A small group of Republicans stopped Trump from becoming a dictator – they might not be able to do it again

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors covers an area of Arizona that includes the city of Phoenix and a swathe of rural and suburban land to the north and west.

Most of the time it concerns itself with things like animal control policy, city planning, housing and air quality. But in 2020, during a vote to certify the county’s elections, its five members found themselves on the receiving end of an attempt by president Donald Trump to steal an election.

“The pressure by the president and his many surrogates was all part of an effort to overturn the election,” says Bill Gates, a board member. “Looking back on it, it is chilling that that’s what we were in the middle of.”

His recounting of that pivotal moment in American history comes in a new documentary directed by filmmaker Dan Reed, which tells the full story of Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election. Trump’s Heist: The President Who Wouldn’t Lose hears from the Republican politicians and administrators who resisted those efforts, whom Reed calls “the thin red line”.

If they had yielded to the leader of their party, and country, the United States could have looked very different today. “These are minor cogs in the machine that suddenly become the key to throwing an election for Donald Trump,” Reed says.

“It’s told by people who voted for Trump and really wanted him to get back in. They were diehard supporters, arch-conservatives who loved his policies, and they’re the people who tell us how close Trump came to sedition,” he adds.

After covering the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, in a previous documentary, Reed worked backwards to uncover exactly what and who brought the mob to the gates that day. The attack on the Capitol building was not some freak