WATCH: Sen. Adam Schiff Testifies at Hearing Spotlighting Fifth Anniversary of January 6 Insurrection, Highlights Trump’s Continued Attempts to Undermine American Elections

Schiff: "Despite the challenges facing our democracy, we can and must ensure a free and fair election this Fall and far into the future."

Washington, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a former member of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, testified at a hearing hosted by House Democrats reflecting on the fifth anniversary of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and its aftermath.

Schiff highlighted the many heroic Americans who stood up to Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election and raised the alarm regarding President Trump's transparent attempts to systematically purge federal and election officials who uphold their oaths of office to protect the integrity of future elections. He underscored that Congress must act to strengthen legal protections around U.S. elections and conduct oversight around continued efforts by the current Administration to undermine faith in our nation's voting systems.

"Since 2020, many who stood firm have been pushed out, harassed, and driven out by threats. They're now being replaced by individuals who may be more than willing to bend or break the law when pressure comes. As the Select Committee warned in its findings, the greatest threat to democracy comes from those in positions of power who are willing to subvert the rule of law. That is exactly what this Administration is trying to engineer," said Senator Schiff.

Read a transcript of the Senator's remarks as delivered below:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Five years ago, in the aftermath of January 6th and the attack on the Capitol, the Select Committee documented in painstaking detail how our democracy held just barely, in large part, thanks to a critical mass of honorable officials who withstood President Trump's pressure campaign to subvert the law and overturn the election results, people like Brad Raffensperger, Gabriel Sterling, Rusty Bowers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, among many others, who, as the Select Committee documented, faced extraordinary pressure to betray their oaths and to overturn the will of the voters.

They never bent or yielded, and their names will be etched in history. The Select Committee's final report detailed how President Trump pressured, for example, Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, in that now infamous phone call, demanding that he find 11,780 votes, as Raffensperger told the Committee, "I felt then, and I still believe today that this was a threat."

When Raffensperger refused the President and his allies turned their ire on election workers like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, subjecting them to threats and harassment that upended their lives.

The committee's report documents at least 200 acts of pressure by President Trump, targeting state and local officials through meetings, phone calls, text messages, as well as social media campaigns.

Then Arizona speaker Rusty Bowers testified to the Committee that when asked by President Trump and Rudy Giuliani to overturn Arizona's results, he told them directly, "You are asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath."

Officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania received the same phone calls from President Trump telling them to "have some backbone and do the right thing."

What allowed these officials to hold the line in 2020? Courage, yes. Patriotism without question. Dedication to duty without a doubt. But they also had federal partners willing to follow the law.

They had the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency providing critical election security support. They had federal courts, including judges appointed by President Trump himself, reject baseless claims and uphold the rule of law. Even Attorney General Bill Barr, who crossed many lines on behalf of the President, nevertheless testified before the Committee: "I repeatedly told the President, in no uncertain terms, that I did not see evidence of fraud. You know, that would have affected the outcome of the election."

Today, however, the landscape has fundamentally changed. The election officials who stood strong in 2020 are being systematically purged, and the guardrails to protect the integrity of our elections are being taken down, brick by brick. By Donald Trump, by his enablers, by those willing to look the other way for the sake of political expediency. This administration is working methodically to ensure that when the next test comes, there will be few, if any, left to resist.

First, they've eliminated the federal support system. They've ended all election security work at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. They fired employees who worked on election related programs. They've ceased funding the election infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, the very organization that helped state and local officials respond to cyber-attacks on election systems.

Second, they've replaced trusted public servants with loyalists. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the President's former personal lawyers are now in leadership positions at the Justice Department, and they have proved themselves more than willing to adopt and disseminate conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

An attorney who worked alongside the architects of the fake elector scheme now represents DOJ in its Fulton County litigation. Another who tried to throw out 200,000 ballots in Wisconsin now works at the DOJ Civil Rights Division. Trump's Justice Department has even fired or demoted career prosecutors and investigators who are doing their jobs by holding violent attackers accountable.

Third, they're creating legal pretexts for future subversion. In March 2025, the President issued an executive order that purports to establish documentary proof of citizenship requirements for voter registration, to decertify voting machines used throughout the country and to restrict election funding to states that allow post-election day receipt of ballots. While federal courts have stopped parts of this order, it serves to sow confusion and provide cause to refuse to certify future election results.

How the President may ask in November, "Can we trust the results from an election run on voting machines" that he previously sought to decertify.

And fourth, they're weaponizing DOJ to intimidate voters and local officials. The department has filed lawsuits against 18 states, largely those with Democratic majorities seeking complete unredacted voter rolls with Americans personal identifying information.

It's easy to see the script they could deploy to call into question future election outcomes without any basis in fact. They could claim, for example, the Department of Justice cannot confirm that X states elections were free of voter fraud because they refused to share voter information with the federal government.

And perhaps most ominously, we've seen the President's efforts to coerce Colorado into releasing Tina Peters, a county clerk, convicted of serious state level election related crimes, including going so far as to veto a bill unanimously passed by both chambers of Congress that delivers clean drinking water to rural Coloradans. In doing so, President Trump continues to signal to election administrators nationwide that if they commit crimes on his behalf, they will have the full support of the Office of the President, and if needed, a pardon.

As a result, we're seeing massive turnover among election workers, and since 2020 many who stood firm have been pushed out, harassed and driven out by threats. They're now being replaced by individuals who may be more than willing to bend or break the law when pressure comes. As the Select Committee warned in its findings the greatest threat to democracy comes from those in positions of power who are willing to subvert the rule of law. That is exactly what this administration is trying to engineer.

Despite the challenges facing our democracy, we can and must ensure a free and fair election this Fall and far into the future.

As the Select Committee concluded in its report, had enough state officials gone along with President Trump's plot, his attempt to stay in power might have worked. It is fortunate that a critical mass of honorable officials withstood President Trump's pressure to participate in this scheme.

These brave individuals prove that standing firm in defense of democracy is possible, even under extraordinary pressure. We must prepare to do so again. I thank you.

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