Jan. 6 committee holds fourth hearing

The House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, just wrapped up its fourth hearing of the month.

The panel heard live testimony from several Georgia election officials about former President Trump's efforts to try to pressure state officials to overturn the 2020 election, incorrectly claiming there was voter fraud.

The witnesses testified about the details of their conversations with the former President. They also said they experienced threats and harassment as a result of Trump's lies. Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his chief operating officer Gabe Sterling and former Fulton County, Georgia, election worker Wandrea "Shaye" Moss were on the panels.

Raffensperger emerged as a national figure in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Trump urged Georgia's chief elections officer to "find" enough votes to overturn the state's election results.

The Georgia Republican had already spoken privately with the Jan. 6 committee about his experience in addition to testifying before the special grand jury in the criminal probe into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the Peach State.

Here’s what the officials told the Jan. 6 committee:

Brad Raffensperger: Raffensperger said he and his team investigated "every single allegation" of election fraud from former President Trump — and they came up with nothing indicating any fraud whatsoever. 

He said in the face of threats and harassment to him and his family, he didn’t walk away because he knew his office had followed the law. “I think sometimes, moments require you to stand up and just take the shots,” he said. “We followed the law and we followed the Constitution, and at the end of the day, President Trump came up short.”

Raffensperger said the numbers don't lie, explaining to the committee how the ballots were checked three separate times, all with very close accuracy. "Every allegation we checked. We ran down the rabbit trail to make sure our numbers were accurate," he said.

Gabe Sterling: Sterling described the misinformation and threats that were being directed at workers in the days after the election. During testimony, he recalled the moment he "lost it" when he found out an election contractor working for Dominion Systems was receiving death threats "that had been posted by some QAnon supporters." After that, he started trying to combat misinformation at news conferences and said that he even argued with some family members about false claims of election fraud.

He said the job of the secretary of state's office is to continue to combat that feeling and "get the facts out, do our job, tell the truth, follow the Constitution, follow the law and defend the institutions... and the institutions held."

Wandrea "Shaye" Moss: Moss was accused by Trump and others of carrying out a fake ballot scheme in Fulton County, Georgia. She said she and her family received threats and Trump's lies turned her life "upside down." Moss told the committee about "hateful" and "racist" threats she received via Facebook.

“A lot of threats, wishing death upon me. Telling me that, you know, I'll be in jail with my mother and saying things like 'be glad it's 2020 and not 1920,'" Moss said, adding that she loved her job and loved helping voters with any questions they had.

The committee also played video of recorded testimony from Moss’ mother, Ruby Freeman. She said she lost her “name and her reputation,” adding that she left her home for about two months ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, after the FBI told her it wouldn’t be safe. Freeman said agents told her she needed to stay away until “at least the inauguration.” She also testified that even today there is "nowhere" she feels safe.

Read takeaways from today's hearing here.

The House Jan. 6 select committee's fourth hearing of the month just wrapped up. 

The panel focused on how former President Donald Trump and his allies pressured officials in key battleground states as they sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The committee's next hearing is scheduled on Thursday at 3 p.m. ET.

A former Georgia election worker who was targeted by former President Trump said it has turned her life "upside down."

Wandrea "Shaye" Moss told the Jan. 6 House select committee she doesn't want anyone to know her name after Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani alleged she and her mother committed election fraud and passed a USB drive to each other in a video. Moss testified that her mother was handing her a ginger mint.

"I've gained about 60 pounds. I just don't do nothing anymore. I don't want to go anywhere. I second-guess everything that I do. It's affected my life in a major way, in every way — all because of lies. For me doing my job, same thing I've been doing forever," she continued.

Ruby Freeman, a former Fulton County, Georgia, election worker and mother of witness Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, expressed how profoundly her life has changed after Rudy Giuliani and former President Trump targeted her and her daughter with fraud allegations in video testimony.

Freeman told the House select committee that she lost her sense of self and security after being targeted by the former President.

"For my entire professional life, I was Lady Ruby. My community in Georgia, where I was born and lived my whole life, new me as Lady Ruby. I built my own business around that name, Ruby's Unique Treasures. A pop-up shop catering to ladies with unique fashions. I wore a shirt that proudly proclaimed that I was, and I am, Lady Ruby. Actually, I had that shirt on. I had that shirt in every color. I wore that shirt on election day, 2020. I have not worn it since and I will never wear it again," Freeman testified.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff ended the witness statements with Freeman's own words of how being targeted by the President meant that she did not feel safe "nowhere."

Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff to President Donald Trump, wanted to send "a sh*tload of POTUS stuff," including autographed Make America Great Again hats and memorial coins, to election auditors in Georgia, Rep. Adam Schiff said Tuesday, citing evidence from a White House aide.

