Biden steps up his attacks on Trump on the eve of the first US debate of 2024 on January 6

On the eve of his first 2024 election debate with his recently convicted predecessor, President Joe Biden escalated his criticism of Donald Trump’s actions leading up to and during the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which he incited in his last attempt to cling to power.

Biden’s campaign released a statement of support on Wednesday morning from former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a member of the January 6 House investigative committee that investigated the attack. This was followed by the release of a new ad It quotes a Michigan sheriff criticizing Trump for doing nothing for three hours while his supporters violently attacked police officers protecting the Capitol.

A few hours later, on Wednesday afternoon, Kinzinger appeared at the Statehouse in Atlanta along with Georgia’s former Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan and former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn for a press conference in support of Biden.

“Going against the grain as a Republican who supports Democrat Joe Biden for president is not easy. But I’m not really looking at this election from a Republican’s perspective. I’m looking at it from an American’s perspective,” Duncan said, calling Trump “the morally bankrupt candidate” of his long-standing party. “Enough is enough. The nightmare must end, and it must end now.”

Representatives of the Trump campaign did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment. Trump has personally attacked both Kinzinger and Duncan. Duncan described on Tuesday how he had to acquire armed guards after the 2020 election when he refused to believe Trump’s lies that the Georgia election was stolen from him.

The press conference took place at the foot of a grand staircase, the same spot where Gabriel Sterling, a Republican and senior election official in the US state of Georgia, presciently warned in December 2020 that “someone is going to get killed” if Trump continued to uphold his false claims.

Duncan spent much of the last year urging his fellow Republicans to break with Trump – at one point even saying Trump had the moral compass of an axe murderer – and nominate someone else for president. Last month, he endorsed Biden after Republicans overwhelmingly voted for Trump in their primaries.

Dunn had been traveling around the country with Washington police officer Michael Fanone in recent weeks at Biden’s campaign events. Both men were attacked by Trump supporters on January 6.

At the press conference in Atlanta, Dunn recalled how he and his colleagues were beaten by Trump supporters carrying pro-police flags with thin blue lines – a symbol meant to express support for law enforcement.

“Trump has encouraged and continues to encourage political violence,” he said.

Trump was impeached for inciting the storming of the Capitol. The storming came immediately after he called on tens of thousands of his supporters – whom he had urged in the weeks before to come to Washington on the day of the congressional certification ceremony – to march to the Capitol. At a rally outside the White House, he urged his supporters to demand that lawmakers reject Biden’s victory, warning them that they would lose their country if they did not “fight like hell.”

Senate Republicans rejected a conviction of Trump, which would almost certainly have resulted in a permanent ban on him ever running for federal office again.

Trump now faces two charges, one federal and one in Georgia, for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. He also faces a second federal charge for refusing to turn over classified documents he took with him when he left the White House for his South Florida country club.

Last month, he became the first former president in U.S. history to become a convicted criminal after a New York City jury found him guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in an effort to keep a porn actress’s story of an affair with him out of the headlines before the 2016 presidential election.

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced for these crimes on July 11, two weeks after the debate and just four days before the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he is scheduled to officially accept the presidential nomination.

Thursday’s debate, moderated by CNN and simulcast by PBS and C-SPAN, begins at 9 p.m. EST and lasts 90 minutes. A second debate will follow in September, moderated by ABC.