(WASHINGTON) — Nicholas Roske, 26, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to one count of attempting to kill a justice of the United States, two weeks after he was arrested outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanugh’s home with a gun.
He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Roske was arrested in the early morning hours of June 8 near Kavanaugh’s Maryland home. He was allegedly armed with a gun and pepper spray, and had zip ties and several pieces of burglary equipment in a backpack, according to an arrest affidavit.
“Roske indicated that he believed the Justice that he intended to kill would side with Second Amendment decisions that would loosen gun control laws,” the affidavit said. “Roske stated that he’d been thinking about how to give his life a purpose and decided he would kill the Supreme Court Justice after finding the Justice’s Montgomery County address on the internet.”
Last week, he was indicted by a federal grand jury on one count of attempting to kill a justice of the United States.
Dressed in a burgundy pants, a shirt and unmasked, Roske rocked back and forth silently in his chair as he awaited court proceedings. After pleading guilty, Roske at times rested his head on the table with his hands folded around the back of his neck.
Roske will face a jury trial before Magistrate Judge Ajmel Ahsen Quereshi on Aug. 23.
ABC News’ Luke Barr and Alexander Mallin contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Included in the anti-gun violence legislation announced Tuesday night by a bipartisan group of senators is a measure that supporters hope will help protect victims of domestic violence.
The legislation includes a change to the so-called “boyfriend loophole,” which refers to a gap in the law on who can purchase guns.
Currently, federal law prohibits people convicted of domestic violence from purchasing a gun, but only if they are living with their partner, married to their partner or have a child with their partner. The law does not apply to dating partners.
Under the newly-introduced legislation, the definition has been expanded so that individuals in “serious” “dating relationships” who are convicted of domestic abuse would also be prevented from purchasing a gun.
Additionally, the bill includes language that allows those convicted of non-spousal misdemeanor domestic abuse to have their gun ownership rights restored after five years if they have a clean record.
“This is an incentive, I think for people who have made a mistake, committed domestic violence and received a misdemeanor conviction, to straighten up their act and not repeat it,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, one of the bill’s lead negotiators, said in a floor speech Tuesday.
Advocates for victims of domestic violence had encouraged senators to close the loophole in the new legislation, negotiations for which began after the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting on May 24, which left 19 elementary-age students and two teachers dead.
On average, more than 12 million men and women in the United States are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner each year, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, which offers free, 24/7 support for victims of domestic violence.
According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, a woman is five times more likely to be murdered when her abuser has access to a gun.
Last year, more than 17,000 people who reached out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline said firearms were a part of the abuse they experienced.
Katie Ray-Jones, CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, said in a statement that her organization “applauds the [senators’] work” to address domestic violence in gun legislation.
“We appreciate the senators’ initiative to close this dangerous gap and protect millions more people experiencing relationship abuse in this country,” she said. “We also know while this is a significant step forward, there is even more work to be done to ensure that all survivors are protected.”
Exact timing for a final vote on the legislation in the Senate is not yet known but could happen toward the end of the week, with all involved hoping to approve the legislation before the two-week July 4 recess.
In addition to strengthening the ban on convicted domestic abusers possessing firearms, the bill also includes support for mental health and school security services and provides incentives to expand the federal background check system for prospective buyers under 21.
Both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said they supported the bill, indicating that it could reach a super-majority in the Senate — which is necessary to overcome any filibuster — barring more developments.
ABC News’ Rachel Scott and Trish Turner contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is set to bring into focus Thursday former President Donald Trump’s relentless post-Election Day efforts to enlist the Justice Department in his failed bid to overturn his election loss.
The committee’s fifth hearing this month will feature testimony from three former top officials in the department who say they resisted Trump and his allies’ repeated entreaties, former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, former deputy acting attorney general Richard Donoghue and former top DOJ lawyer Steven Engel.
All three have previously confirmed that they went as far as joining a group of top White House lawyers in threatening a mass resignation if Trump didn’t back away from plans to oust Rosen and replace him with another obscure official in the top echelons of the department who was sympathetic to the president’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
That former official, Jeffrey Clark, previously pleaded the Fifth Amendment in an appearance before the committee and has declined to comment through an attorney when asked about specific details regarding his alleged coordination with Trump and others.
Trump ultimately relented, and his behind-the-scenes campaign wasn’t publicly revealed until the New York Times reported on the dramatic standoff several days after President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Throughout his four-year tenure, former President Trump completely disregarded and distorted Justice Department protocols in place since the post-Watergate era, where the department sought to generally avoid having the White House or the president directly involved in criminal matters.
Trump’s efforts following his loss to Biden blew up any notion of Justice Department independence on criminal investigations that might benefit the White House or president politically. Trump’s post-election interaction with top DOJ officials portray a president pressing for specific investigations that could potentially help him keep his grip on power.
And FBI and DOJ investigators did indeed end up investigating some of the more outlandish claims pushed by Trump election lawyers like Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and others.
Similar to the committee’s first two hearings revealing evidence gathered from their nearly year-long investigation, much of the details of Trump’s effort to weaponize DOJ in his effort to undermine the results of the election have been reported on previously.
In remarks last week, the committee’s vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said the hearing will seek to tie Trump’s effort to “corrupt the Department of Justice” into his broader plan to thwart the certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, which culminated in the deadly attack on the Capitol.
ABC News has learned that Rosen on Thursday will testify that he was under repeated and constant pressure from Trump to find widespread corruption.
A source familiar with the matter told ABC News that Rosen would often simply reply to the president that his department was “just not seeing the evidence.”
The source said that at one point Clark discussed with Rosen that the president was about to name him acting attorney general and that Rosen could potentially stay on as Clark’s deputy. The source said Rosen used that information to coordinate with other department officials a plan of mass resignation if Trump were to remove him and install Clark.
In August last year, ABC News exclusively obtained emails showing how Rosen and Donoghue rebuffed Clark’s request to urge officials in Georgia to investigate and possibly overturn Biden’s victory in the state.
The emails showed a draft letter circulated by Clark on Dec. 28, which he sought to send to Georgia’s governor and other top state officials, advising them to convene the state legislature into a special session so lawmakers could investigate claims of voter fraud.
