Closing summary
The fourth hearing of the January 6 committee explored both the official effort to overturn the 2020 election and the impact of personal attacks by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani against a pair of Georgia poll workers. Meanwhile, Congress is in the midst of a flurry of legislating, with lawmakers days away from taking a two-week break.
Here’s what else happened today:
- South Dakota state attorney general Jason Ravnsborg lied to investigators and abused the power of his office after he struck and killed a pedestrian, prosecutors argued earlier today at the opening of an impeachment trial that could remove him from office.
- Documentary film maker Alex Holder is cooperating with a subpoena by the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and related events. He filmed interviews with Trump and family.
- Congress is inching towards votes on a bipartisan gun control compromise reached between Republicans and Democrats, spurred on by the Uvalde school massacre as well as the racist killings at a grocery store in Buffalo.
- The US Supreme Court has struck down a state-funded program in Maine that covers the costs of some private schools — but only those that are nonsectarian.
The US politics blog will return tomorrow, but for all the developments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine as they happen, including news on the visit by US attorney general Merrick Garland, the fate of American citizens fighting on Ukraine’s side, and what’s happening on the ground, do follow our global live blog on the war, here.
The testimony by Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss was the emotional climax of the January 6 committee’s fourth hearing, as they detailed how being personally attacked by Trump ruined their lives. Their experience is unfortunately not unique.
Alexander Vindman, a prominent witness in Trump’s first impeachment investigation, tweeted his support:
Lady Ruby and Shaye,
— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) June 21, 2022
I know what it’s like to have the President of the United States attack me. Stay strong. We are better than him and we will prevail. Much love!
Former US attorney and Trump foe Preet Bharara weighed in:
If Shaye Moss can come testify, so can Mike Pence
— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) June 21, 2022
A spokesman for Ron Johnson has responded to evidence presented in today’s January 6 hearing that appeared to show the Republican senator cooperated with Trump’s efforts to disrupt the 2020 election results in crucial swing states.
The senator had no involvement in the creation of an alternate slate of electors and had no foreknowledge that it was going to be delivered to our office. This was a staff to staff exchange. His new Chief of Staff contacted the Vice President’s office.
— alexa henning (@alexahenning) June 21, 2022
The Vice President’s office said not to give it to him and we did not. There was no further action taken. End of story.
— alexa henning (@alexahenning) June 21, 2022
In its hearing, the committee detailed a plan by Trump supporters to create “fake elector documents,” which would say that states crucial to Joe Biden’s victory such as Georgia and Arizona actually voted for Trump. The idea was to get these into the hands of Mike Pence, who was to certify Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021. The committee showed an aide for Johnson contacted the vice-president’s staff about getting the documents to Pence, but they ultimately rejected the request.
Updated
The January 6 committee has finished its hearing for the day, and as is its practice, ended with a preview of its next presentation, set for Thursday.
Committee chair Bennie Thompson said the House lawmakers will explore Trump’s “attempt to corrupt and the country’s top law enforcement body, the justice department, to support his attempt to overturn the election.” He played a brief excerpt from the testimony of Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general at the end of Trump’s term.
“The president said suppose I do this, suppose I replace 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,” Donoghue is heard saying.
Rosen was the acting attorney general for the final weeks of Trump’s time in the White House. Clark was an assistant attorney general who is accused of plotting with Trump to overturn the election, and is now facing disbarment.
The committee also showed Trump attacking Freeman as a “vote scammer” in a call with the Georgia secretary of state. Moss and Freeman are ending their testimony with the latter describing how it feels to be personally attacked by the president.
“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,” Freeman said in recorded testimony played by the committee.
Earlier, Moss had described just how intense the attacks from Trump supporters against them became. People would repeatedly make large pizza orders to Freeman’s home, sending delivery drivers to her door. In one instance, Moss said, strangers turned up at Freeman’s home and tried to force their way in to attempt a “citizens arrest” of her. Around January 6, Freeman was advised by the FBI to leave her home for her safety.
Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman are detailing how Trump and Giuliani’s promotion of a conspiracy theory that they somehow rigged the vote has disrupted their lives.
Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman are passing around USB ports “as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine,” Giuliani said in video testimony to the Georgia senate that the committee just played. In reality, Moss testified, what’s shown being passed in that video was a ginger mint. But that allegation started the campaign of attacks by Trump supporters against the mother and daughter.
Moss, who is Black, said people found her Facebook profile and left her “hateful” and “racist” messages, including one saying “Be glad it’s 2020 and 1920.”
“I don’t go to the grocery store at all. I haven’t been anywhere. I gained about 60 pounds,” Moss said of the the threats’ effects on her. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I second-guessed everything that I do.”
Updated
The three Republican officials have now finished their testimony before the committee, and the lawmakers are now hearing from Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a Georgia poll worker who, along with her mother, was accused of rigging the vote in a number of conspiracies promoted by Trump supporters.
Her mother is seated behind her in the hearing room.
Moss has been a Fulton county election worker for 10 years, and began by confirming she never received threats before like she did during the 2020 election.
Raffensperger debunks Trump fraud claim: 'The numbers don't lie'
Using Trump’s words from a recorded phone call with Raffensperger, the committee is having the two Georgia officials debunk all of his claims of a stolen election in their state.
“The numbers are the numbers and numbers don’t lie,” Raffensperger said, defending his office’s conduct. “Every single allegation, we checked, we ran down the rabbit trail to make sure that our numbers were accurate.”
The FBI and Georgia Bureau of Investigation also investigated the claims and found them to be baseless.
Adam Schiff, the California Democrat leading today’s question, said that the committee has learned that around the time of the dispute over Georgia’s vote, Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, wanted to send Georgia election investigators “a shitload of Potus stuff,” in the words of one White House aide. These included coins and autographed Maga hats. “White House staff intervened to make sure that didn’t happen,” Schiff said.
Updated
Sterling is detailing some of the conspiracy theories that followed Biden’s election victory in Georgia, and debunking them. But despite the evidence he outlined that the theories weren’t true, he said it was hard to get people to believe him.
“It was kind of like a shovel trying to empty the ocean,” Sterling said. “It was frustrating. I even have family members who I had to argue with about some of these things, and I would show them things, and the problem you have is you’re getting to people’s hearts.”
“Once you get past the heart, the facts don’t matter as much. And our job, from our point of view, is to get the facts out,” Sterling added.
The January 6 committee has resumed its hearing, with the focus turning to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state. As with Bowers before him, Raffensperger begins by confirming his bonafides as a conservative Republican who wanted Trump to win.
Also answering questions is Gabriel Sterling, Raffensperger’s deputy, who went viral for his speech following the election in which he strongly denounced Trump’s baseless insistence that the 2020 election was stolen in Georgia.
Sterling is addressing that speech before the committee, saying it was prompted by direct threats to staff members in his office.
“I lost my temper,” Sterling said. “But it seemed necessary at the time, because it was just getting worse.” He also noted that he’s not aware of any request from Trump to his supporters not to use violence.
The committee is now taking a recess, but before they concluded, Bowers, a Republican who said he voted for Trump in the 2020 election, detailed the costs of his refusal to go along with the former president’s plot to swing Arizona’s electoral votes in his favor.
“We received, my secretaries would say, in excess of 20,000 emails, tens of 1000s of voicemails and texts which saturated our offices and we are unable to work,” Bowers said.
Every Saturday, Bowers said organizations that he did not name would stage protests near his house.
“We have various groups combined. They have had video panel trucks with videos of me, proclaiming me to be a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician and blaring loudspeakers in my neighborhood, and leaving literature, both on my property and arguing and threatening with neighbors, and with myself,” Bowers said.
The committee is now airing evidence that groups of Trump supporters from several states met after the 2020 election to create “fake electors documents,” which they sent to Washington in an attempt to change their states’ electoral votes from Trump to Biden.
The states included Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada and Wisconsin, and the meetings were done at the request of the Trump campaign. The intention was to submit the documents to vice-president Mike Pence, and the National Archives.
The committee then showed text messages that indicate Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson attempted to get the fake elector documents to Pence. An aide to the vice-president ultimately prevented the documents from reaching him.
