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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — August 3, 2022

By August 3, 2022August 10th, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Pat Cipollone Subpoenaed By Federal Grand Jury Investigating January 6 

  • ABC: Ex-White House Counsel Subpoenaed By Federal Grand Jury Investigating Jan. 6 Attack: A federal grand jury has subpoenaed former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone in its investigation into the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sources with direct knowledge of the matter told ABC News. The sources told ABC News that attorneys for Cipollone — like they did with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — are expected to engage in negotiations around any appearance, while weighing concerns regarding potential claims of executive privilege. The move to subpoena Cipollone signals an even more dramatic escalation in the Justice Department’s investigation of the Jan. 6 attack than previously known, following appearances by senior members of former Vice President Mike Pence’s staff before the grand jury two weeks ago.

More Missing Texts: Key Trump DOD Officials’ Phones Were Wiped After January 6 

  • CNN: Jan. 6 Text Messages Wiped From Phones Of Key Trump Pentagon Officials:  The Defense Department wiped the phones of top departing DOD and Army officials at the end of the Trump administration, deleting any texts from key witnesses to events surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, according to court filings. The acknowledgment that the phones from the Pentagon officials had been wiped was first revealed in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit American Oversight brought against the Defense Department and the Army. The watchdog group is seeking January 6 records from former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, among other prominent Pentagon officials — having filed initial FOIA requests just a few days after the Capitol attack. Miller, Patel and McCarthy have all been viewed as crucial witnesses for understanding government’s response to the January 6 Capitol assault and former President Donald Trump’s reaction to the breach. All three were involved in the Defense Department’s response to sending National Guard troops to the US Capitol as the riot was unfolding. There is no suggestion that the officials themselves erased the records.

Arizona Officials Knew Trump’s Fake Electors Scheme Would “Appear Treasonous” 

  • New York Times: Arizona Officials Warned Fake Electors Plan Could ‘Appear Treasonous’: Two Arizona Republicans recruited by allies of former President Donald J. Trump to join an effort to keep him in office after he lost the 2020 election grew so concerned about the plan that they told lawyers working on it that they feared their actions could be seen as treason, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times. Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, and Kelly Townsend, a state senator, were both said to have expressed concerns to Mr. Trump’s lawyers in December 2020 about participating in a plan to sign on to a slate of electors claiming that Mr. Trump had won Arizona, even though Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the state. The scheme was part of a broader bid — one of the longest running and most complicated that Mr. Trump undertook as he sought to cling to power after losing the 2020 presidential election — to falsely manufacture a victory for him by creating fake slates of electors in battleground states who would claim that he had been the true winner. Some of the lawyers who undertook the effort doubted its legality, and the emails, which have not been previously reported, were the latest indication that other key players also knew they were on shaky legal ground, and took pains to create a rationale that could justify their actions. Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer working for Mr. Trump’s campaign, wrote in a Dec. 11, 2020, email to other members of the legal team that Ms. Ward and Ms. Townsend had raised concerns about casting votes as part of an alternate slate of electors because there was no pending legal challenge that could flip the results of Arizona’s election. “Ward and Townsend are concerned it could appear treasonous for the AZ electors to vote on Monday if there is no pending court proceeding that might, eventually, lead to the electors being ratified as the legitimate ones,” Mr. Chesebro wrote to the group, which included Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. Mr. Chesebro wrote the word “treasonous” in bold.

Trump-Backed Election Deniers Triumphed In Primaries Across The Country Last Night 

