The House select committee investigating last year's Jan 6 attack on the Capitol heard riveting and emotional testimony from state election officials on Tuesday on how defeated president Donald Trump and his allies pressured them to reverse the 2020 election results.
Arizona Republican House Speaker Russell Rusty Bowers, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the office's chief operating officer Gabriel Sterling, former Fulton County election registration officer Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman testified in the committee's fourth public hearing.
A transcript of a phone call between former U.S. President Donald Trump and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State, appears on a video screen during the fourth hearing on the January 6th investigation in the Cannon House Office Building on June 21, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Agencies)
Bowers, who campaigned for Trump in 2020, gave moving testimony explaining why he refused to go along with requests by Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani to convene a state committee to investigate alleged voter fraud and replace duly chosen electors with a false slate favorable to Trump.
Bowers said Trump pressed him, suggesting he expected a better response from a fellow Republican. But Bowers testified that because of his faith, what the president was asking him to do was "foreign to my very being".
Bowers recalled a phone call in which Trump claimed thousands of illegal immigrants and "dead people" had voted in Arizona. He said Giuliani claimed that 200,000 unauthorized immigrants and"5,000 or 6,000 dead people" had voted in the election.
After Bowers asked "multiple times" for evidence, Trump interrupted in a call and said: "Give the man what he needs, Rudy!" But Giuliani never produced the evidence, he added.
Bowers said protests by Trump supporters outside his home continued until recently, with groups accusing him of pedophilia and perversion, and arguing with his neighbors.
Raffensperger testified about a phone conversation in which Trump urged him to "find" him 11,780 votes－enough to win the election in Georgia.
But "we didn't have any votes to find", he said, adding that votes had been counted accurately and that the vote totals had been certified.
Georgia election worker Moss was the last one that day to testify before the committee. She recalled the threats she and her mother faced after Trump and Giuliani accused them by name of election tampering.
Moss said she had first heard about the accusations against her and her mother shortly after Giuliani appeared at the state legislative hearing and compared the two women to drug dealers. She told the committee that when she looked at her Facebook messages, there were death threats and other "horrible things".
Moss' mother later said in a videotaped deposition that around the week of Jan 6, 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation told her she had to leave her home for two months due to threats against her.
