Kinzinger says Trump knew he lost the 2020 election

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), one of the two Republican members of the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, said on Sunday that he thinks former President Trump knew that he lost the 2020 presidential election ahead of the rioting. 

“I think if anybody truly believed after … what the attorney general says, for instance, after what every piece of information comes in, if you truly believe the election was stolen then, if the president truly believed that, for instance, he’s not mentally capable to be president. I think he didn’t believe it. I think the people around him didn’t believe it. This was all about keeping power against the will of the American people,” Kinzinger said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Kinzinger, who is not running for reelection, also said Trump “absolutely tried to overthrow the will of the people and he tried to do it initially through misinformation, through the Department of Justice, through pressuring the vice president, and then on Jan. 6.”

“And he was told repeatedly by people that he trusted, that he respected … folks around him, that the election wasn’t stolen, that there is no corroborating proof of any kind of a stealing or any kind of a corruption that would change the outcome,” he added.

“And so I think it’s pretty obvious he knew, but he didn’t want to lose.”

Kinzinger’s remarks come after the House panel’s first public hearing on Thursday night, which drew nearly 20 million viewers. The second hearing is scheduled for Monday morning.

Former Attorney General William Barr was shown during the first hearing in an interview with committee officials reiterating his belief that Trump’s allegations of election fraud in 2020 were “bullshit.”