crowd (chanting): Stop the steal! Stop the steal!
Stop the steal! Stop the steal! Stop the steal!
(chanting continues)
Donald J. Trump: This election was rigged,
and we can't let it happen.
Can't let it happen. Can't let it happen!
Bill Barr: Before the election, obviously,
I wanted Trump to win. I supported Trump.
♪♪
But after the election, he started spewing out
all these allegations of voting fraud.
This was a massive fraud.
So, I felt I had to get on top of the main claims
that were being made.
Stephanie Grisham: I was close to him.
Very, very close to Mrs. Trump.
I really liked them.
I kind of felt like they were family to me.
We were getting ready to win this election.
Frankly, we did win this election.
(crowd cheering)
Grisham: I guarantee anybody who was around him at the time,
despite what they were thinking inside,
they were saying, "Oh, it was stolen, sir."
♪♪
Marc Short: It was weeks of a pressure campaign
to overturn election results.
The vice president was loyally standing by his side.
I stand with President Donald Trump!
But at the same time, we were on a collision course
between the president and the vice president.
And I hope Mike is gonna do the right thing. I hope so.
Because if Mike Pence does the right thing,
we win the election.
♪♪
Mark Brnovich: President Trump did a great job.
I was right there with him. He called me and said,
"Hey, you'll be the most popular guy in America!
"You'll, you'll be able to run for President!
All you gotta do is say there's fraud or find some fraud."
I could have been a ****ing hero.
Trump (on phone): Look, ultimately I win.
So, what are we going to do here, folks?
I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.
I was for Trump the whole time.
I walked for him. I campaigned for him.
It was fun.
Everyone is saying,
"Wow, the evidence is overwhelming."
And then it started. The steal.
♪♪
(plane whirring)
crowd (chanting): Four more years! Four more years!
♪♪
Trump: Get out and vote, and I love you.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
(crowd cheering)
Alyssa Farah Griffin: One of the greatest honors I have
is getting to travel the country,
meeting with real Americans with President Trump.
I joined the West Wing under Trump in April of 2020.
I felt emotionally invested in him winning.
(crowd cheering)
Some of these rallies you'll be in a stadium-like seating,
and those can be overwhelming and feel like,
"Wow, this is so many people."
And I remember thinking, he's going to pull it off.
Who, who else can bring and command this kind of a crowd?
(forklift whirring)
But we had no shortage of chaos and crises
in that six-plus month period.
officer (megaphone): Leave the area immediately.
-(gunshots) -(people shouting)
There was sort of a perfect storm of conditions.
♪♪
By late summer, President Trump starts
to kind of grease the wheels for excuses if he lost.
These elections will be fraudulent,
they'll be fixed, they'll be rigged,
and everyone's looking at it.
♪♪
Griffin: I was sitting in the Oval Office with him.
No one in the West Wing team
was talking like losing was a reality.
Barr: Up until the election,
you could always appeal to his self-interest.
"Mr. President, this was a bad idea for you.
This will hurt you."
And that would work,
if you appealed to his self-interest.
And that is what helped keep things within the guardrails.
-(plane idling) -Leading up to the election,
all he had to do was temper his behavior a little bit,
and I think he would have easily won re-election.
And people were telling him this for months,
but he was very self-indulgent.
Let's vote for Sleepy Joe, he's fallen asleep.
Joe... Joe, oh...
He ignored all the advice he was getting.
And he ran this election that, that was self-destructive.
The only way we're gonna lose this election
is if the election is rigged, remember that.
It's the only way we're going to lose this election.
♪♪
Ronald Hansen: In 2020, Arizona,
really for the first time in a long time,
emerged as one of the key swing states
for the presidential race.
-(marching band playing) -(singing)
Arizona has had a change in its population.
You have an immigrant population.
You also have a fair number of retirees coming in.
And it all adds up to a churn in Arizona's population
that helps redefine the state's political inclinations.
crowd: Get out and vote! Get out and vote!
♪♪
Clint Hickman: Welcome to the Board of Supervisors.
2020 is going to be a very interesting year.
We have elections to run.
It's an honor to serve as Chairman of the Board of Supervisors.
In November 2020, I was Chairman
of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
My role is to run an election.
The integrity and success of our elections
is my number-one priority.
Maricopa County is the second largest voting district
in the United States because there's just so much population
that exists in this one county.
Moving on. Number four is the pet showcase.
John Reynolds is here from Animal Care and Control.
Uh, we believe her to be maybe a Parsons Russell terrier
and poodle mix.
Bill Gates: We are in 50 different lines of business,
but many of them sort of off the front pages. Right?
You know, animal care and control, air quality,
transportation.
So, important but sort of a more low-profile role.
Until all of this happened.
-We are adjourned. -(bangs gavel)
(plane roaring)
(tires screech)
President Trump was in this community
three, four, five times with large rallies. I was at one.
Six days, can you believe this?
-Six days from now... -(crowd cheering)
...we are going to win Arizona, and we are going to win
four more years in our great beautiful White House.
Hickman: I was a Republican Chairman.
I had something to do with him being there that day.
I was thanked.
Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman.
-(crowd cheering) -Hickman: I felt really happy.
He was our Republican president.
Thank you, Clint. Good job, Clint.
♪♪
(applause)
Trump: I think if anything, we're going to do very well.
Winning is easy.
Losing is never easy. Not for me, it's not.
reporter: Let's bring in Alyssa Farah from the White House,
the White House Communications Director.
The president is in a great mood. We're energetic.
The vibe in the West Wing is we're excited.
The early results were coming in,
and it looked like Trump might pull it off.
So, people were a little bit excited
and started making their way over
to the East Wing for the party.
Grisham: There was music playing in the background.
There were two bars open.
You know, people were chatting, taking pictures.
I think-- And it was kind of a, "Let's take pictures
"of us winning again, you know, and this time,
we're winning in the White House."
And so, it was really jolly and jovial
and everyone was really happy.
Honestly, I don't even know that people were paying
that close of attention because we were gonna win.
And then very shortly after, the Arizona call came in.
(fountain splashing)
The Fox News decision desk is calling Arizona for Joe Biden.
That is a big get for the Biden campaign.
It's a significant victory for, for Joe Biden.
As I say, the first flip of the night.
Hansen: Fox News calling Arizona for Joe Biden.
This started to set the dominoes tumbling.
It had outsized repercussions for the tenor
of the national race.
Grisham: We were all in the residence,
I think it was like, two in the morning,
three in the morning at that point,
as we watched stuff come in,
and then as it was looking like
Biden was going to accept that he had won.
I'm here to tell you tonight
we believe we're on track to win this election!
(crowd cheering)
I'm optimistic about this outcome!
The President was standing in this middle of this--
this crowd of people. And it was just chaos.
Everyone's yelling.
Trump's waving a piece of paper in his hand.
He's very angry.
And when he's pissed,
you don't want to even get in his line of vision.
And then all of a sudden, abruptly,
it was like a light switch went off.
It was like somebody just turned the light off
'cause everybody just started heading downstairs,
um, for him to speak.
crowd: We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump!
("Hail to the Chief" playing)
(crowd cheering)
Trump: Well, thank you very much.
Grisham: And then he just walked on stage.
The man took the stage and no one knew
what was going to come out of his mouth.
I don't know if he's gonna concede.
I don't know what he's going to say.
This is, without question, the latest news conference
I've ever had.
-(laughter) -supporters: We love you! We love you! Yeah!
Thank you, thank you.
(cheering)
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.
(applause, cheering)
Grisham: When he started down that road of, "Frankly, we won,"
I just was devastated.
I was so disappointed in my president,
and I thought, "How can you, like, do this to the country
and leave everybody hanging like this?"
And, um, yeah, I started to just cry.
I was pissed.
Trump: Mr. Vice President,
say a few words, please. Please.
(applause, cheering)
Greg Jacob: Whereas President Trump talked a lot about fraud
and that he thought he had won the election,
I think the vice president was cognizant
that he didn't want to make allegations
that he didn't know were supported.
It wasn't necessarily that he knew one way or the other.
You're in the very early days, you just can't know.
We're waiting to see what evidence
gets developed over time.
I truly do believe, as you do,
that we are on the road to victory
and we will make America great again, again.
Short: For many of us, we felt it would probably be
a contentious few weeks, but that ultimately,
if there ended up not being evidence
to support fraud or theft,
that ultimately there would be some level of concession.
-(applause) -Thank you very much.
Grisham: He came off the stage, I thought, "Holy shit."
You know, I knew him for so long and he never goes backwards.
