January 6 Committee Hearings

Day 4 of the January 6 Committee hearings were broadcast on TV yesterday. Just before the hearing the disgraced twice-impeached former president issued a statement claiming that witness Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, told him “the election was rigged and I won Arizona.”

Bowers, a Republican who had wanted Trump to win the election, told the committee that this was false: “Anyone, anywhere, anytime I said the election was rigged, that would not be true.”

Bowers also recalled a conversation with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and lawyer Jenna Ellis about allegations of voter fraud in Arizona. In a phrase that captured the president’s own mindset, Giuliani allegedly said: “We’ve got lots of theories but we just don’t have the evidence.”

But the centerpiece of the big lie is Georgia, which Trump narrowly lost and which became his all-consuming obsession for wild conspiracy theories. The committee heard testimony from its secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and his deputy Gabe Sterling. 

Excerpts from a 67-minute phone call between Trump and Raffensperger were heard during the hearing. One by one, Trump could be heard making ludicrous assertions without foundation. One by one, Raffensperger and Sterling calmly demolished them.

The president was heard claiming that votes were “in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases but they weren’t in voter boxes.” Sterling testified: “They’re standard ballot carriers that allow for seals to be put on them so they’re tamper proof.”

Trump went on during the call: “But they dropped a lot of votes in there late at night. You know that, Brad.” Raffensperger told the committee: “There were no additional ballots accepted after 7 pm.”

The president insisted: “The other thing, dead people. So dead people voted and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.” Raffensperger observed: “No, it’s not accurate ... We found two dead people when I wrote my letter to Congress that’s dated January 6 and subsequent to that we found two more. That’s one, to, three, four people, not 4,000.” 

More sinister yet, Trump claimed that election workers had been shredding ballots, “a criminal offense” that could put Raffensperger at risk. “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.” Raffensperger told the hearing: “What I knew is we didn’t have any votes to find.” 

At the end of his call to Raffensperger, Trump could be heard saying: “It takes a little while but let the truth comes out.” Now, finally, the truth is coming out, but not the one that occupies his fantasies. 

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The Guardian     06/21/2022

The Big Ripoff

The Committee* is holding televised hearings. It was revealed that Donald Trump and his campaign engaged in potential fundraising fraud, raising $250 million for a Trump “election defense fund” that did not actually exist.

In showing that Trump deceived donors into contributing money to the election defense fund – based on claims about a stolen election that his top advisers told him were nonsense – the Committee suggested Trump engaged in potential fraud as well as other violations of federal law.

But the “Official Election Defense Fund,” as it was billed on fundraising emails did not formally exist, according to Trump campaign aides.

During the hearing Congresswoman (D-Calif.) Zoe Lofgren said, “Not only was there the Big Lie, there was the Big Ripoff.”

Most of the money went to Trump’s newly created Save America PAC. The PAC then made contributions to Mark Meadows’ charity, to a conservative organization employing former Trump staffers, to the Trump Hotel Collection, and to the company that organized the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol last Jan. 6.

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*Wikipedia:  The U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol is a select committee of the U.S. House of Representatives to investigate the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The attack, inspired by Donald Trump's false claims of a stolen 2020 presidential election, was the culmination of attempts to overturn the election, which the incumbent Republican Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

On June 12, 2022, the committee announced it has enough evidence to recommend that the Justice Department indict Trump. The committee has argued that Trump knew he did not win the election and was thus perpetrating a fraud, and it has referred to a "criminal conspiracy" that led to the attack on the Capitol.