Defend Our Country Weekly: What to Know for the Weekend

By Isabella Paquette

This week, progress continues to unfold in investigations into Donald Trump’s interference in the 2020 election with subpoenas for his family members and closest allies. While he and his allies are one step closer to being held accountable for trying to overturn the election, MAGA Republicans across the country continue to push conspiracies and anti-voter agendas. The fight to defend our country from MAGA Republicans is ongoing. 

Here’s what you need to know for the weekend: 

Main Points for the Weekend:

1. The special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s interference in the 2020 election has subpoenaed Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and former Vice-President Mike Pence. Each of the three surrounded the former president on and around January 6 and the information they can share with investigators is essential for holding Trump and his allies accountable. 

• • Top point to make: Trump must be held accountable for his criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of an election he knew he lost.
    

• • If you read one thing: New York Times, 2/22/23: Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Subpoenaed in Jan. 6 Investigation. “The decision by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to subpoena Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner underscores how deeply into Mr. Trump’s inner circle Mr. Smith is reaching, and is the latest sign that no potential high-level witness is off limits… Both testified before the Jan. 6 House select committee, appearing for videotaped interviews in which both provided memories about the day. The committee, in turn, repeatedly played clips of their testimony at some of its public hearings. One clip that got considerable attention showed Ms. Trump making clear that she accepted Attorney General William P. Barr’s declaration that there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the election, despite Mr. Trump’s repeated claims otherwise. Mr. Trump was infuriated by the clips and what was said in them, according to people in contact with him.”

2. A former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, Dan Kelly, was a key player in the “fake electors” scheme to try and overturn the 2020 election. Kelly is just another MAGA Republican following the Trump playbook. 

• • Top point to make: The fight to protect our democracy from MAGA Republicans is ongoing, as they continue to fill Congress and state legislatures as well as state and federal courts.

• • If you read one thing: NBC News, 2/21/23: Trump ally with ties to ‘fake elector’ scheme advances in Wisconsin Supreme Court race. “Daniel Kelly is a former state Supreme Court justice with connections to a plan hatched by the former president’s allies to reverse the 2020 election results in Wisconsin through the use of ‘fake electors.’ He was one of two candidates to advance in Tuesday’s Supreme Court primary, according to projections by The Associated Press… In a deposition to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, former Wisconsin GOP chairman Andrew Hitt said he and Kelly had “pretty extensive conversations” about the plan, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last week that the Republican Party at the state and national levels had paid Kelly $120,000 to advise it on ‘election integrity’ issues.”

3. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene made comments calling for a “national divorce,” dividing “red states and blue states” into separate nations. These comments are especially alarming considering the power Greene holds in the MAGA House on the Homeland Security Committee and as a right-hand to Speaker McCarthy.

• • Top point to make: Republicans need to speak out and disavow the comments from Greene to  protect our country.

• • If you read one thing: The Hill, 2/23/23: Greene stirs up political storm with ‘national divorce’ comments. “Greene’s call for the U.S. to be split into two nations of red and blue states has infuriated members of both parties, while giving Republicans an unwanted headache. While Greene is known for incendiary rhetoric sure to provoke Democrats and Republicans alike, her words take on new importance now that she is a key ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and serves on the House Homeland Security Committee. She also has her eyes on a possible vice presidential bid on a ticket led by former President Trump… ‘Kevin McCarthy’s shameful silence on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s divisive calls for secession of states sends a dangerous message to conspiracy theorists and anarchists,’ Tommy Garcia, a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman, said in a statement. ‘Apparently, upholding and defending the Constitution is merely a suggestion to the House Republican party.’”

Expert voices

Janet Malzahn, predoctoral research fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and Andrew B. Hall, professor of political economy and political science at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business: “We combine newly collected election data with records of public denials of the results of the 2020 election to estimate the degree to which election-denying Republican candidates for senator, governor, secretary of state, and attorney general over- or under-performed other Republicans in 2022. We find that the average vote share of election-denying Republicans in statewide races was approximately 2.3 percentage points lower than their co-partisans after accounting for state-level partisanship. Election-denying candidates received roughly 2 percentage-points more vote share than other Republican candidates in primaries, on average, although this estimate is quite uncertain. The general-election penalty is larger than the margin of victory in battleground states in recent close presidential elections, suggesting that nominating election-denying candidates in 2024 could be a damaging electoral strategy for Republicans. At the same time, it is small enough to suggest that only a relatively small group of voters changed their vote in response to having an election-denying candidate on the ballot.” Working Paper: Abstract: Election-Denying Republican Candidates Underperformed in the 2022 Midterms | Janet Malzahn Tweet | Andy Hall Tweet   

