January 6 Committee On The Personal Toll Of Trump’s Pressure Campaign To Subvert The Election

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The Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday leaned on emotional testimony to illustrate the human toll that Donald Trump’s elaborate scheme to overturn the 2020 election had on public servants and their families.

NBC News reports, ‘A dangerous cancer’: Jan. 6 panel depicts human toll of Trump’s election pressure:

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While the Jan. 6 hearings have focused on Trump’s aggressive efforts to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory, the committee’s fourth public hearing zeroed in on other consequences of that pressure campaign: the violent threats to those who stood up to Trump’s election lies and the upending of the lives of even the most low-level poll workers.

“The president’s lie was — and is — a dangerous cancer on the body politic,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a Jan. 6 committee member who played a prominent role in Tuesday’s hearing. “This pressure campaign brought angry phone calls and texts, armed protests, intimidation, and, all too often, threats of violence and death.”

In live testimony, the committee elicited not just stories about the Trump effort to overturn the election, but the personal experiences that ran concurrent — a poll worker forced from her home for two months, a state official with a dying daughter and another who became irate after seeing the threats to a young man.

Wandrea “Shay” Moss, an election worker from Georgia, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, became the target of conspiracy theorists, fueling a barrage of racist attacks on both of them. Freeman testified earlier that around Jan. 6 the FBI told her it wasn’t safe to remain in her home after Trump called her out by name; she didn’t return for two months. Moss said Tuesday she now rarely leaves the house, has gained weight and continues to fear for her safety.

“It’s turned my life upside down,” Moss said. “It’s affected my life in a major way, in every way, all because of lies [about] me doing my job.”

Rusty Bowers, a Republican and the speaker of the Arizona House, testified about the effort by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to have the state Legislature pick a new, rival slate of electors that would favor Trump, even though GOP Gov. Doug Ducey had already certified Biden’s election win in the state.

Bowers told the committee that he knew Trump’s request to be unconstitutional — and repeatedly refused.

“It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired, that this is my most basic foundational belief,” said Bowers, who is Mormon. “And so for me to do that because somebody just asked me to, is foreign to my very being; I will not do it.”

Bowers, a longtime conservative lawmaker, choked up as he told the committee about the toll these events have taken on him and his family. Trump supporters, he said, have regularly shown up at his home on Saturdays, causing his family dread. They have driven trucks through his neighborhood with video panels falsely proclaiming him to be “a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician,” he said. In one instance, a man possessing a pistol began arguing with him and one of his neighbors about the election.

This all came as his daughter was gravely ill, Bowers said, tears in his eyes. She died on Jan. 28, 2021, several weeks after the attack on the Capitol.

“So it was disturbing,” he testified. “It’s disturbing.”

Bowers testified to the fact that Trump lied about his conversation with Bowers over who won the Arizona election before his testimony today (witness intimidation).

To illustrate some of the other violent threats, the committee played videos of pro-Trump protesters chanting “stop the steal!” and “You’re a tyrant and a felon” outside the home of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who had earlier told the panel she thought they were going to attack her and her children “with guns.”

In another committee video, a script was shown that was used by Trump campaign staff to call state lawmakers and ask them to help overturn the election. The video also included voicemails trying to pressure state officials that were left by Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Trump aide.

Building on the theme of last week’s hearing showcasing Trump’s aggressive effort to strong-arm former Vice President Mike Pence, the Jan. 6 panel Tuesday put a spotlight on the campaign to pressure state officials. Specifically, the nine-member panel said, Trump pushed state officials to manipulate vote tallies in Georgia and send to Congress slates of “fake” pro-Trump electors from key swing states: Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

In recorded testimony, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told the committee that Trump himself had called her and passed the phone to John Eastman, the architect of the plot to overturn the election, in a bid to coordinate the slates of “contingent electors.”

