good day, everyone. i'm andra mitchell joined by hallie jackson. the committee shifts from the pressure of mike pence to donald trump's campaign to get state and local officials in battleground states to falsify election results so he could hold on to the white house. >> here is what and who to watch for 60 minutes from now. state republican officials from arizona, the house speaker, and from georgia, the secretary of state brad raffensperger and his deputy who faced pressure from former president trump and his inner circle of election deniers in the week after joe biden was rightfully declared the winner of the 2020 race. the committee is going to introduce the country to the woman you see on the right, a georgia elections worker who along with her mother faced down

threats to her safety after being accused of being part of a conspiracy theory involving fake ballots, debunked, by the way. >> most of the discussion heading into today's hearing surrounds brad raffensperger who won a primary earlier this month. raffensperger was facing deep discontent from some trump supporters for pushing back on donald trump in the days before the january 6 insurrection, refusing the former president's request to, quote, find the votes trump needed to win that state. >> i just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state. flipping the state is a great testament to our country. >> ladies, in the hearings so far, each followed a pattern. donald trump was told he lost.

he told his supporters that he won anyway. donald trump was told that there was no fraud. he told his supporters that there was fraud. donald trump was told that mike pence did not have the power to overturn the election. he said mike pence had the power to overturn the election. i wonder if that's the same pattern we will see today about pressuring state officials and i'm curious about what we will hear about mark meadows, what role he did or did not play in all of this. >> exactly. one of the two points that i'm looking for today is the mark meadows factor. congressman schiff, who will play a big part in today's hearing, talked to his hometown paper about the potential for new evidence to be introduced that directly, he says and suggests, links mark meadows to what we have seen. that's something to watch for. the other piece of context to remember, the republican officials that we are talking about that we will hear from in the first part of the hearing,

these are people who put their state, who put constitutional election law over loyalty to the party. they are not anti-trumpers. rusty, to the associated press, said he would vote for donald trump in 2024 over joe biden. this is not an anti-trump republican. this is somebody who backs donald trump but who nonetheless resisted pressure to try to overturn legit election results. >> the big difference today is firsthand evidence from the former president himself. the first time that we will have not just what people said that they said to donald trump but this is the first time we are going to hear the voice, the words of donald trump sounds some have compared this to sort of criminal conspirator, a mob figure, saying, i just need

11,780 votes. get me the number of votes. i just need one more, i'm paraphrasing, one more than joe biden got in order to basically steal the election in georgia. if he could do that in enough battleground states, he could be declared the winner. i want to bring in january 6 committee member, pete aguilar, who led the questioning last week when the committee focused on donald trump's pressure on mike pence not to proceed with the electoral vote count that certified joe biden as president. thanks for being with us today. you led the hearing, the testimony. we know this is not a court of law. this is not evidence. but it's presenting a lot of firsthand testimony, of course, of what people said to the president. we will hear from the president himself today as we remember from that brad raffensperger call. you said something that really intrigued me, to "the washington post." you wanted to frame the

questioning, before you finished with your witnesses, to reach your grandmother, people more concerned about the economy, about inflation, about the kitchen table issues that are really the headwinds against democrats in this upcoming midterms and to make people care about election security and democracy. tell us about that and how you think today's witnesses are going to accomplish that. >> i appreciate it. thanks for the question, andrea. i think that's what we need to do. we need to speak to as broad of an audience as possible. i think that this hearing will do just that. this is a continuation of the theme that you talked about. we know donald trump knew he lost the election. we knew he continued to perpetuate that lie. we knew that the pressure campaign on his own vice president continued to build. now the next step of that is talking about that moment in time when the pressure campaign that he levelled directly from the white house on these state

elected leaders, so you have the speaker of the arizona statehouse as well as georgia officials who will all say that they did the right thing, but that they also fielded a number of inquiries and a number of times where the president and mark meadows, rudy giuliani, john eastman pressured them. we need to speak to the broader audience. we need to make sure the american people understand what we are trying to protect. it's the temple of democracy that is standing behind me, the image of the united states capitol under assault. that's what we need to make real for folks. >> congressman aguilar, thank you for being with us and your time today. let me look ahead. i spoke with a member of the january 6 committee who alluded to more witnesses having come forward, more potential witnesses since the hearings have begun in the last couple weeks. i wonder what else you can tell us about who you are hearing

from now. who has maybe come out of the woodwork to want to speak with you? how is that playing into the future hearhearings? what should we expect? >> i think we are. there's always an opportunity to analyze and to continue the investigation of this. like we said from the very beginning, this is about putting to the a puzzle for the american public. we know that a number of hearings are going to be a part of that. we want to make sure we convey everything we need to to the public. we are looking at ways to do that, to continue to build off of this with future public hearings. you are right, the chairman issued the tip line as well. we saw a spike in the number of people who reached out to us with information after the chairman directly put the tip line information out there. we continue to hear information from folks who are going to be potential witnesses at future

hearings. again, this is about putting together as much information as possible for the american public. we want to make sure that we do just that. >> will you subpoena mike pence, the former vice president? will you subpoena ginni thomas? will we expect to hear from either one of those during the oncoming hearings? >> we haven't closed the door to hear from any witness. keep in mind that we have had 1,000 interviews. we have had a handful of individuals who testified publically. we continue to gather that information. this isn't just about putting someone in public. this is about making sure that we're true to the investigation. just because we are focusing on the hearings right now doesn't mean we have left the investigative phase of what we're trying to do here. there will be new witnesses who will talk to us. some behind closed doors.

so both the chair and vice chair have indicated based on public reporting that they would be interested in hearing from some of those individuals. we just haven't closed any door yet. the committee will make that decision in the right course. >> congressman, you have a lot of material from aides, lawyers, donald trump's family, depositions, text messages, documented. you have donald trump saying things in public. do you have any documents from donald trump directly? any audio from behind the scenes from donald trump directly that you plan to share with the american public? >> as you previewed, in this hearing today we're going to talk about that. the state pressure campaign. you will hear i think a heavy dose of that phone call with brad raffensperger that the president had where he continued to level the pressure campaign and continued to not only spew lies but to tell the setting of state to engage in illegal

behavior. you will hear some of those things. i'm not going to get ahead of other evidence we have or our ways we will communicate that. you can expect in future hearings to see both exhibits as well as images and video that we have to share. we have done a good job, i think, on the multi-media side of helping to convey what this means to the american public and we will continue to do that. >> congressman pete aguilar, we could probably talk with you for the next 51 minutes. i know you have to go. thank you for your time. we appreciate it. i want to bring in our reporters covering this. senior capitol hill correspondent garrett haake, ben collins and washington correspondent yamiche alcindor. garrett, let me start with you. i see you in the hallways. i'm sure there's activity. i know you framed this as kind of a prequel to what we saw last

week. talk me through it. >> if you are going to do these hearings chronologically, this would have happened before the pence hearing. it's the failure of the effort, as the committee will lay out, by president trump to flip states to find false electors, to find votes in states that weren't there. as efforts started to fail, it increased the pressure on mike pence and the focus on january 6. a bit out of order if you were to do this chronologically. you could see today as the context for why january 6 did occur. it's this failure. i think you were talking about georgia. we know the story about brad ref raffensperger. it was covered in real time. what i'm going to watch today is the arizona portions of this. we know there was a pressure campaign in arizona.

we know rudy giuliani was involved in it. we haven't seen as much reporting about the specifics of it, about exactly how it went. the speaker of the arizona house coming to testify today. very much a pro trump republican who got put in a very difficult spot by president trump. i think it's going to elicit more information. the former president is pre-butting his testimony, suggesting there are tapes of his conversations that might be detrimental to the republican house speaker in arizona. that's what i'm watching more closely in terms of new information that pushes forward the committee's theory of this conspiracy. >> we will have katie hobbs, the arizona secretary of state, later on the show. stay with us for that. yamiche, i was talking about this a moment ago. we heard so prominently from white house lawyers, aides, some of the family members. we haven't heard a lot about

mark meadows and the role he did or didn't play in all of this. mark meadows was donald trump's chief of staff. is that going to change today? >> it could change. it's something that lawmakers absolutely want to make sure is clear, which is that former president trump wasn't alone in his pressure campaign when he was trying to get state officials to overturn the election and deliver their states for president trump. i think it's interesting to think about the idea that mark meadows, the chief of staff, someone receiving text messages from so many people from reporters who were on the hill, from conservative personalities saying that this needs to stop, on the day of january 6. he was the president's right-hand man. on the calls while the president was pressuring officials to change votes and to really overturn the will of the people. i think what is really interesting -- garrett gets at it. we heard about georgia. i want to hear about arizona. i remember in november when michigan officials were summoned

to the white house. i was on the lawn when former president trump had these michigan officials in the white house and trying to pressure them to change the results of that election even as votes were being counted. it's really important when i'm talking to my sources that lawmakers want to get at the idea that this was not just a couple of states but every state that former president trump thought he could twist arms for in order to try to wrestle back the election even when it wasn't counted and even if it wasn't final. i think that's very important. i think it's important about the politics of this. when we look at these republicans, these are going to be people with bona fide conservative backgrounds saying, this was wrong what the former president was doing. here is what he was trying to do. when i talk to ethical lawyers, they say this is -- or ethics lawyers, rather, this is what lawmakers want to hammer home, that it wasn't a partisan issue but these are republicans talking about a republican president doing something that was unlawful and that would subvert the constitution. >> i want to bring in ben

collins. the nation heard more about the conspiracy theory that donald trump had been spreading. there was a suitcase of votes in georgia. now you have a local election official and her mother, both affected. they can tell us exactly what happened during that vote counting, how the election falsehoods really impacted her life. there were threats against her and her mother. the threats we are hearing about against members of congress. we heard about from adam kinzinger. >> yeah. i think ruby freeman, one of the election workers in georgia, who was brought on because they needed help from her daughter who is going to testify. she's a skeleton key here to this whole thing, to this intimidation effort. she's seen on cctv footage that was distributed by mostly the guy -- his name is ron walkins. she's seen placing ballots on a

table and putting them back down. that was enough to say that there was shady business going on with this election. what happened? someone sent kanye west publicists to her home to admit to an election crime she didn't commit. who sent that person there? that's something i'm interested in finding out. in part, because people in congress who were pro trump were saying we need evidence. we can't just show up on january 6 with no evidence of election fraud. nobody admitting anything and try to get people to overturn this election. if ruby freeman was going to be a patsy here, we have to find out who send kanye west's publicist to her door. thankfully, she was strong enough in that moment to not just admit to a crime that she had nothing to do with. she was strong enough in her faith. she's a fascinating private figure in this situation. she's now suing a bunch of people who spread lies about

her, like websites. we need to find out exactly what went on that led people to her door in the days before january 6. >> ben, let me follow up, when you talked about the suitcase, it was because that suitcase was just the way that election officials always bring votes from one location back to be counted. it had nothing to do with providing new biden votes as was alleged. it was a completely legitimate, normal procedure for that precinct. >> that video was combed over and over again by people like brad raffensperger who have repeatedly said, this is a normal thing that happens. the problem was, it was on cctv. that got through to people trying to prove some election conspiracy that didn't actually happen. ruby freeman, a black woman, was a target of the mob. donald trump in his calls to georgia lawmakers brought up ruby freeman saying she was a

hustler. that's not what she was. she's somebody who ran a kiosk at the mall where she sold purses. she's not a professional political operative. she was a private citizen. that's the chilling part of this whole thing. anybody can be targeted in these moments of wild hysteria having to do with trying to prove an election was stolen that was not stolen. >> we have seen some very scary threats, including what congressman kinzinger put out. a letter that threatens his wife and his 5-month-old daughter and his life. thank you very much. coming up, we heard the call where donald trump wanted georgia to find 11,780 votes. what will we hear about what led up to it and then followed it? what exactly was mark meadows thinking about in sending the georgians conducting the audit, what was he going to send them? you are watching special coverage of the january 6th committee hearings right here on msnbc. e hearings right here on e hearings right here on msnbc. in real time

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welcome back to our special coverage of the january 6th committee hearing. chairman thompson is expected to gavel down at 1:00 p.m. the hearing will include testimony from state officials pressured by donald trump and his allies to overturn donald trump's loss. with me are andrea mitchell and hallie jackson. joining us now, chuck rosenberg, there he is, former u.s. attorney joyce vance, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence frank figueroa and political reporter greg bloomstein. the donald trump phone call to find the votes, that's direct evidence of him trying to find votes. you could argue it's direct evidence maybe of a crime. can you argue that?

is there more evidence to build that case? >> this is sometimes a complicated inquiry for people who aren't trial lawyers. we get hung up on this notion of direct evidence. actually, trial lawyers can use direct evidence or they are use circumstantial evidence. maybe this example will explain how that will play into today's hearing. if you and i watch it snow, then we can say it snowed. that's direct testimony. if we go to sleep at night and there's no snow on the ground the and we wake up in the morning and there's snow, there's a pretty good chance it snowed overnight. that's circumstantial. a lot of the evidence that we are looking at so far about the former president's involvement is circumstantial. nobody is saying, i heard him say he knew he lost the election and wanted the people in georgia to make up the number of votes that he needed. but his own words on tape, it's awfully close. it's very good circumstantial evidence that he knew what the numbers looked like, his campaign folks were telling him what the numbers looked like.

>> he knew the number he needed. >> that's look close to manufacturing ballots. >> andrea? >> chuck, we heard the call from trump to georgia's secretary of state that was referred to and the committee is getting up to 20 hours of documentary fooage from a filmmaker, including raw video from the day of the attack and video leading up to the attack. how could that prove helpful? the committee is supposed to see it thursday. he is cooperating. >> right. as joyce explained so well, what he said, the words out of his mouth, get us closer to what he knew. right? you also mentioned this at the beginning of the show and you are right. being told something is different than knowing something. what you are told gets you close to what you know but not always. when i took calculus, i was told

for a semester how calculus worked. if you look at my exams, you would think i learned nothing. you would be right. i don't know calculus. when we listen to what president trump said in his own words about what he believed and what he knew and what he understood, that gets us closer to being able to prove intent. by the way, i mostly agree with joyce's analysis about the tape of the phone call between trump and the georgia secretary of state. but he also says in that call, we won. if he actually believed he won -- he didn't, by the way. but if he believed he won, then it beens harder to prove the call was fraudulent. the call is helpful to prosecutors, but it's not conclusive and it's not determinative. a admitting it was a fraud would get prosecutors to where they immediate to be. >> nobody knows georgia better

than you and the dynamics at play. brad raffensperger, gabe sterling, we will hear from them. brad in particular has said a lot publically. i interviewed him. >> he wrote a book. >> he wrote a book. he has spoke n to the fulton county grand jury. what are you anticipating new that we may hear from secretary raffensperger, or is this more about the committee looking to create a story line that they think will be compelling? >> i think you are right about that. i think it's about creating that narrative, that story line. i talked to some of raffensperger's aides who indicate he has month bombshell to drop. he wrote a book about it. millions of people have listened to the phone call. he is in the middle of a re-election campaign. he talked about it on campaign trail. there's not much more there there that he can discuss. we will hear probably from the

investigators about the events that led up to that phone call, about his feelings, his emotions as he got the call, whether he felt coerced, whether he felt bullied. perhaps we will hear from other trump allies, whether senator graham of south carolina, or other trump supporters, their attempts to get brad raffensperger to toss out joe biden ballots or to overturn the election. we might hear more about those efforts as well. >> so much of the testimony today is expected, especially with the local officials from georgia, to be about the security threats we are seeing proliferating around the country, especially in battleground states. frank figliuzzi, there's now a new report from the capitol police showing a huge increase in threats against elected members. it's 1,820 this year alone. it's up 144% since donald trump was elected. the security issue -- we

referred to it a couple of times to adam kinzinger and threats against him. we see security around several members intensified. what just happened as well to the supreme court. it's not just members of congress. the supreme court members especially, of course, to justice kavanaugh at his home. what can be done about this? what should be done about this? is the fbi on this? is it just the capitol police? >> the fbi is on it. the attorney general made sure they are on it. there have been public notices to elected officials from school boards to election officials at the local, county, state level that the fbi is involved in teaching them threat analysis, mitigation, security procedures. you will recall the fulton county district attorney who is looking at this issue of trump pressuring the georgia officials requested not too long ago fbi help in assessing the security threat around her, her office and what she's doing.