“There is no chance that I would sign this letter or anything remotely like this,” Donoghue responded roughly an hour after receiving Clark’s email. “While it maybe true that the Department ‘is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President’ (something we typically would not state publicly) the investigations that I am aware of relate to suspicions of misconduct that are of such a small scale that they simply would not impact the outcome of the Presidential Election.”
Rosen responded several days later on Jan. 2, according to the emails, stating he had “confirmed again today that I am not prepared to sign such a letter.”
A day later, according to previous testimony from Rosen and Donoghue to both the Senate Judiciary Committee and House select committee, came the extraordinary meeting in the Oval Office.
Rosen said he arranged for the meeting through Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after learning from Clark that Trump planned to replace him “so that [Clark] could pursue” his plan with the Georgia election.
“And I said “Well, I don’t get to be fired by someone who works for me,” in the case of Mr. Clark. I wanted to discuss it with the President,” Rosen told Congress last year.
That night, Meadows walked Rosen, Donoghue and Engel into the meeting with Trump, Clark, then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his top deputies — but Meadows then left the room for the discussion that followed, according to Rosen.
“The president said something near the very beginning, “One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything. And you don’t even agree that I’m right about these concerns that people are telling me,”” Rosen recalled Trump saying.
What followed was a roughly two-and-a-half-hour meeting, by Rosen and Donoghue’s telling, where Trump repeatedly pressed but was eventually dissuaded from his plan to install Clark atop the Justice Department to pursue baseless allegations of voter fraud just days before Congress was set to convene to certify Biden’s victory.
What appeared to change Trump’s mind, according to Donoghue’s testimony, was unanimity among nearly everyone in the room that they would resign if Trump moved forward with the plot.
“And I said, “And we’re not the only ones. You should understand that your entire Department leadership will resign,” Donoghue said. “And I said, “Mr. President, these aren’t bureaucratic leftovers from another administration. You picked them. This is your leadership team. You sent every one of them to the Senate; you got them confirmed. What is that going to say about you, when we all walk out at the same time?”
Donoghue then detailed a nightmare scenario for Trump of hundreds of career officials in the department following en masse, resignations that he said Engel told Trump would leave Clark “leading what he called a graveyard; there would be no one left.”
The account of the Jan. 3 meeting could prove for gripping on-camera testimony as the committee seeks to show the country that the former president, desperate at clinging to power by any means necessary, was in the days leading up to Jan. 6 seriously entertaining a plot that would almost certainly thrust the country into an unprecedented constitutional crisis.
Rosen, Donoghue and Engel could also serve to bolster the committee’s line of argument that President Trump was persistent in moving forward with his attempt to overturn the election leading up to Jan. 6, even as he had been told repeatedly that he had lost.
While much of the focus thus far on that front in the committee’s investigation has zeroed in on Barr’s private statements to Trump as well as in an interview with the AP about the department finding no evidence of fraud that could overturn the election results, his resignation left a clear opening for Trump to continue seeking to use the department to aid his campaign to overturn the election.
Rosen has previously testified that at a meeting on Dec. 15, the day after former attorney general William Barr announced he would resign from the department, a group of top officials at the White House told Trump that “people are telling you things that are not right” regarding claims of widespread fraud in the election.
Donoghue said he later told Trump in a Dec. 27, 2020 phone call “in very clear terms” that DOJ had done “dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews” and determined “the major allegations are not supported by the evidence developed.”
And unlike Rosen, Donoghue and Engel — Barr’s statements to the committee about his private interactions with Trump appear in direct conflict about his public actions leading up to his resignation.
Leading up to the 2020 election, Barr spent more time arguably than any other Trump cabinet official sowing doubts about expansions of mail-in voting, laying the groundwork for Trump and his legal team to later make their baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
Barr pushed a conspiracy theory that foreign actors would be able to flood the country with millions of fraudulent ballots, even when top officials in the intelligence community were publicly disputing that was possible.
Barr told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl in an interview that then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had been urging him to speak out against Trump’s fraud claims “since mid-November,” in part over McConnell’s fears it would sabotage the GOP’s chances to win the Georgia Senate runoffs. Barr didn’t give his interview ruling out widespread fraud to the AP until Dec. 1.
But two weeks later, Barr gave his resignation letter to Trump, saying he “appreciate[d] the opportunity to update you this afternoon on the Department’s review of voter fraud allegations in the 2020 election and how these allegations will continue to be pursued.” The resignation letter showed no indications of Barr’s supposed concerns about Trump’s behavior, and instead lauded Trump as a victim of a supposed left-wing-led conspiracy to undermine all the accomplishments of his administration.
The Justice Department’s inspector general last year announced it had launched its own investigation into efforts inside the department to subvert the 2020 election.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is currently overseas, told reporters at the Justice Department last week that he plans to watch all of the committee’s hearings in their entirety, while adding, “I can assure you that the January 6 prosecutors are watching all of the hearings as well.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s calls for Congress to pass a gas tax holiday were being met with skepticism Wednesday from both sides of the aisle.
In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he had several concerns with the proposal and signaled he would not support it.
“I’m not a yes right now, that’s for sure,” Manchin said, just hours before Biden was set to speak Wednesday afternoon.
For the last 25 years, all revenue from the federal gas tax has gone to the Highway Trust Fund, the major source of federal funding for highways, roads and bridges. Manchin noted Congress put an additional $118 billion into the fund when it passed the bipartisan infrastructure package.
“Now, to do that and put another hole into the budget is something that is very concerning to me, and people need to understand that 18 cents is not going to be straight across the board — it never has been that you’ll see in 18 cents exactly penny-for-penny come off of that price,” Manchin said.
Biden is expected to call on Congress to suspend the federal gas tax, which amounts to roughly 18 cents of gasoline and 24 cents per gallon of diesel through the end of September. Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee took issue with the timing ahead of the fall midterm elections.
“My other would be the political ramification. It goes off at the end of September. Which politician up here is going to be voting to put that 18-cent tax back on a month before the November election? So, we just dig the whole deeper and deeper and deeper,” Manchin said.
