The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol will hold its fourth hearing on Tuesday, and this time it will focus on former president Donald Trump’s plot “to pressure state-level officials to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election,” aies to the select committee said Monday.
In the months following the Nov. 3 presidential election, Trump and many of his allies launched a campaign to delegitimize the results, levying lawsuits in multiple states and even directly challenging officials – some of whom were members of his own party – across Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and more.
“What we’ll demonstrate is that President Trump and his allies drove a pressure campaign based on lies,” committee aides told reporters of Tuesday’s hearing. “These lies led to threats, put state and local officials and their families at risk. These lies perpetuated the public’s belief that the election was stolen, tainted by widespread fraud. And lies that ultimately contributed to the violence of January 6.”
Tuesday’s hearing will feature testimony from officials and election workers in Arizona and Georgia, both states which saw numerous lawsuits from the Trump campaign following the election.
As he did in many states, Trump led Joe Biden in both Arizona and Georgia on election night, since states counted in-person votes before mail-in ballots and Trump had notoriously encouraged followers to vote in-person rather than by mail.
But again in both states, Biden eked out victories once all votes were tallied, winning Georgia with just over 11,700 votes and Arizona by just over 10,400.
Since Georgia’s race was so close, Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger ordered a statewide hand audit of all ballots, which would go on to affirm Biden’s win in the state on Nov. 19.
On Jan. 2, 2021 – just four days before the violent insurrection on Capitol Hill – then-president Trump called Raffensperger and attempted to pressure him to “find 11,780 votes” in order to turn the election in Trump’s favor.
Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s secretary of state chief operating officer, will testify at Tuesday’s hearing – as will Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia election worker who committee aides said was “accused by name by President Trump and others of carrying out some fake ballot schemes.”
The committee will also hear from Arizona’s House speaker Rusty Bowers, a one-time Trump supporter who refused calls from the president to overhaul the state’s elections process and send a separate, pro-Trump slate of electors to Washington.
Select committee aides called the Republican officials “heroes in this story,” saying they were “public servants who didn’t give in to the pressure campaign, who remained true to their oath, to their duties as public servants.”
“They prioritized their duty to uphold the law and the Constitution over the pressure campaign, over any loyalty to any party or any individual,” aides added.
The overarching goal of Tuesday’s hearing will be to show how the former president was aware that his actions would incite violence, both against individuals and against the greater electoral process, yet chose to press forward with his unbased (and since disproven) claims of election fraud, aides to the panel said.
“You’ll hear, ultimately, how this threat is not over,” committee aides added. “That threats to election workers, continuing efforts to undermine our country’s faith in democratic institutions are real, they’re a danger to our democracy, and that lies about the 2020 election and lies about future elections are ongoing.”
It was a warning similar to one issued by retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig at last week’s committee hearing. Luttig, a well-respected stalwart of the conservative party, warned that Trump and his supporters still pose a “clear and present danger to American democracy.”
“That’s not because of what happened on Jan. 6,” Luttig told the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, saying should Trump or the Republican candidate lose the next presidential election, the former president’s supporters “would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but succeed in 2024, where they failed in 2020.”