If anything, he goes forwards and he doubles and triples down.
He will never back down now. There's no walking this back.
(band fades out)
Barr: At two in the morning, for him to go out
and claim that fraud was underway was,
was very dangerous.
You know, I started worrying a lot from then on.
(distant police siren wails)
reporter: President Trump's supporters are ramping up
their voices in the Valley, gathering outside
of the Maricopa County Elections Office.
protesters: Let them in! Let them in! Let them in!
We started getting some protests
outside of the tabulation center.
It got, uh, pretty ugly, pretty quick.
protesters: Let them in! Let them in!
Shame on Fox! Shame on Fox!
Adrian Fontes: I mean, it's all theater except for they've got
assault weapons and they're armed,
and at any moment they could have come in
and mounted an armed assault against our warehouse,
where the ballots were held.
protesters: Where are the votes? Where are the votes?
Fontes: Some elected officials even showed up,
Congressman Gosar was one of them.
(Paul Gosar chanting)
Hickman: These are publicly elected officials
coming to charge up a crowd.
That was a sign of things to come
about some Republican colleagues.
All of these people,
with Trump flags, wearing their AR-15s.
It enraged me.
(camera shutters snapping rapidly)
♪♪
Thank you very much. Thank you.
This is a case where they're trying to steal an election.
They're trying to rig an election.
Hickman: President Trump was making sure
that there was talk about rigging of elections
or bashing people across the United States.
Trump: The officials overseeing the counting
are all part of a corrupt Democrat machine.
Today, we're on track to win Arizona.
crowd: Four more years! Four more years!
If you count the legal votes, I easily win.
protester (on megaphone): Count the legal votes!
protester (on megaphone): We are watching you!
reporter 1: Mr. President, are you going to accept the outcome
of the election, sir, if you lose?
-Mr. President! -reporter 2: Are you being a sore loser?
protester: Trump said, "Hey, if you count all the legal votes,
I won this election."
reporter: When you say count the legal votes,
which illegal votes are-- is the group referring to?
Uh...
Just emp--
Like, empty ba-ballots
that liberals working the elections
have filled in on their own.
Wolf Blitzer: After four long, tense days, we've reached
a historic moment in this election.
We can now project the winner of the presidential race.
(news jingle playing)
Barr: One of the reasons I have a high degree of confidence
that the election was not stolen by fraud
was because when you actually look at the votes,
there's no mystery as to why he lost in 2020.
He lost where people were telling him
for months and months he was gonna lose.
The problem all along was that
his way of going about energizing his base
drove away a lot of suburban professionals.
That's where the fatal gap was for him.
It was in the suburbs.
So, it's no mystery as to why he lost.
-(cars honking) -(crowd shouting)
Griffin: The race was ultimately called for Joe Biden.
And in the neighborhood I lived in in DC,
like, there were cheers in the streets.
People were very excited.
supporters (singing): ♪ We are the champions ♪
♪ No time for losers ♪
Griffin: And I kind of accepted it and, you know,
knew I was going to go back into work to do my job
because win or lose, we still had, like,
two and a half months in office.
♪♪
It's a very odd time in history
when a sitting president loses a re-election.
And then add to it, a president who has chosen not to concede.
And my office is just right around the corner
from the Oval Office.
And I remember popping my head in,
and he's watching Fox News, um, and Joe Biden's on
and he says,
"Can you believe I lost to this effing guy?"
♪♪
Grisham: He knows he lost, but he's a narcissist,
and his ego will not accept defeat.
And when you have people who will so willingly
come around you and tell you
you didn't lose and the things that you want to hear,
which he's a master at.
He's a master at finding these people who will say whatever.
And so that enables him to double down and triple down.
♪♪
Barr: He had lost the election.
He had sort of nothing to lose.
And that's when he started shutting down communication
with the people who were actually in advisory positions,
in the government
and started listening almost exclusively to this cabal
on the outside.
Joining us this evening is Rudy Giuliani,
the president's attorney, former mayor of New York City...
Barr: The President then rolled out his legal team.
Wow, what a beautiful day. Thank you.
Barr: Obviously, Rudy played a big role, you know,
in this very excited conspiracy theory type of way.
Joe Frazier is still voting here.
Kinda hard since he died five years ago.
Also, Will Smith's father has voted here twice since he died.
I'm joined right now by Jenna Ellis
who is the president's legal advisor...
Griffin: In came, one day, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell,
who was an attorney herself, but was known as,
frankly, kooky, in the West Wing.
We're fixing to overturn the results of the election
in multiple states. And President Trump won
by not just hundreds of thousands of votes,
but by millions of votes.
And suddenly, you would see them sitting in sort of the,
the West Wing lobby.
It was almost like this bar-room scene from "Star Wars,"
you know, of people hanging around the Oval Office,
these people from the outside.
I've been a prosecutor for, on and off, 50 years of my life.
Prosecuted a lot more dangerous criminals than these morons,
and, uh, and the evidence is overwhelming.
President Trump won, fairly, and genuinely by a landslide,
and we intend to prove that.
Sidney Powell: Well, I can hardly wait
to put forth all the evidence we have collected,
and I'm going to release the Kraken.
Griffin: And that was sort of the beginning
of a even darker period of
the campaign fraud nonsense that was pushed.
That's when shit really hit the fan.
(shutters snapping rapidly)
Good afternoon.
Griffin: They all show up on stage,
at the Republican National Committee headquarters.
-(reporters yelling) -Nope, nope, nope! (stammers)
You've got Rudy Giuliani who's sweating off his hair dye
down his face, and the whole thing was chaotic.
We let this happen, we're going to become Venezuela.
We cannot let this happen to us.
We cannot allow these crooks, 'cause that's what they are,
to steal an election from the American people.
They elected Donald Trump.
Jacob: I made my entire legal staff
watch the Rudy Giuliani press conference
'cause that was supposed to be the big reveal.
Now, you know, we've been hearing these allegations,
now we're supposed to hear all of the evidence.
And so, we all sat and watched it together and were...
uh, underwhelmed.
You can't say-- I mean,
you're just lying to the American people
when you say there's no evidence.
Jacob: It was really shocking to me how
untethered to evidence and facts
a lot of what he seemed to be saying and putting forward were.
I know crimes, I can smell 'em.
You don't have to smell this one.
I can prove it to you 18 different ways.
Barr: Their public statements kept on citing fraud,
but there was just not evidence of that.
Especially on a scale that would have affected
the outcome of the election.
So, excuse me, we're not at the questions at this point.
My name is Jenna Ellis,
and I'm the senior legal advisor.
You have Jenna Ellis, you know, giving her best sort of,
"We've got to stand and fight for the American people."
This is an elite strike force team
that is working on behalf of the president and the campaign
to make sure that our Constitution is protected.
We are a nation of rules.
You have Sidney Powell espousing bizarre theories.
What we are really dealing with here
and uncovering more by the day
is the massive influence
of communist money through Venezuela,
Cuba, and likely China in the interference
with our elections here in the United States.
What I don't think enough of us were thinking that day is,
this is incredibly dangerous.
We'd later find out that it was incredibly dangerous.
We are going to take this country back.
We are not going to be intimidated.
-(cheering) -Jacob Chansley: We are taking the nation back.
We will not allow communism in the United States.
Here in Arizona, I went down to the Election Center every day,
seven days a week.
Then, we moved from the Election Center
over to the Capitol building.
We will not accept corruption in Arizona or in the United States!
We're bringing down the New World Order!
Nobody voted for Biden, dude. Not here in Arizona.
There's something wrong with our elections.
It's plain and simple.
♪♪
-Pray for our President. Pray... -(crowd murmuring)
Big business, big tech, and big media
all colluded together
to keep Donald Trump from being re-elected.
It's that simple.
They're trying to take away your dream of four more years!
-Are you gonna let them do that? -crowd: No!
Brnovich: As the attorney general, there was nothing more
that I would have wanted to do
than to prosecute a bunch of, you know, left-wing Democrats
for, you know, injecting thousands of votes
illegally into the Arizona system.
I mean, I didn't want Joe Biden to win.
Donald Trump loves America!
(crowd cheering)
Brnovich: Here in Arizona, a majority of Republicans
thought the election was stolen.
Part of the reason why they believed it
is because they kept hearing it.
President Trump at that time was talking about,
you know, that if he didn't win, the election was rigged.
And you get it out there, and then people believe it,
and then, you know,
there's a certain confirmation bias, right?
Once somebody believes something,
they see everything through that prism.
Sharpiegate here in Arizona.
Remember I talked to you about this Sharpie...
They were handing out Sharpies...
So, they were using Sharpies...
Sharpiegate...
There was a huge issue related to Sharpies
and whether Sharpies had affected the way people voted.
Folks were claiming that the Sharpie pens
were causing a bleed-through on the piece of paper.
So, if someone voted, you know, on one side,
'cause we have the two-sided ballots,
that the bleed-through of the pen marks to the other side
would lead to inaccurate results.
Yeah, everybody's a little pissed.
Marko Trickovic: All across Arizona,
the chaos really kinda came, like, on Election Day, right?
So, what they're doing is they're telling people to use
-the Sharpies, that way... -Yes.
-Trickovic: ...those votes aren't counted. -Yes.
-Trickovic: That's exactly what's happening? -Yes.
Trickovic: You know, I shot that video
that ultimately ended up turning into Sharpiegate.
They're saying my vote didn't count.
So, people are coming here to vote for Donald Trump,
and those votes are all getting invalidated.
Welcome to the new America, people.
That's what's going on.
Do I believe that the election was stolen?
Absolutely, 100% I do.
And yes, the other side,
the officials that were involved in that process,
they're gonna tell you everything was on the up and up
because they have to.
It's organized crime at that point.
People were talking about the Sharpies.
Why did we use Sharpies?
Well, I know we made videos,
you know, six months before,
saying don't worry about it.
Please use Sharpies.
(energetic music playing)
narrator: Did you know you can use a black or blue pen or Sharpie
to fill out your ballot in Maricopa County?
So, bleed-throughs are not a problem.
So, as people were saying, "Hey, there's something here.
It's not counting my vote."
It's like, no, I'm good.
Certainly, we were noticing irregularities.
Things that didn't quite add up.
Because the Sharpies will indeed bleed through the paper.
You know, there-- we're--
there's enough there to question,
to be a skeptic.
(indistinct chatter)
Brnovich: My immediate reaction was that we would look into
the use of Sharpies
and whether that affected the vote in 2020.
We just want to make sure that no one can ever say
that this election wasn't done properly.
My goodness, I had every motive and reason to find
some sort of massive fraud.
And we-- it just wasn't there.
supporter (on megaphone): Trump is gonna stay our president...
Brnovich: We were able to systematically
and methodically lay to rest
so many conspiracy theories
and people that still maintained that the election was stolen,
they moved on to other things.
All the fraud didn't happen with Sharpies, right?
That was just a small piece to a massive problem.
There were votes for people that were dead.
Here in Arizona!
(people cheering)
1.8 million people, dead people voting...
You've got people out there,
this group saying that thousands of dead people voted.
You've got former president
saying that it affected the election.
But we were systematically able to go through
and disprove that.
-(crowd chatter) -(horn blowing)
We spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours
as an office with lawyers, investigators
but some sort of massive conspiracy
that would have changed the outcome of the election?
I haven't seen it.
The reality is, right now, it does appear
that Joe Biden will win Arizona.
I admire your nerves of steel, and a backbone to match.
I just wish you well on this 'cause a lot of people
are not gonna digest this very nicely.
I'm the ****ing Republican
statewide-elected attorney general,
and people are jumping up and going,
"Get some balls! Why don't you prosecute anybody about 20--"
And, like, people are beatin' the shit out of me.
protesters: We want Trump! We want Trump!
We want Trump!
We want Trump...
They cheated! They're cheaters!
-(drumming) -(bell rings)
That was just a harbinger of what was to come.
Sharpies kind of died away
to a next theory and a next theory.
Basically, from our research, we were able to discover
that the actual theft of the United States election
occurred in Italy...
Italian satellites, uh, German servers...
The server holding all of our votes in Germany
has been obtained.
It was like playing Whac-A-Mole.
One day, there was a claim de jure
that everyone was talking about,
and once that was slapped down, the next day,
another one would pop up.
The company Dominion
is a far-left, radical company.
Dominion, Dominion, nobody even knows who owns it.
These machines are controlling our country.
Barr: One of the ones that I thought was damaging
to the public's confidence in the outcome
was allegations about the Dominion voting machines.
Dominion is a joke.
Sidney Powell is leading the charge.
You're saying that the CIA is behind
the Dominion voting software as well?
The machines can be hacked.
There's no question about that. Their machines can be hacked.
Hickman: The big theory was that Dominion equipment
was hooked up to the internet that they could swing voters.
We have evidence of how they flipped the votes,
how it was designed to flip the votes.
They're not capable of doing that,
so there's no internet.
♪♪
Gates: So, this is very important that people understand,
that these tabulation machines
are not connected to the internet in any way.
Because people said, "Well, what about Wi-Fi?"
Well, there's no routers in these tabulation machines.
So, outside actors are not able
to control the machines remotely.
Then, in addition to that,
if they wanted to physically access these,
they would have to break in,
to some of the additional security features
that we've put in there.
So, it is because of these various layers of security
that I'm confident that these machines
have not been manipulated by outside actors.
And that's been confirmed time and time again by experts,
as well as in a court of law, in many courts of law in fact.
This is supposed to be a secure system. It was not.
So, to make the claim
that there was no off-site computer communications,
totally a lie.
Totally a falsehood.
Somebody's trying to cover something up.
It's hard when people are saying,
"Don't believe the county.
Whatever you do, don't believe the county."
And it becomes almost like a battle at that point.
"I know what I know. You might know what you know,
but I'm now not trusting what you're saying."
It's like, I don't know. At this point,
I don't know how to get around that.
And we have a machine, the Dominion machine,
that's as filled with holes as Swiss cheese
and, uh, was developed to steal elections.
They spent a lot of energy and time on those allegations.
So, I set up two extensive meetings
with the experts over at Department of Homeland Security,
as well as the FBI experts,
and I concluded that these allegations were bogus.
(quiet crowd chatter)
♪♪
(distant siren wailing)
Hickman: Okay. Welcome, everybody.
Gates: So, you have Election Day.
It takes many days to get the final results.
Once that is completed,
then the elections department puts together a canvass.
And then that canvass is presented
to the Board of Supervisors, the five of us,
and we have the final say by voting
to certify that canvass.
Welcome to the Board of Supervisors,
November 20th special meeting...
Hickman: President Trump ran out of votes.
By the time the final vote was counted,
he didn't quite catch up.
The board is required by law
to canvass the November 3rd election.
caller (on voicemail): Hello, Mr. Hickman.
When we come to lynch your stupid, lying, commie ***,
you piece of shit, you're going to die,
you piece of shit. We're going to hang you!
Hickman: During the certification,
the death threats were already happening.
There were threats to rape our daughters.
Just some of the most vile things you can imagine.
Hickman: We were in our auditorium,
but people were just outside of the auditorium.
-protester (on megaphone): Trump 2020! -crowd: Trump 2020!
protester (on megaphone): Trump 2020!
crowd: Trump 2020!
Hickman: People were banging drums
and banging on the doors.
-protester: Stop the steal! -crowd: Stop the steal!
This is where we meet to do the people's business.
Gates: That's when I was contacted by people
within President Trump's orbit.
Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party.
I was sent numerous text messages
pleading with me not vote to certify the election.
(text chimes)
She was putting some stress on apparently all of us
through texts or maybe phone calls.
Kelli Ward (on voicemail):
We have to continue to pressure that board of supervisors
-to do the right thing. -crowd: We do!
We have got to continue!
Gates: The pressure by the president and his many surrogates
was all part of an effort to overturn the election.
Now, looking back on it, it really is chilling
that that's what we were in the middle of.
We're here, taking a hard look
at the Maricopa County election of 2020.
People didn't want us to certify the vote,
and I didn't know how my colleagues were gonna vote.
Supervisor Gallardo?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I was fearful that my board,
that I serve on, would decide not to canvass the election.
What happens in those cases?
The pressure was so great,
that I felt my colleagues would buckle.
I listened to and considered all theories
about what might have happened. But, let me be clear.
There is no evidence of fraud or misconduct or malfunction
in Maricopa County, and that is with a big zero.
It's time to dial back the rhetoric, conspiracies,
and false claims. In a free democracy,
elections result in some people's candidate losing.
I'm not going to violate the law
or deviate from my own moral compass,
as some have pushed me to do,
and some have probably pushed others to do here.
I'm like-- I'm like this.
It was-- It--
It was probably the most pressure-packed...
night of my life.
I will now entertain a motion to canvass
the November 3rd election...
I mean, I had no idea exactly if we would have three votes.
We needed three votes.
