Skip to main content
Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — July 8, 2022

By July 8, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

January 6 Committee To Hold Primetime Hearing Next Thursday 

  • Reuters: January 6 Panel To Hold Prime Time Hearing Next Thursday -Source: The congressional committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol will hold a hearing on the evening of July 14, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The hearing will be the second one to take place next week and is aimed at reaching a broad television audience during prime viewing hours.
  • Politico: Jan. 6 Panel’s Next Target: Proud Boys and Oath Keepers: A federal judge noted in February that there’s no evidence former President Donald Trump ever met or plotted with a Proud Boy or an Oath Keeper. But some conspiracies, he added, can be “tacit.” The Jan. 6 select committee’s next hearing is expected to delve deeply into that relationship, exploring all the subtle signaling between Trump’s orbit and the seamy underworld of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers that prosecutors and congressional investigators have been probing. Until now, the select committee has focused its public hearings on the high-level plotting by Trump to seize a second term by deploying an army of loyalist lawyers to promote fringe constitutional theories. On Tuesday, the committee will instead plunge into conspiracy-driven fever swamp, where groups like the Proud Boys flourished and strategized openly ahead of Jan. 6. The hearing is unlikely to produce explicit evidence of Trump’s approval of the groups’ tactics or plans, but the more important concept, according to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), is “convergence.”

Another Trump-Aligned “Election Integrity” Initiative Prompts Fears Of Scams, Voter Intimidation 

  • The Guardian: ‘It’s a Sham’: Fears Over Trump Loyalists’ ‘Election Integrity’ Drive: A conservative group called the America Project that boasts Donald Trump loyalists and “big lie” pushers Roger Stone and Michael Flynn as key advisers, has begun a self-styled “election integrity” drive to train activists in election canvassing and poll-watching, sparking fears from voting rights watchdogs about voter intimidation. Patrick Byrne, the multimillionaire co-founder of the America Project, has said he has donated almost $3m to launch the drive, dubbed “Operation Eagles Wings”, with a focus on eight states including Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which Trump lost, plus Texas and Florida, which he won. The drive was unveiled in late February at a press event where Byrne touted plans to educate “election reform activists” to handle election canvassing, grassroots work and fundraising “to expose shenanigans at the ballot box” in what has echoes of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged, and could become a sequel to those charges. Byrne, for instance, has said the operation’s mission is to “make sure that there are no repeats of the errors that happened in the 2020 election”, and stressed the “need to protect the voting process from election meddlers who care only about serving crooked special interest groups that neither respect nor value the rule of law”. But voting rights advocates have voiced sharp criticism of Operation Eagles Wings, calling it a “sham”, given the roles of Stone, Flynn, Byrne and others, and warning that it could lead to voter harassment at the polls and suppress legitimate votes.

New Ethics Complaints Filed Against Lawyers Involved In The Fight To Overturn The Election In Pennsylvania 

  • Philadelphia Inquirer: Seven Pa. Lawyers Involved In Trump’s Legal Fight To Overturn The 2020 Election Are Hit With Ethics Complaints: A legal advocacy group formed in hopes of disbarring and disciplining lawyers who aided Donald Trump’s push to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election filed complaints Thursday with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court against seven lawyers in the state for their involvement in the former president’s legal efforts. The list of those targeted by the 65 Project include bit players like attorney and conservative talk show host Marc A. Scaringi, of Harrisburg, who sponsored Rudy Giuliani to argue on behalf of the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania’s federal courts, as well as some of the most in-demand GOP elections lawyers in the state, like Ronald Hicks and Carolyn McGee, who most recently represented Republican Senate candidate David McCormick in recount litigation during his primary campaign against Mehmet Oz. Additionally, the group filed complaints against three out-of-state lawyers who participated in Pennsylvania election litigation — including Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, who is now serving as a senior legal adviser to state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee in this year’s governor’s race. All of them, the organization said in their filings, lent their “law license and the legal profession’s integrity and power to an orchestrated effort to undermine our nation’s elections.”

In The States 

ARIZONA: AZ Gubernatorial Race Becomes A 2024 Proxy Battle

  • NBC: GOP Race For Arizona Governor Becomes 2024 Proxy War As Ducey Defies Trump: In a last major test of Donald Trump’s Republican power this year, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Thursday endorsed a potential successor who’s going up against a candidate backed by the former president. Ducey’s defiance of Trump in supporting Karrin Taylor Robson over Kari Lake marks the third swing-state governor’s race — following primaries in Georgia and Pennsylvania — in which Republican establishment figures have resisted Trump and his preferred candidates. The fight in Arizona, as in the two other swing states, is as much about relitigating the 2020 election, which Trump lost, as it is about exerting his influence in the GOP as he weighs another White House bid. “The Arizona governor’s primary is the purest race in the country for showing MAGA versus the Republican establishment,” said Steve Bannon, who was a top Trump White House adviser. “This is a proxy war on, really, 2024.”

MICHIGAN:  Leading Gubernatorial Candidate Pleads Not Guilty To January 6 Charges 

  • Detroit Free Press: Michigan Governor Candidate Ryan Kelley Pleads Not Guilty To Jan. 6 Charges: Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley entered not guilty pleas Thursday to four misdemeanor charges arising from his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021,  riot at the U.S. Capitol. Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia set a Sept. 22 status conference as the next hearing in the case. Kelley appeared by video with his attorney, Gary Springstead of Fremont, Michigan, who announced the “not guilty” pleas on Kelley’s behalf. Kelley is charged with entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, disorderly and disruptive conduct, knowingly engaging in an act of physical violence against a person or property, and willfully injuring property, according to a criminal complaint.

What Experts Are Saying

Norm Eisen, senior fellow at Brookings Institution, re: January 6 committee’s work (CNN video): “[White House counsel Pat] Cipollone agreeing to testify on video is a big win for the 1/6 committee. His answers will shed light on the most important issues: Trump’s violent intent on 1/6 and his corrupt scheming before that. I discussed @CNN @AC360 w/ @andersoncooper @JohnWDean.” Tweet 

Laurence Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, re: recent interview of civil wars expert Barbara F. Walter and threats of violent extremism in the United States: “You MUST read this. Armed insurrection may be poised to metastasize from the Capitol to Everytown, USA, in our not too distant future. We the People need assurance that the military and the FBI are prepared — and not on the side of the violent rebels: LINK” Tweet

Barbara F. Walter, political science professor at the University of California at San Diego and the author of “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them”: “What we’re heading toward is an insurgency, which is a form of a civil war. That is the 21st-century version of a civil war, especially in countries with powerful governments and powerful militaries, which is what the United States is…We know the warning signs. And we know that if we strengthen our democracy, and if the Republican Party decides it’s no longer going to be an ethnic faction that’s trying to exclude everybody else, then our risk of civil war will disappear. We know that. And we have time to do it. But you have to know those warning signs in order to feel an impetus to change them.” Washington Post 

Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket, re: Moore v. Harper (CNN video): “If SCOTUS guts the ability of state courts to hold state legislatures accountable to their own constitutions, frankly there is very little standing between democracy and tyranny.” Tweet 

Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law professor emeritus, and Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor: “The conspiracy that nearly ended the American experiment should motivate every voter to go to the polls this midterm. Meanwhile, we can have faith in unrelenting prosecutors like Fani Willis to hold the 2020 conspirators to account so that this nation, conceived in liberty, can endure as a government of, by, and for the people.” Boston Globe 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

Axios: Cheney to defend her position on Constitution in new ad

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Washington Times: Kellyanne Conway blames 2020 campaign ‘debacle’ squarely on Trump in-law Jared Kushner

Washington Times: Thune urges Congress to clear up vice president’s role in counting Electoral College votes

Other Trump Investigations 

CNN: IRS chief refers Comey, McCabe audit decision to inspector general for review

Sarasota Herald Tribune: Trump left Sarasota media company weeks before federal subpoenas were issued

Washington Post: Trump’s new money-maker: Political speeches to fans

Opinion

Boston Globe (Laurence Tribe and Dennis Aftergut): Georgia DA’s Trump investigation is making history

Political Violence

Associated Press: Japan ex-leader Shinzo Abe assassinated while giving speech

In The States 

Associated Press: Spectacle in Michigan race threatens GOP’s bid for governor

Washington Post: Arizona activists want a vote on expanding access to voting