One of two Republican members of the House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, starkly warned Sunday that his own party’s lies could feed additional violence.
“There is violence in the future, I’m going to tell you,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), on ABC’s “This Week.” “And until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can’t expect any differently.”
Public officials have been inundated with threats in recent months, many spurred by former president Donald Trump’s continued obsession with the baseless claim that his 2020 loss was the result of a vast conspiracy of fraud. The Washington Post last year tracked how election administrators in at least 17 states received threats of violence in the months after the Jan. 6 attack, often sparked directly by comments from Trump.
The violence on Jan. 6 was a logical conclusion given the falsehoods spread by Trump his allies, Kinzinger said. “If you truly believe the deep state owned the election and the democracy was stolen and the election was stolen, that’s the most logical outcome,” said Kinzinger, who voted to impeach Trump shortly after the Jan. 6 attack and is not running for reelection.
He warned that the lies have not ended and could lead to a degradation of the democratic system, pointing to a county in New Mexico where Republican commissioners last week
refused to certify the results of a primary election because they did not trust their voting machines. The commission reversed its rejection
only after an order from the state supreme court.
