text: On November 21, a group of Republican legislators in Pennsylvania petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court in appeal of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision against the legislators, who had asked to nullify mailed ballots after they had been cast, or to direct the legislature to select Pennsylvania's electors. The high court denied the request in a one-sentence, unsigned order on December 8. By the time of the high court's decision, the Pennsylvania election results had been certified in Biden's favor. Lawyers for Pennsylvania argued to the high court that the legislators' request was "an affront to constitutional democracy" and that "Petitioners ask this court to undertake one of the most dramatic, disruptive invocations of judicial power in the history of the Republic; no court has ever issued an order nullifying a governor's certification of presidential election results."


title: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election

text: On December 8, 2020, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton sued the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where certified results showed Joe Biden had won, alleging a variety of unconstitutional actions in their presidential balloting, arguments that had already been rejected in other courts. Paxton asked the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate those states' 62 electoral votes, allowing Trump to be declared the winner of a second presidential term. This case, "Texas v. Pennsylvania", was hailed by Trump as "the big one". Trump and seventeen Republican state attorneys general filed motions to support the case. and 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives signed onto it. On December 11, the Supreme Court said it would not hear the case. In denying the plaintiff's motion to invalidate those votes, it said that "the state of Texas' motion" had "lack of standing." Ted Cruz, who had previously argued nine cases before the Supreme Court, agreed to Trump's request to argue the Paxton suit should it come before the Court.


text: In late December attorneys Chesebro and Troupis asked the Supreme Court to review whether competing slates of electors from seven contested states could be considered by Congress on January 6. The Supreme Court declined their request for an opinion.


text: On December 31, Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro emailed other members of Trump's legal team, saying that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was "key" and proposing that they "frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue" an order to undermine Georgia's election results. Trump lawyer John Eastman responded in agreement.


text: After legal efforts by Trump and his proxies had failed in numerous state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, some right-wing activists and Trump alliesincluding Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and L. Lin Woodsuggested that Trump could suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and "rerun" the election. Many retired military officers, attorneys, and other commentators expressed horror at such a notion. Trump held an Oval Office meeting on December 18 with Rudy Giuliani, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Powell, and Flynn. At the meeting, Trump entertained the idea of naming Powell, who has promoted election conspiracy theories and falsehoods, as special counsel to investigate election matters, though most advisors in attendance strongly opposed the idea. Two executive orders were drafted to appoint a special counsel and confiscate voting machines, which Trump falsely claimed were rigged against him. One order called for the Pentagon to seize machines, while the other tasked the Department of Homeland Security. At Trump's direction, Giuliani called Ken Cuccinelli, the second in command at DHS, on December 17 to ask if the department could seize the machines, but Cuccinelli said it did not have the authority. On Giuliani's advice, Trump had rejected a recommendation from Flynn and Powell to have the Pentagon seize the machines, and Bill Barr flatly rejected the president's suggestion that the Justice Department do it. Flynn reportedly discussed his idea to declare martial law, although others also resisted that idea, and Trump's opinion on the matter was unclear. That same day, Flynn appeared on Newsmax TV to suggest that Trump had the power to deploy the military to "rerun" the election in the swing states that Trump had lost. Trump dismissed reports about a discussion of martial law as "fake news", but it remained unclear whether he had endorsed the notion.


text: An attempt by Trump to invoke martial law to invalidate the results of the election would be illegal and unconstitutional. In late December 2020, legal scholars Claire O. Finkelstein and Richard Painter wrote that while it was very unlikely that Trump would actually "attempt to spark a military coup," Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen should be prepared to direct federal law enforcement "to arrest anyone, including if necessary the president, who ... conspired to carry out this illegal plan." Likening a hypothetical invocation of martial law to overturn the election to the 1861 firing on Fort Sumter, Finkelstein and Painter wrote that any such plan would constitute seditious conspiracy and possibly other crimes, and that any military officers or enlisted personnel ordered to assist in such a plan would be required, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to disregard such an illegal order.


text: On December 18, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and General James McConville, the Army chief of staff, issued a joint statement saying, "There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election."<ref name="Frum_12/20/2020"></ref> On January 3, all ten living former secretaries of defenseAshton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Mark Esper, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeldpublished an op-ed in "The Washington Post" calling for the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, noting that "efforts to involve the US armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory", and noting that "civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic." The former defense secretaries wrote that "acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller and his subordinatespolitical appointees, officers and civil servantsare each bound by oath, law and precedent to facilitate the entry into office of the incoming administration, and to do so wholeheartedly. They must also refrain from any political actions that undermine the results of the election or hinder the success of the new team."


text: Elizabeth Neumann, an adviser at Defending Democracy Together and a former assistant secretary of Homeland Security under Trump, stated that "In the conspiratorial conservative base supporting Trump, there are calls for using the Insurrection Act to declare martial law. When they hear that the president is actually considering this, there are violent extremist groups that look at this as a dog whistle, an excuse to go out and create ... violence."


text: On December 21, Congressman Mo Brooks, who had been the first member of Congress to announce he would object to the January 6, 2021 certification of the Electoral College results, organized three White House meetings between Trump, Republican lawmakers, and others. Attendees included Trump, Vice President Pence, representatives Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), representative-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and members of the Trump legal team. The purpose of the meetings was to strategize about how Congress could overturn the election results on January 6. Brooks confirmed after one such meeting that it had been "a back-and-forth concerning the planning and strategy for January the 6th."


text: "Talking Points Memo" reported in December 2022 that it had obtained the 2,319 text messages Meadows had provided to the January 6 committee, including 450 showing Meadows communicating with 34 Republican members of Congress about plans to overturn the election.


text: In the runup toward election certification on January 6, attempts to uncover significant election fraud bore no fruit and related legal challenges were rejected by the courts. Hence, those seeking to overturn the election focused attention increasingly on then-vice-president Mike Pence. The Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires the President of the Senate, which was Pence for the January 6 certification of the presidential election, to supervise the counting of electoral ballots at a joint session of the Congress. The Trump team developed multiple theories about how the Vice President might act on January 6 to aid the overturning of election results; and repeatedly encouraged him to act accordingly.


text: Beginning in late December, false legal theories went viral on pro-Trump social media suggesting that Vice President Pence could invoke a "Pence Card", a supposed legal loophole that would enable him, in his capacity as president of the Senate, to reject pro-Biden electoral votes from contested swing states on the grounds that they had been cast by fraudulently appointed electors. These theories originated from Ivan Raiklin, an attorney and former Green Beret who was among a small group of military-intelligence veterans associated with Michael Flynn who were instrumental in spreading false information alleging the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. The theory stems from a misreading of , which directs the vice president to request electoral vote certificates from any state that has not yet sent these votes to the National Archives by the fourth Wednesday in December. Under the theory, Pence had unilateral authority to declare that state certificates from contested states had not in fact been received, and that new certificates (presumably supporting President Trump) should be issued. Trump retweeted a post of Raiklin's calling for the invocation of the Pence Card on December 23, the day specified in statute, but Pence took no action consistent with the theory. In late December, Pence called former vice president Dan Quayle for advice, and Quayle told him (according to reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa): "Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. ... I do know the position you're in. I also know what the law is. ... You have no power." Although the fourth Wednesday had passed, Trump still believed that Pence had the authority to reject electoral votes, and kept asking him to do so; however, over lunch on January 5, Pence informed Trump that he did not believe he had any such authority.


text: Attorney John Eastman incorrectly told Pence in a January 5 Oval Office meeting that Pence had the constitutional authority to block the certification, which Trump reportedly urged Pence to consider. Eastman also sent to Republican senator Mike Lee a six-point plan of action for Pence to set aside electors in seven states, which Lee rejected. By January 5, Trump was continuing to assert that Pence had unilateral power to throw out states' official electoral certificates on grounds of fraud. During the Capitol attack, numerous rioters chanted "Hang Mike Pence", and the phrase trended on Twitter until Twitter banned it. In March, when ABC News' Jonathan Karl asked Trump if he was worried about Pence while the crowd was chanting, Trump defended the crowd, saying they were "very angry" and that it was "common sense" that they would want to stop Congress from certifying the election result. Of Pence, Trump said, "I thought he was well protected and I had heard that he was in good shape." On September 27, 2021, Laurence Tribe, American legal scholar and University Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law at Harvard University, and colleagues, fully described the legal background of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and, as well, possible ways of averting the use of such a legal strategy and related in the future.


text: Dozens of lawmakers from five key states wrote Pence on January 5 asking him to delay for ten days the final certification of electors scheduled for the following day, to allow them an opportunity to open special legislative sessions to decertify their electors and submit a new slate of electors. This came three days after Trump, Giuliani and Eastman held a conference call with 300 legislators to present them purported evidence of election fraud. Ted Cruz, a decades-long friend of Eastman, proposed a complementary plan in the Senate, garnering the support of ten other senators.