this isn't all happening in isolated vacuum-like environments. this is tied to a strategy, namely, by people like steve bannon, even the proud boys who say, we're going local. we're going to plant and seed people who will help change and control the outcomes of elections at local, county and state levels. this kind of thing is not all isolated. by the way, there's also an interesting fbi connection. it's been glossed over in the news of the day that we have to keep up with. it's been reported by multiple news outlets that fbi agents have actually interviewed multiple gop officials, major prominent gop donors in georgia and issued subpoenas to former gop officials in georgia and asked them about whether they have had contact with trump on the issue of the georgia election. this is not just a state or

county investigation and grand jury in georgia. it appears the fbi is all over the georgia case as well. >> we will see if we will find out more about georgia from these committee hearings. we have all heard the call between donald trump and raffensperger. raffensperger wrote a book about it. one thing i learned today that i didn't know yesterday in an interview with the "l.a. times," adam schiff said the committee has text messages from mark meadows where he expresses a desire to send those conducting the georgia audit autographed signatures, autographed maga hats, autographed by donald trump. >> all of these little pieces add some color and texture to the story. to go back to chuck's point about the need to have really clear evidence of what was going on, i think juries -- if we were talking about a criminal case, for sure -- are interested in

hearing about little details that firm up the relationships. this isn't something that you do when you are the president's chief of staff just for nothing. this is the sort of thing that you do when the relationship has been productive and the work has been productive. >> is it legal to send an auditor an autographed hat? where does the law stand on that? >> it's technically okay to send something that's small in value. that would turn more on georgia state ethics than anything else. it might be something if you are the georgia state auditor you might choose in the exercise of discretion not to accept, to politely turn down. i'm not sure i would say it crosses over some sort of a legal line. again, we have this sense that the white house is interfering in state and local elections in ways that the white house isn't supposed to. there's a longstanding principle at doj that the justice department doesn't get involved in these investigations, that should in no way influence the

outcome of elections. that's the problem here. it's clear washington is trying to influence the outcome of elections. >> well, thanks to craig, thank you, chuck, joyce, frank. don't go far. we will check back with you before the committee gavels in. that's expected around 1:00. coming up, what we could hear today from arizona's house speaker about the pressure he faced from former president trump and rudy giuliani. arizona's secretary of state joining us next. you are watching special coverage of the january 6th committee hearings on msnbc. stay with us. n msnbc. n msnbc. stay with us and that's... how you collect coins. your money never stops working for you with merrill, a bank of america company. only at vanguard you're more than just an investor you're an owner. that means that your priorities are ours too. our interactive tools and advice can help you build a future for the ones you love.

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welcome back. while much of today's january 6th committee hearing is going to focus on donald trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 georgia, they will first hear from republican house speaker rusty bowers. he refused to help donald trump overturn arizona's presidential results, despite pressure from the former president and his supporters. a short time ago, the former president put out this statement saying -- t put out this statemet

saying - with us now is arizona's secretary of state who is seeking the democratic nomination for governor. what is your reaction to the new statement from donald trump about arizona's vote? >> it's just more of his false allegations about the election. it's not surprising, unfortunately, that he just continues to put out lies. >> secretary, i have to ask you, one of the -- i talked with others who were involved on the elections on state levels here. unanimously, i have heard one thing. people talking about the future. this isn't about looking to the past and 2020. this is about looking ahead. i know that's a sentiment you share. can you explain that?

when we watch what's going to go down in 25 minutes and it's very much looking back at what happened in 2020, what should we think about as it relates to the next election? >> this is about more than january 6 and the events leading up to that. what we are seeing as an effort to continue to undermine our elections, to attack them, to install loyalists of the former president who will be willing to work to overturn results in the future if they don't like them. that's in addition to the attacks on voting rights we have seen across the country based on the big lie. this is all a very coordinated effort to continue to attack our democracy and install leaders of the former president's choosing. that's a big threat not just to our freedoms to vote and the future free and fair elections but manyfreedoms.

we are waiting for the decision on roe. that's the start of many more attacks on our freedoms. >> how do you restore the confidence that's been eaten away by these conspiracies, by the former president saying the election was stolen, when it wasn't, by him singling out arizona? how do you restore confidence in your state? i guess i wonder if we can take that and apply it to the rest of the country. >> i think it's so important for leaders on both sides of the aisle to stand up and tell the truth about what happened in 2020, to provide that transparency into the processes that we oversee to make sure voters and the public understand what's happening and that these allegations, they have no basis in reality. that's what we have been doing, part of how we are countering these attacks and will continue to do here in arizona. it requires leadership like from the speaker bowers that we will hear from today.

both sides of the aisle need to be a part of this. we can't solve it ourselves on the democratic side. it's really unfortunate that the majority of the republican party has bought into these lies and falsehoods instead. >> secretary, republicans in your state lost a legal effort to end mail-in voting. you said this was the precursor for what they will try to do in 2024. look ahead to what you see in 2024 given everything that's happened before and ongoing. are you disappointed congress has not done something to at least close the electoral count loophole which is a big part of the mike pence drama that was unveiled last week in the hearings? >> on the federal level, we need major reform to protect voting rights across the country. the electoral count act is a small part of what needed to be looked at. i think that reiterates the

importance of state level elections, because what happens in 2020 will determine 2024. the outcome of the races, the governor race, secretary of state race in arizona, i'm facing a probable nominee on the republican side who has repeat lid called to decertify the 2020 election, refused to say whether she would certify. she was a party to the lawsuit to end early voting. she's filed a lawsuit to end the use of standard tab ooh lags equipment, which would be a disaster for administration. she's not on the side of the voters, for sure. that's why i'm running for governor. >> we have referenced a couple of times here on the show so far in our special coverage the growing concern about the potential for political violence, the increased number

of threats against officials serving in congress or elsewhere since the january 6th insurrection. you have faced some of this yourself. can you tell us more about that? what did you hear? >> there were threats against me and my family and my life. i had armed protesters outside my house. those threats continued through the sham audit that drug on throughout the summer last year. what i know is that this january 6th committee is the first step in accountability. until these folks are held accountable at every level, this type of violence and threat is going to be the norm. that's not acceptable. >> arizona secretary of state, we are grateful to you for your time and for being here with us. thank you so much. coming up, the pence factor. how the former vice president is handling the january 6th hearings as he reportedly considers a presidential run of

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we are back with the fourth january 6th hearing set to begin a couple of minutes from now. it's on the left side of your screen. we saw officer daniel hodges and harry dunn in the room. they have been there all or most of the hearings. i'm joined by andrea and katie. the focus on today's session on former president trump's pressure on state officials to overturn the election. you will hear from that from the witnesses who will take the seats in the next 10 or 15 minutes. officials who resisted that pressure, allowing, of course, for a transfer of power that followed the constitution. i want to bring in a couple folks to talk about this.

dasha burns on the ground in georgia. we will start with you and what you are hearing from folks there. how much are they pay attention to what's going down? >> reporter: i talked to voters around the first hearing. i have a sense that people are not paying as much of attention, this isn't the same kind of grab your popcorn, silence your phones schedule that viewing type of television. they are paying attention with their secretary of state in the spotlight today. there are two things that i heard from my conversations with voters. truth and accountability. everyone i spoke with -- these were folks across the political spectrum -- believed it was important to hold the hearings, important to get to the truth of what happened on january 6. when it came to the accountability factor, people were very skeptical that they would see that part of things come to fruition here. listen to what i heard. >> be honest if you are in

politics. most of them are not. i hate to -- i don't know what the outcome is going to be. >> it depends on how that ends up going down the line. someone can tell you exactly what happened and the truth, but that doesn't mean people are going to act on it. >> as far as anything happening to the person we are dealing with, i don't think it's going to weigh anything. >> you don't think there's accountability? >> no. >> reporter: people were eager to hear from the secretary of state. they, of course, know about the phone call. they remember, most people i spoke with, hearing it at the time. they are eager to hear him talk about it in his own words, what that experience was like, and see what else might come out today that they haven't yet learned about. >> let's stick with this reaction and go to vaughan hillyard who is in illinois. the former vice president pence spoke there last night. he made a quick allusion to what is going on with the hearings. what are you hearing from folks

out there? are they telling you that they are paying attention? are they caring? >> reporter: i talked to one gentleman herein illinois. he listened to a the former vice president. he notably told me me had watched part of the hearings, and actually, appreciated the role that mike pence laid on january 6th. but there was a head nod to the power structure that donald trump still plays. despite mike pence being that central figure on january 6th, you are not hearing him go around this country or even take part in interviews in which he's talking about his role that day or the danger he faced or just how close the peaceful transfer of power was from being obstructed take a listen to the subtle nod he did give to january 6th in his hope for these months ahead for the republican party.

take a listen. >> we have all been through a lot. global pandemic, social unrest, divisive election, tragic day in our nation's capitol. now is the time to have courage in our convictions. to stand firm, to speak boldly with stout hearts. elections are about the future. the days it wasn't now and election day, let's cast a positive vision for the future for the american people. >> reporter: if i may, let's look at it this way. 18 months ago was the january 6th insurrection. 18 months from now, we're looking at the iowa caucuses to help determine the gop nominee for president in 2024. >> interesting timing and an important reminder because republican national committee, your former chairman, michael

steele, pence has his eye, as does donald trump potentially as well, on 2024. and mike pence is really not even walking a tight rope here in that speech, he's avoiding the january 6th and what happened six months ago and not sepping or embracing this hero label that was attached to at least his behavior that day. a lot of people criticized why did you wait so long. why did you wait until the 12:00 hour on that very day, almost 1:00, an hour efore the breach when it was too late to turn the mob back, to declare you were not going to go along with the conspiracy to overturn the election by stopping the count. what about mike pence? complete loyalist, all i have seen in all parts of the world declaring in really hostile places, people were hostile to

trump, i bring you readings from the greatest president of the united states, and in silence at international gatherings. how does he deal with this when trump still has a hold on so many people in the republican party? he has to run a primary or a caucus in iowa. >> he's got to figure out what path he wants to take. i don't see it as a tight rope. in my estimation, i think he has a lot more power and ability to influence than he may give himself credit for. have the courage of our convictions and stand firm. okay, what are your convictions when it comes january 6th and what happened you knowing the president of the united states wanted you dead and what are you standing firm for or against relative to that. he's not going to get through a 2024 cycle without having to

confront and address that part of his involvement and what he felt, what those pictures showed us that we have seen the still shots of him in that graduating there on the phone trying to figure out what's happening. and calling kmabd shots, being the commander-in-chief at that moment, so i don't think this is going to be as easy for him as he may think or some of his people may think. he has to address it head on. i think he should. i think he should lean into the role he played that day to create that separation, to reorient, if you l the footing of the gop away from trumpism and towards the brand of conservatism that we all know mike pence really believes in. >> i just want to put a pin in that. adam schiff was indicating he's not going to be testifying to this committee.

>> the hearing room a moment ago or now, i should say, is filling up. we are about five minutes or so from 1:00, which is when we expect this hearing to begin. michael, stick with us. let's bring back our panel. ali, i want to begin with you. when i was on the capitol, i spoke to lindsey graham. he was going to dinner instead of watching and then denigrated the committee. now that 20 million people have watched these hearings, 6 in 10 americans say the president should be charged. is that changing the way that republicans on capitol hill are seeing this hearing? >> reporter: i think when you think about republicans on capitol hill and the way they are viewing this hearing, you go a step deeper in that pole and you see what's shaking out here. 60% of americans think trump should be held accountable when

you actually break it down at the republican level in that poll, it's shy of 20%. it's not to say that every republican is ignoring the fact that these hearings are happening. many of them are aware. it's whether or not they are willing to speak to them in a candid way. those who do, you are added to the list of trump's vendetta campaign. i do think the interesting thing that's happening though around trump's response to the way republicans on the hill have handled this is the way he's going after kevin mccarthy for not having republicans on this committee. with know the republicans that mccarthy wanted on this committee were jim jordan and jim banks. those are people who are alloys of the former president and blocked from being on this committee because many of themselves voted not to certify the results. that's the crux of being on this committee. republicans are feeling like

they lack the visibility into what he's doing. they have no insight into what this committee is doing right now. that's a key point there that republicans are now grappling with as these hearings go forward. >> thank you so much. we'll look for you during any breaks in the hearings. as we keep up our special coverage afterwards. the witnesses in the room seated. so it's not as close of a look as we have gotten but the absolute scrum of fafers, media in the room and the shot from behind. you can see they will be filled with members of the january 6th select committee. michael steele, let me bring back up what we started with which is thissed in of the people we're about to hear from. the three of them seated there who was attacked within the last 52 minutes by former president trump. again, these brad who just won that primary race in georgia,

essentially a call from voters that they backed him and his actions that the trump loyalty only goes so far. the point that's interesting is he's still supports donald trump. he would still vote for donald trump again. these are not rinos, republicans in name only. these are people, especially in the case of m. bowers, who believe in the party who couldn't cross this bridge for donald trump. where to you see their place in the party? >> so first first. the only real rino is donald trump. secondly, these three gentlemen, unlike a lot of other republican elected officials who stood on the side of holding the line, have demonstrated that they can create that separation and survive. they can be supportive of trump's policies or whatever and

survive. so they really are, i think a testament to the idea about what really happened that day, the role that trump may have played in trying to put pressure on them. that's what this conversation is going to be about coming up. and i think it will be an instructive framing for america this sort of dichotomy that you'll have someone who says, yeah, i would vote for trump, but at the same time, testify to what trump did that day. and why that is important at this time going back to the accountability question, to hold people accountable for what happeneden that day. we'll see how the public receives it. but i think it's very dramatic in telling that they are here in large measure surviving the slings and arrows from trump and trumpists out there. and about ready to testify to what trump tried to bully the narrative and push them to do something unconstitutional.

