SALT LAKE CITY — Two Utahns are discussed in the latest documents from the January 6 Committee — one of whom the committee says worked to overturn the 2020 election and another who pleaded guilty to a crime.
Sen. Mike Lee “spent a month encouraging the idea of having State legislatures endorse competing electors for Trump,” according to the committee’s final report.
Meanwhile, the committee released a transcript of 58-year-old Janet Buhler of Kaysville. She pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021. She said she had concerns about election fairness, in part because of a contest in Utah.
Much of the committee report addresses efforts to send alternate or fraudulent electors from states won by Joe Biden in 2020. Lee, according to the report, worked on Trump’s behalf leading up to the scheduled certification of the election, but indicated he wouldn’t accept just anyone claiming to be an elector.
“Although Senator Lee had spent a month encouraging the idea of having State legislatures endorse competing electors for Trump,” the report says, “he grew alarmed as it became clear that the Trump team wanted the fake electors’ votes to be considered on January 6th even without authorization from any State government body.”
The report goes on to describe Lee on Dec. 30, 2020, texting Trump advisor Cleta Mitchell that their plans for Jan. 6 was “a dangerous idea,” including “for the republic itself.”
“I don’t think we have any valid basis for objecting to the electors,” the report quotes his text messages as saying, part. “It cannot be true that we can object to any state’s presidential electors simply because we don’t think they handled their election well or suspect illegal activity.”
“[W]ill you please explain to me how this doesn’t create a slippery slope problem for all future presidential elections?” the messages continued.
In text messages, reported earlier by CNN, Lee wrote that he’d been working “14 hours a day” to find a path for Trump he could “persuasively defend.”
A Lee spokesman on Monday denied Lee encouraged state legislatures to do anything.
“There is absolutely nothing to the idea that I would have ever supported, ever did support the fake electors plot,” Lee said during his only general election debate as he ran for re-election this fall. “Nothing.”
Lee defeated independent candidate Evan McMullin last month.
Chris Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah who was the 2020 Democratic nominee for Utah governor, on Monday said Lee’s idea was that legislatures could ignore the outcome of the presidential election in their states.
“It’s a radical,” Peterson said, “and in my view somewhat bizarre interpretation of the Constitution that amounts to a legal plot to overturn the election... It’s dangerous and it’s misguided.”
The January 6 Committee report also describes a text message Lee sent on the day of the insurrection.
“You can’t make this up,” Lee wrote to then-national security advisor Robert O’Brien. “I just got this voice message [from] Rudy Giuliani, who apparently thought he was calling Senator Tuberville. You’ve got to listen to that message. Rudy is walking malpractice.”
As for Buhler, she spoke to the committee on Feb. 28 of this year. She voted for Trump but said she was not politically active for him. Her social media exposure to election falsehoods appears to have been limited to some Youtube videos a few days before the insurrection, according to her testimony.
“I was just concerned because the election went differently than other elections I remember,” Buhler told the committee. “Just usually we knew by… the end of that day… who the winner was, but it… went on for weeks. And even in Utah, we had a house race that… took weeks for them to finish counting.”
In 2020, Utah Democratic incumbent Rep. Ben McAdams conceded to Republican challenger Burgess Owens 13 days after the polls closed.
“I just kind of have, you know, just questions,” Buhler said.
She testified she hadn’t considered going to Washington, D.C., until receiving an invitation from her stepson-in-law, retired Salt Lake City police detective Michael Lee Hardin. She told the committee he was a Trump supporter whom some in her family did not like.
“And out of the idea of… creating better relationships in the family… that’s why I went,” Buhler said.
She added, “I have never been to Washington, D.C. before, and I thought this would be a good time to go. And I just wanted to be part of the group.”
Buhler said if she had known the protest would be violent, “I would not have gone.”
The transcript shows committee members pressing Buhler on whether she wanted to stop Congress from certifying the election for Biden. After saying that wasn’t necessarily her aim, Buhler’s attorney, former U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman, offered an explanation.
“She’s very much wanted something to be clearly fair,” Tolman explained, “and didn’t seem to be the person who cared one way or the other about the result.”
Buhler described traveling to Washington, listening to Trump speak and then walking toward the Capitol.
“This woman came up to the side of us,” Buhler said. “and she says, ‘Pence folded.’ So, it was kind of like, OK, well. In my mind I was thinking, ‘Well, that’s it,' you know. Well, my son-in-law looks at me and says at me, ‘I want to go in.’”
Buhler and Hardin were inside for about 30 minutes. They are not accused of violence or property damage that day.
Hardin pleaded guilty to the same charge as Buhler. He received 18 months of probation and 60 hours of community service.
Buhler is the wife of a former chiropractor for the Utah Jazz. Retired Jazz guard John Stockton wrote a letter to the judge seeking leniency for Buhler, saying she was "one of the kindest people I have ever known."
Buhler received 30 days in jail and 36 months of probation.
She told the committee she regretted going to Washington.
“I just beat myself up every day about it,” she said. “It’s just dumb, stupid.”