U.S. Sen. Angus King warned Utah Sen. Mitt Romney of potential threats to his life days before the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021, according to a forthcoming biography of Romney.
The anecdote was revealed Wednesday in an excerpt from a not-yet-published biography of Romney by McKay Coppins, a staff writer at The Atlantic, which posted the excerpt just after the Republican senator announced his decision to not run for reelection next year.
King’s communication with Romney had not been reported before and is a peek behind the vague rumblings that preceded the Capitol riots motivated by Trump’s false insistences that he actually won the last election over President Joe Biden. Romney has been a harsh critic of Trump since early 2016 as the former president closed in on the Republican nod.
Coppins wrote that Romney was feeling an “unnerving sensation” late on the afternoon of Jan. 2, 2021, that began after King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, texted Romney.
“Could you give me a call when you get a chance?” King texted Romney, according to the excerpt. “Important.”
Romney called back, and the Maine senator told his colleague of a conversation he just had with a “high-ranking Pentagon official” regarding online chatter among extremists who appeared to be planning something nefarious on Jan. 6. That was when Trump scheduled a rally to promote debunked claims of a stolen election.
King told him about rumors of “gun smuggling, of bombs and arson, of targeting the traitors in Congress who are responsible for this travesty,” according to Coppins, and he mentioned how Romney’s name was popping up “in some frightening corners of the internet.”
After hearing from King, Romney hung up and immediately sent a text to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky.
“In case you have not heard this, I just got a call from Angus King, who said that he had spoken with a senior official at the Pentagon who reports that they are seeing very disturbing social media traffic regarding the protests planned on the 6th,” Romney texted McConnell. “There are calls to burn down your home, Mitch; to smuggle guns into DC, and to storm the Capitol.”
Romney also told McConnell he hoped “sufficient security plans are in place” but was concerned that Trump — whom he called “the instigator — “is the one who commands the reinforcements the DC and Capitol police might require.”
McConnell never responded to Romney’s text, according to the forthcoming biography, though it also notes McConnell had privately urged Trump to stop attacking senators.
When Romney later thanked McConnell for sticking up for him against Trump, McConnell reportedly called Trump an “idiot” and told Romney “it wasn’t for you so much as for him.”
Trump held his rally on the Ellipse in Washington just before many supporters joined a large crowd that breached the Capitol, assaulted law enforcement officers and forced members of Congress to hide and shelter as they were in the process of certifying the results of the 2020 election.
While the Senate would later vote to acquit Trump of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, he has since been indicted in four criminal cases, one of which relates to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the run-up to the Jan. 6 riot.
Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts governor who became in 2020 the first senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a president from their own party in an impeachment trial, said Wednesday that the country is ready for younger leaders.
“They’re the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in,” Romney, 76, said in a video announcing his decision to not run for reelection.
On March 3, 2016, Romney denounced Trump in a speech at the University of Utah, a rare attack from a former GOP presidential nominee against the person who was the party’s presidential favorite that year.
That same day, Trump was in Maine and dismissed Romney as a “choke artist.” He told a crowd in Portland that he supported Romney as the presidential nominee in 2012.
“I backed Mitt Romney. He was begging for my endorsement,” Trump said in 2016 during his Maine visit. “I could have said ‘Mitt, drop to your knees.’ He would have dropped to his knees.”
