Ahead of the Jan. 6 Select Committee’s hearing on Tuesday, member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told the Los Angeles Times that the panel plans to demonstrate then-Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ “intimate role” in the then-President’s scheme to pressure Georgia state legislators into overturning the election results.
Additionally, Schiff said the committee is set to release new information about Meadows’ appearance at a “signature audit” in Georgia before Jan. 6. Schiff said the panel will also show text messages that demonstrate Meadows’ desire to send autographed Make America Great Again hats to people who conducted the audit.
Tuesday’s hearing will spend considerable time on the Trump White House’s efforts to steal Georgia’s election, and will feature live testimony from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Trump tried to pressure into “finding” enough votes to toss out Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state. Others who are set to testify on Tuesday include Raffensperger’s top deputy, Gabriel Sterling, and Shaye Moss, a Georgia elections worker.
In addition to the Georgia elections officials, Rusty Bowers, a Republican serving as Arizona house speaker, is scheduled to testify regarding the calls he received from Trump and conservative lawyer John Eastman as well as a meeting with Rudy Giuliani, who demanded Bowers to take action to overturn the election.
Schiff is set to lead Tuesday’s hearing, which will focus on Trump’s pressure campaign on Republican officials in multiple states. After losing both Georgia and Arizona in the 2020 election, Trump and officials in his re-election campaign attempted to pressure top state officials to toss out Biden’s victory through an ill-fated scheme to submit fake slates of pro-Trump electors.
In an infamous phone call days before the deadly Capitol insurrection last year, Trump urged Raffensperger in a phone call for “find” enough votes to declare him the winner in Georgia. Raffensperger, however, repeatedly stated that there is no evidence showing widespread voter fraud in the battleground state as he pushed back on Trump’s election fraud falsehoods.
Sterling similarly refused to do Trump’s bidding to boost the Big Lie, and was outspoken in denouncing the then-president’s rhetoric. Both Raffensperger and Sterling have received threats for their defiance of Trump’s efforts to subvert the election results and sow doubt on the democratic process.
Bowers, the Arizona speaker, received a call from Trump and Giuliani shortly after the election. Trump and Giuliani attempted to rope Bowers into their fake electors scheme in an effort to overturn Biden’s win in Arizona. Additionally, Bowers reportedly received an email from Ginni Thomas, the wife Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, In Nov. 2020 asking him to select a “clean slate of electors,” the Washington Post reported.
Over the past two weeks of the Jan. 6 Select Committee’s public hearings, the panel has outlined Trump’s multifaceted plot to subvert the 2020 presidential election results and his refusal of a peaceful transfer of power. Ultimately, Trump’s election steal scheme led to a mob of his supporters violently storming the Capitol on the day of the joint session of Congress certifying Biden’s electoral victory. Last week, the committee’s third public hearing demonstrated how Trump and his allies’ boost of the Big Lie put his then-Vice President Mike Pence in danger as Trump supporters breached the Capitol building.
