the violence at the capitol on january 6th, 2021 was just the most visible part of donald trump's attempt to hold on to power. tonight, we talk to those who witnessed the whole plot unfurl and tried to stop it. the lines -- >> this election was stolen from you, from me, from the country. >> if you ask how many republican congressmen believe donald trump was reelected, i would say maybe a couple. but 60% of our base does. >> conspiracy theories -- >> that could have been mickey mouse. >> this is the craziest thing i've ever seen. and people just bought it. >> lawsuits. >> they tried to not have your votes count. they did not want your vote to count. >> 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. >> extraordinary scheming. >> let's talk about this. >> just breath taking that you would have laid out such a clear game plan that so clearly violated the constitution. >> and all too many in the republican party -- >> we believe this was a free and fair election. >> and maga media who followed along. >> unverifiable dumps of votes. >> we will never give up. we will never concede. >> and it all might have worked if not for a key people in key places. notably among them, brave republicans. >> in moments of truth you need the right people to pass the most difficult tests. wet just must the people on jigt. >> pursuant to 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. >> i'm deeply afraid for our country. >> 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 illegitimately. that's fallen nation territory. third world territory. my country left cuba to avoid that fate. i will not let it happen. >> that's anthony gonzalez of ohio. >> i rise today in support of the cuban people -- >> grandson of an immigrant, he has a quintessentially american success story. a talented wide receiver who played three years for ohio state. five more in the nfl. and when injuries side lined 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 from cuba. we come from a failed nation and we see what happens when the rule of law is dismantled, when a strongman is allowed to take hold and democratic norms cease to exist. >> now the conservative republican has a warning for all of us about what trump and his minions tried to do when they tried to steal the election zblfl this country has been through a lot. we fought through it. we've persevered. as much as i despise almost every policy of the biden administration, the country can survive a round of bad policy. the country can't survive torching the constitution. that's the one thing the country cannot survive. >> a rigged election. there will be fraud. >> trump's plan to undermine the election started months earlier with the return to lies he had been telling for years. >> in 2012, he tweeted, quote, more reports of voting machines switching romney votes to obama. 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. >> in 2020, mail-in ballots which would be more prevalent because of the pandemic became a new foil for trump's old claim. >> voting by mail is brought with fraud and abuse. when you do all mail-in voting ballots, you're asking for fraud. >> alyssa was the white house communications director for then president trump from april through december 2020. >> we had to pull together a meeting in the oval to remind them that many of our voters, particularly senior citizens, would vote by mail. that we were deterring people from turning out and voting in the way that they would. >> all this caught the attention of liz cheney. a conservative and daughter of former vice president dick cheney. at the time she was number three in house republican leadership. 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. >> cheney's constitutional concerns came about 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 to a peaceful transfer of power after the election? >> we'll 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 tom. you wrote, the peaceful transfer of power is enshrined in our constitution and fundamental to the survival of our republic. american leaders swear an oath to the constitution. we will uphold that oath. that suggests to me that you were worried. >> i was. such a basic fundamental thing. every president is really responsible for safeguarding the peaceful transfer of power. >> we'll have to see what happens. >> 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. >> we either need to get them on board or move the polling place. >> he was one of three city commissioner in philadelphia. his job was to oversee the city's elections. >> there was a big problem. in philadelphia, they went in to watch. they're called poll watchers. they were thrown out. do you know why? 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? >> it i said out loud, i see what you're doing. it was before a single vote was cast in the city. >> watch though ballots. i don't like it. >> thousands of ballots, all over the country are being reported. some thrown in garbage cans with my name on them. >> did you see today? there was a big misham with the ballots. another one. >> not only was trump spreading distrust of the electoral process -- >> did you see they found 50,000 ballots in like a river. >> he was doing it in states such asp pennsylvania and michigan where the results were expected to be tight and the wait was expected to be unusually long. >> in most of america, there is 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've got all this vote flowing in -- >> reporter: chris was part of fox news' decision desk. >> do republicans do well enough on election day to offset it? >> 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 stage for what experts predicted early vote counts. >> there may be a re mirage. there is a long blue wave. it has come in overwhelmingly democrat. we've never had early voting like this. >> we all knew some states would show him up and then it would get closer. did he not know that in. >> he had been told that repeatedly and he didn't care. he had decided before the summer, frankly, when it was clear that the pandemic was going to change the way by mail voting worked. he started laying the ground work for this can't be trusted. >> this is not right. what they're doing is not right. >> everyone who followed the elections closely knew about this. but then -- >> breaking news. >> reporter: right before the actual election day, a convenient alternative explanation. >> this project, this system called hammer -- >> reporter: a false conspiracy theory popped up in right wing media. >> it will 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. >> in the final hours of i can maing a amusemental decision. we're keeping an eye on it. >> former president trump was in his residence. he had people coming up and down. 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 would be a repeat of 2016. >> a big win for president trump in florida -- >> trump with a in a decent move until fox called arizona for biden. >> the fox news decision desk is calling arizona for joe biden. that is a big get for the biden campaign. >> he believed what he was doing being told by some advisers after he won florida, 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 the arizona call and it all fell apart. >> it's a significant victory for joe biden. 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. it was this sort of psychotic murderous rage about us. and we don't do anything. we're just the weathermen. 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. >> as though it was the call that made it true. not the votes that were cast. >> he had made up his mind weeks before that he would go to the podium if election night showed he was losing and he would say he had won and that's 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. >> 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? >> 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. >> 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. and while you're hittin' the trail, i'm hitting your cooler. oh, cheddar! i've got hot dog buns! and your cut-rate car insurance might not pay for all this. so get allstate, and be better protected from mayhem, like me. roar. 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( ♪ ) get a free storage upgrade when you pre-order at verizon. 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'm one of these alex p. ky keaton kids. >> he's part of the governing board for the county which is arizona most populous. 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've ever run. >> my job was to make sure there wasn't anything improper or fraudulent that was going on. >> you weren't discounting anything. >> no. my job is to investigate what was being brought to me. i followed up on those with our elections officials. >> and? >> and there was nothing to it. >> hey, ken. >> good morning. >> for gates and list colleagues the madness began in the hours after the polls closed. >> as far as i'm concerned, we already have one. >> before the tally was finished, supporters who believed then president trump when he said he won arizona began flocking to the counting site. >> it was a circus. it was really la la palooza for the alt right. and they were outside the election center which is really off the beaten path. >> across the u.s., local election officials were scrambling to get a record number of mail-in ballots counted. among them, in philadelphia, was al schmidt. at the time he was one of three city commissioners, 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 the republican party in the state was election integrity. since coming into office in 2012, i've 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 happen to be walking past. the president saying, why are they still counting? we already got the results. >> we're winning pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes. >> i want to be very clear about what then president trump was calling for. he wanted millions of americans to be disenfranchised. >> which is completely at odds with democracy. it was pretty upsetting to see that. >> let's get a key race alert. >> when half 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's the law the republicans made and refused to change. >> and this is a key point in pennsylvania. >> this is the most significant modernization of our elections 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. if you can't get the ballots counted accurately, efficiently, expeditiously, you create this space for trump and his squad and these goons to go out there and plant lies, to try to steal this election. >> we're going to prove to the american people that arizona is trump country. >> it was happening most notably in swing states. in arizona, there was sharpy gate. the trump campaign said sharpy markers made them unreadable by the counting machines. >> that was at the beginning of this. let's start and throw chum in the water for folks who want to overturn this election. >> in georgia, a 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 out from underneath the table. >> something the republican lieutenant governor jeff duncan and list 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 is a sequentialed pattern that can be explained all the way through. those weren't suitcases. those 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. 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, for an emergency order to stop the counting. and they're claiming that they had no people in the room. that's what they had been claiming outside the courtroom. 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 -- >> despite this barrage -- >> we will await more votes to come into pennsylvania. >> quite momentously, the saturday after the election. >> the decision came down to philly. after sfily was finally 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. while all that is happening, we're 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. >> they keep the votes of dead people secret. very suspect method of voting -- >> degrading -- >> there was no security. zero. -- >> pathetic -- >> people in this country have no assurance at all -- >> preposterous -- >> that those ballots were actually cast -- >> farcical moment of this post election day challenge. >> and appropriate. >> it would have had to be almost unanimously cast by joe biden to catch up. >> they didn't mean to have this industrial landscaping right next to a crematorium and sex shop. >> and it was the day trump got the news he did not want to hear. >> he was told by two of 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, 2020, 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 he never lost an election. >> the only thing left is the vote. that could have been the same person 30 times. >> one of its most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes. >> thank you. >> ben ginsburg, the preemnanlt election attorney who battled with democrats on many recounts and recalls was watching. >> when i first heard that press conference, i said can that really be true? because if there was nothing there, they wouldn't 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. glin and one of its former deployees would later sue giuliani and powell for more than $1 billion. a court document filed by powell's lawyers that, no reasonable person would conclude that while 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 his information about a former dominion employee having antifa ties from social media. >> those social media posts get all, facebook, instagram, twitter. >> social media postings. >> or something else. i think it was facebook. >> he also admitted that he didn't, quote, have the time to investigate the claims himself. a lissa griffin it was white house communications director when all these lies were being fed to then president trump. >> are you saying in november, there seems to be a tacit acknowledgement by the president that he lost. but then something changed. >> something did change. and i think this was when the more conspiracy theorist individuals started getting access to the president. the sydney powells, even steve bannon was in his ear. i think he believes it. >> this election was a fraud. >> the former president believes he won the election. and that's scary. and the other thing though that your viewers need to know is the people around the president, the sail 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 he made 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 these lawsuits, they just want to throw out the results and have the general assembly pick their own set. >> practiced raffensperger who supported trump, ordered a statewide hand count. it confirmed there was no widespread fraud involved with the machine count. >> we never saw enough fraud that would turn the results of the election. >> still, then president trump hate-tweeted about him. and both raffensperger and list wife were threatened. >> people started threatening her, sending her sexualized texts. those kinds of intimidations. >> bill gates got threats, too. so did al schmidt who testified about them in congress. >> tell the truth or your three kids will be fatally shot. it included our address, my children's names, included a picture of our home. cops can't help you. heads on spikes, treasonous schmidts. >> we've not had any sort of credible incidents yet. >> an interesting pattern. i would go on tv, speak the truth if there is an issue, we want to understand it, investigate it. >> within minutes he would send a tweet out that would say something derogatory or infamiliarer to. >> his latest target jeff d duncan. he's a rino, never trumper. too dumb. >> within minutes, either me or my wife would start the get threats that would show up on our phone. like about blood kurdling threats with deep meaning that would know things about me and my family. they are intentionally trying to scare us or intimidate us to get us to sit down and be kawhi. zp then president trump wanted some republicans to sit down. others he invited to washington. >> he decided to bring in party leaders from michigan. >> he starts having them come to the white house to visit with him. again, this is part of the sales job that he thinks he's doing. he's telling them he won, and how they submit electors but none went along with it at the end of the day. >> joe biden had about 61,000 votes. >> in michigan, despite losing to joe biden by more than 154,000 votes, trump waged a fierce fight to keep the results from being certified. 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 incredible 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. 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 mountain state. we would have had rioting in every community. it would have been an attack on democracy. >> a version of that, of course, came later. , i'll take that! 