One of the most remarkable things about the testimony in the Jan. 6 investigation was how one-sided it was — almost all of it from Republicans. Part of the reason for this is that they were there, at the scene of many crimes.

It also serves to defang the claims that the election was stolen from Trump, based on allegations of fraud and voting security violations. More specifically, and in refutation of the recent letter listing alleged voter fraud stories, former Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon oversaw allegations about voter fraud, set up a voter fraud tip line and testified about a conversation with chief of staff Mark Meadows, saying that none of the allegations had any evidence of changing election results.

President Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, testified of the campaign’s efforts to investigate all allegations but that they kept coming up empty. Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue testified of daily phone calls with Trump explaining what the Justice Department’s investigations showed: “We’ve done dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews. The allegations are not supported by the evidence developed. We’ve looked in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada.”

Given this, in conjunction with the mountains of other evidence, confessions of the guilty, and large number of people who have given mutually corroborating testimony, any recent presentation of voter fraud stories are nothing but deliberate lies.

As for Speaker Mike Johnson’s role in all of this, he eagerly echoed Trump’s false claims about vote by mail fraud and in a post-election interview claimed that both Dominion Software and Hugo Chavez (who died in 2013) were involved. This demonstrates how unhinged from reality he is, no doubt a desirable attribute for being elected Republican Speaker of the House.

Johnson put together a case that strung together a series of implausible legal claims that three-quarters of the Republicans supporting overturning the election would come to rely on, making Johnson one of the most important architects of the Electoral College objections.

Despite his smooth talking and low-key personality, this makes him disproportionately dangerous to American democracy. If Hannah Arendt’s work on totalitarian regimes taught us nothing else, the most sinister designs can be delivered in the most banal guise.

Chris Esposito

La Grande