He added, “we have an infrastructure bill for the first time in 30 years that we can start fixing roads and bridges, but electric vehicles have to pay proportionally also as they use the same roadways and vehicles. They’re not. They’re paying nothing. So, we need a lot of adjustments made.”
Manchin called on Congress to start thinking about Americans in their home districts, insisting “the people in West Virginia are having a hard time — they really are — these inflation checks have hit hard no matter how many checks we sent out during the COVID relief that’s all forgotten it’s all for not,” Manchin said.
“We put over $5 trillion out into the marketplace and it’s all forgotten and all we have now is higher inflation and really more hardship on people that need some good decisions here in the Congress. We just need to start looking at the long-term effect of what we are doing and how we are doing it,” he said.
Other Democrats skeptical, too, while Republicans not interested
Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois said it’s important to provide relief, but contends a gas tax holiday is a “temporary only” solution.
“Long term, it’s going to be an expensive infrastructure investment, which I support,” Durbin said. “We’ve got to get this behind us.”
But for Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a key Democrat negotiator on the roughly $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that passed last year, the hit that a gas tax holiday would take to the Highway Trust Fund, and therefore the nation’s infrastructure spending, is concerning.
He said he’s “hesitant” about supporting a gas tax holiday. He also cited concerns about the president’s proposal to end the holiday in September.
“I want to make very clear if we were to take this action — its easy to take away this tax its hard to put one back on,” Warner said.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said he’s “willing to support” Biden’s gas tax holiday call but doesn’t know whether it will get the support it needs to pass the Senate.
And with even some Democrats sour to the idea, the president is unlikely to make up support with Republicans.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, in floor remarks Wednesday morning, called the proposal an “ineffective stunt to mask the Democrats’ war on affordable American energy.”
The second-ranking Senate Republican echoed that.
“I think a lot of things being suggested by the administration are very gimmicky, short term, and I wonder if they would have any real impact,” Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said. “This stuff is clearly political gimmickry it’s not the right long-term solution.”
(WASHINGTON) — A decision in the U.S. Supreme Court’s biggest gun rights case in over a decade is expected to land any day now.
The closely-watched case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v Bruen, addresses whether New York state’s concealed carry law violates the Second Amendment.
It is the most significant case regarding the Second Amendment since the high court affirmed the right to bear arms with its 2010 decision rendering Chicago’s nearly 30-year ban on handgun ownership unconstitutional.
“There’s been a big push to get more Second Amendment cases before the courts because many people believe that the lower courts were not being faithful to the Supreme Court’s decision in 2010 saying that states, as well as the federal government, were restricted by the Second Amendment,” Seth Chandler, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center who teaches constitutional law, told ABC News. “The Supreme Court for the past 10 years or so has just not placed that hot-button issue on its docket. But now, with this New York State Rifle and Pistol v. Bruen case, they’ve accepted those challenges.”
‘May issue’ states
The case, brought forth by the NRA-affiliate New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, focuses on a century-old New York state law that requires gun owners to show “proper cause” to carry a handgun in public for self-defense. Local authorities currently are given the discretion to decide who receives a concealed carry license even if basic requirements are met.
Twenty-five states require a permit to carry concealed weapons in public, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Among those, New York is one of eight states, as well as the District of Columbia, that have such “may issue” concealed carry laws. Someone may be denied a permit if, for instance, they have not demonstrated a strong reason to carry a weapon in public.
Seventeen “shall issue” states, meanwhile, issue concealed carry permits with little to no discretion to those who meet basic qualifications. The remaining 25 states generally allow people to carry concealed weapons in most public spaces without a permit, according to the Giffords Law Center.
Gun control advocates like the Giffords Law Center warn that relaxing concealed carry laws could increase the risk of gun violence, while gun rights groups argue that laws like New York’s are unfair and overly discretionary.
The court is also deciding the case at a time when the country has seen record levels of gun violence and gun deaths and a spate of deadly mass shootings that have reignited calls for gun reform, alongside record gun sales.
Potential outcomes
During oral arguments on the case in November, many of the court’s conservative justices seemed skeptical of New York-style laws, though raised concerns about public safety if restrictions were rolled back too far.
With the high court appearing poised to strike down New York’s proper-cause requirement, it would be a question of “how narrowly or broadly that opinion is written,” Darrell Miller, a professor at the Duke University School of Law who teaches constitutional law, told ABC News.
“A really narrow opinion could be something like New York can have a licensing law for concealed carry, but it can’t grant as much discretion as it does to the licensing authority,” Miller said. “A broad decision on this issue would be something like it’s unconstitutional to have any kind of licensing [for concealed carry] at all. I don’t think that that’s likely, but it’s possible.”
If it rolls back New York’s concealed-carry restrictions, the Supreme Court may also need to address decisions on where guns should be prohibited, Miller said.
“If you end up having more people carrying guns around New York, could you prevent people from carrying guns on college campuses or in the middle of Times Square on New Year’s Eve?” Miller said. “If the Supreme Court says we’ll have rights to carry guns in more places, that puts a lot of pressure on legislatures and eventually the courts to figure out what places are potentially sensitive that you can prohibit guns from being there.”
The justices could uphold the law, allowing New York to continue to exercise discretion in issuing concealed carry licenses, or they could say they don’t want to decide the case now — though both seem unlikely, Miller said.
The justices could send the case back to the district court to get more facts — such as how often people are denied concealed carry licenses in New York — Chandler said, though noted that also seems unlikely.
“I suspect the court feels it’s ready to decide the matter,” he said.
Potential impact
Should the court decide that New York’s discretionary licensing law is unconstitutional, similar laws in other states will likely be challenged, depending on how narrow or broad the decision is, Miller said.
A technical but potentially consequential “sleeper issue” in this case, Miller also noted, is whether the court takes a “text, history and tradition”-only approach in instructing lower courts on how to think about Second Amendment rights, or if judges can continue to consider modern evidence like social science data while balancing individual rights against state laws promoting public safety.