>> chuck rosenberg, i may have to interrupt you. we may be about a minute away from them gaveling down. does it have to be evidence of a crime in order to grab americas's attention to the fact that a president of the united states when he was president was not only pressuring his vice president, but pressuring state, local officials around the country to try to overturn an election? >> no, it was an unlawful attempt to hold on to power. that fact ought to be enough to make sure this man never holds office, let alone the office of the president again. if there are crimes, and i'm not just talking about trump here, but some of his underlings, we ought to consider holding people accountable for that, absolutely. but just looking ats the behavior, looking at the conduct, that ought to be enough to turn off anybody to convince anybody who watches this fairly

and with an open mind that this man should never be in power again, should never be trusted with thats esteemed office. >> as we say see the still photographers in the well there taking pitures of the witnesses, you see brad in the middle of the georgia secretary of state, who has been on all sides of this pressure and we'll hear from liz cheney and adam schiff, certainly very familiar to our audiences, who was elected in the 2000 cycle and became is much more better known through both impeachments and as head of the intelligence committee and also as the ranking democrat on the intelligence committee when the republicans still held the house. that battling with the republicans over the intelligence committee and over

whether or not there were leaks from either side. >> what's interesting is congressman schiff talked about from this committee so many more witnesses speaking on the record than with the prior impeachment. >> a huge frustration. we hear the gavel. we are going to hear from the chairman. >> the select committee to investigate the january 6th attack on the united states capitol will be in order. without objection, the chair is authorized to declare the committee in recess at any point. pursuant to house deposition authority regulation 10, the chair announces the committee's approval to release the deposition material presented during today's hearing. good afternoon. in our last hearing, we told the story of a scheme driven by donald trump to pressure former vice president mike pence to illegally overturn the election

results. we showed that when the pressure campaign failed and mike pence fulfilled his constitutional obligation, donald trump turned a violent mob loose on him. we showed that the mob came within 40 feet of the vice president. today we'll show what happened to mike pence wasn't an isolated part of donald trump's scheme to overturn the election. in fact, pressuring public servants into betraying their oaths was a fundamental part of the playbook. a handful of election officials in several key states stood between donald trump and up ending of american democracy. as we begin today, it's important to remember when we count the votes for president, we count the votes state by state.

the candidates who win the pop already vote in the state wins all the states electoral college votes. whoever wins a majority of the electoral college votes wins the presidency. so donald trump focused on just a few states. he wanted officials at the local and state level to say the vote was tainted by fraud and throw out the results. even though as we showed last week, there wasn't any voter fraud that could have overturned the election results. and like mike pence, these public servants wouldn't go along with donald trump's scheme. when they wouldn't embrace the big lie and substitute the will of the voters with donald trump's will to remain in power, donald trump worked to ensure they would face the consequences. threats to people's livelihood

and lives, threats of violence that donald trump knew about and amplified, and in our other hearings, we can't just look back ward at what happened in late 2020 and early 2021 because the danger hadn't gone away. our democracy endured a mighty test on january 6th and in the days pfr. we say our institutions held. but what does that really mean? democratic institutions aren't abstractions or ideas. they are local officials who oversee elections. secretary of state, people who whom we placed our trust that they will carry out their duties. two weeks ago new mexico held its primary elections. one county commission refused to certify the results citing they unsupported claims dealing with

voting machines. the court stepped in saying the mexico law required the commission to certify the results. two of the three members of the commission finally relented. one still refused saying his vote, quote, isn't based on any evidence. it's not based on any facts. it's only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition and that's all i need. by the way, a few months ago, this county commissioner was found guilty of illegally entering the capitol grounds on january 6th. this story reminds us of a few things. first, as we have shown in our previous hearings, claims that widespread voter fraud tainted the 2020 presidential election have always been a lie.

donald trump knew they were a lie and he kept amplifying them any way. everything we describe today, the relentless destructive pressure campaign on state and local officials based on a lie. donald trump knew it. second, the lie hasn't gone away. it's corrupting our democratic institutions. people who believe that lie are now seeking positions of public trust and as seen in new mexico, their oath to the people they serve or take a backseat to their commitment to the big lie. if that happens, who will make sure our institutions don't break under the pressure. we won't have close calls. we'll have a catastrophe. my distinguished colleague from california, mr. schiff, will

present much of the select committee's finding on that matter. first, i'm pleased to recognize our vice chair ms. cheney of wyoming for any opening statement care to offer. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. today we will begin examining president trump's effort to overturn the election by exerting pressure on state officials and state legislatures. donald trump had a direct and personal role in this effort a 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 work ing 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.

but a as a federal court has already indicated, these efforts were also part of a broader plan and all of this was done in preparation for january 6th. i would note two points for particular focus today. first, today you will hear about calls made by president trump to officials of georgia and other states. as you listen to these tapes, keep in mind what donald trump already knew at the time he was making those calls. he had been told over and over again that his stolen election allegations were nonsense. for example, this is what former attorney general bill barr said to president trump about allegations in georgia. >> we took a hard look at this ourselves. and based on our review of it, including the interviews of the key witnesses, the fullton

county deegations had no merit. the ballots were legitimate. they weren't in a suitcase. they had been preopened for feeding into the machine. all this stuff about the water leak and some sent fuj involved, there was no evidence to create an opportunity to feed things into the count. so we didn't see any evidence of fraud in the fullton county episode. >> and acting deputy attorney general told donald trump this. we have done hundreds of interviews. the major allegations are not supported by the evidence to vote. >> trump was told by his own advisers that he had no basis for his stolen election claims. yet he continued to pressure state officials to change the election results.

second, you'll hear about a number of threats and efforts to pressure state officials to reverse the election outcome. s one witness warned president trump about potential violence. more than a month before january 6th. you'll see excerpts of that today. >> it had all gone too far. all of it. joe asked for chris krebs to be shot. a 20-something tech today has death threats and a noose put outside he should be hung for tree sob because he was transferring a report on batches from an ems to accounting computer so he could read it.

it has to stop. mr. president, you have not condemned these actions or lack waj. senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions. this has to stop. we need you to step up and if you're going to take a position of leadership, show something. my boss, his address is out there. they have people doing caravans in front of their house. they have had people come on to their property. it has to stop. this is elections. this is a backbone of democracy. and all of you who have not said a damn word. >> the point is this. he did not condemn them.

he made no effort. he went forward. for those way. ing today to focus on the evidence the committee will present. don't be distracted by politics. this is serious. we cannot let america become violence. finally, i want to thank our witnesses today. for all of your service to our country. today all of america will hear about the selfless actions of these men and women who acted on our law, protect our freedom and preserve our constitution. today, mr. chairman, we'll also see an example of what truly makes america great. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> without objection, the chair recognizes the gentleman from california, mr. schiff, for an opening statement.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. on november 3rd, 2020, donald trump ran for reelection to the office of the presidency and he lost. his opponent joe biden finished ahead in the key battleground states of arizona, michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, georgia, and elsewhere. the losing presidential candidate fought. he did so through a variety of means. he sought to stop the counting of the vote knowing that the millions of absentee ballots election officials would be counting and thereafter would run strongly against him and deliver a victory to joe biden. next, when he could not stop the counting, he tried to stop state legislatures and governors from certifying the results of the election. he went to court and filed dozens of frivolous lawsuits on

claims of fraud. when that failed, to get them to go back into session and either declare him the winner, decertify joe biden as the winner, or to congress. one for biden and one for him. and pressure the vice president. but the state legislatures wouldn't go along with this scheme. and neither would the vice president. none of the legislatures agreed to go back into special session and declare him the winner. no legitimate state authority in the states donald trump lost would agree to appoint fake trump electors and send them to congress. but this didn't stop the trump campaign either. they assembled individuals and got them to call themselves electors, created phoney

certificates associated with these fake electors and then transmitted them to washington and to the congress to be counted during the joint session of congress on january 6th. none of this worked. but according to federal district judge david carter, former president trump and others likely violated multiple federal laws by engaging in this scheme, including conspiracy to defraud the united states. you will hear evidence of the former president and his top advisers direct involvement in key elements of this plot for what judge carter called a coup in search of a legal theory. for as the judge explained, president trump's pressure campaign to stop the electoral count did not end with vice president pence. it targeted every tier of elected officials, convincing state legislatures to certify competing electors was essential to stop the count and ensure

president trump's reelection. as we have seen in our prior hearings, running through this scheme was a big lie that the election was plagued with massive fraud and somehow stolen. you'll remember what the president's own attorney general bill barr said he told the president about these claims of massive fraud affecting the outcome of the election. >> i told him that the stuff that his people were shuttling out to the public were bs. >> the president's lie was, and is, a dangerous cabser on the body politic. if you can convince americans they cannot trust their own elections, at new time they lose, it's illegitimate and what is left but violence to determine who should govern.

this brings us to the focus of today's hearing. donald trump and his campaign tried to put pressure on them. when state executive officials refused to certify him, he applied more pressure. when state legislators refused to go back into session, he amped up the pressure yet again. anyone who got in the way of donald trump's continued hold on power after he lost the election was the subject of a dangerous and escalating campaign of pressure. this pressure campaign brought angry phone calls and texts, armed protests, intimidation and all too often threats of violence and death. state legislators were singled out. so, too, were statewide elections officials. even local elections workers diligently doing their jobs were accused of being criminals and had their lives turned upside

down. as we will show, the president's supporters heard the former president's claims of fraud and the false allegations he made against state and local officials as a call to action. >> stop the steal. stop the steal. you're a threat to democracy. you're a threat to free and honest elections. >> we started to hear the noises outside my home. i thought, it's me. and then we don't know what's going to happen. the uncertainty of that was the fear. are they coming with guns?

are they going to attack my house? i'm in here with mid-my kid. i'm trying to put him to bed. so that was the scariest moment not knowing what was going to happen. >> this pressure campaign against state and local officials spanned numerous states. as you'll see in this video produced by the select committee. >> my name is josh rosselman for the house select committee to investigate the january 6th attack on the united states capitol. beginning in late november 2020, the president and his lawyers started appearing before state legislators urging them to give their electoral votes to trump, even though he lost the popular vote. >> i represent president trump along with chad ellis. and this is our fourth or fifth hearing. >> this election has to be turned around because we want pennsylvania by a lot and we won all of these swing states by a

lot. >> this was a strategy with both practical and legal elements. the select committee campaign lawyer asked another lawyer to write a memo justifying the idea. >> when do you remember this coming up for the first time? >> right after the election. it might have been before the election. >> eastman prepared a memo attempting to justify this strategy which was circulated to the trump white house. to advocate for it publicly. >> you can do what the florida legislature was prepared to do which was to adopt electors yourselves. and when you add in the mix of the significant anomalies and sworn affidavits and video evidence of outright election fraud, i don't think it's just your authority to do that, but i think you have a duty to do that

to protect the integrity of the election here in georgia. >> but republican officials in several states released public statements recognizing that president trump's proposal was unlawful. for instance, brian kemp called the proposal unconstitutional. while arizona house speaker rusty bowers wrote the idea would undermine the rule of law. the pressure campaign to get legislators to go along with this intensified when president trump invited delegations from michigan and pennsylvania to the white house. >> either you or speaker, did you make the point to the president that you were not going to do anything that violated michigan law? >> i believe we did. whether or not it was those exact words or not, i think the words to how it would have more likely used is we're going to follow the law. >> nevertheless, the pressure continued. the next day president trump tweeted hopefully the courts or legislatures will have the courage to do what has to be done to maintain the integrity of our elections and the united

states of america itself. the world is watching. he posted multiple message as on facebook listing the contact information for state officials and urging his supporters to contact them to, quote, demand a vote on decertify indication. in one of those posts, president trump disclosed a personal phone number to his millions of followers. >> all i remember is receiving over just shy of 4,000 text messages in a short period of time. calling to take action. >> it was a loud noise, loud consistent cadence. we heard that the trump folks are calling and asking for changes in the elections and you can do this. they were believing things that were untrue. >> these efforts also involved

targeted outreach to legislators. >> my name is angela. i'm calling from trump campaign headquarters in washington, d.c. you do have the power to reclaim your authority and send a slate of electors that will support president trump and vice president pensacola. >> from president trump's lawyers and from trump himself. >> i have become friendly with legislators i didn't know four weeks ago. >> another legislator, house speaker brian cutler, received daily voice mails from trump's lairs in the last week of november. >> mr. speaker, this is udy giuliani and jenna ellis. we're calling you together because we'd like to discuss the election. >> lel hello, this is jenna ellis. i'm here with rudy giuliani. >> brian, it's rudy. i really have something important to call to your attention that i think really changes things. >> he felt the outreach was

inappropriate and asked his lawyers to tell rudy giuliani to stop calling, but giuliani continued to reach out. >> i understand that you don't want to talk to me now, but i just want to bring some facts to your attention and talk to you as a fellow republican. >> on december 30th, steve bannon announced a protest at dut cutler's home. >> we're going to start going to offices. if we have to, we're going to go to homes and let them know what we think about them. >> i don't remember the exact number. there was at least three outside either my district office or my home. and you're correct. my then 15-year-old son was home by himself for the first one. all my personal information was online. it was my personal e-mail, my personal cell phone, my home phone number, we had to diskkt our home phone for three days because it would ring all hours of the night and fill up with

messages. >> brian cutler, we are outside. >> clerk facing felony charges in michigan. >> these ads were another element in the effort. the trump campaign spent millions of dollars running ads online and in television. >> the evidence is overwhelming. call your governor and legislators and demand they hear the evidence. >> public pressure on state officials grew dangerous in the lead-up to january 6th. >> let us in! >> what are we going to do? what can you and i do? i'm not going to advise it. >> the punishment for treason is death. >> the state pressure campaign and the danger it posed to state

officials and the state capitols around the nation was a dangerous precursor to the violence we saw on january 6th at the u.s. capitol. today you'll hear from rusty bowers, speaker of the house of representatives, he will tell us a about his conversations with the president, rudy giuliani and john eastman and what the president's team asked of him and how his oath of office would not permit it. we'll then hear from brad raftens persianer, who was directed to find 11,000 votes that did not exist, but just enough needed to overtake joe biden. you'll also hear from gabriel sterling, the chief operating officer, about the claims of fraud in the elections in georgia and who responding to a cascading set of threats to his elections team warned the president to stop.

that someone was going to get killed. and you'll hear from a former local elections worker fullton county a about how the lies impacted the lives of real people who administer our elections and still do. dwroul hear what they experienced when the most powerful man in the world, the president of the united states, sought to cling to power after being voted out of office by the american people. the system held but barely. and the system held because people of courage, republicans and democrats, like the witnesses you'll hear today, put their oath to the country and constitution above any other consideration. they did their jobs as we must do ours. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> i now welcome our first panel witnesses. we're joined today by

distinguished legislator from arizona rust bowers who is a republican speaker of the arizona house of representatives. he was first elected to the state legislature in 1993 and has served as speaker since 2019. welcome, speaker bowers. brad raffesperger is serving in this role since 2019. as an elected official and a republican, he is responsible for supervising elections in georgia and maintaining the state's public records. welcome, mr. secretary. gabriel sterling is a chief operating officer in the georgia secretary of state's office. mr. sterling was the statewide voting systems implementation manager for the 2020 election in georgia responsible for leading the secretary of state's

response to the covid pandemic and rolling out modernized voting equipment. i will swear in our witnesses. the witnesses will please stand and raise their right hand. do you swear on the perjury that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god? thank you. please be seated. let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative. speaker bowers, thank you for being with us today. you're the speaker of the arizona house and a self-described conservative republican. you campaigned for president trump and with him during the 2020 election. is it fair to say that you wanted donald trump to win a second term in office? >> yes, sir. thank you.

