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Mr. Cipollone was a witness to some of the most significant moments in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election results, including discussions about seizing voting machines, meddling in the Justice Department and sending false letters to state officials about election fraud.

“That’s a terrible idea for the country,” he said of suggestions that the Trump administration seize voting machines, adding, “That’s not how we do things in the United States.”

Mr. Cipollone was also in direct contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 as rioters stormed the Capitol and told the House committee he believed more should have been done to call off the mob.

“I think I was pretty clear there needed to be an immediate and forceful response, statement, public statement, that people need to leave the Capitol now,” Mr. Cipollone testified.

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Louisiana Republican U.S. Sen. John Kennedy joined an effort to refuse certifying electors from six states, in hopes of denying the presidency to the election's winner, Joe Biden. Trump won those states in 2016, but voters there backed Biden in 2020. Undisputed Senate king of the waffle, Oxford, England-educated Sen. Kennedy then characteristically waffled: “You will never find where I ever said, anywhere, that the election was stolen or not stolen,” Kennedy told WWL-TV in his first extended interview about his votes Jan. 6 and the Capitol riot that attempted to derail the peaceful transfer of power.

“Now, having said that, I have never seen demonstrated evidence proven in a court of law that it made a difference. I'm not saying it did. I'm not saying that it didn't. I'm not sure anybody knows,” he said.

Kennedy acknowledged that “some people” say there were no significant voting irregularities at all, but said even if that were true, “people perceived that there were. And that's undermining our election integrity.”

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Mr. Clark, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Perry all played roles in the effort to keep Mr. Trump in office, according to extensive evidence gathered by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House select committee that is looking into the events of Jan. 6. The men also each had direct dealings with Mr. Trump, meaning the inquiry could ultimately lead to the former president. Mr. Perry was instrumental in pushing Mr. Trump to appoint Mr. Clark as his acting attorney general over the objections of several other top officials at the Justice Department. At one of its presentations, the House committee released text messages in which Mr. Perry repeatedly pressured Mark Meadows, then Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, to reach out to Mr. Clark. Perry, a five-term congressman who last fall became chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, is known both for his vigorous support of Trump and for his history of promoting baseless conspiracies on issues that range from terrorism to the coronavirus to the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. Learn More

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2020: Steve Bannon sought to overturn the certified results falsely alleging illegal voting, mail-in ballots and voting machines.

He and Peter Navarro authored a plan "to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to misuse his role as the person officially counting electoral ballots and instead reject them, delaying the certification of Biden’s victory and giving Republican-controlled state legislatures time to overturn the election."

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The so-called "election integrity" committees of the RNC and its state counterpart (the RSLC) are filled with election deniers (members who backed the false conspiracies about the 2020 election) and who have publicly called for some of the most severe voting restrictions.

On the RNC committee, Drew McKissick, the Republican chair in South Carolina, tweeted false accusations by the Trump campaign in November about dead voters and vans full of Biden ballots.

Lenar Whitney, a RNC committee member from Louisiana, repeated conspiracies about Dominion voting machines at a party meeting.

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“There's two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy, Republican-California, said, according to a recording of the 15 June 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Representative Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia. Learn More

Sept. 29, 2019

Pirro imagines barbarians storming the White House gates:

“The White House stands alone like an ancient walled city with barbarians storming the gates, looking to annihilate the man the American people put in that house in 2016.”

Jan. 6, 2021

Pirro sees barbarians storming the U.S. Capitol gates:

“I want to be clear. The actions at the United States Capitol three days ago were deplorable, reprehensible, outright criminal." Learn More

On the Hill, the different ideological factions inside the Party were known as the Five Families; the most unruly of these was the House Freedom Caucus, a group of thirty-three hard-line anti-institutionalists. The closest the conference came to a proactive message was its vow to investigate Joe Biden and to fight the scourge of the federal bureaucracy. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/economy-default-2022-republican-midterm-elections/671707/ On January 2, 2021, Jordan led a conference call with Trump to discuss how they could delay certifying the election. One of the ideas was to encourage Trump supporters, via social media, to march on the Capitol on January 6th. Jordan spoke routinely with the President by phone during the next few days, including twice on January 6th, and he texted Trump’s chief of staff with advice on how to get Vice-President Mike Pence not to count electoral votes. Hours after the insurrection, Jordan stationed himself next to the House floor to whip votes against certification. Before leaving office, Trump gave him the country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Jordan, Trump has said, “is a warrior for me.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/jim-jordans-conspiratorial-quest-for-power Learn More

Under the guidance of Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell, the “Election Integrity Network” has built what it calls “permanent election integrity infrastructure” in swing states staffed with people fully committed to election conspiracies. After recruiting thousands of election workers and poll watchers in the 2022 cycle, Election Integrity Network coalitions are now mobilizing far-right activists to advance restrictive voting policies in key states. Mitchell supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including joining the infamous call when the president urged Georgia’s top election official to “find” 11,780 votes. The Nework is the progeny of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), the $45 million MAGA institution led by former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. In states like Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, CPI’s Election Integrity Network has organized coalitions of election conspiracy theorists, drawing from national groups like Tea Party Patriots and Heritage Action, as well as a range of fringe state-based groups, like Audit the Vote PA and Stand Up Michigan, and with support from local, state, and national GOP officials and entities. Learn More