Arizona Republican tells of threats after refusing to back Trump attempts to overturn election results

Protesters, one with a gun, turned up at the home of a senior Republican politician in Arizona calling him a paedophile and corrupt after he refused to help Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, the US congressional committee has been told.

Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers said he received many “disturbing” threats and that there were demonstrations at his home at a time when his daughter was “gravely ill”.

Separately a former election worker in Georgia told the committee she had to leave her home for two months after the FBI advised her of a risk to her safety after she and her daughter were accused of being involved in vote fraud by Mr Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Ruby Freeman said there was nowhere now that she felt safe.

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“Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”

Ms Freeman’s daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, said she had received “hateful” and “racist” threats via Facebook.

“A lot of threats, wishing death upon me. Telling me that, you know, I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like ‘be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920’.”

She said she did not want people to know her name and no longer wanted to go anywhere.

Mr Trump and Mr Giuliani had alleged that she and her mother were seen in a video passing a USB drive to each other at the election count. Ms Moss said her mother was just giving her a mint.

Mr Bowers told the committee of the pressure he had come under after refusing to assist Mr Trump.

“Up to even recently, it is the new pattern or a pattern in our lives to worry what will happen on Saturdays because we have various groups come by, and they have had panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to be a paedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician and blaring loudspeakers in my neighbourhood,” he said.

“There was one gentleman that had the three bars on his chest (the logo of a far-right group) and he had a pistol and was threatening my neighbour — not with the pistol but vocally. When I saw the gun, I knew I had to get close,” he said.

“It was disturbing,” he said. “It was disturbing.”

Mr Bowers said he resisted overtures from the then president and his allies to change his state’s 2020 presidential election results because he saw no evidence supporting their claims of fraud and didn’t want to be “used as a pawn”.

He said he had been told by Mr Giuliani that hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants had voted in the election as well as thousands of dead people.

However, he said despite being promised, he never received any evidence.

Mr Bowers says that on one occasion Mr Giuliani told him: “We’ve got lots of theories; we just don’t have the evidence.” He speculated that this comment may have been a gaffe by Mr Giuliani.

Mr Bowers said Mr Giuliani tried to appeal to him as a fellow Republican, saying Mr Trump’s team expected to get a better reception from him.

Asked about attempts made by Mr Trump and his allies to overturn the election results, including moves to appoint “fake electors” to vote for the former president in the electoral college vote on the presidency, Mr Bowers said: “This is a tragic parody.”

“I thought of the book, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” Mr Bowers said.

Mr Bowers disputed strongly an assertion by Mr Trump that he had previously told him that the election in Arizona had been “rigged”.

The committee on Tuesday heard details of pressure being applied to state officials and politicians to back claims by Mr Trump and his allies that the outcome of the election, which was won by Joe Biden, had been determined by fraud.

Committee chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat of Mississippi, said that “pressuring public servants into betraying their oaths was a fundamental part of the playbook”.

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, gave evidence said he had also received threats after the election.

He said his wife also received texts, which were often of a sexual nature, after he concluded Mr Trump did not win the election. He said the home of his daughter-in-law, who is a widow, was broken into.