he did not win. and they are lying to you, and they are lying to him when they suggest that the election was stolen. >> there were more than 60 lawsuits filed by the trump campaign or its supporters. they only prevailed in one case. from pennsylvania. but the number of ballots affected was too small to change the results from the state. >> none of the claims were found meritorious by any court in any way that would have reversed the results of the election. >> georgia faced more than a dozen of these suits. >> many of the lawsuits, they just wanted to throw out the results and then have the general assembly pick their own set of electors. >> brad raffensperger, georgia's secretary of state, a conservative republican who supported trump and has fought with democrats on election issues ordered a state hand count. that habitat hand count confirmed there was no widespread fraud involved with the machine count. >> no, we never saw enough fraud that would have turned the results of the election. we have about 250 investigations going on. if you look at it, it's onesies, twossy twosies is, a couple of people doing something, but never added up to 12,000 votes. >> still then president trump a doing something, but never added up to 12,000 votes. >> still then a couple of peopl doing something, but never added up to 12,000 votes. >> still then president trump , doing something, but never added up to 12,000 votes. >> still then a couple of peop doing something, but never added up to 12,000 votes. >> still then president trump hate tweeted about him and he and his wife were threatened. >> people were threatening her, and sending her sexualized threats. those kind of sbemsz. >> bill gates got threats too. so did commissioner al schmidt who testified about them in congress. >> tell the truth or your three kids will be fatally shot. included our address, included my children's names. included a picture of our home. cops can't help you. heads on spikes, treasonist schmidts. >> we have not had any sort of credible incidents raised to our level yet. there was a interesting time line or pattern is a better way to put it. i would go on tv, speak the truth. and within minutes he would send a tweet out that would say something derogatory or inflammatory. >> georgia lieutenant governor, duncan, a rino, never trumper, too dumb to recognize massive fraud in georgia and should be replaced. >> minutes after that me or my wife would start to get threats showing up on our phone. i mean, like, blood-curdling threats from the most awful-sounding individuals and deep meaning that would know things about you and your family. they intentionally were trying to scare us and intimidate us to try to get us to sit down and be quiet. >> then president trump wanted some republicans to sit down. others he invited to washington. >> he starts bringing in state legislators from pennsylvania. >> yes. >> party leaders from michigan. >> he has them come to the white house to visit with him. this is part of the sales job he thinks he's doing. he is saying he won, and they should consider that and how they submit electors and how they go ahead and certify the election in their states, but none of them went along with it at the end of the day. >> joe biden ahead by 61,000 votes. >> in michigan, despite losing to joe biden by more than 154,000 votes, he waged a fight to keep the votes from being certified. >> stop the count! stop the count! >> it might have worked if one of the two republicans on the state canvassing board had not resisted intense pressure and voted with the democrats to certify. >> we must not attempt to exercise power we simply don't have. >> after that act of courage state republicans replaced him on the board. >> it was all part of a presidential push for legislators to disenfranchise their own constituents, based on lies. there was no credible evidence of widespread fraud. perhaps the president's most shocking push was in georgia. >> so then president trump asked governor kemp to call a special session of the legislature so the legislators could appoint their own electors instead of the ones for biden that the voters had picked. >> you play that out and you disenfranchise 2.5 million people's votes in a state, i don't care if they are ds or rs, we would have had rioting in every community. it would have been an absolute attack on democracy. >> a version of that, of course, came later. >> fight for trump! fight for trump! as court losses piled up and inauguration day crept closer, trump hoped that u.s. attorney general bill barr with the might of the department of justice behind him would back him and add credence to his fraudulent crimes. >> where is the doj and fib in all of this, mr. president? >> is the doj investigating? >> missing in action. can't tell you where they are. >> bill barr was investigating. >> bill barr issued a memo that told prosecutors around the country that they could take overt steps to look into allegations of fraud. this is something the department traditionally didn't do until votes for certified. it was absolutely seen as putting pressure on prosecutors around the country to at least say publically, or have signs that they were investigating voter fraud. bill barr was looking for it and the truth was it was not there and he eventually came to realize that. >> in an interview with the associated press, barr publicly contradicted trump's baseless certifications, saying, quote, to date we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election. >> the president is furious. he calls barr over to meet with him and the two of them get into a shouting match. >> barr told trump they had looked in to these things that trump asked about and there was nothing there. and trump got very agitated and barr just kept saying this is not real, sir. at