June 22, 2022
A Gazette Editorial
Many of us lowly Proles have experienced the unpleasant ordeal of being called on the carpet by Management for an alleged workplace infraction. The offense might have been inadvertent or perhaps it was due to miscommunication or an ambiguous policy, but the sense of doom it may provoke can feel crushing. Anxiety builds and catastrophic scenarios of destitution and disgrace take shape.
Now imagine that the alleged offense never even happened! Then, on top of the anxiety, a new layer of discomfort develops: Injustice! Being wrongly accused by the Boss is never pleasant. You must somehow prove your innocence even while carrying the burden of your presumed guilt and the implicit threat to your livelihood. The workplace grapevine buzzes with updates about you, your purported offense, and reflections on your character – that you’d never, ever do such a thing or perhaps that nobody’s surprised that you did. The best you can hope for is exoneration, but you’d probably feel relieved just to go home with a job and a warning in your file at the end of the day.
Some folks watching the fourth televised hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol may have experienced a flashback or two as, one after another, men and women whose job performance had been publicly and repeatedly impugned by the President of the United States testified before the Nation. Each one of them held a position related to the 2020 election that Trump still insists was stolen from him by massive voting fraud, despite mountains of evidence that it wasn’t and none that it was. The President of the United States bullied election personnel simply for doing their jobs.
Officials from Georgia and Arizona described the intense pressure from Trump and his surrogates to change the results so he’d win. He badgered them privately and denounced them publicly. They, and their families, were then subjected to harassment and threats of physical violence, and even death, by Trumpist partisans. Most of them had been Trumpists themselves. They’d voted for him in both 2016 and 2020 and were hoping to see him re-elected. To the extent that they could look around for additional Trump votes, they did. Georgia recounted the ballots three times! They looked for votes by dead people. They ran down tips about suitcases full of votes for Biden. Nothing.
DONALD TRUMP:
So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.
ADAM SCHIFF:
Mr. Secretary, was the President here asking you for exactly what he wanted? One more vote than his opponent.
BRAD RAFFENSPERGER:
What I knew is that we didn’t have any votes to find. We had continued to look. We investigated. I could have shared the numbers with you. There were no votes to find. That was an accurate count that had been certified. And as our general counsel said, there was no shredding of ballots.
ADAM SCHIFF:
Mr. Secretary, after making this request the President then goes back to the danger of having you deny these allegations of fraud. Let’s listen to that part of the clip.
DONALD TRUMP:
And I watched you this morning and you said well, there was no criminality, but I mean, all of this stuff is — is very dangerous stuff. When you talk about no criminality, I think it’s very dangerous for you to say that.
ADAM SCHIFF:
Secretary Raffensperger, you wrote about this in your book and you said, quote, “I felt then and still believe today that this was a threat”. Others obviously thought so too because some of Trump’s more radical followers have responded as if it was their duty to carry out this threat. Please tell us what you or your wife, even your daughter in law experienced regarding threats from Trump’s more radical followers.
BRAD RAFFENSPERGER:
Well, after the — after the election, my email, my cell phone was doxed. And so I was getting texts all over the country. And then eventually my wife started getting the texts and hers typically came in a sexualized attacks which were disgusting. You have to understand that Trish and I, we met in high school.
We’ve married over 40 years now. And so they started going after her I think just to probably put pressure on me. Why don’t you just quit and walk away? And so that happened. And then some people broke into my daughter in law’s home and my son has passed and she’s a widow and has two kids. And so we’re very concerned about her safety also.
ADAM SCHIFF:
And Mr. Secretary, why didn’t you just quit and walk away?
BRAD RAFFENSPERGER:
Because I knew that we had followed the law, we had followed the Constitution And I think sometimes moments require you to stand up and just take the shots. You’re doing your job. And that’s all we did. You know, we just followed the law and we followed the Constitution. And at the end of the day, President Trump came up short.
But I had to be faithful to the Constitution. And that’s what I swore an oath to do.
DONALD TRUMP:
We had at least 18,000. That’s on tape. We had them counted very painstakingly, 18,000 voters having to do with the Ruby Freeman. That’s — she’s a vote scammer, a professional vote scammer and hustler.
ADAM SCHIFF:
Donald Trump attacked you and your mother, using her name 18 times on that call, 18 times. Ms. Moss, can you describe what you experienced listening to former President Trump attack you and your mother in a call with the Georgia Secretary of State?
SHAYE MOSS:
I felt horrible. I felt like it was all my fault, like if I would have never decided to be an elections worker, like, I could have — like, anything else, but that’s what I decided to do. And now people are lying and spreading rumors and lies and attacking my mom, I’m her only child, going to my grandmother’s house.
I’m her only grandchild. And — and my kid is just — I felt so bad. I — I just felt bad for my mom, and I felt horrible for picking this job and being the one that always wants to help and always there, never missing not one election. I just felt like it was — it was my fault for putting my family in this situation.
ADAM SCHIFF:
Well, it — it wasn’t your fault. Your mother was kind enough to come speak with us earlier. Let’s listen to her story in her words.
RUBY FREEMAN:
My name is Ruby Freeman. I’ve always believed it when God says that he’ll make your name great, but this is not the way it was supposed to be. I could have never imagined the events that followed the presidential election 2020. For my entire professional life, I was Lady Ruby. My community in Georgia where I was born and lived my whole life knew me as Lady Ruby.
