Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Rafensperger is due to testify Tuesday in a House of Representatives committee on Jan. 6 about the extraordinary pressure he faces from former President Donald Trump to “find 11,780” votes that could turn the state around. to prevent Joe Biden’s election victory
Rafensperger, along with his deputy Gabe Stirling and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, are scheduled to be key witnesses when the House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6, 2021 uprising resumes on Tuesday.
The focus will be on how the former president and his allies are vigorously pressuring officials in key combat states with rejection schemes or calculations of entire states to change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
The committee will also highlight how Trump knew that his relentless campaign of pressure could potentially cause violence against state and local officials and their families, but nevertheless persecuted him, according to an aide to an elected committee.
“We will show brave civil servants who stood up and said they would not agree to this plan or call the legislature back in session or desert the results for Joe Biden,” said Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Democratic committee members told CNN on Sunday.
The commission’s fourth hearing this month is the latest effort to deepen Trump’s unprecedented attempt to stay in power, a widespread scheme that the commission’s chairman of Jan. 6 likened to a “coup attempt.” The commission will review how Trump relies on Rafensperger to cancel the ballots that voters cast for Biden. And then he listens to state lawmakers in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and other controversial states to reject election results from his own constituents.
Although the commission cannot accuse Trump of any crimes, the Justice Department is closely monitoring the commission’s work. Trump’s actions in Georgia are also under investigation by the grand jury, and the district attorney is expected to announce the findings this year.
Rafensperger, a high-ranking official in Georgia’s election, rejected Trump’s request to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory in the state – a request recorded during a telephone conversation days before the January 6 attack.
During the conversation, Trump repeatedly cited refuted allegations of fraud and raised the possibility of a “criminal offense” if Georgian officials do not change the vote count. The state counted its votes three times before confirming Biden’s victory with a difference of 11,779.
Sterling, Rafensperger’s chief operating officer, has become a notable figure in Georgia’s long post-election and presidential ballot counts, with regular updates often broadcast live for a divided nation. At one point, the soft-spoken Republican begged Americans to soften their heated rhetoric.
“Death threats, physical threats, intimidation – it’s too much, it’s not right,” said Stirling, a Republican.
Bowers is expected to discuss the pressure he faces to overturn Arizona’s results – demands from Trump advisers, whom the Republican leader on Monday called “youthful.”
In an interview with the Associated Press after arriving in Washington before the hearing, Bowers said he was expected to be asked to talk to Trump, during which attorney Rudy Giuliani suggested the idea of replacing Arizona voters with those who would vote for Trump.
Bowers also revealed a second phone call with Trump in December 2020, which he said was mostly fairy tales, although Trump also mentioned their first conversation.
Also testifying on Tuesday was Vandrea Shay Moss, one of two election workers in Georgia who filed a defamation lawsuit in December 2020 against a conservative website. Moss claims that One America News Network falsely spread allegations that she and her mother were involved in ballot fraud during the election.
The lawsuit, which was settled in April, also cited Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as a vocal defender of the baseless allegation, which the mother and daughter said led to intense harassment, both personal and online.
The elected committee also plans on Tuesday to unravel the complex scheme of “fake voters” aimed at halting Biden’s election victory. The plan saw fake voters on seven battlefields – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico – sign certificates falsely stating that Trump, not Biden, had won their states.
Conservative law professor John Eastman, Trump’s lawyer, pushed fake voters in the weeks after the election. Trump and Eastman convened hundreds of voters at an invitation on January 2, 2021, encouraging them to send alternative voters from their states, where Trump’s team alleges fraud.
The fake election certificates were produced and mailed to the National Archives and Congress. But efforts ultimately failed as Vice President Mike Pence rejected Trump’s repeated demands to stop bidding for Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021, a force he did not have in his purely ceremonial role.
The commission says it will also show on Tuesday that it has gathered enough evidence through its more than 1,000 interviews and tens of thousands of documents to link the various cancellation efforts directly to Trump.
At least 20 people have been summoned by the House committee in connection with the fraudulent voter scheme, including former members of the Trump campaign, state party officials and state lawmakers.
“We will show during the hearing what the president’s role was in trying to get the states to name alternative constituencies, how this scheme initially depends on hopes that the legislature will come together again and bless it,” Schiff said.
Schiff told the Los Angeles Times on Monday that the hearing would deepen into the “intimate role” of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in plotting to put pressure on Georgian lawmakers and election officials.
Rafensperger’s public testimony comes weeks after he appeared before a special grand jury in Georgia to investigate whether Trump and others tried to illegally interfere in the state election in 2020.
In retaliation for Rafensperger’s refusal to support his election lies, Trump enlisted a major rival in an attempt to remove him from office. But Rafensperger barely withstood the threat of last month’s primary election, leaving him in a position to run against a Democrat in the general election.
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