- Shaye Moss, a Black Georgia election worker, testified on the threats she got amid the push to overturn the 2020 election.
- She said she got numerous hateful Facebook messages "saying things like, 'be glad it's 2020 and not 1920.'"
- "I felt bad for my mom, and I felt horrible for picking this job," said Moss.
A Black former Georgia election worker said on Tuesday that she faced racist, deadly threats as President Donald Trump publicly attacked her and her mother and sought to overturn the 2020 election results.
Wandrea ArShaye "Shaye" Moss, a veteran election official in Fulton County, testified before the January 6 committee during its fourth public hearing, which focused on Trump and his allies' efforts to get states, including Georgia, to overturn their election results. Joe Biden won Georgia by just under 12,000 votes in the presidential election.
Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told the Georgia state Senate that Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, "engaged in surreptitious illegal activity" and accused them of "passing around USB ports as if they're vials of heroin or cocaine." He claimed a video of the election workers counting ballots showed the alleged crime.
That entirely unsubstantiated claim led to a deluge of racist and threatening Facebook messages, which Moss detailed to the committee on Tuesday.
"They included threats, a lot of threats wishing death upon me," she said. "Telling me that, you know, I'll be in jail with my mother, and saying things like, 'Be glad it's 2020 and not 1920.'"
In 1920, several "Jim Crow" laws were in place to enforce racial segregation in the United States, and racially-motivated lynchings remained commonplace.
—The Recount (@therecount) June 21, 2022
Moss said the messages made her regret working as an elections worker, a career she said she undertook because "a lot of people, older people in my family, did not have that right."
"I felt bad for my mom, and I felt horrible for picking this job, and being the one that always wants to help," said Moss.
The committee also aired testimony from Freeman in which she said she was nervous about going grocery shopping, and is fearful of giving her name for food orders.
Moss said the Trump team's false claims have dramatically disrupted her life.
"I don't go to the grocery store at all," Moss said. "I haven't gone anywhere at all."
Also testifying on Thursday were Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, as well as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger and his deputy, and Gabriel Sterling. All are Republicans.
Moss and Freeman, later sued Giuliani and One America News Network for defamation, saying that the "campaign of malicious lies" against them destroyed their reputations and caused them to fear for their physical safety.
Earlier that month, the duo also sued the right-wing website Gateway Pundit for the same charge.
In December, Freeman called 911 after hearing loud bangs on her door around 10pm.
"Lord Jesus, where's the police?" she asked said in a call to police, the recording of which was obtained by Reuters. "I don't know who keeps coming to my door."
OANN later settled with Moss and Freeman, issuing a statement retracting the network's claims about the 2020 election.
"Georgia officials have concluded that there was no widespread voter fraud by election workers who counted ballots at the State Farm Arena in November 2020," the network said in a 30-second statement at the time. "The results of this investigation indicate that Ruby Freeman and Wandrea 'Shaye' Moss did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct."
At one point, a former publicist for Kanye West travelled to Freeman's home and pressured her to say she committed voter fraud.
"If you don't tell everything, you're going to jail," publicist Trevian Kutti told Freeman.
As Insider's Grace Panetta reported in December, Freeman and Moss are among dozens of election workers that have faced threats and harassment as a result of the former president and right-wing media allies' pressure campaign.
Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi said Moss and her mother were "two of the unsung heroes in this country" and were doing the "hard work of keeping our democracy functioning."
Moss received a 2022 "Profile in Courage" Award from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum alongside Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.