text: In January 2022, as Congress began debating whether to amend the 1887 Electoral Count Act to make it clearer that the vice-president has no power to overturn an election, Trump released a statement asserting, falsely, that Pence did have such power: "Unfortunately, he didn't exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!" and "they now want to take that right away". Pence responded several days later while addressing the Federalist Society: "President Trump is wrong. ... Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election."


text: John Eastman, author of the Eastman memos, began working with the Trump team in November 2020. Trump adviser Peter Navarro claimed that the “Green Bay Sweep” plan was developed over weeks prior to January 6, 2021.


text: On December 13, Trump allies in the House were developing a plan involving Pence "to use Congress’s tallying of electoral results on Jan. 6 to tip the election to President Trump”. Kenneth Chesebro emailed Rudy Giuliani and others pointing out that, if Pence were to recuse himself, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa would be in charge of certifying the election, and if Grassley were to delay doing so, this would give Trump more time for court battles. Chesebro's subject line called this the "'President of the Senate' strategy."


text: On December 21, Trump’s legal advisors, Pence, and multiple members of Congress at a White House meeting discussed ways to challenge the January 6 certification process and results.


text: On December 23, Trump re-tweeted the Ivan Raiklin “Operation Pence Card” memo while stating “America @VP @Mike_Pence MUST do this, tomorrow To defend our Constitution from our enemies … Let him know!”


text: On December 24, a Trump aide contacted John Eastman to request documentation of his legal theories concerning the certification process including the role of the vice president, resulting in the Eastman memos.


text: On December 27, a lawsuit seeking to force action by Pence during the January 6 certification, Gohmert v. Pence (see below), was filed in a Texas court.


text: On December 31, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows e-mailed a memo prepared by Jenna Ellis, a legal advisor to the Trump campaign, to one of Pence’s top aides. The memo claimed that the Vice President should not open electoral ballots from six states “that have electoral delegates in dispute”, and should defer the eventual count of electoral delegates until January 15.


text: On December 14, two weeks after Barr stated there was no evidence of significant election fraud, Trump announced that Barr would be leaving as attorney general by Christmas. Before Trump's announcement, he enlisted Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and other aides to pressure deputy attorney Jeffrey Rosen, who would replace Barr on December 23, and other Justice Department officials to challenge the election results. Meadows and a top Trump aide emailed allegations of voting anomalies in three states to Rosen and other officials. Meadows also sought to have Rosen investigate a conspiracy theory, promoted by a Giuliani ally, that satellites and military technology had been used in Italy to remotely change votes from Trump to Biden. Trump also enlisted a private attorney, Kurt Olsen, to seek a meeting with Rosen to propose a legal challenge he had drafted; it was similar to a challenge initiated by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and supported by dozens of Republican members of Congress and state attorneys general, that attempted unsuccessfully to have the Supreme Court reject election results in four states. Trump also spoke to Rosen about Olsen's proposal. Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue resisted the efforts, exchanging emails mocking them, in one case, as "pure insanity." Rosen later testified to Congress, "During my tenure, no special prosecutors were appointed, whether for election fraud or otherwise; no public statements were made questioning the election; no letters were sent to State officials seeking to overturn the election results; [and] no DOJ court actions or filings were submitted seeking to overturn election results."


text: In late December, Trump reportedly phoned Rosen "nearly every day" to tell him about claims of voter fraud or improper vote counts. Donoghue took notes of a December 27, 2020, phone call between him, Rosen and Trump in which he characterized the president saying, "Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen." The next day Jeffrey Clark, acting assistant attorney general for the civil division, approached Rosen and Donoghue with a draft letter and requested them to sign it. The letter was addressed to officials in the state of Georgia, saying that the Justice Department had evidence that raised "significant concerns" about the outcome of the presidential election, contrary to what Barr had publicly announced weeks earlier, and suggesting that the Georgia legislature "call itself into special session for [t]he limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors." Both Rosen and Donoghue refused to sign the letter, and it was never sent.


text: The Associated Press reported in December that Heidi Stirrup, an ally of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, who months earlier had been quietly installed at the Justice Department as the White House's "eyes and ears," had in recent days been banned from the building after it was learned she pressured officials for sensitive information about potential election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House. Stirrup had also circumvented Justice Department management to extend job offers to political allies for senior Department positions and interfered with the hiring of career officials.


text: According to ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, Michael Flynn called senior Trump intelligence official Ezra Cohen and told him to take extreme actions, including seizing ballots, to prevent the election results from favoring the Democrat. Cohen didn't entertain Flynn's orders, responding, "Sir, the election is over. It's time to move on." Flynn replied, "You're a quitter! This is not over! Don't be a quitter!"


text: Trump attorney Sidney Powell called Cohen shortly thereafter and attempted to enlist his help with a far-fetched claim involving then-CIA Director Gina Haspel. According to Karl's book, Powell told Cohen that "Haspel has been hurt and taken into custody in Germany. You need to launch a special operations mission to get her." The claim, a conspiracy theory, had been circulating among Powell's QAnon following for some time. The conspiracy theory falsely claimed that Haspel had been injured while on a secret CIA operation to seize an election-related computer server that belonged to a company named Scytl. Powell alleged to Cohen that the server contained evidence of "hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of votes had been switched using rigged voting machines." Powell was under the impression that Haspel had been engaged in this operation with the aim of destroying the nonexistent evidence on that nonexistent server. According to the book, Cohen thought Powell sounded "out of her mind" and he quickly reported the call to the acting defense secretary.


text: A December 18, 2020 memo proposed that the Trump administration seek evidence that there had been foreign interference in favor of Biden. The memo laid out a plan for Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller to use National Security Agency and Defense Department powers to seize phone and email records. One of Trump's informal advisers, Michael Pillsbury, described this as "amateur hour" perpetrated by people with no existing connection to Trump who were raising topics that the government had already "said there was no evidence for."


text: The then-President’s team also developed plans to have federal authorities seize voting machines from states where the election had been closely contested but won by Biden. News reports indicate that, at various points in the planning, the Justice Department, the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Guard were considered as entities that would conduct the seizures. Several versions of a draft Executive Order that would authorize the seizures were prepared. Then-President Trump was reported to have reviewed the draft Executive Order authorizing seizure by the National Guard but, based on advice by (among others) Patrick Cipollone and Rudy Giuliani, he did not sign and issue it.


text: In June 2022, an email dated November 21, 2020 surfaced, sent by British biopharmaceuticals executive Andrew Whitney, who in August 2020 pitched to Trump in the Oval Office the toxic botanical extract oleandrin as a cure for COVID-19. The email included a draft "authorizing letter" to be presented by the president allowing three armed private companies to seize all voting machines and related materials, with assistance from U.S. Marshals. The email was sent to Doug Logan, the president of Cyber Ninjas, which later conducted the 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit that sought but failed to find election fraud in that county, and to cybersecurity expert Jim Penrose, who had worked with Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne, who were seeking access to voting machines in an attempt to find proof of election fraud.


text: On New Year's Eve, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sent a memo drafted by Trump attorney Jenna Ellis to a top Pence aide containing a detailed plan to overturn the election results. The plan entailed Pence returning the electoral results to six battleground states on January 6, with a deadline of January 15 for the states to return them. If any state did not return their electoral slate by that date, neither Trump nor Biden would hold a majority, so the election would be thrown to the House for a vote to determine the winner. Per the Constitution, in such a scenario the vote would be conducted on the basis of party control of state legislatures, with Republicans holding 26 of 50, presumably giving Trump the victory.


text: Ellis drafted a second memo dated January 5 which she shared with Trump personal attorney, Jay Sekulow. The memo argued that certain provisions of the Electoral Count Act that restricted Pence's authority to accept or reject selected electors were unconstitutional. She proposed that when Pence reached Arizona in the alphabetical order during the certification, he could declare the state's results as disputed and send all the electoral slates back to the states for "the final ascertainment of electors to be completed before continuing." Sekulow did not agree that Pence had such authority.


text: In February 2022, "The Washington Post" obtained a memo of unknown provenance dated December 18, 2020 that had circulated among Trump allies and was shared with some Republican senators. The memo called for Trump to direct acting defense secretary Christopher Miller to obtain "NSA unprocessed raw signals data" in an effort to prove foreign interference in the election. The proposal called for Miller to direct three men named in the document to acquire the data. At least two Republican senators received the memo after a January 4 meeting at the Trump International Hotel attended by at least three senators and others, which had been arranged by Mike Lindell. The meeting centered around voting machines and alleged interference by China, Venezuela and other countries. The three men involved were not close to Trump and their names had not been previously reported in efforts to subvert the election. Miller said he was not aware of the memo and Trump did not act on it.


text: On New Year's Day, White House director of personnel John McEntee sent a series of bullet points via text message to Pence's chief of staff to incorrectly assert that Thomas Jefferson "Used His Position as VP to Win" the 1801 election, which McEntee claimed "proves that the VP has, at a minimum, a substantial discretion to address issues with the electoral process." Jonathan Karl, the ABC News chief White House correspondent for the duration of the Trump administration, wrote a November 2021 profile of McEntee, characterizing him as particularly powerful because "Trump knew he was the one person willing to do anything Trump wanted."


