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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — July 12, 2022

By July 12, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

What To Watch: 

The January 6 Committee will hold a hearing exploring links between the Trump White House and violent extremist groups at 1:00 PM 

Must Read Stories

Today’s January 6 Hearing Will Focus On Trump’s Links To Violent Extremist Groups That Attacked The Capitol 

  • Politico: Jan. 6 Panel Zeroes In On Trump’s ‘clarion Call’ To Extremists: The Jan. 6 select committee plans to make its most complex case yet at its public hearing Tuesday: that Donald Trump’s words and actions influenced extremists and brought them to the steps of the Capitol. “Be there. Will be wild,” Trump tweeted on Dec. 19, 2020, barely two weeks before a mob seeded with members of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers besieged the Capitol and threatened the transfer of power to Joe Biden. That tweet will be the focal point of the Jan. 6 panel’s seventh public hearing, as House investigators aim to show that the former president’s most extreme supporters were intently listening — and quickly began preparing for potential violence in support of Trump’s goal to stay in power. The tweet was a “clarion call” to the groups, said Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), who is leading Tuesday’s hearing along with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). “We’ll show you how they began to organize around that date,” she said in an interview. “And you know that they were [not] organizing … for a peaceful protest, because you don’t bring explosives and weapons to peaceful protests.” Tuesday’s hearing will require investigators to delve into the sordid world of internet extremism and specifically lay out how Trump’s words rippled through its corners. Former Oath Keepers spokesperson Jason Van Tatenhove is expected to be one of the witnesses Tuesday afternoon, according to a person familiar with the situation. Van Tatenhove has described himself as a former “propagandist” for the Oath Keepers, and left the group several years ago, he told local television station KDVR. The select panel has cited concerns about harassment and security of the witnesses, mostly declining to name them before the hearings begin. The panel intends to highlight how adherents to the antisemitic, fringe conspiracy theories of QAnon latched onto Trump’s stolen-election claims, as well as how the extremist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers used Trump’s crusade to fundraise for a violent effort to keep Biden from office. Committee members will also get into how the White House pushed forward with plans for a march on the Capitol — one witnesses say Trump desperately tried to join — even as warnings about the likelihood of brutality grew.
  • ABC: Accused Jan. 6 Rioter Who Warned Of Possible ‘Civil War’ Expected To Testify To House Committee Tuesday:  An Ohio man who accused Joe Biden, other Democrats, and the mainstream media of “treason” is set to testify in a public hearing Tuesday before the House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol last year, according to a source familiar with the matter. The hearing is expected to focus on the rise of radical extremism in the United States, and the source said one of the key witnesses will be Stephen Ayres of Warren, Ohio, who recently admitted to illegally entering the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In court documents filed last month, Ayres acknowledged that the day before the riot, he drove to Washington, D.C., to protest Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential election results. On Facebook, Ayres had spotlighted then-President Donald Trump’s call for supporters to descend on Washington on Jan. 6, which Trump said will “be wild” in a Tweet he posted on Dec. 19, 2020. During Tuesday’s hearing, the committee hopes to explore the impact that Tweet had on Trump’s supporters, committee aides said. The hearing is expected to also include clips from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s deposition with congressional investigators last week, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News

Former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone Corroborated “Almost Everything” In Cassidy Hutchinson’s Bombshell Testimony  

  • NBC: Cipollone Corroborated Virtually Everything From Hutchinson, Jan. 6 Panel Member Says: Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone corroborated virtually all of the revelations from previous witnesses, including former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, in lengthy testimony before the panel last week, a top Jan. 6 committee member told NBC News. “Cipollone has corroborated almost everything that we’ve learned from the prior hearings,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said in an exclusive interview just hours before the next hearing. “I certainly did not hear him contradict Cassidy Hutchinson. … He had the opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say, so I didn’t see any contradiction there.” Video clips of Cipollone’s taped testimony will be presented at Tuesday’s hearing, which Raskin will lead alongside Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., as the panel focuses on how the pro-Trump mob came together at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Judge Will Not Delay Steve Bannon’s Contempt Trial, Shreds Possible Defenses 

  • Politico: Judge Shreds Bannon Defenses Ahead Of Contempt Trial: A federal judge on Monday eviscerated nearly all of Steve Bannon’s defenses against a charge that he criminally defied a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee, leaving the longtime Donald Trump ally with few options to fight the contempt of Congress case against him. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols also denied Bannon’s bid to postpone for three months the jury trial set to open next Monday, rejecting defense arguments that such a delay was warranted due to intense media coverage around the ongoing House hearings on the Capitol siege. Bannon’s attorneys contended Trump’s sudden move to abandon executive privilege claims for Bannon should also spark a delay, but the judge rejected that as well. The Trump-appointed judge said thorough questioning of potential jurors could almost certainly resolve potential prejudice. And if it couldn’t, Nichols added, he would revisit the issue after jury selection. After a two-and-a-half-hour hearing which Bannon elected not to attend, Nichols returned to the bench Monday afternoon to spend nearly an hour delivering oral rulings that left the defense case in tatters. Bannon’s legal team appeared flummoxed by the result.