Heather Cox Richardson, American historian at Boston College:“Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) explicitly called for dividing the nation. She tweeted: “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this.” For once I will spare you my usual lecture on how elite southern enslavers in the 1850s made this same argument because they resented the majority rule that threatened their ability to impose their will on their Black neighbors. (I will note, though, that former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) helpfully reviewed “some of the governing principles of America” for Greene, tweeting: “Our country is governed by the Constitution. You swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Secession is unconstitutional. No member of Congress should advocate secession, Marjorie.”)

What Greene had to say next is of more interest in this moment. The Munich Security Conference, the world’s largest gathering for international security discussions, has just reported that the Russian war on Ukraine is a war of authoritarianism on a rules-based international order. At that conference, Vice President Kamala Harris said the U.S. had determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity and noted that the bipartisan U.S. delegation to the conference was the largest we have ever sent. The U.S. president has just entered a war zone to declare U.S. support for democracy and is now in Poland, where he will speak with the leaders of the nine countries that make up NATO’s eastern flank and will deliver a speech that Blinken has described as “very significant.” In contrast, Greene echoed authoritarian leaders Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Putin himself when she called for splitting the nation over “the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats” and “the Democrat’s [sic] traitorous America Last policies.” Authoritarian leaders insist that the equality that underpins liberal democracy threatens traditional society because it means that LGBTQ people, women, and minorities should have the same rights as white men. Greene appears to be taking the same position.” Letters from An American 

Norman L. Eisen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, E. Danya Perry, former deputy chief criminal division, SDNY, and Amy Lee Copeland, criminal defense and appellate attorney in Savannah, Georgia: “We need to prepare for a first in our 246-year history as a nation: The possible criminal prosecution of a former president. If Mr. Trump is charged, it will be difficult and at times even perilous for American democracy — but it is necessary to deter him and others from future attempted coups.” NYT Op-Ed: It’s Time to Prepare for a Possible Trump Indictment

Joyce Vance, former US attorney, re: Speaker Kevin McCarthy giving Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 1/6 Capitol surveillance footage: “How does this square w/the Founding Fathers’ vision of the 1st Am & free press? Of an open gov’t w/checks & balances? & what does McCarthy hope to do by anointing state run media? Why not make this available to everyone in the media-it’s the people’s property, not the Speaker’s.” Tweet

Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “And what of foreign policy? MAGA Republicans have been cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Would they allow Russian intelligence operations and drone launches from their side of the border? Or let Russia stage “defensive” weaponry, much as the United States has done in NATO countries bordering Russia?   

Whatever America was left would have a rump military. As the most populous state, California supplies the largest number of U.S. service members, but Texas and other Southern states provide the bulk of the military force. The South hosts a disproportionate number of bases. Who would get what? However things were split, the winners would be China and Russia, which would face a hobbled United States.” The Hill Op-Ed: US secession is a great idea — for Russia

Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “The easiest way for the Fulton County district attorney’s office to dispose of any removal motions would be to convince the federal court that the conduct here fell far outside the scope of official duties. That’s one of the reasons the investigative grand jury’s unanimous finding that fraud did not taint the outcome of the Georgia election may end up being so important. If Trump makes a motion to remove, state prosecutors are likely to argue Trump was not pursuing any legitimate work on behalf of the federal government when he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asked him to “find” the precise number of votes he needed to win the state or when he green-lit the fake elector scheme and asked the judge to summarily return the case to state court.” Civil Discourse 

Andy Wright, senior fellow and founding editor at Just Security – served as Associate Counsel to President Barack Obama in the White House Counsel’s Office, Ryan Goodman, founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security and the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law at New York University: “Summary of our findings: Vice President Mike Pence may have a reasonable basis to claim that the Speech or Debate Clause includes a Vice President when acting as President of the Senate. However, that is largely to no avail here. First, the Clause, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, does not provide sufficient legal basis to resist wholesale a subpoena to testify before the grand jury in the January 6th investigation. Second, there are several lines of questions – which we describe below with specific examples – that would not be precluded by the Speech or Debate Clause.” Just Security: The Limited Scope of Vice President Pence’s Speech or Debate Clause Immunity