text: Trump reportedly reached out to Steve Bannon for advice on his quest to overturn the election results. In early January, Bannon, John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani were operating what they called a "war room" or "command center" at the Willard Hotel near the White House with the goal of overturning the election results. Christina Bobb of the pro-Trump One America News was also a participant. Further related details of the effort to deny and overturn the election were also reported.


text: Justice Department officials pressured Atlanta's top federal prosecutor, B. J. Pak, to say there had been widespread voter fraud in Georgia, warning him that he would be fired if he did not. The White House forced Pak to resign on January 4, 2021.


text: On January 6, 2021, a joint session of Congress presided over by Vice President Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took place to count the electoral votes. Normally a ceremonial formality, the session was interrupted by a mob that attacked the Capitol. As Congress convened to certify the results, Trump held a rally on the Ellipse. He then encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol building, which they attacked.


text: Five lawyers who represented Trump resigned in January 2021 after claiming he coerced them to repeat false claims of voter fraud.


text: On December 27, 2020, Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas and the slate of Republican presidential electors for Arizona filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against Vice President Mike Pence, seeking to force him to decide the election outcome. Gohmert argued that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 was unconstitutional, that the Constitution gave Vice President Pence the "sole" power to decide the election outcome, and that Pence had the power to "count elector votes certified by a state's executive," select "a competing slate of duly qualified electors," or "ignore all electors from a certain state." Pence, represented by the Justice Department, moved to dismiss the case, since Congress, and not the vice president, was a more suitable defendant. The Justice Department also argued that "the Vice Presidentthe only defendant in this caseis ironically the very person whose power [plaintiffs] seek to promote. A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction." Lawyers for Congress also supported Pence's position.


text: On January 1, 2021, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle dismissed the suit saying that due to the plaintiffs' lack of standing, the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction relating to the constitutional status of the Electoral Count Act. On appeal, the next day, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed Gohmert's appeal in a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel.


text: On January 2, 2021, Trump, Giuliani, Eastman and others held a conference call with 300 legislators of key states to provide them purported evidence of election fraud to justify calling special sessions of their legislatures in an attempt to decertify their electors. Three days later, dozens of lawmakers from five key states wrote Pence to ask he delay the January 6 final certification of electors for ten days to allow legislators the opportunity to reconsider their states' certifications.


text: That same day, Trump held a one-hour phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump was joined by Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, trade adviser Peter Navarro, Justice Department official John Lott Jr., law professor John Eastman, and attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell and Kurt Hilbert. Raffensperger was joined by his general counsel Ryan Germany. Raffensperger recorded the call, reportedly doing so while recalling his November 13 call with Trump ally and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, after which Graham made public statements about the discussion that were at odds with Raffensperger's recollection.


text: In the call with Raffensperger, Trump repeatedly referred to disproven claims of election fraud and urged Raffensperger to overturn the election, saying "I just want to find 11,780 votes." Raffensperger refused, noting that Georgia had certified its results after counting the votes three times, and said at one point in the conversation, "Well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is the data you have is wrong." Trump issued a vague threat suggesting that Raffensperger and his general counsel Ryan Germany might be subject to criminal liability. After the Georgia call, Trump and his team spoke on Zoom with officials in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.


text: Raffensperger told his advisers that he did not wish a recording or a transcript to be made public unless Trump made false claims about the conversation or attacked Georgia officials. On the morning of January 3, Trump tweeted that Raffensperger "was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions" about various election-related conspiracy theories endorsed by Trump. Raffensperger replied by tweet, "Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out." Later that day, "The Washington Post" reported on the call and published the full audio and transcript. (The Associated Press also obtained the recording.)


text: Two months later, it was revealed that Trump had also called Raffensperger's chief investigator, Frances Watson, on December 23. He spoke to her for six minutes, during which he told her: "When the right answer comes out, you'll be praised."


text: Legal experts stated that Trump's attempt to pressure Raffensperger could have violated election law, including federal and state laws against soliciting election fraud or interference in elections. Election-law scholar Edward B. Foley called Trump's conduct "inappropriate and contemptible" while the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington called Trump's attempt "to rig a presidential election ... a low point in American history and unquestionably impeachable conduct."


text: Democrats condemned Trump's conduct. Vice President-elect Harris, as well as Representative Adam Schiff, (the chief prosecutor at Trump's first impeachment trial) said that Trump's attempt to pressure Raffensperger was an abuse of power. Dick Durbin, the second highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, called for a criminal investigation. On January 4, 2021, Democratic Representatives Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray asking him to open a criminal investigation of the incident, writing that they believed Trump had solicited, or conspired to commit, "a number of election crimes." More than 90 House Democrats supported a formal censure resolution, introduced by Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia, to "censure and condemn" Trump for having "misused the power of his office by threatening an elected official with vague criminal consequences if he failed to pursue the president's false claims" and for attempting "to willfully deprive the citizens of Georgia of a fair and impartial election process in direct contravention" of state and federal law. Some congressional Democrats called Trump's conduct an impeachable offense. In February 2021, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened a criminal investigation into the phone call along with the phone call made by Lindsey Graham. In January 2022, a panel of Fulton County judges agreed to Willis's request to impanel a special grand jury to compel testimony from individuals who had refused to cooperate.


text: Several House and Senate Republicans also condemned Trump's conduct, although no Republican described the conduct as criminal or an impeachable offense. Republican Senator Pat Toomey, who is not seeking reelection in 2022, called it a "new low in this whole futile and sorry episode", and commended "Republican election officials across the country who have discharged their duties with integrity over the past two months while weathering relentless pressure, disinformation, and attacks from the president and his campaign." Other congressional Republicans ignored or sought to defend Trump's Georgia call, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Georgia Senator David Perdue, who told Fox News in an interview that he thinks releasing the tape of the call was "disgusting."


text: The day after Attorney General William Barr said he intended to resign, Trump began to pressure his planned replacement, Jeffrey Rosen, to help him fight the election results. In particular, Trump asked Rosen to file legal briefs supporting lawsuits against the election results; to announce Justice Department investigations of alleged serious election fraud; and to appoint special prosecutors to investigate Trump's unfounded allegations of voter fraud and accusations against Dominion Voting Systems. Rosen refused, as did his deputy, Richard Donoghue, as the Justice Department had already determined and announced that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. However, Trump continued to pressure them.


text: Despite these disagreements, Rosen became acting U.S. Attorney General on December 24 as originally planned. Trump continued to pressure Rosen, asking him to go to the Supreme Court directly to invalidate the election results, but Rosenalong with his predecessor Barr and former acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wallsaid such a case would have no basis and refused to file it.


text: Meanwhile, assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark, acting head of the Civil Division, proposed himself as Rosen's replacement, suggesting to Trump that he would support the president's efforts to overturn the election results. Clark told Rosen and other top Justice Department officials that the Department should announce it was investigating serious election fraud issues. Clark drafted a letter to Georgia officials claiming the DOJ had "identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States" and urging the Georgia legislature to convene a special session for the "purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors." Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue rejected the suggestion, as the Department had previously determined and announced that there was no significant fraud. On January 3, Clark revealed to Rosen that Trump intended to appoint him in Rosen's place. Rosen, Donoghue, and head of the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel made a pact to resign if Rosen was removed. Confronted with the threat of mass resignations, the president backed away from the plan. In early August 2021, Rosen and Donoghue told the Justice Department inspector general and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that Clark attempted to help Trump subvert the election. Rosen also told the Committee that Trump opened a January 3 Oval Office meeting with Rosen, Donoghue and Clark by saying, "One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren't going to do anything to overturn the election."


text: During the closing weeks of the Trump presidency, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sent multiple emails to Rosen, asking him to investigate conspiracy theories, including that satellites had been used from Italy to remotely switch votes from Trump to Biden. Rosen did not open the investigation.


text: During the days leading up to January 6, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sent messages in support of preparing alternate Republican electors to replace those in some states in which Biden might win. He also claimed in an email that the National Guard would be ready to "protect pro Trump people".


text: Additionally, a PowerPoint presentation on how the election could be overturned was sent by email to Meadows on January 5. The presentation, circulated by retired Army Colonel Phil Waldron and apparently inspired by the ideas of Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, alleged foreign interference in the election and recommended that the president declare a national emergency to delay the certification, that Pence provide alternate electors, and that the military count votes. When Meadows was subpoenaed in September 2021 by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, he provided the document to the Committee and stated that he had not acted on the plan it described. Of the broader context, U.S. Representative Ro Khanna said on December 15: "There were 20, 30 people who knew about it and were close to going through with it."


text: In early January 2021, Trump and his supporters continued to pressure Pence into aiding their attempts to overturn election results during the January 6 certification. In early January, Trump criticized Pence for being "too honest" and warned him that people would "hate" him and believe he was "stupid".


text: On January 1, Trump aide John McEntee sent a memo to Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, titled "Jefferson used his position as VP to win", suggesting that Pence could emulate Thomas Jefferson by taking the actions encouraged by Trump and his supporters.


