Jan. 6 panel to hear from Raffensperger, Arizona House speaker on Trump pressure campaign

State officials from Arizona and Georgia who were pressured by Donald Trump to help him overturn his 2020 election loss are set to headline the fourth hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection Tuesday afternoon, committee aides said.

The speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, Rusty Bowers, a Republican, is expected to talk about being harassed and intimidated by Trump’s allies, committee staff said. And a trio of election workers from Georgia, where Trump is being criminally investigated for his efforts to alter the state’s results, are set to testify as well.

“We’ll be taking a close look at how the president and his allies came up with these schemes to pressure Republican-controlled legislatures and other state officials to reverse certification of his electoral loss, or to withhold certification in certain contested states,” committee staff said Monday.

Tuesday’s hearing will mark the fourth in a series of public hearings on the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol spurred by Trump’s extensive campaign to deny his 2020 election loss and attempt to stay in power. Thursday’s hearing is expected to focus on the former president’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to aid him in his attempt to illegally stay in power, committee staff said Monday.

Trump, for his part, has demanded “equal time,” complaining that he doesn’t have any of his supporters on the committee. Asked if the panel was trying to secure testimony from Trump, a committee staffer said that it would “welcome” testimony from anyone involved. A pair of Trump spokespeople did not return requests for comment.

Over the weekend, committee member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the panel may be open to subpoenaing former Vice President Mike Pence to testify. A committee staffer declined to say Monday if it would push Pence to testify.

A large number of commentators have been calling for Pence to testify following the last hearing, which focused on the intensive pressure Trump placed on Pence and the resulting riot on Jan. 6 that threatened the former vice president’s life.

The committee also expressed a new interest in Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, after the Washington Post reported that she tried to lobby 29 Arizona state lawmakers to approve fake electors in an effort to keep Trump in power. The committee later uncovered evidence that Ginni Thomas had been communicating with John Eastman, the lawyer at the center of Trump’s last-ditch effort to overturn the election, the Post reported.

The panel’s leaders, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., sent a request to Ginni Thomas last week asking that she testify before the committee sometime between July 6 and July 11. Thomas told the Daily Caller last week, “I look forward to talking to them.”

Schiff, who has long been a central player in investigations of Trump, is set to lead Tuesday’s hearing.

In addition to Bowers, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who recently defeated a Trump-backed challenger, and Gabriel Sterling, one of his top aides, are set to testify about Trump’s relentless pressuring of them to “find” the votes he needed to win Georgia.

In a call that is now the focus of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s investigation, Trump requested Raffensperger come up with 11,780 votes for him.

Georgia state election worker Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who was targeted by Trump supporters with death threats and repeated harassment, is also scheduled to testify Tuesday.

The fourth hearing is also expected to focus on Trump and his allies’ tactic of trying to send fake electors to Washington to spur chaos and give Pence a reason not to certify Biden’s victory.

Retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig testified at the third hearing last week that the use of fake electors was a key tactic in the effort to overturn the election result and would likely be used again if Trump or his “anointed successor” were to run in 2024 and lose.