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Jan. 6 committee hearings resume today

by Will Tubbs

Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News

 

 

The House committee that has set about to convict former President Donald Trump in the court of public opinion and perhaps beyond will take to the national airwaves today at 1 p.m. Eastern for another in its series of public hearings.

Where previous hearings have focused primarily on the happenings in Washington, D.C., proper, Tuesday’s proceedings will center on state-level matters as well as an accusation that promises to further sensationalize and already made-for-TV undertaking.

The committee has promised to show the American people that Trump exerted pressure, potentially illegal, against secretaries of state and, according to committee member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), attempted to submit alternative slates of electors as a means of “stealing” the election.

“Yes, we’ll show evidence of the President’s involvement in this scheme,” Schiff said during an appearance on CNN. “We’ll also again show evidence about what his own lawyers came to think about this scheme. And we’ll show courageous state officials who stood up and said they wouldn’t go along with this plan to either call legislators back into session or decertify the results for Joe Biden.”

Schiff promised to “show you what we know about his role in this” but remained vague in terms of what shape that evidence might take.

“We’ll show during the hearing what the President’s role was in trying to get states to name alternate slates of electors, how that scheme depended initially on hopes that the legislators would reconvene and bless it,” Schiff said.

Sunday, on his own website as well as Truth Social, Trump remained steadfast in his rejection of the committee’s claims and continued to question committee members’ motives.

“The highly partisan Unselects are trying to create a FAKE narrative, for whatever reason but only with evil intention, that ‘He (me) knew he lost the election,’” Trump wrote in one post. “This is completely false. I felt the Election was RIGGED & [stolen], have from the very beginning, & have only gotten stronger in that belief with time & larger amounts of additional evidence and proof.”

In a different post, Trump wrote, “I have [so] many witnesses to everything good, but the highly partisan and one sided [sic] Unselect Committee of political hacks has [no] interest in hearing or seeing them. This Witch Hunt could all be ended quickly if they did!”

KINZINGER DECRIES THEATS, PREDICTS MORE VIOLENCE

While Schiff visited CNN to make allegations against Trump, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of two Republicans serving on the committee, went on ABC to blast Republicans for not jettisoning Trump, who he blames for the events of Jan. 6 and for additional violence that Kinzinger says is bound to happen.

Kinzinger said that he, his wife, and their 5-month-old child have been targeted with threats, specifically in the form of a letter sent to his home. The congressman later tweeted a copy of the letter, which was addressed to his wife.

“Here is the letter,” Kinzinger said. “Addressed to my wife, sent to my home, threatening the life of my family.  The Darkness is spreading courtesy of cowardly leaders fearful of truth. Is the what you want @GOP? Pastors?”

On ABC, Kinzinger said he was not worried about the letter, this in spite of the fact that whoever authored it threatened to execute the representative and his family.

“There is violence in the future, I’m going to tell you,” Kinzinger said. “And until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can’t expect any differently.”

Kinzinger said the main source of his worry was the 2024 presidential election. He did not specify if he felt more violence would occur after this election, but he did question the motives of state-level election officials. The congressman indicated that the actions of three election officials in New Mexico, who refused to certify primary election results until threatened with legal consequences, was evidence of a wider problem.

“We [are] focused so much on what goes on in D.C. and Congress and the Senate,” Kinzinger said. “But when you have these election judges that are going to people that don’t believe basically in democracy, authoritarians, 2024 is going to be a mess.”

MORE REPUBLICANS TO TESTIFY

Tuesday’s slate of witnesses, in keeping with recent trends, will include a collection of Republicans who are expected to add to the bleak picture the committee is painting of Trump.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Georgia Secretary of State Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling, and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, all Republicans, are slated to testify as is Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia election worker who Trump accused of helping rig the election by providing “suitcases” of ballots for Biden.

Followers of social media might best remember Moss as the central figure in a viral video that showed her pulling a large box of ballots from below a table after media and poll watchers left a voting facility.

As was reported at the time by WSB-TV, an Atlanta ABC affiliate, Sterling and other state officials cleared Moss of any wrongdoing.

Raffensperger and Bowers will likely be to closest-watched witnesses, as each could provide additional insight into to what extent, if any, Trump attempted to exert influence over the certification of election results in battleground states.

In early January 2021, Trump and Raffensperger were part of an hour-long conference call that was the subject of much talk at the time and will no doubt be central to the committee’s case later today.

The call was cited in the articles used to impeach Trump a second time. Democrats accuse the former president of having used this call to pressure Raffensperger into changing the outcome of the election.

Trump, though, has maintained he did nothing wrong.

“My phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, with many other people, including numerous layers, knowingly on the line, was absolutely PERFECT and appropriate,” Trump wrote Sunday. “YES, it was a PERFECT CALL (and so was the second call for which the Washington Post was forced to do a major, and somewhat embarrassing, retraction). Thank you!”

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