Rep. Schiff played a video of election-denying protesters chanting “stop the steal” outside the home of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. The protestors could be heard calling Benson a “threat to democracy," a “tyrant” and a “felon.”
Benson, in a taped interview with the committee, was then heard describing the ordeal.
“We started to hear the noises outside my home, and that’s my stomach sunk, and I thought: It’s me,” Benson was heard saying. “We don’t know what’s going to — and the uncertainty of that was the fear. Like are they coming with guns? Are they going to attack my house? I’m here with my kid. You know, it’s, I’m trying to put him to bed. And so it was — that was the scariest moment, just not knowing what was going to happen,” she said.
The committee also played clips of Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling’s repeated pleas to the president and others to speak out against the violent threats election workers faced in 2020.
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“It’s all gone too far,” Sterling said at a Dec. 1 press conference, listing out threats election workers in his state faced. “It has to stop. Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language. Senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions. This has to stop, we need you to step up, and if you’re going to take a position of leadership, show some.”
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