WASHINGTON – A House of Representatives commission investigating Tuesday’s January 6 attack on the Capitol plans to reveal in detail the personal involvement of President Donald J. Trump is campaigning for pressure on government officials to undermine the will of voters, as well as a bold scheme to present fake voter lists in seven states to keep him in power.
At its fourth hearing this month, scheduled for 1 p.m., the committee will seek to demonstrate what the group has repeatedly emphasized: that Mr. Trump knew – or should have known – that his lies about stolen elections, and the Plans which he pursued to remain in office were wrong, but he still continued them.
The committee also plans to highlight, in potentially emotional testimonies, the vitriol and death threats that election workers suffered because of Mr Trump’s lies.
“We will show evidence of the president’s involvement in this scheme,” said Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat and committee member, on CNN’s State of the Union.
“We will also again show evidence of what his own lawyers thought about this scheme,” he continued. “And we will show brave civil servants who stood up and said they would not comply with this plan or call the legislature back in session or cancel the results for Joe Biden.
Mr Schiff, who will play a key role in Tuesday’s hearing, told The Los Angeles Times that the committee would release new information about the deep involvement of Mark Meadows, Mr Trump’s last chief of staff. Among that evidence, Mr Schiff said, would be text messages revealing that Mr Meadows wanted to send autographed hats “Make America Great Again” to people auditing the Georgia election.
The first witness to the hearing will be Rusty Bowers, a Republican who chairs the Arizona House of Representatives. Mr Bowers has withstood pressure to cancel Mr Trump’s state election; Rudolf W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer; and even Virginia Thomas, the wife of Judge Clarence Thomas.
Mr Bowers will describe the campaign of pressure from Mr Trump and his allies, according to a committee aide. He will also describe the harassment he suffered before and after January 6 and its impact on his family, the aide said.
The commission will then hear testimonies from Brad Rafensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, and Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer of the secretary of state’s office, who have been pressured to cancel their state’s election results. In a phone call, Mr Trump forced Mr Rafensperger to “find” enough votes to put the state in his column and vaguely threatened him with a “criminal offense”.
Finally, the committee will hear Shea Moss, a Georgia election official who was targeted by a right-wing defamation campaign.
Ms. Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, both processed ballots in Atlanta during the 2020 Fulton County Election Board elections, filed a defamation lawsuit against The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing conspiracy website that publishes dozens of fake stories about them. The stories describe the two women as “distorted Democrats” and claim to have “taken out suitcases full of ballots and started counting them without observers in the election in the room”.
Ms Moss and Ms Freeman also sued Mr Giuliani, saying he had “significant and enormous responsibility for the guerrilla killing campaign” they faced.
Investigations by the Georgian Secretary of State’s office found no wrongdoing on the part of the two women.
The campaign to pressure government officials came when Trump’s campaign organized fake voter lists in seven different states, won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. The commission and federal prosecutors are investigating how these lists were used by Mr. Trump’s allies in an attempt to disrupt the proper functioning of January 6th Congressional certification of votes.
The fourth hearing comes as the commission continues to build its case against Mr. Trump, exposing evidence of how he spreads lies about election results, then raises hundreds of millions of dollars from those lies, and tries to stay in office by pushing of Vice President Mike Pence to reject legitimate electoral votes.
The fifth hearing, scheduled for Thursday, will examine Mr Trump’s attempts to interfere in the work of the Justice Department, including examining the possibility of firing the acting Attorney General for failing to comply with his plans.
The Commission continues to gather evidence during its hearings. The committee recently sent a letter to Ms. Thomas, nicknamed Ginny, asking her to interview her about her communication with John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who advised Mr. Trump on how to cancel the election and later unsuccessfully sought Please.
“We believe you may have information about John Eastman’s plans and activities related to our investigation,” the commission wrote to Ms. Thomas in a letter to The New York Times.
As the committee investigated how Mr Trump’s lies caused death threats against election officials, a member of the committee revealed some of the anger he endured on Sunday. Lawmaker Adam Kensinger, a Republican from Illinois, posted a letter on Twitter threatening to kill his family.
“This threat that came was sent to my home,” Mr Kinzinger told ABC’s “This Week”, adding: “We received it a few days ago and it threatens to execute me, as well as my wife and 5-month-old child. We’ve never seen or had anything like it. “
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