Per Bowers’ retelling, the pressure campaign against him went on for some time, and included calls from those outside the White House.
Andy Biggs, a Republican House representative from Arizona, asked Bowers to support decertifying the Biden electors. “I wouldn’t,” the Arizona speaker said he replied.
“We have no legal pathway, both in state law nor to my knowledge in federal law for us to execute such a request,” Bowers said of his opposition to the demands from Trump’s team, which included reconvening Arizona lawmakers to either reject Biden’s electors or send two lists of electors to Congress. “And I am not allowed to walk or act beyond my authority.”
Updated
Arizona House speaker: 'I will not break my oath'
Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives is now testifying. He’s detailing a phone call from Trump and Giuliani following the 2020 election in which he was pressured to act to change the state’s vote in the electoral college from Biden to Trump.
The two men claimed that the state’s election was tainted by fraud, to which Bowers demanded evidence.
“Did you ever receive from him that evidence, either during the call, after the call or to this day?” asked Adam Schiff, the Democratic House representative leading the questioning.
“Never,” replied Bowers. Giuliani then came on the call to demand that Bowers “would allow an official committee at the capitol so that they can hear this evidence, and that we can take action thereafter.”
“I refused. I said up to that time that the circus, I called it circus, had been brewing with lots of demonstrations, both in the counting center (and) at the capitol,” Bowers said. “And I didn’t want to have that in the House.”
“Look, you are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath,” Bowers said to their demands that he act to change the state’s vote. “You’re asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath.”
Updated
The committee is airing a video detailing a multi-pronged effort to convince, cajole and intimidate state officials into acting in Trump’s favor in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
There were phone calls from Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, both lawyers for Trump, to state lawmakers, pushing them to act to give Trump their state’s electoral votes. Trump also publicly posted the contact details of lawmakers in crucial states.
The efforts had a tangible effect, the committee is showing. “All of my personal information was doxed online. It was my personal email, my personal cell phone, my home phone number. In fact, we had to disconnect our home for about three days because it would rain all hours of the night would fill up with messages,” Bryan Cutler, the Republican speaker of Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives told the committee.
The video ends with shots of protests by Trump supporters, some of which are armed or making threats of violence against lawmakers, or both.
Updated
The committee is now showing video of Trump supporters gathered outside Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s house at night.
“Stop the steal!” the video shows them chanting, with one voicing calling Benson a “threat to democracy.”
“My stomach sunk,” Benson told the committee. “Are they coming with guns? Are they going to attack my house?... That was the scariest moment just not knowing what was gonna happen.”
“Don’t be distracted by politics. This is serious,” Liz Cheney, the January 6 committee’s top Republican member, said in an appeal against partisan politics as the hearing began.
“We cannot let America become a nation of conspiracy theories and thug violence,” she added.
Yet Cheney herself may not be able to escape the partisan implications of her strident denunciation of Trump and his actions around January 6. She’s been booted from her state’s Republican party and is facing a vigorous primary challenge.
Updated
January 6 committee begins fourth hearing
The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has begun its fourth hearing, focusing on Trump’s efforts to convince state officials to swing the results of the 2020 election in his favor.
Among those testifying today will be:
- Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who last month fended off a Trump-backed attempt to oust him from office.
-
Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager during the 2020 election who is now Raffensperger’s top deputy and vocally condemned Trump’s baseless claims about the integrity of his state’s election.
- Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona House.
- Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a Georgia poll worker who, along with her mother, was accused of rigging the vote in a number of conspiracies promoted by Trump supporters.
Updated
Interim summary
It’s been a busy day so far in US politics, building to this afternoon’s latest hearing by the House January 6 committee investigating the insurrection in 2021 and events surrounding Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat (and potentially to corrupt future election results, as an alleged “clear and present” danger to American democracy).
We’ll have live coverage of the hearing, beginning at the top of the hour.
Here’s where things stand:
- South Dakota state attorney general Jason Ravnsborg lied to investigators and abused the power of his office after he struck and killed a pedestrian, prosecutors argued earlier today at the opening of an impeachment trial that could remove him from office.
- Documentary film maker Alex Holder is cooperating with a subpoena by the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and related events. He filmed interviews with Trump and family.