  • Arizona Republic: Trump-Backed Candidates Surge In Arizona Primary, Showing Former President’s Sway Among Republicans: Donald Trump-backed candidates pulled ahead in Arizona’s GOP primaries, showing, if early election results hold, a sign of the sway the former president still has over Republicans in the state. Some races were too close to call early Wednesday but showed Trump’s preferred candidates leading in high-profile Republican races for Arizona governor, U.S. Senate, U.S. Congress, Arizona attorney general and secretary of state. Trump-endorsed Kari Lake and Karrin Taylor Robson, who was endorsed by former Vice President Mike Pence, were in a virtual tie in the race for the GOP nomination for governor.  The winner will face Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s current secretary of state, who easily won the Democratic nomination for governor.  Republican Blake Masters, who’s backed by both Trump and tech investor Peter Thiel, was declared the U.S. Senate primary winner by the Associated Press after building a lead over former solar power executive Jim Lamon and Mark Brnovich, the current Arizona attorney general. Masters will face Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly in the November general election.  Mark Finchem was declared the Republican primary winner in the secretary of state race, and Abe Hamadeh led his competitors for attorney general. Both men were Trump-endorsed, and both denied Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election in Arizona.
  • Associated Press: Michigan GOP Rep. Meijer, Who Voted To Impeach Trump, Loses: Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Meijer lost Tuesday to a primary challenger backed by former President Donald Trump as he and two other Republican U.S. House members who voted to impeach Trump fought to hang onto their seats. “A Constitutional Republic like ours requires leaders who are willing to take on the big challenges, to find common ground when possible, and to put their love of country before partisan advantage,” Meijer said in a statement before The Associated Press called the race for his challenger, John Gibbs. “Though this was not the outcome we hoped for, I will continue to do everything possible to move the Republican Party, West Michigan, and our country in a positive direction.” The primaries for the other two House Republicans who voted for impeachment, Washington state Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse, were too early to call Wednesday morning. The three races were the biggest test yet for GOP incumbents who broke with Trump after a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a bid to keep him in power on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has vowed revenge against the 10 House Republicans who crossed party lines for the impeachment vote, and he endorsed GOP challengers to them in the midterm elections.
  • New York Times: Election Victories by Trump Allies Showcase His Grip on the G.O.P. Base:  Primary victories in Arizona and Michigan for allies of Donald J. Trump on Tuesday reaffirmed his continued influence over the Republican Party, as the former president has sought to cleanse the party of his critics, install loyalists in key swing-state offices and scare off potential 2024 rivals with a show of brute political force. In Arizona, Mr. Trump’s choice for Senate, Blake Masters, won a crowded primary as did his pick for secretary of state, Mark Finchem, an election denier who has publicly acknowledged his affiliation with the far-right Oath Keepers militia group. The governor’s race was virtually tied early Wednesday, even as Mr. Trump’s pick, Kari Lake, was badly outspent. And in a particularly symbolic victory for Mr. Trump, Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona House who gained national attention after testifying against Mr. Trump at the Jan. 6 congressional hearings, lost his bid for State Senate. In Michigan, a House Republican who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, Representative Peter Meijer, was defeated by a former Trump administration official, John Gibbs, and Mr. Trump’s last-minute choice for governor, the conservative commentator Tudor Dixon, who has echoed his false claims of election fraud, easily won her primary. Mr. Trump and his allies have been particularly focused on the vote-counting and certification process in both Arizona and Michigan, seeking to oust those who stood in the way of their attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The victory of Mr. Finchem, who marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6, was a key sign of how the “Stop the Steal” movement that was formed on a falsehood about 2020 has morphed into a widespread campaign to try to take control of the levers of democracy ahead of the coming elections.

In The States 

ARIZONA: January 6 Committee Witness Rusty Bowers Loses Senate Campaign 

  • Associated Press: Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers Loses State Senate Bid: Republican Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers lost his bid for a state Senate seat after refusing then-President Donald Trump’s pleas to help overturn the 2020 election results and testifying before Congress about the efforts. Bowers tried to move to the state Senate because of term limits. He lost to former state Sen. David Farnsworth, who criticized him for refusing to help Trump or go along with a contentious 2021 “audit” that Republican leaders in the Senate commissioned. Farnsworth automatically will win the Senate seat because no Democrat is running in the heavily Republican district. Bowers faced an uphill battle in the eastern Phoenix suburb of Mesa, especially after the state Republican Party censured him following his June testimony before the panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress and Trump endorsed Farnsworth.

PENNSYLVANIA:  Pennsylvania Supreme Court Upholds Mail Voting 

  • Philadelphia Inquirer: Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court Upheld The State’s Mail Voting Law After A Long Legal Fight: Pennsylvania’s mail-voting law is constitutional, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, upholding the 2019 measure that allows any voter to use mail ballots and removing a cloud of uncertainty heading into the midterm elections. The law dramatically expanded mail voting from a method that had been allowed only in a very small number of cases — about 5% of votes in any given election — to one used by millions over the last two years. It was the product of bipartisan negotiations between Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and Republicans who control the state legislature, the biggest change to Pennsylvania election law in generations. But its implementation in 2020 came during both the first year of the pandemic and a heated presidential election. As massive numbers of voters cast ballots by mail, state and county elections officials tried to build out the system — in some cases triggering Republican outrage and lawsuits over their decisions. That was further stoked by then-President Donald Trump, who began attacking mail voting months before his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Republicans have continued to try to dismantle the law known as Act 77, with some saying it has been abused in its implementation, and others espousing bogus conspiracy theories about widespread fraud.

WISCONSIN:  Donald Trump Endorses Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ Primary Opponent 

  • New York Times: Trump Tries To Topple A Powerful Wisconsin Republican In His Futile Quest To Reverse His 2020 Loss: After months of toying with Robin Vos, who as the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly is the most powerful Republican in state politics, former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Mr. Vos’s long-shot primary challenger on Tuesday in a futile effort to push the state’s Republicans to decertify the results of the 2020 election. Mr. Trump backed Adam Steen, a largely unknown and underfunded far-right Republican who said he would aim to claw back the state’s 10 Electoral College votes from 2020 — a legal impossibility — and enact sweeping changes to the state’s voting laws. Mr. Steen’s far-right views are not limited to elections. He is opposed to all abortions under any circumstances and he said in an interview on Monday that he would seek to make contraception illegal in Wisconsin. “This is way deeper than a political discussion. This is a moral issue,” he said. “To me, you’re ending a life. Yes, I would definitely outlaw contraception.” In his endorsement message, Mr. Trump blamed Mr. Vos for blocking efforts to conduct a “full cyber forensic audit” of the 2020 election and said he had “refused to do anything to right the wrongs that were done.”

What Experts Are Saying

Harry Litman, former US attorney, re: news that Pentagon wiped phones of key Trump admin. officials:  “The underlying events have been so stunning we haven’t focused enough on this to date; but this potentially huge problem is the Watergate analog of ‘it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.’  Here though it would be both.” Tweet 

Theda Skocpol, a political scientist and sociologist at Harvard University: “Trump, in a second term, would bring in like-minded loyal and lawless authoritarians from the get-go, especially to run Justice, Homeland Security, and Defense. From all he says, it is clear that exerting domination and using the government apparatus to reward loyalists and punish perceived opponents is his main thing now. [American institutions] would not survive another Trump term, especially because of parallel reinforcing developments in a majority of states and in the federal Courts. Discouragement and outright repression and popular threats of violence would push most centrists and liberals into full retreat. Minority rule would lock in.” Thomas B. Edsall’s NYT Column 

Heather Cox Richardson, professor of American history at Boston College: “If the majority is speaking up for our rights and freedoms, it seems the Republican Party is doubling down on extremism. Today, [Rusty] Bowers lost the Republican primary in a bid to move to the state senate. His opponent, who won by a large margin, was endorsed by former president Trump.” Letters from an American 

Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “Accountability can come in the form of civil cases: Judge Mehta said the evidence suggests Trump assembled the crowd & then instructed the rally goers to march on the Capitol, despite knowing that the crowd likely included violent & destructive elements.” Tweet 

Federico Finchelstein, professor of history at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College, re: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis falsely claiming elementary school workers are instructed to tell children to switch genders: “As the author of a book on the history of fascist lies, I can assert with authority that this is how fascist liars work…” Tweet 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Axios: 2024 GOP hopefuls back Trump’s plan to purge civil servants

Bloomberg: Trump Meets With Viktor Orban After Immigration Tirade

Daily Beast: The Republicans Who Want Election Laws to ‘Stay Broken’

New York Times: How the Claremont Institute Became a Nerve Center of the American Right

New York Times: Meijer’s Defeat Shows Republican Intolerance for Trump’s Antagonists

Washington Post: Several election deniers backed by Trump prevail in hotly contested primaries

January 6 And The 2020 Election

CNN: Retired DC cop who testified before January 6 committee says Trump ‘adamantly’ wanted to go to Capitol

Politico: Judge rejects bid to delay Oath Keepers Jan. 6 trial

Washington Post (Analysis): The inevitable end to claims of rampant voter fraud: None is found

Other Trump Investigations

New York Times: Giuliani Is Unlikely to Face Criminal Charges in Lobbying Inquiry

Opinion

New York Times (Sam Adler Bell): The Violent Fantasies of Blake Masters

New York Times (Thomas Edsall): Trump Has Big Plans for 2025

In The States 

Atlanta Journal Constitution: Republicans back fake elector for state Senate

Bolts: Tennessee DA Faces Voters, Months After Prosecuting Activist for Wanting to Vote

Washington Post: Memo shows Wis. GOP lawyer privately opposed decertifying Biden’s 2020 win

Washington Post: Misleading Kansas abortion texts linked to Republican-aligned firm