Washington — The House select committee examining the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol will convene Tuesday for its fourth public hearing this month. This session will focus on President Trump’s efforts to pressure state officials as part of his broader campaign to remain in office for a second term after losing the 2020 election.
CBS News will broadcast live coverage of the hearing starting at 1 p.m. ET.
Expected to appear before the panel are two GOP elections officials from Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, and Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the secretary of state’s office, as well as Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, also a Republican. Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, a former election worker from Fulton County, Georgia, will also appear.
Trump lost both Georgia and Arizona to President Biden, but he and officials with his reelection campaign pushed top officials in those states to overturn the election results, in part through a scheme to submit alternate, pro-Trump slates of electors.
Select committee aides said they’ll show that Trump “was warned that these actions, including false claims of election fraud, pressuring state local officials, that they risked violence. They risked undermining confidence in our democratic institutions.”
In Georgia, Trump urged Raffensberger in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call to “find” enough votes to make him the winner, though Raffensperger repeatedly rebuffed the president’s efforts and refuted claims of widespread voter fraud in Georgia.
Both Raffensperger and Sterling defended the integrity of Georgia’s election and faced intense criticism for their actions, receiving death threats and, in the case of Raffensperger, a censure by the state Republican Party. Despite the backlash, Raffensperger defeated Trump-backed Rep. Jody Hice and two other candidates who challenged him in the Republican primary last month for secretary of state.
The two election officials also testified this month before a special grand jury in Fulton County that is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election.
Moss, the Fulton County election worker, sued One America News Network and Rudy Giuliani in December for defamation, alleging the network aired stories that falsely accused her and her mother, a fellow election worker, of committing ballot fraud to alter the outcome of the 2020 election, according to the lawsuit. The two reached a settlement agreement with One America News in April, though Giuliani remains as a defendant.
Trump himself also accused Moss and her mother of carrying out a fake ballot scheme and called them professional vote scammers, allegations that led to death threats and intimidation, and forced them into hiding, committee aides said.
In Arizona, Bowers, who backed Trump in 2020, received a call from Trump and Giuliani, the former president’s lawyer, in late November 2020 urging him to have the state legislature substitute a slate of presidential electors, overriding Mr. Biden’s win in the state, according to the Arizona Republic.
Bowers also received an email from Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in early November 2020 urging him to select a “clean slate of electors,” according to the Washington Post. The committee has asked to speak with Thomas, and she told The Daily Caller she looks forward to talking with House investigators.
Testimony from Trump White House officials, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows, is expected to be heard during Tuesday’s hearing.
Tuesday’s hearing will kick off the third week of proceedings for the Jan. 6 select committee, which is laying out for Americans how Trump mounted a multi-pronged campaign to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power, culminating in the violent attack on the Capitol building.
Earlier hearings have focused on the violence that took place at the Capitol on Jan. 6 as law enforcement struggled to control the mob of Trump’s supporters descending on the complex to stop Congress’s counting of state electoral votes; Trump’s decision to declare victory on election night even though his closest aides knew there was no evidence to support his claims the election was stolen from him; and the former president’s efforts to strong-arm Vice President Mike Pence to reject state electoral votes and unilaterally declare him the winner of the election.
In its third hearing last week, aides to the former vice president said Trump’s repeated lies about the election pushed the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis and put Pence in harm’s way when a mob of Trump supporters breached the Capitol building.
“Approximately 40 feet. That’s all there was, 40 feet between the vice president and the mob,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, a Democrat from California, said last week. “Make no mistake about the fact that the vice president’s life was in danger.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, is expected to play a leading role in the fourth hearing. He told CNN on Sunday that the panel will demonstrate how Trump mounted a pressure campaign against state and local elections officials that endangered their lives, and present evidence of the former president’s role in a scheme to convince states to name pro-Trump alternate slates of electors.
“The system held because a lot of state and local election officials upheld their oath to the Constitution,” Schiff told CNN.
Since its creation nearly one year ago, the select committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews — including with former White House and Trump campaign officials, and members of the former president’s family — and collected more than 140,000 documents.
Trump, meanwhile, has continued to attack the committee and falsely claim he won the 2020 election. During remarks Saturday in Memphis as part of the “American Freedom Tour,” Trump claimed without evidence the committee is doctoring video of depositions and accused its members of being “liars and con artists.”
