Jan. 6 committee holds fourth hearing

Ruby Freeman, a former Fulton County, Georgia, election worker and mother of witness Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, expressed how profoundly her life has changed after Rudy Giuliani and former President Trump targeted her and her daughter with fraud allegations in video testimony.

Freeman told the House select committee that she lost her sense of self and security after being targeted by the former President.

"For my entire professional life, I was Lady Ruby. My community in Georgia, where I was born and lived my whole life, new me as Lady Ruby. I built my own business around that name, 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 have not worn it since and I will never wear it again," Freeman testified.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff ended the witness statements with Freeman's own words of how being targeted by the President meant that she did not feel safe "nowhere."

Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff to President Donald Trump, wanted to send "a sh*tload of POTUS stuff," including autographed Make America Great Again hats and memorial coins, to election auditors in Georgia, Rep. Adam Schiff said Tuesday, citing evidence from a White House aide.

The revelation, in the fourth day of public testimony before the House Select Committee, came as lawmakers outlined the efforts by Meadows and Trump to interfere in the vote count in Georgia, which quickly became a focal point of the effort to overturn the election results.

White House staff intervened to make sure no Trump swag was ever sent to the Georgia investigators, according to Schiff. 

Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, a former Georgia election worker, told the Jan. 6 House select committee about "hateful" and "racist" threats she received via Facebook

"A lot of threats, wishing death upon me. Telling me that, you know, I'll be in jail with my mother and saying things like 'be glad it's 2020 and not 1920,'" Moss said.

Former President Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani alleged that she and her mother were seen in a video passing a USB drive to each other. Moss said her mother was just giving her a ginger mint.

Moss also described to the committee how much she loved her job, in which she helped voters with any questions they had.

"I've always been told by my grandmother how important it is to vote and how people before me, a lot of people, older people in my family, did not have that right," she said.

"I liked being the one that, you know, if someone couldn'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 could put it in the mail for them. I was excited always about sending out all the absentee ballots for the elderly and disabled people. I even remember driving to a hospital to give someone her absentee application. That's what I loved the most," Moss said.

The head of the Republican Party testified to the House select committee that former President Donald Trump called her as part of an effort to use fake electors to support him. 

The new detail links Trump directly to efforts to put forward rogue, alternate slates of electors in states that he lost, even though his top lawyers in the White House and the campaign knew the approach wasn’t legally sound.

She noted that the electors were being pulled together in case Trump legal challenges succeeded in blocking Biden wins.

The campaign wasn't entirely on board, however. 

Some of the top officials in the Trump campaign and White House believed the fake electors plan wasn't legal, and left the push to lawyers like Eastman and Rudy Giuliani who had swarmed after the election, the committee said.

In an interview with the committee, Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to the White House chief of staff, confirmed to the committee that lawyers with the White House counsel said the plot was not legally sound. She said former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani were involved in the meeting.

Two top campaign lawyers, Matt Morgan and Justin Clark, said in their taped depositions that they told Trump lawyers pushing the fake electors scheme they didn't want to take part.

"You just get after it. I'm out," Clark told the House, about a conversation he had with another lawyer who backed the fake electors plan, Kenneth Chesebro. "I don't think this is appropriate. This isn't the right thing to do."

Morgan described directing another campaign official to tell Chesebro: "This is your task. You are responsible for the Electoral College issues moving forward. This was my way of taking that responsibility to zero."

Before Tuesday, it wasn't known that Clark had spoken to the House select committee. 

A source familiar with Clark’s testimony says he testified “a while back” and that Trump is likely not pleased his former lead campaign attorney is shown saying essentially his campaign didn’t have a case to back up Trump’s lies.

Clark still works with Trump. Last year he directed witnesses the House had subpoenaed to preserve executive privilege, and he represented Trump in his unsuccessful appeal to try to stop the release of White House documents from the National Archives.

In the face of threats and harassment from people across the country, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he didn't just walk away because he felt like he "had to be faithful to the Constitution."

Raffensperger testified before the Jan. 6 committee that after the election, he and his wife were both getting texts and emails. He said the texts to his wife were often sexual.

"We met in high school, we've been together over 40 years now," he said. "They started going after her, I think, to put pressure on me."