I built my own business around that name, LaRuby’s Unique Treasures, a pop up shop catering to ladies with unique fashions. I wore a shirt that proudly proclaimed that I was and I am Lady Ruby.
Actually, I had that shirt on — 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.
Now I won’t even introduce myself by my name anymore. I get nervous when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my name. I’m worried about who’s listening. I get nervous when I have to give my name for food orders. I’m always concerned of who’s around me. I’ve lost my name, and I’ve lost my reputation.
RUBY FREEMAN:
I’ve lost my sense of security, all because a group of people, starting with number 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani, decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shea to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.
ADAM SCHIFF:
Ms. Moss, how has this experience of being targeted by the former president and his allies affected your life?
SHAYE MOSS:
This turned my life upside down. I no longer give out my business card. I don’t transfer calls. I — I don’t want anyone knowing my name. I don’t want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell my name out over the grocery aisle or something. I don’t go to the grocery store at all. I haven’t been anywhere at all.
I’ve gained about 60 pounds. I just don’t do nothing anymore. I don’t want to go anywhere. I second guess everything that I do. It’s affected my life in a — in a major way. In every way. All because of lies. For me doing my job, same thing I’ve been doing forever.
ADAM SCHIFF:
Your mother also told this committee about how she had to leave her own home for her safety and go into hiding after the FBI told her that it would not be safe for her there before January 6th and until the Inauguration. Let’s listen to a clip of her story in her own words.
RUBY FREEMAN:
Around the week of January 6th, the FBI informed me that I needed to leave my home for safety. And I left my home for safety around that time.
UNKNOWN:
Understood. How — how long did you stay out, did you, you know, remain outside of your home for your own safety?
RUBY FREEMAN:
I — I stayed away from my home for approximately two months. It was horrible. I felt homeless. I felt, you know, I can’t believe — I can’t believe this person has caused this much damage to me and my family. To have to leave my home that I’ve lived there for 21 years. And, you know, I’m having to have my neighbors watch out for me. You know, and I have to go and stay with somebody.
It was hard. It was horrible.
UNKNOWN:
And the — your conversation with the FBI about needing to leave your home for your — your own safety or perhaps recommending it. Do you remember was there a specific threat that prompted that or was it the accumulation of — of threats that you had received?
RUBY FREEMAN:
What prompted it was — was getting ready to — January 6th was about to come. And they did not want me to be at home because of all the threats and everything that I had gotten. They didn’t want me to be there in fear of, you know, that people were coming to my home. And I had a lot of that, so they didn’t want me to be there just in case something happened.
I asked how long am I gonna have to be gone? They said at least until the Inauguration.
ADAM SCHIFF:
Ms. Moss, I understand that people once showed up at your Grandmother’s house. Tell us about that experience.
SHAYE MOSS:
I received a call from my Grandmother. This woman is my everything. I’ve never even heard her or seen her cry ever in my life. And she called me screaming at the top of her lungs, like, “Shaye, Shaye, oh my gosh, Shaye.” Just freaking me out saying that there are people at her home and they, you know, they knocked on the door and of course she opened it seeing who was there, who it was.
And they just started pushing their way through, claiming that they were coming in to make a citizen’s arrest. They needed to find me and my mom. They knew we were there. And she was just, like,screaming and didn’t know what to do. And I wasn’t there. So, you know, I just felt so helpless and so horrible for her.
And she was just screaming. I told her to close the door. Don’t open the door for — for anyone. And,you know, she’s a 70 something I won’t say year old woman. And she — she doesn’t like having restrictions. She wants to answer the door. She likes to get her steps in walking around the neighborhood. And I had to tell her, like, you can’t do that.
You — you have to be safe. You know, she would tell me that at night people would just continuously send pizzas over and over to her home. You know, and they was expecting her to pay for these large amounts of pizzas. And she went through a lot that she didn’t have to. And once again it made me just feel so horrible.
ADAM SCHIFF:
In addition to the personal impact this experience has had on you and your family, one of the things that I find most disturbing is how these lies discourage longtime election workers from continuing to do this important work. Tell us if you would, of the other election workers shown in that State Farm Arena video and their supervisors, how many are still election workers in Fulton County?
SHAYE MOSS:
There is no permanent election worker or supervisor in that video that’s still there.
ADAM SCHIFF:
And did you end up leading your — leaving your position as well?
SHAYE MOSS:
Yes, I — I left.
ADAM SCHIFF:
Ms. Moss, I want to thank you for coming in to speak with us and I thank you for your service to our democracy. What we have just played is a truly horrible and appalling sample, but just a sample of the things that were said about you and your mother following the election. I want to say how very sorry I think we all are for what you’ve gone through.
And tragically you’re not alone. Other election workers around the country have also been the subject of lies and threats. No election workers should be subject to such heinous treatment just for doing their job. With your permission, I would like to give your mother the last word.
SHAYE MOSS:
Yes.
ADAM SCHIFF:
We’re just going to play the tape.
RUBY FREEMAN:
There is 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 Rudy, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stand up to help Fulton County run an election in the middle of the pandemic.
Top photo: Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, former employee, Department of Registration and Elections in Fulton County, Georgia.
Edit: Arizona, not Alabama.
