The January 6 Hearings - Part Four

 he fourth public hearing of the January 6 House select committee got very interesting yesterday.  And not because of Georgia boys Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, who told the stories of intense harassment and pressure from Trump supporters to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which we already knew about.  With House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy trying to downplay the insurrection in the hope of being Speaker of the U.S. House in 2023, the January 6 committee heard from the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the state of Arizona . . . a conservative Republican with far more integrity than McCarthy.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (above) said he was pressured by Donald Trump and Rudolph Giuliani to have the Arizona presidential ballots overturned because they insisted that Joe Biden had won the state through fraud.  When Speaker Bowers asked Giuliani for proof, the Trump lawyer and former New York mayor promised to provide evidence . . . and never did.  Trump even tried to get Speaker Bowers to call a special session of the Arizona House of Representatives to negate the presidential election results, something he couldn't do without a two-thirds majority of the Arizona legislature's lower house (which he could never get anyway).  Trump pressured Speaker Bowers to find any way to overturn Biden's victory, even if it meant cheating and lying.  A religious conservative, the Speaker refused to violate the tenets of his faith.

Oh yeah, his faith . . ..  Bowers is a Mormon, and as a Mormon, he believes that the U.S. Constitution - to which he took an oath to support, an oath he deems as sacred as his local temple - is a divinely inspired document, and to violate the Constitution is to violate the word of God Himself.  Asking a Mormon to violate the Constitution is like asking an Orthodox Jew to work on Saturdays.  Speaker Bowers said he would not be bullied into lying and cheating and going against his faith. 

The day also presented damning evidence that Trump personally went after Georgia poll worker Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shay Moss, for handling voters at their local polling station and accused the pair of manipulating and rigging the vote in their precinct.  Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, who are black, are now afraid to go out in public and have confined themselves to home.

So, in other words, two black women are afraid to venture out on their own because a white man has ensured that they will be whipped and beaten if they do.

Just like in the days of slavery.  And, truth be told, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's daughter-in-law and grandchildren (his son died) have received death threats as well as he.  Raffensperger had the thankless task of investigating Trump's bogus claims of dead people in Georgia having voted. 

If there's any levity to be found in yesterday's hearing, it's this . . . when Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling testified about the integrity of the vote . . .

. . . must have been thinking, "Wait a minute! Roger Ebert was involved?  I thought he was dead!"

Yes, and like many deceased Chicagoans, Roger Ebert voted for Joe Biden, too.

We have to laugh once in awhile with regard to January 6.  If we don't laugh, we're going to have to cry.