Lindsey Graham Ordered To Testify Before Fulton County Grand Jury 

  • WSB: Sen. Lindsey Graham Ordered To Testify In Front Of Special Grand Jury In Trump Election Probe: A Fulton County judge ordered U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to testify before a special grand jury in Fulton County next month. Graham is one of eight people jury members subpoenaed last week. Graham said he would fight the subpoena. On Monday, the judge declared Graham a “necessary witness” to the investigation. This is another step in a long legal process of getting Graham down from Washington to testify. That new order says the grand jury needs to hear about Graham’s two alleged phone calls to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. In the order, Fulton County Superior Judge Robert McBurney said the “court finds that Lindsey Graham is a necessary and material witness” in the special grand jury’s investigation into potential criminal interference in Georgia’s 2020 election. The new order also requires Graham to come testify in August.

January 6 Violence By Extremist Groups May Only Be The Beginning 

  • Time: For the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, Jan. 6 Was Just the Start: Hours after the angry mob of pro-Trump rioters ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a small contingent of men regrouped three blocks away at a nearby hotel. Members of the far-right paramilitary group known as the Oath Keepers, the men gathered in a private suite at the Phoenix Hotel in downtown D.C. and listened as their leader, Stewart Rhodes, dialed someone on speaker phone and said that President Donald Trump should call on the Oath Keepers to “forcibly oppose the transfer of power.” After he hung up, according to court documents, Rhodes turned to the group and declared, “I just want to fight.” Eighteen months later, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and other extremist groups involved in the violence on Jan. 6 are still spoiling for a fight. The July 12 hearing by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is expected to focus on the allegedly criminal activity by their members that day, including seditious conspiracy and obstruction, as they attempted to keep then-President Donald Trump in power. But evidence in hundreds of federal cases, hours of Congressional testimony and online posts among their members show that their efforts to overturn the 2020 election were just a small part of their larger ambitions. Over the last year and a half, the groups have surfaced at protests against COVID-19 vaccines and other government public health measures at state capitals. They’ve disrupted school board and town council meetings to protest mask mandates. Recently, these groups have been more visible in public. 
  • Washington Post (Greg Sargent): An Expert In Political Violence Urgently Warns: The Worst Is Coming: The Jan. 6 House select committee hearings this week are among the most important of all, because they will foreground a topic that many Americans ordinarily don’t associate with their democracy, even after the events of the insurrection: political violence. The Tuesday proceeding will focus on militias and paramilitary groups that helped bring us to the precipice on Jan. 6, 2021. The Thursday hearing will examine President Donald Trump’s derelict conduct as the violence raged — and how this was intimately entangled with the desire of Trump and many of his MAGA followers to overturn our political order. But hovering over these hearings will be a broader, unanswered question: whether the United States is developing an endemic problem with political violence and, in coming years, how bad it might get. 

In The States 

ARIZONA: Trump Rally In Prescott Escalates His Proxy War With Governor Ducey  

  • Politico: Trump Rally Ups The Stakes In Proxy Fight With Arizona Governor: Donald Trump will travel to Arizona later this month to campaign for Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, escalating an emerging proxy fight between the former president and Gov. Doug Ducey, who has endorsed a rival GOP candidate. Trump’s Saturday rally in Prescott Valley, which was announced Monday night, comes ahead of the Aug. 2 primary. Lake is running against a field that includes Karrin Taylor Robson, a former member of the Arizona Board of Regents and a wealthy GOP donor who last week received Ducey’s support. The primary is the latest point of contention between Trump and Ducey. The former president has repeatedly assailed the Arizona governor for refusing to overturn the 2020 election outcome in Arizona, which President Joe Biden won narrowly. After the election, Ducey was famously seen putting the former president to voicemail while signing papers certifying Biden’s victory. The contest to succeed the term-limited Ducey as governor has revolved around the 2020 campaign. Lake, a former local TV news anchor, has echoed Trump’s ongoing lie that the election was stolen and made it the centerpiece of her campaign. Robson, meanwhile, has not joined other Arizona Republicans in falsely saying Trump won the state.