text: On January 2 in an appearance on Fox News, Trump aide Peter Navarro claimed that Pence had authority to delay election certification and to require an audit of the states' election results. Navarro, a promoter of the Green Bay Sweep, was intimately involved with the election-overturn effort. His remarks elicited a public response from the Vice President’s office.


text: On January 3, Eastman memos author John Eastman briefed Marc Short and vice presidential counsel Greg Jacob on the arguments he had been presenting to Trump about the Vice President’s certification role.


text: On January 4, Trump tweeted, "the Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.


text: Later that day, Trump told an audience of thousands at a January 4 rally in Georgia, "I hope Mike Pence comes through for us … Of course, if he doesn't come through, I won't like him quite as much".


text: On January 4 and 5, Trump met with Pence at the White House several times, attempting to persuade Pence to act as recommended by the Eastman memos; Eastman was present for at least one of the meetings.


text: Also on January 5—following a January 2 call between Trump, Giuliani, Eastman, and about 300 state legislators—several dozen of those legislators from five key states wrote to Pence and requested a 10-day delay of certification to allow reconsideration of the electoral results previously certified by those state legislatures.


text: Also on January 5, Eastman communicated with Jacob. That day, Jacob wrote a memo to Pence stating that Eastman's plan would violate multiple provisions of the Electoral Count Act and would assuredly be blocked in court, or if not considered by a court, would create an unprecedented political crisis and "the Vice President would likely find himself in an isolated standoff against both houses of Congress...with no neutral arbiter available to break the impasse."


text: On January 5 or the early morning of January 6, after hearing from Pence and that he did not agree that the Vice President’s power extended to actions that would change election results, Trump issued a statement falsely claiming that Pence was "in total agreement” with his contention that “the Vice President has the power to act".


text: On January 6 in the morning, Trump called Pence and again attempted to secure his cooperation. Trump reportedly told Pence, “You can either go down in history as a patriot or you can go down in history as a pussy.”


text: On January 6 at the rally preceding the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Trump said, "If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election", "Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our country", and “All Vice-President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president …”.


text: Other speakers at the January 6 rally, notably Giuliani and Eastman, also highlighted the actions being requested of Pence. After the rally, during the 2021 United States Capitol attack, rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” and displayed a gallows complete with a hanging noose.


text: During the Capitol attack on January 6, Eastman emailed Jacob, who was with Pence in the Capitol, saying that the siege was occurring "because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary."


text: Also during the January 6 Capitol attack and resulting interruption of the certification process, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”


text: The certification process was interrupted for about 5 hours and 53 minutes (from 2:13 p.m. to 8:06 p.m.)


text: In a meeting arranged by Senior presidential advisor Jared Kushner, Trump and Pence met each other on January 11 for the purpose of reconciliation.


text: In December 2020, several Republican members of the House, led by Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, as well as Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, declared that they would formally object to the counting of the electoral votes of five swing states won by Biden during the January 6, 2021, joint session. The objections would then trigger votes from both houses. At least 140 House Republicans reportedly planned to vote against the counting of electoral votes, despite the lack of any credible allegation of an irregularity that would have impacted the election, and the allegations' rejections by courts, election officials, the Electoral College and others, and despite the fact that almost all of the Republican objectors had "just won elections in the very same balloting they are now claiming was fraudulently administered."


text: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who on December 15 had acknowledged Biden's victory the day after the Electoral College vote, privately urged his Republican Senate colleagues not to join efforts by some House Republicans to challenge the vote count, but he was unable to persuade Hawley not to lodge an objection. Hawley used his objection stance in fundraising emails. Eleven Republican senators and senators-elect Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, and Tommy Tubervilleone-quarter of Senate Republicansannounced that they would join Hawley's challenge. However, many senators acknowledged that it would not succeed. On January 2, 2021, Vice President Pence had expressed support for the attempt to overturn Biden's victory. Neither Pence nor the 11 senators planning to object made any specific allegation of fraud; rather, they vaguely suggested that some wrongdoing might have taken place. Other Senate Republicans were noncommittal or opposed to the attempt by the 11 Republican senators to subvert the election results.


text: Objections to the electoral votes had virtually no chance of success, as Democrats had a majority in the House of Representatives and, although the Senate had a Republican majority, there was no majority for overturning the election results. Trevor Potter, a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and the president of the Campaign Legal Center, wrote that the counting joint session "gives Trump's die-hard supporters in Congress an opportunity to again provide more disinformation about the election on national television." After Senator John Thune, the second highest-ranking Senate Republican, said that the challenge to the election results would fail "like a shot dog" in the Senate, Trump attacked him on Twitter.


text: In early January, Trump began to pressure Pence to take action to overturn the election. As vice president, Pence presides over the Congressional session to count the electoral votesnormally a non-controversial, ceremonial event. For days beforehand, Trump demanded both in public and in private that Pence use that position to overturn the election results in swing states and declare Trump-Pence the winners of the election. Pence demurred that the law does not give him that power, but Trump insisted that "The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act." Pence ultimately released a statement stating: "It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not".


text: An hour before the joint session was set to start, the president's lawyer Rudy Giuliani tried to call freshman Senator Tommy Tuberville but accidentally left a message in the voicemail of another senator, which was subsequently leaked to "The Dispatch", stating that "we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down ... So if you could object to every state and, along with a congressman, get a hearing for every state, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote ... they have written letters asking that you guys adjourn and send them back the questionable ones and they'll fix them up".


text: At the January 6 session, after Republican senators had raised objections to Biden's electoral victory, the House debated and voted. A majority of Republicans, totaling 139 and including Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and his deputy Steve Scalise, voted to support at least one objection.


text: At the end of February 2021, Representative Zoe Lofgren released a nearly 2,000-page report that examined the social media posts of Republican leaders who had voted against certifying the election results. The report focused on their posts before the November election and after the January 6 riot.


text: <section begin=DoABbtt/>Starting in December, Trump repeatedly encouraged his supporters to protest in Washington, D.C., on January 6 in support of his campaign to overturn the election results, telling his supporters to "Be there, will be wild!" "The Washington Post" editorial board criticized Trump for urging street protests, referring to previous violence by some Trump supporters at two rallies and his statement during a presidential debate telling the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by." Multiple groups of die-hard Trump supporters staged rallies in Washington on that day: Women for America First; the Eighty Percent Coalition (also at Freedom Plaza) (the group's name refers to the belief that approximately 80% of Trump voters do not accept the legitimacy of Biden's win); and "The Silent Majority" (a group organized by a South Carolina conservative activist). George Papadopoulos and Roger Stone, ardent allies of Trump, headlined some of the events. In addition to the formally organized events, the Proud Boys, other far-right groups, and white supremacists vowed to descend on Washington on January 6, with some threatening violence and pledging to carry weapons. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio said that his followers would "be incognito" and would "spread across downtown DC in smaller teams."


text: As the certification process was underway, Trump gave a speech encouraging his supporters to march to the Capitol. Many of them did, whereupon they joined other protesters already gathered in the area and violently breached and stormed the Capitol, eventually entering the Senate chamber as well as numerous offices. The Congressional proceedings were suspended, the legislators were taken to secure locations, and Mike Pence and later Nancy Pelosi were evacuated.<section end=DoABbtt/> Protestors penetrated the Senate chamber. One unarmed woman was shot and killed by Capitol Police inside the Capitol building after she attempted to climb through a broken door into the Speaker's Lobby, leading to the House chamber; the officer who shot her was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, and was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing.<ref name="Smith_Gibson_Arkin_Williams_1/6/2021"></ref> Another rioter died of a drug overdose, and three succumbed to natural causes. A Capitol Police officer died from a stroke the next day.


text: As the attack progressed, Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber to a basement room, as Trump tweeted, "Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution." The Secret Service prepared to evacuate Pence to Andrews Air Force Base. Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reported in their book "I Alone Can Fix It" that Pence was brought to his armored limousine but told his security chief Tim Giebels, "I'm not leaving the Capitol...If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I'm not getting in the car." Pence remained at the Capitol and certified the election results late that night.


text: On January 3, 2022, "Newsweek" reported, for the first time, the deployment of undercover commandos at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to manage the "most extreme possibilities," including an attack on President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence.


text: According to a January 3, 2022 CNN News report, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has learned that Trump did nothing to stop the attack as it was unfolding. Leaders of the committee Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney have characterized his failure to intervene, despite being asked to do so, as "dereliction of duty". In April 2022, Cheney stated:It's absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful ... I think what we have seen is a massive and well-organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election.


text: On January 7, 2021, with help from local tech company SullivanStrickler, Trump supporters copied data from an election office in Coffee County, Georgia. Surveillance video shows someone who had posed as a fake elector escorting two Trump operatives into the Coffee County election office earlier that day. The would-be fake elector had communicated with the elections supervisor about office access. The two Trump operatives later admitted that Sidney Powell had sent them and that they had accessed a voting machine inside the building. The would-be fake elector invoked the Fifth Amendment. In 2022, SullivanStrickler was subpoenaed by the special grand jury convened by Fani Willis in Fulton County, Georgia.


text: On January 15, Trump ally and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell visited the White House, where he was photographed carrying notes that appeared to suggest an additional attempt to overturn the election. The document bore a heading containing the words "taken immediately to save ... Constitution" and called for 780th Military Intelligence Brigade (Cyber) civilian lawyer "Frank Colon NOW as Acting National Security ["illegible"]", and mentioned the "Insurrection Act" and "martial law". It further recommended "[m]ov[ing] Kash Patel to CIA Acting" and made reference to Trump loyalist Sidney Powell.


text: Starting in late January, QAnon adherents began expressing their beliefs that Trump would be re-inaugurated as the 19th President on March 4, the original date for presidential inaugurations until the passage of the Twentieth Amendment in 1933. This belief was adopted from a false aspect of sovereign citizen ideology that asserts there has not been a "legitimate" U.S. president since Ulysses S. Grant (whose first inauguration occurred on March 4, 1869) due to an 1871 law that supposedly turned the U.S. into a corporation. In February, it was reported that National Guard troops were expected to remain in Washington, D.C., through March 12 due to concerns over possible activity by QAnon adherents on March 4.


text: On March 2, it was reported that security measures were being added in Washington, D.C., in preparation for possible events on March 4. Despite these reports, the Capitol Police had advised lawmakers earlier that week that there was no indication of any protests or acts of violence in Washington, D.C., being planned. However, based on new intelligence that an identified but undisclosed militia group might attempt an attack on the Capitol building from that date to March 6, the agency issued an updated alert on March 3. House leadership subsequently rescheduled a March 4 vote to the previous night to allow lawmakers to leave town, though it later said the reschedule was not done out of security concerns. Meanwhile, the Senate did not follow suit, and it continued debating on the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 as planned.


text: In addition to the Capitol Police advisory, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint intelligence bulletin, featuring similar warnings of possible violence on March 4, to state and local law enforcement agencies across the U.S. on the previous day. The Associated Press reported that federal agents were monitoring hotel rooms, flight, and rental car reservation increases, as well as bus charters, for that day. It also reported a decline in online activity on some social media platforms regarding March 4, similar to another decline of online chatter leading up to the events of January 6.


text: Ultimately, March 4 passed without any serious incidents being reported. Afterwards, it was reported that the QAnon community had recently become skeptical of the March 4 theory. Prominent QAnon influencers did not treat the date with any significance unlike January 6, and some even dissuaded followers from participating in events scheduled on that date and accusing the news coverage about the date of being part of a false flag narrative designed to entrap them. Similar rhetoric had been observed prior to the January 6 riot and Biden's inauguration. According to "Newsweek", some QAnon adherents rescheduled the purported date of Trump's re-inauguration to March 20, based on a misinterpretation of a 2019 act that "extends support provided by the General Services Administration to the president- and vice president-elect for up to 60 days after the inauguration"; it was also the 167th anniversary of the founding of the Republican Party.


text: Alleging fraud, during 2021 Republicans initiated or proposed audits in several states. An audit in Maricopa County, Arizona that began in April inspired Republicans in other states to pursue similar efforts, with some calling for audits in all fifty states. More than a year after the election, Trump supporters continued to pressure state election officials to investigate or decertify the outcome, even in states where Trump won by a large margin.


text: An Associated Press analysis published in December 2021 examined every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states that Trump had challenged. The analysis found 473 potential incidents. Even if all the incidents involved votes for Biden, which they did not, and involved ballots that were actually counted, which they did not, the number was far smaller than would have been necessary to change the election outcome. The analysis found no evidence of organized fraud but rather in virtually every case it involved an individual acting alone.


text: On March 31, 2021, the Arizona Senate Republican caucus hired four firms to perform an audit of the presidential ballots in Maricopa County, with a Florida-based company called Cyber Ninjas being the lead firm. There was no stated purpose of overturning the election, and there is no mechanism under the Constitution by which the Congressional certification of the result could be reversed. Arizona Senate President Karen Fann said that the audit was not intended to overturn the state's election results, including at a July 15 hearing. Nevertheless, Trump and some of his supporters expressed the hope that the Arizona result would be changed and that there might be a "domino effect" in which other states changed their results.


text: The auditors released a report on September 24, 2021, finding no proof of fraud and that their ballot recount increased Biden's margin of victory by 360 votes. Following the audit, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey rejected calls for the state's election to be decertified or overturned.


text: In January 2022, Maricopa County election officials released a final report finding nearly every claim the auditors made was false or misleading. The next day, Cyber Ninjas announced it was shutting down, as a Maricopa County judge imposed a $50,000 contempt fine on the company for every day it refused to hand over documents as it had been ordered to do months earlier.


text: A group called VoterGA filed a lawsuit requesting to examine by microscope 150,000 Fulton County ballots that it asserted might be counterfeit. The suit arose after four Republican auditors involved with the November 2020 statewide audit and manual recount claimed to see what they asserted were "pristine" absentee ballots which they suspected might have been computer-generated, though an October 2021 investigation by the Georgia secretary of state's office found that there were no counterfeit ballots in the batches named by the complainants. After an initial ruling in favor of the suit by a superior court judge in May 2021, it was ultimately dismissed in October because the plaintiffs "failed to allege a particularized injury." The dismissal of the suit marked the end of the last remaining lawsuit challenging the Georgia election results until another suit making largely the same argument was subsequently filed. In December 2021, that suit was joined by David Perdue, who had announced his candidacy for Georgia governor days earlier. Perdue lost his bid to be reelected as a United States senator in 2020 and asserted that he, like Trump, had been cheated.


text: Trump had claimed that about 5,000 dead people had voted in Georgia, but an examination by the State Election Board released in December 2021 found that four absentee ballots of dead people had been mailed in by relatives.


text: In September 2021, Bonner County, Idaho announced it would perform a recount of ballots cast in the election, in response to an allegation by election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell that all 44 Idaho counties had been digitally hacked. Lindell provided a detailed list of IP addresses he asserted had been compromised. County Clerk Mike Rosedale stated that all county voting machines were fully airgapped from the Internet, also noting that seven Idaho counties don't use voting machines. Lindell alleged that a specific formula had been applied by hackers to flip votes from Trump to Biden. Rosedale said Lindell had not contacted his office before presenting his allegations. Trump carried Bonner County with 67.2% of the vote and Idaho with 63.9% in the 2020 election. The Bonner audit, and audits of two other counties that don't use voting machines, affirmed the accuracy of the ballot count. Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck said Lindell would be sent a bill for the audits.


text: By August 2021, Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers were preparing to hold formal hearings on the election and conduct a "full forensic investigation." Prior to the investigation, Senate President Jake Corman made a statement asserting that the investigation is not meant to overturn the results of Pennsylvania's election and that the legislature does not have the authority to do so. The next month, Republicans approved subpoenas for a wide range of personal information on millions of voters who cast votes in the May primary and November general election. Republicans intended to hire private firms to manage the data. On September 23, 2021, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro filed a lawsuit seeking to block the subpoenas from being issued. On October 7, 2021, Corman said that he accepted the results of the election but also reaffirmed his support for the investigation.


text: The Texas attorney general's office, led by ardent Trump ally Ken Paxton, spent more than 22,000 staff hours investigating potential voting fraud in 2020. The investigation identified and prosecuted sixteen cases of false addresses on voter registration forms, among nearly 17 million registered voters in the state. This was half as many cases as two years earlier. A 2021 investigation found only three prosecutable cases among all elections in the state.


text: In September 2021, hours after Trump wrote to Texas governor Greg Abbott demanding an audit of the state's election results, the Texas secretary of state's office announced that audits had begun in four major counties. County officials and others in the secretary of state's office initially said they were unaware of any audit underway. Trump won Texas with 52.1% of the vote, though Biden and Texan Lyndon Johnson were the only Democrats to win Tarrant County since 1952; Trump won the county by nine points in 2016.


text: The audits were conducted by secretary of state John Scott, whom Abbott appointed in October 2021. Scott is a former state litigator who briefly joined Trump's legal team in 2020 to challenge the election results. He released preliminary findings of the audits in December 2021 that found few issues, including 17 votes cast by deceased voters and 60 cross-state duplicate votes among 3.9 million ballots cast. The duplicate votes remained under investigation.


text: By May 2021, state election officials had identified 27 potential cases of voting fraud among 3.3 million ballots cast. Sixteen of those cases involved people using a UPS Store rather than their residence for their mailing address.


text: Trump and his allies filed multiple lawsuits challenging Wisconsin election results but lost all of them, including a series of decisions by the state Supreme Court. State Republicans initiated multiple types of investigations beginning in February 2021. That month, the Republican majority legislature voted to direct the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct an examination of some election procedures.


text: In May 2021, Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin state assembly, hired three retired police officers and an attorney to examine reported tips of potential election irregularities.


