Gabriel Sterling, a high election official in Georgia who publicly disputed former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of election fraud within the 2020 election, is testifying earlier than the Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday.
Mr. Sterling, together with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, turned a vocal defender of Georgia’s election safety within the weeks after the election, at the same time as Mr. Trump and members of his marketing campaign sought to discredit the outcomes and to flow into conspiracy theories that the election had been rigged in favor of Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Within the listening to on Tuesday, the committee is anticipated to concentrate on how Mr. Trump and people in his interior circle focused state officers of their quest to overturn election leads to battleground states that Mr. Biden gained narrowly. In Georgia, Mr. Biden’s remaining margin of victory was fewer than 12,000 votes.
Mr. Sterling helped oversee the implementation of Georgia’s voting techniques in 2020, together with the digital gear produced by Dominion Voting Techniques, which turned the goal of outlandish conspiracy theories perpetuated by the Trump marketing campaign. He additionally helped arrange a painstaking recount of Georgia’s practically 5 million votes with the intention to affirm the state’s election outcomes.
Not like different state-level officers who didn’t act on Mr. Trump’s false claims, Mr. Sterling repeatedly spoke out in opposition to the falsehoods in distinguished trend.
In fiery information conferences after the election, Mr. Sterling confronted Mr. Trump’s false claims, methodically debunking lots of the most widespread falsehoods aimed on the election in Georgia. He additionally accused Mr. Trump of whipping up public resentment towards election officers in his bid to remain in energy, and he criticized the previous president for refusing to sentence a wave of violent threats in opposition to officers.
On Tuesday, Mr. Sterling is anticipated to talk about how Mr. Trump and people in his orbit disingenuously accused officers in Georgia of failing to safe the election, even after they repeatedly defined that claims of election fraud or voting irregularities have been unfounded.