“Donald Trump had a direct and personal role in this effort, as did Rudy Giuliani, as did John Eastman,” said Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the top Republican on the Jan. 6 panel. “In other words, the same people who were attempting to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes illegally, were also simultaneously working to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election at the state level.

Two top Georgia election officials — Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger and top aide Gabriel Sterling — testified in-person about a now-infamous phone call four days before the attack in which Trump explicitly told them to “find 11,780 votes” that would put him ahead of Biden in the state.

“There were no votes to find,” Raffensberger testified. “That was an accurate count that had been certified.”

ut they also discussed threats to election workers fueled by Trump and his allies floating a disproven conspiracy that Fulton County officials had added a suitcase of thousands of illegal ballots to their tally.

Sterling testified what led him to go on a televised tirade on Nov. 30, 2020, when he issued a stern warning that Trump’s election lies would get someone killed. He had received a call from an official from Dominion Voting Systems, who he described as “audibly shaken” and who told him that a young contractor had been receiving threats from QAnon supporters.

Later, Sterling logged onto Twitter and discovered a tweet with the young man’s name and a GIF of a noose.

“For lack of a better word, I just lost it,” Sterling said. “I lost my temper but it seemed necessary at the time because it was just getting worse.”

Both men are cooperating with a Fulton County special grand jury investigation into whether Trump violated election law by pressuring the Georgia officials.

On Thursday, the Jan. 6 committee is set to hold its fifth public hearing, focused on how Trump pressured top Justice Department officials to investigate false claims of widespread voter fraud.





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5 thoughts on “January 6 Committee On The Personal Toll Of Trump’s Pressure Campaign To Subvert The Election”

  1. No one should lionize Rusry Bowers for doing the right thing, this time. The Associated press reports, “Arizona Republican calls push to overturn 2020 ‘juvenile’”, https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-capitol-siege-biden-presidential-election-2020-5f0f2eeae477437a5fed9fffe9ce286a

    Bowers said efforts by Trump’s backers have harmed the nation, undercut trust in elections and the right of people to vote their conscience.

    “I just think it is horrendous. It’s terrible,” Bowers said. “The result of throwing the pebble in the pond, the reverberations across the pond, have, I think, been very destructive.”

    [B]ut while Bowers said the efforts by Giuliani and other Trump backers have been hurtful, he does not levy any criticism on Trump directly and would support him if he were on the ballot.

    “If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again,” Bowers said. “Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the county. In my view it was great.”

    -This is cognitive dissonance, and just insane.

  2. UPDATE: Raw Story reports, “Exclusive: Christian nationalist group financed recall effort that resulted in harassment of Rusty Bowers”, https://www.rawstory.com/rusty-bowers-2657554688/

    During his testimony before the January 6th Committee on Tuesday, Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, recounted how his family faced harassment after he resisted repeated requests by President Trump and his allies to decertify Arizona’s electors for Joe Biden.

    [T]he organized incursions into Bowers’ neighborhood in Mesa, east of Phoenix, began as part of a recall campaign designed to punish the conservative Republican House speaker for refusing to cooperate with Trump’s effort to overturn the election. Raw Story has learned that the recall campaign benefited during its final push from an infusion of cash and organizational coaching by a little-known conservative operative with ties to the Christian nationalist movement. Some of the information for this story was originally uncovered by a group known as the “Citizen Patriot OSINT Researchers.”

    America Restored, an entity that describes itself as “an action-driven conglomeration of patriots,” contributed a total of $113,066 to the Patriot Party of Arizona, according to records on file with the Arizona Secretary of State. The contributions from America Restored accounted for more than 90 percent of revenue for the second quarter of 2021 that was received by the Patriot Party of Arizona, which initiated the recall campaign. America Restored’s executive director is Tomi Collins, a conservative activist with a long history of heralding dubious claims of election fraud who promoted state capitol rallies to support Trump after the 2020 election.

