Skip to main content
Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — February 28, 2023

By February 28, 2023No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

After Failing At The Polls In 2022, Election Deniers Are Now Running Key State Republican Parties 

  • Associated Press: Failing At Polls, Election Deniers Focus On State GOP Posts: In a basement event space in the Denver suburb of Parker, Tina Peters surveyed a crowd of Colorado Republicans last week and made an unusual pitch for why she should become chair of their beleaguered party: “There’s no way a jury of 12 people is going to put me in prison.” Peters was referring to her upcoming trial on seven felony charges related to her role in allegedly accessing confidential voting machine data while she was clerk in western Colorado’s Mesa County. The incident made her a hero to election conspiracy theorists but unpopular with all but her party’s hardest-core voters. Peters, who condemns the charges as politically motivated, finished second in last year’s GOP primary for secretary of state, Colorado’s top elections position. Now Peters has become part of a wave of election deniers who, unable to succeed at the polls, have targeted the one post — state party chair — that depends entirely on those hardest-core Republicans. Embracing election conspiracy theories was a political albatross for Republicans in states that weren’t completely red last year, with deniers losing every statewide bid in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But the movement has focused on GOP state party chairs — positions that usually are selected by only dedicated activists and have the power to influence the party’s presidential nominating contest and some aspects of election operations, such as recruiting poll watchers.
  • News From The States: Election Deniers Who Lost Secretary Of State Races Now Run Several State GOP Operations:  Many of the election deniers who ran last year for positions that would have given them control over state elections systems lost their races. But several have found a new path to exert influence: as chair of their state Republican Party.  On Saturday, Kristina Karamo, an activist who rose to prominence for her efforts to overturn Michigan’s 2020 presidential results, was elected chair of the Michigan GOP at the party’s convention.  A week earlier, Mike Brown, a former county commissioner who has stoked fears that the 2020 election was stolen, won the same job at Kansas’ convention.  And in July, Idaho Republicans chose Dorothy Moon, a former state legislator who has said there was a “big problem” with the 2020 vote and made unfounded claims about illegal voting, as their leader.  Meanwhile, Tina Peters announced last week that she’s running for state GOP chair in Colorado. A former county election clerk, Peters is facing felony charges in connection with an alleged scheme to breach secure voting equipment in order to show that her state’s 2020 vote was rigged. All four Republicans ran unsuccessfully last year for secretary of state, which would have made them their state’s chief election official.

Rupert Murdoch Admits In Deposition That Fox News Hosts Endorsed Lies About Election Fraud 

  • New York Times: Murdoch Acknowledges Fox News Hosts Endorsed Election Fraud Lie: Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, and that he could have stopped them but didn’t, court documents released on Monday showed. “They endorsed,” Mr. Murdoch said under oath in response to direct questions about the Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, according to a legal filing by Dominion Voting Systems. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” he added, while also disclosing that he was always dubious of Mr. Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud. Asked whether he doubted Mr. Trump, Mr. Murdoch responded: “Yes. I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up.” At the same time, he rejected the accusation that Fox News as a whole had endorsed the stolen election narrative. “Not Fox,” he said. “No. Not Fox.” Mr. Murdoch’s remarks, which he made last month as part of Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox, added to the evidence that Dominion has accumulated as it tries to prove its central allegation: The people running the country’s most popular news network knew Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were false but broadcast them anyway in a reckless pursuit of ratings and profit.

Special Counsel Seeks To Force Mike Pence To Testify Before January 6 Grand Jury While Conservative Former Judge J. Michael Luttig Blasts His Obstruction 

  • New York Times: Special Counsel Seeks to Force Pence to Testify Before Jan. 6 Grand Jury: The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to force former Vice President Mike Pence to testify fully in front of a grand jury investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, seeking to cut short any attempt by Mr. Trump to use executive privilege to shield Mr. Pence from answering questions, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The request — amounting to a pre-emptive motion to compel Mr. Pence’s testimony — came before the former vice president had even appeared in front of the grand jury, and before any privilege claims had actually been raised in court. The sealed motion, filed in recent days in Federal District Court in Washington, is the latest step in a long-running behind-the-scenes struggle, first by the Justice Department and now by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to cut through the various assertions of privilege that witnesses close to Mr. Trump have repeatedly raised in an effort to avoid answering questions.
  • CNN: Conservative Former Judge J. Michael Luttig Blasts Mike Pence Plan To Defy Subpoena: In a stern rebuke of former Vice President Mike Pence, the conservative former judge who advised Pence on how to handle the January 6, 2021, election certification vote is now warning of both the legal and political consequences of Pence’s plan to fight the grand jury subpoena by special counsel Jack Smith. “We can expect the federal courts to make short shrift of this ‘Hail Mary’ claim and Mr. Pence doesn’t have a chance in the world of winning his case in any federal court and avoiding testifying before the grand jury,” former Judge J. Michael Luttig says in an op-ed published in The New York Times on Friday. Luttig calls Pence’s vow to resist the subpoena a “dangerous gambit” and one that will invite an “embarrassing spectacle.” “No prosecutor, least of all Mr. Smith, will abide this political gambit for long,” Luttig says.

