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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — January 10, 2023

By January 10, 2023No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Rudy Giuliani And Others Subpoenaed In Special Counsel Investigation Of Trump Fundraising 

CNN: Giuliani Subpoenaed Amid Special Counsel Investigation Into Trump’s Fundraising: 

  • Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has subpoenaed Donald Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani, asking him to turn over records to a federal grand jury as part of an investigation into the former president’s fundraising following the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the subpoena. The subpoena, which was sent more than a month ago and has not been previously reported, requests documents from Giuliani about payments he received around the 2020 election, when Giuliani filed numerous lawsuits on Trump’s behalf contesting the election results, the person said. Prosecutors have also subpoenaed other witnesses who are close to Trump, asking specifically for documents related to disbursements from the Save America PAC, Trump’s primary fundraising operation set up shortly after the 2020 election, according to other sources with insight into the probe. Taken together, the subpoenas demonstrate prosecutors’ growing interest in following the money after the 2020 election as part of their sweeping criminal probe around Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss of the presidency.

Fulton County Special Grand Jury Concludes Its Work  

  • Politico: Atlanta-Area Special Grand Jury Completes Trump Investigation:  The Atlanta-area special grand jury investigating efforts by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election has concluded its investigation, according to the state judge overseeing the probe. Judge Robert McBurney acknowledged the conclusion of the investigation in a two-page order, noting that the panel “has now issued its final report,” but it’s unclear what the grand jury put in its report regarding Trump. The special grand jury is expected to make a charging recommendation related to Trump and other targets, about whether their efforts to overturn the 2020 election violated state law. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis must then make the ultimate charging decision after presenting the panel’s findings to a regular grand jury.
  • Washington Post: Fani Willis, The Georgia Prosecutor Investigating Trump, Has Taken On Seemingly Untouchable Targets: Standardized test scores in Atlanta public schools were going up, but the explanation in dozens of schools was not necessarily that students were learning more. Investigators found that teachers were systematically cheating, motivated by incentives to demonstrate improved results. To Fani Willis, a prosecutor in the Fulton County district attorney’s office, it was a criminal conspiracy on a vast scale. Using Georgia’s expansive anti-racketeering law — a statute traditionally used against drug dealers, gang leaders and mafia figures — she and her colleagues won guilty pleas from 21 educators and the convictions of 11 others in 2015 for accepting bonuses and other rewards while students suffered, losing access to remedial education. The episode, which ended with teachers and administrators sentenced to prison, continues to divide the city. Now Willis is considering using the racketeering statute in another sprawling, politically treacherous investigation. The question this time is whether a former president, Donald Trump, conspired with his allies to break the law and attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Willis, Fulton County’s district attorney, finds herself at the center of an inquiry with the potential to make history and influence the course of the next presidential vote.

House GOP Cripples The Office Of Congressional Ethics, Establishes A Subcommittee To Obstruct DOJ Investigations 

  • Washington Post: House Republicans Pass Ethics Changes That Democrats Say Would Hamper Probes: The House on Monday passed a rules package that included changes to how ethics-related complaints about members of Congress are handled. According to a summary of the GOP’s proposed rules changes released last week, the package imposes term limits of eight years for the eight board members of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), an independent body established in 2008 that investigates complaints about sitting members of Congress. Any board members who have exceeded those term limits would be removed. The rules package also requires the OCE board to appoint staff within 30 calendar days, and that the hiring and compensation of those staff members would need to be approved by at least four board members. Democrats and liberal groups decried the proposed changes, saying they would hobble the way the OCE functions.
  • Politico: Mutually Assured Obstruction: House GOP Aims ‘Weaponization’ Panel at DOJ: House Republicans are declaring what amounts to an investigative war on the Biden administration, pledging to probe “ongoing criminal investigations” at the Justice Department. Veterans of some of Congress’ recent major probes, and the department itself, predict that they’ll be told to pound sand. GOP lawmakers are dramatically escalating their standoff with the administration by launching a wide-ranging investigative panel to probe what they call the “weaponization of government.” It’s a broad mandate that will allow the party to look into any government agency or program that it views as suspect, including the FBI, IRS and the intelligence community — making good on a key demand of a band of hardline conservatives who opposed Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s bid for the gavel. And it’s an opening salvo that promises to escalate quickly. The Justice Department is certain to fiercely protect its most sensitive investigative files and prosecutors are simply not going to hand over information on open criminal probes, legal experts say. The resulting conflict promises to erode the already strained relationship between DOJ and congressional Republicans.

