trump electors. we are going to hear from four witnesses this afternoon, including the secretary of state for georgia, brad raffensperger and his chief operating officer, gabriel sterling, big public figures in the wake of the november election in 2020. the committee says it s going to show evidence that former president trump put undue pressure on legislatures to try to put forward alternative slates and electors. for president trump, the strategy did not work, legislatures did not go along with it. you see betty thompson taking it there, much of the questioning will be handled by california congressman adam schiff as he questions the witnesses and makes the majority of the presentation. liz cheney there seated to betty thompson s left-hand side, adam schiff on the right-hand side. we expect the hearing will last at least a couple of hours. let s pause now while chairman thompson gavels in today s hearing. the select committee to investigate the january 6th attack on the u
republican tried to ambush and hand fraudulent electors to mike pence on january 6th. those stories and reports are coming up. but after a hearing like today s we begin with something more fundamental than a legal breakdown, and more powerful, perhaps, than meticulously going through the evidence, though that also matters. right now we begin with this. what millions of americans saw and heard today from the top republican leader out of arizona in plain, serious, and stern testimony about the choices officials have to make, the tests that trump posed, tests that, by the way, many republicans have fail bid cowering to a would be autocrat by minimizing threats of violence and coups, by only speak out late, if at all. some have walked back from some of those public humiliations. others just live in them. but today s testimony by this republican here offers a view of what it looks like to stand up. i said, look, you are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath that i
intended to intimidate lawmakers. if we have to, we re going to go to homes and let them know what we think about them. there were multiple protests. i don t remember the exact number, three at least outside either my district office or my home. you re correct. my then 15-year-old son was home by himself for the first one. all of my personal information was online. it was my personal email, my personal cell phone, my home phone number. in fact, we had to disconnect our home phone for about three days because it would ring all hours of the night, would fill up with messages. brian butt cutler, we re outside. outlining pressure from trump aides and the ex-president himself to peddle the big lie even as team trump admitted they didn t have any evidence. he said we ve got lots of theories, we just don t have the evidence. and i don t know if that was a gaff. maybe he didn t think through what he said. both myself and others in my group and my counsel both remembered tha
threats to her safety after being accused of being part of a conspiracy theory involving fake ballots, debunked, by the way. most of the discussion heading into today s hearing surrounds brad raffensperger who won a primary earlier this month. raffensperger was facing deep discontent from some trump supporters for pushing back on donald trump in the days before the january 6 insurrection, refusing the former president s request to, quote, find the votes trump needed to win that state. i just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state. flipping the state is a great testament to our country. ladies, in the hearings so far, each followed a pattern. donald trump was told he lost. he told his supporters that he won anyway. donald trump was told that there was no fraud. he told his supporters that there was fraud. donald trump was told that mike pence did not have the power to overturn the election. he said mike pence had the power to
and stolen. that view was wrong then and it is wrong today. that comes as the justice department is ramping up its criminal investigation into the fake electors scheme that was concocted by trump and his allies with federal agents delivering grand jury subpoenas to at least four people yesterday. this is at a scale that we had not seen before from doj. it raises questions about how deep they are in to the fake elector scheme with their investigations. we will have much more on that in just a moment. that is the justice department branch of all of this. the congressional side of the investigation picks up in a few hours with a new hearing focused on the former president s pressure campaign to get the department of justice to intervene in the 2020 election. joining me now ellie honig former federal prosecutor. we can tell a lot by this witness list today. we can, john. let s set the scene. mid-december 2020 now it s about a month and change after the election, we are a few