Quotables

Jan. 6 committee members preview next hearings, warn 2024 election could be a violent 'mess'

Members of the House Jan. 6 committee said Sunday that their next televised hearing will focus on the effort by former President Donald Trump's campaign to organize and promote a slate of fake electors in an effort to overturn the 2020 election results. 

"We'll show evidence of the president's involvement in this scheme," Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union. "We'll also, again, show evidence about what his own lawyers came to think about this scheme. And we'll show courageous state officials who stood up and said they wouldn't go along with this plan to either call legislatures back into session or decertify the results for Joe Biden."

The scheme appeared kind of slapdash and amateur, The Washington Post reports, "but internal campaign emails and memos reveal that the convening of the fake electors appeared to be a much more concerted strategy, intended to give Vice President Mike Pence a reason to declare the outcome of the election was somehow in doubt on Jan. 6, 2021, when he was to preside over the congressional counting of the electoral college votes." The Justice Department and an Atlanta-area prosecutor are investigating to see if any crimes were committed.

Committee members declined to offer specific evidence that Trump himself committed criminal acts, saying the committee will present its findings at the hearings. But Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of two Republicans on the committee, said Trump's false claims about the 2020 election being stolen are still reverberating dangerously through all levels of the U.S. government and the 2024 election will likely be a "mess." 

Kinzinger, who is not seeking reelection, pointed to a New Mexico county where Republican commissioners initially refused to certify the results of a primary because they don't trust their voting machines. Similar Trump-influenced officials will be in charge of certifying elections in many states, he said on ABC's This Week.

Kinzinger also disclosed that he received a death threat in the mail several days ago, a letter sent to his home address threatening to execute him, his wife, and their 5-month-old baby. "It was sent from the local area," he said. "There is violence in the future," and "until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can't expect any differently."