State officials from Arizona and Georgia who were pressured by Donald Trump to help him reverse his defeat in the 2020 election will lead the House select committee’s fourth hearing on Tuesday afternoon, committee aides said.
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican, is expected to speak out about being harassed and intimidated by Trump allies for the first time, committee staff said. And a trio of poll workers from Georgia, where Trump is being criminally investigated for his efforts to tamper with the Georgia results, will also testify.
“We will be watching closely as the president and his allies devised these schemes to pressure Republican-controlled legislatures and other state officials to revoke certification of their electoral loss, or to withhold certification in certain battleground states,” the president said. committee. staff said Monday.
Tuesday’s hearing will mark the fourth in a series of hearings into the violent attack on the US Capitol fueled by Trump’s extensive campaign to deny his defeat in the 2020 election and try to stay in power. Thursday’s hearing is expected to focus on Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to help him in his bid to stay in power illegally, committee staff said Monday.
Trump, for his part, has demanded “equal time,” complaining that he has none of his supporters on the committee. When asked if the panel was trying to get Trump’s testimony, a committee staffer said he would “welcome” testimony from anyone involved. A pair of Trump spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.
Over the weekend, committee member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the committee may be open to subpoenaing former Vice President Mike Pence to testify before the committee. A committee staffer declined to say Monday whether they would pressure Pence to testify.
A host of commentators have called for Pence to testify after the latest hearing, which focused on the Jan. 6 riots that threatened Pence’s life.
The committee also expressed a new interest in Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, after the reported that he tried to pressure 29 Arizona state lawmakers to pass fake electors in an effort to keep Trump in power. The committee evidence that Ginni Thomas had been communicating with John Eastman, the lawyer at the center of Trump’s latest effort to nullify the election, the Post reported.
Panel leaders Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., to Ginni Thomas last week, asking her to testify before the panel sometime between July 6 and 11. Thomas told the last week, “I look forward to speaking with them.”
Schiff, who has long been a central player in the Trump investigations, will lead Tuesday’s hearing.
In addition to Bowers, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Trump-backed challenger, and Gabriel Sterling, one of his top advisers, will testify about Trump’s ruthless attitude. I needed to win Georgia.
In a call now the focus of the Fulton County District Attorney, Trump asked Raffensperger for him.
The Georgia state poll worker, who was targeted by Trump supporters with death threats and repeated harassment, is also scheduled to testify Tuesday.
The fourth hearing is also expected to focus on Trump and his allies’ tactic of trying to send fake voters to Washington to stir up chaos and give Pence a reason not to certify Biden’s victory.
Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig testified at the third hearing last week that the use of fake voters was a key tactic in the effort to overturn the election result and whether Trump or his “anointed successor” would run in 2024 and they would lose
Reference-news.yahoo.com