Tuesday's hearing was probably the most emotional of the four so far.
We got a glimpse into the threatening intimidation campaign against state election officials at all levels. By resisting, those citizens defended the Constitution and preserved the institutions of our democracy. If you know LSR at all, you know I am a U.S.A. Pollyanna. I truly deeply believe in the good of our country. The past few years have shaken me, but hearing these patriots renews my hope.
We heard from four live witnesses: three Republican state officials, one from Arizona and two from Georgia, and a poll worker from Georgia. Two of them received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) (yay!) led today's questioning of the live witnesses.
It was powerful.
Simultaneously to the pressure campaign waged against V.P. Pence, the Tangerine Palpatine's campaign was launching a similar campaign against election officials and legislators in several battleground states. Even after he was told unequivocally by his own team and the Department of Justice that there was no fraud, 45 placed extreme pressure – intimidation really – upon state officials to "find" extra votes for him, to find fraud, and to install an "alternate" (illegal) set of electors to issue their own faked certificates which would be given to V.P. Pence and Congress in place of the lawful elector votes. Then he set about demonizing those who did not do his bidding.
First up was Arizona State Representative Russell "Rusty" Bowers, the Speaker of the Arizona House. Mr. Bowers has served in the Arizona state government for decades, most recently as a member of the House of Representatives since 2015 and Speaker since 2019. Bowers is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican. He's a lifelong Republican, certainly longer than Mar-a-Lardo has been. He voted for him and wanted to see him reelected. He's as far from a "RINO" as you can get. And still he resisted the pressure placed upon him to perform illegal acts.
The first part of his testimony shot down a statement made shortly before the hearing. The former president* had said that during a November phone call with Bowers, Bowers "told me that the election was rigged and that I won Arizona."
Bowers testified, "I did have a conversation with the president. That certainly isn't it. Anyone, anywhere, anytime who said that I said the election was rigged, that would not be true."
Bowers outlined the pressure campaign and very poignantly explained that his oath to the Arizona Constitution and to the U.S. Constitution would not allow him to comply. He described how Giuliani and Eastman pressured him at different times. He explained that he asked Giuliani for evidence of fraud (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants and thousands of dead people voting), and none was provided. And in fact, he recalled of Rudy Giuliani, "My recollection, he said we've got lots of theories. We just don't have the evidence."
He said more than once that his faith (he's Mormon, and he believes the U.S. Constitution is "divinely inspired") and his oath of office guided him. When Giuliani asked him to replace the electors of Arizona with a different slate, he told him, "I will not break my oath." When Old Wack Donald telephoned Bowers, he also told him – more than once – that he would not do anything illegal. And that was it for him. The campaign kept trying, right up to the morning of January 6, when U.S. Representative Andy Biggs from Arizona called him for one more effort. Bowers would not budge.
Bowers kept a journal during that time, and he read from it:
It is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me turn on me with such rancor. I may in the eyes of men not hold correct opinions or act according to their vision or convictions, but I do not take this current situation in a light manner, a fearful manner, or a vengeful manner. I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to.
At the end of his testimony, Bowers described the ways his life has changed, including terrible harassment and threats of violence that has been waged against him and and his family. He was nearly in tears as he described how groups in vans with speakers and video screens have trawled his neighborhood, blaring that he is a pedophile and a corrupt politician. People came through his neighborhood armed with firearms and harassed his neighbors. All of this deeply upset his wife and his daughter who was ill with cancer (and who died three weeks after the insurrection).
Rep. Schiff asked for a short break after Bowers's testimony, allowing us all to collect ourselves.
And then there was Georgia. Oh my dear lawd, the pressure on Georgia. As you recall, Dolt 45 lost the election in Georgia by 11,779 votes. He was desperate to find a way to change the results of the election in that state.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his chief operating officer Gabriel Sterling sat before the committee and testified.
Raffensperger detailed how fast, accurate, and consistent the results of the Georgia counting process was on every one of the three counts. He was proud!
You'll remember hearing portions of his 67-minute-long telephone call on January 2 with 45, where SCROTUS asked him to "find" 11,780 votes. The Danger Yam knew very well by January 2nd that the claims of fraud were bogus and that he lost the election. But he called Raffensperger anyway.
The committee played more of this recorded phone call, more evidence of the Quarter Flounder's crimes. Here is the entire recorded phone call and transcript.
Every single assertion that 45 made was shot down by Raffesnsperger.
There was a mysterious suitcase full of ballots that had been hidden under a table and brought out late at night. No, it was an official ballot-holding box and it was counted in the usual way.
"They dropped a lot of votes in there late at night." No, the poll workers accepted ballots until 7pm on Election Day as allowed by law.
5000 dead people voted. No, they found evidence of four, 1-2-3-4, dead people voting.
You can just 'recalculate' the votes. No, the numbers in the original count, the re-count, and the second hand-count recount all came out remarkably the same. "The numbers are the numbers, the numbers don't lie."
Raffensperger testified that every one of the campaign's claims of fraud was investigated and none panned out. He was crystal clear that SCROTUS lost Georgia: "Simply put in a nutshell, what happened in fall of 2020 is that 28,000 Georgians skipped the Presidential race and yet they voted down ballot in other races. And the Republican Congressman ended up getting 33,000 more votes than President Trump. And that's why President Trump came up short."
