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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — April 28, 2022

By April 28, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day:   

Must Read Stories

White House Discussions Of Martial Law Draw Attention From January 6 Committee 

  • Washington Post: Talk Of Martial Law, Insurrection Act Draws Notice Of Jan. 6 Committee: Three days before Joe Biden’s inauguration, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene texted White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. She told him that some Republican members of Congress believed the only path for President Donald Trump to change the outcome of the 2020 election and stay in power was for him to declare martial law. The text from Greene (R-Ga.), revealed this week, brought to the fore the chorus of Republicans who were publicly and privately advocating for Trump to try to use the military and defense apparatus of the U.S. government to strong-arm his way past an electoral defeat. Now, discussions involving the Trump White House about using emergency powers have become an important — but little-known — part of the House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation of the 2021 attack on the Capitol. In subpoenas, document requests and court filings, the panel has demanded information about any Trump administration plans to use presidential emergency powers to invoke martial law or take other steps to overturn the 2020 election. Interviews with committee members and a review of the panel’s information requests reveals a focus on emergency powers that were being considered by Trump and his allies in several categories: invoking the Insurrection Act, declaring martial law, using presidential powers to justify seizing assets of voting-machine companies, and using the military to require a rerun of the election “Trump’s invocation of these emergency powers would have been unprecedented in all of American history,” said J. Michael Luttig, a conservative lawyer and former appeals court judge.

Trump Allies Attack Voting Systems In Search Of “Fraud” Evidence

  • Reuters: Trump Allies Breach U.S. Voting Systems In Search Of 2020 Fraud ‘Evidence’: Eighteen months after Donald Trump lost the White House, loyal supporters continue to falsely assert that compromised balloting machines across America robbed him of the 2020 election. To stand up that bogus claim, some Trump die-hards are taking the law into their own hands – by attempting, with some success, to compromise the voting systems themselves. Previously unreported surveillance video captured one such effort in August in the rural Colorado town of Kiowa. Footage obtained by Reuters through a public-records request shows Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder, the county’s top election official, fiddling with cables and typing on his phone as he copied computer drives containing sensitive voting information. Schroeder, a Republican, later testified that he was receiving instructions on how to copy the system’s data from a retired Air Force colonel and political activist bent on proving Trump lost because of fraud. That day, Aug. 26, Schroeder made a “forensic image of everything on the election server,” according to his testimony, and later gave the cloned hard drives to two lawyers. Schroeder is now under investigation for possible violation of election laws by the Colorado secretary of state, which has also sued him seeking the return of the data. Schroeder is defying that state demand and has refused to identify one of the lawyers who took possession of the hard drives. The other is a private attorney who works with an activist backed by Mike Lindell, the pillow mogul and election conspiracy theorist.

January 6 Committee Will Speak To Rudy Giuliani And RNC Staff 

  • CNN: Rudy Giuliani Expected To Appear Before January 6 Committee Next Month: Rudy Giuliani is expected to appear next month before the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection, according to sources familiar with the matter. The expected appearance comes after months of negotiations between lawmakers and the former mayor of New York, who served as former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney for much of his presidency Giuliani, a central figure in Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election, was subpoenaed by the committee in January and has been engaging with lawmakers, through his lawyer, about the scope of the subpoena and whether he may be able to comply with some requests. In its subpoena, the committee alleges Giuliani “actively promoted claims of election fraud on behalf of the former President and sought to convince state legislators to take steps to overturn the election results.” The subpoena also states Giuliani was in contact with Trump and members of Congress “regarding strategies for delaying or overturning the results of the 2020 election.”
  • Politico: Multiple RNC Staffers Have Spoken To Jan. 6 Panel, Sources Say: Multiple current and former Republican National Committee staffers have spoken with the Jan. 6 select committee amid questions about the party’s messaging and fundraising in the weeks after the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the probe. The committee has shown particular interest in staff from the RNC’s digital and finance teams. Most of the officials who have spoken with investigators are former employees who worked during the 2020 election cycle, including the fraught period between Election Day and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, one of the people said. That means the committee has more insight than previously known into the Republican Party’s activity in the lead-up to January 6. The interviews underscore the select committee’s interest in how political messaging by the national GOP apparatus — which partnered with the Trump campaign on digital fundraising efforts — may have stoked falsehoods about the 2020 election. They also want to know just how successful one particular email campaign was at getting users to click through to donation websites. Those emails prompted people to give money based on false claims the election was stolen, the select committee has emphasized.

In The States 

Election Conspiracy Theorists Dominate State Races From Idaho To Pennsylvania 

  • Idaho Capital Sun: Two Of Three Idaho Gop Secretary Of State Candidates Deny Biden Won 2020 Election:   Two of the three candidates running in the Idaho Republican primary election for secretary of state incorrectly said President Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election during a televised statewide debate Tuesday night.  Responding to a question during Tuesday’s debate about whether Biden fairly won the 2020 election, Sen. Mary Souza, R-Coeur d’Alene, and Rep. Dorothy Moon, R-Challis, said they do not think so. Ada County Clerk Phil McGrane said Biden did win.  […] The other Republican hopefuls disagreed. “I have a different opinion. I do not think that Joe Biden won the presidential election, but he has been named president and that’s been certified,” Souza said. “So I am not suggesting we would go back, but we have to learn from what happened. There were many things. I will call it death by a thousand cuts, as the Chinese would put it. It was ballot harvesting. It was ballot boxes that were … video taped … but they were not manned. It was a lot of small changes in law that were significant during the COVID crisis in many of the swing states, and they were not done legally by the state legislatures.” Moon also disagreed. “No, I think there was a big problem when we noticed at 11 o’clock at night all of the battleground states decided to go to bed and then they were going to start back up at 8, 9 or 10 in the morning,” Moon said. “In my lifetime, I had never seen that happen nor had most Americans who stay up that late to watch for the results. So sadly, you know, the fact of the matter is we had to deal with it. Everyone was in shock, a lot of us. Based on polling, President Trump should have been re-elected.”
  • Philadelphia Inquirer: 4 Takeaways From Wednesday Night’s Pennsylvania Republican Governor’s Debate:  The candidates each supported rolling back the 2019 state law expanding mail voting, which passed with broad Republican support and was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. […] Mastriano, who has long pushed lies about the 2020 election being stolen, matched Trump’s rhetoric by calling McSwain “a coward” who “left me hanging” when Mastriano held a public hearing after the election. Trump famously called into that hearing. Barletta also went after McSwain, suggesting he had voted for Barack Obama for president, something McSwain denied. Barletta later offered a backhanded apology, telling McSwain he meant to say he had supported Bill Clinton, since he was a registered Democrat until 2004. And Barletta said he’s the candidate Republicans can trust. “I am proven, road-tested and ready,” he said. “I am pro-God, pro-gun, pro-family, pro-life, and pro-America.” Mastriano pointed to the subpoena he received from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He said he’s “been fighting for election integrity and taken the shots – even subpoenaed by this McCarthyist Democrat cabal in Congress.” He did not say whether he’s complied with the subpoena, which seeks documents and testimony about his involvement in efforts to overturn the election.

What Experts Are Saying 

  • Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University: “I think it’s really important for all Americans to really take note of where we are. We’re finding out more and more as the January — as the — as the House Select January 6th Committee on the insurrection and the attempted coup does its work. This was obviously a coup attempt, and it’s also, if you take a longer look, which I tend to do as an historian, we see that this goes back, you know, the Tea Party faction of Republicans and the big donors who back them have not accepted outcomes when their party has lost since 2008 when President Barack Obama was elected as the first black president. they, you know, pushed the birther conspiracy… These people are manipulating the tools of democracy to undermine democracy and install autocracy and that’s why they are going to see Victor Orban who is an expert in this and who rigged the rules so he would just win a very secure re-election with a comfortable margin to work with in their parliament.” MSNBC’s The ReidOut with Joy Reid 
  • Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University: Kruse: “Is it fair to see DeSantis as a very capable, committed student, whereas Trump is more of an instinctual autocrat?” Ben-Ghiat: “There are limits to the comparison because Trump truly is an autocratic individual. He was as a businessman and he has surrounded himself with people from [Paul] Manafort and [Roger] Stone to [Steve] Bannon who have decades of experience helping and working for dictators. They’re on a crusade to ruin democracy. And DeSantis had a very different career path. And so what’s notable about him is he has sensed, like all smart politicians, what you need to get ahead in today’s America, in today’s GOP, what kind of leader you need to seem to be, what policies, what talking points, [such as] election fraud. What you need to do is turn citizens against each other, which he does with the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. His election security office has a hotline where you can call and tip off your fellow Floridians doing bad things. These are in themselves all things that match up with autocratic policies. Yes, he’s a very capable student of what is going to have success in today’s GOP and with today’s electorate.” Politico Magazine 

Headlines

The Ongoing Campaign To Undo The 2020 Election

Vice: Trump’s Spokeswoman Calls For Arrests Over 2020 Election at QAnon Rally

The January 6 Conspiracy 

The Hill: House panel to explore impeachment, judicial ethics in wake of Ginni Thomas texts

NBC: Top Trump allies tangle with McCarthy, Scalise over leaked audio

Washington Post: How McCarthy sought to contain the damage from leaked Jan. 6 audio

Washington Post: Facing House GOP, McCarthy defends himself after audio reveals he blamed Trump for Jan. 6 attack

Trump Investigations

CNN: New York grand jury hearing evidence in DA’s investigation into Trump Organization expires this week

In The States 

Washington Post: Trump’s Georgia allies are running on 2020 grievance. It may not work.