In her opening statement on Tuesday, Jan. 6, select committee vice president Liz Cheney said “we can’t let America become a nation of conspiracy theories.” The committee later heard testimony from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling, which denied one of President Donald Trump’s most widespread election claims: that a suitcase of fraudulent ballots cost the state victory in 2020.
California Democrat Adam Schiff, who played a central role in Trump’s impeachment hearings and is also on the committee, handled the interrogation of Raffensperger and Sterling and exposed the essence of the theory of Trump conspiracy on the suitcase.
“This story falsely alleges that at some point on election night, election workers at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, expelled observers from the polls. After the observers left, the story goes. , these workers took the so-called ballot papers from under a table and passed those ballots through counting machines several times, “Schiff said. “Completely unproven, President Trump and his allies claimed that these suitcases contained up to 18,000 ballots, all by Joe Biden. None of this was true.”
Claiming that the vote counted at the State Farm Arena revealed fraudulent ballot processing, Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Raffensperger, Sterling, and state lawmakers to testify. invalid results in this essential swing. state.
“What did the tape really show?” Schiff asked Sterling.
Gabriel Sterling, COO of the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, testified before the select committee on Jan. 6. (Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)
“This conspiracy theory came to life, where they combined a water network rupture that was not a water network rupture and throwing observers and a host of other things, when it actually proved that Fulton County election observers were engaged in normal ballot processing, “Sterling said. “One of the specific things, one of the things that was very frustrating, was the so-called ballot boxes under the table.”
The story goes on
Sterling stated that in fact no suitcase was shown in the video.
“These are standard ballot papers that allow stamps to be tamper-proof,” he said.
Raffensperger began his testimony by noting that “President Biden brought the state of Georgia by approximately 12,000 votes,” and that digital and manual counts, as well as a forensic audit of the election, had confirmed this result.
“Three counts, all very close, that showed President Trump fell short,” Raffensperger said.
In a December 2020 phone call during Monday’s hearing, Raffensperger told the president that his theory about the ballot suitcase was not true.
An image of the presentation video during the House select committee hearing on Tuesday. (Home TV)
“We did an audit of that and conclusively proved that they were not scanned three times,” Raffensperger can be heard telling the president.
Schiff reproduced a video testimony about the so-called suitcase handed to the committee that began with statements from former U.S. Attorney General BJ Pak, whom former Attorney General William Barr had commissioned to investigate the allegations.
“I listened to the tapes and checked the video tapes myself [and found] that there was nothing. Giuliani was wrong, “Pak said of the suitcase theory.
“Fulton County’s allegations had no merit,” Barr told the committee.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue also testified about a telephone conversation he had with Trump about suitcases.
Election officials count votes for Fulton County, Ga., January 6, 2021. (Megan Varner / Getty Images)
“He kept staring at the suitcase that was supposed to have fraudulent ballots and the suitcase was rolled up from under the table, and I said,‘ No, sir, there’s no suitcase. You can watch this video over and over again. No suitcase. There is a trash can with wheels … “
During his call with Raffensperger, Trump proposed other conspiracy theories that he said explained his electoral loss to Biden, including a rumor that 5,000 dead had voted in Georgia. Like the suitcase, the accusation of dead people turned out to be more fiction than reality.
“We had a lot of complaints and we investigated each of them,” Raffensperger told the committee.