The results are accurate and complete,
and it's time to move forward.
Thank you, Vice Chairman Sellers.
-Do I have a second? -Second.
Second. Thank you, Supervisor Gates.
-All in favor, say "aye." -officials: "Aye."
Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries unanimously.
I knew they were all under a severe amount of pressure
and to be a unified vote, I was gratified.
We all have run, um, our elections,
and they're, and they're over with.
And I will tell, uh, the group loud and clear
that voted for me and voted for my colleagues,
you voted for people that serve with integrity and honor.
I'm very proud to serve with you.
-We are adjourned. -(bangs gavel)
-Don't get me emotional again! -(producer chuckles)
Because it was, it was an emotional time,
and I, when I reflect on it, I still get emotional.
(scoffs)
Gates: After the vote,
we soon learned that this groundswell
was not going to abate.
In some ways, this was just beginning.
(indistinct chanting)
We'd had been doxxed by this point.
So, they would come to our houses
and sort of try and do a citizen's arrest.
officer: This is-- Guys, this is a personal residence.
Please! Pl-Please, listen--
protester: If we can move through this,
-we'll be gone really quick. -officer: Please.
This is my house, man. And my family.
(indistinct chatter)
I don't know who these people are.
And if someone tries to come in this house,
you better hit the deck.
-I'm firing. -(camera beeping)
officer: Please, please get him to stop. Please?
-I'm being as cool as I can. -(police radio chatter)
You know? Like, I appreciate what you guys are trying...
Gates: I was doing my job.
My colleagues were doing their jobs,
and yet we had become the focus of, of hatred.
But you know, as-- in elected office,
we're just supposed to not be human, right?
We're just supposed to do our jobs
and just let all this stuff bounce off of you,
but I realized it was too much.
That was-- I really struggled with that.
-(cars honking) -(crowd chatter)
(indistinct speech)
Hansen: In Arizona, we knew that there was a willingness
to entertain conspiracy thinking.
What we didn't understand at that point
was just how connected it was to the Trump campaign.
It was being engineered from the very highest levels
and seeking foot soldiers in Arizona
to carry something out.
We later found out that Trump himself
was reaching out to people in Arizona to try
and engineer an outcome more to his liking.
It's been my pleasure to have served
in and around the legislature
since first being elected in 1992.
Hansen: The most memorable of those encounters is with,
then, House Speaker Rusty Bowers.
Arizona House Speaker, Rusty Bowers.
I was for Trump the whole time.
I walked for him. I campaigned for him.
Stand up on the stage,
and he would glad-hand us all and tell everybody
what great people we are and blah blah blah.
It was fun.
(crowd cheering)
But I do not like bullies.
22nd November,
pulled in the driveway in my magnificent little Prius,
and the phone, "White House."
"The president will be right on."
And then, the president comes on.
"Mr. Speaker, you're doing a great job out there,"
and he glad-hand, you know, pat the back.
"We've heard so many great things about you,
but we got some problems we'd like to talk to you about."
I said, sure, whatever.
He was saying, "We got fraud all the way across the country."
I'm saying, okay,
gear it up, Rusty. Here we go.
And then Rudy comes on and says "14,000 dead people voted
and a couple hundred thousand illegal aliens voted."
You got names? "Yeah."
You've got names of the 14,000 dead people? "Yes."
You got names of the 200,000 illegal aliens who voted?
"Yes."
You can bring those and put those on my desk?
"Yes."
Rudy, I got to have proof.
You got the proof? "Yes."
And the president says, "Give him the proof, Rudy."
I said, Rudy, what's the ask out of all this?
And he said, "Well, we would like to have
"a committee hearing to review this evidence
"before a committee in the legislature.
"There's an arcane Arizona law that allows you to evaluate
"whether or not you can remove Biden's electors
and replace them with Trump's electors."
And he says, "Well, this is some Arizona law."
I said, "I've never heard of that law, Rudy."
(applause)
Hansen: It was fairly startling.
The Trump team tried to impress on Rusty
that the legislature had, within its powers,
the ability to just change who the state electoral votes go to.
What they are proposing
is something that sounds fantastical in some ways,
illegal in others.
I'm going to throw out Biden's electors
and put in Trump's electors?
"Yeah. That's what we're gonna-- That's our ask."
♪♪
The dude is just straight-up asking you
to throw the election.
I mean, that's clearly what he had wanted me to do.
So, I said, "Look,
"I need proof. When you bring me the proof,
we talk. But no proof, no talk."
The Founding Fathers figured out
where to point the finger of responsibility,
and the buck stops with the state legislatures.
It's gonna have to go to the state legislatures
to be decided, Jeanine.
Trump: Hopefully our legislatures will step forward
-and save our country. -(cheering)
It's going all over the country.
And it's kind of a national effort to throw the election.
♪♪
This is essentially a coup.
They are setting aside the election results
based on allegations with no substance behind them.
It was about trying to get to an outcome
that would have kept Donald Trump in office.
The president came and put the thumb on me.
If it's alright for me to throw an election
because somebody asked me, and I was afraid to say no...
You just step down towards anarchy.
speaker: We are at war.
(indistinct shouting)
(quiet chatter)
-(scattered cheering) -supporter: Thank you!
(indistinct chatter)
Patricia Murphy: The atmosphere in Georgia remained
not just charged, but supercharged.
Sort of a crescendo of that
was this rally at the Georgia State Capitol.
protesters: Stop the steal! Stop the steal!
Stop the steal!
♪♪
-(cars honking) -(cheering)
Murphy: There were three recounts in Georgia,
which is really quite unprecedented.
There was no question over the result of the Georgia election
after all of these recounts, in most people's minds.
Except for Donald Trump's supporters,
as he continued to say,
"The election was stolen."
Trump: You know we won Georgia, just so you understand.
(crowd cheering)
You gotta make sure your secretary of state knows
-what the hell he's doing. -(cheering)
As secretary of state, I believe that the numbers
that we have presented today are correct.
The secretary of state is in charge of monitoring
and overseeing the elections.
I'm a passionate conservative, and, as I've said before,
I'm a proud Trump supporter.
Murphy: It's a typically low-profile office
and that changed in a big way for Brad Raffensperger in 2020.
He was being absolutely annihilated
by Donald Trump on social media.
Brad Raffensperger: From there, it just accelerated.
It was like a rocket ship flying higher and faster
with more and more vitriol and anger.
Georgia became the focal point.
Now, when all these allegations were made,
did I ask my team, "Have we checked this out?
Have we checked that?" I'm an engineer.
Absolutely, we checked it out.
I went back, closed all the loops
to make sure that we verified it.
There was one candidate who came up short.
One candidate who did not want to concede that he had lost.
So, you think Donald Trump,
no matter how many counts we go through,
still lost the state of Georgia?
I don't see how we could come to any other conclusion.
We told, uh, the campaign
if they find instances of voter fraud,
we will check it out.
We have not seen widespread systemic voter fraud
that would overturn the results of the people.
♪♪
Trump: We are looking at things that are so bad in Georgia.
But I understand this secretary of state,
who is really...
he's an enemy of the people,
this secretary of state.
And whether he's a Republican or not...
Gabriel Sterling: He called Brad, "This enemy of the people,
this Raffensperger." I'm like...
Wow. I mean, it was just sort of--
That was probably one of the more weird things to see
a president,
of his own party,
calling any elected official an enemy of the people.
But this was so specific and so directed.
The numbers are corrupt.
It was a rigged election, 100%, and people know it.
That's why you have people
marching all over the United States right now.
They know it was a rigged election.
In Georgia, I was the Voting System Implementation Manager.
No one should know who the hell I am.
The only reason you do
is because something went terribly wrong somewhere.
And look at what's happening in Georgia.
A lot of things are being found in Georgia.
With all these claims, it was Whac-A-Mole.
We'd knock one down and it would come up three days later,
knock it down again.
But it was out there, and the president was saying it.
And it didn't matter. It just--
"The president said it, it's fact."
You have Dominion, which is very, very suspect
to start off with.
You can press "Trump," and the vote goes to Biden.
All you have to do is play with the chip.
"The Dominion machines flipped these votes
and we caught 'em, and they flipped it back."
"It's an algorithm."
The world "algorithm" became like this catch-all.
"The algorithm did it."
"What'd it do?" "It stole the election."
"Well, how did it steal the election?"
"Well, it-it changed out votes."
Like, that can't happen.
-They're trying to-- Look, between you people-- -(reporter yells)
Don't answer-- Don't talk to me that way.
You're just a-- You're just a lightweight.
