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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — November 15, 2022

By November 15, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Kari Lake Defeated In Arizona In Another Massive Rebuke Of Election Denial 

  • Arizona Republic: Katie Hobbs Elected Arizona’s 5th Female Governor, Defeating Election Denier Kari Lake: Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s Democratic election chief who built a national profile by standing up to false claims about the 2020 presidential election, has won the state’s race for governor. The Associated Press, NBC News and CNN called the race for Hobbs shortly after 7 p.m. Monday, following a nail-biter week of election returns that highlighted the competitiveness of politics in the state. “Democracy is worth the wait,” Hobbs posted on social media before issuing a statement thanking her family, volunteers and staff for their work. “This was not just about an election — it was about moving this state forward and facing the challenges of our generation,” the statement read, ending: “Let’s get to work.”
  • Bloomberg: Kari Lake’s Loss in Arizona Is Biggest Rebuke of Election Denial: Katie Hobbs’s defeat of Kari Lake in the Arizona governor’s race represents the most stinging and high profile defeat of an election denier in the midterms.  During the campaign, Lake repeatedly and relentlessly cast doubt on Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, saying she would not have certified it as governor. As secretary of state, Hobbs oversaw that vote and insisted it was fair.  Arizona was a hotbed of election denial this year and of special significance to former President Donald Trump and his baseless claim of widespread fraud in 2020. This is where Fox News back then called Arizona for Biden, a decision that left Trump fuming. Two other determined election deniers have also lost gubernatorial races: Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Tudor Dixon in Michigan. Their losses, along with those of dozens of others who questioned the results of the 2020 election, marked a clear repudiation by voters of Trump’s “stop the steal” effort. In addition to Lake, the Republican candidate for senator, Blake Masters, and Mark Finchem, who ran for secretary of state, were also defeated.

With A Presidential Announcement Expected Tonight, Trump Is Still In Control Of The Republican Party 

  • Politico: It’s Still Trump’s Party And He’ll Run If He Wants To … Run If He Wants To, Run If He Wants To: Donald Trump’s iron grip over his party may be weakening following Republicans’ lackluster showings in the midterm elections. But as Trump prepares to plunge into another bid for the presidency, he starts as the GOP’s favorite. A new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows that 47 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they would back Trump if the Republican presidential primary were held today. By comparison, 33 percent said they would back Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. No other prospective candidate received above 5 percent in the poll, save former Vice President Mike Pence, who stood exactly at that figure. But if the poll shows the clear path forward for Trump as he readies his third White House run since 2016, it also exhibits the peril ahead. Among all voters surveyed, 65 percent said Trump should probably or definitely not run again (with 53 percent in the definite camp). And while Trump’s standing has not dropped significantly since pre-election (he stood at 48 percent in the most recent Morning Consult poll), DeSantis’ star has risen. The Florida governor was at 26 percent in that last poll.
  • New York Times: Republicans Pushing To Move Past Trump Face One Big Obstacle: His Voters: Trump rallies aren’t where you expect to hear hard-nosed analysis of Donald J. Trump’s chances of winning back the White House. But Chuck Smith, an ardent supporter who recently drove two hours to stand under the scorching Arizona sun to cheer Mr. Trump, was blunt. “I don’t think Trump is a viable person for re-election,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s a wise decision, especially with the way he was attacked — and the way he’s still attacked — it would be a major risk to the Republican Party.” But in the next breath, Mr. Smith followed up with a caveat that could define the Republican Party for months to come. “Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “I would definitely support him if he ran.” That unwavering support is the most significant reason Mr. Trump will enter a presidential contest as his party’s clear front-runner if he announces his bid, as expected, on Tuesday. Although his dominance of Republican politics has led to three disappointing elections in a row for his party, a solid and devoted core of conservative voters appears ready to follow him wherever he leads again — even if into defeat. It’s a painful reality for the cohort of Republicans hoping to move on from Mr. Trump. First they have to find answers to two inevitable questions: How many Trump die-hards are there, and can they be persuaded?