Riots In Brazil Show Global Reach Of Trump’s Election Denial 

  • Washington Post: Brazil’s Riot Puts Spotlight On Close Ties Between Bolsonaro And Trump: In August 2021, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s son traveled to Sioux Falls, S.D., to meet with some of the most prominent purveyors of former president Donald Trump’s false claims of mass election fraud. Eduardo Bolsonaro had a dire warning for the group, which included Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former top adviser: Brazil’s electronic voting system was “ridiculous” and vulnerable to mass fraud, he said according to a recording of the event. The gathering was part of the prologue to events that unfolded in Brazil on Sunday, when Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed government buildings — smashing windows and assaulting police — in a striking echo of the pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Like Trump, Bolsonaro had spent months predicting mass fraud and then refused to concede defeat after losing his October election. While no evidence has emerged that Bolsonaro or his son had a direct role in the rioting in Brazil’s capital, it is clear that the family fomented anger against democratic institutions — part of a playbook that reflected their deep ties to Trump and those who fueled his own push to cast doubt on American election results.
  • Rolling Stone: ‘Stop the Steal’ Scoundrel Ali Alexander Reinstated to Twitter Day After Praising Brazilian Riot: The timing could hardly be more troubling. Following the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, and just hours after copy-cat rioting in Brazil that he cheered on, Ali Alexander has been reinstated to Twitter. Alexander is an acolyte of Roger Stone, the political dirty trickster and Trump-pardoned felon, and an ally of Trump himself. He was a key organizer of the Big-Lie-promoting “Stop the Steal” rallies in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, and was instrumental in drawing massive crowds to Washington, D.C., on the day of the Jan. 6 insurrection. In advance of Jan. 6, he’d tweeted incendiary rhetoric including “1776 is always an option” and warned that if efforts to challenge the Electoral College vote count were stymied in Congress, “everyone can guess what me and 500,000 others will do to that building.” The day before the riot, he lead a D.C. crowd in a chant of “Victory or death!“

In The States 

LOUISIANA:  Election Conspiracy Theories Grow In Louisiana Ahead Of 2023 Gubernatorial And Secretary Of State Elections 

  • Baton Rouge Advocate: A Voter Fraud Movement Is Growing In Louisiana. Election Officials Say It’s Baseless: Louisiana might seem an unlikely battleground for claims that the 2020 election was rigged to steal the election from then-President Donald Trump. After all, Trump won Louisiana’s electoral votes by a huge margin, garnering even more votes here than he did in 2016. But a growing movement of Republicans in Louisiana, some linked to the MyPillow CEO and election fraud conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, have spent months pushing a theory that Louisiana’s elections are rife with fraud. While election officials and independent watchdogs say voter fraud is exceedingly rare in Louisiana and elsewhere, the movement could have ramifications on Louisiana’s long-running effort to choose new voting machines, the 2023 election for secretary of state and the broader direction of the Louisiana Republican Party, which dominates statewide politics.

What Experts Are Saying

Andrew Weissmann, lead prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office, re: Fulton special grand jury completing Trump investigation (MSNBC Video): “It is inconceivable to me that the first grand jury having heard all of the evidence… that they’re not going to say that there is probably cause, which is a relatively low standard, to bring charges against the former president” MSNBC’s Deadline White House 

Barb McQuade, former US attorney, re: state-level January 6 investigations (MSNBC Video): “I would think that anybody involved in a conspiracy to undermine the outcome of this election, would be fair game for a crime, but I would focus very much on the events occurring leading up to the 2020 election” MSNBC’s Deadline White House 

Brian Klaas, associate professor in global politics at University College London: “You don’t need Sherlock Holmes to deduce the parallels between January 6th in Washington and the storming of government buildings in Brazil yesterday. Two defeated presidents who refuse to accept reality; two sets of lies aimed at discrediting elections they lost; two violent mobs on a doomed quest to put a loser in power. The similarities even extended to rioters in each mob stealing furniture from the government buildings they stormed, as though they were collecting trophies. This tale of two insurrections is no coincidence. Instead, it’s a classic case of what political scientists refer to as ‘authoritarian learning,’ the diffusion of autocratic tactics across borders. Part of the explanation lies in copycat dynamics, in which a high-profile effort to overturn an election is likely to spur others to do the same. But part of the explanation lies with a more insidious strategy, in which Trump’s political advisers actively sought to replicate January 6th in Brasilia.” The Garden of Forking Paths

Joe Lowndes, professor of political science at the University of Oregon: “The inability of the House GOP to choose the Speaker demonstrates the post-democratic dilemma. The party’s right is no longer concerned with institutional order, nor for that matter with liberal democratic governance at all. The 20 House members who have repeatedly blocked the election of Kevin McCarthy represent, in essence, an authoritarian regime struggling to be born. It contends with an establishment right that also has no interest in democracy, but one that still operates by the institutional rules that have long rewarded it.” Adventures in Post-Democracy: January 6 and The House Leadership Debacle

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Time: ‘Is There Something More Sinister Going On?’ Authorities Fear Extremists Are Targeting U.S. Power Grid

Washington Post (Analysis): Trumpian Election Rejection Goes Global: 

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Politico: No conflict in investigating the investigators investigating him, Perry says

Other Trump Investigations

NBC News: Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to be sentenced Tuesday

Political Violence

New York Times: Suspect in Shootings at Homes and Offices of New Mexico Democrats Is in Custody