>> is it your understanding that president biden was the winner of the popular vote in arizona in 2020? >> yes, sir. >> thank you. pursuant to section 5c 8 the chair recognizes the gentleman from california for questions. >> speaker, thank you for being with us today. before we begin with the questions that i have prepared for you, i wanted to ask you about a statement that former president trump issued, which i received just prior to the hearing. have you had a chance to review that statement? >> my counsel called and read it to me, yes, sir. >> in that statement, i won't read it in its entirety. former president trump begins by calling you a rino, republican in name only. he then references a conversation in november 2020 in

which he claims that you told him that the election was rigged and that he had won arizona. to quote the former president during the conversation, he told me the election was rigged and that i won arizona, unquote. did you have such a conversation with the president? >> i did have a conversation with the president. that certainly isn't it. there were parts of it that are true. but there are parts that are not, sir. >> and the part that i read you, is that false? >> anywhere, anyone, any time has said that i said the election was rigged, that would not be true. >> when the former president in his statement today claimed that you told him that he won arizona s that also false? >> that is also false. >> mr. bowers, i understand that

after the election, and i don't know whether this is the conversation the former president is referring to, but after the election, you receive ed a phone call from president trump and rudy giuliani in which they discussed the result of the presidential election in arizona. if you would, tell us about that and whether the former president or rudy giuliani raised allegations of election fraud. >> thank you. my wife and i had returned from attending our church meetings. it was on a sunday. and we were still in the driveway. i had received a call from a colleague telling me that the white house was trying to get in touch with her and i. and that she said please, if it you could try to take this together. immediately, i saw that the white house on my bluetooth was calling. and i took the call and was asked by the operator at the white house if i would hold for the president, which i did.

and mr. giuliani came on first. nicety. then president trump came on. he initiated a conversation. >> during that conversation, did you all ask mr. giuliani for proof of these allegations of fraud that he was making? >> on mult presidential occasions, yes. >> when you asked him for evidence, what did he say? >> he said that they did have proof, and i asked him do you have names. for example, 200,000 illegal immigrants, some large number, 5,000 dead people, et cetera. and i said, do you have their names? yes. will you give them to me? yes. the president interrupted and said give the man what he needs, rudy. he said, i will. and that happened on at least

two occasions that interchange in the conversation. >> so mr. giuliani was claiming on the call there were hundreds of thousands of undocumented people and thousands of dead people who had purportedly voted in the election. >> yes. >> and you asked for evidence of that? >> i did. >> did he ever receive from him that evidence during the call? >> never. >> what was the ask during this call? he was making these allegations of fraud, but he had something or a couple things that they wanted you to do. >> the ones i remember were first that we would hold and allow an official committee at the capitol. and they can take action thereafter. and i refused. the circus had been brewing with

lots of demonstrations at counting center and other places. and i did not feel that the evidence in its absence merited a hearing and i didn't want to be used as a pawn. if there was some other need that the committee hearing would fulfill. >> what was his second ask? >> i said to what end the hearing. he said we have heard by an official high up in the republican legislature that there is a legal theory or ability in arizona that you can remove the electors of president

biden and replace them, and we would like to have the legitimate opportunity through the committee to come to that end and remove that. and i said, that's totally new to me. i have never heard of any such thing. and had pressed that point and said you are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath when i swore to the constitution to uphold it and i also swore to the constitution and the laws of the state of arizona and this is totally foreign as an idea or a theory to me, and i would never do anything of such magnitude without deep consultation with qualified attorneys. i have some good attorneys and i'm going to give you their names.

i said i will not break my oath. i they thi that was up to that point. >> during the conversation, you heard mr. giuliani calling as essentially a fellow republican. did he make a similar appeal to you or bring up the fact you share a similar party? >> whether it was in that call or a later meeting, he did bring that up more than once. >> how would he bring that up? >> aren't we all republicans here? i would think we would get a better reception. i would think you would listen a little more open. that we're all republicans. and this evidence that you asked him for that would justify this extraordinary step, i think you said they never produced. why did you feel either in the absence of that evidence or with it what they were asking you to do would violate their oath to the constitution.

>> first of all, arizona there's some 40 plus years earlier, the legislature established the manner of electing artificials or the electors for the presidential race. once it was given to the people, it becomes a fundamental right of the people. so as far as i was concerned for someone to ask me in the posse, there was no evidence being presented of our strength. evidence can be hearsay evidence. it's still evidence, but it's still hearsay. but strong judicial quality evidence, anything that would say to me you have a doubt, deny your oath. i will not do that.

on more than one occasion throughout all this, that has been brought up, and it is a tenant of my faith that the constitution is inspired. of my most basic foundational believes. and so for me to do that, because somebody just asked me to, is foreign to my very being. i will not do it. >> did you ask if when he was proposing had ever been done before? >> i did. >> what did he say? >> he said i'm not familiar with arizona law, but i don't think

so. and that also was brought up in other conversations both with him and with john eastman and others. >> i understand he apyred with others with the the effort to overturn the result of the election that a purported hearing and hotel ballroom in phoenix, was this an official hearing of the state legislature? >> it was not. and why was it not a real official hearing of the legislature? >> a legislators can hold a group meeting. he can call it a hearing but when they ask me to have an official hearing, we establish it by protocols, public notice, et cetera. it's typically held at the capitol, but doesn't need to be. we can authorize a hearing off campus. in this case, i had been asked on several occasions to allow a

hearing. i denied it. but said you're free to hold a meeting to the person who asked. and which he ultimately did. i think he was a little frustrated, but he ultimately did. >> this meeting was the same day, i believe, that the governor of arizona certified biden as the winner of the presidential election in arizona. did you meet with mr. giuliani nd his associates while they were in phoenix sometime after that legislative hearing? >> yes, i did. >> and at that meeting, did mr. giuliani raise any specific allegations of election fraud again? >> his initial comments were, again, the litany of groups of illegal individuals or people deceased. and he brought that up. and i wasn't alone in that meeting. there were others. and other members of the senate aggressively questioned him.

and then i proceeded to question him on the proof he was going to bring me. he did bring those. >> these others were republican members of the senate? >> they were, yes, sir. >> and did they also press him for proof of these allegations? >> they pressed him very strongly. two of them especially. very strongly. >> at some point, did mr. giuliani ask one of the other attorneys on his team to help them out with the evidence? >> he did. he asked jenna ellis, who was sitting to his right. one thing was it was more to the point of was there sufficient evidence or action that we could justify the recalling of the electors. but at that part of the conversation, i know he referred to someone else. but he did ask do we have the proof to jenna.

and she said yes. and i said i want the names. do you have the names. yes. do you have how they voted? we have all the information. i said can you get to me that information. did you bring it with you? she said, no, both mr. giuliani asked her and i asked generally if they had brought it with them. she said, no, it's not with me, but we can get it to you. i said then you didn't bring me the evidence. which was repeated in different it rations for some period of time. >> at some point, did one of them make a comment that they didn't have evidence but they had a lot of theories? >> that was mr. giuliani. >> what exactly did he say? >> my recollection, he said, we have lots of theories. we just don't have the evidence. i don't know if that was a gaffe. maybe he didn't think through what he said, but both myself and others in my group, the

three in my group and my counsel both remembered that specifically. afterwards, kind of laughed about it. >> getting back to the ask in the phone call, he wanted you to have the legislature dismiss the biden electors and replace them with trump electors on the basis of these theories? >> he did not say it in those words, but he did say that arizona law according to what he understood that that would be allowed. and we needed to come into session to take care of that. which initiated a discussion about what i can legally and not legally do. i can't go into session in arizona. >> this meeting or any other time did anyone provide you with evidence of election fraud sufficient to effect the outcome of the presidential election in arizona? >> no one provided me ever such evidence. >> the committee has uncoffered

evidence in the course of our investigation that it stopped the steal protests at state capitals across the country, there were individuals with ties to the groups of parties involved in the january 6th attack on the u.s. capitol. one of those incursions took place in the arizona house of representatives building. as you can see in this footage. this is previously undies closed video of protesters illegally entering and refusing to leave the building. one of the individuals shown in this video is jacob chansly. perhaps better known as the qanon sha mom. he was photographed and ultimately sentenced to 41 months in prison after pleading guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding. ore other protesters who

occupied the house of representatives building included proud boys, men armed with rifles stood outside the entrance. i understand these protesters were calling for you by name. is that correct? >> that is correct. >> speaker bowers, did the president call you again in late december? >> he did, sir. >> did you tell the president in a that second call that you supported him, that you voted for him, but that you were not going to do anything illegal for him? >> i did, sir. >> nevertheless, his lawyer called you some days later on june 4th, 2021. he did have a very specific ask that would have required you to do what you already told the president you couldn't do. something that would violate your oath. >> that's correct. it wasn't just me. i had my counsels and others on the call. >> what did mr. eastman want you to do? >> that we would, in fact, vote,

take a vote to overthrow -- i shouldn't say overthrow. we would decertify the electors and that because we had authority to do so. and he cited article 2, section 1, i think it's clause 2. and said that in his opinion, that gave us the authority. if there was -- i don't recall him saying sufficient evidence, but there was some call or strong reason to do so that we or justification to do so that we could do that. and that he was asking that -- his suggestion was that we do it. and i said, again, i took an oath. for me to take that to do what you do would be counter to my oath. i don't recall if it was in that

conversation clearly that we talked more about the oath, but i said what would you have me do? he said just do it and let the court sort it out. and i said you're asking me to do something that's never been done in history, the history of the united states. and i'm going put my state through that without sufficient proof and that's going to be good enough with me? that i would put us through that, my state, that i swore to uphold both in constitution and in law, no, sir. he said, well, that's my suggestion would be just do it and let the courts figure it all out. and i didn't use that exact phrase, but that was what he

meant. and i declined and said that was close to the end of our phone call. >> and again, this took place after you had recently spoken with president trump and told him that you wouldn't do anything illegal for him. is that right? >> it wasn't wasn't days after, obviously it was days after, but a few days had gone by. >> you had told president trump you would not do anything illegal for him? >> i did both times. >> and you told dr. eastman you did not believe there was legal support to justify what he was asking, but he still wanted you to do it and effectively let the courts work it out? >> i had been warned don't say things you think maybe he said but i do remember him saying that the authority of the legislature was plenary and you could do it. i said you should know i can't call in legislature into session

without two-thirds majority vote. we are only 30 plus 1. there's no way that could happen. >> in your view what he was asking you to do would have violated your oath to the constitution of the united states and of the state of arizona? >> yes, sir. >> did you receive a call from representative andy biggs on the morning of january 6? >> i did. >> what did mr. biggs ask you to do. >> i believe that was the day the vote was occurring to each state to have certification or to declare the certification of the electors and he asked if i would sign on both to a letter that had been sent from my state and or that i would support decertification of electors and i said i would not. >> mr. speaker, on december 4th, 2020, shortly after your meeting

with giuliani and other allies of trump, you released a statement saying calls for legislature to overturn the 2020 certified election results, the statement is straightforward in explaining the breathtaking request, unquote, made by representatives of president trump. quote, that the arizona legislature overturn certified results of last month's election and deliver the state's electoral college votes to president trump, unquote. why did you believe as you wrote in this statement that the rule of law forbid you doing what president trump and his allies wanted you to do? >> representative, i'm sorry, i should be saying mr. chairman, representative schiff, there's two sides to the answer. one is what am i allowed to do and what am i forbidden to do.

we have no legal pathway both in state law nor to my knowledge in federal law for us to execute such a request. and i am not allowed to walk or act beyond my authority if i am not specifically authorized as legislator, as a legislature, then i cannot act. to the point of calling us into session. some say a few legislators have plenary authority, and this is part of this discussion. so to not have authority and be forbidden to act beyond my authority on both counts, i am not authorized to take such action and that would deny my oath. >> in your statement you included excerpts from president ronald reagan's inaugural address in 1981. the newly inaugurated president

told the country, quote, the orderly transfer of authority is called for in the constitution, routinely takes place as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are, in the eyes of many in the world, this every four year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle. tell us if you would, mr. speaker, why did you include president reagan's words in your public statement. >> mr. chairman, representative schiff, because i have a lot of admiration for ronald reagan. i had the opportunity of going to his home with one other person and walking through and i have a lot of admiration for him. when he pointed out, i have

lived in other country for a period of time and visited a few countries, during election times the fact that we allow an election, support an election, and stand behind the election even in the past when there have been serious questions about the election and then move on without disturbance and acceptance, that we choose, we choose to follow the outcome of the will of the people. that will means a lot to me and i know meant a lot to him so we included that.

>> thank you, speaker bowers. i want to look even more deeply at the fake electors scheme. every four years citizens from all over the united states go to polls to elect their president. under our constitution when we cast votes for president, we are voting to send electors pledged to our preferred candidate to the electoral college. in december they meet and send votes to washington. there's only one legitimate slate of electors from each state. on january 6, congress meets to count those votes and winner of the electoral college vote becomes president. you'll hear how they were involved in coordinating the plot to replace biden electors with fake electors not chosen by voters. you'll hear how the campaign convinced fake electors to

submit those through fake certificates, saying votes would only be used in the event president trump won his legal challenges. yet when the president lost those challenges and they were rejected without merit, the fake elector scheme continued. at this point president trump's own lawyers so-called team normal walked away rather than participate in the plan and his own white house counsel's office said the plan was not legally sound. let's play the following video produced by the select committee. >> i am an investigative council for house select committee to investigate the january 6 attack on the united states capitol. november 18th, a lawyer working with trump campaign wrote a memo arguing the trump campaign should organize its own electors in swing states president trump had lost. the select committee received testimony those close to president trump began planning to organize fake electors for

trump in states biden won in weeks after the election. >> who do you remember being involved in those early discussions around thanksgiving time regarding having alternate electors meet? >> mr. giuliani, several of his associates, mr. meadows, members of congress. it is difficult to distinguish if the members i am thinking of were involved during thanksgiving or involved as it progressed through decision. >> at the president's collect request, rnc campaign assisted coordinating this effort. >> what did the president say? >> essentially he turned the call over to mr. eastman who proceeded to talk about the importance of the rnc helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any legal challenges that were

ongoing changed the result of any of the states. i think more helping them reach out and assemble them. my understanding is the campaign did take the lead and we just were helping them in that role. >> as president trump and his supporters continued to lose lawsuits, some campaign lawyers became convinced convening electors in states trump lost was no longer appropriate. >> i just remember, i replied or called somebody saying unless we have litigation pending in these states, i don't think this is appropriate, this isn't the right thing to do. i don't remember how i phrased it, but i got into a little bit of a back and forth, i think with ken cheese broe where i said all right, get after it. like i'm out. >> at that point i had josh

findlay email mr. chess broe to say this is your task. you are responsible for electoral college issues. it was my way of taking that responsibility to zero. >> the committee learned the white house counsel's office felt the plan was potentially illegal. >> to be clear, did you hear the white house counsel's office say the plan to have alternate electors meet and cast votes for trump in states he lost was not legally sound? >> yes, sir. >> who was present for that meeting that you remember? >> it was in our office, mr. meadows, mr. giuliani and a few of giuliani's aassociate atmosphere. >> select committee interviewed several fake electors and campaign staff that helped organize the effort. >> we were kind of useful idiots at that point, strong part of me

really feels it is just kind of as it continued, failure, failure, that that got formulated as what we had on the table, let's just do it. >> and now after what we've told you today about the select committee's investigation about the conclusion of the progressional lawyers, clark, morgan, josh findlay about unwillingness to participate in the convening of the electors, how does that contribute to your understanding of the issues? >> i'm angry. i'm angry. because i think in a sense no one really cared if people were potentially putting themselves in jeopardy. >> would you have not wanted to participate in this any further as well? >> absolutely would not have, had i known the three main lawyers for the campaign that i

have spoken to in the past and leading up were not on board. yeah. >> i was told that these would only count if a court ruled in our favor, so that would have been using our electors, well, it would have been using our electors in ways we weren't told about and we wouldn't have supported. >> documents obtained by the select committee indicate instructions were given to electors in several states that they needed to cast ballots in complete secrecy. because the scheme involved fake electors, those participating in certain states had no way to comply with state election laws like where the electors were supposed to meet. one group of fake electors considered hiding overnight to ensure they could access the state capitol as required in michigan. >> did mr. norton say who he was working with at all on this to have electors meet? >> he said he was working with

the president's campaign. he told me that the michigan republican electors were planning to meet in the capitol and hide overnight so that they could fulfill the role of casting their vote per law in the michigan chambers and i told him in no uncertain terms that was insane and inappropriate. >> in one state, they asked for a promise the campaign would pay their legal fees if they were sued or charged with a crime. ultimately, fake electors did meet december 14th, 2020 in arizona, georgia, michigan, pennsylvania, new mexico, nevada, and wisconsin. at the request of the trump campaign, the electors from these battleground states signed documents falsely asserting they

were the duly elected electors, submitted them to national archives and to vice president pence in capacity as president of the senate. here's what some of the fake elector certificates looks like. these had no legal effect. in an email produced to the select committee, dr. eastman told trump campaign representative it did not matter that electors were not approved by a state authority. quote, the fact that we have multiple slats of electors demonstrates the uncertainty of either. that should be enough. he urged that pence act boldly and be challenged. documents produced to the select committee show the trump campaign took steps to ensure physical copies of fake electors' votes were delivered to washington for january 6. text messages exchanged between republican party officials in wisconsin show january 4th, the trump campaign asked for someone to fly fake electors documents to washington.

