What we learned on Day 4 of Jan. 6 committee hearings

Judy Woodruff:

For the fourth time this month, the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol presented evidence of the relentless efforts by former President Trump and his allies to throw out the results of the 2020 election.

The focus of today's hearing was the pressure President Trump, former President Trump, exerted on state legislators and state and local election officials. Because of the former president's repeated lies, Congressman Adam Schiff said that election workers faced threats for simply doing their jobs.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA):

The president's lie was and is a dangerous cancer on the body politic.

If you can convince Americans that they cannot trust their own elections, that, any time they lose, it is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to determine who should govern?

Judy Woodruff:

Those threats were made repeatedly over the phone, in person, and even at the homes of the election workers. The witnesses shared story after story about how the sustained intimidation has completely upended their lives.

State Rep. Rusty Bowers (R-AZ):

At home, up until even recently, 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.

And they have had video — panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to be a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt and — politician, and blaring loudspeakers in my neighborhood.

Brad Raffensperger (R), Georgia Secretary of State: Some people broke into my daughter-in-law's home. And my son has passed. And she's a widow and has two kids. And so we're very concerned about her safety also.

Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, Former Georgia Election Worker: I just don't do nothing anymore. I don't want to go anywhere. I second-guess everything that I do.

This affected my life in a major way, in every way, all because of lies, for me doing my job, same thing I have been doing forever.

Judy Woodruff:

The "NewsHour"'s congressional correspondent, Lisa Desjardins, and our White House correspondent, Laura Barrón-López, have been watching the hearing today. And they join me now.

So much of today's testimony was moving, as we just heard.

Laura, I want to begin with you.

The witness we just heard from, he is the secretary — I'm sorry — the speaker of the House in the state of Arizona, Rusty Bowers. This is a state that Joe Biden won by, what, 10,000 votes. And yet Speaker Bowers testified to the kind of relentless pressure he was put under. Tell us more about that.

Laura Barrón-López:

That's right, Judy.

He faced pressure from President Trump and he faced pressure from Trump's lawyers. And, specifically, Bowers recounted a conversation that he had with one of Trump's lawyers, John Eastman. And in that conversation — in that conversation, Eastman asked Bowers to call a vote in the Arizona legislature, so, that way, they could decertify the state's electors.

And those electors represent that state's Electoral College vote. Here's what Bowers said in response to Eastman's request.

State Rep. Rusty Bowers:

I said: "What would you have me do?"

And he said: "Just do it and let the courts sort it out."

And I said: "You're asking me to do something that's never been done in history, the history of the United States. And I'm going to put my state through that without sufficient proof, and that's going to be good enough with me," that I would — I would put us through that, my state, that I swore to uphold, both in Constitution and in law? No, sir."

Laura Barrón-López:

So, Bowers also told the committee that he faced pressure from Trump and that he repeatedly told Trump that he would not do anything illegal to overturn the election results in his state.

Even to this day, Bowers is facing a target on his back from the former president, because President Trump put out a statement ahead of the hearing today, saying that Bowers is a RINO, a Republican in name only. Trump also said that Bowers told him that he won the election right after November 2020 and that Bowers said that the election was rigged.

Now, Congressman Schiff asked Bowers about that in his testimony today, and Bowers said, no, all of that is false and that he did not say any of that to the president, and that he repeated again and again in his testimony that he would never do anything illegal to overturn Arizona's election results.

Judy Woodruff:

We should add that Speaker Bowers described himself — described himself as a conservative Republican.

To Lisa now.

Lisa, we also learned today that some of this pressure campaign was coming from members of Congress themselves who were pushing election officials to accept what they called alternate slates of electors. Tell us about that.

Lisa Desjardins:

This is the charge from the committee.

In addition to this idea that Laura was talking about that the president and those around him were pushing states to simply overturn the results and say that he won the popular count in each state, we heard testimony today that the Trump campaign was also trying to push a different idea, alternate slates of electors that, no matter what the results were in the end, the final tabulation, that they were preparing lists of people who would be the electors and, as many of our viewers know, the ones who cast the final votes in the American presidential system.

And with those electors, there was a question of who was behind this idea. At one point, President Trump, we heard testimony today, got together with the — got a phone call together with the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, top Republican Party official in the country, and John Eastman, that lawyer we have heard so much about.

And here's how McDaniel, again, top Republican official in the country, recounts that conversation about slates of electors.

Question:

What did the president say when he called you?

Ronna McDaniel, Chair, Republican National Committee:

Essentially, he turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result of any of the states, I think more just helping them reach out and assemble them.

But the — my understanding is, the campaign did take the lead, and we just were helping them in that — in that role.

Lisa Desjardins:

That's a key portion, that the campaign took the lead.

The timing there matters, Judy. And we're asking about the timing of that call. Was it when all of the court cases had already ended and it was clear the president had lost? In that case, this raises sort of criminal questions about fraud and election fraud. Was it beforehand? Those are important questions about this sort of idea.

Well, let's talk about those two members of Congress that came up today in the hearing, one, Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona. He is someone who did ask, we heard in testimony today, the state speaker to try and change the results or overturn the results, bring in new electors, create electors.

And then Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the testimony today — and we saw this in text messages — was that, on January 6 itself, that one of his aides reached out to Vice President Pence's staff and said he wanted to — the senator wanted to hand him a slate of alternate electors on January 6. Ron Johnson's office today says he didn't know about that ahead of time.

But there is a real question if, on January 6 itself, Ron Johnson was still trying to bring in a slate of electors that was not what his state decided.

Judy Woodruff:

Still some unanswered questions there.

And, Lisa, staying with you, the focus — so much of the focus today was on these state and local election officials. Tell us more about what we heard from this committee in terms of White House officials themselves pressuring local election people.

Lisa Desjardins:

In particular, two women from Fulton County.

These are the two women who were seen in video moving absentee ballots late at night. The Trump campaign for months said that those were secret suitcases of ballots. We know that's not true. It was regular election procedure.

You heard from Shaye Moss earlier. Her mother, Ruby Freeman, also testified about the barrage of threats that came emanating from her name being used by the Trump campaign, including people knocking on her door, at one point the FBI saying she had to move because the threats to her life and property were so serious.

Here's what she told the committee in recorded testimony this has meant and done to her.

RUBY FREEMAN, Former Georgia Election Worker:

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, lady Ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen, who stand up to help Fulton County run an election in the middle of the pandemic.

Lisa Desjardins:

Judy, I want to show you some quick statistics.

She represents thousands of election workers across this country. And look at what's happened in 2020, election officials experiencing threats, one in six. And election officials who plan to quit by 2024, look at that, one in five.

So this is something that is not one person that might have been an extreme version of it, many election officials feeling personal harm and professional harm from the last election.

Judy Woodruff:

Yes, those numbers are just absolutely stunning.

And finally, back to you, Laura.

We did here today, as we have reported, from the top two election officials in the state of Georgia, the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and also the official who works with him closely, Gabriel Sterling.

We already knew about the phone call that President Trump had placed and spent over an hour pressuring Raffensperger. What else did we learn today about the pressure he put on them?

Laura Barrón-López:

Yes, there were two things that stood out today, Judy.

One, Sterling in his testimony said that the onslaught of disinformation and conspiracy theories pushed by President Trump, as he and his team tried to fight it, it was like — quote — "shoveling out the ocean," trying to clear out the ocean with a shovel.

And then the second thing was the specificity of Raffensperger's testimony. He went into specific details about everything that he investigated, saying he investigated every element of the allegations that Trump's team brought to him.

Brad Raffensperger:

They said that there was over 66,000 underage voters. We found that there was actually zero.

They said that there was 2,423 non-registered voters. There were zero. They said that there was 2,056 felons. We identified less than 74 or less that were actually still in a felony sentence. Every single allegation, we checked. We ran down the rabbit trail to make sure that our numbers were accurate.

Laura Barrón-López:

So, Raffensperger, you mentioned, Judy, he detailed all of the stuff about the allegations that Trump brought to him and how they were all false.

He also talked about that phone call that Trump made to him, pressuring him to find more than 11,000 votes. Now, that phone call, a lot of election law experts think, is enough to bring criminal charges against the president and his allies.

Now, the committee today brought up the illegality of what we witnessed on January 6 and the lead-up to it, and they kept saying over and over again that the Justice Department needs to be paying attention to what they are presenting.

But it's not just the Justice Department that could bring criminal charges. The Fulton County DA in Georgia could very well bring charges herself against the president and against his allies. Right now, there is a grand jury investigation going on which she is overseeing.

And they also heard testimony from Raffensperger earlier this month. So that just speaks to the fact that it's not just the Justice Department, but that, in Georgia, they could also bring charges against the president, as we look forward to what potentially the ramifications could be.

Judy Woodruff:

All right, a very, very full day of testimony.

I want to thank you both, Laura Barrón-López covering all this from the White House, Lisa Desjardins at the Capitol.

Thank you.