- Congress is inching towards votes on a bipartisan gun control compromise reached between Republicans and Democrats, spurred on by the Uvalde school massacre as well as the racist killings at a grocery store in Buffalo.
- The US Supreme Court has struck down a state-funded program in Maine that covers the costs of some private schools — but only those that are nonsectarian.
For all the developments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine as they happen, including news on the visit by US attorney general Merrick Garland, the fate of American citizens fighting on Ukraine’s side, and what’s happening on the ground, do follow our global live blog on the war, here.
Updated
South Dakota state attorney general Jason Ravnsborg lied to investigators and abused the power of his office after he struck and killed a pedestrian, prosecutors argued earlier today at the opening of an impeachment trial that could remove him from office, the Associated Press reports.
Ravnsborg’s attorneys countered that such an action would improperly undo the will of voters for what he has maintained was an accident.
Ravnsborg, a Republican who only recently announced he wouldn’t seek a second term, faces two charges in the state’s first-ever impeachment trial over his actions in following a 2020 crash that led criminal investigators, some lawmakers and the victim’s family to question his truthfulness.
Senators may also vote on whether Ravnsborg should be barred from holding future office.
Either way, the outcome of a proceeding expected to take two days will close a chapter that has roiled state politics, pitting Republican governor Kristi Noem against Ravnsborg and some in her own party who objected to her aggressive pursuit of his removal.
He absolutely saw the man that he struck in the moments after,” said Alexis Tracy, the Clay County state’s attorney who is leading the prosecution.
Prosecutors also told senators that Ravnsborg had used his title “to set the tone and gain influence” in the aftermath of the crash, even as he allegedly made “misstatements and outright lies” to the crash investigators.
The prosecution played a montage of audio clips of Ravnsborg referring to himself as the attorney general.
Ravnsborg has maintained that he did nothing wrong and cast the impeachment trial as a chance to clear himself.
He resolved the criminal case last year by pleading no contest to a pair of traffic misdemeanors, including making an illegal lane change and using a phone while driving, and was fined by a judge.
Alex Holder, a documentary film-maker who Politico reported has been subpoenaed by the January 6 committee for his interviews with Trump and his inner circle, responded to the news:
My statement in response to being subpoenaed by Congress: pic.twitter.com/LOY53rEynI
— Alex Holder (@alexjholder) June 21, 2022
Robert Costa of CBS News has some details of what Holder may have captured:
Some reporting on the Alex Holder Trump doc, per convos with 3 people this morning who worked on Trump 2020...
— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 21, 2022
1-They recall a film crew coming to HQ at least once. They also remember it being odd because campaign's legal team seemed surprised, as if it was an unvetted project.
2-The campaign's lawyers were like, "Huh, what is this? What's going on today?" Saw it as another side project from the family/Trump confidants.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 21, 2022
3-"This was a family thing," one of the campaign staffers told @CBSNews.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 21, 2022
NEWS: Per a person familiar with the project, ALEX HOLDER has made a 3-part series on Trump. Spent Sept. 2020-Jan. 2021 with the Trump family and campaign, filming. Was on Cap grounds, not WH day of Jan. 6. He had full editorial control, was not paid. Paid for crew, hotels, etc.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 21, 2022
Stephen Colbert has spoken out following the Thursday evening arrests of several of his crew members near the US Capitol, as Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:
Talkshow host Stephen Colbert on Monday called the recent arrests of seven staffers near the US Capitol “unpleasant” but said both his employees and the police officers who detained them “were just doing their job”.
“Everyone was very professional,” Colbert added during the monologue of his show Monday, four days after the arrests. “Everyone was very calm.”
The Late Show host also bristled at comparisons – even tongue-in-cheek ones – between the deadly January 6 attack at the Capitol and Thursday night’s detentions, including that of the voice behind the puppet character Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
“This was first-degree puppetry,” Colbert joked, before striking a more serious tone and adding: “Drawing any equivalence between rioters storming our Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral ballots and a cigar-chomping toy dog is a shameful and grotesque insult to the memory of everyone who died and trivializes the service and the courage the Capitol police showed on that terrible day.”
