Then-President Donald Trump and his cronies were made fully aware in advance that their sustained campaign to steal the 2020 election could lead to violence on the day the election results were to be certified on Jan. 6, according to House Jan. 6 Committee vice chair Liz Cheney (R-WY).
“We have learned that President Trump and his team were warned, in advance and repeatedly, that the efforts they undertook to overturn the 2020 election would violate the law and our Constitution,” Cheney said during a committee meeting on Monday night.
“They were warned that January 6th could, and likely would, turn violent,” she added.
The panel has spoken to “hundreds” of witnesses, including more than a dozen ex-Trump aides, in its investigation into the Capitol insurrection, according to Cheney.
Cheney’s remarks came as the committee voted to recommend criminal contempt charges for ex-Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino on Monday.
The fact that Trump and his team were apparently warned their actions could potentially trigger violence adds extra weight to the multiple instances of them invoking warlike rhetoric while falsely claiming the election was fraudulent, especially during the Trump rally that preceded the insurrection.
That’s when, after then-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani infamously called for a “trial by combat,” Trump told his angry supporters that they’ll “never take back our country with weakness.”
“You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” he said shortly before the mob, having been fed lies about the election for months at that point, stormed the Capitol.
