Jan. 6th committee releases full testimony of Fulton County election workers

The U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol released the full testimony of two Georgia election workers who were the subject of unsubstantiated claims they engaged in ballot fraud during the 2020 election.

Fulton County election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss were publicly accused by associates of former President Donald Trump of introducing suitcases of illegal ballots and committed other acts of fraud to try to alter the outcome of the presidential election in Georgia.

Moss has worked for the Fulton County elections department since 2012 and supervised the absentee ballot operation during the 2020 election. Freeman, her mother, was a temporary election worker, verifying signatures on absentee ballots and preparing them to be counted and processed.

After narrowly losing the presidential election in Georgia, Trump made unproven claims widespread fraud led to his loss in the state. He particularly zeroed in on Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold that includes most of Atlanta.

Once their names circulated online along with allegations that they had engaged in fraud, the two women said they were subjected to intense harassment, both in person and online.

Those claims of wrongdoing by the mother-and-daughter duo were debunked after Georgia election officials openly refuted the allegations. Georgia officials concluded in late 2020, shortly after the allegations against the two women surfaced, that the pair had done nothing wrong.

In the combined 93 pages of testimony, the mother and daughter told the committee about their roles during the election and the harassment that followed.

"I wore a shirt that proudly proclaimed that I was, and I am Lady Ruby. Actually, I had that shirt in every color. I wore that shirt on election day 2020. I haven’t worn it since, and I’ll never wear it again," Freeman told the committee.

Freeman explained in detail how almost overnight she became the target of public attack.

"I lost my name, I’ve lost my reputation. I’ve lost my sense of security – all because a group of people, starting with Number 45 and his ally Rudy Giulliani, decided to scapegoat me and my daughter, Shaye, to push their own lies about hoe the Presidential election was stolen," she continued.

Freeman’s daughter lamented how she loved working for the county registering voters.

"My first and only job was working for Fulton County Voter Registration and Elections. I worked there for more than 10 years. I loved my job, and I was really good at it. I even created new procedures to make our process faster and more accurate. I made sure Georgia residents were properly registered to vote," Moss told the committee.

She expressed guilt over getting her mother, a former county worker, to sign up as a temporary worker in the election. The pair was part of a team that worked 12-hours days for two weeks straight following the election.

"After the election, we were so proud of a job well done, and my mom was proud of me," she told the committee.

The good feelings would disappear for Freeman and Moss in early December.

"…former President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and their allies start spreading terrible lies about my mother and me. They said we snuck ballots into the State Farm Arena in a suitcase. That’s not true. They said we lied about a water main break to kick observers out. That’s not true. They said we counted ballots multiple times to try to steal an election. That’s not true. And they said we passed around a flash drive to try to hack a machine. That’s not true," she told the committee. "The thing they got so excited about, that my mom passed to me, was a ginger mint, her favorite candy. None of the lies are true. They don’t even make sense."

In her testimony, Moss detailed how each one of the accusations could not be true.

The committee interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, including most of his closest White House aides and allies. Many of those witnesses provided substantive detail about his efforts to sway state legislators, federal officials and lawmakers to help him overturn his defeat. And White House aides who were with him on Jan. 6 told the panel about his resistance to tell the violent mob of his supporters to leave the Capitol after they had broken in and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

Earlier this week, the committee released the full interview they conducted with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In his testimony, Reffensperger repeatedly told the committee he followed the law during the 2020 election. He recalled his now-infamous phone call with then-President Trump asking to find votes. He told the committee there were no votes to find.

"We believe, as was said in my letter to Congress, there's never a perfect election, but there was never enough votes to overturn the results of the election. President Trump lost the election," he told the committee.

One of the committee’s final acts on Thursday, before being dissolved next week, was to withdraw the subpoena former President Trump.

In its final report issued last week, the committee concluded that Trump engaged in a "multi-part conspiracy" to upend the 2020 election and failed to act on the violence. The panel also recommended that the Justice Department investigate the former president for four separate crimes, including aiding an insurrection.

On social media Wednesday evening, Trump and his lawyers construed the move as a victory. "They probably did so because they knew I did nothing wrong, or they were about to lose in Court," Trump wrote on his social media site. He called the panel "political Thugs."

On Twitter, Trump lawyer Harmeet Dhillon said the panel had "waved the white flag."

The Associated Press contributed to this report