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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — October 31, 2022

By October 31, 2022No Comments

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Poll Workers Train For Conflicts As Federal Law Enforcement Warns Of “Heightened Threat”To Elections From Domestic Extremists

  • CBS: Government Warns Of “Heightened Threat” To 2022 Elections, Fueled By Rise In Domestic Violent Extremism: Less than two weeks before the 2022 elections, the U.S. government is warning of a “heightened threat” to the midterm contests, fueled by a rise in domestic violent extremism, or DVE, and driven by ideological grievances and access to potential targets, according to a joint intelligence bulletin obtained by CBS News.   “Potential targets of DVE violence include candidates running for public office, elected officials, election workers, political rallies, political party representatives, racial and religious minorities, or perceived ideological opponents,” the bulletin, published Friday, stated.  The bulletin was issued on the same day that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was violently attacked by a man who broke into their home and demanded, “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?”
  • Associated Press: Poll Workers Train For Conflict: ‘a Little Nervous? I Am”: Milwaukee’s top election official surveyed about 20 poll workers gathered in a classroom in a city building stuffed with election supplies, then spoke frankly about the tense environment they may face next week when the city expects more people watching their work than ever before. “So who is worried about observer disruptions?” Claire Woodall-Vogg, head of the Milwaukee Election Commission, asked the group. “Who has read things or heard things on the news, and you’re a little nervous? I am. I’ll raise my hand,” she said, smiling. A few of the workers raised their hands, too. They’re not alone in their concern: Election officials across the country are bracing for confrontational poll watchers fueled by lies about the legitimacy of the 2020 election spread by former President Donald Trump and others, even after Trump’s loss was upheld by repeated reviews, audits and recounts, and courts rejected legal challenges.

“Stop The Steal” Tactics Are Coming Again As Republicans Repeat The Trump 2020 Playbook 

  • USA Today: Trouble Ahead? Most Republicans Don’t Trust Midterm Election Count To Be Fair, Poll Finds: With Election Day a week away, almost two-thirds of Republicans aren’t prepared to trust the midterm results, saying they worry the vote count could be manipulated. The findings in a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll portray a political landscape primed for lawsuits, recounts and conspiracy theories to follow the 2022 election, even as former president Donald Trump continues to press the debunked argument that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. By nearly 2-1, 62%-32%, Republicans say they are worried the midterm results could be manipulated. In contrast, Democrats overwhelmingly trust the count to be fair and accurate, 76%-21%.
  • Vox: ‘Stop The Steal’ Conspiracies Are Coming For Swing State Ballot Boxes: In the lead-up to the November midterm elections, groups that have allied themselves with former President Donald Trump and Republicans have encouraged people to stake out polling sites — with the explicit goal of building a case to challenge election outcomes, introducing a new facet to the efforts to overturn the 2020 election. […]  These activities are contributing to an environment around the upcoming election so volatile that the Department of Justice addressed it publicly at a news conference last week. Attorney General Merrick Garland there said that “the Justice Department has an obligation to guarantee a free and fair vote by everyone who’s qualified to vote and will not permit voters to be intimidated” around the midterm elections.
  • Daily Beast: Dems Sound The Alarm Over Gop’s New ‘Stop The Steal’ Threats:  With the threat of another GOP “Stop the Steal” movement in Pennsylvania looking increasingly real, the campaign arm for House Democrats is telling candidates to lawyer up. Former President Donald Trump has reportedly been telling Republican allies, according to Rolling Stone, to prepare “scorched-earth legal tactics” to challenge election results—particularly in Philadelphia. In response to those threats, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent an email to Democratic candidates in Pennsylvania this week urging them to “identify a local attorney for your campaign.” That lawyer, the DCCC email said, should be available both on and after Election Day. The DCCC is also asking candidates to provide the campaign committee with the name of their lawyer, the name of their firm, and their contact information. The DCCC also warned candidates who are lawyers not to rely on their own legal prowess. In other words, the DCCC is taking the threat of legal challenges seriously.

