Representative Adam Schiff said Tuesday that former President Trump and his close associates violated ‘many federal laws’ in their ‘pressure campaign’ to persuade states to recalculate or annul their election results – including Georgia and Arizona.
The committee is hearing from officials in those states during the fourth day of the public hearings on January 6.
The televised trial featured live testimony from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, his chief operating officer Gabriel Sterling, Arizona Speaker Rusty Bowers and former Georgia election official Wandrea ArShaye ‘ Shaye ‘Moss.
Bowers first spoke through a microphone, in which he erased former President Trump’s criticism of him before the hearing.
‘Arizona Parliament Speaker Rusty Bowers is the latest RINO to play with the Non-Election Committee,’ Trump wrote in a statement e-mailed before the start of the trial at 1 p.m.
‘In November 2020, Bowers thanked me for getting him elected. He said he would lose, and he really expected to lose, if I didn’t come along. During the conversation, he told me that the election was rigged and that I had won Arizona, ‘Trump continued.
‘He said he got more votes than I got which could not have happened. In fact, he said that without me, he would be out of the office, and he expected to be there before I came, and the big Arizona meetings. The night before the election he went out with his wife and saw Trump’s great enthusiasm and said to him, ‘You know what? Maybe I will win anyway’ — and he won. Bowers should hope there is no dialogue. ‘
Bowers said he spoke to the president, but never said it was ‘not true’ that he once said the election was rigged or told the president he had won Arizona.
Bowers also said that he received a call from former personal counsel of former president Rudy Giuliani shortly after the election telling him they have evidence that hundreds of thousands of votes were cast from illegal immigrants and thousands of votes were diverted from dead people.
‘I asked,’ Do you have names? ‘ he said ‘yes.’ I said, ‘Can you give it to me? He said ‘yes.’ Trump then interrupted and said ‘Give the man what he needs, Rudy.
Bowers said Giuliani had never sent him evidence. He stated that after he repeatedly pressured the former mayor of New York to obtain evidence, Giuliani told him: ‘We have a lot of theories and we have no evidence.’
“I don’t know if that was nonsense or he didn’t think what he said,” Bowers said.
Bowers then said that Trump and Giuliani had asked him to convene a formal legislative session to present evidence of fraud and work to replace President Biden’s voters.
“You are asking me to do something that is contrary to my oath,” Bowers said he told Trump. ‘You want me to break my oath, and I will not break my oath.’
“I did not want to be used as a pound,” he added.
Bowers also alleged that attorney John Eastman pressured him to approve Biden voters, as did Representative Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., On January 6.
‘I said,’ What would you like me to do? ‘ Bowers talked about his phone with Eastman. ‘ He said, ‘Do it and let the court settle it.’
“This pressure campaign brought angry calls and text messages, armed protests, threats, and, more often, threats of violence and death. State legislators were appointed. ., he demanded.
“As we will see, supporters of the president heard the former president’s allegations of fraud and the false allegations he made against government and local officials as a call for action.”
Meanwhile vice-chair of the January 6 committee, Representative Liz Cheney backed Schiff’s claim that Trump should be held accountable for the crime. ‘Each of these efforts to overthrow the election is serious. Each one deserves to be considered by Congress and the Legal Department, “he said.
“This pressure campaign brought in angry phone calls and text messages, armed protests, threats, and, more often, threats of violence and death. State legislators were appointed. Similarly, state election officials were present,” Representative Adam Schiff claimed.
Arizona State House Speaker Rusty Bowers, left, Georgia State Secretary Brad Raffensperger, center, and Georgia state secretary general chief executive officer Gabriel Sterling before the trial.
Bill Barr says he told Trump his allegations of fraud in the Georgia election were ‘bullshit ***’.
The committee also quoted former attorney general Bill Barr’s testimony in which he acknowledged that Donald Trump’s allegations that there was a ridiculous business in the counting of votes in Fulton County, Georgia ‘were baseless.’
‘I told him that the things his people were giving out in public were bulls ***. I mean the allegations of abuse were bullshit ***, ‘he said in evidence recorded by investigators on January 6 playing in the fourth public session on Tuesday.