a staffer for wisconsin senator ron johnson texted a staffer for vice president pence minutes before the beginning of the joint session. this staffer stated senator johnson wanted to deliver fake elector votes from michigan and wisconsin. the vice president's aide instructed them not to deliver fake votes to the vice president. even though the fake slats were submitted to congress and the executive branch, the vice president said his role was to count lawfully submitted electoral votes. >> joseph r biden from state of delaware got 306 votes. donald j. trump with state of florida got 232 votes. >> which is what he did when the joint session resumed january 6 after the attack on the capitol. >> we just heard in that video was an aide to the white house chief of staff telling the committee that the white house

counsel's office felt this fake electors plan was not legally sound. nevertheless, the trump campaign went forward with the scheme anyway. speaker bowers, were you aware fake electors met in phoenix december 14th, purported to cast electoral votes for president trump? >> i was not. >> when you learned electors met and sent electoral votes to washington, what do you think? >> well, i thought of the book "the game that couldn't shoot straight." i just thought this is a tragic parody. >> i understand you flew from phoenix to washington yesterday, you reflected on passages from a personal journal that you were keeping in december, 2020 while all this was taking place. with your permission, i wonder if you would be willing to share one passage in particular with

us. >> thank you very much. it is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me turn on me with such rancor. i may in the eyes of men not hold correct opinions or act according to their version or convictions, but i do not take this current situation in a light manner, a fearful manner, or vengeful manner. i do not want to be a winner by cheating. i will not play with laws i swore allegiance to. with any contrived desire towards deflection of my deep foundational desire to follow

god's will as i believe he led my conscience to embrace. how else will i ever approach him in the wilderness of life knowing that i ask of this guidance only to show myself a coward in defending the course he let me take. he led me to take. >> thank you, mr. speaker, powerful words. i understand taking courageous positions that you did following the 2020 election in defense of the rule of law and protecting voters of arizona resulted in you and your family being subjected to protests and terrible threats. can you tell us how this impacted you and your family? >> well, as others in videos mentioned, we received my

secretaries would say in excess of 20,000 emails and tens of thousands of voice mails and texts which saturated the offices and we were unable to work or communicate. at home up until recently it is the new pattern or pattern in our lives to worry what will happen on saturdays because we have various groups come by and they have had video panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to be a pedophile and pervert and corrupt politician and blaring loud speakers in my neighborhood and leaving literature both on my property

but arguing and threatening with neighbors and with myself. and i don't know if i should name groups but there was one gentleman that had the three bars on his chest and he had a pistol and was threatening my neighbor not with the pistol but just vocally. when i saw the gun, i knew i had to get close. and at the same time, on some of these we had a daughter who was gravely ill who was upset by what was happening outside. my wife was a valiant person, very strong, quiet, very strong

woman. so it was disturbing. it was disturbing. >> mr. speaker, i want to thank you for your service to the state of arizona and to the country. mr. chairman, at this point, i think it would be appropriate to take a short recess. where i may reserve the balance of my time. >> the chair requests that those in hearing room remain seated until the capitol police have escorted members and witnesses from the room. we'll have five minute recess. we'll have five minute recess. >> the gavel of the chairman taking a five minute recess after powerful testimony. i am here with hallie jackson and katy tur. ladies, that was rusty bowers,

republican house speaker testifying how he repeatedly stood up to pressure from the president of the united states, from giuliani, from ellis, others on the stop the steal committee, trying to pressure him to change the vote, to decertify the biden electors who had been legally elected. cheney, liz cheney giving the witness a hug as he walked off. this was so straightforward. so deliberate. he was sort of a jimmy stewart figure speaking before the house committee. if i may just recall something from an old movie, he was speaking truth to power when he argued with donald trump, said he did not have the power. he was asked about a trump statement, adam schiff asked about a trump statement today saying bowers at one point told

him the election had been rigged and trump had won arizona. and he said, schiff said, did you have such a conversation with the president? i did have a conversation, testified bowers, but that was certainly not it. he went on to talk as his testimony built about how much pressure he was under, including outside his house when his daughter was gravely ill. katy tur, i don't know how to summarize the power of his straightforward testimony. >> let's just repeat what he said there at the end. i don't want to be a winner by cheating, this is what he wrote in his diary after this was all going down. again, the pattern we saw, that we have seen so far in the hearings, not to be a broken record, but i think it bears repeating, donald trump was told that there was not a way to decertify the election within the states, that rusty bowers

couldn't call a special hearing. he was asked, he asked donald trump for the evidence. donald trump said we're going to get it to you. told jenna ellis, rudy giuliani, get him the evidence. the evidence never came. then we hear about more states, including arizona, having fake electors who sent documentation to the federal government saying that they were duly elected electors, duly certified electors and they were casting ballots in the name of their state, and my question to our legal analyst is well, is that a felony, sending a document like that, a certified, certified document like that that they know is fake to the federal government? >> a lot of take aways from what we just heard in addition to the point you raise and the testimony of rusty bowers, the strength of his conviction on

the constitution. you had a real emphasis in looking ahead, and you heard congressman schiff say the system held, but barely. in other words, the bullet was dodged, but what about the next time. that's the thread they're leaving dangling at this point. i want to reference involvement we heard, these are pieces of information from members of congress. people that we know have been extremely supportive of donald trump, former president, his lies about the election. congressman andy biggs reaching out to mr. bowers in arizona. ron johnson's aide trying to get his boss to physically give fake elector certificates to then vice president mike pence and an aide saying no, you do not give that to him. some new pieces of information. let's bring in ali vitale. do you have anything from inside the room where mr. bowers was visibly, audibly emotional, seeking to compose himself

before talking again, specifically when it came to his faith and his faith in the constitution and how it effected his family on a personal level. ali? >> reporter: those were the two prongs of the hearing. there was both the direct threat of violence and threats against the election officials, including rusty bowers detailed at length, not just in arizona but places like michigan and pennsylvania and georgia, things that we knew about at the time but hearing people at the center of them talk about how their kids were home alone, protesters were outside threatening them, they had to disconnect their phone lines, that was one key piece. then of course the other, false slates of electors, including emails on how the strategy would be pulled off. in the room there were certain moments people snapped to attention.

overall the room was wrapped during his testimony. people like congresswoman stephanie murphy nodding along, smiling, almost empathizing with emotion he was giving to the testimony. that was one of the things we had been flagged to by the committee the night before, saying this was the first time we were going to hear speaker bowers in his own words talk about the pressure campaign and ways he held fast against it. i think there are bread crumbs that will be important moving forward and as we look at the role other members of congress played before going into the hearing. chairman benny thompson said they would detail in a few weeks, his words, the roles that members of congress played. they've already told us that people like scott perry asked for pardons, that congressman biggs also asked for a pardon. we're now getting more information on the role senator ron johnson potentially could have played. you were talking before about

those text messages. that's the key threads people are pulling on as we see what it looked like not just from the state level but members of the body that the committee is part of in congress. so a lot of things to pull on here. and that's just panel one. >> back with us. i want to bring in the panel. chuck rosenberg, joyce vance, michael steele. chuck, you and others on the panel faced juries. here it is public opinion. you have a republican arizona official who supported donald trump. and listen to part of his emotional testimony about how he told the former president and others on the team he could not violate his faith shall his belief that the constitution was divinely ordained. listen to rusty bowers. >> that the constitution is

divinely inspired of the most basic foundational beliefs. for me to do that because somebody asked me to is foreign to my very being. i will not do it. >> chuck, if presenting to a jury, how powerful is this witness? >> extraordinarily powerful, andrea. we have a tendency, a mistake to demonize people with whom we disagree. whatever your party and affiliation, your politics, thank goodness there are people in both parties like rusty bowers, principled, dignified. his oath meant more than pleasing the person in power. he supports donald trump. he voted for him. maybe he would again. but if you're an arizonan, whether you live in this man's district or voted for him or donated to him, you're lucky you

have someone like that running the arizona house of representatives. again, he is a very compelling, thoughtful, dignified, principled man. we don't have to agree with people to admire them and i admire rusty bowers. >> we don't have audio of the phone call he had with donald trump like we had the audio of the phone call, i hope you got that, hope my audio was on, if it wasn't, we don't have audio of phone call between bowers and donald trump like we have audio of donald trump and brad raffensperger, but joyce, this is another example of direct connection between donald trump and an official having a conversation about what is possible and what is not possible and the official saying i have to abide by the laws of my state, i have to abide by the constitution. if you have proof of fraudulent votes, dead voters that you say you have, if you have proof

there were illegal immigrants, send me names. he was never sent the names. >> on the first call, trump says get the man what he needs and he never gets it. of course, it is possible trump could say i was just listening to my lawyers, they said there was a path in arizona forward. but speaker bowers is clear about something. he is asked did you tell trump there was fraud in arizona. and as you've already said, katy, he said that wasn't my conversation. in other words, trump is lying about this. so why would trump lie about that if he really believed that what they were doing was righteous, if he believed they won in arizona and there was fraud, there would be no need for him to lie about what speaker bowers said to him. >> as chuck points out, who are

you going to believe in the head to head matchup. if you're a jury in a courtroom, you're going to believe rusty bowers. it is difficult to discount this man's testimony. >> is this going to get to a jury in the courtroom, is the doj going to ask on this, they asked for the transcripts, but -- >> i don't think i would go directly to donald trump, but doj should take intermediary steps and work up the chain. that's the practice in these kinds of cases. >> as we look ahead to the next part of the hearing today, this was a quick break. seen ten minute breaks, this is only five or so, presumably they'll be walking back shortly. we'll hear from folks in georgia. brad raffensperger gave sterling, the secretary of state and his deputy, and shay moss who was elections worker in georgia involved in, shouldn't say involved, at the center of what some described as a conspiracy theory.

election worker that didn't do anything wrong but found herself subject of threats from those on the far right that believes the theory about a suitcase of ballots. frank, we look at one of the next threads, one will have to do with chief of staff mark meadows. we heard from somebody close to meadows, cassie hutchinson. first time we have seen on camera. she has spoken extensively to the select committee. and it is likely we will see new evidence relating to meadows and the plot in georgia if you will, his involvement. frank? >> i can't help but notice this is looking increasingly like a kind of criminal enterprise, trump at the head of an organized crime family, meadows, people like giuliani and certain members of congress we mentioned carrying out the acts, getting

their hands dirty. as we see more and more of that, it will increasingly look like a criminal enterprise. to that effect, it helps us project what accountability might look like. because to make the mob analogy, prosecutors and investigators as joyce alluded to in such cases will try to make the case first on the henchmen, rely on them flipping or further evidence to develop to get to the copo himself. if you see that approach taken, don't rule out the possibility those individuals would be charged for their role in this, certainly a first. and then later if ever you get to the copo. >> and we have less than a minute before they may be gaveling down. michael steele, when we talk about this metaphor, the analogy of comparing the president of the united states to some sort of criminal enterprise, this is

really striking to the american people. >> i guess in some respects it is, but i think people baked in the kind of man that donald trump is. it is not surprising that he operates in this space and i think really to frank's point, what firms it up for me was bower's comment in that conversation with giuliani, we've got lots of theories, we just don't have the evidence. so you can see how all of this was being baked together, how at the center of it was donald trump. >> and as you can see, benny thompson, the chairman, michael and all of us, the chairman is entering the room, he is going to gavel down. what we are going to hear is next from secretary of state raffensperger. we heard so much from him as we have been mentioning, he has written a book, talked publicly, been on television with all of us. fact is, he is now testifying under oath about what donald

trump told him, and the audio tape, that infamous tape of him asking for 11, 780 votes to turn the election in georgia. here comes the gavel and chairman thompson. the committee will be in order. president trump's pressure campaign against state officials existed in all key battleground states that he lost, but the former president had a particular obsession with georgia. here is the president on the afternoon of january 6th after his own attorney general warned him that claims you are about to hear are patently false. >> should find those votes. they should absolutely find them. just over 11,000 votes, that's all we need. they defrauded us out of a win

in georgia and we're not going to forget it. >> so the state of georgia is where we will turn our attention to next. i want to emphasize our investigation into these issues is still ongoing. as i stated in our last hearing, if you have relevant information or documentary evidence to share with the select committee, we welcome your cooperation. but we will share some of our findings with you today. secretary raffensperger, thank you for being here. you have been a public servant in georgia since 2015, serving first as member of the georgia house of representatives and then since january, 2019 as georgia's secretary of state. as a self described conservative republican, is it fair to say that you wanted president trump

to win the 2020 election? >> yes, it is. >> secretary, many witnesses told the select committee that election day november 3rd 2020 was a largely uneventful day in their own states. in spite of the challenges of conducting an election during a pandemic, you wrote in "the washington post" that election was, quote, successful. tell us what was your impression of how election day had proceeded in georgia. >> on election day in november our election went remarkably smooth. in fact, we meet at the gema headquarters, georgia emergency management, but in the afternoon, average wait time was three minutes. statewide, recording for various precincts. it got down to two minutes. and at the end of the day, we

felt we had a successful election from the standpoint of administration and operation of the election. >> thank you. the chair recognizes the gentleman from california, mr. schiff. >> thank you, mr. chairman. secretary raffensperger, did joe biden win the presidential election in georgia and by what margin? >> president biden carried the state of georgia by approximately 12,000 votes. >> mr. secretary, as i understand it your office took several steps to ensure accuracy of the vote count in georgia reviewing the count in three ways, including machine recount, forensic audit, full hand recount of every one of 5 million ballots cast. did these efforts including recount of literally every ballot cast in state of georgia confirm the result? >> yes, they did. we counted the ballots, they would be scanned, then we did the 100% hand audit of the

entire 5 million ballots in the state of georgia, cast in place, absentee ballots, hand recounted, came remarkably close to the first count. then because he was within a half percent could ask for a recount, then we recounted again through scanners, got remarkably the same count. three counts, all remarkably close, shows president trump did come up short. >> nevertheless as you will see, the president and allies began making numerous false allegations of voter fraud, false allegations that you and mr. sterling among others had to address. mr. sterling, thank you also for being here today. following the 2020 election in addition to your normal duties, i understand you became a spokesperson to combat disinformation about the election and the danger it was creating for elections officials among others in a december 1 press conference, you addressed some remarks directly to

president trump. let's take a look at what you said that day. >> mr. president, it looks like you likely lost the state of georgia. we are investigating, there's always a possibility, i get it, and you have the right to go through the courts. what you don't have the ability to do, stop inspiring people for potential acts of violence. someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed and it is not right. it is not right. >> mr. sterling, what prompted you to make these remarks? >> mr. schiff, we had a previously scheduled press conference that day as we were in the habit of doing, trying to be as transparent as we could about the election and counts going on. a little after lunch that day, lunchtime, i received a call from the project manager from dominion voting systems who was

oddly audibly shaken, not the kind of person i would assume would be that way, masters of mit, graduate of the naval academy, on the ball, pretty much unflappable. she informed me of a young contractor they had receiving threats from a video posted by some qanon supporters. at that point we were steeping in this stuff, it was around us all the time. i didn't take note of it more than adding to the pile of other stuff we were having to deal with. and i did pull up twitter and scrolled through it, saw the young man's name, particular tweet, straw that broke the camel's back. young man's name, very unique name, first generation american, and so it had his name, you committed treason, may god have mercy on your soul with a slowly twisting gif of a noose. for lack of a better word, i