text: Janel Brandtjen, who chairs the Assembly elections committee, opened a "forensic audit" modeled after the Maricopa County, Arizona audit. She had traveled to Arizona to review that audit. Brandtjen issued subpoenas to two major counties for ballots and voting machines, but they were rejected because Vos had not signed them, as required by law. Vos indicated he did not intend to sign the subpoenas, which requested information that doesn't exist or doesn't apply to Wisconsin elections. Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson asserted the subpoena he received was "clearly a cut and paste job" from similar election-related legal moves by Republicans in other states.


text: In June 2021, Vos selected Republican former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman to conduct an investigation of the election. Gableman had been considered for a position in the Trump administration in 2017. Soon after the election, Gableman had voiced conspiracy theories about the outcome and had attended an August conference hosted by election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell. He also consulted Shiva Ayyadurai, a conspiracy theorist whose work on the Arizona audit was discredited. Gableman issued subpoenas, later withdrawn, some of which contained errors and requested information that was already public. He later stated, "Most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work." Gableman sent emails to election officials across the state asking them to retain information, but they came from a Gmail account associated with a different name and in some cases were blocked as a security concern or spam. Gableman compared a newspaper's coverage of his investigation to Nazi propaganda. In October, the office of Democrat Wisconsin attorney general Josh Kaul sent Gableman a nine-page letter characterizing the investigation as unlawful and called for it to be closed.


text: On October 22, 2021, the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau released their findings of an audit ordered by Republicans in February 2021. The findings reported that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and that State Senator Robert Cowles said that the election was "safe and secure". State Senator Kathy Bernier said that the audit found no evidence of any "attempt at vote fraud".


text: A ten-month review by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found in December 2021 that certain election procedures weren’t adequately followed, but there was "little direct evidence of fraud, and for the most part, an analysis of the results and voting patterns does not give rise to an inference of fraud."


text: On March 29, 2021, businessman and Trump supporter Mike Lindell predicted that Trump would "be back in office in August" in a video released by Right Wing Watch. Lindell more specifically predicted that Trump would be reinstated on the morning of August 13, the day after his three-day cyber fraud conference in Sioux Falls, stating "it'll be the talk of the world". When President Joe Biden remained in office, Lindell moved his prediction for Trump's return to September 30, and then to the end of 2021.


text: On October 7, 2021, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary published their report on Trump's efforts to pressure the Department of Justice to overturn the results of the 2020 election.


text: In multiple U.S. states, officials who work for the secretary of state received threats following the election and were still receiving threats as of October 2021. Law enforcement generally was not prepared to provide ongoing security for these officials, as their positions had never before been considered high-risk.


text: In July 2021, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack was formed, largely along party lines. The select committee has considered formally recommending that the Justice Department open a criminal investigation into Donald Trump for his activities on January 6, though the Justice Department is already investigating.


text: At the first public hearing on June 9, 2022, the committee said that Trump had engaged in a seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election, and they discussed it in the hearings that followed. According to Bennie Thompson, chair of the committee: “Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government ... The violence was no accident. It represents Trump’s last stand, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power.” Trump, according to the committee, "lied to the American people, ignored all evidence refuting his false fraud claims, pressured state and federal officials to throw out election results favoring his challenger, encouraged a violent mob to storm the Capitol and even signaled support for the execution of his own vice president." On October 21, 2022, the committee subpoenaed Trump's testimony and relevant records.


text: During the 2021 German federal election, the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS) found that false claims of voter fraud had become commonplace on Telegram in Germany, with accusations against Dominion Voting Systems being common despite the company's technology not being used in German elections. CeMAS researcher Miro Dittrich said, "We have seen far-right actors try to claim election fraud since at least 2016, but it didn't take off. When Trump started telling the 'big lie,' it became a big issue in Germany, sometimes bigger than the pandemic, because far-right groups and the AfD are carefully monitoring the success Trump is having with this narrative."


text: By March 2022, Justice Department investigations of participants in the Capitol attack had expanded to include activities of Trump's inner circle leading up to the attack. A federal grand jury was empaneled that issued at least one subpoena seeking records about people who organized, spoke at, or provided security at Trump rallies, as well as information about members of the executive and legislative branches who may have taken part in planning or executing the rallies, or attempted to "obstruct, influence, impede or delay" the certification of the election.


text: In May 2022, a civil lawsuit was filed in Dane County, Wisconsin against the ten Trump supporters who had presented themselves as alternate electors for that state.


text: As of early April 2022, Trump has publicly continued to insist that the election was stolen. Around the same time, it was reported that Trump had admitted his loss to a group of historians in , saying, "We had a deal all set, and then when the election was rigged and lost, what happened is that the deal went away."


text: "The New York Times" reported later in April 2022 that Trump supporters were continuing to seek ways to overturn the election. John Eastman, state and federal legislators, and right-wing news outlets continued to press for state legislatures to rescind electoral votes for Biden, and to bring new lawsuits asserting large-scale voting fraud. The "Times" reported that Trump was privately insisting he could be returned to power as he also continued to consider another run for the presidency in 2024. Legal experts expressed concerns that efforts were being made to undermine public confidence in democracy to lay the groundwork for baselessly challenging future elections. Former federal appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative attorney for whom Eastman clerked, remarked,At the moment, there is no other way to say it: This is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy. Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency.


text: On May 1, 2022, investigations by the House Select Committee into fundraising efforts by the Republican National Committee, based on their promotion of Trump's "big lie", have been supported by a federal judge.


text: On May 22, 2022, "The New York Times" presented a detailed analysis of the continuing efforts by Trump and his allies to further promote "the big lie" and related lies in their attempts to overturn and influence future elections, including those in 2022 and 2024.


text: In June 2022, the Republican Party in Texas adopted a statement that the election was illegitimate into its official party platform.


text: On July 9, 2022, after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that ballot dropboxes must be placed inside election clerks' offices in the future, Trump called Wisconsin House Speaker Robin Vos and complained about dropboxes in the 2020 election. Vos said he told Trump that such an attempt to overturn the 2020 election was unconstitutional. Trump posted to Truth Social: "It’s now up to Robin Vos to do what everybody knows must be done."


text: On August 29, 2022, Trump stated on Truth Social that he should be declared the president, or at least a new election should be held.


text: On December 3, 2022, following the release of information by Twitter CEO Elon Musk documenting Twitter executives' discussion of previously disclosed content moderation relating to the "New York Post"'s story regarding Hunter Biden, Trump made comments on Truth Social suggesting the "termination" of the United States Constitution in order to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.


text: The controversies surrounding the election prompted calls to improve federal election laws. The Democratic led House of Representatives passed the For the People Act on March 3, 2019, but it was blocked from being heard in the Republican led Senate by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.


text: The narrower Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act and Enhanced Election Security and Protection Act were announced by a bipartisan group of senators on July 20, 2022.


text: In the aftermath of the election, numerous claims were made and began to circulate, stating that serious anomalies could be found, suggesting an election fraud. However, a paper entitled "No Evidence For Voter Fraud: A Guide To Statistical Claims About The 2020 Election" written by Justin Grimmer, Haritz Garro and Andrew C. Eggers, was published by the conservative Hoover Institution (February 3, 2021) concluded that the statistics used to "claim some election facts would be unlikely if there had been no fraud" were either not accurate in the first place or if they were accurate, weren't really surprising.


text: At least eight sitting Republican Senators, members of the second Bush administration, and former members of the Trump administration condemned Trump's claims of fraud.


text: A spokesperson for President-elect Biden called the effort a publicity stunt that would fail, a statement echoed by Senator Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat of the committee with jurisdiction over federal elections. A bipartisan group of senators condemned the scheme to undo the election for Trump; Joe Manchin (D-WV), Susan Collins (R-ME), Mark Warner (D-VA), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Angus King (I-ME), Mitt Romney (R-UT), and Maggie Hassan (D-NH) said: "The 2020 election is over. All challenges through recounts and appeals have been exhausted. At this point, further attempts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election are contrary to the clearly expressed will of the American people and only serve to undermine Americans' confidence in the already determined election results." In a separate statement, Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, denounced his Republican colleagues who had sought to overturn the election results, terming them "the institutional arsonist members of Congress" and called the submission of objection to counting the electoral votes a "dangerous ploy" by Republican members of Congress whoin seeking "a quick way to tap into the president's populist base"were pointing "a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government". Other prominent Republicans who spoke out against attempts to subvert the election results included Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House.


text: Former Republican Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, wrote in "The Economist" that "President Donald Trump's actions to destroy faith in our elections and throw centuries of American principles out the window must be met with universal condemnation from all political leaders, regardless of party."


