While most of the 18 people indicted alongside Donald Trump in regards to the effort to overturn the 2020 election are lawyers and close associates of the former president, one is a Christian pastor from Illinois, Religion News Service reported.
The Rev. Stephen Cliffgard Lee, a former police chaplain and current pastor at a Missouri church, is accused of “unlawfully conspired and endeavored to conduct and participate in criminal enterprise in Fulton County, Georgia, and elsewhere.”
Lee is specifically charged with attempting to influence witnesses and conspiring to solicit false statements and writings, according to RNS.
Lee’s involvement revolves around his efforts to contact Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman in December 2020. Lee appeared at the election worker’s door roughly two weeks after Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, were falsely accused by Trump of pulling fake ballots from suitcases in Georgia, with Trump suggesting they committed election fraud.
According to the indictment and Reuters’ reporting, Lee knocked on Freeman’s door, left and later parked his car in her driveway. Alarmed, Freeman called the police. Police body cam footage uncovered last year by Reuters shows an officer approaching Lee’s car, at which point Lee identified himself as a faith leader.
The indictment alleges that Lee knocking on Freeman’s door was part of a broader effort to “influence [Freeman’s] testimony in an official proceeding in Fulton County, Georgia, concerning … the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia.”
Read the full report over at Religion News Service.