lost it. i just got irate. my boss was with me at the time, the deputy secretary, and she could tell i was angry. i tend to turn red from here up when that happens, what happened at that time. she called secretary raffensperger to say we are seeing these kind of threats and gabe thinks we need to say something about it. the secretary said yes. and that's what prompted me to do what i did. i lost my temper. but it seemed necessary at the time because it was just getting worse. i could not tell you why that particular one put me over the edge but it did. >> after you made this plea to the president, did donald trump urge his supporters to avoid use of violence? >> not to my knowledge. >> as we know, the president was aware of your speech because he tweeted about it later that day. let's look at what the president said. in the tweet, donald trump claims there was, quote, massive

voter fraud in georgia. mr. sterling, that was just plain false, wasn't it? >> yes, sir. >> nevertheless, the very next day december 2nd, president trump released a lengthy video again making false claims of election fraud in georgia. let's look at what he said this time. >> they found thousands and thousands of votes that were out of whack. all against me. >> in fact, the day after donald trump released that video, now talking two days after the emotional warning that you gave that someone is going to get killed, representatives of president trump appeared in georgia, including rudy giuliani, and launched a conspiracy theory that would take on a life of its own and threaten the lives of several election workers. sometime during election night, workers at the state farm arena in atlanta, georgia kicked out poll observers. after they left, the story goes,

workers pulled so-called suitcases of ballots from under a table and ran ballots through counting machines multiple times. completely without evidence president trump and allies claimed suitcases contained as many as 18,000 ballots all for joe biden. none of this was true. but rudy giuliani appeared before georgia state senate and played a surveillance video from state farm arena falsely claiming it showed this conspiracy taking place. here's a sample of what mr. giuliani had to say during the hearing. >> when you look at what you saw on the video, which to me was a smoking gun, powerful smoking gun, well, i don't have to be a genius to figure out what happened. i don't have to be a genius to figure out those votes are not legitimate votes. you don't put legitimate votes under a table. wait until you throw the opposition out and in the middle

of the night count them. we would have to be fools to think that. >> president trump's campaign amplified giuliani's false testimony in a tweet pushing out the video footage. giuliani likewise pushed out his testimony on social media. as you can see in this tweet, mr. giuliani wrote it was now beyond doubt that fulton county democrats had stolen the election. later in this hearing, we'll hear directly from one of the election workers about the effect the lies had on her and her family. mr. sterling, did the investigators in your office review the entire surveillance tape from state farm arena election night? >> they actually reviewed about 48 hours going over the time period where action was taking place at the counting center at state farm arena. >> what did the tape actually show? >> depending which time you want to start, as mentioned, this conspiracy theory took on a life

of its own where they conflated a water main break, there wasn't a water main break, throwing observers out, a series of other things. what it actually showed is fulton county election workers engaging in normal ballot processing. one of the things that was frustrating was the so-called suitcases from under the table. if you watch the entirety of the video, you saw that these were election workers who were under the impression they would get to go home at 10:00, 10:30, putting on coats, putting ballots prepared to be scanned into ballot carriers that are sealed with tamper proof seals so they're not messed with. it is an interesting thing. you watch, there are four screens of video. as you are watching it, you can see the election monitors with the press as they take these ballot carriers, putting them under the table. you see it. one of the other hidden ones, on

the outside ofed table from camera angle you couldn't see it originally. it goes under no good deed goes unpunished, we were at gema, as the secretary pointed out, looked like they were shutting down fulton county. secretary expressed displeasure. we wanted everybody to keep counting and get to the results and know what was happening. the elections director called their elections director at another location because it was election day, there were two places where ballot things were done by fulton county office. so he called ralph jones who was at the state farm arena, said what the heck are you doing, go ahead and stay. as you watch the video, you see him take the phone call, as people are putting things away, getting ready to leave. for 15, 20 seconds, he doesn't want to tell people they have to stay. he walks over, thinks about it, come back to corner of a desk,

okay, y'all, we have to keep counting. they take off coats, get ballots out. secondary thing, people counting ballots, batch goes through, they take them off, run them again. what happens there is standard operating procedure, if there's a misalignment, these are high speed, high capacity scanners. three or four go through after a misscan. you delete that batch, put it through again. going through hand tally as the secretary pointed out, we showed multiple ballots scanned without corresponding physical ballot, counts would have been higher than ballots themselves. by doing the hand tally, we saw two specific numbers met. hand tally got.009% on the margin, which is dead on accurate. hand tally, you have between 1

and 2%. because we had ballot marking devices it is clear what the voter intended makes it easier to conduct hand count and show none of that was true. >> i understand that when you review tapes and did the analysis, it proved the conspiracy theory. but you still had to take a lot of steps to make sure the public knew the truth about allegations and you did frequent briefings for the press look at one held december 7th to make the point you did today. >> move on to what i'm going to call disinformation monday. out of the gate many of y'all saw the videotape of state farm arena. i spent hours with investigators going over the video to explain what you saw, the secret suitcase of magic ballots were

ballots packed into those absentee ballot carriers by workers in plain view of the monitors and the press. what's really frustrating is the president's attorneys had the same videotape. they saw the exact same thing the rest of us could see and chose to mislead state senators and the public about what was on the video. i am quite sure they will not characterize the video if they try to enter it into evidence, that's the thing that could lead to sanctions because it is obviously untrue. they knew it was untrue and continue to do things like this. >> mr. sterling, despite efforts by your office to combat this misinformation by speaking out publicly and through local media, you were unable to match the reach of president trump's platform and social media megaphone spreading false conspiracy theories. what was it like to compete with the president who had the biggest bully pulpit in the world to push out these false

claims? >> for lack of a better word it was frustrating but often times i felt our information was getting out but there was a reticence of people that needed to believe it because the president of the united states who many looked up to and respected was telling them it wasn't true. despite the facts. and i characterized at one point it was like a shovel trying to empty the ocean. and yes, it was frustrating. i even have family members i had to argue with about some of these things. i would show them things and the problem you have is you get into people's hearts. i remember one specific attorney that we know that we showed walking through, this wasn't true. i get that. this wasn't true. okay, i get that. at the end, he said i know in my heart they cheated. once you get past the heart,

facts don't matter as much. our job was to get the facts out, do our job, tell the truth, follow the constitution, follow the law, and defend the institutions. and the institutions held. >> let's take a look at what you were competing with. this is the former president speaking in georgia december 5th. >> evidence of fraud is overwhelming and again i'm going to ask you to look up at that very, very powerful and expensive screen. >> hidden cases of possible ballots are rolled out from under a table. four people under a cloud of suspicion. >> so if you take the crime of what those democrat workers were doing, and by the way, there was no water main break. there was no water plain break, that's ten times more than i need to win the state. that's ten times maybe more than that, but ten times more because

we lost by a very close number. >> this committee's hearing last monday we heard from senior federal law enforcement officials, from senior most federal law enforcement official in atlanta at the time, u.s. attorney for northern district, pj pack, as well as former attorney general bill barr. they testified the allegations were thoroughly investigated and found to have no merit. here is u.s. attorney pack. >> i told him we looked into it, we have done several things, including interviewing witnesses. i listened to tapes, reviewed the videotape myself and there's nothing there. giuliani was wrong representing that this was a suitcase full of ballots. >> hearing what attorney general bill barr had to say about the same allegations. >> took a look, hard look at this ourselves and based on our

review of it, including interviews of key witnesses, the fulton county allegations were -- had no merit. >> we also have testimony from senior department of justice officials establishing that they specifically told president trump these allegations had been thoroughly investigated and were completely without merit. here's acting attorney deputy attorney general richard donahue, describing a phone conversation in which he specifically told president trump that these allegations were false. >> kept fix ating on the suitcase, if the suitcase was rolled out from under the table, and i said no, sir, there's no suitcase. you can watch it over and over, there's no suitcase. there's a wheeled bin where they were kept. >> where they cured the ballots. no matter how many times senior

justice department officials, including his own attorney general general, told the president that the allegations were not true, president trump kept promoting the lies and putting pressure on state officials to accept them. january 2nd, the president had a lengthy telephone conversation with raffensperger. i want to share important context. first, the white house, including the former president's chief of staff mark meadows, repeatedly called or texted the secretary's office some 18 times in order to set up this call. they were quite persistent. second, mark meadows took the extraordinary step of showing up at a signature audit site in georgia where he met with secretary raffensperger's chief investigators, francis watson, who was supervising the audit process. behind me is a photograph from that visit. third, the day after meadows' georgia visit, he set up a call

between president trump and francis watson. on the call between president trump and georgia investigator francis watson, the former president continued to push the false claim that he won the state of georgia. let's listen to that part of the conversation. >> you know, it is just that you have the most important job in the country right now because if we win georgia, first of all, if we win, you're going to have two wins. they're down because the people of georgia are so angry at what happened to me, they know i won. won by hundreds of thousands of votes, it wasn't close. >> and in the next clip, he told state law enforcement official that she would be praised if she found the right answer. >> hopefully, when the right answer comes out, you'll be praised. i mean, i don't know why, you know, they've made it so hard. they will be praiseed.

people will say great because that's what it's about. that ability to check and to make it right. because everyone knows it is wrong, there's just no way. >> mr. raffensperger, i know you weren't on this call but that you have listened to it. president trump didn't win by hundreds of thousands of votes in georgia, did he? >> no, he did not. i have been traveling through the state of georgia for a year now and simply put in a nutshell what happened in fall of 2020 is that 28,000 georgians skipped the presidential race and voted down ballot in other races, a republican congressman got 33,000 more votes than president trump, that's why president trump came up short. >> thank you, mr. secretary. the president on this call doesn't stop here. let's listen to another part of the conversation between president trump and miss watson.

>> anyway, but whatever you can do, francis, it would be, it's a great thing, it's an important thing, so important. you have no idea, it's so important. and i very much appreciate it. >> whatever you can do, francis. this is the president of the united states calling an investigator looking into the election which he is a candidate and asking her to do whatever you can do. mr. secretary, you place a call to the chief investigator, the select committee got text messages saying mark meadows wanted to send some of the investigators in her office in the words of one white house aide a hit low of potus stuff, coins, autographed maga hats, et cetera. white house staff intervened to be sure that didn't happen. it was clear at the time of the call the former president had his sights set on january 6. listen to this when he told francis watson about a very important date.

>> do you think they'll be working after christmas, to keep it going fast? because we have that date of the 6th which is a very important date. >> an important date of course was the joint session of congress where georgia's electoral votes would be counted for joe biden. over a week afte call to frances watson, the president was finally able to speak with you, secretary raffensperger. bear in mind as we discuss this call today that by this point in time early january, the election in georgia had already been certified but perhaps more important the president of the united states had already been told repeatedly by his own top justice department officials that the claims he was about to make to you about massive fraud in georgia were completely false. mr. secretary, the call between you and the president lasted 67 minutes, over an hour. we obviously can't listen to the entire recording here today although it is available on the select committee's website, but

we'll listen to selected excerpts of it now so we can get your insights. let's begin with the president raising the debunked allegations of suitcases of ballots. >> these are the allegations of the department of justice and your office had said were false, is that right? >> correct. and even more importantly, when bj pack resigned as u.s. attorney of the northern district president trump

appointed acting attorney bobby christine and he was quoted in the ajc that he found nothing and he dismissed that case early also. >> and the president references suitcases or trunks. mr. sterling, were the objects seen in these videos suitcases or trunks or we they the ordinary containers? >> standard ballot carriers that allow for seals to be tamper-proof. >> and the president claims that there was a minimum of 18,000 ballot somehow smuggled in all for biden. i take it that that was also categorically false? >> a, no physical way that he could smuggle those. and fulton county has been an issue when it comes to elections so we had a very difficult time in the primary in large part because of covid. so we put them under consent

decree where we had a monitor on site, carter jones, and he had gone from state farm to the english street warehouse to look at the election day activities. but before he left state farm arena, noted how many ballots had been counted on each one of the machines. when he came back after we found out that they were working again and he took note again and i believe the final number was something like 8900 ballots were scanned by the time he left to the time 1:30 in the morning. way below 18,000. >> let's play the next clip. >> mr. secretary, did somebody drop a lot of votes there late at night? >> no. i believe that the president was referring to some of the counties when they would upload, but the ballots had to be accepted by state law by 7:00 p.m., so there were no additional ballots accepted

after 7:00 p.m. >> let's play the next clip in which the president makes claims about so-called dead voters. >> so secretary, did your office investigate whether those allegations were accurate, did 5,000 dead people in georgia vote? >> no, it is not accurate. actually in their lawsuits they allege 10,315 dead people. we found two dead people when i wrote my letter to congress that is dated january 6, subsequent to that we found two more. that is four people, not 4,000. just a total of four, not 10,000, not 5,000. >> let's play the next clip.

>> there is nothing wrong saying that you recalculated. 2,000, absentee ballots, they are all exact numbers that were done by accounting firms, lawmakers, et cetera. and even if you cut them in half, cut them in half and cut them in half again, it is more votes than we need. >> mr. secretary, is there any way that you could lawfully change the result in the state of georgia and somehow explained it away as a recalculation? >> no, the numbers are the numbers. the numbers don't lie. we had many allegations and we investigated every single one of them. i challenged my team did we miss anything and they said that there was over 66,000 underage voters, we found that there was actually zero. you can register to vote in georgia when you are 17 and a half, you have to be 18 by election day. we checked that out.

they said that there was nonregistered voters but there was zero. 2066 felons. we identified less than 74 still on felony sentence. every allegation we ran down the rabbit trail to make sure that our numbers were accurate. >> so no way that you could have recalculated except by fudging the numbers? >> the numbers were the numbers. and we could not recalculate because we had made sure that we had checked every single allegation. we had nearly 300 investigations from the 2020 election. >> mr. secretary, you tried to push back when the president that piece unsupported claims, whether about suitcases of ballots or that biden votes were counted three times. let's play the next clip.

>> you told the president that you would send him a link from wsb which i understand is a local television station that had an you think edited video from state farm arena. the president said he had a much better link. mr. secretary, at the time that you were on the call with the president as we have shown both the fbi and georgia bureau of investigation have proven the claims to be nonsense and you told him about these investigations on the phone. let's listen to what president trump had to say about the state and federal law enforcement officers who conducted, who investigated these false claims. >> but the president didn't stop at insinuating that law

enforcement officers were either dishonest or incompetence. he went on to suggest that you could be subject to criminal liability for your role in the matter. before i play that portion of the conversation, i'd like to show you something that the president retweeted a couple weeks before your call with him. here is the president retweeting a post from one of his allies, a lawyer who was later sanctioned by a judge in michigan to making false claims of election fraud. let's take a look at that tweet. the tweet read, quote, president trump is a genuinely good man. he does not really like to fire people. i bet he dislikes putting people in jail especially quote/unquote republicans. he gave brian kemp and georgia secretary of state every chance to get it right and they refused. they will soon be going to jail. so on your call this, was not the first time the president was suggesting that you might be criminally liable.

with that let's listen to this portion of the call. >> secretary raffensperger, after making the false claim about shredding the ballots, the president suggested that you may be committing a crime by not going along with his claims of election fraud. after suggesting that you might have criminal exposure, president trump makes his most explicit ask of the call.

let's play a part of that conversation. >> mr. secretary was the president here asking you for exactly what he wanted, one more vote than his opponent? >> what i knew is that we didn't have any votes to find. we had continued to look. we investigated like i shared the numbers with you. there were no votes to find. that was an accurate count that had been certified. as our general counsel said, there was no shredding of ballots. >> after making this request, the president then goes back to the danger of having you deny these allegations of fraud. let's listen to that part of the clip.