one point barr described giuliani and his ilk as clowns, and trump sort of listened and said, maybe, but he wouldn't get off of it. >> it was just rudy giuliani pedaling the false claims, there were others stepping in to aid with the dirty work of trying to subvert the election. >> ken paxton, big supporter of donald trump brings a lawsuit arguing that the ballots from four states -- pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, and georgia -- should be thrown out because those states had not followed their own laws in allowing mail-in balloting and in the way that they had carried out their elections. he was arguing that millions of ballots should be thrown out. >> the legal filing was so constitutionally unhinged and substantively bereft, he refused his name on the suit. it had speculative allegations and some down there lies. >> it said philadelphia's vote should on not be counted because it used dominion voting machines. philadelphia does not use dominion voting machines. basic facts like that of some it was completely absurd to read. >> another absurdity, the lawsuit cited a statistical analysis claiming the probability of biden winning those four states saying it's less than 1 in 1 qua drill on. >> for the vote to swing by as much as it did, the probability of that in one state is one in one quadrillion, that is one, comma, 15 zeros and then to the fourth power. it was nonsense, a lie, the analysis completely ignored what everyone, including the trump campaign, knew, because of vote by mail, and when states counted early ballots, some states were going to show an early lead for trump that would not hold. despite the lawsuit, 17 other republican state attorneys general signed a legal brief backing it. an overwhelming number of house republicans were drawn in to that effort as well. at trump's with request, congressman mike johnson of louisiana circulated an e-mail to his republican colleagues asking them to sign on to the brief, supporting paxton's lawsuit. >> as the amicus brief was being prepared, i was urging my colleague who was preparing the brief not to do it. >> i did not sign it because i thought it was wrong, frankly. that's when i started getting some phone calls from people saying hey, wait a minute, aren't you going to fight this sning this election thing, this election was stolen. >> in the end, 126 house republicans signed their names to it. adam kinzinger, a republican congressman illinois, did not. >> how many people do you think believed the nonsense in it? >> if i had to guess, i'd say five ten. >> i think there was a sense among those who did sign it, at least some of them were sort of, well, we're just going to do this to placate president trump. and i thought that was not doing our duty. kevin mccarthy told me directly that he wasn't going to sign it. i said, good, this is not a brief we ought to be associated with. and then a few hours later he signed it. >> the brief went out without kevin mccarthy's name and the next day claiming he was left off and he signed on to it. that was bad. initially he did not want to sign it and realized what the pressure was. and what you see there are people that sign onto something they don't believe to avoid political pressure. it's leaders that are afraid of their base and not leading their base. >> the supreme court declined to even hear the suit. >> a majority of house republicans, like two-thirds of them literally saying i don't want any of the votes from pennsylvania. i don't want any of them to count based on this lie. i mean, i will say, for me personally as a pennsylvanian, they were trying to disenfranchise my mom and dad based on lies. >> i don't know how everyone doesn't take that personally. they tried to not have your counts voted. thermtsz want to have your vote count based on nothing whatsoever. that is to mind-bending and so difficult to comprehend. >> what is going to happen next presidential election? how many people will sign a brief saying over throw it to the supreme court, that becomes the bottom line standard, that happens every time in d.c. and a lot of the standards were broken in the season and i'm worried we will never get them back. >> up next, donald trump's phone call to the top election official in georgia. >> i just want to find 11,780 votes. >> was he telling him to break the law? >> it certainly felt like it. ♪ move your high-interest debt to a sofi personal loan. earn $10 just for viewing your rate — and get your money right. ♪ quadrillion ok everyone, our mission is to provide complete, balanced nutrition for strength and energy. whoo hoo! ensure, with 27 vitamins and minerals, now introducing ensure complete! with 30 grams of protein. with xfinity home, you can keep your home and everything in it more protected. i can wrangle all my deliveries. thanks, hoss! and i help walk the dog from wherever. *door unlocks* ♪ ♪ well, i can bust curfew-breakers in an instant. well, you all have xfinity home, with cameras to home security monitored by the pros. *laughs* learn more about home security or get our self-monitored solution starting at just $10 per month. quadrillions before the 2020 you were perceived as a rising star in the republican in georgia. now you're not running for election. so what happened? that's funny. you talk about rising star. i don't know if i would agree with that. but one of the biggest knocks against me when i was running for lieutenant governor was that i was too drive actually be a statewide candidate. hey, georgia, jeff duncan -- conservative candidate for lieutenant governor. >> in 2018, in the increasingly purple state of georgia, jeff duncan ran as a long-shot on his conservative values. >> please raise your right hand and place -- >> and he won. >> so no one can actually question your conservative button