Jan. 6 committee members see huge increase in violent threats in past 24 hours: report
The members of the House select committee have seen a notable increase in the number of violent threats against them since their latest public hearing.
The committee held its fourth hearing Tuesday focusing on Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his election loss by sending slates of fraudulent electors to Congress and pressuring local election officials through violent intimidation to admit to bogus claims of wrongdoing, and that has unleashed a new wave of threats against panel members, reported the Washington Post.
“There is violence in the future, I’m going to tell you,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week," "and until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can’t expect any differently.”
Kinzinger, one of the panel's two Republicans, revealed over the weekend that he had received a letter threatening to execute him, his wife and their five-month-old child.
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All lawmakers on the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection will likely receive a security detail in response to the new threats, according to three sources close to the probe.
On Tuesday, the House select committee heard from poll worker Shaye Moss, who was falsely accused by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani alongside her mother Ruby Freeman of "rigging" the election count in Georgia with "suitcases" full of ballots for Biden.
Moss, who is Black, described people making "hateful" and "racist" threats of violence following the baseless accusations, including one message saying: "Be glad it's 2020 and not 1920."
"This turned my life upside down. I no longer give out my business card, I don't transfer calls," Moss testified.
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"I don't want anyone knowing my name... I don't go to the grocery store. Haven't been anywhere at all."
Freeman said in her deposition she had lost her good name and sense of security because "number 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen."
The mother and daughter were among poll workers or election officials in several states who found themselves pressured to thwart the will of millions of voters based on bogus claims of fraud, the panel said.
The remaining hearings, which will resume Thursday but will then be paused until July, will focus even more of political violence from Trump's right-wing supporters, with a hearing led by Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) that explores the path to extremism taken by many of the insurrectionists.
With additional reporting by AFP
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