>> secretary raffensperger, you wrote about this in your book and you said, quote, i felt then and still believe today that this was a threat. others obviously thought so too because some of trump's more radical followers have responded as if it was their duty to carry out this threat. please tell us what you, your wife, even your daughter-in-law experienced regarding threats from trump's more radical followers. >> after the election, my email, my cellphone was docked and i was getting texts from all over the country and eventually my wife started getting the texts. herself hers typically came in as sexualized.

they were disgusting. we've been married over 40 years now and i think they started going after her to just put pressure in me, why don't you just quit, walk away. so that happened. and then some people broke into my daughter-in-law's home and my son has passed and she is a widow, has two kids. so we were concerned about her safety also. >> and mr. secretary, why didn't you just quit and walk away? >> because i knew we had followed the law, we had followed the constitution and i think sometimes moments require you to stand up and just take the shots, you're doing your job, and that is all we did. just followed the law and followed the constitution. and at the end of the day president trump came up short. i had to be faithful to the constitution. and that is what i swore an oath to do. >> during the remainder of the call, former president continued to press you to find the remaining votes that would ensure his victory in georgia. let's listen to a little more.

>> four days after the president's call to secretary raffensperger was january 6. the president whipped up the crowd in front of the elipse once again promoting the allegation that secretary raffensperger told him was false. here he is on the elipse.

>> fulton county republican poll watchers rejected, in some cases physically from the room under the false pretense of a pipe burst. water main burst, everybody leave, which we now know was a total lie. then election officials pull boxes, democrats, suitcases from out under a table. totally fraudulent and illegally scanned them for nearly two hours totally unsupervised. tens of thousands of votes. this act coincided with a mysterious vote dump of up to 100,000 votes for joe biden, almost none for trump. oh, that sounds fair. that was at 1:34 a.m. >> mr. secretary, mr. sterling, i want to thank you for your service to the state of georgia and to the country. speaker bowers likewise, i want

to thank you for your service to the state of arizona and to the country. you have served not only your home states and our democracy. i yield back. >> i thank the witnesses for joining us today. you are now dismissed.

>> i thousand welcome our final witness this afternoon.now welc witness this afternoon. shaye moss. ms. moss worked in the department of registration and

elections in fulton county, georgia from 2017 until 2022. in that job, ms. moss handled voter applications and absentee ballot requests and also helped to process the vote count for several elections. in december 2020, ms. moss and her mother, miss ruby freeman, became the target of nasty lies spread by president trump and his allies as they sought to overturn the election results in georgia. ms. moss and her mother, ms. freeman, are two of the unsung heros in this country doing the hard work of keeping our democracy functioning for every american. ms. moss, welcome. thank you for your service and i thank you for being here today. i will now swear you in.

please stand. do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god? thank you. please be seated. let the record reflect that the witness answered in the affirmative. ms. moss, thank you very much for being here today. i understand that you are here along with your mother today. would you like to introduce your mama? hi, mom. ms. moss, today we'll be asking you about some of the threats that you received following the 2020 election. since you've been an election worker for over ten years, i want to ask you in your decade

of service, had you ever experienced threats like these before? [ shakes head ] >> don't be nervous. i understand. so -- and i want to make sure that the record reflects that you've done it for quite a while and you never received threats, and your answer was no? thank you. pursuant to section 5-c-8 of the house resolution 503, the chair recognizes gentleman from california mr. schiff for questions. >> good afternoon, ms. moss. thank you for being here. i understand that you were employed by the fulton county registration and elections department for more than ten years. and i understand that you loved that job. please tell us what made you so

fond of the work that you did. >> well, i've always been told by my grandmother how important it is to vote and how eople before me, older people in my family, did not have that right. so what i loved the most about my job were the older voters. younger people could usually do everything from their phone or go online, but the older voters like to call, they like to talk to you, they like to get my card, they like to know that every election i'm here. and even college students, a lot of parents trusted me to make sure that their child does not have to drive home, they will get an absentee ballot, they can

vote. and i really found pleasure in that. i like being the one that being you know, if someone can't navigate my voter page or, you know, they want a new precinct card, they don't have a copy machine or a computer or all of that, i can put it in the mail for them. i was excited always about sinding out all the absentee ballots for the elderly, disabled people. i even remember driving to a hospital to give someone her absentee application. that's what i loved the most. >> so you really enjoyed helping people vote and participate and that was something -- the right to vote that your grandmother taught you was precious. >> yes. >> i know the events that we're here to talk about today are incredibly difficult to relive.

your proud service as an election worker took a dramatic turn on the day that rudy giuliani publicized the video of you and your mother counting ballots on election night. president trump, rudy giuliani and others claimed on the basis of this video that you and your mother were somehow involved in a plot to kick out observers, bring suitcases of false ballots for biden into the arena and then run them through the machines multiple times. none of that was true, was it? >> none of it. >> i'd like to show you some of the statements that rudy giuliani made in a second hearing before the georgia state legislatures a week after that video clip from state farm arena was first circulated by mr. giuliani and president trump. i want to advise viewers that these statements are completely false and also deeply disturbing. >> tape earlier in the day of

ruby freeman and shaye moss and one other gentleman say rip tesch usually passing around ports as if they are vials of cocaine. it is obvious to anyone who is a criminal investigator or prosecutor that they are engaged in surreptitious illegal activity again that day. and that is a week ago and they are still walking around georgia lying. they should have been questioned already. their places of work, their homes should have been searched for evidence of ballots, usv ports, evidence of voter fraud. >> that video was from rudy giuliani's appearance at a georgia state senate hearing on december 10. how did you become aware, how did you first become aware that rudy giuliani, the president's lawyer, was accusing you and your mother of a crime?

>> i was at work like always. and former chief, mr. jones, asked me to come to his office. and when i went to his office, the former director, mr. barren, was in there and they showed me a video on their computer. it was just like a very short clip of us working at state farm. and it had someone on the video like talking over the video just saying that we were doing things that we weren't supposed to do. just lying throughout the video. and that is when i first found out about it.

>> were there social media posts that they showed you responding to those false claims? >> well, when i saw the video of course the first thing that i said was like why? why are they doing this? what is going on? and they just told me that trump and his allies were not satisfied with the outcome of the election and they were getting a lot of threats and being harassed online and asked me have i been receiving anything and i need to check on my mom. and i told them, i was like, where, where have they, you know -- where have you been getting these threats? i don't believe i have any. and mr. jones told me like they are attacking his facebook.

and i don't really use facebook. i have one. so i went to the facebook app and i'm just kind of panicky at this point because this has never happened to me and my mom is involved. i'm like her only child. so i'm asking like where are the messages all i see is the feeds and how do i get to the messages. and he said there is another icon on your phone that says messenger. and i went to that icon and it was just ale lot of horrible things there. >> and did those horrible things include threats? >> yes, a lot of threats. wishing death upon me. telling me that i'll be in jail with my mother and saying things like be glad it is 2020 and not 1920. >> were a lot of these threats

and vile comments racist in nature? >> a lot of them were racist, a lot were just hateful. yes, sir. >> in one of the videos we just watched mr. giuliani accused you and your mother of passing some sort of usb drive to each other. what was your mom actually handing you on that video? >> a ginger mint. >> it wasn't just rudy giuliani. we heard president trump make these false allegations repeatedly during his call with secretary raffensperger. let's listen to a portion of what he had to say about you and your mother.

>> donald trump attacked you and your mother using her name 18 times on that call. 18 times. ms. loss, can you attack how i pelt when you heard president trump attacking you and your mother? >> i felt horrible. i felt like it was all my fault. like if i would have never decided to be an elections worker like i could have -- anything else, but that is what i decided do and now is people were lying and attacking my mom. i'm her only child, i have her only grandchild. and my kid is just -- i felt so

bad. just felt bad for my mom and i felt horrible for picking this job and being the one that always wants to help and always there. never missing not one election. i just felt like it was my fault. putting my family in this situation. >> well, it wasn't your fault. your mother was kind enough to come speak with us earlier. let's listen to her story in her words. >> my name is ruby freeman. i've always believed that when god says that he will make your name great, but this is not the way it was supposed to be. i could have never imagined the events that followed the presidential election 2020. for my entire professional life, i was lady ruby. my community in georgia where i was born and lived my whole life

knew me as lady ruby. i built my own business around that name, lady ruby's unique treasures. a pop-up shop catering to ladies with unique fashions. i wore a shirt that proudly proclaimed that i was and i am lady ruby. actually i had that shirt on -- i had that shirt in every color. i wore that shirt on election day 2020. i haven't worn it since. and i'll never wear it again. now i won't even introduce myself by my name anymore. i get nervous when i bump into someone i know in the grocery store who says my name. i'm worried about who is listening. i get nervous when i have to give my name for food orders. i'm always concerned of who is

around me. i've lost my name and i've lost my reputation, i've lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with number 45 and his ally rudy giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter shaye to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen. >> ms. moss, how is this experience being targeted by the former president and his allies affected your life? >> it's turned my life upside down. i no longer give out my business card. i don't transfer calls. i don't want anyone knowing my name. i don't want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell my

name out over the grocery aisle or something. i don't go to the grocery store at all. i haven't been anywhere at all. i've gained about 60 pounds. i just don't do nothing anymore. i don't want to go anywhere. i second guess everything that i do. it has affected my life in a major way. in every way. all because of lies. me doing my job. same thing i've been doing forever. >> your mother also told the select committee about how she had to leave her own home for her safety and go into hiding after the fbi told her that it would not be safe for her there before january 6 and until the

inauguration. let's listen to a clip of her story in her own words. >> around the week of january 6, the fbi informed me that i needed to leave my home for safety. and i left my home for safety around that time. >> and how long did you stay out -- you know, did you remain outside of your home for your own safety? >> i stayed away from my home for approximately two months. it was horrible. i felt homeless, i felt, you know -- i can't believe -- i can't believe this person has caused this much damage to me and my family. to have to leave my home that i've lived there for 21 years and, you know, i'll having to have my neighbors watch out for me, you know.

and i have to go in and stay with somebody? it was hard. it was horrible. >> and your conversation with the fbi about needing to leave your home for your own safety or perhaps recommending it, do you remember was there is a specific threat that prompted that or was it the accumulation of threats that you had received? >> what prompted it was it was getting ready to -- january 6 was about to come. and they did not want me to be at home because of all the threats and everything that i had gotten. they didn't want me to be there in fear of, you know, the people would come into my home and i have a lot of that, so they didn't want me to be there just in case something happened about and i asked how long and they said at least until the

inauguration. >> ms. loss, i understand that people once showed you at your grandmother's house. tell us about that experience. >> i received a call from my grandmother. this woman is my everything. i've never even heard her or seen her cry ever in my life. and she called me screaming at the top of her lungs like shaye, oh, my god, shaye, just freaking me out, saying that people were at her home and they -- you know, they knocked on the door and of course she opened it and seeing who was there, who it was. and they just started pushing their way through claiming that they were coming into make a citizens arrest, they needed to

find me and my mom, they knew we were there. and she was just screaming and didn't know what do. and i wasn't there, so, you know, i just felt so helpless and so horrible for her. and she was just screaming. i told her close the door, don't open the door for anyone. she was a 70 something old woman and she doesn't like having restrictions. she wants to answer the door. she likes to get her steps in, walking around the neighborhood, and i had to tell her like you can't do that. you have to be safe. she would tell me at night people would just continuously send pizzas over and over to her home, you know, and they were expecting her to pay for these

large amounts of pizzas. she went through a lot that she didn't have to. once again, it made me just feel so horrible. >> in addition to the personal impact this experience has had on you and your family, one of the things that i find most disturbing is how these lies discourage long time election workers from continuing do this important work. tell us, if you would, of the other election workers shown in that state farm arena video and their supervisors, how many are still election workers in fulton county? >> there is no permanent election worker or supervisor in that video that is still there. >> and did you end up leaving your position as well? >> yes, i left. >> ms. moss, i want to thank you for coming into speak with us. and thank you for your service

to our democracy. what we have just played is a truly more only and appalling sample, but just a sample of the things that were said about you and your mother following the election. i want to say how very sorry i think that we all are for what you've gone through and tragically you are not alone. other election workers around the country have also been the subject of lies and threats. no election worker should be subject to such heinous treatment just for doing their job. with your permission, i would like to give your mother the last word. >> yes. we'll just play the tape. >> there is nowhere i feel safe. nowhere. do you know how it feels to have the president of the united states to target you? the president of the united states is supposed to represent every american, not to target

one. but he targeted me. lady ruby. a small business owner, a mother, a proud american citizen, who was standing up to helpful ton county run the election in the middle of the pandemic. >> thank you, ms. moss. thank you, ms. freeman. as america now knows her, lady ruby. for your service to fulton county, georgia, our country and our democracy. mr. chairman, i yield back. >> thank you, mr. schiff. ms. moss, i want to thank you for sharing with us the very troubling story of what you and your mother experienced. the harassment of election workers like you simply for doing your duty as public servants poses a threat to our democratic process.

your testimony is an important contribution to the work of our committee and serves as a reminder to all of us that the safety of local election officials is vital to ensuring that our elections are always free and fair. i want to thank our witness for joining us today. the members of the select committee may have additional questions for today's witness and we ask that you respond expeditiously in writing to those questions. without objection, members will be permitted ten business days to submit statements for the record including opening remarks and additional questions for the witness. without objection, the chair recognizes the gentleman from california mr. schiff for a

closing statement. >> for more than 200 years our democracy has been distinguished by the peaceful transfer of power. when an american raises their right hand and takes the presidential oath of office, they are transformed from an ordinary citizen into the most powerful person in the world, the president. this is an awesome power to acquire, it is even more awesome when it is handed on peacefully. when george washington relinquished the office the presidency, it set a precedent that served as a beacon for other nations struggling against tyranny. when ronald reagan described it as a kind of miracle in the eyes of the world, he was exactly right. other countries use violence to seize and hold power. but not in the united states. not in america. when donald trump used the power of the presidency to try to stay in office after losing the election to joe biden, he broke that sacred and centuries-old covenant. whether his actions were

criminal will ultimately be for others to decide. but what he did was without a doubt unconstitutional. it was unpatriotic and it was fundamentally unamerican. and when he used the power of his presidency to put the enormous pressure on state, local elections officials and his own vice president, it became down right dangerous. on january 6, that pressure became deadly. ruby freeman said the president is supposed to protect every american, not target them. and she is right. if the most powerful person in the world can bring the full weight of the presidency down on an ordinary citizen who is merely doing her job with a lie as big and heavy as a mountain, who among us is safe? none of us is. none of us. city councils and town councils,

on school boards and election boards, from the congress to the courts, dedicated public servants are leaving their posts because of death threats. to them, and to their families, this is not who we are. it must not become who we are. our democracy held because courageous people like those you heard from today put their oath to the constitution above their loyalty to one man or to one party. the system held but barely. and the question remains will it hold again. if we are able to communicate anything during these hearings, i hope it is this -- we have been blessed beyond measure to live in the world's greatest democracy. that is a legacy to be proud of and to cherish. but it is not one to be taken for granted. that we have lived in a democracy for more than 200 years does not mean that we

shall do so tomorrow. we must reject violence, we must embrace the constitution with the rev advance it deserves, take the oath of office seriously, informed by the knowledge of right and wrong and armed with no more than the power of our ideas and the truth, carry on this venerable experiment in self governance. thank you, mr. chairman. and i yield back. >> without objection the chair recognizes the gentle woman from wyoming, ms. cheney, for a closing statement. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. lady ruby and shaye, thank you for your courage, thank you for your strength, thank you for being here today. it means so much for everyone to hear your stories. so thank you for that. we have had tremendous testimony today, we've been reminded that we're a nation of laws. and we've been reminded by you and by speaker bowers and

secretary of state raffensperger, mr. sterling that our institutions don't defend themselves. individuals do that. and we have been reminded that it takes public servants, it takes people who have made a commitment to our system to defend our system. we also have been reminded what it means to take an oath under god to the constitution, what it means to defend the constitution. and we were reminded by speaker bowers that our constitution is indeed a divinely inspired document. and so it has been an honor to spend time with you and with our previous witnesses here today. to date more than 30 witnesses called before this committee have not done what you've done but have invoked their fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination. roger stone took the fifth. general michael flynn took the fifth. john eastman took the fifth. others like steve bannon and peter navarro simply refused to

comply with lawful subpoenas and they have been indicted. mark meadows has hidden behind president trump's claims of executive privilege and immunity from subpoenas. we're engaged now in litigation with mr. meadows. the american people in our hearings have heard from bill barr, jeff rosen, richard donahue and many others who stood up and did what is right and they will hear more of that testimony soon. but the american people have not yet heard from mr. trump's former white house counsel pat cipollone. our committee is certain that donald trump does not want mr. cipollone to testify here. indeed our evidence shows that mr. cipollone and his office tried to do what was right, they tried to stop a number of president trump's plans for january 6. today and in our coming hearings, you will hear testimony from other trump white house staff explaining what mr.

