Thread by @JPughMI

I'm going to thread my tweets on this morning's Senate Oversight Committee show hearing on the conspiracy theories from the TCF Center so folks can follow along or mute if you'd like. Hasn't started yet but you can follow along here if you'd like: misenate.viebit.com/player_live.ph…

Sen. McBroom starts off by calling Kent County "Clark County." This should be fun

McBroom announces that walking Twitter troll @pjcolbeck will be given an exception to the three minute testimony limit, for some reason

Colbeck says he will only be showing the tip of the iceberg today "due to time constraints," which the chair just said aren't actually applied to him. Now he's talking about being a certified Microsoft small business specialist

Colbeck has prepared a power point riddled with typos, which is now being shown full screen on the video stream of the committee hearing

so far he is using fancy graphs to say that a disproportionately large amount of absentee ballots were cast for Democrats. No kidding!

Colbeck is using the Ramsland number of "289,866 ballots illegal votes" but has arrived at this identical number in a completely different way than the guy who mixed up Minnesota with Michigan

mini-kraken released: Colbeck's entire case that there was illegal wifi in the TCF Center is a wireless network that had "AV" in it

GOP Senator Lucido just asked Colbeck "tell me why we don't have an expert on the cable rotor and the hacking portion"

there it is: Colbeck says "the burden of proof is on the Secretary of State and the Board of Canvassers"

This is really bizarre, through the looking glass stuff. Colbeck is widely regarded as a crank. His book was devoted to score settling with many Republicans. And so far this morning three GOP senators have praised his supposed expertise and generosity.

He's almost got it! McBroom points out that all of these alleged irregularities disappear when you look at the paper record. Doesn't ask a question.

.@JeffMIrwin asks the obvious question: if you were John James or Donald Trump, would you have requested a recount?

Pressed on why he keeps throwing out bullshit after it was knocked down by R senators, Colbeck says "demographic analysis" (?) shows there are 600k people who shouldn't be registered to vote in Michigan. Prior to last year a Republican has been MI Secretary of State for 24 years.

Colbeck is done. Despite being given nearly an hour to speak, he waved away many questions of inconsistencies and lies in his testimony by saying he didn't have enough time to get into it.

30 seconds in and a GOP activist is saying the loading of ballots at the Department of Elections wasn't supervised, which is obviously something he couldn't possibly have firsthand knowledge of

second GOP activist testifying is starting by showing off a binder full of affidavits. No word on whether Edison County makes an appearance

Oh this is rich. She is saying "there were lots of agitators there working on behalf of the Democrat Party."

Rhonda is testifying about her experiences following a random guy who was driving around Detroit. She has photos.

"what I witnessed myself - admittedly through secondhand sources" was a real thing that was just said by a Republican activist testifying right now. For some reason the chair is allowing him to continue

more testimony now about how there weren't enough Republicans in the right places and that was somehow Detroit's fault.

Glenn Sitek who just spoke is vice president of "Election Integrity Fund" - he closed his testimony by saying he's been charged with assault and battery against a pollworker???

man testifying is saying he "has proof" that thousands of voters are actually dead - something he obviously could not possibly have proof of, let alone firsthand

this GOP activist just said “our feelings are irrelevant, you follow the law,” which isn’t quite making the point she thinks it is

Monica Palmer is now testifying that prior to November she had "never witnessed the [vote counting] process before in person," which seems like an important piece of experience for someone nominated by their party to the board of canvassers for Michigan's largest county!

Yet another Republican activist is testifying about how unfair it is that there weren't enough Republicans in the particular places where she thought they should've been at a particular time, and that is both evidence of fraud and Detroit's fault

A brief aside: on November 4, Republicans zeroed in on claiming that Detroit was throwing out pro-Trump "military ballots." Since realizing that military members from Detroit overwhelmingly voted for Biden, they've pivoted to trying to get them thrown out

Brian Pannebecker is presenting secondhand hearsay from Randy Bishop, a far-right northern Michigan radio host who is friends with the Proud Boys and at least one of the conspirators who plotted to kidnap and murder the governor

Current speaker is saying that because she speaks with an accent, pollworkers assumed she was a Democrat so they gave her the goods on all the secret fraud that was definitely happening. Hasn't provided any evidence

The evidence for why Republicans shouldn't have been kicked out: "they weren't attacking, they weren't there with guns." I am not making this up

Here's just one firsthand example from 11/4 at TCF Center of Republican challengers trying to disrupt vote counting

https://twitter.com/salwangeorges/status/1324101336233889795

Here's a thread from 11/4 at TCF Center showing Republicans trying to "stop the count"

https://twitter.com/BismaPar/status/1324078481874030592

A judge said of Melissa Carone who is currently testifying: "Ms. Carone’s description of the events at the TCF Center does not square with any of the other affidavits... The allegations simply are not credible."

Pete Lucido, who has been credibly accused of sexual harassment several times, just asked Melissa Carone for her phone number

I can find absolutely nothing online about Nick Ikonomakis being "like the top of the top of Dominion" or a part owner of the company, as Melissa Carone just testified.