The revelation, in the fourth day of public testimony before the House Select Committee, came as lawmakers outlined the efforts by Meadows and Trump to interfere in the vote count in Georgia, which quickly became a focal point of the effort to overturn the election results.

White House staff intervened to make sure no Trump swag was ever sent to the Georgia investigators, according to Schiff. 

Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, a former Georgia election worker, told the Jan. 6 House select committee about "hateful" and "racist" threats she received via Facebook

"A lot of threats, wishing death upon me. Telling me that, you know, I'll be in jail with my mother and saying things like 'be glad it's 2020 and not 1920,'" Moss said.

Former President Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani alleged that she and her mother were seen in a video passing a USB drive to each other. Moss said her mother was just giving her a ginger mint.

Moss also described to the committee how much she loved her job, in which she helped voters with any questions they had.

"I've always been told by my grandmother how important it is to vote and how people before me, a lot of people, older people in my family, did not have that right," she said.

"I liked being the one that, you know, if someone couldn't navigate my voter page or, you know, they want a new precinct card, they don't have a copy machine or a computer or all of that, I could put it in the mail for them. I was excited always about sending out all the absentee ballots for the elderly and disabled people. I even remember driving to a hospital to give someone her absentee application. That's what I loved the most," Moss said.

The head of the Republican Party testified to the House select committee that former President Donald Trump called her as part of an effort to use fake electors to support him. 

The new detail links Trump directly to efforts to put forward rogue, alternate slates of electors in states that he lost, even though his top lawyers in the White House and the campaign knew the approach wasn’t legally sound.

She noted that the electors were being pulled together in case Trump legal challenges succeeded in blocking Biden wins.

The campaign wasn't entirely on board, however. 

Some of the top officials in the Trump campaign and White House believed the fake electors plan wasn't legal, and left the push to lawyers like Eastman and Rudy Giuliani who had swarmed after the election, the committee said.

In an interview with the committee, Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to the White House chief of staff, confirmed to the committee that lawyers with the White House counsel said the plot was not legally sound. She said former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani were involved in the meeting.

Two top campaign lawyers, Matt Morgan and Justin Clark, said in their taped depositions that they told Trump lawyers pushing the fake electors scheme they didn't want to take part.

"You just get after it. I'm out," Clark told the House, about a conversation he had with another lawyer who backed the fake electors plan, Kenneth Chesebro. "I don't think this is appropriate. This isn't the right thing to do."

Morgan described directing another campaign official to tell Chesebro: "This is your task. You are responsible for the Electoral College issues moving forward. This was my way of taking that responsibility to zero."

Before Tuesday, it wasn't known that Clark had spoken to the House select committee. 

A source familiar with Clark’s testimony says he testified “a while back” and that Trump is likely not pleased his former lead campaign attorney is shown saying essentially his campaign didn’t have a case to back up Trump’s lies.

Clark still works with Trump. Last year he directed witnesses the House had subpoenaed to preserve executive privilege, and he represented Trump in his unsuccessful appeal to try to stop the release of White House documents from the National Archives.

In the face of threats and harassment from people across the country, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he didn't just walk away because he felt like he "had to be faithful to the Constitution."

Raffensperger testified before the Jan. 6 committee that after the election, he and his wife were both getting texts and emails. He said the texts to his wife were often sexual.

"We met in high school, we've been together over 40 years now," he said. "They started going after her, I think, to put pressure on me."

Raffensperger also said someone else broke into his daughter-in-law's home. Since she is a widow with two kids, he said he was "very concerned about her safety."

Despite all that, Raffensperger said he couldn't just quit and walk away because "I knew we had followed the law, we had followed the Constitution."

"I had to be faithful to the Constitution," he added.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he and his team investigated "every single allegation" of election fraud from former President Donald Trump — and they came up with nothing indicating any fraud.

"You can register to vote in Georgia when you're 17 1/2, you have to be 18 by Election Day. We checked that out, every single voter. They said that there was 2,423 non-registered voters; there were 0. They said that there was 2,056 felons; we identified 74 or less that were actually still on felony status," Raffensperger said.

"Every allegation we checked. We ran down the rabbit trail to make sure our numbers were accurate," he said.

Trump also claimed there were ballots using dead people's names, which Raffensperger said is highly inaccurate.

"In their lawsuits, they allege 10,315 dead people. We found two dead people when I wrote my letter to Congress that's dated Jan. 6 and subsequent to that, we found two more. That's one, two, three, four people. Not 4,000; just a total of four. Not 10,000, not 5,000," he said.

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