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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — October 21, 2022

By October 21, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Democrats Struggle Against Election Deniers In Crucial Secretary Of State Races 

  • New York Times: Democratic Secretary of State Candidates Struggle Against Election Deniers: Ted Pappageorge, the head of Culinary Union Local 226, whipped up the crowd of canvassers into a frenzy on a recent Monday morning, earning him “sí, se puede!” chants. But before he sent the canvassers out to knock on doors for Cisco Aguilar, the Democratic candidate of secretary of state, he had a question. “Does anybody know what the secretary of state does in the state of Nevada?” Mr. Pappageorge asked. A few murmured “voting” and a half dozen raised their hands. The buzzing quieted, before Mr. Pappageorge offered his take: The office oversees the election and “makes sure it doesn’t get stolen by any of these MAGA extreme Republicans.” The cheering returned. Such is the plight of many Democratic candidates for secretary of state, an office that has long lived in political obscurity and rarely inspired great passions among voters. But in 2022, after secretaries of state helped thwart Donald J. Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat, races for the post have taken on new urgency. Facing off against Republican candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election, Democrats have poured tens of millions into the contests, casting them as battles for the future of American democracy. If only they could get voters to see it that way. Instead, voters remain focused on rising inflation, economic woes, education and other issues that are outside the purview of the official duties of a secretary of state. And while a vast majority of Americans view democracy as under threat, a striking few see it as a top issue, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll. Democrats are facing other challenges. Many of the candidates are relative unknowns, leaving their futures heavily dependent on what voters think of their party or the party’s high-profile candidates for Senate or governor.
  • Axios: Down-Ballot Alarms Drive National Attention To Local Races: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is getting involved in secretary of state races for the first time in the group’s history, worried about politicization and the integrity of future results if election-deniers are elected in key states. Driving the news: The group is spending $1 million on digital campaigning, social media ads and direct mail to educate voters about where candidates stand on election administration and voting rights in Arizona, Minnesota and Nevada, said senior campaign strategist Zara Haq. “It’s important to make sure the chief election officer is running elections in a nonpartisan way and that they’re committing to certifying results,” Haq said. Last week, the ACLU and its affiliate chapter in North Carolina announced a $1.1 million campaign focused on educating voters about state Supreme Court races and their role in determining abortion access. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said election disinformation “leads [voters] to policy disagreements, which of course are OK — but it also leads them to supporting candidates who put their stock in conspiracy theories.”  The big picture: The intervention by the ACLU comes amid a wave of massive last-minute spending on down-ballot races by Democrats concerned that GOP wins could erode election integrity in 2024 — as well as abortion rights.

Kelly Loeffler And Pat Cipollone Testify To Georgia Grand Jury.  Lindsey Graham Ordered To Testify Soon.  

  • CNN: Former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Former Us Sen. Kelly Loeffler Testify To Grand Jury In Georgia Investigating 2020 Election Interference: Prosecutors in Georgia have secured grand jury testimony from two prominent witnesses – former US Sen. Kelly Loeffler and former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone – in their investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in that state, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. Their grand jury appearances in recent months, which have not been previously reported, highlight the wide-ranging investigation underway as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis probes efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to try to keep him in power. Cipollone was the top White House lawyer at the end of the Trump administration and attended some of the meetings where Trump and his allies discussed ways to subvert the election results. He was among the former President’s advisers who pushed back along with the Justice Department, which found no evidence to support the claims of widespread fraud. Cipollone has provided testimony to the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, as well as to a federal grand jury in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation, where he invoked Trump’s privilege claims to decline to answer some questions. He declined to comment on questions about the grand jury. The revelation that Loeffler testified before the grand jury comes as hundreds of Loeffler’s text messages have surfaced, revealing new details about the Georgia Republican’s correspondence about efforts to challenge the election in the months leading up to and immediately following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
  • New York Times: Lindsey Graham Must Testify in Georgia Elections Inquiry, Court Rules:  A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that Senator Lindsey Graham must appear before the special grand jury that is investigating efforts by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss in Georgia, although the court set limits on the kinds of questions Mr. Graham could be asked. The ruling means that Mr. Graham, at some date after the Nov. 8 midterm elections, will most likely have to travel to the Fulton County courthouse in downtown Atlanta to answer questions about phone calls he made to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in the weeks after the 2020 election. In a court document issued this summer, Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court wrote that Mr. Graham, in the course of those phone calls, “questioned Secretary Raffensperger and his staff about re-examining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump.”

