Former Attorney General Bill Barr told CNN that he believes Donald Trump “knew well he lost the election.”

He added: “At first I wasn’t sure, but I have come to believe he knew well he had lost the election.”

“A top election security official who was fired by President Donald Trump weeks after the 2020 election has confirmed to CNN that he was interviewed in recent months by the special counsel investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election,” CNN reports.

“Federal prosecutors have interviewed the secretaries of state for both Pennsylvania and New Mexico in recent months as part of the ongoing investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election,” CNN reports.

“The interviews, which have not been previously reported, indicate that special counsel Jack Smith is focused on actions taken by former President Donald Trump and his allies in seven key battleground states as they sought to upend Joe Biden’s electoral victory.”

“Arizona’s top prosecutor is ramping up a criminal investigation into alleged attempts by Republicans to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state by signing and transmitting paperwork falsely declaring Donald Trump the winner,” the Washington Post reports.

“Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) assigned a team of prosecutors to the case in May, and investigators have contacted many of the pro-Trump electors and their lawyers.”

“Former President Donald Trump sent a Dante-like message to elected Republicans when he criticized Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Monday: There’s a special place in hell for those who remain neutral in times of crisis,” NBC News reports.

“Political insiders say that’s not hell; it’s Iowa.”

“The neutrality of many Republican elected officials in Iowa — and across the country — has rubbed Trump the wrong way at a time when he is the clear front-runner for a third consecutive GOP presidential nod. That’s because it’s one of the few evident counterpoints to the narrative that he’s on a glide path to locking down the nomination.”

“In a phone call in late 2020, President Donald Trump tried to pressure Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) to overturn the state’s presidential election results, saying that if enough fraudulent votes could be found it would overcome Trump’s narrow loss in Arizona, according to three people familiar with the call,” the Washington Post reports.

“Trump also repeatedly asked Vice President Mike Pence to call Ducey and prod him to find the evidence to substantiate Trump’s claims of fraud, according to two of these people. Pence called Ducey several times to discuss the election, they said, though he did not follow Trump’s directions to pressure the governor.”

“The extent of Trump’s efforts to cajole Ducey into helping him stay in power have not before been reported, even as other efforts by Trump’s lawyer and allies to pressure Arizona officials have been made public.”

“The fringe legal theory that former President Donald Trump deployed to subvert the 2020 election faced withering scrutiny Tuesday from California legal authorities who want to disbar its key architect: attorney John Eastman,” Politico reports.

“Eastman’s bar trial, on charges that he committed professional misconduct by fomenting efforts to obstruct the election of President Joe Biden, comes as both he and Trump await word on whether they’ll be criminally charged for the scheme. But on Tuesday, California bar authorities made sure that Eastman’s legal theory itself would face its own thorough reckoning for the first time since Jan. 6, 2021.”

Philadelphia Inquirer: “That Trump had been in contact with Mastriano and other Pennsylvania legislative leaders in December 2020 has previously been reported in the media, and documented by the House Jan. 6 committee that investigated the attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

“But the new emails reveal additional details about Trump’s pressure campaign in Pennsylvania and provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how it was received in Harrisburg. Election-related conspiracy theories and bad legal advice percolated quickly through the legislature.”

A new CNN poll finds that 63% of Republican voters still think the result of the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate.

Tim Miller: “Both decided that they had to accede to every whim of their respective super-online activist bases rather than stick with what was working for them.”

“Warren tried simultaneously to attract the most strident Bernie bros by belatedly embracing Medicare for All (and other lefty issues) while also checking every box demanded by the identitarian wing of the resistance: putting pronouns in her Twitter bio, branding merch with Latinx, and attracting the support of a group of activists named ‘Black Womxn For’ (without actually gaining any meaningful support from Black WomEn).”

“DeSantis’s right-wing version has been much less earnest and well intentioned, but it’s just as out of touch. As a campaign prelude, Meatball Ron is presiding over a legislative session with a policy orientation more suited for Alabama than presidential battleground states. He’s tied himself to policies such as a six-week abortion ban and “constitutional carry” that even many Republicans don’t support. On top of that, his current stump speech requires a Ph.D. in based online discourse to have any idea what he’s talking about.”

New audio shows Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) selling his plan to overthrow the 2020 election to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo — four days before the Capitol riot, the Daily Beast reports.

Washington Post: “The ‘Project 2020’ report conducted by the Berkeley Research Group and a team of scientists has now been obtained by prosecutors investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

“A copy was reviewed by The Washington Post, and it shows that Trump’s own campaign paid more than $600,000 for research that undercut many of his most explosive claims. The research was never made public.”

Washington Post: “The records show how Brnovich used his office to further claims about voting in Maricopa County that his own staff considered inaccurate. They suggest that his administration privately disregarded fact-checks provided by state investigators while publicly promoting incomplete accounts of the office’s work. The innuendo and inaccuracies, circulated not just in the far reaches of the internet but with the imprimatur of the state’s attorney general, helped make Arizona an epicenter of distrust in the democratic process, eroding confidence not just in the 2020 vote but in subsequent elections.”

“The documents — two investigative summaries and a draft letter with edits, totaling 41 pages — are far from an exhaustive record of Brnovich’s investigation. But they fill in details about the sometimes-enigmatic actions of the state’s former top law enforcement officer.”

“A lawsuit from a trio of Utah brothers seeking to kick President Joe Biden out of the White House and return Donald Trump to the presidency will not be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court,” the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

“The high court again rejected the brother’s case on Tuesday.”

“The Georgia GOP spent more than $200,000 last year to bankroll the legal fees of phony Republican electors who could face criminal charges amid Fulton County’s probe of whether Donald Trump and his allies committed crimes while trying to overturn his election defeat,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

In his first congressional race in 2020, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) created a “Devolder Santos for Congress Recount” committee less than 24 hours after Election Day — a fundraising committee that raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars supposedly in connection with a recount, the Daily Beast reports.

But Santos ultimately lost that race to Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) by more than 46,000 votes and that recount never happened.