The Jan. 6 committee hearing on Trump’s pressure campaign

The Jan. 6 select committee’s fourth hearing on Wednesday focused on the extreme pressure Trump and his allies put on state and local election officials to overturn the 2020 election results. The committee showed how the former president and his supporters also harassed and threatened election officials, using the false claim of a rigged election.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers gave compelling testimony about efforts to convince him to go against his oath in the absence of evidence. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who Trump told on the infamous phone call to “find” enough votes to overturn the results, also testified about the extreme pressure he and his family withstood. And former Georgia election worker Wandrea “Shaye” Moss explained how she and her mother, Ruby Freeman, became a target of false fraud allegations and death threats.

The committee also showed how the Trump campaign organized slates of fake electors in states that Trump lost to alter the certification of the vote.  This hour, we talk about yesterday’s Jan. 6 hearing, what it revealed, how it might impact public opinion and election safeguards in the future.

Guests

Wendy Weiser. Vice President of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University  School of Law. @WendyRWeiser

Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter for POLITICO. @kyledcheney

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POLITICO ‘The system held, but barely’: Jan. 6 hearings highlight a handful of close calls “Had Raffensperger or other election officials acquiesced, it would have created a pretense for Georgia’s legislature to appoint new electors and send them to Washington for Pence to consider on Jan. 6.”

NPR Jan. 6 hearing updates: A former Georgia election worker describes being singled out by Trump “Both former President Trump and Giuliani pushed Republican Rusty Bowers to set up a vote in the Arizona legislature to decertify its electors. “You are asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath,” [Rusty Bowers] said.”

CNN The single most compelling witness of the January 6 committee hearings so far “Trump called Freeman a “professional vote scammer” and a “hustler.” Giuliani said that Moss and Freeman had been passing around USB ports like “vials of cocaine or heroin.”