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Jan. 6 Committee hearings put Georgia in the spotlight

The proceedings saw testimony Tuesday from state election officials Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling and former Fulton election worker Shaye Moss.

ATLANTA — UPDATE: The hearings have concluded. You can watch Raffensperger's and Sterling's testimony in the video player above.

Original story below

The January 6 Committee will reconvene today with a hearing that puts Georgia front and center.

The proceedings will begin at 1 p.m. ET, and out of four announced panelists who will testify before the committee on Tuesday, three are from the Peach State.

They include the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger; the chief operating officer of the Secretary of State's Office, Gabriel Sterling; and a Fulton County elections worker who stayed late at State Farm Arena on Election Night 2020 and became the subject of a withering harassment campaign by conspiracists advancing fraud narratives, Wandrea "Shaye" Moss.

RELATED: Jan. 6 panel to hear from Raffensperger, others Trump pushed

11Alive will be monitoring the hearings all afternoon and providing live updates as the committee hears testimony in the first panel from Raffensperger and Sterling, and then in the second panel from Moss.

Watch the hearing below:

Find our live updates below:

Jan. 6 Committee hearing live updates

3:40 p.m. | The hearing has been adjourned.

3:38 p.m. | Chairman Thompson now delivering his final remarks. 

"For Donald Trump, these witnesses and others like them were another road block to his attempt to cling to power."

3:35 p.m. | Rep. Cheney now delivering a closing statement, following on Schiff.

3:30 p.m. | Schiff thanks Moss and Freeman. Plays one final clip of the mother explaining the impact of the harassment campaign against her:

"Nowhere I feel safe, nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the President of the United States to target you? The President of the United States is supposed to represent every American, not to target one. but he targeted me, 'Lady Ruby' - a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stood up to help Fulton County run the election in the middle of the pandemic."

3:28 p.m. | Moss asked about other election workers on the State Farm Arena videos. 

Says, "There is no permanent election worker or supervisor in that video that's still there."

Says she left her positions as well.

3:25 p.m. | More video testimony from Moss' mother, Ruby Freeman. She says FBI advised her to leave her home ahead of Jan. 6. Says it made her feel homeless.

"I can't believe this person (Trump) has caused this much damage to me and my family, to have to leave my home that I've lived there for 21 years."

3:23 p.m. | Moss on the harassment campaign's long-term effects on her:

"I don't go to grocery store, I don't do nothing anymore. I don't wanna go anywhere. I second guess everything that I do, it's affected my life in a major way, in every way. All because of lies for me doing my job, same thing I've been doing forever."

3:22 p.m. | Committee now playing a deposition that Moss' mother, Ruby Freeman, gave.

She says she doesn't even introduce herself by name anymore. Gets nervous when she has to give her name for food orders, and is always concerned of who's around her.

"I've lost my name, I've lost my reputation, I've lost my sense of security - all because a group of people starting with No. 45 (Trump) 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."

3:19 p.m. | Moss says she felt a lot of guilt through the harassment campaign, felt like it was her fault for putting her family through all of it. Schiff tells her it was not her fault.

3:18 p.m. | Moss tells Schiff the "USB drive" she was alleged to have suspiciously passed to her mom in surveillance videos was a mint.

3:17 p.m. | Moss talks about the threats she got through Facebook messenger. 

"Wishing death upon me, telling me that ill be in jail with my mother and saying things like be glad it's 2020 and not 1920."

3:13 p.m. | Schiff plays a video of Giuliani naming Moss and her mother as he spread conspiracies about State Farm Arena.

3:12 p.m. | Moss talks about what she liked most about her job. Speaks about helping elderly voters, who prefer to call election offices directly rather than do everything online. Says she liked helping parents whose kids were in college get them absentee ballots.

Said she once drove an absentee ballot application to someone in the hospital, as well.

Service, she said, "that's what I loved the most."

3:08 p.m. | Moss is sworn in and Rep. Thompson says he will begin to ask her about the threats she received following the 2020 election.

3:07 p.m. | Chairman Thompson now brings Wandrea' "Shaye" Moss to the hearing. Moss is a now-former Fulton County elections worker who became the focus of harassment campaigns spawned by the conspiracies surrounding State Farm Arena vote counting.

3:05 p.m. | Schiff thanks Raffensperger and Sterling, gives the time back to Chairman Thompson. He thanks them for joining and dismisses them.

3:04 p.m. | Schiff now connecting Trump's comments at the rally on Jan. 6 that preceded the riots at the Capitol to Georgia.

3:03 p.m. | Raffensperger on why he didn't quit:

"Because I knew that we had followed the law and followed the Constitution, and I think moments sometimes require you to stand up and take the shots. You're doing your job, and that's all we did... at the end of the day President Trump came up short."

3:02 p.m. | Schiff plays a part of the call where Trump told Raffensperger it was "very dangerous" for him to declare there had been no criminal undermining of the election. 

Raffensperger talks about the attacks that then followed on him and his wife.

3:00 p.m. | Schiff now plays the part of the call where Trump said he wanted to "find" enough votes to flip Georgia.

"What I knew was we didn't have any votes to find," says Raffensperger.

2:56 p.m. | Raffensperger recounting how they investigated claims about underage voters, felon voters - "every single allegation we checked, we ran down the rabbit trail to make sure our numbers were accurate."

"The numbers were the numbers."

