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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — October 19, 2022

By October 19, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Faith In Democracy Erodes With Nearly Half Of Republicans Reporting Little To No Confidence That The Midterm Election Results Will Be Accurate 

  • Associated Press: Many Remain Critical of State of US Democracy: AP-NORC Poll: Many Americans remain pessimistic about the state of U.S. democracy and the way elected officials are chosen — nearly two years after a divisive presidential election spurred false claims of widespread fraud and a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. Only about half of Americans have high confidence that votes in the upcoming midterm elections will be counted accurately, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, though that’s an improvement from about 4 in 10 saying that just before the 2020 presidential election. Just 9% of U.S. adults think democracy is working “extremely” or “very well,” while 52% say it’s not working well. In a reversal from two years ago, Republicans are now more likely than Democrats to say democracy is not working well. This year, 68% of Republicans feel this way compared with 32% two years ago. The share of Democrats with a sour outlook on how democracy is functioning in the U.S. dropped from 63% to 40%. […] The poll shows 47% of Americans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence that the votes in the 2022 midterm elections will be counted accurately. Confidence is highest among Democrats, 74% of whom say they’re highly confident. On the Republican side, confidence in elections is decidedly mixed: 25% have high confidence, 30% have moderate confidence and 45% have little to no confidence.

Battleground State Election Workers Are The Most Likely To Receive Threats 

  • Axios: Election Workers In Battleground States More Likely To Receive Threats: The FBI says battleground states that are likely to see calls for election audits and recounts — like Georgia — are more likely to see threats and harassment directed at election workers during the midterms. What’s happening: As early voting begins and Election Day draws near, counties are on guard to avoid a repeat of the 2020 election. Catch up quick: After voting officials from the county level on up to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reported threats and harassment from conspiracy theorists and election deniers who alleged the election was stolen. Former Fulton elections employee Shaye Moss testified to the Jan. 6 oversight committee that she endured violent threats and went into hiding after she was falsely accused of conspiring to commit election fraud. Details: As of June 2022, 11% of the more than 1,000 contact reports to the U.S. Department of Justice’s task force monitoring threats to election workers met “federal criteria for further investigative action.”

Trump Admitted In An Interview That He Knew He Was Keeping “Top Secret” Papers At Mar-A-Lago 

  • New York Times: Trump Acknowledged in Interview That Letters to Kim Were ‘Top Secret’: An excerpt from a new audiobook revealed that President Donald J. Trump shared classified letters from Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, with the journalist Bob Woodward and seemed to acknowledge that they were sensitive material that he should not be sharing. “Don’t say I gave them to you,” Mr. Trump said in December 2019, according to a copy of Mr. Woodward’s audiobook obtained by CNN, adding that “nobody else” had the letters and imploring the journalist to “treat them with respect.” The Washington Post reported that a month later, in January 2020, Mr. Woodward also asked to see letters that Mr. Trump had written to the North Korean leader. Mr. Trump replied, “Oh, those are so top secret.” The original letters between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump were among the voluminous number of presidential records that the National Archives tried to recover from Mr. Trump after he left office. Mr. Trump resisted returning the boxes of documents he had taken to his Florida estate, describing them to several advisers as “mine.” The recordings appear to contradict Mr. Trump’s claims that none of the material he took with him from the White House was sensitive, or that the documents were personal records.

In The States 

FLORIDA:  New Video Shows Stunned Floridians Arrested For Voting In DeSantis “Election Integrity” Fear Campaign 

  • Miami Herald: ‘What Is Wrong With This State?’ Video Shows Stunned Floridians Arrested For Voting: When police went to arrest Tony Patterson outside his Tampa home in August, he couldn’t believe the reason. “What is wrong with this state, man?” Patterson protested as he was being escorted to a police car in handcuffs. “Voter fraud? Y’all said anybody with a felony could vote, man.” Body-worn camera footage recorded by local police captured the confusion and outrage of Hillsborough County residents who found themselves in handcuffs for casting a ballot following investigations by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new Office of Election Crimes and Security. The Aug. 18 arrests — conducted hours before DeSantis called a news conference to tout his crackdown on alleged voter fraud — were carried out by state police officers accompanied by local law enforcement. The never-before-seen footage, obtained by the Herald/Times through public records requests, offers a personal glimpse of the effects of DeSantis’ efforts to root out perceived voter fraud. “They’re going to pay the price,” DeSantis said during the news conference announcing the arrests. Of the 19 people arrested, 12 were registered as Democrats and at least 13 are Black, the Herald/Times found.

PENNSYLVANIA: GOP “Election Integrity” Rules Might Force Philadelphia To Scale Back Checking For Double Votes 

  • Philadelphia Inquirer: Philly Might Scale Back A Process For Catching Double Votes — Because Of GOP ‘Election Integrity’ Rules:  Philadelphia elections officials are poised to remove or significantly scale back a procedure meant to catch double votes. Ironically, it’s because of rules Republicans imposed on “election integrity grants.” Otherwise, the city risks losing millions of dollars. The procedure, known as poll book reconciliation, compares mail ballots with poll books from Election Day. If a person is listed in the poll books as voting in person but the city also receives a mail ballot from the same voter, the mail ballot is rejected to ensure only one vote per person counts. The process caught dozens of accidental double votes in 2020, but none in the last three elections. But poll book reconciliation temporarily stops the vote count, sometimes for a day or more. And that appears to conflict with a new state law known as Act 88, which provides state election funding with conditions, including that counting “continue without interruption.” Now local officials have to decide whether to risk millions of dollars by keeping the procedure in place to catch double votes — or expose anew a vulnerability that was addressed in previous elections.

What Experts Are Saying

Thomas Carothers, a senior fellow and co-director of the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Benjamin Press, a research assistant at the Carnegie Endowment: “With the notable exception of the United States, however, backsliding has not affected any long-established peer democracies, such as those in Canada; Northern, Western, and Southern Europe; East Asia; and Oceania. Many of these countries have experienced troubling illiberal tremors in recent years, including the rise of anti-systemic political figures and parties on the far right. But their overall democratic systems remain intact. None show the signs of potential systemic failure that haunt the current U.S. landscape: rampant election denialism, an insurrection incited by a sitting president, and extreme political polarization laced with rising political violence.” Foreign Policy  

Joyce Vance, former US attorney (MSNBC Video): “All of the appearances are that DOJ, the lumbering giants, spring to life in late December or in January and began to investigate approximately on a timeline with the Jan. 6 committee, and I honestly don’t know what to make of that first year” MSNBC Deadline WH Tweet 

Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director (MSNBC Video): “We know from FBI data that… the most lethal, the most violent form of extremist ideology is that which comes from hate based violent ideology, that’s the most lethal, and there’s no sign of it going away” MSNBC Deadline WH Tweet 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Newsweek: The GOP’s Election Fraud Strategy Isn’t New or Fleeting: Experts

NPR: Who counts as Black in voting maps? Some GOP state officials want that narrowed

January 6 And The 2020 Election

The Hill: Kinzinger says Secret Service Jan. 6 inconsistencies ‘pure incompetence’ or ‘potentially very criminal’

NBC: Oath Keeper testifies he was ready to die on Jan. 6 to keep Trump in office

Other Trump Investigations 

CNN: Primary source for Trump-Russia dossier acquitted, handing special counsel Durham another trial loss

New York Times: In Documents Review, Special Master Tells Trump Team to Back Up Privilege Claims

In The States 

CNN: Fact check: Mike Lee’s own texts contradict his debate claims about his effort to overturn the 2020 election