Thread by @sarahposner

PA GOP House Speaker Bryan Cutler was pressured by Giuliani and Ellis to change slate of electors; Bannon then called on podcast listeners to go to his house to protest; like other officials, both D & R, he was subject to threats and doxxing and intimidation. #Jan6Hearings

Egged on also by extremist groups; committee plays also a clip from Nick Fuentes program. #Jan6Hearings

As Cheney said at the outset today, we don't want to become a nation of conspiracy theorists and violent thugs. These videos of Trump-incited mobs outside of public officials' homes are terrifying, and should show all of us how close we are to that. #Jan6Hearings

Schiff questioning Rusty Bowers, GOP Speaker of AZ House, about Trump claiming that Bowers told him the election was "rigged" and that he had won.

Bowers: "That would not be true."

#Jan6Hearings

Bowers says it was also false that he told Trump he had won AZ.

Bowers now describing a call he got from Trump and Giuliani after the election. He says it was a Sunday, he was returning home with his wife from church.

He asked Trump & Rudy for evidence of fraud, specifically their claims of dead people and undocumented people voting.

Bowers says they never provided such evidence (because it doesn't exist).

They pressured him to convene a special committee hearing. Bowers says he refused "this circus" and "I didn't want to be used as a pawn." #Jan6Hearings

Bowers asked Trump & Rudy "to what end?" They claimed there was legal ability to remove and replace Biden electors, and they wanted the committee to do that.

"You are asking me to something that is counter to my oath... This is totally foreign as an idea or theory," he told them

Bowers says the AZ established the system of electing electors. Once given to the people, "it becomes a fundamental right of the people... it is a tenet of my faith that the constitution is divinely inspired. My most basic foundational beliefs."

Basically Bowers is saying that what Trump was asking him to do violated his sincerely held religious beliefs.

Let that sink in.

#jan6hearings

https://twitter.com/sarahposner/status/1539302788278149124

Schiff: did anyone provide you evidence of election fraud?

Bowers: Nobody.

#Jan6Hearings

Schiff showing previously undisclosed video of QAnon shaman illegally entering the AZ House of Rep building, with others, including Proud Boys, while armed men waiting outside.

#Jan6Hearings

Eastman called Bowers on Jan. 4, 2021. He wanted Bowers to "take a vote ... to decertify the electors because we had plenary authority to do so" says Bowers. "I said, again, I took an oath" and what he was asking "would be counter to my oath."

"I said you're asking me to do something that's never been done... in the history of the United States... without sufficient proof, and that's going to be good enough for me?" Bowers says, incredulously, he told Eastman. Eastman told him he should do it and let courts sort it out

Bowers still declined. He had already told Trump, twice, that he wouldn't do something illegal for him, and the Eastman pressure came after that. #jan6hearings

Rep. Andy Biggs called Bowers on the morning of Jan. 6. "He asked if I would sign on both to a letter sent from my state and/or that I would support the decertification of the electors. I said I would not."

Bowers now talking about his admiration for Ronald Reagan, who he quoted in his public statements about why he wouldn't do what Trump et al demanded.

"The fact that we allow an election, support an election, and stand behind the election...then move on without disturbance and with acceptance, that we choose, we choose to follow the outcome of the will of the people. That will means a lot to me and I know it meant a lot to him"

Now we see testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Mark Meadows aide, talking about the hatching of the fake electors scheme. And Ronna Romney McDaniel, chair of the RNC. "The campaign did take the lead, and we were just helping them."

Two former Trump campaign lawyers testified to the committee that they wanted no part of the fake electors scheme.

Hutchinson said she heard WH counsel say it wasn't legal. Meadows and Giuliani were there.

IOW, lawyers both in the campaign and WH knew it was illegal, and Trump, Giuliani and Meadows all heard them say it was.

In one state the fake electors asked the state party to indemnify them!! They knew it was wrong.

Bowers now reading from his journal. "It is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me turn on me with such rancor. I may in the eyes of men hold correct opinions...but I do not take this current situation in a light manner...I do not want to be a winner by cheating"

More: "a deep foundational desire to follow God's will as I believe he led my conscience to embrace. How else, will I dare to approach him in the wilderness of life?"

Bowers had received in excess of 20,000 emails, and thousands of texts and voice mails at the office, making it impossible to work. At home, "it is the new pattern... to worry what will happen on Saturdays"

groups come and blare videos claiming he is a pedophile, arguing with his neighbors, one threatened his neighbor while brandishing a pistol. And more.

Committee is in recess.

Let's recap this Bowers testimony.

Bowers, a deeply religious man, resisted the pressure campaign by Trump, Giuliani, Eastman, and others, to overthrow the will of Arizona voters.

Bowers is committed to his oath of office, is a man of deep faith who admires Ronald Reagan.

Not too long ago he would have been model Republican.

Now MAGA mobs want him dead.

They're back, now focusing on Georgia.

Raffensberger, the GA Sec of State, is first. He's a Republican who wanted Trump to win in 2020.

Election went smoothly in November 2020, he says.

