"You can believe in 'Stop the Steal' or American democracy. Not both."

The Jan. 6 Committee has proven that Trump led an authoritarian campaign to remain in power despite losing the election

In the run-up to the prime-time, possibly final hearing, of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol, I was asked by Duke News about my thoughts on the achievements of the Committee.

Here are my thoughts:

“The core achievement of the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee has been to demonstrate that Donald Trump knowingly attempted to remain in power even though he lost the 2020 election – the gravest assault on American democracy since the succession of the Confederate states.

The scope and mendacity of the Trump misdeeds the committee has documented are stunning:

• a campaign to pressure state election officials to violate the law by endorsing false, baseless claims of voter fraud;

• a multi-state effort to have invalid, fake slates of electors submitted to the Congress for counting;

• an attempt to install an unqualified loyalist as attorney general to place the authority of the Justice Department behind fictitious claims of vote fraud;

• the intentional stimulation of a mass rally directed against the counting of electoral votes that he suggested would be violent;

• the placement of massive pressure on Vice President Pence to exercise power not granted to him under the Constitution to reject Electoral College votes from contested states;

• an effort to personally join an armed mob marching to the Capitol to encourage it to prevent the counting of Electoral College votes;

• the failure on Jan. 6, for hours, to take any steps to call off the mob that had violently assaulted the police and breached the Capitol while the Electoral College votes were being counted.”

For the portion of the country that has been paying attention or cares, the committee has now made unmistakably clear that the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement — which Trump has fomented and many candidates for office around the country continue to embrace — is inherently anti-democratic and authoritarian.

You can believe in ‘Stop the Steal’ or in American democracy – but not both.”

These comments and those of my friend and colleague Asher Hildebrand can be found here. You can watch the Jan. 6 Committee hearing tomorrow (Thursday) at 8PM here.