Says they had nearly 300 investigations related to the 2020 election.

2:55 p.m. | These questions are all being prompted by the Trump/Raffensperger phone call, which is being replayed in part by the committee.

2:55 p.m. | Schiff asks Raffensperger if there were thousands of dead people they found had voted. The secretary responds they found four votes cast on behalf of dead people.

2:54 p.m. | Schiff asks Sterling if 18,000 ballots could have been smuggled in for Biden. 

He responds no.

(quotes in part paraphrased)

"Fulton County was an issue for years in our state, they had a very difficult time during the primary, we put them under a consent decree where we had a monitor on site. Carter Jones, he took a notation, he had gone from State Farm Arena to the English Street warehouse, before he left the arena he noted how many ballots had been counted on each one of the machines, when he came back when we found out they were working again, he took note again when they closed. The number was 8,900 ballots, way below 18,000."

2:50 p.m. | Trump highlighted the date of Jan. 6 as a "very important date" in the call with Watson. Schiff now asking Raffensperger about the call between him and the then-president.

2:48 p.m. | Schiff presenting a call between Trump and Frances Watson, an investigator in the Secretary of State's Office, in which he insisted there was fraud and she would be praised for exposing it.

2:47 p.m. | Schiff now appears to be moving onto when the pressure campaign intensified on Raffensperger, culminating with the infamous call between Trump and the secretary days before Jan. 6.

2:45 p.m. | Your eyes didn't deceive you. That was 11Alive's Brendan Keefe briefly featured in the hearing a few minutes ago.

Credit: WXIA

2:40 p.m. | Sterling explaining how if fraudulent ballots had been double or triple counted at State Farm Arena, the hand audit would have shown many more ballots than were originally reported. Instead it showed the counts were mathematically "dead on accurate."

2:37 p.m. | Sterling speaking to how the State Farm Arena surveillance videos showed election workers conducting normal activity.

2:35 p.m. | Schiff now bringing up the "suitcases of ballots" episode at State Farm Arena which became a focus of conspiracists. 

2:32 p.m. | Schiff now asks Gabriel Sterling about his Dec. 1, 2020 press conference in which he pleaded with former President Donald Trump to stop the campaign to delegitimize Georgia's election results. Sterling describes how he learned of threats against a Dominion Voting Systems worker on Twitter.

"For lack of a better word I lost it. I just got irate."

2:30 p.m. | Rep. Schiff now asking Raffensperger questions. Asks him how many votes Biden won by, Raffensperger responds by about 12,000. Asks him about state's efforts to confirm election results - including hand audit and machine recount.

2:28 p.m. | Thompson is now addressing Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger. He asks the secretary if he wanted Trump to win the 2020 election. He replies affirmatively.

2:27 p.m. | Chairman Thompson announces the hearing will turn its attention to Georgia. 

2:22 p.m. | Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling have come back and taken their place at the front of the hearing.

2:12 p.m. | The committee will be taking a short recess following the testimony from Arizona's Bowers.

2:02 p.m. | The committee just played videos of Trump campaign lawyers acknowledging they wanted no part of, and felt there was no legal basis for, the multi-state campaign for "alternate" electors to submit Electoral College votes for Trump. Such a slate of electors submitted votes from Georgia.

1:50 p.m. | Bowers if Arizona is testifying about how a Trump lawyer, John Eastman, pressed him to bring a special session of the Arizona House and reverse that state's election results. Similar efforts were made in Georgia.

1:31 p.m. | Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers is taking the first questions.

1:30 p.m. | Raffensperger, Sterling and an official from Arizona have been sworn in to testify under oath.

1:29 p.m. | Rep. Thompson is now introducing the panelists, including Raffensperger and Sterling.

1:25 p.m. | Here's a clip from several minutes ago featuring former AG Bill Barr talking about the allegations of fraud in Georgia having "no merit."

1:20 p.m. | Schiff presents a video outlining the pressure campaign on state and local officials to overturn election results. Video includes a clip of Rudy Giuliani at the Georgia Capitol.

1:15 p.m. | Cheney has concluded her remarks. Rep. Adam Schiff of California is now presenting an opening statement.

1:14 p.m. | We covered Sterling's now-famous press conference castigating former President Trump over the campaign to overturn election results back on Dec. 1, 2020.

1:12 p.m. | Cheney plays a clip of Gabriel Sterling saying in December 2020 saying that "it has all gone too far," back when the campaign to overturn Georgia's election results was at a peak.

1:10 p.m. | They are currently playing a clip of former Attorney General Bill Barr addressing the allegations that were made in Fulton County, saying they had "no merit." Also says there was no evidence of an attempt at a "subterfuge" with events at State Farm Arena on Election Night 2020.

1:10 p.m. | Rep. Thompson delivered an opening statement saying former President Donald Trump orchestrated the pressure campaign on states like Georgia knowing it was founded on lies. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the committee's vice chair, is now delivering her own opening statement.

1:05 p.m. | The hearing has began with an opening statement from the committee's chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.

12:55 p.m. | Just a few minutes now before the hearing begins. Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer in the Secretary of State's Office, have taken their place for the first panel.

9:30 a.m. | Good morning! The hearings are scheduled to begin in a little over three hours this afternoon, at 1 p.m.

Ahead of the hearing, catch up with some of 11Alive's coverage over the past few weeks on Georgia's presence at the Jan. 6 Committee:

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