Don't talk to me that-- Don't talk to--
I'm the president of the United States.
Don't ever talk to the president that way.
Sterling: I was a Republican before Donald Trump was a Republican.
I'll be a Republican after he's gone.
There's tens of millions of Americans
who saw him do good things.
Here's the thing. I saw him do good things.
I love the judges. I love the tax cuts.
I love the deregulation.
But the problem is you can do all those great things
and your actions,
your personality, can undercut all of it.
And this thing at the end,
these claims of the stolen election,
it's not based on anything real.
We want to take you straight to the Georgia State Capitol...
Sterling: That's when I started doing the press conferences.
I mean, it was really just the blocking and tackling.
This is where we are...
Because we were trying to be as transparent as we could.
We know the system counted properly.
We know the ballots that were there
were counted properly and correctly. We know that.
I never had a doubt about having the election stolen.
Because to do this would require a high degree of competence,
a high degree of coordination, a high degree of, of loyalty,
internally, to a conspiracy to actually happen.
♪♪
Barr: I hadn't been over to see the president.
It was getting late in November
that I finally went over to talk to him.
I told him that I was disappointed in the outcome,
and he said, "No, I won the election by a lot."
And-And I explained to him that I thought that, uh,
he was listening to people around him,
like Giuliani and others, his, sort of these sycophants,
and that this was a disservice to him and the country.
He wouldn't, uh, pause to address
whatever counterpoint you made.
He just ignored it.
reporter: Hi, Alyssa.
(reporters chattering)
I was pretty done with my role in the West Wing,
um, mentally and emotionally.
But, there had been a letter circulated,
essentially threatening to fire any staffer
who was seen passing along their resume
or searching for the next opportunity and therefore
acknowledging that Trump lost.
Grisham: It's a matter of survival at that point.
Think about it. There's these people now
in this limbo in the White House,
leaving the Trump White House, especially after he's lost.
You're not gonna find any jobs anywhere.
You're not gonna be well-liked.
And I do know for a fact that people were looking for jobs,
but nobody talked about it
because that was a sign of
you don't think he won. You are disloyal.
And you pretended like you were gonna work there
for the next four years.
protesters: Stop the steal! Stop the steal!
♪♪
Hansen: In Arizona, when you get to the end of November,
you really see an escalation on the claims of fraud.
The only cards left to play were the legislature.
They needed the State House and the State Senate
to sort of change the trajectory of the election.
♪♪
protesters: Rudy! Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!
(indistinct chatter)
Trickovic: Eventually towards the end of November,
it led to, you know,
the Giuliani hearing with some of our legislators
so that there was some hope of maybe they can do something.
Distinguished senators and representatives,
thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to be heard.
It's been difficult getting an opportunity to be heard.
There was a hearing that was done
about elections integrity, uh, sponsored by Mark Finchem.
We are caught between the desire to trust the process
and the suspicion that it has failed the people of Arizona.
The purpose of the hearing was to seek truth,
take testimony, take evidence.
We knew that there was something to this.
It wasn't a nothing burger. It was, "Okay,
so let's continue to go down this path."
The goal of this hearing is to provide an objective forum
for constituents to hear testimony and see evidence.
Hickman: It angered me.
These are my Republican colleagues,
and they've decided to go and air out theories.
They were all pushing the, the steal.
I mean, to me, that's just a, a farce.
But, Giuliani's there, Jenna Ellis,
and they put on their show.
This election was a conspiracy that was hatched
by the crooked leaders of the Democratic Party.
Hansen: In this day-long event,
you see clownishly bad assertions by them.
At one point, Giuliani claimed that there was, like,
five million illegal immigrant voters in Arizona,
a state that only had seven million people in it to begin with.
Let's say there were five million
illegal aliens in Arizona.
It is, um...
it's beyond credulity
that a few hundred thousand didn't vote.
Let me spend just one minute on Dominion.
The whole situation with the Dominion machine,
it's really a national security problem.
The Dominion slur just continues,
but it didn't match up
with any of the facts as we understood them
in Arizona at that time, or even on subsequent review.
Trump (on phone): Well, thank you very much.
I've been watching the hearings and they're fascinating,
-incredible... -(crowd cheering)
Rusty Bowers: We went from that
to the meeting with Rudy at the Senate building.
"Rudy, you remember when you told me
you were gonna bring me some proof? Have you got it?"
"No, I don't. Jenna, do you have the proof?"
She goes, "Yeah, yeah, we've got the proof."
She had a satchel. "I don't have it with me.
It's probably back at the hotel."
"Okay, thanks for letting me come. I'm gone."
I knew what he wanted, I knew what he was asking,
and I told 'em they had to bring me the proof.
They didn't bring it. So...
I wasn't gonna do anything.
And then suddenly, I get flooded with thousands of emails.
"Not only will you not have a future in Arizona,
"I will personally see to it that no member of your family
sees a peaceful day ever again."
Just the most vile.
And I thought many times,
this is my side.
It's not the Democrats. They're just laughing.
My side is coming after me.
♪♪
Barr: One of the things that sticks in my craw,
throughout the country at the state level,
people responsible ultimately did
what they thought to be right and what the facts showed,
and these were Republicans.
And they have been, you know, raked over the coals by Trump
and should be drummed out of the party
which is an attempt to convert the party
into a cult of personality.
It was really a despicable posture for the president.
protester: Rusty Bowers, everybody.
Bowers: I didn't cheat for Trump, and I didn't break the law.
And suddenly there's a bunch of people at our house,
at the end of the driveway.
protester: Resign, brother! Resign, Rusty!
Bowers: Don't come over. Don't come over.
protester: Time to resign, buddy.
Bowers: Don't come over.
I'm giving you fair warning, don't come over.
They'd shout that I was a pedophile.
-protester 1: Pedophile! Total pedophile! -protester 2: He's a pedophile!
-neighbor: Go home! -protester 3: Rusty Bowers is a pedophile!
neighbor: You go home!
protester: Rusty Bowers is a pedophile!
Bowers: I mean, the whole thing was sad to me.
The damage we did to ourselves.
It was...
it was bad.
♪♪
Trump (on phone): You would think if you're in the Department of Justice,
this is the biggest thing you could be looking at.
Where are they? I've not seen anything.
Barr: He had been taking shots at the Department of Justice
as we went along,
suggesting that the department hadn't been looking
at the evidence of fraud.
I said to the president that we had, in fact,
been looking into credible allegations of fraud
when they came in. And they're bullshit.
They're bullshit.
You know, he, he, uh... didn't like that.
Maria Bartiromo: Where is the DOJ and the FBI in all of this, Mr. President?
Shouldn't this be something that the FBI
is investigating? Are they?
-Trump: Missing in action. -Is the DOJ investigating?
Trump: Missing in action, can't tell you where they are.
He said the department was missing in action.
I felt it was time to, to say something after that.
reporter: Barr told the Associated Press today, quote,
"We have not seen fraud on a scale that could have
effected a different outcome in the election."
Directly contradicting the president's claims
that the election was stolen.
Barr: I went down to the Oval Office.
The president was as mad as I've ever seen him.
He was, uh, flushed and, uh, breathing heavily.
And he said, "Did you say this?" And I said, "Yes."
And he said, "Why?" And I said, "Because it's the truth."
And he said, "Yeah, but you, you know,
"pulled the rug out from me. This is killing me. You must hate me.
You must hate Trump, you must hate Trump."
I said, "No, I don't hate you, Mr. President."
I said, "Look, you only have five or six weeks to challenge
"the outcome of a presidential election,
"and you wheeled out this clown car of lawyers,
"and it's been a joke.
"And you've wasted five of your six weeks,
"most of your time on this nonsense
"about the Dominion machines,
on this bullshit theory."
There is Chinese technology in the Dominion software.
"Your people are just shoveling this shit
out to the American people." And, um...
he was very resentful of this. (laughs)
reporter: President Trump made it very clear
that he's disappointed in his attorney general.
He hasn't done anything, so-- He hasn't looked.
When he looks, he'll see the kind of evidence
that, right now, you're seeing in Georgia.
protesters: Stop the steal! Stop the steal! Stop the steal!
♪♪
Sterling: We were having multiple protests.
Actually, I was standing at this window
and looked out and saw a guy with an AR-15.
-(cars honking) -(protesters chattering)
(cheering)
We had been under assault for about three weeks.
Some of our local elections officials were being, you know, harassed,
if not flat-out threatened.
The venom was kind of increasing.
(indistinct chatter)
And at that heightened state of fear and anxiety,
I got a call from Dominion.
