President spearheaded outreach aimed at numerous officials in States he lost but that had GOP-led legislatures, including in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.
The Select Committee estimates that in the two months between the November election and the January 6th insurrection, President Trump or his inner circle engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure, or condemnation, targeting either State legislators or State or local election administrators, to overturn State election results. This included at least:
- 68 meetings, attempted or connected phone calls, or text messages, each aimed at one or more State or local officials;
- 18 instances of prominent public remarks, with language targeting one or more such officials;[56] and
- 125 social media posts by President Trump or senior aides targeting one or more such officials, either explicitly or implicitly, and mostly from his own account.[57]
Furthermore, these efforts by President Trump's team also involved two other initiatives that tried to enlist support from large numbers of State legislators all at once:
- The Trump Campaign contacted, or attempted to contact, nearly 200 State legislators from battleground States between November 30, 2020 and December 3, 2020, to solicit backing for possible Statehouse resolutions to overturn the election. At least some messages said they were "on behalf of the president."[58]
- Nearly 300 State legislators from battleground States reportedly participated in a private briefing with President Trump, Rudolph Giuliani, John Eastman, and others on January 2nd. The President reportedly urged them to exercise what he called "the real power" to choose electoral votes before January 6th, because, as President Trump said on the call, "I don't think the country is going to take it."[59]
It may be impossible to document each and every meeting, phone call, text message, or other contact that President Trump and his allies had with State and local officials in various battleground States. What follows is a summary that focuses on four States and that demonstrates the lengths to which President Trump would go in order to stay in power based on lies—the Big Lie—about the election.