What Experts Are Saying

Norm Eisen, Brookings senior fellow: CNN Video: “I expect [today’s] 1/6 committee hearing to demonstrate how Trump called the militias to D.C. for January 6. It was like a bat signal for them to spring into action. I discussed  @CNN @CNNnewsroom w/ @AnaCabrera @renato_mariotti” Tweet 

Just Security: Strongest Evidence of Guilt: Chart Tracking Trump’s Knowledge and Intent in Efforts to Overturn the Election: “presents key factual findings – concerning evidence of Trump’s knowledge and beliefs when trying to overturn the election – based primarily on the Committee’s work to date…The following list highlights just some of the information presented in the Chart below.

*Lying about victory on Election Night (Nov 3-Nov. 4 early AM)

*Manufacturing false allegations of election fraud (December 3, 2020-early January, 2021)

Trying to force Department of Justice officials to lie about the department’s findings of election fraud (late December, 2020 – Jan. 3, 2021)

*Advancing false claims of election fraud after being told by senior DOJ and campaign officials of irrefutable flaws in the claims (Dec. 2020 – Jan. 6, 2021).

*Lying about communications with federal and state officials in efforts to pressure them (Jan. 2-Jan. 6, 2021)” Just Security 

Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “Q: ‘Does that put us at a crossroads? Trump tried to destroy our constitutional order and had the tacit backing of many in his party. That produced the biggest outbreak of political violence in modern U.S. history. Yet many Republicans still refuse to seriously admit to what happened or even dismiss efforts at an accounting as themselves being illegitimate. Could a very different response from Republican leaders right now — in which they took this moment seriously — make a further downward spiral less likely?’ A: ‘Absolutely. The research on leaders is incredibly clear. If enough Republican leaders started denouncing political violence — saying there’s a line in the sand in a democracy, and violence is it — we would see much less political violence.’” Column from Washington Post’s Greg Sargent 

Karen Stenner, political psychologist & behavioral economist: “A decent chunk of MAGA will in the end realize theyve been had & be *furious*. That can easily go sideways so watch for *any* opportunities to bring them back in (it *won’t* be by smugly triumphing over/shaming/excluding them!) But large % might just dig in deeper to self-protect” Tweet 

Andrew Weissmann, former Assistant United States Attorney: “The tenacious work of the Jan. 6 committee has transformed how we think about the Jan. 6 rebellion. It should also transform the Justice Department’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election…The evidence gathered in the hearings describes a multiprong conspiracy — what prosecutors term a ‘hub and spoke’ conspiracy — in which the Ellipse speech by President Trump and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol were just one spoke of a grander scheme.” New York Times op-ed

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

Bloomberg: Election Deniers Got Nearly $2 Million in May From Corporate PACs

New York Times: Half of G.O.P. Voters Ready to Leave Trump Behind, Poll Finds

New York Times: An Anti-Trump Republican Group Is Back for the Midterms

Vice: The GOP Just Asked an Authoritarian to Headline Its Most Important Conference

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Bloomberg: Barr Subpoenaed in Dominion’s $1.6 Billion Suit Against Fox News

CNN: Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne to meet with January 6 investigators

CNN (Analysis): The big win the January 6 committee has already scored

CNN: Paul Ryan was ‘sobbing’ as he watched the US Capitol attack unfold, new book says

FiveThirtyEight: Jan. 6’s Tangled Web Of Extremism: 

NBC: Oath Keepers lawyer says Stewart Rhodes wanted her Trump contacts before Jan. 6 Capitol attack

NBC: Judge won’t delay Steve Bannon’s trial after his last-minute offer to cooperate with Jan. 6 panel

New York Times: Hutchinson Testimony Jolts Justice Dept. to Discuss Trump’s Conduct More Openly

New York Times: Raskin Brings Expertise on Right-Wing Extremism to Jan. 6 Inquiry

Other Trump Investigations 

Raleigh News & Observer: Rally in Greensboro NC canceled with Trump in court

Opinion

New York (Jon Chait): Ron DeSantis Would Kill Democracy Slowly and Methodically Whether he’s as bad as Trump isn’t the question.

New York Times (Andrew Weissmann): Merrick Garland Should Investigate Trump’s 2020 Election Schemes as a ‘Hub and Spoke’ Conspiracy    

In The States 

Deseret News: Q&A: Rusty Bowers opens up on Trump, the Jan. 6 committee and his Latter-day Saint faith

Washington Post: Michigan activists push for ballot initiative to expand voting access