The Daily Fuckup

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack spent June 21, 2022 hearing testimony about a different kind of fallout from Donald Trump’s effort to hold onto power: threats and harassment aimed at the people who ran elections.

Witnesses told lawmakers that false claims about the 2020 vote helped fuel abuse against election workers and local officials. In remarks from the hearing, Chairman Bennie Thompson said the harassment of election workers doing their jobs posed a threat to the democratic process and to the safety of local election officials.

The hearing was part of the committee’s broader series on Trump’s post-election pressure campaign. The panel has already shown that Trump and allies pushed fraud claims after the election, pressed state and local officials, and tried to keep him in office through a mix of legal arguments, political pressure, and efforts aimed at the Justice Department and other institutions.

That broader record gives the June 21 testimony a sharper edge. The committee was not only describing how the election denial effort spread through Washington. It was also showing how the same campaign ricocheted outward, leaving election workers and officials to absorb the threats, intimidation, and security fears that followed.

The result was a hearing centered less on abstract claims about the vote than on the concrete damage those claims caused. The committee kept moving through its planned public hearings, and the testimony added another layer to the record it was building: the cost of the Trump-backed falsehoods was measured not just in politics, but in threats directed at the people carrying out elections.