Republican Campaigns Are Filled With White Nationalists And Conspiracy Theorists 

  • Mother Jones: GOP Secretary Of State Candidates Scheduled To Appear With A White Nationalist And Conspiracy Theorists: An ally of white nationalists; a former CEO and conspiracy theorist who tried to convince Donald Trump to use the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election; an Ohio math teacher who claims he discovered an algorithm showing that virtually every county in the United States was hacked to prevent Trump’s reelection two years ago—these are people with whom Republican secretary of state candidates have forged alliances.  Mark Finchem, Jim Marchant, and Kristina Karamo, each an election denialist and a GOP contender for secretary of state in, respectively, Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan, were scheduled to appear October 29 at a self-described “Florida Election Integrity Conference 2.0” in Orlando. Also on the bill: other proponents of Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen from him. The event, one in a series of such conferences being mounted by 2020 truthers across the country, shows how these Republican candidates are closely tied to right-wing extremism.
  • Jewish Insider: Laxalt Campaign Paid Thousands To Political Operative Linked To Twitter Account That Denigrated Jews, Women: Until it was suddenly removed from Twitter on Thursday, an anonymous account called “LaxaltStan” — which spent much of its time posting bigoted comments denigrating Jews, women and gay and transgender people, among other groups — had made sure to emphasize in an all-caps disclaimer that it was “NOT AFFILIATED” with Adam Laxalt, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Nevada. But a review of past social media activity contradicts that assertion, linking the account to a right-wing political operative who has received payments from the Laxalt campaign as recently as late August, according to filings from the Federal Election Commission. In a now-deleted tweet uncovered on the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine, the anonymous user behind the account directly identified himself as Michael Pecjak, a conservative activist from Nevada who has previously served as a campaign staffer for a former Republican House candidate in the Las Vegas area, among other roles.
  • Rolling Stone: Dr. Oz’s Campaign Is Stocked With Jan. 6 Rally Attendees:  IN HIS RUN for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat, Mehmet “Dr.” Oz has tried to convince voters that — despite his close ties to Donald Trump — he’s moderate enough to represent their battleground state. Most notably, while the former president falsely insists the 2020 election was stolen, Oz has at times recognized its legitimacy. Oz’s tact is a departure from the state’s other high-profile Republican, Doug Mastriano, who’s running for governor with a rapturous embrace of Trump’s election lies. But it’s Oz’s approach that appears to be working: While the polls show Mastriano floundering, Oz is running a close race against Democrat John Fetterman. But while Oz pays lip service to the 2020 election results, he has quietly loaded up his 2022 campaign with true believers in Trump’s “Big Lie” — including ones who attended Trump’s infamous Jan. 6 rally aimed at nullifying Joe Biden’s victory. According to records reviewed by Rolling Stone, at least two Oz campaign staffers attended Trump’s Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C. The rally, in which Trump declared the election stolen and encouraged supporters to “fight like hell” to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn it, directly preceded the deadly Capitol riot. 

January 6  Committee Obtains Emails Showing Planning Of Post-2020 Election Crime

  • CNN: January 6 Committee Obtains Eight Emails Showing Possible Planning Of Post-Election Crime: The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol has obtained eight emails from late 2020 that a judge determined show Donald Trump and his lawyers planning to defraud courts and obstruct the congressional vote on the presidency. A new court filing from Trump’s then-attorney John Eastman disclosed that the House said it had accessed the emails on Friday. The House probe has been fighting for the records for months, and a federal judge cleared the way for the committee to receive them in recent weeks, calling them possible evidence of the planning of crimes on Trump’s behalf. Eastman had tried several last-ditch attempts to hold off the committee. The panel declined to comment to CNN. The emails that the committee finally has accessed include four communications between Trump attorneys that appear to indicate they knew details they submitted to courts to challenge the election were false, and four emails that reveal them discussing filing lawsuits as a way to hold off congressional certification of Trump’s electoral loss, Judge David O. Carter previously revealed. One of the emails describes concern the lawyers had about submitting a declaration signed by Trump himself in a lawsuit challenging the election, which said the election fraud allegations it presented to the court were true, the judge’s previous opinion revealed. The Trump-signed statement was sent to court, even though the lawyers knew the allegations within weren’t sound, according to the court record.

Republicans Vilified Nancy Pelosi For Years, Stoking Right Wing Hate.  Now They’re Spreading Lies And Misinformation About The Attack On Her Husband. 

  • Washington Post: Elon Musk, Right-Wing Figures Push Misinformation About Pelosi Attack: Elon Musk and a wide range of right-wing personalities cobbled together misreporting, innuendo and outright falsehoods to amplify misinformation about last week’s violent assault on Paul Pelosi to their millions of online followers. A forum devoted to former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s right-wing radio show alerted its 78,000 subscribers to “very strange new details on Paul Pelosi attack.” Roger Stone, a longtime political consigliere to former president Donald Trump, took to the fast-growing messaging app Telegram to call the assault on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband an “alleged attack,” telling his followers that a “stench” surrounded mainstream reporting about the Friday break-in that left Pelosi, 82, hospitalized with a skull fracture and other serious injuries. The skepticism didn’t stay in right-wing echo chambers but seeped also into the feeds of popular online personalities, including Musk, Twitter’s new owner. “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” he wrote Sunday morning, pointing his 112 million followers to a sensationalist account of the episode published by a site known for spreading right-wing misinformation before deleting the tweet several hours later. The rush to sow doubt about the assault on Pelosi’s husband illustrates how aggressively influential figures on the right are seeking to dissuade the public from believing facts about the violence, seizing on the event to promote conspiracy theories and provoke distrust. The House speaker has long been a bugbear for the right, which has intensified its rhetorical blitz on her in recent years — even as extreme threats against members of Congress have increased.
  • New York Times: Pelosi, Vilified By Republicans For Years, Is A Top Target Of Threats: The attack on Ms. Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, on Friday, which left him with a fractured skull and appeared to be part of a planned attack on the speaker herself, came after a yearslong campaign by Republicans to demonize and dehumanize Ms. Pelosi in increasingly ugly ways. For the better part of two decades, Republicans have targeted Ms. Pelosi, the most powerful woman in American politics, as the most sinister Democratic villain of all, making her the evil star of their advertisements and fund-raising appeals in hopes of animating their core supporters. The language and images have helped to fuel the flames of anger at Ms. Pelosi on the right, fanned increasingly in recent years by a toxic stew of conspiracy theories and misinformation that has thrived on the internet and social media, with little pushback from elected Republicans. Ms. Pelosi is now one of the most threatened members of Congress in the country. After the grisly assault on Mr. Pelosi, 82, many Republican lawmakers and leaders denounced the violence, but hardly any spoke out against the brutal political discourse that has given rise to an unprecedented wave of threats against elected officials. Most instead tried to link the incident to rising crime rates across the country that the party has made a centerpiece of its campaign message ahead of the midterm elections that are just days away.

Attack On Paul Pelosi Highlights Rising Fears Of Political Violence 

  • Axios: Pelosi Attack Stokes Congress’ Fears: “Somebody Is Going To Die”: Members of Congress are sounding new alarms about their personal security — and broader concerns about what the drumbeat of threats against prominent political figures means for them and for the country. Why it matters: Friday’s attack against Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband hit especially hard because of where it happened: inside the personal residence of the woman second in line to the presidency. The big picture: Violence and threats of violence against lawmakers — as well as judges, election workers, federal law enforcement and other public officials — are on the rise, and security is struggling to keep pace. “Somebody is going to die,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) told Axios.
  • Politico: Law Enforcement Agencies Rush To Assess New Threats To Lawmakers: Law enforcement officials across the country are scrambling to assess the threats of physical attacks on politicians or election officials in the coming days, according to two local officials and two other people familiar with the matter. The growing anxiety comes just one day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was violently attacked in his San Francisco home. The alleged perpetrator, David DePape, reportedly entered the house attempting to locate the speaker, who at the time was in Washington D.C. The resulting attack sent shockwaves through California and the nation’s capital and raised difficult questions about the rise of threats against politicians and the precautions being taken to protect them.

In The States 

ARIZONA: Cochise County Officials Say Hand Counting Of Ballots Is Back On

  • Arizona Republic: Another Twist In Arizona’s Rural Cochise County: Officials Say Hand Count Of All Ballots Is Back On:  Election drama in a rural Arizona county took another turn Friday, the most recent twist in five days in a dispute over ballot counting in next month’s election. Cochise County officials now intend to hand count all ballots cast in the Nov. 8 election, officials said Friday. Such a hand count is illegal under Arizona law, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has said, and Friday’s events have revived a dispute that could lead to a lawsuit.

ARIZONA: Federal Judge Allows Drop Box Monitoring By Armed Activists To Continue 

  • Arizona Republic: Federal Judge Rejects Emergency Injunction In Ballot Drop Box Monitor Lawsuit: U.S. District Court Judge Michael Liburdi will not approve an emergency injunction to stop ballot drop box monitors from gathering outside Arizona voter locations. The federal judge’s decision comes days after two voting rights groups filed a legal challenge targeting conservative group Clean Elections USA, which has organized drop box surveillance in the Phoenix area, and its founder, Melody Jennings. The Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans, a progressive grassroots organization that supports seniors’ issues, and Voto Latino, a nonprofit focused on getting out the young Latino vote, claimed in court documents that Jennings coordinated a “campaign of vigilante voter intimidation.”

FLORIDA:  Fear Of Prosecution Is Preventing Some Eligible Floridians From Voting 

  • HuffPost: Some Eligible Ex-Felons Fear Voting Because Of Ron DeSantis: When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called a press conference in August to announce illegal voting charges against 20 Floridians with prior felony convictions ― all of whom seem not to have intentionally broken the law, but rather fallen victim to a confusing voter registration system ― a chill went over the state. As a result, some would-be voters who actually are qualified to register, thanks to a constitutional amendment to restore former felons’ voting rights that Florida voters approved four years ago, are nevertheless passing on the opportunity because they’re worried they’ll go back to prison.

What Experts Are Saying

John M. Sides, professor and William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair in the department of political science at Vanderbilt University: “I think what is concerning to me is that if people who lose free and fair elections will not accept that outcome and will actively work to undermine it or subvert it. That, to me, is the biggest threat to democracy. And here, again, I think you made a reference a little while ago to how Trump had changed the way that Republican politicians think they need to act and talk. And I think this is one of the examples of that.” New York Times’ The Ezra Klein Show

Michael Berkman, political science professor and director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University: “‘Coming down from elites – from the former president, from leaders within the Republican Party, from many candidates – is the perpetuation of this idea that something was stolen, that these elections are not legitimate,’ said Michael Berkman, a Penn State professor who directs the university’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy. They study what it takes to nurture democratic institutions, in the U.S. and abroad. [Robert] Costa asked, ‘In the United States people often say it can’t happen here, the rise of a hard-line, nationalistic, anti-democratic government. But could it?’ ‘Oh, absolutely,’ Berkman replied. ‘I mean, I think that the thing to remember about democratic erosion is that it’s most likely to happen from within. We’re all watching what’s happening in Ukraine and impressed and proud of the Ukrainians, how they’re standing up and fighting for their democracy. But democracy doesn’t usually die through coups or invasion. It usually dies from within. An authoritarian-oriented leader is elected, and then they start to change the rules. They start to change who the other people in office are, start to change the referees. And you start to eat away at norms, start to eat away at guardrails. You start to erode people’s acceptance and the legitimacy of institutions that are essential to democratic rule. ‘And you can end up in a very unfortunate place.’” CBS News 

Michael Jensen, Senior Researcher at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland: “Jensen, who is studying extremist violence, said he’s been updating data lately for the number of reported incidents and was startled to see ‘a tremendous increase’ in threats and intimidation against local politicians and judges. ‘There’s always been threats against the president. There’s always been threats against senators and governors, but now you’re getting local school board members,’ Jensen said. ‘They don’t have the security and the protection. A local school board member, a health board member, an election volunteer — they’re not walking around with bodyguards. They don’t have a Marshal Service protecting them.’ Jensen said Jan. 6 was a wake-up call, as well as a missed chance for an off-ramp to the political extremism that is steadily spilling into violence.‘There was an opportunity for the more moderate elements of the Republican Party to distance themselves from the more radical elements and marginalize them, and be the start of the end of this wave,’ Jensen said. ‘The exact opposite happened. What we saw instead was a doubling down on moving extremism into the mainstream.’” Washington Post 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Associated Press: Confident GOP unifies behind candidates once seen as risky

CNN: This is the late message some Democrats believe could make a difference in close elections

The Guardian: US voters with disabilities face maze of new restrictions

NBC: In 5 key battlegrounds, most GOP state legislative nominees are election deniers, report finds

NBC: How ‘mule watchers’ evolved from a Truth Social meme into a ballot drop box patrol

NBC: Liz Cheney launches TV ad targeting Arizona election deniers

New York Times: It’s 2024. Trump Backers Won’t Certify the Election. What Next, Legally?

Politico: Kari Lake lends MAGA star power to two GOP governor hopefuls

Votebeat: Is this election the year predictions of trouble at the polls come true?

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Axios: Mike Pence’s new book reveals key moment before Jan. 6

NBC: Elected official from Connecticut admits he entered Capitol during Jan. 6 attack

Washington Post: Inside the secretive effort by Trump allies to access voting machines

Washington Post: White House rejects promoting general involved in Capitol riot response

Washington Post: Key Proud Boys Jan. 6 co-conspirator pleads guilty, Tarrio lawyer says

Other Trump Investigations 

Associated Press: ‘Vicious, biased’: Trump assails judge in NY fraud lawsuit

Washington Post: Top national-security prosecutor joins Trump Mar-a-Lago investigation

Political Violence

Associated Press: Violent Attack On Paul Pelosi Latest Shock In Country On Edge About Threats To Democracy: 

Associated Press: Suspect in assault at Pelosi home had posted about QAnon

Associated Press: Paul Pelosi Attack Highlights Rising Threats To Lawmakers

Axios: Pennsylvania man pleads guilty after Rep. Swalwell death threats

CBS: Suspect in Paul Pelosi attack had list of targets, law enforcement sources say

CNN: Suspect in Paul Pelosi attack had bag with zip ties, source says

Los Angeles Times: Accused Pelosi attacker David DePape spread QAnon, other far-right, bigoted conspiracies

Vice: Man Accused of Attacking Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Left Trail of Far-Right Hate

Washington Post: Attack On Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Follows Years Of GOP Demonizing Her: 

In The States 

Associated Press: Wisconsin ballot spoiling is a no-go after court upholds ban

CBS: Belief in the Ballot: Republicans in Arizona running on claims of election fraud

Daily Beast: The Democrat Trying to Save Arizona Elections From a Big Lie Fanatic

Washington Post: How one small-town lawyer faced down the plans of election skeptics