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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — October 12, 2022

By October 12, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Tomorrow’s January 6 Committee Hearing Will Reveal “Surprising” New Material 

  • CNBC: Next Jan. 6 Committee Hearing Will Reveal ‘Pretty Surprising’ New Material, Rep. Zoe Lofgren Says: The House Jan. 6 select committee’s next public hearing will reveal new material about former President Donald Trump’s plans and how much he knew about the Capitol riot, one of the panel’s members said Tuesday. The committee’s ninth public hearing will touch on the “close ties between people in Trump world and some of these extremist groups,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said in a CNN interview. But “that’s not the only thing the hearing will be about,” Lofgren said. “We’re going to be going through, really some of what we’ve already found, but augmenting with new material that we’ve discovered through our work throughout this summer.” That involves focusing on Trump’s intentions, she said, including “what he knew, what he did, what others did.” “I do think that it will be worth watching,” Lofgren said. “There’s some new material that, you know, I found as we got into it, pretty surprising.”

Republicans Kinzinger And Riggleman Endorse Democrats To Combat Growing Threats To Democracy 

  • Politico: Kinzinger Endorses Dems In Major Governor, Secretary Of State Races: Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the most prominent Republican critics of former President Donald Trump in Congress, is rolling out a bipartisan series of midterm endorsements Tuesday, including a handful of Democrats seeking to become their states’ top election officials. Kinzinger (R-Ill.) endorsed four Democratic secretary of state candidates: incumbents Steve Simon of Minnesota and Jocelyn Benson of Michigan, along with Arizona’s Adrian Fontes and Nevada’s Cisco Aguilar, both of whom are running for open seats. Kinzinger’s endorsements, shared first with POLITICO, also include Democrat Josh Shapiro’s campaign for governor of Pennsylvania, where he would appoint the secretary of state if he wins. In an interview, Kinzinger said he chose 2022 endorsements partly based on where there are “going to be positions that, frankly, can be bulwarks to defend against a real constitutional crisis in 2024.” “A badly-placed, bad faith secretary of state can really throw the whole country into chaos,” he added.
  • Washington Post: Ex-Republican Congressman Riggleman Appears In Ad Supporting Spanberger:  Former Virginia Republican congressman Denver Riggleman is going to bat for Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) in her competitive reelection bid in Virginia’s 7th District, appearing in a new TV ad urging voters to back the congresswoman for her willingness to work across the aisle. “This is not a typical political ad,” Riggleman says in the opening frame. “I’m a Republican congressman saying nice things about a Democrat.” Indeed, it’s pretty unusual for a former Republican congressman to campaign for a sitting Democrat, a la Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) supporting Democrats in Arizona over the election-denying Republican candidates for governor and secretary of state. But Riggleman is pretty unusual in that he was part of the vocal minority of Republicans to break ties with the GOP over former president Donald Trump’s stolen-election lies, telling The Washington Post in interviews last year he no longer identified as a Republican. Riggleman had also railed against what he called GOP purity tests he said he didn’t fit into.

How 2000 Mules Radicalized The Midterms 

  • HuffPost: ‘2000 Mules’ Has Radicalized The 2022 Midterm Elections: By June 2, the right-wing polling outfit Rasmussen said 15% of survey respondents had seen 2000 Mules. Multiple Republican candidates, including two secretary of state nominees in pivotal swing states, have praised the film publicly, a HuffPost review found. And the movie has inspired groups across the country to hold stakeouts at drop boxes and to mobilize again around Donald Trump’s lie that, as the then-president said in August 2020, “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.” These pronouncements may have a profound impact on the midterm elections ― not only by activating the conservative base with risible lies, but by building a mandate for these election officials to undertake serious actions against voting rights and fair elections if they make it into office Already, the film may be encouraging plots against the administration of the midterm elections. Several sheriffs in key states, activated by seeing the film, are now claiming to be watching aggressively for supposed voter fraud. And a briefing paper last month on threats to drop boxes from Logically.ai, a web-based anti-disinformation firm, highlighted everything from efforts to organize “all night patriot tailgate parties” to comments about sabotaging drop boxes with bleach, acid, glue, road flares, flamethrowers and explosives.