How Election Denial Cost The GOP 

  • Washington Post (Analysis): How Badly Election Deniers Cost The GOP, In 9 Stats:  Back in May, we wrote a piece running down the biggest races in which a GOP election denier, if elected, could exercise significant control over the 2024 election. It named nine candidates for governor and other statewide offices. As of today, it looks like each and every one of them has lost. The latest additions are two secretary of state candidates in Arizona and Nevada. And vote counts released Sunday night in the Arizona governor’s race suggest the only one of the nine who hasn’t lost so far, Kari Lake, is unlikely to break the trend. The 2022 election was a big disappointment for Republicans: They failed to win the Senate, and it looks like they will have only the barest of House majorities. But it was an utter disaster for the most prominent election deniers among them.

January 6 Legal Update:  Brian Kemp To Testify To Fulton County Grand Jury Today, Supreme Court Blocks AZ GOP Attempt To Shield Records, January 6 Committee Plans Next Moves After Trump Refuses Subpoena 

  • Atlanta Journal Constitution: Kemp To Testify Before Fulton Grand Jury Tuesday: Gov. Brian Kemp will testify Tuesday morning before the Fulton County special grand jury examining whether former President Donald Trump and his allies criminally meddled in Georgia’s 2020 elections, according to two sources with knowledge of the appearance. The Republican, who cruised to re-election last week, is among the most high-profile witnesses to testify before the 23-person grand jury. His blockbuster appearance represents a hard-fought victory for the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, which has been angling for Kemp’s testimony for a year-and-a-half.
  • Washington Post: Supreme Court Turns Down Arizona GOP Head’s Request To Shield Records: The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request from the head of the Arizona Republican Party to shield her phone records from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had said it was proper for the committee to issue a subpoena seeking information about calls placed from Kelli Ward’s cellphone between November 2020 and January 2021. The information would not include the content or location of the calls. Ward argued that demanding the information would violate her First Amendment right to freedom of association. “In a first-of-its-kind situation, a select committee of the United States Congress, dominated by one political party, has subpoenaed the personal telephone and text message records of a state chair of the rival political party,” Ward’s lawyers told the Supreme Court.
  • The Hill: Jan. 6 Panel Weighs ‘next Steps’ After Trump Fails To Show For Deposition:  The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol says it is considering “next steps” after former President Trump failed to appear for his Monday deposition following a subpoena last month. In a joint statement from Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the panel bashed Trump for filing a lawsuit Friday challenging the subpoena, accusing him of “hiding” after he was compelled to appear for testimony Monday. “Even though the former President initially suggested that he would testify before the committee, he has since filed a lawsuit asking the courts to protect him from giving testimony. His attorneys have made no attempt to negotiate an appearance of any sort, and his lawsuit parades out many of the same arguments that courts have rejected repeatedly over the last year,” the two said in a statement.

In The States 

ARIZONA:  Arizona Attorney General Race Likely Headed To A Recount 

  • Arizona Republic: Kris Mayes Holds Lead Over Abe Hamadeh In Ariz. Attorney General Election; Recount Appears Likely: Democrat Kris Mayes’ lead over Republican Abe Hamadeh shrunk but held Monday night as Maricopa County released its last large batch of voting results. She now leads by 4,195 votes, or 0.2 percentage points, in the race to become Arizona’s next attorney general, making the prospect of a recount even more likely.  On Sunday, Mayes led by a little over 11,000 votes, or 0.4 percentage points. On Saturday, she led by approximately 20,000 votes, or 1 percentage point. Races with less than a 0.5 percentage-point difference between candidates automatically go to a recount. Hamadeh received more votes in the latest ballot returns from Maricopa County. With approximately 85,000 to 95,000 votes left to count in Arizona’s largest county, the race is heading toward a photo finish.  The final results may not be known until later this week, if not longer, if the final outcome is so close it triggers a recount. Results can change as votes are tabulated and the race could seesaw again.

NEVADA:  Nevada Supreme Court Rejects Another Attempt To Block Nye County Hand Count 

  • Associated Press: Nevada High Court Rejects Plea To Stop County’s Hand-Count: The Nevada Supreme Court denied an emergency writ from two voting rights groups on Monday that sought to shut down a controversial hand-count of all paper ballots in rural Nye County, meaning that the county clerk can continue the hand-counting of ballots that have been counted by machine tabulators. “Having reviewed the petition and answer, we conclude that petitioner has not demonstrated that our extraordinary intervention is warranted at this time,” the justices said in their decision. Officials in the county first started a hand-counting process on Oct. 26 but the Nevada Supreme Court ordered it shut down a day later, siding with the American Civil Liberties Union’s objections to volunteers reading election results aloud. Nye County resumed a revised version of its hand-counting last week after Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske ordered the county to halt its counting until after polls closed. While Nye County commission members have shown support for scrapping voting machines completely, machine tabulators are the primary counting method for this election, and Nye has already reported the results of nearly 21,000 ballots cast. Nye County, home to about 34,000 registered voters, is the most prominent county in the U.S. to change its vote-counting process in reaction to conspiracy theories about election fraud tied to voting machines, though there has been no credible evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of machines.

