WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and his allies engaged in a monthslong campaign to pressure state election officials in key swing states to help overturn the results of the 2020 election, leading to widespread threats and harassment, according to new testimony at Tuesday’s Jan. 6 committee hearing.
“Pressuring public servants into betraying their oath was a fundamental part of the playbook,” said committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. “A handful of election officials in several key states stood between Donald Trump and the upending of American democracy.”
State officials, including Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, testified that they received multiple phone calls from Trump, along with his lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, urging him to decertify the results of the 2020 election and approve a slate of pro-Trump electors.