fides. there's no question when it comes to social issues or economic all yours or foreign policy. there's no way in which you're squishy or a liberal? >> i'm a conservative because of the principles of it, not because it wins in georgia. i was wired to be a conservative. i was raised that way. i think our family is conservative. the businesses that i run are conservative. that is just who i am. >> but in 2020 after he pushed back against a wave of false claims -- >> it is disheartening to watch folks willing to put their character and morals out there just so that they can spread >> duncan found himself on the receiving end of republican fury. just like georgia's secretary of state brad rathensberger, who's office was flooded with voters urging him to change the results of the election. >> i want to talk to -- i want to talk to the people that are not [ bleep ] doing the [ bleep ] right thing. this election was [ bleep ] stolen. >> we could feel the angst and the hate building over the air over nothing. over a mirage. over a shiny fact that donald trump had lost the election fair and squarely. >> you could have very easily kept your mouth shut not said anything, gone along, was all of it worth it? putting it all on the line for the truth? >> the answer is absolutely it was worth it. >> the lieutenant governor found himself among the few to speak the truth. he was not alone. disgusted by threats his election workers were getting from misled trump supporters gabe sterling was a vocal critic of the public lies. >> i remember a young guy was taking the trash out and all the people swarm around and say, you are going to prison. you are going to prison. he is a warehouse guy. i mean, nobody should have to go through that. >> good afternoon. >> on december 1st, 2020, sterling gave a blistering warning. directed to the most powerful man in the world. >> two minutes before he was going to go up there, one of my friends and said gabe is getting ready to have a press conference and you might want to watch. >> mr. president, you have not condemned these actions or this language. these are elections and those of you that haven't said a dang word are complicit in this. someone will get hurt. someone will get shot. someone will get killed. >> felt like me saying those words. he said everything i wanted to say. it was heart felt. >> this is the backbone of elections. this stuff getting done and that level it did eat at me and i thought i'm doing something that's vitally important. i just want all americans to understand their vote is counted. >> despite sterling's pleas to tone down the rhetoric, president trump continued his pressure campaign. >> your governor could stop it easily, if he knew what the hell he was doing. he could stop it. >> just days later, he exp exploreates brian kemp for not helping him to overturn the election. something kemp could not legally do and had no grounds to do. >> so far we haven't been able to find the people with the courage to do the right thing. >> here he was calling this into question because we wouldn't lie in front of a national audience for donald trump. >> and trump leaned on the state election investigator. >> the people of georgia are angry. i won by hundreds of thousands of votes. whatever you can do for answers is a great thing for the country. >> the surprising part to me was how granular of a level donald trump was actually personally engaged in trying to overturn the election in georgia. certainly we started hearing about phone calls he was making and of course, we all heard the unfortunate 60 plus call with brad. >> they were threatening ballots. >> you had out-of-state voters. >> that was a complete disaster and embarrassment to anybody that cares about democracy. >> after repeating a litany of false investigations in his view the secretary was breaking the law in his view by ignoring his false conspiracy theories. >> you're not reporting it. that's the thing. that's a criminal -- that's a criminal offense. and, you know, you can't let that happen. that's a big risk to you. >> did you feel like he was threatening you? >> i think you can take that as a form of pressure. >> of everything he said to you on that call, what sticks with you the most? >> he continually circled back on all i need is. >> i just want to find 11,780 votes. >> he wanted us to go out and somehow find additional votes. we had all the ballots. there were no more ballots to add and they had been tabulated time and time again. >> was he telling him to break the law? >> it certainly felt like it and was embarrassing as an american to hear the u.s. president having that type of conversation. there is no setting where that call was appropriate. >> what he was asking for wasn't something supported by state law, wasn't supported by the facts, wasn't supported by the constitution. >> that phone call is now key evidence in an ongoing investigation by prosecutors in georgia looking into whether or not president trump broke the law in his efforts to overturn the election. but trump was not even close to done in his efforts to overturn the election. ahead, a memo that could have destroyed democracy. >> it is a blueprint for how to >> it is a blueprint for how to ignore the vote of the people. when traders tell us how to make thinkorswim even better, we listen. ♪ ♪ because platforms this innovative, aren't just made for traders - they're made by them. thinkorswim trading. from td ameritrade. football, is a game of inches. but it's also a game, of information. because the nfl is connected. and at any moment, the fate of the season can come down to this. billions of secure connections, per second. when the game is on the line and the game is always on the line touchdown! the nfl relies on cisco. 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