cipollone said and did including on january 6. but we think that the american people deserve to hear from mr. cipollone personally. he should appear before this committee and we are working to secure his testimony. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> people answer the call to public service in such different ways. some run for office. some volunteer to make sure that neighbors can get to their voting locations. some work at polling sites to help election day go smoothly. some look into problems to guarantee our elections are secure and accurate, just to name a few. as i mentioned at the start of this hearing, when we talk about our democratic institutions, we are talking about these individuals and many others who do these jobs across the

country. they represent the backbone of our democracy in its most important moments when the citizens cast their votes and when those votes are counted. we've heard the stories of their courage. they have earned the thanks of a grateful nation. but for donald trump, these witnesses and others like them where another road block to his attempt to cling to power. on thursday, we'll hear about another part of that scheme, his attempt to corrupt the country's top law enforcement body, the justice department, to support his attempt to overturn the election. just as we heard today that donald trump was deeply involved in the scheme to pressure state officials to overturn the election results, we're hear -- we will hear on thursday that donald trump was also the

driving force behind the effort to corrupt the justice department. listen to this clip from the former acting attorney general richard donahue. >> the president said suppose i do this, suppose i replace him, jeff rosen, with him, jeff clark. what do you do? and i said, sir, i would resign immediately. there is no way i'm serving one minute under this guy, jeff clark. >> you will hear from mr. donahue in person on thursday as my colleague mr. kinzinger presents details about this plan. the chair requests those in the hearing room remain seated until the capitol police have escorted members from the room. without objection, the committee stands adjourned.

>> bennie thompson gavels down and i'm hear with hallie jackson and katy tur. i am really struck by the fact that we heard from election workers, ordinary volunteers, people who were part of that community, it was such an important part of their lives. we heard from shaye moss about how she'd heard from her mother and her grandmother, the importance of voting, how important it was to the elderly especially during a pandemic. important to them that she was available to them, that she would help college students not have to travel home but get mail-in ballots. and to be able to vote. all of that. and as we -- >> and look at what is happening on the screen. hugs with adam kinzinger, paying their respects to her and her mother. you can see them walking towards the camera where lady ruby is.

>> and you can see liz cheney approaching and of course also congressman raskin. so, you know, let's think about the impact of this testimony. lady ruby as she described herself, these people who were honest ordinary citizens, so vilified that they were afraid to go to the grocery store, afraid to tell anybody their names, their lives have been ruined, lady ruby had to go into hiding on the recommendation of the fbi for two months before january 6 because of threats to them and their families. and that is exactly what is happening according to lots of testimony that we've heard. all over the country to election workers. ruby saying do you know what it feels like to have the president of the united states target you. >> and this is what happens. this is the results of the president spreading the lie. and rudy giuliani spreading the lie. and making unfounded targeted

claims against an individual. i mean, she is saying pretty clearly her life is ruined, her mother as you said had to go into hiding for two months. the big takeaway that i got from these hearings today and on top of that powerful testimony from shaye, the election worker, that once again donald trump knew. he knew there were no dead people. he was told there were no dead people. you knew there were no suitcase full of ballots. no shredded ballots. no nonregistered voters. no people too young to vote. no large mass of felons voting, no authority to change electors. he was told over and over and over again by aides, by white house lawyers, by campaign lawyers, by the courts, by elections officials in these various states, he was told, he was told, he was told and he kept on repeating the lie over and over again even spending

millions of dollars to spread the lie across the country keeping up the pressure campaign, and what we saw there was shaye moss' testimony is the result of how that affected an individual person. what we saw on january 6 is how it affected the country. >> there is also the theme that we've been talking about looking ahead, right some looking forward. and what we saw from shaye moss was a microcosm. for all she said about wanting to help, wanting to help people, feeling like this was her calling. her grandmother talking about why it was so important to vote. she no longer works as an election official. congressman schiff detailed the threats to election workers. what happens next election? that is so much the focus i think. the line that the committee is trying to draw. not just from 2020, but ahead to '24 and future elections. what happens if we know longer as a country, as a democracy are

able to dodge those bullets so to speak. let me bring in ali vitali, chuck rosenberg, joyce vance, ben collins. ali, i know you have some hallways to run through. fill us in on what you've seen as people are exiting the hearing room after this hearing today. >> reporter: we have some hallways to run through because we have questions for the chairman and others as they come out about what this might look like going forward. of course they did tease ahead to the thursday hearing about the department of justice officials who will testify. but i think this hearing focused on the second prong that we talked about, the idea that this violence was, frankly, a feature not a bug. they detailed at each level whether it was election workers or state election officials at the highest levels, attorneys general and others, who were pressured at their front doors, at their homes, that was certainly one of the key takeaways here. and i think on the other piece of it, we saw people speak today that we hadn't heard before. chairman of the rnc talking

about the calls that she had with former president trump. of the emails going through between conservative lawyers including john eastman really putting more meat on the bone giving us a sense of how this web of that false elector strategy happened throughout the country. even going so far as to show us the difference between what the real slates of electors look like and what the fake slates of electors look like and how simply muddying the waters was eastman's hope that that would be enough to give pence the ability to say that there was doubts about these slates of elector, all of this shedding more light on things that we already knew about but certainly seeing it in new light with much more detail this time. >> thank you so much, ali. and i want to bring in joyce vance. in addition to the emotion, the raw emotion that i'm sure was felt in the room, we certainly felt it here on set, but hearing from ordinary citizens trying to do the right thing and were pressured from the oval office,

completely pressured by the president of the united states, what about liz cheney at the end calling out the white house counsel pat cipollone for ducking testifying. she said that they know from other testimony from people on his team that he tried to do the right thing. he was the white house counsel, trying to do the right thing but avoiding testimony and they said -- she said that they are trying to get him to testify but what do they have to do? they have run into a brick wall of subpoena avoidance, haven't they, from mark meadows, from pat cipollone any in particular who was trying to stop the president from continuing with these plots. >> well, liz cheney certainly is not in a mood to take any prisoners here. and while she may recognize the reality that this committee is at the end of its subpoena power and can't force this testimony, she is certainly willing to shame these officials like the

white house counsel who sat through this, lived through this, could offer meaningful testimony about things that the former president knew and said, pieces of evidence that are essential. she is certainly willing to shame him into coming forward with that. and if anything will shame any of these people. it is the testimony of shaye moss which just breaks my heart, a woman who wanted to help people vote, who was targeted by a president who manufactured out of thin air this number, 18,000 votes that she and her mother were responsible for dumping, who makes up a story that they are committing voter fraud by passing a usb drive around when her mom was giving her a ginger mint while working on the election. it is shameful. and any of these people who aren't willing to show the same kind of courage that these two women, ms. moss and her mother, ms. freeman, showed, they ought to be ashamed. >> and she said that she is

scared for anyone to hear her name, don't call my name out, i'm afraid anyone to know who i am. chuck rosenberg, let's talk about the process we've seen so far, the building upon what donald trump knew and when he knew it and what he did even though he knew it. we've heard over and over again in each one of these scenarios that he was told that it would be corrupt, that there was no legal basis, no fraud, et cetera, et cetera. >> that's right. it is absolutely shameful. it is abhorrent behavior. and i think it just illustrates something that we saw today but i'd like to comment on it very briefly. rule of law is construct. it depends on people like mr. bowers, mr. sterling, mr. raffensperger, it depends on shaye moss and her mom, ruby freeman, to make sure that it is upheld even under extraordinary and difficult circumstances. and so whatever you think of mr.

trump, and i can tell you i don't think very much, thank goodness that we have people who understand that the rule of law is only sustained by their good graces and their good will and good deeds. the law of gravity exists everywhere including in countries that have no rule of law and i'd hate to become one of those. >> ben collins, let me bring you in because you probably more than any of us on the screen right now know ruby freeman and shaye moss, you've done extensive reporting in georgia on this conspiracy theory that has affected their lives in such a deep way. i wonder when you heard that system from shaye moss and her mother in that taped deposition, what you think the key takeaways are and how this connects to the bigger picture as it relates to the disinformation beat that you cover. >> yeah, i think if you are a human being you are heartbroken hearing these two women who were at every step of the way trying to do the right thing but were in-tell tim dated to commit to a

crime that they did not commit. and the most jarring thing you heard is that rudy giuliani saying that they were handing back and forth a usb stick full of votes like heroin or cocaine. and what was that usb stick in it was a ginger mint. so that is where their heads were at. or cocaine. what was that usb stick? it was a ginger mint. i do have to say, i've been trying to reach out and talk to ruby for a very long time since january 6th when i saw all the harassment she was seeing by places like the gateway foundation and all these other places that are serving as vehicles for future harassment of election workers and future harassment of anyone who wants to participate in the political system. when i reached out to her, she didn't get back to me because she was inundated with threats. here is the end of her voice mail message that she would tell everyone before they left a note. remember in all ways acknowledge god and he shall direct your path. that's what she would see to

people before they would leave her death threats, come to her home and try to intimidate her. they circled her home on january 6th with trucks because the fbi told her not to be there anymore. these were good and decent people trying to do everything at every step. someone was trying to make their lives hell enough that they would admit to a crime they didn't commit. >> frank figliuzzi, part of this is the heartbreaking testimony about shaye moss saying this group shoving their way into her grandmother's house to make a, quote, citizen's arrest. what are the legal ramifications when you listen to the audio of the president of the united states repeatedly threatening local officials and using the name 18 times over, using her mother's name and falsely stating that she was responsible for some fraud? is there any way to connect his

statements to his knowledge that this was false, the fact that he was repeatedly told by his officials that what rudy giuliani was telling him was totally wrong? >> there is a legal line, investigative line, a prosecutive line that you can draw now between the threats he's making, the phone calls he's making and the overall strategy to overturn a valid election. we're focused like a laser, of course, understandably by the words utter by president trump in these phone calls to raffensperger and others. i focus on the phone call to francis watson, the chief investigator for the georgia secretary of state. it's not so much what he said but what has to be inferred from what he said that is tantamount to a threat. he tells her you'll be praised when the right answer comes out.

what is the flip side of that? what is the flip side of what happens to you, what must you infer escapable if the president of the united states is saying you'll be praised if the right thing -- the right answer comes out? of course the only conclusion, the only inference to be drawn there is that really bad things are going to happen if you don't give that president what he wants. that is tantamount to a threat. >> isn't there even a more specific threat to all of you, a more specific threat earlier that you will be criminally charged? didn't that also happen to raffensperger? >> indeed it did. there's implied -- not only implied but now we know it was believed you're violating some mysterious criminal violation here. i think all packaged as saying this is part of a strategy and an indication that he knew or he believed or should have believed

that what he was asking was inappropriate, and the only way to get what he needed was to threaten people even with criminal prosecution. >> michael, in watching what we've seen today and hearing from adam kinzinger the other day with the threat he received, all the threats that shaye moss detailed, the fact that she's not going to be an elections worker any longer, i wonder if you are a republican who supports donald trump, do you look at this and say it's just a bunch of lies? if you are in republican leadership right now, someone like mitch mcconnell who was furious after january 6th -- i think we can say that fairly. how do you interpret everything that is being laid out? what do you think about what happens next? >> well, i think for those republicans that support trump, they think this is a bunch of lies. they don't think that, you know, the testimony we heard today was

dispositive of anything other than emotion and overreaction. i think for a lot of the republican leadership, they want to look past it. they don't want to have to acknowledge that they support a petulant bully. they don't want to acknowledge that they have their own supporters and followers and adherence inside the party who are threatening people, who are circling their homes. the outrage that they feigned at protesters appearing at republican justice's home, where is the outrage here, where you have people that support trump bursting into the home of a relative looking for that official. there was no outrage. there was no, oh, my god, this is not what we do and who we are. in fact, it is what we now do because we agree to it. i think the stain that liz

cheney referred to at the very beginning of this hearing only gets larger with each passing piece of testimony and each passing moment that this committee is pushing out the evidence that they have. >> i want to close the loop on something that had come up earlier in the hearing as related to senator ron johnson, this piece of evidence, new revelation that the committee shared that at some point on january 6th ron johnson's chief of staff reached out to a top aide to then vice president mike pence suggesting they needed to get pence the fake elector certificates, essentially. the aide to the vice president said absolutely do not give that to him. we're now hearing from the senator's office and his spokesperson is tweeting that the senator had no involvement in the creation of fake electors. they say his new chief of staff

contacted the vp's office and said not to give it to him and we did not, end of story. essentially distancing senator johnson from this. i want to bring in -- i believe we have congressman jamie raskin, maryland democrat, member of the january 6th committee. thank you for being with us as we wrap up our special coverage. just about three minutes left in the show. >> you bet. >> biggest takeaways today. katie mentioned donald trump was told repeatedly about these various pieces of information. we heard about the emotional testimony from rusty bowers from shaye moss. what do you hope they take away today? >> donald trump set all of these events into motion and they attempted to get state election officials to lie and to participate in election fraud. they oversaw the preparation of counterfeit electors within the regime. i was very moved by the testimony shaye moss.

i was moved by the testimony of secretary of state raffensperger, speaker bowers. democracy is a really personal thing to people in our country. donald trump was trying to trample the rule of law, the whole et fis of our constitution so i want to salute those patriots. there's good news coming out of these hearings, too, which is there are a lot of people who believe in democracy and are willing to stand up for it. >> congressman, you're the constitutional law professor. a question i was asking a bit earlier was is there any legal ramification for the president of the united states browbeating these local officials and leading the the mob action against shaye moss' grandmother, the heartbreaking testimony we heard today. is there any legal ramification for that? >> well, it's a crime, of

course, to solicit someone to participate in a crime. so, for example, what we saw trump doing with secretary of state raffensperger, was trying to engage him in election fraud. in terms of the lies that he put out that endangered ms. moss and her mother, that's a form of recklessness that is really almost unknown to presidents of the united states that they would target particular election workers in that way. i don't know. we'd have to look hard to see what kind of crime was committed. but there was certainly intentional infliction of emotional distress, and i believe certainly he committed some torts in the state of georgia. >> congressman jamie raskin, thank you very much for being with us this afternoon. we do appreciate your time. that will wrap up our coverage for this afternoon. i'm with hallie jackson and andrea mitchell.

stick by for a two-hour recap special beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern. first up, though, "deadline white house" starts right now here on msnbc. hi everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. an extraordinary day on capitol hill with the fourth in a series of public hearings for the january 6th select committee. this one focused on the pressure campaign by donald trump and his allies on officials in key states. the campaign that was critical in trump's attempts to seize power for himself and one that, despite multiple warnings that his rhetoric could lead to violence, donald trump pursued anyway. as trump attorney cleta mitchell told the committee, the plot to get state legislatures to overturn election results may have been in the works even before election day and it was a multipronged efforts that included daily voicemails from the likes of rudy giuliani and jenna ellis. campaign ads and