January 6th Committee just landed a blockbuster witness for its next public hearing
Last week we noted that a number of high profile individuals were reported to be suddenly interested in publicly testifying to the January 6th Committee. We wondered if any of them would actually go through with it, and pointed out that it would be a blockbuster if they did.
Now it turns out at least one of those names has indeed agreed to publicly testify. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was famously on the receiving end of Donald Trump’s illegal demand that he “find” more Trump votes, has agreed to testify during Tuesday’s upcoming public hearing. Raffensperger’s deputy will also publicly testify, which will help give additional credibility to Raffensperger’s testimony.
This is a big deal for a few reasons. For one thing, it’s first hand testimony from someone who rejected Trump’s illegal demands. While witnesses up to this point have testified that they saw Trump commit crimes, Raffensperger will be the first live witness to publicly testify that Trump tried to get him to commit crimes. Further, the story of Trump trying to squeeze Raffensperger is a fairly high profile one – so Raffensperger’s first hand testimony confirming Trump’s actions may help seal the deal for some skeptics who have been watching the hearings and aren’t quite ready to acknowledge that Trump is 100% guilty of crimes.
It’s not entirely clear how Raffensperger will characterize the overall situation. But the January 6th Committee has already heard from him privately, which means that at the least, most of what Raffensperger has to say will be bad for Trump. We’ll probably see a lot of hand wringing performance art in the media about how Raffensperger, a Republican, could get up there and somehow decide to help get Trump off the hook, but that’s not realistic.
Raffensperger has reportedly already testified to the grand jury in the Fulton County District Attorney’s criminal investigation into Donald Trump. Raffensperger’s public testimony on Tuesday should provide at least some insight into what Raffensperger said to the grand jury about Trump’s guilt.
