Page:Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.pdf/258



steal." He refused, once again, to concede. And he proclaimed that "[t]oday I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide."

For months, President Trump had relentlessly promoted his Big Lie. He and his associates manufactured one tale after another to justify it. For more than an hour on January 6th, the President wove these conspiracy theories and lies together.

By the Select Committee's assessment, there were more than 100 times during his speech in which President Trump falsely claimed that either the election had been stolen from him, or falsely claimed that votes had been compromised by some specific act of fraud or major procedural violations. That day, President Trump repeated many of the same lies he had told for months—even after being informed that many of these claims were false. He lied about Dominion voting machines in Michigan, suitcases of ballots in Georgia, more votes than voters in Pennsylvania, votes cast by non-citizens in Arizona, and dozens of other false claims of election fraud. None of those claims were true.

As explained in the chapters that follow, the Big Lie was central to President Trump's plan to stay in power. He used the Big Lie to pressure