The Democrat-led January 6 Commission is holding its fourth of eight hearings Tuesday outlining what led to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Tuesday’s hearing features four witnesses, including two top Georgia election officials, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his leading deputy during the 2020 election Gabe Sterling.
In the days leading up to the insurrection, a tape surfaced of President Donald Trump's conversation with Raffensperger asking him to “find” enough votes for him to flip the election.
The committee’s previous hearing focused on Trump and attorney John Eastman's pressure to Vice President Mike Pence to reject Electoral College votes.
“One pressure campaign, as we saw last week, on the vice president to ignore the Constitution put the vice president's life in danger,” committee member Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, told CNN’s State of the Union. “And, this week, we will hear about how a similar pressure campaign directed against state and local elections officials put their lives in danger.
“And, similarly, the president was told this scheme is essentially something that his own lawyers couldn't justify.”
Georgia was among six states Trump won in 2016 that Joe Biden flipped in 2020. Biden won the state by a .23% margin.
After Georgia officials declared Biden was the winner, Sterling said he, his family and other election officials were the targets of death threats. He decried Trump and his campaign for alleging the 2020 election was stolen.
Sterling said in late 2020 that Trump has the right to contest the election in court, but added, “You need to step up and say this, is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone's going to get hurt. Someone's going to get shot. Someone's going to get killed, and it's not right."
The Trump campaign issued a statement decrying the violence.