Far Right Figures Are Training Thousands Of Poll Watchers 

  • New York: Cleta Mitchell Is Training Thousands Of Trump Loyalists To Monitor The Polls On Election Day What Could Go Wrong?: I don’t care what anybody says. You can tell me I’m ‘the Big Lie.’ Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Cleta Mitchell had just gotten into her car from her home in central North Carolina for a long drive east. She didn’t want to talk at all — “It’s violating my principles talking to you,” she said — after so much of the mainstream media had, in her view, willfully distorted what she was up to, portraying her as nothing less than the intellectual godmother of an effort to rip American democracy from its very foundations. Despite the focus of the political class on the many Republican candidates who refuse to accept that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Mitchell has engaged in something more immediate: harnessing the energy of the angry Trumpian faithful to embed themselves in the guts of the nation’s election machinery, believing the apparatus of poll workers and election observers and U.S. Postal Service employees is biased against conservatives. “We have to be in the election offices, in the election system, in the same way that parents need to be a presence in the school boards and in the school,” she said when we finally spoke last month of her mission to recruit thousands of election workers and volunteer poll watchers. “You can’t delegate these things to government ministers. You need to have citizen-engagement oversight.” After the 2020 election, Mitchell started the Election Integrity Network as part of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a think tank that serves as a sort of Trump administration-in-exile. CPI, which has raised tens of millions of dollars in dark money to help Trump-related causes, wears its connection to January 6 proudly: According to a report in Grid News, the group and its affiliates employed at least 20 people involved in the Capitol riot and over the summer hosted a gathering with the theme “Hot Gulag Summer” that had cocktails like the Capitol Attaquiri, Insurrection on the Beach, and the Mostly Peaceful Mojito.
  • Daily Beast: Flynn Group Recruits Cops, Vets for ‘One More Mission’—to Watch Election Sites: A conservative group led by former Trump national security adviser and election denier Michael Flynn is trying to recruit thousands of police officers to work as poll monitors on Election Day—and reaching out to QAnon conspiracy theorists to aid in its recruitment effort. Dubbed “One More Mission,” the group bills itself as a nonpartisan effort to recruit military veterans, as well as police officers and other emergency workers, to monitor polls in an effort to “defend our Constitutional right to vote.” “Our team wanted to find an apolitical solution, a business solution, if you will,” a man in one recruitment video says. One More Mission’s promotional materials argue that police and veterans are the most trusted figures in the United States and that they should therefore be used to certify to the public that elections are legitimate. In a late September press release announcing its launch, the group claimed to be a politically independent solution to fears of voter fraud. […] In an interview with The Daily Beast, a spokeswoman for One More Mission initially said she wasn’t sure who funded the organization. In reality, despite its claims to be nonpartisan, One More Mission is funded by another group led by some of the most prominent pro-Trump election deniers in the country. In a single sentence on its website, One More Mission reveals that it’s funded by the America Project, a group of people convinced the 2020 election was stolen that is led by Flynn, his brother Joseph, and millionaire former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.

Steve Bannon To Be Sentenced In Contempt Of Congress Case Today

  • CNN: What To Know About Friday’s Sentencing Of Steve Bannon For Contempt Of Congress:  Steve Bannon, the ex-adviser to former President Donald Trump, will be sentenced on Friday for criminal contempt of Congress after defying of a subpoena from the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection. The sentencing will unfold in a federal courtroom in Washington, DC. Judge Carl Nichols – a Trump appointee – will hand down the penalty in proceedings that will begin at 9 a.m. ET. The sentencing is a milestone moment in the Justice Department’s response to January 6, as prosecutors say that by “flouting” the committee’s subpoena, Bannon “exacerbated” the assault on the rule of law that the US Capitol attack amounted to. It may also bolster the leverage lawmakers have in securing cooperation of witnesses resistant to participating in congressional investigations. Bannon was convicted this summer – by a jury that deliberated for less than three hours – for two counts of contempt: one for his refusal to testify in the investigation and the other for his failure to turn over the documents the committee demanded. Each count carries a maximum imprisonment of one year, though the sentence that will be handed down Friday will likely be shorter. Bannon is also appealing his case, as his lawyers continue to claim that he believed executive privilege concerns precluded his cooperation with the House investigation. Prosecutors countered that argument in court filings showing that Trump’s own attorney was not on board with Bannon stiffing the House probe.

In The States 

ARIZONA: Voter Intimidation Reported From Self-Appointed Ballot Drop Box “Monitors” 

  • Washington Post: In Arizona, Alleged Voter Intimidation At Drop Boxes Worries Officials: The report landed in the Arizona secretary of state’s online portal Monday night, around dinnertime. It contained an urgent message. “There’s a group of people hanging out near the ballot dropbox filming and photographing my wife and I as we approached the dropbox and accusing us of being a mule,” said the report, which was written by a voter in the Phoenix suburbs and obtained by The Washington Post. “They took … photographs of our license plate and of us and then followed us out the parking lot in one of their cars continuing to film.” For months in this vast desert swing state, elections officials and democracy advocates have worried that bands of activist observers hunting for fraud will harass and intimidate voters. Citizen watchdogs, organized and freelance, have advertised stakeout events to monitor the goings-ons in parking lots and other drop box locations as voters deposit their early ballots ahead of Election Day. Monday’s report, which emanated from a drop box in Mesa, just off a major roadway, was the first solid evidence that those fears might come true. Surveillance video shows a man driving an SUV up to the drop box in an otherwise deserted parking lot. As he returns to his vehicle after depositing papers into the box, he stops, appearing to engage with someone off camera for several seconds. He then gets back into the SUV and reverses. The Post obtained the video through a public records request to Maricopa County elections officials. By Wednesday, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), who oversees elections here, referred the matter to the U.S. Justice Department and the Arizona attorney general.