text: The "New York Post", which had promoted Trump's celebrity in New York since the 1980s and had twice endorsed his presidential candidacy, published a front-page editorial in December asking the president to "stop the insanity" and "end this dark charade," asserting that he was "cheering for an undemocratic coup". The editorial continued: "If you insist on spending your final days in office threatening to burn it all down, that will be how you are remembered. Not as a revolutionary, but as the anarchist holding the match." The "Post" characterized Trump attorney Sidney Powell as a "crazy person" and his former national security advisor Michael Flynn's suggestion to declare martial law as "tantamount to treason". The conservative editorial board of "The Wall Street Journal" published an editorial on December 20, 2020, titled "Trump's Bad Exit", writing: "As he leaves office he can't seem to help reminding Americans why they denied him a second term" and "his sore loser routine is beginning to grate even on millions who voted for him." After the "Wall Street Journal" again published another editorial on October 24, 2021, it printed a response from Trump on October 27 in which Trump reiterated conspiracy theories about the election. The newspaper explained the next day that they had considered Trump's response newsworthy given that he is "an ex-President who may run in 2024...even if (or perhaps especially if) his claims are bananas".


text: In 2011, Fox News created a "Monday Mornings with Trump" segment during which Trump would call in to "Fox & Friends" to offer his views on current affairs, and the hosts of that program continued to be supportive of Trump during his presidency. On January 4, 2021, host Ainsley Earhardt stated that many conservatives "feel like it was rigged," although host Steve Doocey responded: "That's the case that Donald Trump and his lawyers have put out. They said there is all this evidence. But they haven't really produced the evidence." Host Brian Kilmeade stated that he had another "worry" about "the protest the president is calling for on Tuesday and Wednesday [as Congress convened to certify the election results]. I mean, this is the type of anarchy that doesn't work for anybody, Republicans or Democrats, in the big picture."


text: All ten living former secretaries of defenseincluding Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gatespublished an essay on January 3, 2021, stating: "The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived." They also warned of grave consequences of any contemplated military involvement in the situation.


text: The Chief Executive of the United States Chamber of Commerce commented that "[e]fforts by some members of Congress to disregard certified election results ... undermines our democracy and the rule of law and will only result in further division", while almost 200 business leaders signed a statement from the Partnership for New York City declaring that such a move would "run counter to the essential tenets of our democracy". The National Association of Manufacturers called for Vice President Pence to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and remove Trump from office.


text: A former communications director for Senator Ted Cruz, acknowledging that she once "worked for him and...believed in him," told reporters that "the new Ted Cruz, post-Trump, is one I don't recognize...his actions directly played into the hands of the mob."


text: During the riot, a Cumulus Media executive told its radio hosts that they must stop spreading the idea of election fraud. The memo said the election was over and that "there are no alternate acceptable 'paths’," and thus the radio hosts must immediately "help induce national calm".


text: According to a "Washington Post" assessment, Trump's falsehoods about fraud cost taxpayers more than half a billion dollars in spending to enhance security, resolve legal disputes and repair property, among other things.


text: Drawing on the false allegations of voting fraud and a stolen election, in early 2021 Republican state legislatures began to implement new laws and rules to restrict voting access in ways that would benefit Republican candidates.


text: On December 17, 2021, "The Washington Post" reported the need to be prepared for a possible insurrection in 2024, according to several retired generals.


text: On December 23, 2021, American legal scholar Laurence Tribe along with his colleagues wrote that Attorney General Merrick Garland ought to be "holding the leaders of the Jan. 6 insurrectionall of themto account" to "teach the next generation that no one is above the law."


text: In June 2022, Ivanka Trump told the panel of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack that she does not believe the election was stolen and accepted William Barr's conclusion that voter fraud claims have "zero basis".


text: Multiple media outlets characterized the efforts as an attempted coup. In addition, cable news political commentators for MSNBC and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough cited the Wikipedia article "coup d'état" and specified that this would technically be an autocoup. Consistent with the notion of an attempted coup and rejection of the results of the 2020 election, longtime Republican strategist Steve Schmidt stated: "The Republican Party is an organized conspiracy for the purposes of maintaining power for self-interest, and the self-interest of its donor class... It's no longer dedicated to American democracy."


text: On the January 4, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's "The War Room" (podcast), Steve Bannon, while discussing the planning for the upcoming events and speech by Trump on January 6 at The Ellipse, said: "Live from our nation's capital, you're in the field headquarters of one of the small divisions of the bloodless coup."<ref name="CNN_7/15/2022"></ref><ref name="Peltz_10/29/2021"></ref>


text: Steven Levitsky, the co-author of "How Democracies Die", said that "in technical terms, it's probably not a coup. But it is an illegal and authoritarian attempt to stay in power." Naunihal Singh, the author of "Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups," opined that Trump's actions were not a coup without military action. Erica De Bruin, assistant professor of government at Hamilton College, submitted a November 11, 2020, op-ed to "The Washington Post", arguing that Trump's actions did "not yet fit" the definition of a coup but more closely matched the description of an autocoup. Scholars Michael Albertus and John Chin also stated that the behavior better fit the political science definition of an autocoup rather than a classical coup, with Chin stating: "<nowiki>[i]</nowiki>f this were a coup, it'd be a very strange one, a slow-motion kind of coup that goes against pretty much what most scholars have observed about coups from time immemorial." Joshua Keating similarly argued in "Slate" that the autocoup descriptor was most accurate, but that regardless of the technical definition "Republicans are drawing up a playbook that won't soon be forgotten" and pointing out that "<nowiki>[p]</nowiki>olitical scientists have identified a phenomenon known as the 'coup trap', in which countries that have experienced coups in the recent past are more likely to have more of them."


text: Daniel Drezner wrote a December 2020 op-ed in "The Washington Post" arguing that while Trump and his confederates were ineptly trying to overturn the election results in a "ham-handed effort to besmirch the election outcome by any easily available means necessary", the attempts were insufficiently violent to meet the criteria for a coup and consequently should not be equated to Turkish military coups d'état. Jonathan Powell described the coup classification as "completely inaccurate", clarifying that "<nowiki>[t]</nowiki>he types of places that have coups are limited to countries that are incredibly poor, that have really stagnant economies, that are economically marginalized, that generally have very serious forms of other types of domestic instability, like civil war", but said that while the attempt "might not be specifically tied to a potential coup right now, it is certainly very alarming for the US's potential to remain a democracy in the future."


text: According to a July 2021 book by "Washington Post" reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, during the weeks following the election, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley became concerned that Trump was preparing to stage a coup, and held informal discussions with his deputies about possible ways to thwart it, telling associates: "They may try, but they're not going to fucking succeed. You can't do this without the military. You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns." The book also quoted Milley saying: "This is a Reichstag moment. The gospel of the Führer." Milley reportedly told police and military officials preparing to secure Joe Biden's presidential inauguration: "Everyone in this room, whether you're a cop, whether you're a soldier, we're going to stop these guys to make sure we have a peaceful transfer of power. We're going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren't getting in." The book also stated that a friend told Milley they were concerned that Trump's allies were attempting to "overturn the government".


text: When news broke about Trump's December 27, 2020 call with Rosen telling the Justice Department to say the election was "corrupt and leave the rest to me", Ari Melber on MSNBC described Trump's activities up through that time as a soft coup.


text: Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) described the event as a coup attempt. New York Attorney General Letitia James similarly described the event as a coup attempt. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) described the events as an "insurrection", language also echoed by President-elect Biden.


text: House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy initially spoke against Trump's schemes but then changed his position. Before the attack, he spoke to Trump, advising him that attempts to object to the election results were "doomed to fail". During the attack, he implored Trump to intervene. Six days after the attack, he said in a radio interview that he supported a bipartisan commission and grand jury to investigate and that Trump "told me personally that he does have some responsibility." The next day, he stated on the House floor that Trump "bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters." However, after meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on January 28, 2021, the tone of McCarthy's public comments "changed markedly". McCarthy ultimately opposed the formation of a bipartisan January 6 commission and the House committee.


text: In Winter 2021, Professor Inderjeet Parmar wrote: "That it was a coup attempt is in no doubtit was openly declared as an attempt to reverse the results of a democratic election."


text: In January 2022, Yale history professor Timothy D. Snyder described January 6 as a "failed coup" and "practice for a successful coup". He expressed fear that legal steps are being taken so that Trump can be "installed" as president, leading to unprecedented violence "next time around".


text: On March 28, 2022, United States district court Judge David O. Carter ordered Attorney John Eastman to hand over documents to the house select committee. In the court's opinion, Judge Carter wrote that Eastman and Trump's campaign was "a coup in search of a legal theory". Later that day, US Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of House January 6th committee, read the relevant paragraph of Judge Carter's opinion into the committee record.


text: On April 7, 2022, Professor David Pion-Berlin and co-authors described these events as a self coup by President Trump.


text: On June 6, 2022, Brookings Institution scholars Norman Eisen, Donald Ayer, and three co-authors released their report ""Trump on Trial: A Guide to the January 6 Hearings and the Question of Criminality"", which they open by summarizing Trump's action as "nothing less than an attempted coup".


text: In a 2022 anthology of essays written by historians, philosophers, and political scientists, Michael Harvey, Dean and Provost of Washington College, compared the capitol attack to Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch, describing Trump's actions as a "self-coup".