Raffensperger also said someone else broke into his daughter-in-law's home. Since she is a widow with two kids, he said he was "very concerned about her safety."

Despite all that, Raffensperger said he couldn't just quit and walk away because "I knew we had followed the law, we had followed the Constitution."

"I had to be faithful to the Constitution," he added.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he and his team investigated "every single allegation" of election fraud from former President Donald Trump — and they came up with nothing indicating any fraud.

"You can register to vote in Georgia when you're 17 1/2, you have to be 18 by Election Day. We checked that out, every single voter. They said that there was 2,423 non-registered voters; there were 0. They said that there was 2,056 felons; we identified 74 or less that were actually still on felony status," Raffensperger said.

"Every allegation we checked. We ran down the rabbit trail to make sure our numbers were accurate," he said.

Trump also claimed there were ballots using dead people's names, which Raffensperger said is highly inaccurate.

"In their lawsuits, they allege 10,315 dead people. We found two dead people when I wrote my letter to Congress that's dated Jan. 6 and subsequent to that, we found two more. That's one, two, three, four people. Not 4,000; just a total of four. Not 10,000, not 5,000," he said.

Watch:

Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows texted or called the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger 18 times in an effort to set up a call between Raffensperger and then-President Donald Trump, Rep. Adam Schiff said during Tuesday’s hearing.

Schiff, a California Democrat, said that Meadows “took the extraordinary step” of traveling to Georgia, where he met with Raffensperger’s chief investigator Frances Watson who was supervising the state’s election audit.

Before Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, call with Raffensperger – where Trump asked the secretary of state to “find” the votes he needed to win – Meadows set up a call between Watson and Trump on December 23, 2020.

CNN has previously reported that Meadows texted Raffensperger after the 2020 election at least twice, according to the Meadows text logs obtained by CNN. On Nov. 19, 2020, Meadows asked Raffensperger to “give me a brief call at your convenience.”

Meadows followed up again by text on December 5, 2020: “mr Secretary. Can you call the White House switchboard at 202 757 6000. For a call. Your voicemail is full.”

The full extent of Meadows' outreach, however, was not previously known until Tuesday’s hearing. 

In addition to Raffensperger, Meadows was in contact with Raffensperger’s deputy, Jordan Fuchs, during Trump’s January 2 call.

"Need to end this call," Fuchs, then the deputy secretary of state, said in a text to Meadows. "I don't think this will be productive much longer."

She added: "Let's save the relationship."

Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer at the Georgia secretary of state's office, said he tried to combat misinformation through news conferences and local media, but was not able to compete with the reach and platform former President Trump had to spread false conspiracy theories — sometimes even arguing with his own family members.

"It was frustrating," Sterling said in live testimony before the Jan. 6 committee. "But oftentimes, I felt our information was getting out, but there was a reticence of people who needed to believe it, to believe it because the President of the United States, who many looked up to and respected, was telling them it wasn't true."

He said that despite the facts he was presenting at news conferences, this hesitation to believe the truth was very strong. Sterling said he even argued with family members.

Sterling said one specific example he remembers, is an attorney with who he showed the evidence.

"This wasn't true. I get that. This wasn't true. I get that — five or six things," Sterling said. "Then he said, I just know in my heart he cheated. Once you get past the heart, the facts don't matter as much."

He said the job of the secretary of state's office is to continue to combat that feeling and "get the facts out, do our job, tell the truth, follow the Constitution, follow the law and defend the institutions... and the institutions held."

Former President Donald Trump pushed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes to overturn the election results after his loss to President Joe Biden, according to an audio recording of a phone call obtained by CNN.

Raffensperger is testifying now before the Jan. 6 committee and the panel is playing excerpts of the stunning one-hour phone call from Jan. 2, 2021. Trump lambasted his fellow Republican for refusing to falsely say that he won the election in Georgia and repeatedly touted baseless claims of election fraud.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated,” Trump said in one part of the call.

In another part, Trump said, “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

“You should want to have an accurate election. And you’re a Republican,” Trump said at one point.

“We believe that we do have an accurate election,” Raffensperger said in response.

Read the full transcript of the call and listen to the audio here and watch more of the exchange between Trump and Raffensperger in the video below: