A former Atlanta-area elections worker said this week she had to go into hiding and quit her job after Rudy Giuliani made her a villain in Donald Trump’s campaign’s unfounded claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Wandrea “Shaye” Moss was on Capitol Hill on June 21 as she described how her life was upended the day Giuliani testified in a state legislature committee hearing that she and her mother, Rudy Freeman, tried to keep observers out of State Farm Arena, the sports facility in downtown Atlanta that had been converted into a center for tallying Fulton County’s votes in the days following the Nov. 3, 2020, general election. He claimed they brought suitcases of fraudulent ballots for Trump’s opponent, President Joe Biden.
Moss said she received several “racist” and “hateful” Facebook messages that day.
“It was just a lot of horrible things there,” Moss told members of the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. “A lot of threats wishing death upon me, telling me I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.'”
Moss had worked at the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections for 10 years before Giuliani’s December 2020 testimony. Her favorite part of the job was helping older Black people who didn’t have right to vote in the past exercise that right.
When Moss passed a ginger mint to her mother, who worked alongside her, Giuliani pointed to a video of the interaction, which he claimed was the pair exchanging USB memory sticks “as if they’re vials of cocaine.” Supporters zoomed in on the footage and identified Freeman and Moss as the election workers.
Trump later called Freeman a “professional vote scammer” and a “hustler.”
“I mean, it’s obvious to anyone who’s a criminal investigator or prosecutor that they are engaged in surreptitious, illegal activity,” Giuliani said. “And they’re still walking around Georgia. They should have been questioned already. Their homes should have been searched for evidence.”
Trump supporters showed up to Moss’ grandmother’s house and reportedly tried to force their way inside to search for evidence of fraud. A woman who later was identified as Kanye West‘s former publicist, Trevani Kutti, went to Freeman’s house to push her to confess to voter fraud. Freeman called the police after Kutti referred to her as a “loose end for a party that needs to tidy up.”
The mother and daughter stopped going to the grocery store out of fear that someone would recognize them and call them by their names.
“I haven’t been anywhere at all,” Moss said through tears.
Freeman no longer wears a shirt that says: “Lady Rudy” or lets anyone call her by the nickname.
“I have lost my name and I have lost my reputation,” a visibly shaken Freeman said in a video of a previous interview played at Tuesday’s hearing. “All because a group of people starting with number 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter.”
Freeman and Moss’ testimony was the fourth committee hearing centered on Trump’s efforts to push state and local officials to overturn the election results. Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger, who are both Republicans, said in their committee testimony on Tuesday their families were threatened after they refused to violate law and reverse the election results in the former president’s favor.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said all of the hearings show that Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud “have always been a lie” and “the lie hasn’t gone away.”
