Takeaways from the fourth hearing on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack

WASHINGTON — Republican public officials in key states such as Arizona and Georgia who found no evidence of the massive vote fraud claimed by then-President Donald Trump after he lost the election faced a lot of pressure — and threats.

That is what witnesses in person and in videos told the hearing Tuesday of the Jan. 6 Select Committee investigating the cause of the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the electoral count and overturn the election.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, a top Georgia election official, are Republicans who had voted for Trump but faced blowback when they rejected his demands to claim voter fraud.

And Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia election worker falsely accused by Trump of election fraud, testified how it shattered her and her mother’s lives.

Fraud evidence 'never' produced

Bowers told the panel he voted for Trump but rejected his schemes, saying, “I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to.”

He faced intense pressure, he said, recalling a call from Trump in which Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani claimed 200,000 undocumented immigrants and 5,000 or 6,000 dead people voted.

“I said, ‘Do you have their names?’” Bowers said he asked Giuliani. “‘Yes.’ Can you give me that? ‘Yes.’ The president interrupted and said, 'Give the man what he needs.'”

Asked if they ever produced the names or any evidence, Bowers said, “Never.”

Bowers said 20,000 emails and tens of thousands of voicemails flooded his office, video panel trucks appeared in his neighborhood blaring accusations that he is “a pedophile” and a man with a gun threatened his neighbor.

“We had a daughter who was gravely ill, who was upset by what was happening outside,” he said. She died in January 2021.

Lady Ruby

The claim by Trump and Giuliani that two Black women election workers counted 18,000 phony votes for Joe Biden and shredded thousands of ballots for Trump at an Atlanta vote counting facility left them shattered.

Several federal and state investigations dismissed as false that claim based on a video showing them pulling out a container suitcase full of votes from under a table and counting them after Trump election observers left. The case contained legitimate votes.

“It has turned my life upside down,” Moss, one of the election workers, testified. “I don’t want anyone knowing my name […] I just don’t do nothing anymore, I don’t want to go anywhere.”

Her mother, Ruby Freeman, who joined her on election night as a temporary election worker, sat behind Moss at the hearing.

“Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?” Freeman asked in a deposition video. “But he targeted me, Lady Ruby — a small-business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stands up to help Fulton County run an election in the middle of the pandemic.”

She added, “I can't believe this person has caused this much damage.”

Shaman sighting

The panel showed a previously undisclosed video of pro-Trump protesters storming into the Arizona House of Representatives building — several of whom later show up at the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

One stood out: QAnon shaman Jacob Chansley, shirtless and wearing a fur hat with horns and carrying a spear. On Jan. 6, a photograph shows him leaving a note on Vice President Mike Pence’s desk in the Senate chamber: “It’s only a matter of time, justice is coming.”

A federal district court judge sentenced Chansley last year to 41 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding.