Distressed Georgia election workers have recounted how former President and his team pressured them to overturn the results, with one live witness detailing racist threats.
Several state elections officials testified about Trump’s intimidation efforts in the fourth public hearing held by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.
Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss, a former Fulton County election worker and black woman, quivered on Tuesday as she revealed fallout from the Trump campaign accusing her and her mother Ruby Freeman of pulling fake mail-in ballots from suitcases on Election Day.
Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani seized video of Moss and Freeman in the ballot counting operation and falsely claimed that they were passing USB drives ‘like vials of heroin or cocaine’.
Moss said her bosses informed her about the video and told her to check her Facebook. She found her account slammed with threats.
‘It was just a lot of horrible things there. A lot of threats, wishing death upon me, telling me that I’ll be in jail with my mother,’ Moss said. ‘And saying things like, “Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.”‘
Moss said of the threats: ‘A lot of them were racist, a lot of them were just hateful’.
In the video, Moss said her mother was actually only handing her a ‘gingermint’.
The committee also played clips of Freeman in a private interview with investigators.
‘I’m scared to give my name during food orders,’ said Freeman. ‘I’ve lost my name and my reputation, and I’ve lost my sense of security.’
Thursday’s hearing focused on Trump’s effort to overturn the election by exerting pressure on state elections workers to declare that he had thousands of more votes he needed to defeat Joe Biden.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in his live testimony said that he and his team looked into ‘every single allegation’ of election fraud claimed by Trump. They found none to be true.
‘We ran down the rabbit trail to make sure our numbers were accurate,’ said Raffensperger, adding that he and his family faced threats and harassment but he continued doing his job.
‘I think sometimes, moments require you to stand up and just take the shots,’ he said. ‘We followed the law and we followed the Constitution, and at the end of the day, President Trump came up short.’
Raffensperger’s chief operating officer Gabe Sterling recalled a moment when he ‘lost it’ upon finding out an election contractor working for Dominion Voting Systems had received death threats from ‘some QAnon supporters’.
Sterling continued that he tried to fight misinformation in press conferences and carry on the office’s job to ‘tell the truth, follow the Constitution, follow the law and defend the institutions… and the institutions held’.
Meanwhile, Arizona’s Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who refused to decertify his state’s election results, told the committee that he and his team got ‘20,000 emails and tens of thousands of voicemails and texts’.
Despite protests outside their home, Bowers, his wife and his ‘gravely-ill’ daughter held strong.
In his closing remarks, committee chairman Bennie Thompson said there were many unconstitutional schemes aimed at reversing the election results, but that the panel seeks to demonstrate that Trump was the ‘driving force’.
The next committee hearing is scheduled for Thursday at 3pm.
‘On Thursday, we hear about another part of that scheme. His attempt to corrupt the country’s top law enforcement body – the Justice Department – to support his attempt to overturn the election,’ Thompson said, referring to Trump.
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