The text, history and tradition-only approach — which gun rights advocates have pushed — “essentially says that only those regulations that have some equal or analogue and history are constitutional, and all other regulations are not,” Miller said.
If the court adopts that approach, other gun regulations — such as those prohibiting guns on planes or keeping them out of the hands of people convicted of domestic violence — may suddenly become subject to that analysis, according to Miller, who was among a group of scholars who filed a brief in the Bruen case on behalf of neither party urging the court not to apply a text, history and tradition-only approach.
If New York’s law remains unchanged, there are other Second Amendment cases in the pipeline that are seeking Supreme Court review, Miller said.
“It’s pretty much guaranteed that whatever this opinion looks like, it will generate further litigation,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — The latest House Jan. 6 committee hearing on Tuesday afternoon focused on what it said was then-President Donald Trump’s “unprecedented” effort to push key state officials to reject the results of the 2020 election — including a scheme to create slates of “fake” electors to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., led the hearing, which featured live witness testimony from Republican officials from Arizona and Georgia to show the pressure campaign related to Trump’s “big lie” extended to well before Jan. 6.
Some of the most compelling testimony came from a mother-daughter pair who worked as election workers in Georgia. They described in deeply personal terms the impact of threats they experienced after being targeted by Trump.
And the panel aired taped testimony from Trump allies to argue he was directly involved in what he knew was a baseless effort to have key states send fake Trump electors to Congress to replace legitimate Biden ones.
“Whether his actions were criminal will ultimately be for others to decide,” Schiff said in his closing remarks. “But what he did was without a doubt unconstitutional. It was unpatriotic. It was fundamentally un-American.”
Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said that “pressuring public servants into betraying their oaths was a fundamental part of the playbook” and warned only a handful of election officials in key states “stood between Donald Trump and the upending of American democracy.”
Here are some key takeaways from Tuesday’s hearing:
Arizona House speaker invokes faith, recalling how he wouldn’t deny oath of office
After Trump claimed Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social that Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican, had told him the election was rigged, Bowers said that was “false” and that Trump’s team claimed widespread fraud in Arizona but never provided him with any evidence.
“Anywhere, anyone, at any time, who said that I said the election was rigged, that would not be true,” Bowers said.
He recalled conversations with Trump election lawyer John Eastman, who tried to convince him there was a law in Arizona that would have allowed him to overturn results in his state, and his maintaining that he would not break his oath of office and decertify electors for Biden.
“I said, ‘What would you have me do?’ He said, ‘Just do it and let the courts sort it out.'”
At one point, Bowers fought back tears as he described the pressure placed on him to betray his oath and the impact “disturbing” protests outside his home had on his family.
“It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired, one of my most basic foundational beliefs,” Bowers testified. “And so for me to do that because somebody just asked me to is foreign to my very being. I will not do it.”
After some lawmakers in Arizona went around him to send a slate of “fake” electors to Congress and the National Archives, with the intention of then-Vice President Mike Pence refusing to certify votes in those states, Bowers described it as a “tragic parody.”
Bowers recalled Trump lawyer Giuliani telling him, “‘We’ve got lots of theories, but we just don’t have the evidence.'”
The Arizona Republican then went on to read aloud a passage from his journal from December 2020.
“I do not want to be a winner by cheating,” he read. “I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to with any contrived desire towards deflection of my deep, foundational desire to follow God’s will as I believe he led my conscience to embrace. How else will I ever approach Him in the wilderness of life knowing that I asked of His guidance only to show myself a coward in defending the course he led me to take.”
Republican witnesses tie Trump to fake electors plot, detail how they responded to pressure from Trump and his allies
In her opening statement, Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said the committee would provide evidence that Trump “had a direct and personal role” in a scheme to have key states send fake electors to Congress and for Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results, “as did Rudy Giuliani, as did John Eastman.”
Appearing to be part of that point, the committee aired taped testimony of Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel being asked about the scheme to send “fake” electors to Congress to decertify Biden’s win and responding that Trump was on a call about the plan.
“He turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of — helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing change the results of any states,” McDaniel recounted.
“The campaign took the lead, and we just were helping them in that role,” she added, appearing to try to distance the RNC from the effort.
The House select committee argued the RNC assisted Trump in coordinating the fake electors plot “at the president’s direct request.”
The testimony is important as Trump has also tried to distance himself, at times, from his own attorneys, but, according to McDaniel, he was personally involved in a call about the effort.
The testimony also detailed Trump’s calls to Georgia election officials highlight his role in the pressure campaign.
The committee played audio clips of the 67-minute, now-infamous phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, in which Trump told Raffensperger he needed to “find” 11,780 votes in Georgia — just one vote over the margin by which he trailed Biden — so he could be declared the winner of an election that three separate counts in the state confirmed he lost.
The call appeared to follow a cycle of Trump offering false election conspiracies and Raffensperger calmly explaining to him that each one was not accurate. At one point, Trump suggested to Raffensperger that his inaction could mean he was criminally liable.
Raffensperger was among several Republicans who told Trump his claims about fraud were false, the committee said, but he continued to spread them anyway.
The committee also aired audio from a call in which Trump tried to convince Frances Watson, the Georgia secretary of state’s lead elections investigator, to reverse his loss.
“You know, you have the most important job in the country right now,” Trump told her as he continued to falsely and publicly claim victory.
“When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised,” Trump said to Watson.
Mother-daughter election worker duo describe impact of targeted attacks
Former Fulton County election worker Shaye Moss, who was falsely accused by Giuliani and other Republicans of election fraud and smuggling “suitcases” of illegal ballots in Atlanta on election night, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who was sitting behind her, told members how their lives were changed by the lies.
“When I saw the video, of course the first thing that I said was, ‘Why? Why are they doing this? What’s going on?'” Moss recalled.
Moss then described the onslaught of threats and hateful messages she received online — a situation she had never been in during her 10 years as an elections worker.
“I felt so bad,” Moss. “I just felt bad for my mom and I felt horrible for picking this job and being the one that always wants to help and always there and never missing out on one election, I just felt like it was my fault for putting my family in this situation.”
Both women told the committee they are now scared to use their names, and Freeman was told by the FBI she had to leave her home for two months because of threats.
