Thread by @B52Malmet

The media frenzy before the 1/6 committee’s 4th public hearing. To be a witness is to be able to be in the bright lights and camera clicks. The hearing begins with Chairman Bennie Thompson explaining how votes are counted. He cited the rogue NM county refusing to certify votes.

Vice Chair Liz Cheney says today’s hearing will focus on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election by pressuring state officials and state legislatures. She name-checks Rudy and Eastman. She also previews election officials who were threatened including witness Gabe Sterling.

In her opening remarks, Liz Cheney said Donald Trump was aware his false claims of election fraud could lead to violence, yet he continued to pressure officials into changing the results of the election at the state level. Trump “had a direct and personal role” in the pressure.

Representative Adam Schiff is the lead doing the questioning of today’s hearing. If that feels familiar, it’s because we saw him during Trump’s two impeachment trials, too. Schiff brings up the increase in threats against election officials.

Note there is a bill in the Senate that would make more stringent penalties for violent threats aimed at poll workers, and election officials. Hopefully, it will pass before the midterm elections.

Schiff is outlining how the Trump campaign and the ex president himself made a way for his followers to make direct threats at state election officials, sharing their personal cellphone numbers on social media, encouraging people to call them. A Michigan R said he got 4k texts.

Chair Bennie Thompson is questioning the first witness, the Arizona Republican House Speaker. Schiff says Trump just issued a statement about Rusty Bowers calling him a RINO. He denies in his phone call with Trump he told him Arizona was rigged. Calling Trump’s statements FALSE.

Get- you think Donald is worried much to discredit Rusty Bowers, Arizona House Speaker just moments before his testimony? He said his counsel back in Arizona had just read Donald’s words to him before he was sworn in today. Schiff did not read the whole statement, thankfully.

“Look you are telling me to do something that is counter to my oath to the Constitution.” Bowers says of Trump was putting the pressure on and he was holding firm. “I will not break my oath.”Trump’s pre-hearing statement said Bowers told him the election was “rigged” “Not true.”

A video was played at the committee hearing which showed the Trump campaign crafted a script for phone callers to use to pressure state officials. “You have the power to reclaim your authority to send a slate of electors that will support President Trump and Vice President Pence”

“I did not want to be used as a pawn” Bowers testifies he told Trump on a phone call in which he was asked to hold a hearing at the Arizona Capitol to investigate election fraud. Bowers said the evidence did not merit that. He does bring up his oath a lot, to the Constitution.

He said Trump told him to “Just do it, and let the courts figure it out.” “It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired. I would not do it.” There was a long emotional moment before Bowers said that phrase.

This is a tell: Bowers testified that Rudy told him “we’ve got lots of theories; we just don’t have the evidence.” He knew that they knew that it was all smoke and mirrors. There was no evidence about election fraud claims.

Bowers is a strong witness. A firm believer in the law, an arch Conservative with a lot of admiration for Ronald Reagan. And get he pushed back hard when Trump was leaning on him to do something he knew he couldn’t do.

A Republican member of congress was named, Arizona’s Andy Biggs, who called Arizona House speaker Bowers on the morning of January 6th. Biggs asked Bowers to support the effort to overturn the election. Bowers told Biggs he would not.

The committee testimony includes their own investigators who introduce themselves to the camera and then clips are shown of them setting up various narrative lines and conducting interviews. Now there is a video montage of various people sewing together the fake elector plot.

Bowers about Biggs.

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1539307114891563008

“I thought of the book, ‘The Gang who Couldn’t Shoot Straight” said Bowers when he heard about Arizona’s slate of fake electors. He is also reads a portion of his own diary “I do not want to be a winner by cheating.” He received 20k emails, texts, at the office.

About personal threats to him and his family, Bowers said on Saturdays, people come by his house with a video truck claiming that he is a pedophile. He says he has a daughter who is gravely ill who is upset by what is happening outside. “It was disturbing.” Short recess.