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is the doj investigating? >> missing in action. i can't tell you where they are. >> 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 the votes were certified. it was absolutely seen as putting pressure on prosecutors around the country to at least say publicly, or have signs that they were investigating voter fraud. bill barr was looking for it. and the truth was, wasn't there. and he eventually came to realize that. >> in an interview with the associated press, barr publicly contradicted trump's baseless assertions, 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 into these things that trump was asking about and there was nothing there and trump got very agitated. and barr kept saying, this is not real, sir. at one point trump described barr and giuliani as clowns. >> it was not just characters like giuliani peddling the false claims. there were others stepping in to aid with the dirty work of trying to subvert the election. >> ken paxton, a 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've carried out their elections. he was arguing millions of ballots should be thrown out. >> the legal filing was so constitutionally unhinged and substantively bereft, the attorney general refused to allow his name on the suit. the suit cited a litany of speculative allegations and some downright lies. >> it that that philadelphia's vote shouldn't be counted because it used dominion voting machines. philadelphia doesn't use dominion voting machines. basic facts like that. it was completely absurd to read. >> another absurdity, the lawsuit cited a statistical analysis that claimed the probability of biden winning those four states, given president trump's early lead in those states, as of 3:00 a.m. on november 4th, 2020, is less than 1 in a quadrillion. >> for the vote to swing by as much as it did, the probability of that in one state is 1 if 1 quadrillion. 1, comma, 15 zeroes. to happen in all four, it is to the fourth power. >> it was nonsense. a lie. the analysis completely ignored what everyone, including the trump campaign knew. because. 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 mendac irty 17 other attorneys general signed a legal brief packing it. an overwhelming number of house republicans were drawn in as well. at trump's request, congressman mike johnson of louisiana circus-related an email to his republican colleague ooze asking to sign on to the brief. >> as the amicus brief was being prepared, i was urging my colleague prepared the brief not to do it. >> i didn't sign it because i thought it was just wrong, frankly. that's when i started getting something phone call from people going, wait a minute. aren't you going to fight? this election was stolen. >> in the end, 126 house republicans signed their names to it. adam kinzinger, a republican congressman from illinois, did not. >> how many people who signed on to it do you think actually believed the nonsense in it? >> if i had to guess, i would say five to ten. >> i think there was a sense among those who did sign it. at least some of them, well, we're going to do this to play indicate president trump. and i thought that was not doing our duty. kevin mccarthy told me directly he wouldn't sign it. i am good. this is not a brief that we ought to be associated with. a few hours later, he signed it. >> the brief went out without kevin mccarthy's name. the next day claiming that he was inadvertently left off and he signed on to it. that was bad. he initially didn't want to sign and it then realized what the pressure was. what you see are people who sign on to 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 jordan of house republicans 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'll just 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 votes counted. they did not want your vote to count. based on nothing whatsoever. that is so mind-bending and so difficult to comprehend. so what will happen next? how many people will sign some brief that says overthrow this to the supreme court? that becomes the bottom line standard. that happens every time in d.c. and a lot of those standards were broken in this season. and i'm worried we'll 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. . rosie used part of her refund to build an outdoor patio. clink! dr. marshall used part of his refund to give his practice a facelift. emily used part of her refund to buy... i run a wax museum. let innovation refunds help you get started on your erc tax refund. stop waiting. go to innovationrefunds.com you really got the brows. i'm jayson. i'm living with hiv and i'm on cabenuva. it helps keep me undetectable. for adults who are undetectable, cabenuva is the only complete, long-acting hiv treatment you can get every other month. cabenuva is two injections, given by my healthcare provider, every other month. it's really nice not to have to rush home and take a daily hiv pill. don't receive cabenuva if you're allergic to its ingredients or if you taking certain medicines, which may interact with cabenuva. serious side effects include allergic reactions post-injection reactions, liver problems, and depression. if you have a rash and other allergic reaction symptoms, stop cabenuva and get medical help right away. tell your doctor if you have liver problems or mental health concerns, and if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or considering pregnancy. some of the most common side effects include injection-site reactions, fever, and tiredness. if you switch to cabenuva, attend all treatment appointments. ready to treat your hiv in a different way? 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(we did it) start today at godaddy.com i see irritated gums and weak enamel. sensodyne sensitivity gum & enamel relieves sensitivity, helps restore gum health, and rehardens enamel. i'm a big advocate of recommending things that i know work. before the 2020 election, you were seen as a rising star in georgia. now you're not running. what happened? >> talk about rising star. i don't know if i would agree with that. one of the biggest knocks against me when i was running for lieutenant governor was that i was too conservative to be a statewide candidate. >> it's jeff duncan again -- >> 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 he won. >> so no one actually can question your conservativeness. there's no question about your foreign policy or other issues. there's no way you're squishy or liberal. >> i'm a conservative because i believe in the principles. not because it gets me elected. i'm wired to be a conservative. i was raised that way. the business that's i run are conservative. that's who i am. >> but in 2020, after duncan pushed back against a wave of false claims? >> it is certainly disheartening to watch folks willing to put their character and their morals out there just so they can spread a half truth or a lie in the efforts to maybe flip an election. >> duncan found himself on the receiving end of republican fury. just lying georgia's secretary of state brad raffensperger whose office was flooded with calls urging him to change the results of the election. >> i want to talk to brad raffensperger. i want to talk to this piece of [ bleep ] for not doing the right thing. this election was [ bleep ] stolen. >> we could feel the angst and the hate building over nothing. over a mirage. over a shiny object to deflect from the 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 this word it? putting it all on the line for the truth? >> the answer is absolutely was worth it. >> the lieutenant governor found himself amongst the few willing to speak the truth, but he was not alone. disgusted by threats his election workers were getting from misled trump supporters, gabe sterling also became a vocal citizenic of the public lies. >> i remember we had our warehouse manager at our center for elections was taking the trash out. this was a young guy with us for few years. and all the people swarmed around with their cameras going, you're going to prison. you're going to prison. he's warehouse guy. nobody should have to go through that. >> good afternoon -- >> sterling gave a blistering warning. >> two minutes before he was going up there, one of my friends called and said gabe is about ready to go have a press conference and you might want to watchful. >> mr. president, you have not condemned these actions or this language. this is elections. this is the back bone of democracy. and all of you who have not said a damn word are complicit in this. stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. someone will get hurt. someone will get shot. someone will get killed. >> it felt like me saying those words. he said everything i wanted to say. it was heartfelt. >> this