“I’ve lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with No. 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen,” Freeman said.
Public officials recount intimidation of protests, tweets from Trump supporters
Elected officials detailed the threats they received or witnessed others received as a result of Trump’s pressure campaign to reject state electors.
Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, recalled the moment that made him decry Trump’s claims of fraud and emotionally speak out about the threats made toward election officials in a press conference in December 2020.
It was a tweet, he said, targeting a contractor he knew that “broke the camel’s back.”
“It had his name, ‘you committed treason, may God have mercy on your soul,’ with a slowly twisting GIF of a noose and, for a lack of a better word, I lost it,” Sterling said. “I just got irate.”
Pennsylvania House Speaker Bryan Cutler, a Republican, said in a taped deposition that all of his personal information was doxxed online and multiple protests happened outside of his home. The committee aired audio from one protest in which participants shouted, “Bryan Cutler, we are outside.”
“We had to disconnect our home phone for about three days because it would ring all hours of the night, it would fill up with messages,” Cutler said.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, described the feeling of having protesters outside her home as well.
“My stomach sunk, I thought, ‘it’s me,'” she told the committee in a deposition. “The uncertainty of that was why it was the fear. Like, are they coming with guns? Are they going to attack my house?”
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, GOP Rep. Andy Biggs involved in fake electors?
As the committee unveils its findings, it has suggested how Republican lawmakers were involved in scheme to overturn the election.
Bowers, Arizona’s House speaker, testified he received a call from Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, asking Bowers if he’d support the decertification of electors. Bowers told Biggs he would not.
The committee also showed evidence that Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., attempted to deliver slates of “fake” Trump electors from Wisconsin and Michigan to Pence ahead of Jan. 6.
Text messages between Johnson staffer Sean Riley and Pence aide Chris Hodgson were displayed on-screen in which Riley wrote that Johnson wanted to hand over fake electors from the two states.
“Do not give that to him,” the Pence aide replied.
Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for Johnson, denied that Johnson had any involvement in the creation of fake alternate slates of electors and claimed he had “no foreknowledge” it was going to be delivered to the office.
“The senator had no involvement in the creation of an alternate slate of electors and had no foreknowledge that it was going to be delivered to our office. This was a staff to staff exchange. His new Chief of Staff contacted the Vice President’s office. The Vice President’s office said not to give it to him and we did not. There was no further action taken. End of story,” Henning told ABC News.
Teasing hearings still to come, the next of which is on Thursday, Cheney put pressure on former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone to appear before the committee, adding that they are “certain” Trump wouldn’t want that to happen.
(WASHINGTON) — An airman was arrested in the U.S. on Thursday in connection with an April attack at a base in Syria that injured four other U.S. service members, according to a new statement from an Air Force official.
“After reviewing the information in the investigation, the Airman’s commander made the decision to place him in pretrial confinement,” the official said.
The Air Force will not release the airman’s name unless charges are preferred.
“It is too early in the process for a charge sheet. It will be available if charges are preferred,” the official said.
Earlier this month, military officials said an American service member had been identified as a “possible suspect” in the April 7 attack at the Green Village base.
Four other U.S. service members were evaluated for minor wounds and possible traumatic brain injuries after what the military originally reported to be two indirect-fire rounds hitting the site. Further investigation showed the explosions were the result of “deliberate placement of explosive charges” at an ammunition storage area and shower facility on base, according to military officials.
The Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) have been conducting a joint investigation into the incident.
An Army CID official previously emphasized that “at this point, these are just allegations” and that any suspects were presumed innocent.
“The investigation is ongoing, which may or may not, develop sufficient evidence to identify a perpetrator(s) and have enough evidence to ensure a conviction in a court of law,” that official said.
(WASHINGTON) — After weeks of negotiation, a bipartisan group of senators released their anti-gun violence bill on Tuesday evening — setting up a vote in the upper chamber as early as this week.
The key four senators on the deal were Republicans John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democrats Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. The group came together after a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last month killed 19 elementary school students and two teachers.
“Today, we finalized bipartisan, commonsense legislation to protect America’s children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country. Our legislation will save lives and will not infringe on any law-abiding American’s Second Amendment rights,” the four lawmakers said in a statement. “We look forward to earning broad, bipartisan support and passing our commonsense legislation into law.”
Led by Cornyn and Murphy, a group of 20 senators had announced last week that they agreed upon the broad outline of a bill, which they then focused on drafting more specifically. Now that the legislative text is complete, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could begin the process of teeing up a vote as soon as this week. He’s previously vowed to move the bill expeditiously.
“Once the text of this agreement is finalized, and I hope it will be as soon as possible, I will put this bill on the floor quickly so the Senate can move quickly to make gun safety reform a reality,” Schumer said in a floor speech the day after the bipartisan framework was introduced on June 12.
The bill marks a step forward in advancing that agreement, which was supported by 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans, enough to overcome a filibuster. That framework had outlined plans for a law that would include expanded background checks for those ages 18-21 as well as funding for school safety and mental health programs, funds to incentivize violence prevention programs in states and the closure of the so-called “boyfriend loophole” regarding which convicted domestic abusers can possess firearms.
If the draft text becomes law, it will be the first major gun legislation in nearly 30 years. But the Senate will need to work quickly if lawmakers want to see a floor vote before they depart for a two-week recess at the end of the week. Waiting until the end of that recess could prove a serious blow to the bill’s momentum, given resistance in some conservative circles.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state of Maine must allow parents who receive taxpayer-funded tuition assistance payments to use them at religious schools, saying a ban on the practice had violated the First Amendment.
The decision is a significant expansion of religious liberty and opens the door for wider use of taxpayer funds for sectarian education.
“The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion joined by the court’s five other conservatives.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
“The Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build,” Sotomayor wrote.
Half of Maine’s school districts — mostly in rural and sparsely populated areas of the state — do not operate their own public schools. Instead, they either contract with a neighboring district to provide public education for residents, or they provide parents with tuition assistance payments to use at a private school of their choice. About 5,000 students currently use the assistance to attend private schools.