Spurred on by the Uvalde massacre as well as the killings at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, Congress is inching towards votes on a bipartisan gun control compromise reached between Republicans and Democrats.
Senators announced an agreement on the legislation last week, but they need to write the bill before it can be put up for a vote. John Cornyn, the Texas senator who is the lead Republican in the talks, says the bill’s text should be released soon.
CORNYN tells me there will be text “hopefully shortly.” Bill is hung up over “details.” Asked about getting booed in TX over the weekend: he’s “all for people exercising their first amendment rights” but the reaction doesn’t change how he’s negotiating the gun reform bill. pic.twitter.com/x0y0RDB4C1
— Allison Pecorin (@AllisonMPecorin) June 21, 2022
While the measure lacks many of the provisions they believe are necessary to stop future mass shootings, Democrats are expected to back the compromise, viewing it as better than nothing. The proposal is also seen as likely to receive 10 votes from Republicans, who are typically hostile to gun control legislation. Their support is necessary to overcome a filibuster from others in their party, and Cornyn himself faced the wrath of some of his fellow Texas Republicans last week for working on the compromise.
There’s been another alarming revelation about the botched police response to the Uvalde school shooting last month.
The director of Texas’s Department of Public Safety told a state Senate committee that police officers could have stopped the shooting three minutes after it began, and called their response an “abject failure,” according to the Associated Press:
Police officers with rifles instead stood and waited in a school hallway for nearly an hour while the gunman carried out the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, testified at a state Senate hearing on the police handling of the tragedy.
Delays in the law enforcement response have been the focus of federal, state and local investigations of the mass shooting.
McCraw told the Senate committee that Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief, decided to put the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children.
The public safety chief began outlining for the committee a series of missed opportunities.
Breaking along ideological lines, the supreme court has struck down a state-funded program in Maine that covers the costs of some private schools — but only those that are nonsectarian.
The decision will allow people in the state to use public money to pay for religious schooling, as Reuter’s Lawrence Hurley explains:
BREAKING: Supreme Court backs public money for religious schools in Maine case
— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 21, 2022
Chief Justice Roberts: "... a neutral benefit program in which public funds flow to religious organizations
— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 21, 2022
through the independent choices of private benefit recipients does not offend the Establishment Clause"
Case is on whether people can use public money for religious schools from funding that Maine provides for people to pay for tuition at private high school in some parts of the state that lack public high schools. Court says "yes" on 6-3 vote
— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 21, 2022
The court’s conservative justices all supported the ruling, while its three liberals Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer dissented.
The supreme court has ended its release of decisions today with a ruling on a 233-year old statute regarding federal court orders:
In its final opinion of the day, SCOTUS rules on the scope of the All Writs Act, a 233-year-old statute that gives federal courts broad power to issue orders. The case involved an Ohio death-row prisoner trying to develop new evidence to challenge his conviction and sentence.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 21, 2022
The supreme court has thus far announced three decisions, none of which deal with abortion, gun rights, environmental regulation or the other contentious topics they are expected to rule on before the current term ends.
Here’s a rundown of what they’ve done so far, from SCOTUSblog:
In a technical dispute about health insurance reimbursements for kidney dialysis, the Supreme Court sides with a health insurer, rejecting a claim from DaVita Inc. (one of the nation's largest providers of dialysis) that the insurer's low reimbursement rates violated federal law.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 21, 2022
In the second (but not final) opinion of the day, the Supreme Court narrows the definition of "crime of violence" in a federal criminal statute. The court agrees with a criminal defendant that the definition excludes attempted robbery under the Hobbs Act.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 21, 2022
The Supreme Court strikes down a Washington law that made it easier for certain workers to get workers' comp from the federal government if they became sick while cleaning up a decommissioned nuclear site. SCOTUS says the law violates the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 21, 2022
Attorney General Merrick Garland has made a surprise visit to Ukraine, expressing support for the country’s effort to prosecute the perpetrators of war crimes following Russia’s invasion.