TEXAS:  Harris County Asks For Federal DOJ Election Monitors As State Officials Announce Plan To Monitor Vote

  • New York Times: Texas County Asks for U.S. Election Monitors as State Plans to Send Inspectors: Officials from Harris County in Texas on Thursday requested federal election monitors from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division after the State of Texas confirmed this week that it would send a contingent of election inspectors there during the midterms in November. The state’s move added a layer of scrutiny tied to an active examination of vote counts from 2020 that former President Donald J. Trump had sought. But that step quickly drew criticism from some officials in Harris, Texas’ most populous county, which includes Houston. They accused the state of meddling in the county’s election activities as early in-person voting is about to begin on Monday in Texas. Christian D. Menefee, the county’s attorney, said in a statement on Thursday that the state’s postelection review was politically driven and initiated by Mr. Trump. Still, he said, the county would cooperate with the inspectors. “We’re going to grant them the access the law requires, but we know state leaders in Austin cannot be trusted to be an honest broker in our elections, especially an attorney general who filed a lawsuit to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” Mr. Menefee said. “We cannot allow unwarranted disruptions in our election process to intimidate our election workers or erode voters’ trust in the election process.”

What Experts Are Saying

Ben Berwick, a counsel at Protect Democracy: “‘One of my biggest concerns with someone like Jim Marchant in that role [secretary of state] is that they can use that platform to do exactly the opposite, and exacerbate or spread disinformation,’ said Ben Berwick, a counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan organization focused on election issues. ‘The idea of putting these people in charge of our elections is nuts,’ Mr. Berwick said. ‘Many of these candidates have said that they would not have certified the 2020 election, and there is good reason to believe they will use their power to try to manipulate the results if their preferred candidate doesn’t win in 2024.’” New York Times 

Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University: “The midterms could turn supporters of election denialism into the new Freedom Caucus – the Tea Party Republicans who came to Washington after the 2010 midterms and organized into a powerful faction in the House GOP within a few years. They could be a driving force in a new majority that pushes anti-democratic policies to the very top of the Republican agenda.” CNN Opinion: Why there may be no turning back from Trumpism

Norm Eisen, Brookings Institute senior fellow (CNN Video): “The criminal case against Trump for defrauding the US after the ’20 election was already powerful[.] But the new Eastman emails make it devastating. I explained @CNN @ErinBurnett @OutFrontCNN w/ @OMGrisham” Tweet 

Timothy Snyder, Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University: “Democracy might or might not have a future. The signs, in general, are not good. The tendency, also in this country, is not encouraging. Our republic might have only a few years left…I try to make the case that the future is democracy, or it is not at all. We are used to people telling us that we have to choose between freedom and security. In fact, we have to choose both to get either.” Thinking about…Substack 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of Italian and history at New York University: “Authoritarian states puff up personality cults for two main reasons. When they fear a destabilization of the social order due to an economic downturn and/or growing discontent, and when there are ongoing or planned domestic crackdowns and/or foreign aggressions. At such moments, illiberal states saturate the public sphere with images of the leader, so he will appear both omnipotent and omnipresent.” Lucid Substack 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

New York Times: How Disinformation Splintered and Became More Intractable

Talking Points Memo: There Are 19 Days Until Election Day, But Americans Already Don’t Trust The Midterm Results

January 6 And The 2020 Election

CNBC: Trump lashes out at judge who said former president knowingly pushed false voter fraud case

NBC: DOJ says it needs more money for the Jan. 6 probe. The next spending bill may be its last chance.

New York Times: Jurors at Oath Keepers Trial Get Panoramic View of Chaos on Jan. 6

Politico: Prosecutors detail Oath Keepers’ mounting frustration with Trump as Jan. 6 approached

Politico: Trump taps firm to handle his Jan. 6 committee subpoena

Other Trump Investigations 

CNN: Trump adviser Kash Patel has appeared before grand jury in Mar-a-Lago document probe

New York Times: Trump Claims He Owns White House Pardon and Immigration Policy Records

Opinion

New York Times (Jamelle Bouie): There Is a Way to Make America Safe for Democracy

In The States 

Arizona Republic: How might Arizona elections change under Lake or Hobbs? Here’s what the governor candidates would do

Associated Press: GOP’s Georgia challenge: Persuading Trump backers to vote

Chicago Tribune: Shadows of Trump’s false stolen election claims hang over Illinois GOP ‘election integrity’ efforts

CNN: Texas secretary of state’s office announces inspection of general election count in most populous county less than week before early voting