Geopolitics

The fourth day of the January 6 hearings show Trump’s pressure campaign on election officials

The House select committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol meets to hold Steve Bannon, one of former President Donald Trump’s allies in contempt, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday evening, Oct. 19, 2021. From left to right are Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

A few minutes every morning is all you need.

Stay up to date on the world's Headlines and Human Stories. It's fun, it's factual, it's fluff-free.

On Tuesday, the special committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021, focused on the threats made to state lawmakers and election officials in two key states from the 2020 election, Georgia and Arizona.

The hearing laid out its evidence that Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani put pressure on officials and ordinary Americans to promote the “big lie" that Trump had actually won the election and that the election had been unfair. It also laid out the plan that the former president and his Arizona allies worked out to replace legitimate electors in the state with fake electors that would have voted in favor of Trump.

The hearings also focused on Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and Georgia’s Fulton County election worker Wandrea Arshaye Moss, who both experienced significant backlash from Trump’s supporters because of false allegations of fraud. Bowers said that his family regularly had to deal with Trump supporters driving around his neighborhood calling him a pedophile and corrupt politician. Moss said that she dealt with death threats and was forced into hiding because of threats of violence against her.

Key comments:

“I think sometimes moments require you to stand up and just take the shots – you’re doing your job," said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, one of the people who testified at Tuesday’s hearing. “And that’s all we did. We just followed the law and followed the constitution. At the end of the day, President Trump came up short."

According to Committee Vice-Chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, Trump “did not care about these threats of violence," adding, “We cannot let America become a nation of conspiracy theories and thug violence."