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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — October 14, 2022

By October 14, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

January 6 Committee Subpoenas Trump For Testimony 

  • CNN: House January 6 Committee Votes To Subpoena Trump During Thursday’s Hearing: The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack voted to subpoena former President Donald Trump for documents and testimony during a high-profile public hearing Thursday. The unanimous vote marks a significant escalation by the panel that will set up a showdown with the former President. It is not expected that Trump will comply with the subpoena, but the action serves as a way for the committee to set down a marker and show that it wants information directly from Trump as the panel investigates the attack. The vote took place at the end of Thursday’s hearing, as the panel made a case to the American public ahead of the midterm election that Trump lied about the outcome of the 2020 election and spurred on a violent mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol. “It is our obligation to seek Donald Trump’s testimony,” the panel’s chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said ahead of the subpoena vote during the hearing. “The need for this committee to hear from Donald Trump goes beyond our fact finding,” he said. “This is a question about accountability to the American people. He must be accountable. He is required to answer for his actions. He is required to answer to those police officers who put their lives and bodies on the line to defend our democracy. He is required to answer to those millions of Americans whose votes he wanted to throw out as part of his scheme to remain in power.” The subpoena will surely trigger a prolonged court battle over Trump’s possible compliance, which could even outlast the committee itself. Republicans have pledged to shut down the Democratic-run panel if they retake the House majority in the midterm election next month.

Yesterday’s January 6 Committee Hearing Included Chilling New Footage Of Democratic Leaders Working To Save The Capitol And New Detail About Secret Service’s Advance Warning Of Threats 

  • New York Times: ‘Do You Believe This?’ Chilling Footage Shows Congressional Leaders on Jan. 6: Huddling with congressional leaders in a secure location as the Capitol was under siege on Jan. 6, 2021, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was emphatic: There had to be a way to show the public that the government could function and the transfer of power could continue. She asked: Was there a way to return to the Capitol and continue the ceremonial counting of electoral votes to certify the election that had been disrupted as a mob of President Donald J. Trump’s supporters began assaulting the building? The answer Ms. Pelosi received shocked her: They could not return to the House floor — and lawmakers still trapped in the chamber were putting on gas masks to prepare for a breach. “Do you believe this?” Ms. Pelosi muttered quietly, repeating the phrase as the scale of the attack dawned on her in real time. Chilling new footage shared on Thursday by the select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol at what was likely the panel’s final hearing showed for the first time in detail how top leaders in Congress scrambled on Jan. 6 to try to secure the building as rioters stormed through, and rushed to reconvene as soon as possible after the violence to show the country that democracy would prevail.
  • CNN: New Footage Shows Congressional Leadership At Fort McNair on January 6, Scrambling to Save the US Capitol: Never-before-seen footage, obtained exclusively by CNN, shows in vivid new detail how congressional leaders fled the US Capitol on January 6 and transformed a nearby military base into a command center, where they frantically coordinated with Vice President Mike Pence and Trump Cabinet members to quell the insurrection and finish certifying the 2020 election.  The January 6 select committee aired snippets of the footage at its public hearing on Thursday, but CNN has obtained roughly an hour of additional material that wasn’t presented by the panel. Congressional leaders contemplated, far more seriously than previously known, whether to reconvene the Electoral College proceedings at Fort McNair, the footage obtained by CNN reveals. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with Pence about the “backup plan,” and officials tried to figure out how they’d transport hundreds of lawmakers to the Army base.  The extended raw footage shines a devastating light on then-President Donald Trump’s inaction during the riot. Lawmakers are seen working around Trump to secure any help they could get – from the National Guard, federal agencies and local police departments – to defeat the mob he incited.
  • Washington Post: Secret Service Knew Of Capitol Threat More Than A Week Before Jan. 6: The Secret Service had warnings earlier than previously known that supporters of President Donald Trump were plotting an armed attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to records revealed in a congressional hearing Thursday. Secret Service agents in charge of assessing the risks around the protests had been tracking online chats on pro-Trump websites and noted that rallygoers were vowing to bring firearms, target the Capitol for a siege and even kill Vice President Mike Pence. As early as Dec. 26, Secret Service officials were sharing one tipster’s warnings about extremist groups coming to the Capitol with murderous plans. “They think they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped,” the tip read. “Their plan is to literally kill people,” the tipster wrote. “Please, please take this tip seriously and investigate further.” The evidence presented at the hearing adds the Secret Service to a long list of national security agencies who received prescient warnings about the assault protesters planned for Jan. 6, yet failed to respond with urgency or cohesion to prevent the insurrection.