In a separate section of the interview, Barr said ‘According to our review, including the interview of the main witnesses, Fulton County claims were baseless.’
“The votes under the table were valid votes, they were not in the box, they were opened before being inserted into the machine,” Barr added.
Raffensperger will be chief in the case on Tuesday as he was one of the GOP targets of Trump’s team’s efforts to get red states to name ‘fake voters’ to disrupt Biden College’s victory. The goal was for Vice President Mike Pence to approve these alternative voters on January 6, 2021 so that Trump could declare victory.
Trump also telephoned Raffensperger on January 2, 2021 – just days before the Capitol riots and the ratification of the election – to pressure him to “seek 11,780 votes” to help him win Biden’s leadership in Peach State.
The former president sought revenge against Raffensperger by backing Georgia’s Jody Hice candidate in the run-up to this year’s foreign affairs race – but Raffensperger easily overcame that challenge.
Bowers also received a call in late November 2020 from Trump and his then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani in which they informed him that Arizona had a new law that would allow his parliament to choose which presidential voters they want to send to Congress for confirmation, according to the Republic of Arizona .
Georgia Foreign Minister Brad Raffensperger (pictured May 24, 2022) will stand in the middle of the fourth session of a select committee meeting on January 6 Tuesday afternoon to confirm the pressure that Donald Trump has placed on GOP government officials in the ‘ his’ plot to overthrow the 2020 elections.
Tuesday’s session of the panel will focus on Trump’s attempts to get the contesting states to nominate their own voters and to demand that Vice President Mike Pence approve the polls on the results of the Electoral College.
The GOP Arizona MP, who is a Trump supporter, told the newspaper that he had asked for confirmation of this law which he had never heard of, but never received.
Bowers was also pressured by the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist, to confirm Biden’s victory in the state.
Panel member Adam Schiff, a California-based democrat, will lead Thursday’s trial.
Excerpts from his opening statement indicate that the panel will try to prove that ‘anyone who got in the way of Donald Trump to continue to hold power after losing the election was under a dangerous and growing pressure campaign.’
“This pressure campaign brought angry calls and text messages, armed protests, threats, and, often, threats of violence and death,” he will say. ‘The state legislators were appointed. That was the case with the state election commissioners throughout the state. Even local election officials, hard at work, were accused of being criminals, and their lives were turned upside down. ‘
‘As we will see, supporters of the president heard the former president’s allegations of fraud, and the false allegations he made against government officials and local governments, as a call for action.’
Arizona and Georgia are both flexible states that changed from Trump’s red in 2016 to blue for Joe Biden in 2020. Biden, however, won those states by a very small margin – 0.4 percent in Arizona and 0.3 percent in Georgia.
Those low levels of victory led Trump, in part, to claim that the election was rigged and rigged by a Democratic conspiracy to send thousands of e-mail votes to get Biden to win the prestigious states that launched him as president in 2016.
Tuesday’s Moss witness, along with his mother Ruby Freeman, was indicted by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani for ‘stealing’ the count of Georgia’s presidential election. The two, according to Trump and his allies, are alleged to have brought ‘bags’ full of Biden votes.
Trump (pictured June 17, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee) phoned Raffensperger on January 2, 2021 to pressure him to ‘get 11,780 votes’ to help him win Biden’s leadership in Georgia.
The former Georgia election official and his mother are now suing Giuliani in federal court after receiving death threats when Trump named them publicly following an investigation in the state that found no fault of the two.
The Democratic-led panel’s view on Tuesday follows three more sessions this month that focused on proving that Trump was aware of his defeat in the 2020 presidential election but still insisted ‘Big Lie’ that he was the winner, despite the campaign. pressure on Pence. to end the Congress not approving the results of the Electoral College.
Pence’s refusal to agree with Trump’s conspiracy to reject the results from Congress and to accept alternative voters on January 6, 2021 prevented the former president from announcing victory in the failed election.
After Tuesday’s hearing there could be four more as the select committee aims to quickly end its case against Trump before the mid-2022 election, which is likely to change Parliament.