The Tuesday public hearing of the January 6 committee in the House was set to focus on topics including pressure on state officials to make some change to the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. In her opening remarks, vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) laid out the case for Justice Department action on what Trump did. Discussing the targeting of officials in various states, Cheney said:
‘Donald Trump had a direct and personal role in this effort, as did Rudy Giuliani, as did John Eastman. In other words, the same people who were attempting to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes illegally were also simultaneously working to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election at the state level. Each of these efforts to overturn the election is independently serious. Each deserves attention both by Congress and by our Department of Justice.’
The January 6 committee has previously established how Trump was repeatedly informed of the falsity of stolen election claims, and Cheney also reiterated that Tuesday. On Tuesday, the panel also played a clip of former Attorney General Bill Barr saying allegations of election fraud in Fulton County, Georgia “had no merit” — federal authorities completed their own review of the situation, Barr indicated. “There was no evidence of a subterfuge to create an opportunity to feed things into the count,” Barr said, discussing the Fulton situation.
Threats of violence against people supposedly involved with imaginary election fraud — or refusing to go along with efforts to address that imaginary fraud — were also a hearing subject Tuesday. “The point is this: Donald Trump did not care about the threats of violence. He did not condemn them. He made no effort to stop them. He went forward with his fake allegations anyway,” Cheney added Tuesday. Threats obviously culminated in part with the very real violence that took over the Capitol grounds on January 6 last year, and indications from rioters show that if they’d been able to physically access certain top leaders, like Mike Pence, those leaders could have been killed. A “confidential informant from the Proud Boys told the FBI the Proud Boys would have killed Mike Pence if given a chance,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said during a recent January 6 committee hearing. Check out Cheney’s comments below:
The Tuesday witnesses included Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — who faced infamous, unsuccessful pressure from then-President Donald Trump to meddle with the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, where Biden won. Also set to be among the witnesses was Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia elections worker who was targeted by Trump for supposed involvement in imaginary election fraud. Amid threats she faced following her targeting, people even showed up at Moss’s grandmother’s house in hopes of making a so-called citizen’s arrest connected to the imaginary fraud. Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, had been election workers in Fulton County. They were named in the consistently debunked allegations discussed by Barr in that footage the January 6 committee aired during its Tuesday hearing.