Pres. Biden carried Georgia by approximately 12,000 votes, he says.

Schiff now playing video of Gabriel Sterling's press conference pleading with Trump to stop spreading lies and inciting people to violence.

Sterling now recounting how Trumpers were attacking a contractor with Dominion on Twitter, threatening him with a noose. "I was angry," and that prompted that press conference. "I lost my temper but it seemed necessary at the time."

Even after Sterling warned that Trump was going to get someone killed, Giuliani et al still came to Georgia, peddling false claim that Georgia election officials double counted suitcases of ballots for Biden found in State Farm Arena, a lie he told to the GA Senate.

Giuliani and Trump campaign claimed a surveillance video proved this. (It didn't.) Sterling says his staff reviewed the video. "What it actually showed Fulton County election workers engaged in normal election ballot processing."

Sterling says there was a "reticence of people who needed to believe it" in response to his efforts to counter Trump's lies and disinformation.

He describes an attorney who concluded (about the Democrats), "I just believe in my heart that they cheated."

Even after DOJ officials told Trump the conspiracy theories about the State Farm Arena suitcases was a lie, he continued to pressure GA officials to overturn the election based on it. #Jan6thCommitteeHearings

"Whatever you can do, Frances." We've heard tape of a call Trump placed to an investigator in Georgia. They even discussed in the WH sending her "a shitload" of POTUS stuff like coins and hats to persuade her.

Serious mob boss stuff.

Schiff establishing that prior to his now notorious call to Raffensberger that Trump had been repeatedly told, including by top DOJ officials, that his claims about fraud were baseless, unfounded, and false, or, as Barr so famously put it, "nonsense" and "bullshit."

Raffensberger points out that even the US Attorney Trump installed after BJay Pal was forced out found these claims without merit.

Now Schiff, a former prosecutor, is methodically playing clips of Trump's strong-arm call to Raffensberger, each crazy claim at a time, and asking Raffensberger to rebut or disprove each one. Very effective. #January6thCommitteeHearings

*Raffensperger. Sorry for the mis-spell

Now Schiff showing a Dec. 2020 tweet (retweeted by Trump) from Lin Wood, asserting that Raffensperger and GA Gov Brian Kemp would be going to jail.

The Trump phone call clips show just how Trump jumped from one conspiracy theory, false claims, and threats of jail, it's just like Sterling said: trying to empty the ocean with a shovel.

Now the part where Trump wants to find one more vote than Biden.

"What I knew was there were no votes to find... it was an accurate count,"says Raffensperger.

More threats from Trump to Raffensperger.

Which were followed by threats to him, his wife, who got texts, typically "disgusting" sexualized texts.

People broke into his daughter in law's home; she's widowed with two kids.

Horrifying.

Next up: Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, election worker and "unsung hero," says Thompson, who was threatened by Trump supporters. She's with her mother, who is also an election worker.

Moss, who is Black, recounting how she loves her job, particularly because people in her family did not always have the right to vote.

Giuliani publicized a video of Moss and her mother counting votes on election night, from which Trumpers spread absolutely false lies about them being part of a plot to steal the election.

Giuliani video: they were "passing around USB ports as if they were a vial of cocaine" and spreading absolutely racist lies about them, appearing at a Georgia State Senate hearing Dec. 10.

That was followed by threatening social media posts, and Moss was also worried about her mother.

She looked at Facebook Messenger, "and there were just a lot of horrible things there... A lot of threats, wishing death upon me, telling me I'll be in jail with my mother...

... be grateful it's 2020 and not 1920."

A lot of these threats were racist.

#January6thCommitteeHearings

Trump attacked Moss and her mother 18X on the Raffensberger call, says Schiff. Trump called Moss's mother a "professional vote scammer" and "hustler."

Moss's mother, Ruby Freeman, told the committee in a deposition that her life was upended by Trump and his allies to advance his lies about a stolen election. Moss adds it "turned my life upside down."

She doesn't even go to the grocery store anymore. She's terrified, second guesses herself.

Trump's and Giuliani's racist attacks on her and her mother, for doing their job, inciting mobs against them.

This is the America Trump and his supporters want.

Trump supporters showed up at Moss's GRANDMOTHER'S house. They tried to push their way in claiming they wanted to make a citizen's arrest.

JESUS CHRIST. Can you imagine.

A Black woman, in her 70s, in the south, this happening to her.

Moss: no election worker seen in the video still works for Fulton County.

Trump and his mob drove them out with threats and violence.

This is the America Trump and his supporters want. Brown shirts threatening government officials and ordinary citizens who cross Trump.

There's a word for this.

"Do you know what it feels like for the President of the United States to target you?" Freeman said in her deposition.

#ladyruby

#January6thCommitteeHearings

This was quite possibly the most upsetting and infuriating testimony we've heard thus far.

Sure, Mike Pence did the right thing. But Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman had been doing the right thing for a long time, they had the courage to show their faces at the hearing, to tell

us how the boss Mike Pence submitted to for nearly four years terrorized them, and destroyed their lives with despicable, racist lies.