was the back bone of elections. this stuff getting done. at that level, i thought, i'm doing something vitally important. i want all americans to understand their vote is counted. >> despite his pleas to tone down the rhetoric, president trump continued his pressure campaign. >> your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing. he could stop it. >> reporter: just days later, he publicly excoriated republicans such as brian kemp for not helping him overturn the election. something kemp could not legally do and have 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 us into question because we would not lie in front of a national audience for donald trump. >> and trump leaned on the state's chief elections investigator. >> the people of georgia are so angry at what happened to me. they know i won. i won by hundreds of thousands of votes. wasn't close. whatever you could do, it's a great thing. an important thing for the country. >> the surprising part to me was how granular of a level donald trump was personally engaged in trying to overturn the election in georgia. certainly, we started hearing about phone call he was making. of course, we all heard the unfortunate 60-plus minute call with brad raffensperger. >> in my opinion, you had out of state voters. they voted in georgia but they were from out of state it was a complete disaster and an embarrass many to anyone who cares about democracy. >> reporter: after repeating a litany of false allegations, trump said he was notifying secretary of state raffensperger in his view, the secretary was breaking the law. by ignoring his false conspiracy theories. >> you're not reporting it. that's a criminal, that's a criminal offense. you can't let that happen. that is big a risk to you. >> did you feel like he was threatening to you? >> i think you could take that as a form of pressure. >> of everything he said, what sticks with you the most? >> he continually circled back to ail need is -- >> i just want to find 11,780 votes. >> he wanted us to somehow find additional votes. we had all the ballots. there were no more ballots we could add. and they were tallied again and again and again. >> was he telling to you break the law? >> it certainly felt lying it. it is absolutely embarrassing as an american to hear that conversation. there is no setting where that call was appropriate. >> what he was doing asking for was not 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 who are looking into whether donald trump broke the law in his efforts to overturn the election. but raffensperger steadfastness to the law, notwithstanding, trump was not even overclose to overturning the election. ahead, a memo that could have destroyed democracy. >> it is a blue print for how to ignore the vote of the people. ♪ chevy silverado has what it takes to do it all. with up to 13 camera views. and the z71 off-road package. ♪ you ok? 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just wish casting. >> most republicans in congress spent those first few weeks telling reporters that trump had every right to pursue legal remedies. but the cases then failed. over and over, the trump team had no credible evidence of significant fraud. but most republicans would not acknowledge reality. not wanting to poke the bear. that's partly because in 2021, there were georgia senate run-off elections coming up that they needed trump to help them win. and partly because they had giant spending bills they needed him to sign. then -- >> breaking news. biden has now received the majority of electoral votes needed to win the presidency. >> reporter: on december 14th, 2020, the electoral college voted in all 50 states, formalizing trump's loss. >> on january 20th -- >> reporter: on the 15th, mitch mcconnell finally publicly embraced the truth. >> today i want to congratulate president-elect joe biden. >> reporter: republicans who had spent the previous weeks trying to play indicate donald trump now found the vacuum their silence had left had been filled with trump's lies. he lashed out at the few republicans acknowledged his defeat. he tweeted, too soon to give up. increasingly concerning paths forward. >> i got a tip from someone that there had been a really intense, bizarre oval office meeting. sydney powell had been offering a conversation being made special counsel within the house to investigation election fraud. i found out that mike flynn, the former lieutenant general and national security adviser was fired very early on in the trump administration, was talking about seizing the voting machines and rerunning the election. it was incredibly jarring that there was a conversation in the oval office with a former military leader talking about a seizure of voting machines. >> and flynn publicly spoke about this. >> he said a version of it at night. >> talking about martial law, something we've never done. martial law has been issued 64 times. >> he was told by officials, this is illegal. we do not have the authority to do this. >> trump was eventually convinced by advisers to pass on that idea, but he became fixated on a new one. derailing the certification of electoral votes. >> once trump realizes that the fraud claims are going nowhere, he now has a new plan which is for there to be enough doubt that he could maybe persuade some of the states, conservative states, to send a separate set of electors. >> on december 19th, trump sent his first tweet encouraging his supporters to come to washington, d.c. on january 6th to protest the election results at a rally organized by a group called women for america first. with ties to controversial characters sufficient as roger stone and steve bannon, that organization had become the de facto force for the false fraud claims after the election. even taking a bus tour across the country, trying to sway members of congress to object to the election results. while women for america first pushed conspiracy theories around the country -- >> we love america! >> the president continued his assault on the capitol. >> the attorney general of the united states, bill barr is leaving -- >> thus began a near daily pressure campaign on the department of justice. according to a sweeping report from the democrats on the judiciary committee, based on interviews with trump's top officials at the justice department, jeffrey rosen and richard donahue, trump directly asked the doj to undermine the outcome. election. he did so nine times. and his chief of staff mark meadows broke with longstanding policy and pressured the doj to look into election fraud claims. >> the wildest theory was this thing called italygate. mark meadows sent an email to the acting attorney general at the time asking him to look into this theory that there was some italian contractor who was using satellites to change vote tallies on machines, voting machines, in the united states. >> on a december 27th call with the new acting attorney general, jeffrey rosen, trump pushed him to, quote, just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the republican congressman. >> trump knows, if the justice department goes out and raises questions about corruption or fraud, just saying that they're investigating, looking into it, that allows republican congressmen to go out there and do the rest of the work and to put the pressure on the states to start their own audits and again, gives him room to operate between then and january 6th. >> the whole notion behind it was, trump and his supporters saying, don't worry about it. we're going to make it up. don't pay attention to the facts. don't pay attention to the law. we're just going to make it up and forge ahead. >> trump continued to press rosen on the call saying, this was an illegal corrupt election. according to richard donahue's notes from the conversation, trump told rosen the doj was failing to respond to reports of crime. >> rosen stood firm on this call saying there's not much the justice department could do. >> trump also plotted with another justice department official, jeffrey clark, to oust the acting attorney general after the refusals to go along with trump's fraudulent allegations. but that scheme imploded and the dramatic white house showdown on january 3rd, 2021. >> this was a scene straight out of aprentiss. he has them vy for the job of attorney general of the united states. and the president is told that if he replaces rosen with clark, there will be huge consequences. a number of top officials at the justice department would resign. there were probably going to be hundreds