US Supreme Court Backs Republican Efforts To Throw Out Undated Ballots In Pennsylvania 

  • Reuters: U.S. Supreme Court Backs Republican In Pennsylvania Ballots Case: The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with an unsuccessful Republican candidate for a judgeship in Pennsylvania and threw out a lower court’s ruling that had allowed the counting of mail-in ballots in the race that he had sought to exclude because voters neglected to write the date on them. The justices vacated the ruling by the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as requested by David Ritter, who lost his 2021 bid for a spot on the Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas to a Democratic rival by five votes after 257 absentee ballots without date notations were counted. The high court’s action means that the 3rd Circuit ruling cannot be used as a precedent in the three states covered by this regional federal appellate court – Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware – to allow the counting of ballots with minor flaws such as the voter failing to fill in the date. Vacating the ruling does not change Ritter’s loss in his race.

In The States 

ARIZONA: Cochise County Wants To Hand Count Ballots, Threatening “Chaos” On Election Day 

  • Votebeat: Hand-Counting Ballots Would Cause “Downright Chaos” In An Arizona County, Experts Say: Cochise County officials are considering hand-counting all ballots cast by the county’s 87,000 voters this election, a radical measure for a county of its size that election experts say is also problematic and unnecessary. A hand count would produce inaccurate results, confuse voters, and consume extensive time, money, and labor, said C.Jay Coles, senior policy and advocacy associate at Verified Voting, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for the responsible use of technology in elections. The county elections office estimated a hand count in Cochise would take 2,500 total hours of work. Election researchers and consultants generally advise against hand-counting ballots, because machine counts are proven to be more accurate and efficient.  “It’s such an opportunity for confusion, and, really, downright chaos,” Coles said. The Republican-leaning county on the southern Arizona border is the latest to propose such an idea, part of a larger trend fueled by distrust of vote-counting machines that emerged after the 2020 election, when conspiracy theorists spread unfounded claims that the machines had been programmed to switch votes in favor of Joe Biden.

GEORGIA: Georgia’s Republican LG Candidate Is A Fake Elector Who Could Be Indicted Soon After The Election 

  • Politico: Brian Kemp Fought Trump’s Election Lie. His Likely No. 2 Was A Fake Elector: One withstood Donald Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the 2020 election, serving as a bulwark as other Republicans buckled. The other is under criminal investigation for actively participating in the former president’s scheme to keep himself in office. Georgia voters could be forgiven for feeling confused about the pair of Republicans seeking the top two state offices in the November election: incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp and lieutenant governor candidate Burt Jones. Jones — a 43-year-old state senator, former captain of the University of Georgia football team and self-funding heir to an oil fortune — could be indicted soon after he wins the No. 2 job, as polls indicate he will. He was among the 16 fake electors who tried to block Joe Biden’s win in Georgia. And Jones continued to deny the election results for months afterward — before becoming a target of ongoing investigations by the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, which expects to decide on whether to charge Trump, Jones or other fake electors in early 2023, according to the DA office’s timeline. Kemp has been called as a witness in that probe. Now, the two are trying to co-exist at the top of the ticket; in Georgia, the governor and lieutenant governor are independent offices whose candidates seek election separately.

FLORIDA: Investigation Reveals How Ron DeSantis Diluted Black Voting Power And May Have Broken The Law 

  • ProPublica: How Ron DeSantis Blew Up Black-Held Congressional Districts and May Have Broken Florida Law: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was incensed. Late last year, the state’s Republican legislature had drawn congressional maps that largely kept districts intact, leaving the GOP with only a modest electoral advantage. DeSantis threw out the legislature’s work and redrew Florida’s congressional districts, making them far more favorable to Republicans. The plan was so aggressive that the Republican-controlled legislature balked and fought DeSantis for months. The governor overruled lawmakers and pushed his map through. DeSantis’ office has publicly stressed that partisan considerations played no role and that partisan operatives were not involved in the new map. A ProPublica examination of how that map was drawn — and who helped decide its new boundaries — reveals a much different origin story. The new details show that the governor’s office appears to have misled the public and the state legislature and may also have violated Florida law.

NEVADA:  Secretary Of State Candidate Jim Marchant Indicates He’ll Try To Have Trump Reinstated As President If He’s Elected 

  • Vice: This QAnon Secretary of State Candidate Is Promising to Reinstall Trump in 2024: Jim Marchant, the GOP candidate for secretary of state in Nevada, appeared on stage alongside former President Donald Trump this weekend and openly boasted that he and his QAnon coalition of candidates would put Trump back in the White House in 2024. “When my coalition of secretary of state candidates around the country get elected, we’re gonna fix the whole country and President Trump is gonna be president again,” Marchant promised as Trump stood next to him during a rally in Minden on Saturday night.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Senate Candidate Don Bolduc Says 2022 Election Might Be Stolen From Him 

