Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers said trucks with loudspeakers drove down his street calling him a pedophile. Credit: AP
“I will not break my oath”
Key witnesses today included Arizona State House spokesman Rusty Bowers, a Conservative Republican who backed Trump’s 2020 re-election candidacy but refused to give in. to attempts by Trump and his disgraced attorney Rudy Giuliani to get him to use the Arizona state legislature to decertify Biden. victory there.
“He didn’t want to be used as a pawn,” he told the panel, emotionally detailing how his refusal to do what Trump and Giuliani wanted meant that he and his family were publicly harassed while their daughter was seriously ill. . He said trucks drove through his neighborhood calling him a pedophile through loudspeakers and that his neighbors had also been threatened with a gun.
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Bowers said he repeatedly asked Trump’s attorneys to show evidence of widespread fraud, but they never provided any.
“You’re asking me to do something against my oath, and I’m not going to break my oath,” Bowers told them. He recalled John Eastman, a chief architect of Trump’s plan to create fake voter boards, and told him to “just do it and let the courts work it out.”
Giuliani also pushed Bowers to find election fraud and did not provide any evidence to the Arizona speaker.
“My memory said, ‘We have a lot of theories, we just don’t have the evidence,'” Bowers told the committee.
“And I don’t know if it was a joke or maybe he didn’t think about what he said, but both me and the others in my group … we both remember it specifically, and then we laughed at it.”
“We had no votes to find”
Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger also took the stand, describing Trump’s now infamous phone call on January 2, 2021, where the then president asked Raffensperger to help him “find 11,780 votes “to win Georgia.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger rejected Donald Trump’s bid to overturn his state’s election results. Credit: AP
“What I knew was that we didn’t have votes to find,” he said.
After refusing, Raffensperger told the committee, “My email and cell phone were stuck, so I was receiving text messages from all over the country, and finally my wife started receiving texts that normally they had a sexualized form, which was disgusting. “
“Campaign took the lead”
Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said Trump called her directly and asked her to help gather “contingent voters” in states where Trump challenged the vote.
Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, says Trump called her directly to rally “contingency voters.” Credit: Bloomberg
“In that effort, what did the president say when he called you?” a committee investigator asked McDaniel, according to the video of his testimony played during the hearing. “Essentially, he delivered the call to [conservative lawyer John] Eastman, who then went on to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent voters in case any of the ongoing legal challenges change the outcome of the dates, “McDaniel said.” I think only helping them to contact and set them up, but … I understand that the campaign took the lead and we were just helping them in that role ”.
“My life has turned upside down”
Perhaps the most powerful witness came from former Georgia election worker Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who recounted how she and her family faced death threats, racist taunts, and were forced into hiding later. that Trump accused her and her mother, Ruby Freeman, of manipulating the election. for Joe Biden with “ballot bags” on election night.
Wandrea “Shaye” Moss testified about the death threats he received after enduring pressure from Trump’s team. Credit: AP
The false claims were filed on a right-wing website called The Pundit Gateway, which is now being sued.
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Moss and his mother also appeared in a video that Trump and Guiliani claimed was “a smoking gun,” but state and federal investigators who reviewed the video found that the couple did nothing wrong.
Asked by the committee how his life was attacked by Trump, he replied: “My life has turned upside down. I no longer give my business card. I don’t transfer calls. I don’t want anyone to know my name … I’m fat about 60 pounds. I don’t do anything anymore, I don’t want to go anywhere and guess everything I do. This has affected my life in a big way. Anyway, because of the lies. “
Today’s hearing was the fourth of seven planned public hearings on the January 6 Capitol attacks, which last year left several people dead and about 150 police officers injured.
Witnesses so far have been a nominal call from people in the former president’s orbit who were either worried about what was happening or were apparently fueling the conspiracy.
Star witnesses include former Attorney General Bill Barr, who said he thought Trump’s allegations of election fraud were “shit,” Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, and relatives Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner .
Today’s hearing explained in detail how Trump was repeatedly told that his pressure campaign could lead to violence against local election workers and their families, but he continued to push his theory that the election was rigged. and publicly and privately attacked Republicans who disagreed.
Among them was Raffensperger MP Gabe Sterling, who also appeared today. It was the election official who helped manage the vote count in Georgia and eventually found that there was no widespread fraud.
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Sterling became a well-known figure after the 2020 election for his regular press conferences, one of which called on Trump to end the campaign to overturn the state’s election results and “stop to inspire people to commit acts of violence. “
“Everything has gone too far,” he said Dec. 1. “All this”.
Today, Sterling stated that a private press conference was motivated by a death threat he saw on Twitter showing a GIF of a bow against an election worker.
“That particular tweet, for lack of a better word, was the drop that made the camel drip for joy,” Sterling said. “He had a young name … and he said: you betrayed; may God have mercy on your soul, with a bow that is slowly twisted. I just lost it. “
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