And she says, "Yeah, one of our young contractors
has been sort of targeted now."
And I remember I was scrolling through, and I found one.
It says, "You've committed treason.
May God have mercy on your soul."
And there was a GIF of a noose
slowly twisting with a little bit of sunlight behind it.
But at that point, I snapped.
-(putting down mask) -(sighs)
It has all gone too far.
I lost my temper.
A 20-something tech at Gwinnett County today
has death threats and a noose put out,
saying he should be hung for treason.
Mr. President,
you have not condemned these actions or this language.
This is elections. This is the backbone of democracy.
And all of you who have not said a damn word
are complicit in this!
Mr. President,
it looks like you likely lost the state of Georgia.
We're investigating, there's always a possibility, I get it.
And you have the rights to go through the courts.
What you don't have the ability to do,
and you need to step up and say this,
is stop inspiring people
to commit potential acts of violence.
Someone's going to get hurt. Someone's going to get shot.
Someone's going to get killed.
Be the bigger man here. Step in. Tell your supporters,
"Don't be violent. Don't intimidate."
It has to stop!
It seemed to have this momentary blip of like, (gasps)
everything sort of stopped for a second.
But, it didn't slow down the other side.
Thank you. This may be
the most important speech I've ever made.
Trump released his, like, long video of all the claims again.
We have a company that's very suspect.
Its name is Dominion.
You can press a button for Trump,
and the vote goes to Biden.
What kind of a system is this?
It was just weird because literally everything he had said
had been stuff I had debunked,
or people in Arizona had debunked,
but he's saying it all again
'cause I guess you keep on saying the same thing
over and over again, if nobody's pushing back,
eventually people will believe you.
I go from winning by a lot,
to losing a tight race.
It's corrupt.
All over the country, people are together
in holding up signs. "Stop the steal."
This election was rigged. Everybody knows it.
Many people in the media, and even judges,
so far have refused to accept it.
Barr: After that, the president continued to challenge
the process and try to set up these, you know,
meetings with state legislators and all that kind of stuff.
reporter: Today in Georgia, Rudy Giuliani questioned
the security of Dominion voting machines
before a state Senate Judiciary Subcommittee.
♪♪
Senator Ligon: Thank you, Senator Harper, Senator Anderson...
Murphy: A State Senate subcommittee
announced that they would be holding a hearing.
So, we had state senators saying, we're happy to take
some kind of public action to let Donald Trump know
that they were trying to fight for him here in this state,
to stop the process of Joe Biden going on to become president.
We really appreciate the opportunity
to get these facts out. We've had some difficulty
-getting a hearing. -Sterling: In Georgia,
we had a Republican governor, a Republican Senate.
"Here's a place where we can exert some real influence
and get our Republicans to do things for us."
Ignoring the law.
Rudy Giuliani: It's your responsibility
if a false and fraudulent count
is submitted to the United States government.
And it's clear that the count you have right now is false.
Sterling: People have asked me, "What do you think
they were trying to do?" They were hoping for a miracle.
Just keep everything alive.
Does it have to make sense? No!
Just keep enough questions and doubts out there.
What we are presenting to you today are facts. Facts.
2,506 felons voted illegally in Georgia.
They said that there was
thousands and thousands of felons.
We found less than 74, so there weren't over 2,000 felons.
Less than 74. It's things like that.
They said there's 2,423 non-registered voters.
At least 2,423 individuals
to vote who were not listed as registered.
There was zero. Everyone was registered to vote.
10,315 or more individuals to vote
who were deceased by the time of the election.
They said that there was 10,000 dead people that voted.
At the time, when we began our investigations, we found two.
Subsequent to that, two years later,
we found two more.
That's a total of four. One, two, three, four.
Not 4,000. Just four.
In Georgia, look at this new surveillance footage
we'll be showing you. Mysterious suitcases,
potentially filled, we believe, with ballots,
well, rolled out from under a table
after partisan election observers
were asked to leave the room.
Sterling: They had these videotapes
and they took out this one little section
where somebody, quote-unquote, took out "suitcases of ballots"
after everybody had been told to leave.
So, I'm Jacki Pick, and I'm here as a volunteer,
and going to explain to you the evidence
that we have in terms of fraud or misrepresentation.
You're looking at one big room here.
What you're going to see happen at about 11 o'clock.
Once everyone is gone, coast is clear.
So now, they're gonna start pulling these ballots out
from under this table.
What are these ballots doing there,
separate from all the other ballots?
And why are they only counting them
whenever the place is cleared out with no witnesses?
But, we can tell you that it appears to be an aberration
from how the other ballots were handled.
Murphy: In reality, what happened
that evening on election night,
state officials called over and said,
"It's getting late. Why don't we shut it down for the evening
"and let everybody go home?
We'll start again in the morning."
That decision was reversed very quickly,
and so you see election workers
taking those ballots out of
state-approved ballot containers
and then beginning to count those ballots.
By Rudy Giuliani's telling, that was two election workers
telling all of the monitors to go home
and then secretly counting the ballots once everybody was gone.
"They're doing something surreptitious.
"They're stealing the election.
Throwing the election illegally to Joe Biden."
That was completely false.
(inaudible)
Sterling: And then there's another part of it, too,
where there's one of the workers there.
"Well, she ran these things through over and over again."
And I'm like, yes, that's a standard practice.
There was a mis-scan. The standard operating procedure
is you take that stack of ballots,
delete the batch you just did,
and send it back through. That's what you do.
There's nothing weird about this.
If you see, you have multiple machines there,
and they're there for two hours.
So, you do the math.
How many ballots went through those machines
in those two hours
when there was no one there to supervise?
Sterling: When you watch this video,
and you see these people doing their jobs,
this is not the "Ocean's 11" crew
engaged in the biggest heist in history.
This is just people who are tired
and trying to do their work. That's all it is.
♪♪
Giuliani: And when you look at what you saw on the video,
which, to me, was a smoking gun, powerful smoking gun...
Sterling: All these things came up around this
because it was sort of ***y.
"We got video. We caught 'em in the act.
This right here is a smoking gun."
Anybody who was honest could look at that
and see what was happening,
but no one was interested in being honest at that point.
(quiet murmuring)
I believe that they knew they were lying,
they did it intentionally,
trying to mislead the State Senate
and the people of Georgia and the American people,
that there was some kind of giant conspiracy happening in Georgia.
It was not true when they claimed it,
and it's not true today.
How about those suitcases that were pulled out from the table?
host: It's pretty hard to dispute that there's something going on
that needs some explanation.
Murphy: So, this was being shown on live cable news,
all across the country,
and that absolutely unwound
Republican voters all across the country.
So, suddenly, it wasn't just a Georgia situation.
This was a national situation.
The footage appears to show poll workers
pulling ballots out of suitcases.
I mean, what the hell?!
Well, Mayor Giuliani rightly described it
as the smoking gun in this case.
Today revealed the smoking gun we've been looking for.
-crowd (chants): Rudy! Rudy! -(cheering)
Barr: The allegations about the video.
You know, I asked the US attorney down there,
BJay Pak,
to take a look at that.
BJay Pak: It was a bombshell of an allegation.
So our independent investigation into the facts of the case
showed that there was no irregularity.
♪♪
We debunked all the allegations.
There's nothing here.
The ballot boxes were proper boxes,
there was no double counting,
and that this was a "smoking gun,"
was completely false.
There's overwhelming evidence of fraud,
including now a smoking gun "bank robbery" videotape.
Pak: I don't know what's in his mind,
but if anyone did any kind of due diligence
about just watching the whole video,
I think it would be very hard to characterize that snippet
as something irregular going on.
I think that the public was misled.
With me now is Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Now, you have been on the receiving end
of a lot of gruff from the president.
Raffensperger: I went on Fox News.
"We followed the law, we followed the Constitution,
and the president came up short."
We did an audit of the race, President Trump still lost,
then we did a full recount. President Trump still lost.
I think that fired up the president.
He wanted to have a conversation with me.
♪♪
Mark Meadows (on phone): Mr. President, everybody is on the line, and just so--
This is Mark Meadows, the chief of staff.
On the line is secretary of state...
Murphy: He had the White House chief of staff
on the line with him, Mark Meadows.
The amount of pressure that is implicit in a call
from the president of the United States
to state officials,
under any circumstances, is immense,
but when you throw in the fact
that he is calling about the election
and telling them that they got it wrong,
and that they know they got it wrong,
that is something that has never happened before.
Meadows: So, Mr. President, now I'll turn it over to you.