  • CNN: Bolduc Raises Unsubstantiated Possibility Of 2022 Election Impropriety Ahead Of New Hampshire Senate Contest: New Hampshire Senate nominee Don Bolduc, a Republican who has pushed the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen, raised the unsubstantiated prospect that the same could happen in 2022 during an interview with a radio host in New Hampshire on Monday. Bolduc’s comments highlight the fine line he is attempting to walk on false 2020 election claims as he faces Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan in what Republicans hoped would be a pickup opportunity for the party in a state President Joe Biden won by 7 points in 2020. Throughout the Republican primary, Bolduc was one of the staunchest purveyors of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. But days after he won his party’s nomination and faced a broader, less conservative electorate, he told Fox News he had changed his position and had “come to the conclusion… the election was not stolen.” The shift riled his conservative base and Bolduc waffled on the issue in the subsequent weeks. On Monday, Bolduc went a step further by raising the prospect that some of the same issues that led Republicans to falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen could happen in 2022. “And as long as we have this type of fraud and irregularities that are susceptible to our system across this country, we are going to be in big trouble,” Bolduc told radio host Jeff Kuhner. “So, it’s less about whether we focus on 2020 stolen election and how we focus on how we’re going to win in 2022 and don’t let it happen.”

What Experts Are Saying

Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law professor emeritus: “ICYMI: My explanation on @Lawrence on MSNBC on Oct 11 of why the only questions for AG Garland are no longer ‘whether’ but ‘when,’ ‘where,’ and ‘for which crimes’” Tweet | MSNBC Video 

Sean Wilentz, George Henry Davis 1886 professor of American History at Princeton University, if Donald Trump is president again: “‘I think it would be the end of the republic,’ says Princeton University professor Sean Wilentz, one of the historians President Biden consulted in August about America’s teetering democracy. ‘It would be a kind of overthrow from within. … It would be a coup of the way we’ve always understood America.’” Washington Post (Magazine): What Will Happen to America if Trump Wins Again? Experts Helped Us Game It Out. 

Jennifer McCoy, a political science professor at Georgia State University: “America is already gripped by an unprecedented level of what political scientists call ‘pernicious polarization’ — stoked and exploited by Trump — and a second Trump term could make it dangerously worse, says Jennifer McCoy, a political science professor at Georgia State University who co-authored a study of the phenomenon for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. No other established democracy since at least 1950 has been so polarized for so long. In nearly half of the dozens of countries McCoy studied, the next step after pernicious polarization was either ‘electoral autocracy’ — where votes are cast but don’t necessarily confer power — or outright ‘democratic collapse.’ ‘It’s extremely worrisome; we’re in uncharted territory,’ McCoy told me. ‘If Trump does come back, I think it would severely deepen the crisis that we face.’” Washington Post (Magazine): What Will Happen to America if Trump Wins Again? Experts Helped Us Game It Out. 

Larry Diamond, senior fellow in global democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University: “For those studying the implications of these trends, ‘there’s no scenario that worries us more than that the wheels just come off completely from the restraints against violence in the United States,’ says Diamond, of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute. ‘My biggest concern is what citizens would do to citizens, and what citizens might do to legitimately constituted government authority.’” Washington Post (Magazine): What Will Happen to America if Trump Wins Again? Experts Helped Us Game It Out. 

Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “Trump filed a civil lawsuit to try and kneecap a lawful criminal prosecution. He very nearly did, at least for a while, with the help of Judge Cannon. Cannon took the unprecedented step of entering an injunction that interfered with a criminal investigation while it was in progress. The 11th Circuit put us back on more solid legal ground by staying parts of her order and permitting the criminal investigation to proceed, like it would have against any other subject of an investigation. There is no reason for the Supreme Court to reward Trump for obstructing and delaying that investigation. Hopefully they will see it that way and let DOJ proceed with its investigation while the 11th Circuit handles the appeal it agreed to expedite last week.” Civil Discourse 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Washington Post: How Trump’s legal expenses consumed GOP donor money

January 6 And The 2020 Election

NBC: Secret Service has given investigators over 1 million electronic communications agents sent before and on Jan. 6, 2021

New York Times: A Lawyer’s Journey From Adviser to the Oath Keepers to Defendant

Other Trump Investigations 

New York Times: She Went Out on a Limb for Trump. Now She’s Under Justice Dept. Scrutiny.

Washington Post: Justice Dept. asks Supreme Court to deny Trump’s request in Mar-a-Lago case

Opinion

Washington Post (Greg Sargent): Kevin McCarthy feared death on Jan. 6. Then he protected Trump anyway.

Political Violence

NBC: Capitol Police investigate letter with ‘concerning language’ found near Jan. 6 committee Chair Bennie Thompson’s office