What Experts Are Saying

Norman Eisen, an author of a new Brookings Institution report (other authors: Donald Ayer, Noah Bookbinder, Gwen Keyes Fleming, Colby Galliher, Joshua Matz, Debra Perlin, and Jason Powell) and House Judiciary Committee co-counsel during Donald Trump’s first impeachment: “‘We are no longer a democracy if an ex-president can get away with conduct that would lead anyone else to be charged.’ While Eisen notes that there might be some exonerating evidence that has yet to come to light, he adds ‘what [evidence] is known is so strong that charges against Trump are likely.’…The report is a sobering reminder of the extent to which a would-be authoritarian would go to retain power illegally. As Eisen tells me, ‘election denial is a danger to the republic, and unless the election denier-in-chief is charged for his past conduct that appears to have crossed the line to criminality, the threat will persist.’” WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin Column | Brookings Report: Fulton County, Georgia’s Trump Investigation

Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington: “American democracy was not upended by the election. And supporters of democracy can take heart from their successes in the fight against Republican authoritarianism and election denialism. But the successes ought not to be exaggerated. American democracy is still under assault, and this week’s election results, while not as horrible as many feared, are still in some ways very horrible. The decisive Gubernatorial victories of Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas keep two seriously reactionary politicians with national ambition in control of two of the largest and most important states in the country.  Kari Lake remains in contention in Arizona, where the votes are still being counted, and it is likely that she will wage a ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign if Democrat Katie Hobbs is declared the winner.” Common Dreams 

Renato Mariotti, former federal prosecutor: “The Fulton County case remains the most likely source of an indictment of Trump, although the Mar-a-Lago document case is more likely to result in a conviction if DOJ indicts Trump.” Tweet 

Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, re: Donald Trump’s January 6 Committee subpoena lawsuit (MSNBC Video): “‘There are other ways of getting their hands on this data, but it’s another example of Trump essentially thumbing his nose at the rule of law,’ Figliuzzi explains. ‘The committee and of course the DOJ can go, and probably already have, to the carriers individually, all the platforms and say we need what you have, and my bet is they’ve done that.’” MSNBC | Tweet 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Axios: Lincoln Project, ABC News alums launching pro-democracy media company

NPR: Election officials feared the worst. Here’s why baseless claims haven’t fueled chaos

Trump 2024

Haaretz: At ZOA Event, Trump Again Attacks U.S. Jews for Supporting Democrats

Politico: Republicans cringe as Trump 2024 approaches

Politico: Club for Growth steps on Trump relaunch with polls showing DeSantis beating him

Washington Post: Trump campaign operation takes shape ahead of expected 2024 announcement

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Bloomberg: Trump’s Jan. 6 Lawsuit Lands Before One of His Judicial Nominees — Once Again

New York Times: F.B.I. Had Informants in Proud Boys, Court Papers Suggest

Politico: Pence: Trump ‘endangered me and my family’

Other Trump Investigations 

Associated Press: Trump exec says he feared firing if he spoke up about scheme

Bloomberg: DOJ Blasts Trump’s ‘Shell Game’ in Mar-a-Lago Document Fight

CNN: New records reveal foreign government spending at Trump’s Washington hotel

New York Times: Trump Family Signs Deal With Saudi Real Estate Developer

New York Times: Giuliani Will Not Face Federal Charges Over Lobbying, Prosecutors Say

Washington Post: Investigators see ego, not money, as Trump’s motive on classified papers

Opinion

New York Times (Tom Scocca): Don’t Be Fooled, Trump’s Hold on the G.O.P. Is Stronger Than Ever

In The States 

Associated Press: Arizona county quick to bat down election misinformation