State regulations have prohibited use of the funds at a school that promotes a specific faith or belief system and teaches academic material through a “lens of faith.”
A pair of families who want to send their children to religiously-affiliated private schools using the program sued the state alleging discrimination under the First Amendment. Two lower federal courts sided with the state, saying that the program was rightly restricted because of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits government establishment of religion.
“A neutral benefit program in which public funds flow to religious organizations through the independent choices of private benefit recipients does not offend the Establishment Clause,” Roberts writes. “Maine’s decision to continue excluding religious schools from its tuition assistance program …thus promotes stricter separation of church and state than the Federal Constitution requires.”
Chief Justice Roberts noted that Maine is not required outright to fund religious schools, but that once it allows general subsidy of private education it could not discriminate. “The State retains a number of options: it could expand the reach of its public school system, increase the availability of transportation, provide some combination of tutoring, remote learning, and partial attendance, or even operate boarding schools of its own,” he wrote.
In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer argued that the Constitution gives the states some leeway to choose how scrupulous they want to be in keeping taxpayer dollars away from religious use.
“That need is reinforced by the fact that we are today a Nation of more than 330 million people who ascribe to over 100 different religions. In that context, state neutrality with respect to religion is particularly important,” Breyer wrote.
Justice Sotomayor, in a separate dissent, sharply rebuked the court’s conservative majority.
“Today, the Court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation,” she writes. “If a State cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any State that values its historic anti-establishment interests more than this Court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens.”
Advocates for the Maine families challenging the program celebrated the court’s decision.
“We are thrilled that the Court affirmed once again that religious discrimination will not be tolerated in this country,” said First Liberty president and chief counsel Kelly Shackelford. “Parents in Maine, and all over the country, can now choose the best education for their kids without fearing retribution from the government.”
Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the justices were infringing on the rights of those who believe the government must remain neutral in matters of religion.
“This nation was built on the promise of religious freedom, which has always prevented the state from using its taxing power to force citizens to fund religious worship or education,” Laser said in a statement. “Here, the court has violated that founding principle by requiring Maine to tax citizens to fund religious schools. Far from honoring religious freedom, this decision tramples the religious freedom of everyone.”
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol holds another hearing Tuesday at 1 p.m. on the pressure campaign it says former President Donald Trump and allies put on state election officials as part of a larger “seven-part scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Please check back for updates. All times Eastern.
Jun 21, 3:47 pm
Schiff calls Trump’s action ‘unpatriotic’ but punts to DOJ on whether criminal
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who led the hearing Tuesday focused on Trump’s pressure campaign on state election officials, appeared to speak to Attorney General Merrick Garland and other prosecutors at the Department of Justice watching the committee unfold its findings, reminding the public that lawmakers will not be the ones to bring charges to Trump and allies.
“Whether his actions were criminal will ultimately be for others to decide. But what he did was without a doubt unconstitutional. It was unpatriotic, and it was fundamentally un-American,” Schiff said.
The committee has appeared to make the case that Trump directly engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the government.
Jun 21, 3:37 pm
Mother-daughter election duo describe impact of ‘hateful’ attacks
Ruby Freeman, the mother of Shaye Moss, both former election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, sat behind her daughter in the hearing room Tuesday as Moss detailed “racist” and “hateful” threats to their lives after Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani falsely accused them of “smuggling” ballots in suitcases.
Both women told the committee they are now scared to use their names, and Freeman was told by the FBI she had to leave her home for two months because of threats. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said that in Trump’s call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, he mentioned Freeman’s name 18 times.
“I’ve lost my name and I’ve lost my reputation,” Freeman, a 62-year-old grandmother, said in taped testimony. “I’ve lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with No. 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.”
“I can’t believe this person has caused this much damage to me and my family,” she added. “It was horrible.”
Asked how the false attack espoused by the president and his allies affected her, Moss said it has “in every way.”
“I haven’t been anywhere at all. I’ve gained about 60 pounds. I just don’t do nothing anymore. I don’t want to go anywhere,” she said. “All because of lies — for me doing my job, same thing I’ve been doing forever.”
Jun 21, 3:30 pm
Former elections worker describes moment she learned about threats against her
Shaye Moss, a former election worker in Fulton County, Georgia, told the committee about the moment she learned Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was falsely accusing her and her mother of smuggling ballots in suitcases.
“When I saw the video, of course the first thing that I said was, ‘Why? Why are they doing this? What’s going on?'” Moss recalled.
Moss then described the onslaught of threats and hateful messages she received online — a situation she had never been in during her 10 years as an elections worker.
“It was just a lot of horrible things,” she said.
“A lot of threats, wishing death upon me, telling me that, you know I’ll be in jail with my mother,” Moss added.
Moss opened her remarks by telling the committee what she had loved about her job, stating she took pride in helping elderly voters and college students cast their ballots.
Jun 21, 3:13 pm
Committee plays audio of Trump’s call to Raffensperger to ‘find’ votes
The committee played audio clips of the now-infamous phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, in which Trump told Raffensperger he needed to “find” 11,780 votes in Georgia — just one vote over the margin by which he trailed President-elect Joe Biden — so he could be declared the winner of an election that three separate counts in the state confirmed he lost.
The call lasted 67 minutes and appeared to follow a cycle of Trump offering false election conspiracies and Raffensperger calmly explaining to him that each one was not accurate. At one point, Trump suggested to Raffensperger that his inaction could mean he was criminally liable.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., leading Tuesday’s hearing, also said that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows reached out to Raffensperger 18 times to set up the call with Trump.
Jun 21, 3:04 pm
Audio of Trump pressuring Georgia official aired in hearing
The committee aired audio from a call in which Trump tried to convince Frances Watson, the Georgia secretary of state’s lead elections investigator, to reverse his loss.
“You know, you have the most important job in the country right now,” Trump told her as he continued to falsely claim victory in the Peach State — which he lost to Joe Biden by some 11,000 votes.
“When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised,” Trump said to Watson.