During this intimidation campaign, Voldemoron insinuated that Ratffensperger was dishonest, incompetent, or criminal. In a veiled threat, Clownigula told Raffensperger, "And I watched you this morning and you said well, there was no criminality, but I mean, all of this stuff is — is very dangerous stuff. When you talk about no criminality, I think it's very dangerous for you to say that."
And yes, Raffensperger and his family also were subjected to terrible harassment and threats by Twitler's supporters, including sexualized threats against his wife and a break-in into his widowed daughter-in-law's home that she shares with her children.
Yet he reamained stalwart. When asked why he didn't just walk away, Raffensperger said, "Because I knew that we had followed the law, we had followed the Constitution. And I think sometimes moments require you to stand up and just take the shots. You're doing your job. And that's all we did. You know, we just followed the law and we followed the Constitution. And at the end of the day, President Trump came up short. But I had to be faithful to the Constitution. And that's what I swore an oath to do."
Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for the office of the Georgia Secretary of State, described how he "lost it" when he saw a tweet doxxing a 20-year-old first-generation American youth who worked as Dominion polling machine contractor. The tweet called the kid a traitor and included a GIF of a noose.
You remember Mr. Sterling giving the powerful press conference on December 1, 2020 just after he saw this tweet. He angrily called out 45 by name and warned that violence may ensue and there was a risk of the loss of life because of this behavior.
Here's that press conference in full.
Mr. Sterling also took part in reviewing the videotape that the Mango Moron and his supporters said contained evidence of all kinds of election malfeasance. The videotape showed absolutely normal operations. He was extremely frustrated that the campaign conflated perfectly normal procedures into some sort of nefarious conspiracy theory. He tried to publicly combat the misinformation scheme as best he could.
Last to testify on Tuesday was Wandrea ArShaye "Shaye" Moss, a low-level Fulton County election official and poll worker. She described her love for the job of enfranchising voters by helping them apply for ballots, access absentee ballots, as well as her work in counting ballots. She said she had been inspired to be a poll worker because of her grandmother, who instilled in her the importance of voting because it is a right not to be taken for granted.
Ms. Moss and her mother "Lady Ruby" Freeman were both working to count votes and were in the building when that famous video was taken out of context and circulated by the campaign as some sort of "proof" of "fraud."
They became the next victims of the Jabba the Gut's ugly intimidation campaign. Horrible allegations were made about them. Here is what Rudy Giuliani said about them: "Ruby Freeman and Shaye Freeman Moss and one other gentleman quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine. I mean, it's our — it's obvious to anyone who's a criminal investigator or prosecutor they are engaged in surreptitious illegal activity again that day, and that's a week ago, and they're still walking around Georgia lying."
That USB device? It was a ginger mint.
DJT himself used Ruby Freeman's name 18 times in the phone conversation with Raffensperger. These two hard-working poll workers, doing the job for the good of their state and the nation, serving the citizens of Georgia, were directly and by name targeted by the most powerful man in the free world.
And of course they were traumatized by the abuse and threats they suffered. "A lot of threats wishing death upon me, telling me that, you know, I'm — I'll be in jail with my mother, and saying things like be glad it's 2020 and not 1920."
Here we are, more than a year and a half later, and still their lives are turned upside down. They suffer anxiety and depression and live in fear of threats of violence.
Lady Ruby testified, "I won't even introduce myself by my name anymore. I get nervous when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my name. I'm worried about who's listening. I get nervous when I have to give my name for food orders. I'm always concerned of who's around me. I've lost my name, and I've lost my reputation. I've lost my sense of security, all because a group of people, starting with number 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani, decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen." (I love that Lady Ruby called him "45" in her deposition. Keep that filth out of your mouth!)
I was in tears from the start of Shaye's testimony, celebrating the civic joy of doing election work, to the end of it, lamenting the injustice and pain of the harassment she and her mother endured.
Ms. Moss was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage in April, 2022.
She no longer works for Georgia elections.
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| George Winners (thanks to Sister Resister Karen for the 'toon) |
There's more.The hearing was chock-full and nothing was superfluous. It deserves a watch. Here it is:
Final thought.
TЯUMP's brand of misinformation has its own life. It continues. As Chairman Bennie Thompson said in his opening statement, "Two weeks ago, New Mexico held its primary elections. One county commission refused to certify the results, citing vague, unsupported claims dealing with Dominion voting machines. The court stepped in, saying New Mexico law required the commission to certify the results. Two of the three members of the commission finally relented. One still refused, saying his vote 'Isn't based on any evidence. It's not based on any facts. It's only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition, and that's all I need.'"
We must not let truth and facts become supplanted by the fantastical fantasies of wing-nuts. Keep up the hard work, resisters!
The next hearing is tomorrow, Thursday June 23, at noon Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern. After that, the hearings will be postponed until July, as the committee has uncovered "a mountain of new evidence" and they need time to compile it.
Again, many thanks to Stephen Colbert and his viewers for nicknames!
Click here for Part 5: Target DOJ
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