ELECTION OFFICIALS DESCRIBE THREATS FUELED BY TRUMP
They testify about receiving abuse for refusing to cave
Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of Arizona’s House, braced every weekend for hordes of Trump supporters, some with weapons, who swarmed his home and blared videos that called him a pedophile.
“We had a daughter who was gravely ill, who was upset by what was happening outside,” he said. She died not long after, in late January 2021.
Gabriel Sterling, a top state election official in Georgia, recalled receiving an animated picture of a slowly twisting noose along with a note accusing him of treason. His boss, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, recounted that Trump supporters broke into his widowed daughter-in-law’s house and threatened his wife with sexual violence.
And Wandrea Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, two Black women who were election workers during the pandemic in Georgia, suffered an onslaught of racist abuse and were driven into hiding after Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s lawyer, lied that they had rigged the election.
“I’ve lost my name and I’ve lost my reputation,” Freeman said, adding as her voice rose with emotion, “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”
Election official after election official testified to the House Jan. 6 committee Tuesday in searing, emotional detail how Trump and his aides unleashed violent threats and vengeance on them for refusing to cave to his pressure to overturn the election in his favor.
Mike Shirkey, the majority leader of Michigan’s Republican-controlled state Senate, was subjected to nearly 4,000 text messages from Trump’s followers after the president and his campaign posted Shirkey’s personal cellphone number.
“It was a loud noise, loud consistent cadence,” Shirkey testified. “We heard that the Trump folks are calling and asking for changes in the electors, and ‘You guys can do this.’ Well, they were believing things that were untrue.”