Jan. 6 committee holds fourth hearing

Georgia election official Gabe Sterling addressed the moment he directly called out former President Trump for inflammatory rhetoric which was impacting election workers in 2020.

On Dec. 1, 2020 Sterling said in remarks directed at Trump, "Mister President, it looks like you likely lost the state of Georgia. We are investigating. There is always the possibility. I get it. You have the rights to go to the courts. What you don't have the ability to do, and you need to step up and say this, is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone's going to get hurt, someone's going to get shot, someone's going to get killed. And it's not right."

Sterling recalled the moment he "lost it" when he found out an election contractor working for Dominion Systems was receiving death threats "that had been posted by some QAnon supporters."

He continued, "And she called Secretary Raffensperger to say, 'We were receiving these kinds of threats and Gabe thinks we need to say something about it. The secretary said 'yes,' and that is 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 was the one that put me over the edge, but it did."

##Witnesses#

The Jan. 6 select committee dissected a Trump-backed conspiracy theory about the 2020 election in Atlanta, breaking down how it originated from the campaign, was amplified on social media, and ultimately “threatened the lives of several innocent election workers,” Rep. Adam Schiff said.

Schiff, a committee members and a California Democrat, explained Trump’s conspiracy theory: Trump claimed that election officials in Atlanta kicked out GOP poll watchers, brought in suitcases of ballots with votes for Biden, and repeatedly ran the ballots through the vote-counting machines. (The claim was completely false.)

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani first peddled the claims at a Georgia State Senate hearing, where he played footage of vote-counting at the State Farm Arena and called it “a smoking gun” of alleged fraud, asserting that suitcases of illegitimate ballots were snuck into the room. 

The Trump campaign “amplified Giuliani’s false testimony,” Schiff said, by tweeting out the same footage from the arena. The footage came from OAN, a far-right TV network that often promotes pro-Trump conspiracy theories. Giuliani also tweeted about the video after his appearance in front of the Georgia lawmakers.

The only problem? Georgia election officials looked into the suitcases issue and quickly determined that it wasn’t proof of fraud. Gabe Sterling, a top Georgia election official, publicly debunked the theory in an early December 2020 news conference, a clip of which was played during Tuesday’s committee hearing. 

Testifying to the committee, Sterling said “this conspiracy theory took on a life of its own” and that the footage showed “normal ballot processing,” despite all of the frenzies claims from Team Trump.

Trump was also briefed by the Justice Department that the allegations of fake ballots in suitcases was unfounded. Yet it has remained to be one of the centerpieces of Trump’s allegations of fraud in 2020.

Watch:

Georgia election official Gabe Sterling is testifying now at the House select committee's fourth hearing this month.

He worked closely with Georiga Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger when he resisted former President Donald Trump's efforts to pressure him to "find" the votes necessary for Trump to win Georgia in the 2020 election in an infamous January 2021 phone call.

Tuesday's hearing will focus on how Trump and his allies pressured officials in key battleground states as they sought to overturn the elecion, multiple sources had told CNN.

In December 2020, Sterling publicly pleaded for Trump to condemn the harassment that officials and election workers had been facing.

A month later, rioters stormed the US Capitol.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is testifying now in front of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Raffensperger emerged as a national figure in the aftermath of the 2020 election, following the revelation of a Jan. 2, 2021 call with Donald Trump in which the then-President urged Georgia's chief elections officer to "find" enough votes to overturn the state's election results after Joe Biden had defeated Trump by nearly 12,000 votes. That call now is part of a special grand jury investigation into whether Trump or his allies committed any crimes in their quest to overturn the election results.

As Trump refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 election and his allies pursued various schemes to try to upend the results, Raffensperger, Raffensperger's wife, Tricia, and other Georgia officials faced a barrage of threats.

The Georgia Republican had already spoken privately with the Jan. 6 committee about his experience in addition to testifying before the special grand jury in the criminal probe into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the Peach State.

Raffensperger, who is seeking reelection, defeated Republican Jody Hice in Georgia's primary election last month. Hice was endorsed by Trump and his campaign centered on false claims about the 2020 election.

Raffensperger has long defended Georgia's election process. He was also a staunch advocate of the voting law that the Republican-controlled legislature approved in 2021, which imposes a raft of new restrictions on mail-in voting, prohibits providing food and water to people waiting in line to vote and more. Raffensperger has also pushed for a constitutional amendment to ban noncitizen voting, although it's already illegal under Georgia law.

The secretary of state, who touts himself as a conservative Republican, took office in 2019. He had served two terms in the Georgia General Assembly in 2015-2019.

Read more about the official here.

CNN's Shawna Mizelle contributed reporting to this post.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol is back after taking a short break. 

