‘A tragic parody’: State officials detail frantic pressure campaign to keep Trump in office
WASHINGTON — Republican state legislators and elected officials detailed Tuesday the intense pressure they faced from President Donald Trump and his lawyers to subvert the will of voters and submit to Congress false slates of electors backing him.
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Secretary of State Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling, all Republicans, testified at the fourth hearing of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6, 2021, about numerous lengthy phone calls and in-person meetings from Trump and those in his inner circle pushing them to act to keep him in office despite being repeatedly informed the effort was illegal or unconstitutional.
“Pressuring public servants into betraying their oath was a fundamental part of the playbook,” committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said. “A handful of election officials in several key states stood between Donald Trump and the upending of American democracy.”
The elected officials detailed in their testimony the retaliation they faced for not complying, as did Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia election worker who gave a wrenching account of racist death threats she and her mother