of other resignations, political appointees across the country as a result of this. it was a murder-suicide pact, is the way this was described during this meeting. >> trump decided that the effort would not be worth the embarrassment of mass resignations and abandoned the plot. he then pinned his hopes to overturn the election on mike pence, based on a written memo written by john eastman. >> let's talk about the eastman memo. what was your reaction when you first heard about it? >> just breath taking, that you would have laid out such a clear game plan that so clearly violated the constitution. >> the eastman memo detailed the six-step plan for pence to throw the election to trump during the january 6th certification. it also called for pence to throw out all electors from seven states and gavel president trump as reelected. eastman has since tried to publicly down play his memo and his role in attempting a coup. but he told a very different story in undercover video from a progressive activist. >> rudy giuliani and me met with 300 legislators on january 2nd via a zoom call. and they all said they wouldn't do anything. >> in appearances, it passed right wing media. >> are we to assume this will be a climactic battle that will take place this week? >> a lot of that is about the spine of the people involved. >> that would be like saying a guy like mike pence? >> yes. >> this level of corruption can't be allowed to stand. and i think that makes, i think that makes the exercise of the vice president's power very compelling. it's quite dangerous. it is a blue print for how to ignore the vote of the people that would have cast aside all the legal foundations upon which the country and the democracy is based. >> we now know eastman's memo was not the only multistep plan the detail how vice president pence could use his role on january 6th to overturn the results of a fair and legal election. another one was written by a trump campaign lawyer named jenna ellis. according to betrayal, the final act of the trump show, a book by abc's jonathan carl, the former president's own chief of staff, mark meadows, forwarded the he willis memo to pence's top aide. >> there is been so much talk about this memo the john eastman wrote. he didn't even work at the white house. he was some outside lawyer. but meadows is forwarding a document that outlines the effort to have a coup. a document written by a lawyer on the trump campaign pay roll. >> publicly, pence raised the hope of trump supporters, telling one georgia rally -- >> we'll have our day in congress. we'll hear the objections. we'll hear the evidence. >> pence reached out to others to see if there was some way he could carry out this unconstitutional move, including, according to "washington post" journalists bob woodward and bob costa, dan quayle who convinced pence he had no constitutional power to throw out the election. also reported by woodward and costa was steve bannon's role in pushing the plan. on a phone call with the president, bannon said, you've got to call pence and get him back here today. we're going to bury biden on january 6th. f'ing bury him. >> pence says that he's talked to all of the lawyers that he can talk to and he has decided that he can't, he doesn't have the power that the president says he has. and trump turns on him. he yells at him. he says that essentially, he has betrayed him. and the meeting doesn't end very well between the two men. >> but that did not stop the president from publicly pressuring the vice president on twitter ahead. certification. up next -- >> we were on a conference call and i told kevin mccarthy, when people are convinced that the election was stolen, there will be violence. his response was, operator, next caller. like a smart coffee grinder, that orders fresh beans for you. oh, genius! for more breakthroughs like that- i need a breakthrough card. like ours! with 2.5% cash back on purchases of $5,000 or more. plus unlimited 2% cash back on all other purchases. and with greater spending potential, sam can keep making smart ideas- a brilliant reality! the ink business premier card from chase for business. make more of what's yours. ♪ chevy silverado has what it takes to do it all. with up to 13 camera views. and the z71 off-road package. ♪ you ok? yeah. any truck can 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[coughing] ...from this highly... ...contagious virus. not all dangers come with warning labels. talk to your pharmacist or doctor... ...about getting vaccinated against rsv today. ♪ tourists tourists that turn into scientists. tourists photographing thousands of miles of remote coral reefs. that can be analyzed by ai in real time. ♪ so researchers can identify which areas are at risk. and help life underwater flourish. ♪ thousands of people descended on our nation's capital. >> biden did not win this election. >> fraud. >> it's not made up. >> angry at what they falsely believed had been a stolen election. >> unquestionable that our votes were stolen. >> the supreme court is not helping us. no one is helping us. >> bewe're taking the country back. >> i woke up at 4:30. buss were everywhere. you couldn't get a clear path from where i was. >> this line wraps around the washington monument. >> and there's all kinds of traffic at 4:30 in the morning. 5:00 in the morning. and there are strobe lights on the national mall. a couple thousand people milling around. at that hour it felt like something was off. >> when did you start becoming worried about january 6th? >> a couple weeks before january 6th, we were on a conference call. all the house republicans. kevin mccarthy, who at this point we did not know how he would go on certification. he said he would object. and i say, kevin, you have to understand, there will be violence. when people are convinced that the election was stolen and there is a route out, there will be violence. his response was, operator next call. so on january 6th, it was obvious what was going to happen. >> they thought they could steal this election -- >> the crowd had been told lies about the election, not just by trump but maga media. they were encouraged to take action. and told how to think about those republicans who acknowledged joe biden won. those who were grounded in reality. >> this is about as mindless as i've ever seen these republican rino establishment hacks behave. >> we're coming for you. >> many of the famous faces peddling the big lie were there. >> we're going to take our country back. >> but not just to rev up the crowd at the rally. according to the book "peril" by bob woodward and robert costa, on the days surrounding jigt, john eastman, rudy giuliani and others gathered at a hotel two blocks from the white house talked about plans to delay the certification. >> i'll tell you this. it won't happen like you think it will happen. >> just the day before on january 5th, bannon teased what was to come on his podcast, war room. >> it will be quite extraordinarily different. you've made this happen and tomorrow it is game day. so strap in. let's get ready. >> everything points to, bannon was close to anything the campaign was doing. >> i think an overwhelming majority of that crowd was there to try to overturn democracy. the democratic process. i knew i was the face of the so called deep state in the republican party. i didn't want to be out in public too much. i never bring my gun into the capitol complex. i brought it that day. >> i was sort of nervous for the morning. i was curious to see what the rally was. i was curious to hear some of the speeches. the defamatory ones. >> speakers at the rally included john eastman, the author of that memo detailing how pence could violate the constitution and keep trump in office as well as many other individuals who saw opportunity in joining in on the big lie. >> are you willing to do what it takes to fight for america? start taking down names -- >> let's have trial by combat. >> but as he preferred it -- the marquis speaker was the president himself. >> meanwhile, inside the chambers of congress, the certification paused. >> i would object to further reading. >> with objections from republican senators and house members. >> i rise to support the objection. >> i rise to support the objection. >> earlier that day, vice president pence had put out a statement saying he was not going to follow trump's instructions. which upset the president, as he conveyed to the massive crowd. >> mike pence, i hope you will stand up for the good of our constitution and for the good of our country. if you're not, i'm going to be very disappointed in you. >> reporter: trump continued to rile up the crowd, demanding they take action. >> you'll never take back our country with weakness. you have to show strength. you have to be strong. >> many at the rally took his words literally. and we all watched as the effort to overturn the election came to a violent -- bloody cy crescend. >> it was so unimaginable. that you would have a mob -- having broken into the capitol and attacking police officers. attempting to break into the floor with the chamber of house representatives. you just couldn't compute that was happening because it is so fundamentally unamerican. >> unamerican. yet very close to happening in america. this video shows utah republican senator mitt romney, someone the angry mob considered an enemy, unknowingly walking toward the rioters. capitol police officer uming 18 goodman tells romney to get out of harm's way. and then runs to confront the insurrectionists, leading them from the senate claim better. vice president pence -- the man many rioters called to be hanged that day. he was inside the claim better and had to be rushed to safety with his family from the senate floor. minutes after rioter breached the capitol. according to reporting from the "washington post," one of the vice president's aides, greg jacob, who was with pence during the insurrection, sent an email to john eastman after they were escorted off the senate floor. >> he said in the email, we're now under siege. >> eastman fired back, blaming the riots on the vice president and his staff. >> they broke through. >> john eastman responded by saying it was actually the vice president's fault and mr. jacobs' fault for the quote, unquote siege. he said if you had done what neds to be done, you would have had a debate, if you would have gone forward like we asked you to go, it wouldn't be happening to you right now. >> he's got a gun! >> the conversation you had with your wife, you've been off to war before, having conversations with loved ones. was it like that? >> this was different. i never really had a sense that i might not survive this. there was a real sense that if they're in the capitol complex, and they've already overrun two or three line of police barricades, there is nothing to stop them from the rest of the complex. it was an emotional conversation. it was nothing i've ever had before. i hope to never have that conversation again. >> we have two young kids. i didn't want to alarm my wife. at the time, it felt like anything was possible. you're seeing the bomb threats. you're tracking it on twitter. i'm seeing messages on telegram and some of these other platforms come through about organized militia groups that will storm the capitol and some folks saying they'll kill whoever they find. so at the time, you don't know how it will end. >> on the other end of pennsylvania avenue, at the white house, trump remained isolated, watching the events unfold on television. >> when he found out what was going on, the violence, his supporters attacking policemen, beating policemen -- >> stay down! >> members of congress hiding, running for their lives. what was his response? >> kevin mccarthy had a conversation with him telling him how bad it was. people are breaking into my office. they're doing this. trump's response was, well, kevin, i guess they're more upset about the election than you are. >> there was roughly an honor that day when some on the biden team were genuinely worried that there would be no transition, sources tell cnn. that trump and his mob had successfully disrupted the counting of electors and might find a way to cling to power. >> thank god there weren't more people killed. at the time, you don't know that. at the time you know there is an angry, violent mob. who believes the election was stolen in the united states of america. you're seeing even members of congress saying this is our 1776 moment. which as a reminder, that's a bloody, violent revolution. >> this is our house. of course you're going to have violence. of course you're going to have a riot at the capitol. that's what all this was about. wasn't just an attack on our symbols of democracy. it was an actual attack on the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another. after it was over, hundreds had been injured. five dead. and the capitol had been breached for the first time in more than 200 years. >> coming up, will trump try to steal the election again? >> you think that he will try to impose some kind of autocracy. >> i think that he absolutely would. that's why, we've we pull our favorite looks so it is easy to get the look you want for less. you got this. we got you. you tried. limiting when it was okay. no tech behind closed doors. but social media's algorithms of addiction always won out. it's not your fault. alone you can't stop it. together, we will. we have a plan. join us. 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call invent help today. they can help you get started with your idea. call now 800-710-0020. hours after the last rioters had been pushed out of the capitol on january 6th, 2021, while there was still glass on the floors and blood on the stairs, congress tried to get back to the business of democracy. >> let's get back to work. >> they had a presidential election to certify. >> when we reconvened that night, there was an opportunity of leadership for kevin mccarthy. an opportunity for him to stand up and say it's time for us to recognize that the election is over. it's over. and we need to come together and heal. >> i rise to address what happened in this chamber today. >> as i sat on the floor and listened to his remarks, he began like that. but then it became clear, he was urging continued objection to the electoral votes, which i can't understand. >> valid concerns about election integrity. >> by the end of the night, two-thirds of republicans in the house of representatives, including the current republican leadership voted not to certify the state of arizona. >> i object to the electoral votes -- >> and not to certify the commonwealth of pennsylvania. >> do you think kevin mccarthy and steve scalise and elise stepaneck voted after blood had been shed, after this attack, do you think they actually believe this cause that they've taken up? >> not a word of it. i don't think they believe any of it. but i think you can convince yourself if you're determined to, that i'll just play the game a little longer so that i'll be here to lead to a new direction. or i'll play the game because i don't have the power and influence to change the ship. when you think about the heroics on flight 93 on 9/11, all those passengers standing up, rushing the cockpit and saving the capitol. had todd beamer or any of the others alone charged the cockpit, we would have probably a rebuilt capitol today and a lot of casualties. but they all decided to do it together. when you only have a few people speaking out, it's no doubt that won't turn the ship. everybody has to particularly, the leaders. party. >> the lie continued on maga media where justifying the rioters' anger became a common refrain. >> these are not conspiracy theorists motivated by lies. these are people that understand first principles. they love freedom and they love free markets. >> one week later, the house voted to impeach donald trump. >> it is not a fear-based decision. >> there is no excuse for president trump's actions. >> while some republicans spoke in favor, the majority of house republicans sided with trump, refusing to vote for impeachment. >> the ayes are 232. the nays are 197. >> ten republicans breaking ranks -- >> but deny the vote to impeach him. >> i voted to impeach him. i think it is very clear, as has been public, that he provoked the violence that day. >> i felt like i had no choice in the matter. as conservative republicans, we are constitutionalists. we believe in the rule of law. >> were you surprised only ten republicans voted to impeach? >> there was a vote probably a couple days before the vote, maybe a day before the vote on impeachment where i thought we would have hit 25. i talked to 25 people. i look at throws people that were going to vote for impeachment and i recognize every one of them that ended up not voting that way themselves always mention ad concern for what it meant for the re-election. >> congresswoman liz cheney was the third ranging republican in the house when she voted for impeachment. she was so concerned about where trump's big lie was leading the nation. >> you have local officials who were getting death threats. you had members of congress who said to me that they believed the president should be impeached after the 6th. they were afraid to cast a vote that way because of their security and the their families. that is a place that we investment been certainly since the civil war. and never when that threat of violence comes from a sitting president. >> we will have to fight much harder. this will remain a cancer. >> included house republican leader kevin mccarthy who said this just two days after the election. >> if president trump won this election, so everyone who is listening, do not be quiet. >> in may 2021, republican new york congresswoman elise stefanek challenged cheney for her leadership post. clain is more conservative than her. she had voted more often but step anneck supports the laws and she defeated cheney for the leadership position. >> it just became increasingly clear that to stay in house republican leadership, i would have to be willing to perpetuate the big lie and i simply wasn't comfortable with that. >> how many of your republican colleagues that perpetuate the big lie, either with their comments or their votes, how many of them do you think actually believe it? >> very few. very few. too many people are putting their own political future and their political fortunes ahead of doing their duty. and so i think that, you know, in some insubstantials, there is fear, physical fear about the threats that might come. in other cases, it's a political congratulations which is pretty craven, if you think about it. >> what about them acquiescing to these demands? to these requests? winking and nodding about the big lie? >> the danger is that once you do it on this issue, what is to, why wouldn't you do it on any other issue? >> this is not about right and left at all. this is about right and wrong. >> the institutions don't hold themselves. 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. we have to make sure that we have an equal number of people to continue to pass the test going forward. >> when the colleague that to us, the guardrails held but barley and only because there were special individuals at great risk to themselves. professionally and personally who stood by the guardrails. people like the maricopa county board of supervisors. people like secretary of state raffensperger in georgia. people like commissioner al schmidt in philadelphia. do you think that ultimately, a do the of people, replaced them and the guardrail falls. >> it that's a threat. >> any time you drive on thely on and you see a guardrail that was hit, it held but it wouldn't withstand a second impact. >> coming up next, that second impact led by former president trump may be coming. >> he either wins legitimately, which he may do, or if he loses, he'll try to steal it. questions and got a real offer in seconds. then, they just picked up the car and paid me right on the spot. sell your car at carvana dot com today. at pnc bank, you can find us in big cities and small towns across the us, where our focus is to always support the people who live and work there. because you call these communities home, and we do too. pnc bank. each day is a unique blend of going, doing, and living. glucerna protein smart with 30 grams of protein to help keep you moving. uniquely designed with carbsteady to help manage blood sugar response. glucerna, bring on the day. ♪ hit it ♪ ♪ it takes two to make a thing go right ♪ ♪ it takes two to make it outta sight ♪ ♪ one, two, get loose now ♪ ♪ it takes two to make a... ♪ stay two nights and get a $ 50 best western gift card. book now at bestwestern.com. we know you care. 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he's eight and he gets it. i'm 10. well, that's less impressive. we are now just months away from the-mile- mid-term electio. >> liz cheney. how about that? >> there was now growing evidence the mid-terms will also test the strength of former president trump. >> her poll numbers have dropped faster than any human being i've ever seen. >> who has been working to turn elected officials into loyalists or get them voted from office. >> get rid of them all. >> trump attorney john eastman made that clear while talking about state legislators in an undercover investigation done by a progressive activist. >> these guys are spoilers. now, if we take them out in the primaries in 2022, the precondition for getting elected is, we're going to fight this stuff, maybe we've got an opportunity. right now i don't see it. >> donald trump's behavior has congressman anthony gonzalez worried. >> it looks to me that he has evaluated what went wrong on january 6th. why is it he wasn't able to steal the election? who stood in his way? and he's going methodically state by state in races from state senate races, all the way down to county commissioner races, trying to get the people, the republicans, the rinos, in his words, who stopped behind from stealing the election. he's trying to get them removed. >> what scares me is the secretary of state roles. they are extremely powerful dealing with elections. >> the focus -- >> in georgia, brad raffensperger who refused to find the votes trump needed to win georgia, faced a challenge from republican congressman jodi h he heiss. raffensperger will be the candidate in november. in arizona, a state representative wants the job which is being vacated by a democrat. >> arizona state representative mark fincham is with us tonight. what a job he's done. >> he's already received the endorsement of donald trump. he has said over and over again, that this was a fraudulent election. he's called for decertification. he's got a decent chance to win this primary. if we had people like that in these key positions moving forward, i think we are in danger. >> in pennsylvania, the governor appoints the secretary of state. and this is the republican nominee for governor. doug mastriano who was protesting outside the capitol on january 6th. >> as governor, i get to decertify any or all machine in the state. i believe the machines are compromised. >> six of the ten house republicans who voted to impeach donald trump are facing primary challenges this year from republicans endorsed by trump or energized by him. one has already lost. another appears to have eeked out a victory. these four still face russ including liz cheney. >> donald trump is very vocally supporting your defeat. are you worried? >> no. i intend to win. >> you could lose. i mean, you're saying you won't but anything is possible. if you lose your career because of this position you're taking, will it have been worth it? >> well, i will, no matter what happens, never stop fighting for the constitution. never stop fighting for the rule of law. to me, there is not even a choice or a calculation. it's just, what is the right thing here? and what has to be done? >> four other republican congressmen who voted to impeach donald trump have decided to not run for re-election, including adam kinzinger who said he wants to fight against the politics of division instead of running for re-election in a newly drawn district in which he would have to run against an incumbent republican, and anthony gonzalez, who decided to retire after two terms. >> this lifestyle, the constant travel, the constant fundraising, wasn't working prior to impeachment. it's pretty clear now is the time to get out. >> the exits are happening at the state level, too. the jeff duncan is not running for re-election. >> i don't want to have to do and say the thing i have to do and say to win a primary with donald trump trying to play the game he's playing. >> he has begun speaking about the republican party after trump and has written a book about it called gop 2.0. and it's not just elected officials stepping out of or being pushed from public view. remember the fox political editor who correctly called the state of arizona for biden? he was fired in january 2021. fox blamed restructuring. his boss retired. >> a source at fox news told the "washington post" that i was fired because my ratings weren't as good as dan's and that audiences were not responding to me as favorably as they were to dan which made me really laugh because i, that's not my job, right? my job is not to tell you what you want to hear. >> he is a conservative pundit. not a reporter. on top of all this, a number of states are ushering sweeping so call election integrity laws that tighten access to the ballot to prevent widespread voter fraud. you know, the kind