Trump (on phone): Okay, thank you very much. Hello, Brad.
If we could just go over some of the numbers,
I think it's pretty clear
that we won very substantially, uh, Georgia.
Although, I saw you on television today,
and you said, uh, that you found nothing wrong.
I mean, you know.
Raffensperger (on phone): Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have
is the data you have is wrong.
Some people didn't have the political guts
just to tell President Trump that he came up short.
Trump: They're going around playing you
and laughing at you behind your back, Brad,
whether you know it or not, they're laughing at you.
There's no way I lost Georgia. There's no way.
We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.
You should want to have an accurate election,
and you're a Republican.
Raffensperger: We believe that we do have an accurate election.
Trump: No, you don't. No, no you don't.
I think he was trying to tell him,
"Put your thumb on the scale.
"Do something to help us out here.
We're all Republicans here, man. Come on."
But because it was so close, and the margin was,
you know, 11,000-something.
Trump: Look, we need only 11,000 votes.
Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election,
and it's not fair to take it away from us like this.
Raffensperger: We have to stand by our numbers.
We believe our numbers are right.
Trump: Well, why do you say that?
Look, ultimately, I win, okay?
"Find me the votes. I don't care who won the election,
make sure I won the election, find me the votes."
Trump: So, what are we going to do here, folks?
I only need 11,000 votes, fellas. I need 11,000 votes.
Give me a break.
From my point of view, he was putting pressure--
and the biggest part of it to me
was when he talked about the legal jeopardy.
There was an implicit threat there.
Trump: It's more illegal for you than it is for them
because you know what they did and you're not reporting it.
That's a, you know, that's a criminal--
that's a criminal offense.
That's a big risk.
If they could have done something in Georgia,
I understand that Arizona was another focal point of theirs,
but I think that was--
If you get one to start rolling, then you get dominoes.
The next one, the next one, the next one.
But, at the end of the day,
we had to make sure we stood firm on the facts.
We had to follow the law. Follow the Constitution.
Was there pressure? Yes. Was it uncomfortable? Yes.
Yes, it's Gabriel.
reporter: As some have said, do you believe
that what happened in that phone call
was an attack on democracy?
I'll leave other people to make the decision on that.
I personally found it to be something that was not normal,
out of place, and-and...
Nobody I know who would be president
would do something like that to a secretary of state.
♪♪
(muffled cheering)
Bowers: Another thing that's very important...
money.
For everybody who's an election denier,
it's just like printing money.
Now, even though Election Day has come and gone,
the Trump campaign has continued to fundraise,
and Fox has just learned that since Election Day,
the campaign, combined with the Republican National Committee,
have raised $207 million
over the last 30 days, just a huge number.
Those solicitations and the poor folks who
they've got a hook in their mouth
and they tug that hook and out falls a few more coins
with Caesar's image on it. I mean, it's--
It's... it's immoral.
It's... it's gross.
Trump: I just left Washington to go to the Army-Navy game.
So, it was a rigged election.
reporter: When you look at this fight, though,
you have 77% of Trump supporters
who believe you won the election.
There's a rally right now in Washington for that.
Trump: There are thousands and thousands of people out there.
I had nothing to do with it.
I didn't kn-- really know they were forming.
They're forming. The spirit, the liveliness,
the whole thing, even the fundraising,
the money that's pouring in to fight this.
reporter: Do you worry about the country being divided?
Trump: No, I worry about the country
having an illegitimate president.
That's what I worry about.
They cheated like nobody's cheated before.
They did things that
nobody has ever seen, and we caught 'em.
But, you-- but your guys have been unable to prove it
-as of now, if something-- -Excuse me. Excuse me.
We've proven it.
Bill Barr, frankly, did the wrong thing.
Bill Barr, I believe-- Not believe, I know,
had an obligation to set the record straight.
I tendered my resignation on December 14th,
the day the states certified the election.
Today, Arizona's 11 presidential electors
are meeting to cast their electoral college votes
for Joseph Biden.
Once the state certifies the vote,
and the governor agrees with that certification, that's it.
That really is the last legal step in the process.
From my standpoint, the election was over.
There was no way of undoing the election results.
Happening today, the Electoral College will cast their votes
to formally elect Joe Biden to the presidency.
But President Donald Trump is still insisting
he is not done fighting to stay in office.
Barr: Then, it seemed that he doubled down again.
That got me very concerned.
Are we gonna have a constitutional crisis
where the president's refusing to leave office?
♪♪
Short: I'd say there were a couple big moments
leading up to January 6.
It was weeks of a pressure campaign
to overturn election results.
For many of the president and his advisers,
it was sort of like throwing spaghetti at the wall
and seeing whatever could hold.
The only last stop on this particular excursion
was going to be January 6th.
Jacob: The vice president presides over
the vote count on January 6th, in the United States Congress,
but that vote count is supposed to be a formality.
Short: Donald Trump, he's not one who accepts loss.
Knowing that he would need to find a scapegoat for that loss,
then it probably means looking to pin it on the vice president.
♪♪
Griffin: Mike Pence, the reality was
he was a stabilizing force
throughout the Trump presidency.
If there was a fire in the Trump administration,
you can be certain that Mike Pence
was quietly behind the scenes trying to put it out.
Barr: There couldn't have been a loyaler vice president.
He was very conscientious and wanted to do what was right
under the Constitution.
-(crowd cheering) -crowd: Stop the steal! Stop the steal!
Stop the steal!
Stop the steal...
♪♪
Short: January 4th, I receive a call on Air Force Two
asking us to return to the White House
and to take a meeting with John Eastman, Greg Jacob,
the president, the vice president, and myself.
At the meeting on the 4th in the Oval Office,
John Eastman was presented to us,
acting as an attorney for the president.
I had one mission.
When the president called me and asked me to represent him,
that was quite an honor. It was a big deal.
Luckily, it wasn't the first time I'd been in the Oval Office.
I'd been there in August 2019, so it wasn't, you know,
looking around, "Oh wow, look at this."
I was aware of Professor Eastman as a constitutional law scholar,
uh, as well as one who was known for taking aggressive positions
that might be difficult to square
with constitutional text and history.
That was my role, to give the best constitutional counsel
that I could to the president of the United States.
We have lots of evidence of illegality
in the 2020 election.
That was all true.
We had, therefore, an unconstitutional election.
The courts are not addressing the unconstitutionality at all.
So, then we're looking at
are there any other constitutional actors
who have some role that might be able to address this?
By then, the only last constitutional player
in the cycle that could do something about it
was Vice President Pence.
Short: The purpose of the meeting was going to be to explore
these novel legal theories
about the vice president's role on January 6th.
The way it was offered, it was to affirm
that the vice president can unilaterally choose
which electors to accept
and which electors to throw out from the various states.
Vice President Pence has the authority
to determine the validity of the electoral votes.
The circumstances then, in my view,
warranted him exercising
the full scope of his power to get this thing right.
We knew, at that point, that the president's team
was presenting a lie
about what the vice president's authority was.
It was almost like this, "Well,
nobody's ever tried this before. So, why don't we try it?"
Jacob: The vice president really played the role
during that meeting of pushing back against
the invented theories of Professor Eastman.
Greg Jacob, I think, was an honest guy.
I think he, maybe,
genuinely believes that the Founders would not
have assigned this power to the vice president.
I think he's wrong about that.
(gavel bangs)
-(banging) -(indistinct chatter)
(banging)
Jacob: When you see that not a single vice president,
in our entire history, has ever exercised an authority
to reject an electoral vote.
It would be very strange for us,
200 years into this project of a republic,
to suddenly discover in 2020
that, oh, all along, it should have been the vice president
who got to decide these things.
And that, essentially, was the idea
that was ultimately being pitched to us.
John Eastman shows up on January 4th,
and that night, President Trump takes the stage in Georgia
and says, "Boy, I sure hope our vice president
comes through for us."
And I hope Mike Pence comes through for us,
-I have to tell you. -(cheering)
I hope that our great vice president comes through for us.
Of course, if he doesn't come through,
-I won't like him quite as much. -(laughter)
It appeared that they eventually came to the conclusion
that there was some avenue by which
they could force the election into Congress.
That was a rigged election, but we're still fighting it,
and you'll see what's going to happen. We'll talk about it...
Barr: Now, it's one thing if there's strong evidence
the election was stolen,
but they felt that they didn't really need the evidence.
You know, they could just BS their way through it.
So, their endgame was foolish.
crowd: Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!
Hey, you know, it really is, it's fight for our country.
It's really fight for our country, not fight for Trump.