    Following the recall campaign in June 2021, Bowers gave an account of the harassment to the Arizona Republic that closely matched his testimony before the January 6th Committee earlier this week. Back in June 2021, he told the newspaper that recall supporters had “been coming to my house and intimidating our family and our neighborhood,” adding that there were “vile” mobile trucks coming through the neighborhood that used loudspeakers to call him a pedophile. Although the campaign collected a sufficient number of signatures, the recall ultimately failed when the Secretary of State found that the campaign failed to attach a date-stamped application to each of the petitions, as required by state law.

    [Foiled by their own GQP Jim Crow 2.0 voter suppression laws!]

    Following Trump’s failed effort to cling to power in early 2021, Collins said she came to Arizona at the request of Mike Lindell, the My Pillow CEO who has spent millions fueling conspiracies to try to overturn the 2020 election. Collins also boasts close ties to Sidney Powell, the attorney responsible for failed lawsuits in Arizona and other battleground states seeking to overturn the election, calling her one of “dear friends” in a Facebook post last August. In a June 2021 interview on Lindell’s Frank Speech TV network, Collins said, “We identified this one as the most important [recall campaign] in the state, so we’ve jumped on board. Mike’s on board. Sidney Powell’s on board.”

    During an interview with far-right podcaster Michele Swinnick around the same time, Collins said her group was “intricately involved in the audit” — the pro-Trump effort to review Arizona’s election results that eventually confirmed that Biden was the winner — and was “working on that with key folks.”

    Collins told Swinnick that America Restored “came down and started evaluating what was going on on the ground in Arizona” and had been “separating the wheat from the chaff.” She, her team looked at a number of proposed recalls, and determined that the one “that we felt was viable and was very, very important was the Rusty Bowers.”

    Explaining the rationale for backing the recall, Collins said her “team began to look at Rusty’s action during the presidential election and the fact that he did not advocate for the people of Arizona. He did not advocate to get the House back in session. He came out with some crazy statements that he made that basically allowed the fraudulent electors to stand.”

    [D]uring the efforts to help Trump cling to power, Collins and America Restored framed the fight over the 2020 election as a battle to preserve a Christian nation.

    “Please understand, if Trump loses we will no longer have a Christian Nation or society,” a tweet by America Restored from Nov. 29, 2020 reads. “There will be no future elections. Now is the time to stand our ground for the Truth! We must put on the Armor of God and fight! Stay off the television and increase your prayers for Trump’s legal team to win. Our Christian future depends on this!”

    America Restored explicitly endorses Christian dominionism, also known as “Seven Mountains” ideology, which holds that Christians must take control of seven spheres of influence: family, religion, media, entertainment, business and government. The America Restored website prominently declares on its website that the entity is “‘We The People’ building a powerful, action-driven infrastructure by organizing and mobilizing existing, effective patriot groups and freedom-loving Americans in all major areas of influence: Education, Family, Faith, Business, Government, Entertainment, and Media.”

    [As] part of the election deniers’ attack on Bowers following the 2020 election, recall supporters attempted to tie him to pedophilia by citing his efforts to pass legislation that would make it easier for people to remove their names in limited circumstances from Arizona’s sex offender registry. Collins insinuated without evidence that Bowers was motivated by a desire to protect powerful allies.

    “When you start looking at some of the high-profile people in Arizona that are actually convicted pedophiles, you can probably see high-profile folks from families with money, you can probably see why this is being pushed,” Collins told Swinnick. “I don’t know any other reason it would be, but it’s disgusting.”

    During her interview with Frank Speech TV in June 2021, Collins urged Trump supporters from across the country to come to Bowers’ district in Arizona.

    “We’re going to have a series of Trump trains and it’s going — just like we had on the interstates before — I think they said there was 90 miles of trains in Arizona,” she said. “They started short, so we’re looking for that again. This weekend is Round 1. We’re gonna go down and we’re gonna fight Round 1 for a knockout punch. If we don’t get Round 1, we’re gonna do it again next weekend for Round 2 — Trump trains down there for signing rally campaigns.”