Here's who is testifying next:

Fake electors for Donald Trump were trying to convene so covertly, that some in Michigan wanted to "hide overnight" so they could be in the statehouse to sign certificates for Donald Trump, the House Select Committee revealed on Tuesday.

One Trump supporter "told me that the Michigan Republican electors were planning to meet in the Capitol and hide overnight so they could fulfill their role," Laura Cox, a Michigan Republican Party official, told the House in her taped deposition. "I told him in no uncertain terms that that was insane and inappropriate."

Trump electors were not needed in states he lost, because Biden electors were submitted to the federal government for the Electoral College. But Trump's electors still convened in December 2021, signing documents in some battleground states saying that they were the rightful electors. Some believed the documents needed to be signed in state Capitol buildings so they could withstand court challenges, if elected officials were to try to throw the election to Trump.

But the need for secrecy has raised new questions about the plot, which is under investigation by criminal prosecutors as well as by the House Select Committee.

CNN previously reported how in Georgia, the Trump campaign encouraged Republican electors to convene with "complete secrecy."

The approach was used in other states, too. Wisconsin — another state where Trump put forward fake electors after his loss — the electors also met in secret, CNN previously reported. One Trump elector in Wisconsin said the secrecy was for security reasons, though the Wisconsin Republican Party disputed that those electors met secretly.

The House select committee on Tuesday unveiled new information showing the role that Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson played in pushing “fake” electors for Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021.

A Johnson aide texted a staffer to former Vice President Mike Pence that the Wisconsin Republican wanted to hand-deliver “fake” electors to Pence just before the start of the Jan. 6 congressional session to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.

The committee showed text messages Johnson aide Sean Riley sent to Pence aide Chris Hodgson, saying that Johnson “needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise.” 

After the hearing, Johnson told CNN he has “no idea” who tried to get him to share the fake electors from Michigan and Wisconsin to Pence and he acknowledged he was aware of the ask on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

“I was aware that we got this package and that somebody wanted us to deliver it, so we reached out to Pence’s office," he said.

Asked who tried to give him the alternate slate of electors, Johnson said: “I have no idea.”

The messages between the aides, which have not been previously disclosed, show that Johnson was playing a role in the effort to put forward “fake” Trump electors that had not been certified by any state legislatures.  

The messages were exchanged just after 12:30 p.m. ET on Jan. 6, according to the committee, minutes before Pence gaveled the joint session of Congress at 1 p.m. ET —and rioters began breaching the Capitol to disrupt the certification.

Chair Bennie Thompson says the committee has “not yet” reached out to Johnson amid the revelations of his involvement in the fake elector scheme. 

“The committee hasn’t made a decision” on whether to call him to testify, Thompson said.

Asked if the fake elector scheme was criminal, Thompson said: “We are just presenting the facts.”

CNN's Manu Raju contributed reporting to this post.

The Jan. 6 committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol is taking a short break in today's hearing.

The panel is focusing on how former President Donald Trump and his allies pressured officials in key battleground states as they sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election. This is the committee’s fourth hearing this month as they present findings from their investigation.

So far, the panel has heard live testimony from Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers about how he was pressured by Trump and his allies to help him win.

Next, the committee is expected to hear from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his chief operating officer Gabe Sterling as well as Fulton County, Georgia, election worker Wandrea "Shaye" Moss.

Here are the key moments you might have missed so far:

Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona statehouse, gave emotional testimony Tuesday about the impact his role defying the scheme to overturn the election results in his state had on him and his family, describing "disturbing" protests outside his home and, at one point, reading a passage from his personal journal about friends who had turned on him. 

Appearing at the fourth public hearing of the House Select Committee, Bowers welled up as he discussed the impact protests at this house had on his wife and his daughter, who was at home gravely ill at the time and was "upset by what was happening outside."

"It is the new pattern or a pattern in our lives to worry what will happen on Saturdays because we have various groups come by," Bowers said. "They had video panel trucks with video of me, proclaiming me to be a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician."

On one occasion, Bowers said, the protesters included an armed man who appeared to be associated with the far-right militant group the Three Percenters.

"There was one gentleman that had the three bars on his chest and he had a pistol and was threatening my neighbor," Bowers said.

Earlier, reading from a December 2020 entry he’d made in his personal journal, Bowers grew emotional as he described losing friends as a result of his position and how his faith helped him make decisions.

"It is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me turn on me with such rancor," Bowers said.

"I may, in the eyes of men, not hold correct opinions or act according to their vision or convictions, but I do not take this current situation in a light manner, a fearful manner, or a vengeful manner. I do not want to be a winner by cheating," he said.

Hear Bowers read his diary entry from December 2020 amid Trump’s pressure campaign: