Raffensperger, along with Gabe Sterling’s deputy and Arizona State House Speaker Rusty Bowers, are scheduled to be key witnesses as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 uprising continues Tuesday. The focus will be on how the former president and his allies strongly pressured officials in key battlefield states with plans to reject ballots or entire state counts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. In addition, the panel will highlight how Trump knew his relentless campaign of pressure could potentially provoke violence against state and local officials and their families, but he went on anyway, according to a select aide to the commission. “We will show courageous government officials who stood up and said they would not go along with this plan, nor call the legislature again, nor confirm the results for Joe Biden,” said Adam Schiff, D-Calif. by Democratic committee members, they told CNN on Sunday. The hearing, the committee’s fourth this month, is the latest in a series of deepening Trump’s unprecedented efforts to stay in power, a far-reaching plan that the January 6 commission chairman likened to a “coup attempt.” The committee will reconsider the way Trump relied on Raffensperger to cancel the ballots cast by voters for Biden. He then called on state legislators in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and other disputed states to reject the election results from their own voters. While the commission cannot prosecute Trump for crimes, the Justice Department is closely monitoring the commission’s work. Trump’s actions in Georgia are also under investigation by the grand jury, with the district attorney expected to announce the findings this year. Raffensperger, Georgia’s top election official, rejected Trump’s request to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory in the state – a call made during a telephone conversation days before the Jan. 6 attack. During the conversation, Trump repeatedly cited allegations of fraud and raised the prospect of a “criminal offense” if Georgian officials did not change the vote count. The state had counted its votes three times before confirming Biden’s victory by 11,779. Sterling, Raffensperger’s chief operating officer, became a prominent figure in Georgia’s long post-election count and run-off, with his regular updates often being broadcast live on a divided nation. At one point, the mild Republican begged Americans to reduce the tone of their rhetoric. “Threats to life, physical threats, intimidation – it’s too much, it’s not right,” said Sterling, a Republican. Also on Tuesday is Wandrea “Shay” Moss, one of two Georgian election workers who filed a defamation suit in December 2020 against a conservative website. Moss claimed that the One America News Network had spread false allegations that she and her mother had participated in ballot fraud during the election. The lawsuit, which was settled in April, also cites Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as an ardent supporter of the baseless allegation that the mother and daughter are said to have led to severe harassment, both in person and online. The selection committee also plans Tuesday to unravel the intricate plan of “fake voters” that aimed to stop Biden’s election victory. The plan saw fake voters on seven battlefields – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico – sign certificates that falsely stated that Trump, not Biden, had won their states. Conservative law professor John Eastman, Trump’s lawyer, pushed fake voters in the weeks following the election. Trump and Eastman rallied hundreds of voters on January 2, 2021, encouraging them to send alternative voters from their states where Trump’s team claimed fraud. The fake ballot papers were produced and mailed to the National Archives and to Congress. But the attempt failed in the end, as Vice President Mike Pence denied Trump’s repeated demands to stop certifying Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021 – a power that had no purely ritual role. The commission says it will also show on Tuesday that it has gathered enough data through its more than 1,000 interviews and tens of thousands of documents to link the various attempts to overthrow the election directly with Trump. At least 20 people have been summoned to the House panel over the fake voter plan, including former members of Trump’s campaign, state party officials and state lawmakers. “We will show during a hearing what the president’s role was in trying to persuade states to name alternative voter lists, how this plan initially depended on hopes that the legislature would meet again and bless it,” he said. Sif. Schiff told the Los Angeles Times on Monday that the hearing would also explore the “familiar role” former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows played in plotting to oust Georgia lawmakers and election officials. Raffensperger’s public testimony comes weeks after he appeared before a special Georgia jury to investigate whether Trump and others illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 state election. In retaliation for Raffensperger’s refusal to support his electoral lies, Trump recruited a top challenger in a bid to oust him. But Raffensperger kept the threat to a close in last month’s by-elections, leaving him unable to run as a Democrat in the general election.