    Collins told Swinnick that she found “a lot of infighting” among different factions of the election denier movement when she came to Arizona, suggesting that she views America Restored as a mediator as well as a benefactor.

    “So, whether they’re part of the Patriot Party or don’t like them or whatever, it doesn’t matter,” Collins said. “Because now America Restored has stepped in, and we’re saying, ‘Hey, is this a win that we need?’”

    Discussing America Restored’s ability to fund smaller conservative groups, Collins said, “And then, of course, we have these amazing — I don’t know if you’d call them mega-donors or whatever…. Because we’ve ran — a lot of what this infrastructure is built on is pure grit of the volunteer groups that we have in all 50 states. Now, we’ve caught the attention of the donor class.”

    America Restored’s finances, including the identity of its donors, remain opaque. A woman who answered her phone on Wednesday promised to forward an interview request to her assistant, but Collins did not return messages for this story.

    America Restored is registered in the state of Virginia as a nonstock corporation and in Florida as foreign profit corporation. The registered agent for America Restored’s most recent annual report on file with the Florida Secretary of State is listed as the National Center for Life & Liberty, a self-described “nonprofit legal ministry” that “serves to protect and defend the Bible-based values upon which our nation was founded.” A request for comment to the David Gibbs III, the nonprofit’s president and general counsel, was not immediately returned for this story.

  3. Yesterday’s hearing was most disturbing.

    I think that half the nation was seething with rage after Shaye Moss and Lady Ruby Freeman told their story.

    But I am glad that the committee included Shaye and Lady Ruby’s testimony in these historic hearings. Let it be documented for the ages that the 45th president of the US was a sniveling, low-life bully and all around piece of sh!t. How dare he and his equally repulsive sidekick Rudy Guiliani defame good, decent, hardworking black women and cut loose the MAGA “brownshirts” to try and lynch them and terrorize Shaye’s elderly grandmother.

    This is, of course, in addition to what Trump did to election officials in all the states where he tried to reverse the will of the voters and steal the presidency. The reality of this just keeps getting worse as we observe Trump in full blown bully mode, talking his trash and lies, bullying and threatening officials, targeting election workers, ruining people’s lives without even thinking about it.

    Trump must be indicted. I just have no faith that AG Garland has got the courage to do what needs to be done.

    • T4ump must be indicted for this or that is what we’ve been hearing going on seven years now. Even longer if you followed his clownish antics since the 70’s.

      He ran a fake university and a fake charity, lied and cheated and stole his way through his real estate career, lies on his loan apps and taxes, and even got convicted for money laundering through his casino’s before they went bankrupt.

      And nothing.

      His life has been one long crime spree with no consequences.

      He blackmailed Ukraine, invited Russian spies into the Oval Office and gave them Top Secret intel. Sided with Putin in Helsinki against his own people.

      He encouraged violence against other Americans and sent out holiday tweets like “Happy Easter, even to the losers”.

      Years of headlines like “former Republican AG says T4ump indictment pending” etc., etc., are just clickbait.

      It’s all a freak show. Lady Ruby threatened by Kanye West’s publicist? QAnon Shaman’s? Windmill cancer and jewish space lasers? Buying Greenland and moats along the Mexico border.

      Chinese hurricane guns. Nuking hurricanes.

      Injecting bleach.

      Five kids with three different baby mamas. Dozens of women with legit claims of assault.

      He ran a “healthcare” company that collected urine samples to make custom vitamins. Testing urine won’t tell you jack about what vitamins you need. WTF?

      The list of weirdness and crime from MAGA-land is thousands of pages long.

      I’m hoping the January 6th hearings will change some minds and encourage Dem voter turnout for the next two elections, that’s our best hope.

      JesusHChrist, America is weird and messed up.

      • Our second best hope is that age and all that hard living catches up with Trump. Soon.

        The damage done to this country by one man is absolutely astonishing. And he’s not done yet.

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