PRESS RELEASE Contact: [email protected]
For Immediate Release
Date: June 21, 2022
Schiff: “What [Trump] Did Was Without A Doubt Unconstitutional, It Was Unpatriotic, And It Was Fundamentally Un-American.”
Washington, DC – In the fourth hearing of the January 6th Select Committee, we learned more about the pressure campaign of Trump and his MAGA allies to overturn the results of the election. An all-Republican panel first detailed Trump and his officials’ harassment, and an election worker and her mother described their experiences after they were falsely accused by Trump of meddling in the election.
“Trump pressured state officials to overthrow the will of the people in order to stay in power, and exposed election workers to threats and harassment by publicly and falsely accusing them of crimes,” said Defend Democracy Project Communications Director Nicole Haley. “There is no depth that Trump will not sink to, including attacking innocent people for just doing their jobs. The threat is ongoing, and those involved must be held accountable no matter if they are former presidents, members of Congress, or other officials.”
1. Officials described Trump and his allies’ campaign to pressure officials to overturn the results of the election they lost.
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- Committee Chair Bennie Thompson: “Pressuring public servants into betraying their oath was a fundamental part of the playbook.”
- Trump lawyer John Eastman told Rusty Bowers, “Do it, and let the courts decide.”
- Giuliani, imploring Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers to go along with the scheme, asked, “Aren’t we all Republicans here?” Instead, Bowers told Trump he had supported him, voted for him, but wouldn’t do anything illegal for him.
- Trump accused Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of committing a crime by refusing to accept his outlandish claims of voter fraud in the state.
2. Officials found no evidence of voter fraud in Arizona and Georgia.
3. At least one U.S. congressman and one senator participated in the conspiracy by pressuring state officials and trying to deliver fake elector certificates to Vice President Pence.
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- Bowers said Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs asked him to sign a letter decertifying Arizona’s electors.
- Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson’s chief of staff texted a top aide to Mike Pence, planning for Johnson to give Pence fake electors certificates from Wisconsin and Michigan. Pence’s aide said, “Do not give that to him.”
4. President Trump’s blatantly illegal actions directly resulted in threats of violence against people doing their jobs and carrying out their oaths to the Constitution.
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- Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a Georgia election worker attacked by Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump, detailed the numerous threats she received after being targeted, including “be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.”
- Moss’s mother, Ruby Freeman, testified that she no longer introduced herself with her name and that she needed to leave her home for safety after Trump mentioned her in a phone call to Raffensperger. “There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere,” she said.
- Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson feared for her and her son’s safety as Trump followers threatened her home: “Are they going to attack my house? I’m in here with my kid,” she testified.
- Raffensperger described being doxxed, lewd texts received by his wife, and how his daughter-in-law’s house was broken into thanks to Trump’s harassment.
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The Select Committee will continue to lay out real evidence gathered by non-partisan career prosecutors proving that Trump and his MAGA allies planned, promoted, and paid for a criminal conspiracy to overturn an election they lost.
This criminal conspiracy extends well beyond the violence perpetrated on January 6, 2021, that injured 140 police officers, including making it harder for people to vote, attempting to appoint bogus electors to overturn the will of voters, and intimidating state officials to change the results in contested states.
Getting to the truth during these hearings and then demanding accountability at the courts and the ballot box is how we stop the current MAGA campaign to sabotage future elections by changing state laws, threatening state officials, and packing election administration offices so that they can have the final say over election results – even when they lose.
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