It's fight for our country
'cause that's what we're fighting for.
Short: The president's and the vice president's conversations,
while cordial, became a little more terse.
That raised a new level of anxiety,
knowing that we were on a collision course
between the president and the vice president.
At that point, it's like, okay,
this is where we're gonna end up.
crowd: **** Antifa! **** Antifa! **** Antifa! **** Antifa!
(indistinct yelling)
♪♪
Jacob: The next morning, January 5th,
there were a number of unpleasant surprises.
Around 11:09, President Trump tweets,
"The Vice President has power to reject electors."
There was a degree of increasing frustration
and bewilderment at the situation
that we found ourselves in.
crowd: Stop the steal! Stop the steal!
Probably more contentious, was the evening of the 5th.
The president's team had put out a statement
professing that the vice president
sees this exactly the same way as the president.
It was an outright lie.
It had no bearing in truth,
no bearing in reality whatsoever.
But, I think it created an expectation,
for a lot of Americans, of something was gonna happen
on January 6th
that we knew never was going to happen.
-(crowd cheering) -speaker (on megaphone): We are the majority!
And Trump won! Trump won!
Short: There was, sadly, a belief
that, uh, one is above the rule of law.
In fact, at one point, leading up to January 6th,
the night of the 5th, the president opened the door
to hear the people cheering outside.
(crowd cheering)
And said, "Mike, you hear that?"
And said, "Those people love us."
And the vice president's response was,
"Those people also love the Constitution, Mr. President."
I don't know how this is going to end,
but if they want a fight,
they better believe they've got one!
(crowd cheering)
We will prevail. Amen.
(cheering)
Jacob: Most people had no idea prior to that point in time
that there even was a January 6th vote count.
People stop paying attention
most of the time after Election Day.
But now, there was going to be this very public limelight
on things with people raising questions
about whether that event was being done properly.
crowd: Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!
-(overlapping yelling) -(pepper spraying)
♪♪
Freedom!
crowd: Freedom!
Chansley: Freedom!
(crowd cheering)
Let's have trial by combat.
John Eastman: Rudy and I are brought up on stage.
Rudy's introduced, and then he introduces me.
He's one of the pre-eminent constitutional scholars
in the United States.
I remember the first kinda time I saw it or paid attention
was when, um, John Eastman took the stage.
America's Mayor. Wonderful.
(cheering)
I remember thinking, "You guys sound just ****ing crazy."
-Hello, America! (chuckles) -(crowd cheering)
The crowd's reaction, they knew I was saying
something important, so they cheered. You know?
All we are demanding of Vice President Pence
is this afternoon, at 1 o'clock,
he let the legislatures of the state look into this...
(applause)
(cheering)
Short: At the end, under pressure,
Donald Trump's true character came through.
I hope Mike is gonna do the right thing.
-I hope so. I hope so. -(crowd cheering)
Because if Mike Pence does the right thing,
we win the election.
You're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
Grisham: He doesn't care about that stuff.
Certainly, the Constitution to him
is like this old brown piece of paper that's boring
and probably written funny.
He doesn't know or understand, I think, most of it.
Trump: We're gonna walk down, and I'll be there with you.
We're gonna walk down to the Capitol.
Right when he said that, I was like, "You ****er."
Because I know him
and I knew he was not gonna walk down there.
He is afraid of crowds.
He doesn't necessarily like to be around his supporters,
despite what he says. He's terrified of germs.
And, again, he knows the power of his words
and I know his supporters, by this chance,
the thought of their president walking with them,
marching with them to the Capitol
would be everything.
And so, right when he said that I just, again,
was just pissed and disgusted.
Whatever was left in me broke, and I resigned right then, yeah.
We will never give up.
We will never concede. It doesn't happen.
You don't concede when there's theft involved.
(crowd cheering)
And we fight. We fight like hell.
And if you don't fight like hell,
you're not gonna have a country anymore.
Barr: I turned on the TV, and I saw what was going on.
-I was completely outraged. -(crowd cheering)
I felt he did precipitate the whole affair,
and I thought that was outrageous,
and his treatment of the vice president was despicable.
(gavel bangs)
Madam Speaker, members of Congress...
Jacob: Up until the very last minute,
he hoped that he would be able to persuade the president,
this time, that he was just wrong.
That he couldn't overturn the results of the election,
and that this meant that they were going to have to
relinquish power, leave office,
uh, and think about the future.
(crowd chattering)
People had been sold an idea
that was not true,
and John Eastman, he had had a causal effect
of helping to convince those people
that the Capitol building was a place worth going to
because that's a place where there's a big decision
to be made this day.
protester: We're coming for you!
I was, uh...
angry.
(crowd yelling)
crowd: Hang Mike Pence!
Jacob: I actually started drafting an email
to John Eastman saying,
"Thanks to your bullshit, now we're under siege."
He said that, and I said, "No, we're here
"because your boss wouldn't do what was necessary
to let this thing get aired out."
Uh, yeah, so...
-(glass breaking) -(indistinct yelling)
speaker: Mr. President, Senator.
Justice is comin', baby!
Freedom!
The vice president, he had been evacuated off the Senate floor at that point.
The Secret Service told the vice president
that we have a clear window to escape right now.
The vice president said, "You're not understanding.
I'm not leaving the Capitol. We're gonna stay here."
2:30-ish,
we had seen the president's tweet when he said,
"The Vice President didn't have the courage
to do the right thing."
Part of me wonders if he even cared
as long as he had someone else to scapegoat
for his election loss.
Yeah!
Hey!
I cannot believe this guy is standing there with a spear.
protester: This is our Capitol. Let's be respectful to it.
Hickman: Unbelievable.
I'm still-- I'm still shocked
with the images, just to this day.
protesters: Stop the steal!
protester 1: Oh, my God.
(overlapping yelling)
protester 2: There's a gun! There's a gun!
(yelling)
-(gunshot) -(echoing yelling)
Trump (on video over megaphone): I know your pain. I know your hurt.
We had an election that was stolen from us.
It was a landslide election.
Short: It's important to have leaders
who believe in our rule of law.
Donald Trump has showed that, uh, he fails that test.
Trump (on video): We love you. You're very special.
But go home, and go home in peace.
protester 1: What's he saying?
protester 2: He says go home.
Donald Trump has asked everybody to go home.
Barr: The President's behavior
was a betrayal of his supporters,
and what he did was irresponsible and shameful.
Mike Pence: Today was a dark day in the history
of the United States Capitol.
-(crowd yelling) -(flashbang pops)
The violence was quelled,
and the people's work continues.
The elected representatives of the people of the United States
have assembled again on the very same day,
to support and defend
the Constitution of the United States.
At 8 o'clock the Senate reconvened,
and we were going to do the work of the people and get back to work.
Let's get back to work.
(applause)
(helicopter whirring)
reporter 1: Former president Donald Trump
turned himself in last night in Georgia
to face charges that he tried to undermine the 2020 election.
Now, his mugshot joins a gallery of images
taken of his alleged co-conspirators.
reporter 2: Rudy Giuliani facing a number of counts.
John Charles Eastman. Jenna Ellis.
Sidney Katherine Powell.
Trump: We did nothing wrong at all.
What has taken place here is a travesty of justice.
We did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong.
Grisham: Everybody's against him.
It's always, "Poor me, poor me, I'm the victim."
And that is how I believe
he continues to get through so much,
and he never gets "punished"
for a lot of the things that happen.
♪♪
I think that January 6th is like a trailer to a movie.
That's the one thing with Donald Trump I-I've learned.
You think he'll, he'll just go this far
and there's not more.
There's always more.
He just takes it as far as it will go.
We won in 2016, and if you really remember,
and if you wanna play it straight,
we also won in 2020.
(crowd cheering)
We are in a very dangerous place heading into the next election.
If he loses, I don't think that you can expect
that he's gonna take it peacefully.
Of course, he's gonna claim that it was stolen,
of course, he's gonna say it was rigged,
and of course, he's going to try to incite his followers
and his diehard loyalists
to the exact same kind of actions as last time.
The notion that this time
he would, like, take it like a champ
and admit he lost is just ridiculous.
(crowd cheering)
Jacob: In 2020, the line held.
You had people of character,
all of whom held the line,
and held to constitutional principle.
crowd: **** Joe Biden! **** Joe Biden!
Jacob: Character matters.
The president of the United States
is the most powerful office under our Constitution,
and that is where character is most important of all.
And you should never put somebody into that office
that you don't have trust and confidence
will follow the Constitution and the law.
Because that could be the end of the Republic.
♪♪