A Republican activist is now arguing that people should not have been allowed to wear masks or clothing inside the TCF Center that said "Black Lives Matter"

This man is now saying it was unfair that he was asked to wear a mask

We are now hearing a tale of someone "holding a pen in a threatening way" in the direction of this Republican activist

GOP activist tells the committee someone at TCF Center yelled "this is what democracy looks like" and people cheered in response, which they believe to be evidence that poll workers were biased

Shane Trejo who testified prior to this break is a far-right figure who received a cease & desist letter from AG Nessel for spreading misleading videos about what went down at TCF Center: freep.com/story/news/pol…

We're back from break. Another Republican challenger is testifying about things that happen every single election because she thought they were strange

She just said there weren't enough challengers watching military ballots being tabulated - then said there were so many that "people couldn't elbow in" - then said "I say that jokingly of course." So...draw your own conclusions I guess?

Articia Bomer ran as a Republican for state House in 2018 (277 votes in the primary) and on the Taxpayers Party ticket for the 13th Congressional District in 2020 (1,974 votes in the general)

Bomer just said she thought it was suspicious that election workers were wearing the same mask she had seen Gov. Whitmer wearing

Another guy just said someone was forced to leave because she was wearing a "Trust Jesus" shirt. Quickly moved on to say "the FBI is a joke"

Many people have testified about how many police and security were present at TCF Center. Many people have also testified about how they thought that day that it would've been too easy for someone to commit unspecified hypothetical crimes.

Adam Di Angeli (currently testifying) is a longtime far-right activist who worked for Ron Paul's presidential campaign and is the organizer of many of the anti-Whitmer events that have been held around the state this year

Republicans keep talking about all of the chaos happening in and around the counting room. Again, this was deliberately sowed by @migopchair and has nothing to do with how the count went or how the pollworkers did their jobs

"BLM. Rhinestones, don't forget the rhinestones." -the way that one woman's testimony just ended

Finally someone is asked if they were a credentialed challenger or a watcher. She was not credentialed but attempted to challenge ballots. It was not legal for her to be there or do that and she should've been thrown out.

All I have to say about Trucker Randy Bishop is he is a thug and a felon who is friends with terrorists. It's a disgrace that he was invited to testify and that Republican senators are friendly with him.

Amazing how hundreds of Republicans were allegedly thrown out for no reason at all and yet not a single one of the Republicans who's testified today was thrown out (except the one who assaulted a poll worker)

Woman testifying saying she witnessed ballots with numbers that didn't match the number on the envelope. Ballots do not have unique identifying numbers AS THAT WOULD SPOIL THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF A SECRET BALLOT

Ed McBroom asks for clarification, and seemingly does not realize that ballots do not have unique numbers on them

McBroom is completely unable to control this committee. He's been in the legislature since 2013

a "lifelong Republican" testifying says he doesn't believe there was any fraud, says all he's heard today was a lot of "hurt feelings." It sounds like Ed McBroom's feelings are hurt by this

Guy is currently telling us that Democrats stole the elections in 2008, 2012, 2018, and 2020. Not sure why we missed so many in there! Or why he's being allowed to say this!

First time today someone is calling for "maybe a revote," because it would make him and other people feel better.

a woman just started her testimony by referring to TCF Center as "the belly of the beast," wonder how she thinks everything went

A woman just testified that she saw some ballots delivered to TCF Center. She was sure to tell us that she saw his eyes and thought "he was of Asian descent." That was the extent of her testimony.

"calling the war room in Lansing" while working inside the count room is illegal and the woman currently testifying should have been thrown out for using her phone

many people have talked about "tens of thousands of ballots" mysteriously showing up to TCF Center in the middle of the night. We know this did not happen. Republicans have told reporters they know this did not happen. For some reason people are allowed to keep repeating this

Currently hearing a story that started "we went to this one woman's house," people wishing to testify were told at the start of the hearing to keep testimony focused on what they witnessed firsthand at the TCF Center

the story that started at this one woman's house ended with it being unfair that media were allowed inside TCF Center...?

Ed McBroom wraps up one woman's testimony by saying "thank you for that, very helpful information on how the room is laid out"

Earlier we heard about a pen being brandished in a threatening manner, now we are hearing about the same happening with a letter opener

for the first time today someone has accurately introduced themselves as a "Republican activist."

Linda Lee Tarver is lying a lot. No one requested a recount, so there won't be a recount. An audit is mandated by Proposal 3 of 2018, so there will be an audit. The @migop can even conduct their own audit later this month! They won't.

"in these urban areas, they're lazy" is a racist thing to say, just FYI.

Ruth Johnson and Bill Schuette, who Tarver just dragged through the mud, both said there was no evidence of any fraud in 2016: michiganradio.org/post/state-off…

I don't know what to make of these GOP senators. This has been 6.5 hours of repeated misinformation, lies, or normal things that people found suspicious. It's all been litigated extensively - yet they're acting like it's all new information. Have they all been asleep for a month?

Linda Lee Tarver has been lying for 30 minutes.

We just went ~40 minutes without anyone mentioning the TCF Center, which was supposed to be the focus of this hearing

Michigan's elections cannot be "hacked, easily" by college students or anyone else. Our ballots have a paper trail so that the counting, the canvass, recounts and a post-election audit verify what actually happened. The process is working regardless of this farce

We're done! That was disgusting. Through the grievances, people said they were maskless through the count process, didn't understand differences between watching/challenging, & assaulted poll workers! Nearly everything else has been repeatedly debunked. Can't wait for tomorrow!