NEW YORK. Election workers became targets for Trump’s lies about election fraud.
Ruby Freeman and her daughter testify about death threats and harassment after the president’s appointment.
– Do you know how it feels when the US President attacks one? said Freeman during the fourth public January 6 hearing.
Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss were election workers in the state of Georgia during the 2020 presidential election.
The women were subjected to an avalanche of threats and hatred after Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani wrongly accused them of manipulating the election result.
In a pre-recorded testimony, Freeman said that she used to proudly call herself “Lady Ruby” in her hometown.
– Now I dare not even say my name anymore. I get nervous if I come across someone in the grocery store who says my name, because I’m worried about who can listen, she told the committee investigating the storming of the Capitol.
– I have lost my name, and I have lost my reputation, she continued.
– It all started because number 45 (Trump) and his ally Rudy Giuliani, decided to make me and my daughter scapegoats.
The fourth public hearing, in which the January 6 committee presents its findings after an eleven-month investigation, focused on how Trump pressured election workers and election officials in key states, such as Georgia and Arizona, to cling to power.
Death threats, sexual harassment and burglary
Several conservative Republicans, such as Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, told the committee and American television viewers how they wanted Trump to win.
But they refused to agree to Trump’s conspiracy, with fake lecturers and lies about fake ballot papers, to influence the outcome.
When they did not agree with the plan, Trump continued to incite his supporters. As a result, Raffensperger and his wife’s address and number were posted online.
They received numerous death threats, sexual harassment, and the stepdaughter was hit by burglary by Trump supporters who believed the election had been stolen.
But Raffensperger refused to leave his post.
– At certain moments, I think you have to stand up and be in the firing line, he testified before the committee on Wednesday.
During a famous phone call with Raffensperger, a few days before January 6, Trump personally tried to pressure him to “find the 11,000 votes that are missing.”
“A voice fraudster”
During the hour-long discussion, the president also mentioned the election worker Ruby Freeman’s name, 18 times. And called her “a voice deceiver”.
Trump had seen a surveillance video of Freeman working during election night in Georgia, a state he has become obsessed with winning. Especially Fulton County, where he erroneously claimed that bags with Biden ballot papers showed up in the middle of the night.
According to election officials, every single statement has been investigated, without any systematic errors being found.
When the Trump call to Raffensperger leaked in early 2021, the harassment against Ruby Freeman and her family increased, she testifies.
She was forced to leave her home for two months because the FBI ruled that it was no longer safe for her to stay at home.
Freeman described how Trump directed his hatred at “a businesswoman, a mother, a proud American citizen, who helped Fulton County conduct an election in the midst of a pandemic.”
– Now I do not feel safe anywhere, Freeman said to the January 6 investigators.
– Do you know how it feels when the US President attacks one?