Here he is along with Ukraine’s prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova:
In unannounced trip, Attorney General Merrick Garland Visits Ukraine, Reaffirms U.S. Commitment to Help Identify, Apprehend, and Prosecute Individuals Involved in War Crimes and Atrocities pic.twitter.com/GzHPGqOUYV
— Anthony Coley (@AnthonyColeyDOJ) June 21, 2022
The United States has already formally accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine, and the country has started trying Russian soldiers for alleged abuses.
When it begins announcing decisions in a few minutes, the supreme court could release an opinion that sharply curtails abortion rights nationwide, and Democratic leaders are trying to make the most of what they hope many of their voters would see as a bad situation.
As Politico reports, the party is making plans to focus voters’ attention on the ruling’s implications, and away from the issues that have swamped Biden’s approval ratings in recent months, such as gas prices and inflation overall.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s preparations, previewed by a committee official, are a window into the Democratic Party’s broader efforts to capitalize — in the middle of a brutal-looking midterm election climate — on the Supreme Court’s likely reversal of Roe v. Wade, which would change a half-century of precedent and let states decide the legality of abortion.
Support for Roe is at an all-time high with voters, and the Democrats’ strategy is aimed at firing up a flagging Democratic base, while also trying to compete for some of the college-educated, female, suburban swing voters who backed them during the Trump era. The question, though, is how to make abortion a top issue for voters in November while facing a range of challenges, especially gas prices averaging $5 a gallon and inflation ticking up.
“We’re not going to be able to keep it in the national news, but we’re going to put a lot of money on paid advertising — on TV, on digital ads, on mail, on radio — and in key places across the country, and that’s how this issue will matter,” said Stephanie Schriock, former president of EMILY’s List, a Democratic pro-abortion-rights group. “And in some states, it will be in the news every day, because state legislatures are going to push this issue further and further to the right with outright bans.”
What else can you expect from the January 6 committee? The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has taken a closer look at how the House lawmakers will present their witnesses and evidence at today’s hearing:
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected to show at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that Donald Trump and top advisers coordinated the scheme to send fake slates of electors as part of an effort to return him to the White House.
The panel is expected to also examine Trump’s campaign to pressure top officials in seven crucial battleground states to corruptly reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the weeks and months after the 2020 election.
At the afternoon hearing, the select committee is expected to focus heavily on the fake electors scheme, which has played a large part in its nearly year-long investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the election at the state level.
In its hearings thus far, the January 6 committee has focused on the circumstances leading up to the attack in Washington, particularly Trump’s baseless claims that the election was stolen.
Viewers will be taken farther afield in today’s hearing, which will feature testimony from state officials about how Trump pushed them to interfere with their election results for his benefit.
Among its guests will be Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who last month fended off a Trump-backed attempt to oust him from office. He will be joined by Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers and Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office.
The hearing will also feature an appearance by Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a Georgia poll worker who, along with her mother, was accused of rigging the vote in a number of conspiracies promoted by Trump supporters. She is now suing Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, rightwing One America News Network and several of its senior executives for defamation, saying the claims put them in physical danger.
Expect to hear more about just what she endured at the hearing today.
January 6 committee to investigate pressure campaign on state officials as search for evidence continues
Good morning, US politics live blog readers. At 1pm eastern time, the January 6 committee will be holding its fourth hearing into last year’s attack on the Capitol, with this session focusing on former president Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on state officials to throw the 2020 election in his direction. The committee is meanwhile continuing its search for evidence. Politico reports that it has subpoenaed a documentary film-maker who had access to Trump’s inner circle around the time of the insurrection.
Here’s what else to expect today:
- Democrats and Republicans in Congress are scrambling to find agreement on gun control legislation and an innovation bill as time runs out to pass the legislation before an upcoming two-week recess.
- The supreme court will release another batch of opinions at 10 am eastern time. Among these could be their opinions on closely watched cases dealing with abortion, gun rights, environmental regulation and other controversial issues.
- Voters will head to the polls (or cast mail-in ballots) in Virginia and Washington DC, while run-off elections are being held in Alabama and Georgia.
- President Joe Biden announced he will appoint Marilynn Malerba as treasurer of the United States. She is the chief of the Mohegan Tribe and would be the first Native American in the position that oversees the US Mint, among other responsibilities.