Bowers’ emotional testimony could be what other election workers will go through in the midterms. So much backlash for doing their jobs because Trump decided to push the big lie. Bowers says he was threatened by a man with “3bars on his chest”- a far right group, Three Percenters

On the other side of the recess, Raffensperger and Sterling are testifying. Sterling said he was scrolling through Twitter and saw disturbing tweets were directed at him- one where he was threatened with a noose. He said that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Gabe Sterling is the chief operating officer for the Georgia Secretary of State. You remember his news conference where he said someone is going to get killed. He was prompted by reading a tweet to him with a hangman and a noose, which is a theme far right extremists use.

Schiff teased that there was evidence the committee would show that links Trump to the fake electors scheme. As evidence, a video played of Ronna McDaniel, chair of the RNC (which pays for all of Trump’s legal bills)- she testified that Trump personally called her to help.

Trump then put Eastman on the phone with McDaniel “to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors” she testified. Contingent electors = FAKE ELECTORS, what are you talking about Ronna???

Snippets of Trump’s call to Francis Watson, a Georgia state investigator- lots of pressure and cajoling of her, telling her she will be praised. Now there is an excerpt from a phone call from Trump to Raffensperger. When you hear Trump’s bs being spewed, you remember #KingCon

Sterling versus Trump

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1539319417800052737

In every clip from Trump’s infamous phone call to Raffensperger you hear his mob tactics in play. He was threatening, he was challenging, he was demanding, and Raffensperger kept telling him no, not true. He is detailing how he and his wife of 40 years received threatening texts.

Yeah, yeah, Trump says he won Georgia by at least 400,000 votes. But he was asking only for 11,000 votes. “Come on fellas” Raffensperger and Sterling are dismissed and now comes the testimony from the final witness. Bennie Thompson says Ms. Moss and her mother are unsung heroes.

Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman worked on processing ballots in Atlanta. Shaye Moss is nervous. Schiff says Shaye Moss did her work for ten years. She says what she loved the most about her job was helping the older voters. And her work with all voters year after year.

Rudy on video is making a bunch of garbage false claims. Ms. Moss says she was surprised by the allegations. And then found a lot of horrible things on Facebook Messenger with a lot of threats wishing death upon her. And that she would be in jail with her mother. So dangerous.

Schiff says Trump attacked her and her mother 18 times during the phone call with Raffensperger. Moss says she felt like it was all her fault for choosing to be an election worker that her mother would be attacked so. Ruby Freeman testified on video. She feels she lost her name.

All because a group of people, Trump and his allies, told lies about her and her daughter, Shaye Moss. Moss says it has turned her life upside down. She is close to tears. “It affected my life in a major way, in every way.” The lies for doing her job.

Ruby Freeman says she was told by the FBI to leave her home where she lived for 21 years, so she did for two months. “It was hard. It was horrible.” She was told she had to stay away at least until the inauguration. Shaye Moss and her mother are clearly traumatized.

Shaye Moss testifying about the danger went beyond her, and her mother to her grandmother. She went through a lot that she didn’t have to and it made Shaye feel horrible. Schiff asks how this affects other election workers? They are all gone, she says.

“Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States, target you?” Ruby Freeman’s video testimony is making me cry. Both her and her daughter have tears, too. Bennie Thompson thanks the witnesses and says committee members have 10 days for further written q’s.

“Ruby Freeman says the president is supposed to protect every American, not target them” Schiff says in his closing remarks. He says Trump’s criminality will be left to others, but what is clear is how un-American his behavior was. “We must reject violence” he says.

Liz Cheney has the final wrap up, she thanks “Lady Ruby and Shaye”- she says institutions don’t defend themselves, individuals do that. “It takes public service to defend our system.” Liz also goes for the Constitution being “divinely inspired.”

Liz Cheney runs down the laundry list of who was willing to testify, who took the fifth, who refused their subpoenas, who is in litigation about. She says WH counsel Pat Cipollone must testify and they are in discussions with him to do so.

Bennie Thompson says Thursday’s hearing will be Adam Kinzinger in the lead and the focus will on the next part of the scheme - how Trump tried to use the Justice Department to overthrow the election.