Such defiance, however, came at a cost.
Mr. Bowers told the committee that after bucking Mr. Trump, a truck was driven through his neighborhood playing a recording that declared him to be a pedophile. Mr. Bowers, who spoke about the Constitution in reverential and spiritual terms, had tears in his eyes as he described his gravely ill daughter enduring some of the harassment outside their house. (She died last year.)
The Themes of the Jan. 6 House Committee Hearings
In similar fashion, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, testified that after he turned down Mr. Trump’s request in a phone call to find the votes that would throw him the election, his wife of 40 years received “sexualized” threats by text and people broke into his daughter-in-law’s house.
“It’s turned my life upside-down,” Wandrea Moss, a Georgia election worker who was implicated by name in one of Mr. Trump’s false election fraud allegations, said in her own emotional testimony. Ms. Moss, who is known as Shaye, added, “It’s affected my life in a major way — in every way — all because of lies.”
And the panel contrasted the willingness of the four officials to speak out with the refusal of many of Mr. Trump’s allies and others around him to tell investigators what they know. In particular, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the panel’s vice chairwoman, singled out Pat Cipollone, Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, who repeatedly pushed back on his efforts to overturn the election.
“Our committee is certain that Donald Trump does not want Mr. Cipollone to testify here,” she said. “But we think the American people deserve to hear from Mr. Cipollone personally. He should appear before this committee, and we are working to secure his testimony.”
The plan to enlist the help of state lawmakers to create fake slates of electors appears to have begun just days after the election when a pro-Trump lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, sent an email suggesting the idea to John Eastman, another lawyer close to Mr. Trump.