that did not happen. at least 19 states have new laws. >> trying to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist. some people say voter fraud never occurs. it does occur. it occurs infrequently. >> beyond efforts making it more difficult to vote are efforts to make it easier to undo an election. for instance, in georgia, some of the work of brad raffensperger now wlis the republican controlled state legislature. >> a number of states have tried to take running of elections away from professionals and giving it to politicians. so when state legislatures like georgia give power to the legislature to potentially overturn results, that's very in 2021, there was no better example of a politicized counting process than the so-called audit of ballots in maricopa county, arizona, by a group calling themselves the cyberninjas. they have no experience at all in election audits. they're headed by this doug logan who has been in this trump orbit ever since the election. >> people saw images of these cyber ninjas looking at ballots through ultra violet light. what were they looking for with the light in the ballots? >> they were actually looking for bamboo on one of the ballots, because there was one of these conspiracy theories that thousand of ballots had been sent in nefariously from somewhere in asia, and if there was bamboo, that would indicate these were in fact those ba ballots. >> if you buy into conspiracy theories or believe the falsehood that the election was stolen from donald trump, the so-called audit made you more suspicious of the ballot counting process. in the end the ninjas concluded that biden did win maricopa county, which is what the county ser cer certified. all this happened in the aftermath of the 2020 election, a planned attempt to undo the will of the people work dozens of events, maneuvers, pressure campaigns, threat of violence, actually violence carried out over months and continuing to this day. you think that what president trump and his minions were attempting was a coup? >> well, when you're trying to not count voters' votes, when you're trying to overturn the will of the people, i wouldn't know how else to describe that. you know, it's hard for me to even attach the words coup and america. that sounds like such a third world notion. i don't know what you could call it other than a coup. >> i think there are a number of different things you could call it, but no president in history has ever done it before, and we have to make sure no president ever does it again. >> republican liz cheney is now vice chair of the committee which spent a year interviewing more than 1,000 witnesses and is publicly laying out much of what we've detailed this evening. >> president trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. >> the january 6th committee hearings are also explaining the pressure campaign waged by the former president, which failed the first time around. if donald trump manages to replace enough opponents with loyalists and enough laws are changed, he could tray the tactic again. and this time -- it might work. >> if we rerun the scenario with people holding the most powerful positions in key institutions being more beholden to him than their oath -- i think it's all pushing towards one of two outcomes. he either wins legitimately, which he may do, or if he loses again, he'd just try to steal it. should he be the nominee or try to run again? i'll do everything i can to stop him. i believe as a citizen of this country who loves this country and respects the constitution. >> the nightmare scenario is this -- it's not too far all the realm of possibility. donald trump is running for president. he'll likely be the nominee for the republican party. joe biden is going to be 82 years old by 2024. many around him don't think he's going to run again. there's very much a scenario where donald trump could be president again. and this is a man who has challenged our institutions near to the breaking point. >> and for those who have worked with trump, the fear is not just his undermining american democracy, but once back in the white house also undoing the american experiment. you think that he will try to impose some form of autocracy. >> i think that he absolutely would. there were things he wanted to do when he was in power the first time that were well beyond the scope of what the u.s. president should be able to do, but oftentimes it was simply the motivation of winning re-election that kept him from doing things. it's very different in the second term, and i think that's what scares me to most. >> can you give me an example? >> whether it's weaponizing the justice department against political opponents, going after the free press -- he'd be open to using the military for political reasons as well. >> that's terrifying. >> mm-hmm. >> it is a warning we are bringing you from conservative republicans. you might have noticed that other than a few journalists, the voices you've heard tonight have been exclusively gop, because there is nothing partisan, nothing liberal about supporting democracy. the american experiment is an experiment. it's not guaranteed. i mean, when ben franklin said, a republic, if you can keep it, he being cheeky. he meant this democracy had to be fought for. how worried are you? >> i have real concerns about the future of this democracy, and i never thought that i would. i didn't think we had this sort of pull towards authoritarianism in our democracy. >> i'm deeply afraid for our country. yeah, i'm afraid that the kind of political violence, the kind of abandonment of the rule of law, the kind of abandonment of the constitution that we watched does threaten the foundations of democracy, the foundations of our system, and the fact that so many in my party are willing to be silent, are complicit, are enabling it adds very much to the peril. because it's a very dangerous place for the country to be. >> i was discussing with an older friend of mine the subject of our documentary tonight, the erosion of american democracy, the continued undermining of basic rule of law and respect for facts. stay sane, he said to me. then, alluding to that famous quote that shamed joe mccarthy in 1954, my friend said, somebody has to sit up and say at long last, have you no decency? on the other hand, my friend said, somebody has to be listening when he says it. the thing is, a bunch of folks have been saying this -- journalists, politicians, conservative republicans that you heard from tonight, terrified about the end of the american experiment. they have been shouting, have you no decendecency, at trump. and the problem is trump has answered and the answer is no, he does not. and his supporters do not seem to care. if the vast majority of republican elected officials do care, as they should, well, they're not acting that way. ♪ ♪ ♪ let me take a look at the numbers for you. ♪ ♪ i'm currently out of the office... focusing on a little blue-sky thinking. i'll be taking meetings... with family and friends. and checking voicemail... as my activities permit. i'll connect with you... after reconnecting with me. ♪ get 1.9% apr for 36 months plus $1,500 purchase allowance on a 2024 xt5 and xt6 when you finance through cadillac financial. ♪ businesses need 5g solutions today. that's why they choose t-mobile for business. mlb partners with t-mobile to not only enhance the fan experience, but to advance how the game is played. aaa relies on t-mobile's network to stay connected nationwide, so they can help get their members back on the road. and we're helping pano ai innovate, to stop the spread of wildfires. now's the time to see what america's largest 5g network can do for your business. the chase ink business premier card is made for people like sam, who make- everyday products, designed smarter. like a smart coffee grinder, that orders fresh beans for you. oh, genius! for more breakthroughs like that- i need a breakthrough card. like ours! with 2.5% cash back on purchases of $5,000 or more. plus unlimited 2% cash back on all other purchases. and with greater spending potential, sam can keep making smart ideas- a brilliant reality! the ink business premier card from chase for business. make more of what's yours. lowe's knows a style refresh is even more refreshing ...when it's at the right price. that's why, we've we pull our favorite looks together in-store and in in the app. so it is easy to get the look you want for less. you got this. we got you. welcome to "the whole story." i'm anderson cooper. former president donald trump