Jun 21, 2:55 pm
Sterling describes threats to election workers amid Trump’s pressure
Gabe Sterling, the chief oversight officer of Georgia’s election, said trying to combat misinformation spread by Trump and his team was “kind of like a shovel trying to empty out the ocean,” adding that he even argued with his own family members over the ‘big lie.’
With Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., asking the Georgia election officials about threats made against them, Sterling said the “straw that broke the camel’s back” for him was a message to a Dominion contractor which said, “You committed treason — May God have mercy on your soul,” accompanied with a “slowly twisting GIF of a noose,” he said.
“I lost my temper, but it seemed necessary at the time because it was just getting worse,” Sterling said.
The committee went on to play a video of him from December 2020 in which he pleaded with Trump to “stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was the first to testify after a short recess and was immediately asked by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., to address the false allegations of widespread voter fraud Trump and his allies pushed in the battleground state.
“Our election went remarkably smooth,” Raffensperger said. “President Biden carried the state of Georgia by approximately 12,000 votes,” he reminded.
Raffensperger, a Republican who supported Trump’s re-election bid, recounted how three separate audits in the state confirmed President Joe Biden as the winner.
“Three counts — all remarkably close — which show that President Trump did come up short,” he said.
Jun 21, 2:38 pm
GOP Sen. Johnson attempted to give fake electors to Pence, committee shows
The committee showed evidence that Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., attempted to deliver slates of “fake” Trump electors from Wisconsin and Michigan to then-Vice President Mike Pence.
Text messages the House panel obtained between Johnson staffer Sean Riley and Pence aide Chris Hodgson were displayed on-screen during Tuesday’s hearing.
Riley wrote that Johnson wanted to hand over fake electors from the two states — which Joe Biden won — to Pence ahead of Jan. 6.
“Do not give that to him,” the Pence aide replied.
Jun 21, 2:32 pm
Arizona House speaker recounts faith in standing up to pressure
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers emotionally recounted the pushback he and his family faced under immense pressure from Trump’s top team, who tried to convince him there was a law in Arizona that would have allowed him to overturn electors in the state — which did not legally exist.
Bowers summarized the effort to go around him and send fake Arizona electors to Washington as a “tragic parody” and recounted how people turned on him as Trump continued to espouse the ‘big lie.’
“It is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me turn on me with such rancor,” he said. “I may, in the eyes of men, not hold correct opinions or act according to their vision or convictions, but I do not take this current situation in a light manner, a fearful manner, or a vengeful manner.”
“I do not want to be a winner by cheating,” he added. “I will not play with laws I swear allegiance to with any contrived desire towards deflection of my deep, foundational desire to follow God’s will as I believe he let my conscience to embrace. How else will I ever approach Him in the wilderness of life knowing that I ask of His guidance only to show myself a coward in defending the course he led me to take.”
He mentioned the threats around his home and how it upset is daughter, Kacey Rae Bowers, who was gravely ill at the time. She passed away at age 42, just days after the attack on the Capitol, on Jan. 28, 2021.
Jun 21, 2:15 pm
RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel appears in videotaped testimony
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, niece of Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, made her first appearance at a Jan. 6 hearing in video testimony where she was asked about the scheme to send “fake” electors to Congress to decertify President-elect Joe Biden’s win.
The House select committee says the RNC assisted Trump in coordinating the effort “at the president’s direct request.”
“He turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then preceded to talk about the importance of — helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing change the results of any states,” McDaniel recounted.
“The campaign took the lead, and we just were helping them in that role,” she added, appearing to try to distance the RNC from the effort.
Jun 21, 2:07 pm
Arizona House speaker says he told Eastman twice he wouldn’t break oath
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers said he told Trump election lawyer John Eastman on two occasions that he would not break his oath of office and decertify electors for President-elect Joe Biden and recalled the conversations before the committee.
“I said, ‘What would you have me do?’ He said, ‘Just do it and let the courts sorted out.’ I said, ‘You’re asking me to do something that is never been done in history, the history of the United States. And I’m gonna put my state through that without sufficient proof? That’s going to be good enough with me that I would put us through that, my state?”
Bowers recalled telling Eastman, “‘I swore to uphold both in the Constitution and in law — no, sir,'” and said that Eastman suggested he “do it” and let the courts figure it out.
Bowers also said he also received a call from Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, asking Bowers if he’d support the decertification of electors. Bowers told Biggs he would not.
Jun 21, 1:58 pm
Arizona Republican gets emotional describing pressure to violate his oath
Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, got emotional Tuesday as he described to the committee the pressure placed on him by Trump and others to violate his oath to the Constitution.
Bowers said he was not presented with any strong evidence that would have given him doubt as to the integrity of the election.
“It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired, one of my most basic foundational beliefs,” Bowers said. “And so for me to do that because somebody just asked me to is foreign to my very being. I will not do it.”
Jun 21, 1:49 pm
Arizona House speaker rejects Trump’s claim, says he told Giuliani he wouldn’t be ‘used as a pawn’
After Trump claimed earlier Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social that Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers told him the election was rigged, Bowers said that was “false.”
“I did have a conversation with the president. That certainly isn’t it. There are parts that are true. There are parts that are not,” Bowers said, asked about Trump’s claim. “Anyone, anywhere, anytime [saying] I said the election was rigged, that would not be true,” he added.
Bowers said Trump’s team claimed widespread fraud in Arizona but couldn’t provide evidence of it.
“I did not feel that the evidence, and its absence, merited the hearing,” he said, explaining that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani wanted him to reconvene his state legislature to change the state’s vote. “I didn’t want to be used as a pawn.”
“I said, look, you are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath that I swore to the Constitution to uphold it. I also swore to the Constitution and the laws of the state of Arizona — this is totally foreign as an idea or a theory to me,” Bowers recalled. “You’re asking me to do something against my oath. I will not break my oath.”
Jun 21, 1:36 pm
Arizona House speaker faces 1st questions
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican who was pressured by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to decertify Biden’s victory in the state, according to emails reviewed by ABC News, as well as Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, according to The Arizona Republic, faced the first questions from the committee on Tuesday, establishing that he did support Trump’s re-election bid.