text: "Trump won" is a political slogan adopted by Trump supporters who, contrary to the election results, believe that Trump won the 2020 U.S. presidential election. These claims were described by former US Attorney General William Barr as "bullshit" in sworn deposition testimony, and are called a "big lie" by many, including President Biden and Senator Mitt Romney.


text: Many Trump supporters still believed Trump won long after President Biden was sworn in. As of May 2021, an Ipsos/Reuters survey reported that 53% of Republican-identifying respondents believed that Trump was still the legitimate President of the United States. , some still believed that Trump will be restored to power by some extraordinary process, possibly later in 2021. These beliefs have led to calls for violence on social media, sparking concerns from the Department of Homeland Security about violence by right-wing extremists in mid-2021.


text: An Economist/YouGov poll conducted on November 15–17, 2020, found nearly all Trump supporters (88%) asserting that Biden's election was illegitimate, that mail-in ballots were manipulated to favor Biden (91%), that votes had been cast by immigrants who were not eligible to vote (89%), and that there was voter fraud more generally (89%). According to a poll by CNBC/Change Research conducted on November 16–19, only 3% of Trump supporters stated that Biden's victory was legitimate. 73% of Trump voters considered Trump the winner of the election, 66% of them stated that Trump should never concede the election, and 31% said Trump should fight the results until the states certified the results.


text: In "Politico"/Morning Consult polls conducted in June 2021 with registered Republican voters, 51% expected an election audit in Arizona to reveal significant problems that could imply that Trump had been the true winner, while 29% expected audits like this to restore Trump to the presidency. The Arizona vote audit report drew the opposite conclusion: in September 2021 it showed that Trump had 261 fewer votes than had been counted whilst Biden had 99 more votes.


text: A CNN/SSRS poll conducted in August–September 2021 found that Republicans' enthusiasm for voting in future elections correlated with believing that "Trump won" and with holding that belief as central to their identity as Republicans.


text: According to a recent poll, 61% of Republicans still believe Biden won in 2020 due to "voter fraud", NBC News reported on September 27, 2022.


title: Marcus Licinius Crassus

text: Marcus Licinius Crassus (; 115 – 53 BC) was a Roman general and statesman who played a key role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. He is often called "the richest man in Rome."


title: Marcus Licinius Crassus

text: Crassus began his public career as a military commander under Lucius Cornelius Sulla during his civil war. Following Sulla's assumption of the dictatorship, Crassus amassed an enormous fortune through real estate speculation. Crassus rose to political prominence following his victory over the slave revolt led by Spartacus, sharing the consulship with his rival Pompey the Great.


title: Marcus Licinius Crassus

text: A political and financial patron of Julius Caesar, Crassus joined Caesar and Pompey in the unofficial political alliance known as the First Triumvirate. Together, the three men dominated the Roman political system, but the alliance did not last long, due to the ambitions, egos, and jealousies of the three men. While Caesar and Crassus were lifelong allies, Crassus and Pompey disliked each other and Pompey grew increasingly envious of Caesar's spectacular successes in the Gallic Wars. The alliance was restabilized at the Luca Conference in 56 BC, after which Crassus and Pompey again served jointly as consuls. Following his second consulship, Crassus was appointed as the governor of Roman Syria. Crassus used Syria as the launchpad for a military campaign against the Parthian Empire, Rome's long-time eastern enemy. Crassus' campaign was a disastrous failure, ending in his defeat and death at the Battle of Carrhae.


title: Marcus Licinius Crassus

text: Crassus' death permanently unraveled the alliance between Caesar and Pompey, since his political influence and wealth had been a counterbalance to the two greater militarists. Within four years of Crassus' death, Caesar crossed the Rubicon and began a civil war against Pompey and the "optimates".


title: Marcus Licinius Crassus

text: Marcus Licinius Crassus was a member of the "gens Licinia", an old and highly respected plebeian family in Rome. He was the second of three sons born to the eminent senator and "vir triumphalis" Publius Licinius Crassus (consul 95 BC, censor 89 BC). This line was not descended from the wealthy Crassi Divites, although often assumed to be. The eldest brother, Publius (born c. 116 BC), died shortly before the Italic War, and Crassus' father and younger brother were either slain or took their own lives in Rome, in winter 87–86 BC, when being hunted down by the supporters of Gaius Marius, following their victory in the "Bellum Octavianum". Crassus had the unusual distinction of marrying his wife Tertulla after she had been widowed by his brother.


title: Marcus Licinius Crassus

text: There were three main branches of the house of the Licinii Crassi in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, and many mistakes in identifications and lines have arisen owing to the uniformity of Roman nomenclature, erroneous modern suppositions, and the unevenness of information across the generations. In addition, the "Dives" cognomen of the Crassi Divites means rich or wealthy, and since Marcus Crassus, the subject here, was renowned for his enormous wealth, this has contributed to hasty assumptions that his family belonged to the Divites. But no ancient source accords him or his father the Dives cognomen; in fact, we are explicitly informed that his great wealth was acquired rather than inherited, and that he was raised in modest circumstances.


title: Marcus Licinius Crassus

text: Crassus' grandfather of the same name, Marcus Licinius Crassus (praetor c. 126 BC), was facetiously given the Greek nickname Agelastus (the unlaughing or grim) by his contemporary Gaius Lucilius, the inventor of Roman satire, who asserted that he smiled once in his whole life. This grandfather was son of Publius Licinius Crassus. The latter's brother, Gaius Licinius Crassus (consul 168 BC), produced the third line of Licinii Crassi of the period, the most famous of whom was Lucius Licinius Crassus, the greatest Roman orator before Cicero and the latter's childhood hero and model. Marcus Crassus was also a talented orator and one of the most energetic and active advocates of his time.


title: Marcus Licinius Crassus

text: After the Marian purges and the subsequent sudden death of Gaius Marius, the surviving consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna (father-in-law of Julius Caesar) imposed proscriptions on those surviving Roman senators and equestrians who had supported Lucius Cornelius Sulla in his 88 BC march on Rome and overthrow of the traditional Roman political arrangements.


title: Marcus Licinius Crassus

text: Cinna's proscription forced Crassus to flee to Hispania. He stayed in Spain from 87 to 84 BC. Here, he recruited 2,500 men (an understrength legion) from his father's clients settled in the area. Crassus used his army to extort money from the local cities to pay for his campaigns, even being accused of sacking Malaca. After Cinna's death in 84 BC, Crassus went to the Roman province of Africa and joined Metellus Pius, one of Sulla's closest allies, but did not stay there for long because of disagreements with Metellus. He sailed his army to Greece and joined Sulla, "with whom he stood in a position of special honor." During Sulla's civil war, Crassus and Pompey fought a battle in the plain of Spoletium (Spoleto), killed about 3,000 of the men of Papirius Carbo, the leader of the Marian forces, and besieged Carrinas, a Marian commander.


title: Marcus Licinius Crassus

text: During the decisive battle outside the Colline Gate, Crassus commanded the right flank of Sulla's army. After almost a day of fighting, the battle was going poorly for Sulla; his own center was being pushed back and was on the verge of collapse when he got word from Crassus that he had comprehensively crushed the enemy before him. Crassus wanted to know whether Sulla needed assistance, or whether his men could retire. Sulla told him to advance on the enemy's center, and used the news of Crassus' success to stiffen the resolve of his own troops. By the following morning, the battle was over, and the Sullan army emerged victorious, making Sulla the master of Rome. Sulla's victory, and Crassus' contribution to it, put Crassus in a key position. Sulla was as loyal to his allies as he was cruel towards his enemies, and Crassus had been a very loyal ally.


title: Marcus Licinius Crassus

text: Marcus Licinius Crassus' next concern was to rebuild the fortunes of his family, which had been confiscated during the Marian-Cinnan proscriptions. Sulla's proscriptions, in which the property of his victims was cheaply auctioned off, found one of the greatest acquirers of this type of property in Crassus: indeed, Sulla was especially supportive of this, because he wished to spread the blame as much as possible among those unscrupulous enough to do so. Sulla's proscriptions ensured that his survivors would recoup their lost fortunes from the fortunes of wealthy adherents to Gaius Marius or Lucius Cornelius Cinna. Proscriptions meant that their political enemies lost their fortunes and their lives; that their female relatives (notably, widows and widowed daughters) were forbidden to marry, remarry or remain married; and that, in some cases, their families' hopes of rebuilding their fortunes and political significance were destroyed. Crassus is said to have made part of his money from proscriptions, notably the proscription of one man whose name was not initially on the list of those proscribed but was added by Crassus, who coveted the man's fortune.


title: Marcus Licinius Crassus

text: Crassus' wealth is estimated by Pliny at approximately 200 million sesterces. Plutarch, in his "Life of Crassus", says the wealth of Crassus increased from less than 300 talents at first, to 7,100 talents. This represented 229 tonnes of gold, or about 7.4 million troy ounces, worth about US$13.7 billion at November 2021 gold prices, accounted right before his Parthian expedition, most of which Plutarch declares Crassus got "by fire and war, making the public calamities his greatest source of revenue."