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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — September 2, 2022

By September 2, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

President Biden Speech Lays Out Threats To Democracy From MAGA Republicans 

  • NBC News: Biden Attacks Trump, MAGA Republicans As A Threat To Democracy In Blistering Speech: President Joe Biden accused former President Donald Trump and his supporters of promoting an extreme ideology that threatens democracy in rare prime-time remarks Thursday as he stepped up attacks on conservatives ahead of the midterm elections. “Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said in the speech from the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. 

Donald Trump Promises Pardons And A Government Apology To January 6 Insurrectionists If He Is Reelected

  • Washington Post: Trump Vows Pardons, Government Apology To Capitol Rioters If Elected: Former president Donald Trump said he would issue full pardons and a government apology to rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and violently attacked law enforcement to stop the democratic transfer of power. “I mean full pardons with an apology to many,” he told conservative radio host Wendy Bell on Thursday morning. Such a move would be contingent on Trump running and winning the 2024 presidential election. Supporters of the former president attacked the Capitol as Congress was confirming Joe Biden’s electoral college win in the 2020 election, the worst attack on the seat of democracy in more than two centuries. The insurrection left four people dead, and an officer who had been sprayed with a powerful chemical irritant, Brian D. Sicknick, suffered a stroke and died the next day. About 140 members of law enforcement were injured as rioters attacked them with flagpoles, baseball bats, stun guns, bear spray and pepper spray. As a result, the House impeached Trump for inciting an insurrection.

Ginni Thomas E-Mailed Wisconsin Lawmakers To Overturn The Election 

  • Washington Post: Ginni Thomas Pressed Wisconsin Lawmakers To Overturn Biden’s 2020 Victory:  Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed lawmakers to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory not only in Arizona, as previously reported, but also in a second battleground state, Wisconsin, according to emails obtained under state public-records law. The Washington Post reported this year that Ginni Thomas emailed 29 Arizona state lawmakers, some of them twice, in November and December 2020. She urged them to set aside Biden’s popular-vote victory and “choose” their own presidential electors, despite the fact that the responsibility for choosing electors rests with voters under Arizona state law. The new emails show that Thomas also messaged two Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin: state Sen. Kathy Bernier, then chair of the Senate elections committee, and state Rep. Gary Tauchen. Bernier and Tauchen received the email at 10:47 a.m. on Nov. 9, virtually the same time the Arizona lawmakers received a verbatim copy of the message from Thomas. 

January 6 Investigations Continue To Accelerate 

  • ABC: Cipollone, Philbin Expected To Appear Friday Before Federal Grand Jury Probing Jan. 6: Sources: Two former top Trump White House lawyers are expected to appear Friday before a federal grand jury investigating the events surrounding Jan. 6, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News. Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin were subpoenaed by a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, ABC News reported last month. The move to subpoena the two men has signaled an even more dramatic escalation in the Justice Department’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack than previously known. Members of former Vice President Mike Pence’s staff have also appeared before a grand jury.
  • Politico: Jan. 6 Select Panel Asks Newt Gingrich To Testify: The Jan. 6 select committee is asking former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to voluntarily cooperate with its probe into the events surrounding the attack on the Capitol and former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a letter the panel sent Thursday. The letter signaled committee investigators are interested in Gingrich’s advice to top Trump allies about advertisements spreading false election fraud claims and Trump’s plan to put forward so-called alternate electors.

In The States 

ARIZONA: Blake Masters Hires False Electors Onto His Campaign.

  • Arizona Mirror: Blake Masters Has Hired Two ‘Fake Electors’ As Campaign Staffers. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters has hired two fake electors, according to his campaign finance reports. Gregory Safsten has been paid $29,350.80 so far by the Masters campaign as a “campaign consultant.” Safsten was one of 11 people who signed a bogus document claiming former President Donald Trump won Arizona’s Electoral College votes in the 2020 election. The fraudulent elector document was organized by the Arizona Republican Party on behalf of Trump’s campaign, which encouraged similar efforts in other battleground states that Trump lost as part of a plan to let congressional Republicans reject Joe Biden’s win and install Trump for a second term. Safsten was the executive director for the AZGOP at the time.

PENNSYLVANIA: Threat To Democracy Doug Mastriano Sues The January 6th Committee

  • The Hill: Mastriano Sues Jan. 6 Committee. Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano is suing the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, seeking to block the panel from enforcing its subpoena for his testimony. The suit makes a familiar argument that has largely been rejected by courts, asserting the committee has no authority to compel testimony given its construction with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) serving as its vice chairwoman rather than a leadership-appointed ranking member. “Because the Select Committee has absolutely no authority to conduct compelled depositions, plaintiff was willing to sit for a voluntary interview,” Mastriano’s attorney Timothy Parlatore wrote in the filing.

GEORGIA: Trump Allies Challenge Tens Of Thousands Of Georgia Voters In One County Alone 

  • Bloomberg: Trump Allies Back Mass Challenge to Voter Eligibility in Georgia: A group backed by Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne is challenging the eligibility of tens of thousands of Georgia voters just weeks before the November election in the state where the former president fought hardest to overturn his 2020 loss. The group, VoterGA, filed eight boxes Monday containing what its leader says are 37,500 challenges to voters in Gwinnett County, a once solidly Republican area of suburban Atlanta that has voted Democratic since 2016.  The move comes less than 10 weeks before the Nov. 8 general election and its tight races for governor and a U.S. Senate seat that could help decide control of the chamber. The challenges promise to make it harder for some registered voters to cast ballots and put a heavy burden on already stretched county elections officials charged under state law with responding to them quickly.

MICHIGAN: Police Investigating How A Michigan Voting Machine Ended Up For Sale Online 

  • CNN: Police Investigating How Michigan Voting Machine Wound Up For Sale Online: Authorities in Michigan are investigating how a missing voting machine from the state wound up for sale on eBay last month for $1,200. The machine was purchased by a cybersecurity expert in Connecticut who alerted Michigan authorities and is now waiting for law enforcement to pick up the device. CNN determined the machine was dropped off at a Goodwill store in Northern Michigan, before being sold last month on eBay by a man in Ohio In an interview with CNN, the Ohio man said he purchased the machine online at Goodwill for $7.99 before auctioning it on eBay for $1,200. Election machines are part of the United States’ critical infrastructure and are supposed to be kept under lock and key. It’s an issue that has become increasingly important in recent years as people have sought to gain unauthorized access to election systems in a futile attempt to prove the false notion that the 2020 election was stolen. News of the sold machine comes as authorities in Michigan, Colorado and Georgia are probing apparent efforts to gain unauthorized access to voting machines or obtain data from them following the 2020 election.

WISCONSIN:  Activist Who Made Fraudulent Absentee Ballot Requests Faces Felony Charges 

  • Washington Post: Wis. Activist Who Said Voter Fraud Is Easy To Commit Faces Election Charges: Prosecutors brought voter fraud charges Thursday against a man who ordered absentee ballots in the names of two others to bolster his claims that breaking election laws is easy. The endeavor to show election fraud is possible earned conservative activist Harry Wait two felony and two misdemeanor charges. In an interview, Wait said he stood by his decision to request that ballots be sent to his home in the names of the speaker of the state Assembly and the mayor of Racine, Wis. “In hindsight, I’d do it all over again a hundred times over,” Wait said. Wait is the president of a group called HOT Government, which derives its name from its pledge to advocate for “honest, open and transparent government.” He has used his platform for the last two years to question the state’s election laws and practices. In July, he used a state online portal called MyVote Wisconsin to request primary ballots in the names of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) and Racine Mayor Cory Mason (D) — two officials he has long criticized. 

What Experts Are Saying

Federico Finchelstein, expert on fascism and  professor of history at the New School: “[W]ell before Jan. 6, 2021, Trump had already established key pillars of fascism: militarization of politics, xenophobia, totalitarian propaganda techniques and demonstrable falsehoods, and the demonization of his antagonists. Trumpism was only missing dictatorship. And then the insurrection happened, as Trump supporters attempted to overturn the 2020 election results because he lost…Trump may no longer be president, but he and his followers are still flying alarmingly close to fascism. The more we know about fascist attempts to squash democracy in the past, the more worried we should be about present semi-fascist and populist forms.” Washington Post Op-Ed: Biden called Trumpism ‘semi-fascism.’ The term makes sense, historically.

A group of former GOP officials and former federal prosecutors – including former high-ranking Justice Department attorneys Donald B. Ayer, Gregory A. Brower, John J. Farmer Jr., Stuart M. Gerson and Peter D. Keisler: “To indulge former President Trump’s assertions of executive privilege through the appointment of a special master would simply put off the inevitable, and harm significant national interests in the process by delaying a criminal investigation and intelligence community assessment of damage.” Amicus brief in opposition to former President Trump’s motion for judicial oversight and additional relief 

Donald B. Ayer, former U.S. deputy attorney general: “If I had somehow managed, when I left the DOJ as Deputy AG, to take with me a like number of highly classified documents, and had similarly resisted efforts of the government to get them back, I would certainly have been prosecuted and likely ended up in prison[.]” The Washington Post 

Michael Beschloss, American historian of the American presidency (Video): MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell is joined by NBC News Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss – who was one of several historians who met with Pres. Biden in August about the fate of American democracy – to discuss the President’s speech in defense of democracy in Philadelphia that was given on the same day that Donald Trump’s attorneys continued to fight a case against the government over classified documents the former president had at his Florida home. MSNBC on YouTube 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

NBC: After Sarah Palin’s election loss, Sen. Tom Cotton calls ranked-choice voting ‘a scam’

New York Times: McCarthy embraces Trump’s assault on the Justice Department over the Mar-a-Lago search.

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Associated Press: Oath Keepers lawyer faces conspiracy charge in connection with January 6

NBC: Ex-NYPD officer who assaulted D.C. officer on Jan. 6 gets record 10-year sentence

NBC: Capitol rioter admits to assaulting Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after Jan. 6

Other Trump Investigations 

CBS: Trump settles with House Oversight Democrats in dispute over financial records subpoena

NBC: More detailed list of what the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago to be made public, judge says

Opinion

Washington Post (Max Boot): MAGA Republicans are out of touch with the real America

In The States 

The Guardian: ‘What’s this about?’: bodycam footage shows confusion as Florida man arrested for voter fraud

HuffPost: GOP Senate Candidate Scrubs Election ‘Integrity’ Section From Website

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ron Johnson rebukes Robin Vos for canceling Gableman election subpoenas, signaling ongoing Wisconsin GOP rift

Michigan Advance: Report: Dixon, DePerno and Karamo are ‘threats to democracy’ for 2020 election conspiracies