Committee investigating Capitol storming exposes how Trump tried to force state officials to reverse election

By

Scott

WASHINGTON – The committee investigating the assault on Capitol Hill discussed at Tuesday's public hearing the pressure that then-President Donald Trump exerted on state officials to annul the 2020 election, after they showed how he had tried to influence the Vice President Mike Pence.

Committee members on January 6 exposed how Trump's pressure not only undermined democracy, but

“Like Mike Pence, these public servants did not agree with Donald Trump's plan.

And when they didn't buy his big lie to substitute their will to stay in power for the popular will, Donald Trump made sure they faced the consequences," Rep. January 6th.

The committee investigating the assault on the Capitol shows a video of Trump, on June 21, 2022.Jacquelyn Martin / AP

“Threats to people's lives and their way of earning a living.

Threats of violence that Donald Trump knew about and amplified,” he added.

Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, testified about the effort by Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani to get the state Legislature to select a new list of electors to favor Trump.

[Giuliani's "drunkenness," Trump's daughter's remarks, and other viral moments from Capitol hearings]

Bowers told the committee that he knew Trump's request was unconstitutional and repeatedly refused to comply.

“It is a personal article of faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired, this is my most basic fundamental belief,” said Bowers, who is Mormon.

“So for me to do that just because someone just asked me to, it's foreign to my very being;

I will not do it".

Bowers became emotional when he told the committee about the toll this episode has taken on him and his family.

Trump supporters have paraded through his neighborhood projecting images of him on their trucks falsely accusing him of being a pedophile.

In one case, an armed man rebuked him and his wife.

"It was disturbing. It's disturbing,"

he declared.

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The committee investigating the attack on Capitol Hill heard testimony from Republican witnesses from Georgia and Arizona, state officials who stood up to the former president in the weeks after the 2020 election and rebuffed his attempts to thwart the will of voters there.

Two top Georgia election officials, Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger and top aide Gabriel Sterling, testified about an infamous phone call four days before the Capitol attack in which

that they would put him ahead of Democrat Joe Biden in the state.

"There were no votes to be found," Raffensberger testified.

"That was an accurate count that had been certified," she added.

[“Pence chose the Constitution over Trump”: Former advisers declare that he had no power to nullify the elections as the former president demanded]

But they also discussed threats to poll workers by Trump and his allies, who falsely claimed Fulton officials had found a suitcase with thousands of ballots.

Sterling explained why he showed up on a TV show on November 30, 2020, when he believed Trump's lies were going to get someone killed.

He received a call from a Dominion Voting Systems official, who was “shocked” and told him that a young contractor had been receiving threats from QAnon supporters.

[It is false that Trump has authorized 20,000 National Guard soldiers to protect the Capitol]

"For lack of a better word, I lost control," Sterling said.

"I lost my temper, but at the time it seemed necessary because the situation was getting worse."

Now both are cooperating with a special Fulton County grand jury investigation into whether Trump violated election law by pressuring Georgia officials.

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Trump issued a statement before Bowers' testimony, insisting that he had told him they had won in Arizona.

"Bowers should hope that there is not a recording of the conversation," Trump said in the statement.

But he didn't provide the audio.

On Thursday, the Jan. 6 Committee is scheduled to hold its fifth public hearing, focused on how Trump pressured top Justice Department officials to investigate false claims of widespread voter fraud.