How Election Lies Took Over The Republican Ticket 

  • New York Times: How Election Lies Took Over the Republican Ticket Nationwide: They include candidates for the U.S. House and Senate, and the state offices of governor, secretary of state and attorney general — many with clear shots to victory, and some without a chance. They are united by at least one issue: They have all expressed doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. And they are the new normal of the Republican Party. More than 370 people — a vast majority of Republicans running for these offices in November — have questioned and, at times, outright denied the results of the 2020 election despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, according to a monthslong New York Times investigation. These candidates represent a sentiment that is spreading in the Republican Party, rupturing a bedrock principle of democracy: that voters decide elections and candidates accept results. This skepticism has stretched into political races in every state and is still frequently being raised as a campaign issue, The Times has found, nearly two years after Donald J. Trump was defeated. Hundreds of these candidates are favored to win their races.

Election Conspiracy Theorists Have Trained Thousands Of Poll Watchers For November And Incidents Of Voter Intimidation Are Multiplying 

  • Reuters: ‘Stop The Steal’ Supporters Train Thousands Of U.S. Poll Observers: As the United States enters the final stretch to November’s midterm elections, Reuters documented multiple incidents of intimidation involving an expanding army of election observers, many of them recruited by prominent Republican Party figures and activists echoing Trump’s false theories about election fraud. The widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election as alleged by Trump and his supporters was never proven. Interviews with more than two dozen election officials as well as representatives of groups driven by false theories about election fraud, and an examination of poll-watching training materials, revealed an intensifying grassroots effort to recruit activists. This has heightened alarm that disturbances in this year’s primary contests could foreshadow problems in November’s local, state and national races. Officials and experts worry the campaign will deepen the distrust about America’s election process and lead to further harassment and threats to already besieged election workers. Election officials in three other states — North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada — reported similar incidents. In 16 North Carolina counties alone, officials noted unusually aggressive observers during May’s primary elections, according to a state election board survey. Some attempted to take photographs of sensitive voting equipment or intimidated voters at polling places, in violation of North Carolina’s election laws. During early voting in Arizona’s Pima County, an election observer was told to put away binoculars; another was caught looking at private voter data, and another was asked to stop making comments about “fraudulent elections,” according to a September report by the county recorder’s office reviewed by Reuters. State law forbids voter intimidation and obstructing election workers.

What Experts Are Saying

Elie Honig, former federal and state prosecutor: “Media: @eliehonig to @andersoncooper: ‘The tag line we’ve been hearing from the @January6thCmte is that #DonaldTrump remains ‘a clear and present danger to #democracy.’ That’s a call up the block to @TheJusticeDept. They understand that … consequences will fall to the #DoJ.’” Porter Anderson Tweet 

Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law: “The hearing is putting together so compelling a case that Trump personally schemed to overturn the election results that his refusal to testify will obviously confirm his guilt.” Tweet 

Julian Zelizer, historian at Princeton University: “The theme of today’s 1/6 commit[t]ee: the multi-part plan wasn’t chaos, it wasn’t “delusion,” nor was it a leader who lost control of events. This was a premediated, coordinated, and intentional effort to overturn an election that Trump and his team understood he had lost.” Tweet 

Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “Trump planned, before the election, to declare victory if he lost. He’s a crook. Whether or not his supporters will ever be convinced of it, the country deserves justice for the crimes he committed against it.” Tweet 

Renato Mariotti, former federal prosecutor: “The U.S. Secret Service texts regarding weapons among the crowd on January 6th corroborates Cassidy Hutchinson’s key testimony that Trump was told that the crowd was armed and that he responded that they weren’t there to kill him but would be marching to the Capitol.” Tweet 

Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW): “Evidence that there was a known and understood plan for Donald Trump to claim victory on election night, despite him and his and the VP’s staff knowing that the real results would not be known then, is crucial for intent to show an illegal effort to obstruct government functions.” Tweet 

Barbara McQuade, former US attorney: “Moving documents to hide them from DOJ is the kind of aggravating factor that would make Trump’s conduct an indictable offense.” Tweet 

Norman Eisen, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution: “their last major piece of unfinished business: establishing that the attempted coup they have documented never ended, simply evolved—and is now targeting our elections and our democracy. It  consists of the Trump-led election denier movement that is seeking electoral office to do in the future what failed in 2020: elevate Trump or other GOP candidates whether they actually win or not. The Committee needs to lay out a roadmap of the evidence against Trump and others for prosecutors, civil litigants, and regulators such as state bars. Whether they make formal referrals matters less than presenting the relevant evidence in detailed form—a 21st-century version of the Watergate Road Map.” The New Republic

Kimberly Wehle, former assistant U.S. attorney: “According to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight, 60 percent of Americans who vote in November will have at least one election denier on the ballot. Of the 552 Republicans running for office, 201 fully deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election. In the House of Representatives, 118 election-denier candidates “have at least a 95 percent chance of winning.” If the committee is serious about saving democracy from a successful re-do of Jan. 6th, perhaps it should use its precious remaining weeks of life to turn its focus on colleagues in the Republican party who appear to be hellbent on destroying democracy, regardless of what Trump does in 2024.” The Bulwark 

What Pundits Are Saying

Alyssa Farah Griffin, Trump White House director of strategic communications and The View co-host: “As I’ve said publicly before: Trump knew he lost. Most around him knew he lost. But he chose to lie and many chose to follow him. He’s wholly unfit for future office & is a clear and present danger to American democracy.” Tweet 

Jen Psaki, former Biden WH press secretary and MSNBC host: “This chronological telling—-with additional details—-is so smart—-what he knew when (that he lost, that his claims of fraud were false) and the fact that he proceeded” Tweet 

David Axelrod, Obama administration senior advisor and CNN senior political commentator: “Two most damning parts of this session: Heretofore unseen USSS material, making clear the magnitude of their concern and real-time awareness, And previous seen but damning  footage of Stone and Bannon BEFORE election of plan to deny and resist the results.” Tweet 

Amanda Carpenter, Bulwark writer and CNN contributor: “See lots of people pointing out how Trump could litigate the subpoena and run out the clock. But, to me, the point of issuing the subpoena isn’t to solely get Trump to testify. It’s to show that he won’t. And if he does, well, fine.” Tweet 

Tim Miller, Bulwark writer and MSNBC analyst: “Why didn’t any of these people who thought the election was over on 12/14 quit their jobs and speak out against the president in clear terms between then and 1/6?” Tweet 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Chicago Sun Times: Dollars to doubters? Mega donor Uihlein kicks in millions to help elect Republicans who question election results

Politico: How wireless modems in voting machines could endanger the midterms

US News and World Report: The Growing Fear for American Democracy

January 6 And The 2020 Election

ABC: Oath Keepers discussed possibility of ‘blood in the streets’ on Jan. 6, FBI agent testifies

CNN: Two former Trump administration officials seen at federal courthouse where Jan. 6 grand jury meets

New York Times: Democrats Aren’t Talking About Jan. 6 in Their Campaign Ads

Other Trump Investigations 

CNN: New York attorney general asks court to block Trump Organization from moving assets

New York Times: Trump Forms New Company, Drawing Scrutiny From N.Y. Attorney General

Politico: Supreme Court rebuffs Trump in Mar-a-Lago docs fight

Washington Post: Key Mar-a-Lago witness said to be former White House employee

Opinion

Bloomberg (Tim O’Brien): Jan. 6 Panel Proves Again Trump Must Be Held Accountable

Wall Street Journal (Editorial): What the Jan. 6 Inquiry Accomplished