Bowers and other state officials on the first panel did not deliver opening statements, but Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the Republican House speaker of Arizona will talk about “conversations with the president, with Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, what’s the president’s team asked of him and how his oath of office would not permit it.”
A spokesperson said for the Arizona House of Representatives said that Bowers is appearing in response to a committee subpoena.
-ABC News’ Ali Dukakis
Jun 21, 1:30 pm
Trump’s election lies are ‘a dangerous cancer,’ Schiff warns
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., described the pressure placed on state officials as a “dangerous precursor” to the violence the nation witnessed on Jan. 6, 2021.
“This pressure campaign brought angry phone calls and texts, armed protests, intimidation, and, all too often, threats of violence and death,” Schiff said in his opening statement. “State legislators were singled out. So, too, were statewide elections officials. Even local elections workers, diligently doing their jobs, were accused of being criminals, and had their lives turned upside down.”
Trump’s supporters, Schiff said, saw his conduct toward local officials as “a call to action.”
“The president’s lie was — and is — a dangerous cancer on the body politic,” Schiff said. “If you can convince Americans that they cannot trust their own elections, that anytime they lose, it is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to determine who should govern?”
Jun 21, 1:20 pm
Cheney says committee will show Trump’s ‘direct and personal role’ in fake electors scheme
Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in her opening statement, said the committee will provide evidence that Trump “had a direct and personal role” in a scheme to have key states send fake electors to Congress and for Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results, “as did Rudy Giuliani, as did John Eastman.”
“In other words, the same people who were attempting to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes illegally, were also simultaneously working to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election at the state level,” Cheney said.
Cheney said the public will learn about calls Trump made to officials of Georgia and other states, and asked, “As you listen to these tapes, keep in mind what Donald Trump already knew at the time he made those calls — he had been told over and over again that his stolen election allegations were nonsense,” she said, going on to play video testimony of Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr.
Also raising threats of violence to election workers, Cheney said, “Donald Trump didn’t care about the threats of violence” and “made no effort to stop them; he went forward with his fake allegations anyway.”
“Do not be distracted by politics,” she added, as the former president and GOP allies continue to attack the committee’s investigation. “This is serious. We cannot let America become a nation of conspiracy theories and thug violence.”
Jun 21, 1:10 pm
Chairman opens hearing
Chairman Bennie Thompson convened the committee’s fourth hearing this month shortly after 1 p.m. and previewed the pressure campaign he said Trump and his allies put on election officials in key states with the aim of overturning the 2020 election.
In his opening statement, Thompson said “pressuring public servants into betraying their oaths was a fundamental part of the playbook” and that, in 2020, only a handful of election officials in key states “stood between Donald Trump and the upending of American democracy.”
“Everything we describe today — the relentless, destructive pressure campaign on state and local officials — was all based on a lie. Donald Trump knew it,” Thompson said. “He did it anyway.”
Explaining how the U.S. elects its president with the Electoral College system, Thompson also warned that “the lie hasn’t gone away” but is still “corrupting our democratic institutions,” citing an example of a county commissioner in New Mexico who refused to certify primary results last week.
“People who believe that lie are now seeking positions of public trust,” Thompson said. “If that happens, who will make sure our institutions don’t break under the pressure? We won’t have close calls. We’ll have catastrophe.”
Jun 21, 12:18 pm
Committee subpoenas filmmaker for new footage of Trump
The House select committee has subpoenaed a British documentary filmmaker who had substantial access to Trump, his family and closest aides both before and after the Jan. 6 attack, according to a statement from the filmmaker obtained by ABC News.
A spokesperson for filmmaker Alex Holder, who began filming Trump for a project in September 2020, confirmed the subpoena, first reported by Politico.
Holder said he has “fully complied with all of the committee’s requests” and handed over footage which includes interviews with Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Vice President Mike Pence, shot in the weeks around the Jan. 6 attack.
-ABC News’ Ali Dukakis and Benjamin Siegel
Jun 21, 12:09 pm
Former election worker to describe threats against her, family
Shaye Moss, a former election worker in Georgia, will testify Tuesday about the threats she said she and her family received in the aftermath of the 2020 race, according to a copy of her opening statement obtained by ABC News.
“Ever since December 2020, I have been under attack for just doing my job,” the statement reads. “My mom too.”
Moss will describe how they were the target of lies spread by Trump and Rudy Giuliani, including false accusations that they brought ballots into the State Farm Arena in a suitcase.
“People showed up at my grandmother’s home trying to bust the door down and conduct a citizen’s arrest of my mom and me,” her statement reads. “The threats followed me to work. People would email the general email address for our office so everyone could see their threats and the hateful messages directed at me.”
Jun 21, 12:04 pm
4th June hearing to include 4 live witnesses
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Trump asked to “find” just one vote over the margin by which he trailed President-elect Joe Biden in a now-infamous phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, will testify before the committee this afternoon, along with his blunt-spoken deputy, Gabe Sterling, after facing backlash from their own party for pushing back on Trump’s claims of election fraud in Georgia.
Joining them will be Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who was pressured by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to decertify Biden’s victory in the state, according to emails reviewed by ABC News. Bowers previously described to The Arizona Republic that Rudy Giuliani also called him after the election to pressure him to involve the state legislature to manipulate results in his state.
Former Fulton County election worker Shaye Moss, who was falsely accused by Giuliani and other Republicans of election fraud and smuggling “suitcases” of illegal ballots in Atlanta on election night, will testify on a second panel. She’s said that she and her mother, another election worker, were subject to harassment and threats online even after Georgia election officials debunked fraud allegations.
Jun 21, 11:42 am
What to expect at Tuesday’s hearing
The committee’s afternoon hearing will focus on what it says was then-President Donald Trump’s “unprecedented” effort to push key state officials to reject the election results and his central role in the plot to create “fake” slates of electors to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
Trump “drove a pressure campaign bases on lies” about the election, an aide told reporters on a briefing call Monday, and was “warned that his actions risked inciting violence” but “did it anyway.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., will lead the 1 p.m. ET hearing that the aide said will reveal new information obtained by the committee detailing Trump’s involvement and feature live witness testimony from Arizona and Georgia officials.