In The States 

ARIZONA:  Arizona GOP Keeps Giving Oxygen To Disproven Conspiracy Theories 

  • Arizona Republic: At Arizona Capitol, Republican Leaders Spotlight Far-Fetched Election Conspiracies: A monthlong series of presentations in the state Senate Elections Committee came to a head on Feb. 23 with the airing of a massive conspiracy theory involving alleged “bribery” of Arizona elected officials by a drug cartel. The dubious allegation scandal exploded on social media, with conservative pundits highlighting portions of the testimony that smeared Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. But the source of the information, a Scottsdale attorney with a suspended law license, told The Arizona Republic in a phone interview that two members of the joint special meeting of the Senate Elections and House Municipal Oversight and Elections committees, its chair and election conspiracy champion Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, and Sen. Ken Bennett, R-Prescott, also were potential bribe-takers. None of the information was backed up by confirmed facts, but neither was other information given prominence in the past few weeks in presentations held at state Senate Elections Committee hearings Viewers of this and other hearings, whether in-person at the Arizona Capitol or watching through archived video livestreams, have heard about more than 60 election-related bills that Republicans are pushing this year and have also seen a host of election deniers given opportunities by GOP committee chairs to present their suspicions and unproven facts.
  • KNXV: GOP Lawmakers Double Down On AZ Elections Despite AG Report Saying They’re Safe And Secure: Any chance that the release of a concealed attorney general report which discredited nearly every claim that Arizona’s 2020 election was stolen quickly evaporated Thursday when Republicans, who sat on the Municipal Oversight & Elections Joint meeting, continued to press their belief that elections in Arizona are not safe and secure. Only Republicans attended the hearing, while Democrats boycotted it. The hearing focused on alleged threats and allegations of foreign and domestic interference in Arizona’s election. It featured a who’s who of election deniers, such as Ivan Raiklin, who was mentioned by name during a January 6th Committee hearing for posting a memo called Operation Pence Card, a theory former Vice President Mike Pence could block the certification of election results on January 6th.

GEORGIA: Nearly 100,000 Voter Registrations Were Challenged By Amateur Voter Fraud Hunters In Georgia Last Year 

  • NBC: Fraud Hunters Challenged 92,000 Voter Registrations In Georgia Last Year: Amateur voter fraud hunters challenged 92,000 Georgia voter registrations last year, using voter rolls, public records, door-to-door canvassing and hours of their own time to ferret out the ballot rigging that election workers, courts and state officials have been unable to find. Data from the challenges was collected by voting rights advocacy group Fair Fight Action and shared exclusively with NBC News. The group’s political action committee is suing in federal court over a massive, coordinated challenge to the eligibility of 364,000 people to vote in the Senate runoff in 2021, arguing that such mass challenges are discriminatory and intimidating. The tally represents challenges in 15 of Georgia’s 159 counties — with seven of the top 10 most populous counties included — meaning the actual number in the state is likely higher. The numbers offer a window into the impact of both baseless claims of stolen elections and Georgia’s 2021 sweeping election law. Senate Bill 202, as it is known, codified that county residents could make unlimited requests to election officials, asking them to remove voters from the rolls if the challengers believed they were ineligible. The law mandated that county officials must conduct a hearing on those challenges within 10 business days.

MICHIGAN: Newly Elected GOP Chair Kristina Karamo Spouts Conspiracy Theories About “Globalist Takeover” Of Michigan 

  • MLive: Michigan GOP Leader: State Is ‘Ground Zero For The Globalist Takeover’: Three days after delegates elected her to lead the Michigan Republican Party, Kristina Karamo reaffirmed her belief in a conspiracy theory, claiming shadowy forces are working to achieve global domination right here in Michigan. “What prompted me to run for chair of the Michigan Republican Party is the fact that Michigan has become ground zero for the globalist takeover of the United States of America,” she said in the interview. Karamo was a guest on the podcast Bannon’s War Room Feb. 21, which is hosted by former President Donald Trump’s one-time strategist Steve Bannon. A study from the left-leaning Brookings Institution found his program was the top spreader of misinformation among popular podcasts since 2020. Nearly 20% of the episodes reviewed by researchers contain claims categorized as false or misleading by independent fact-checkers PolitiFact and Snopes. President Joe Biden, Karamo said on the show, is a “known traitor” and “illegitimate president” who “needs to be impeached.”

What Experts Are Saying

Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “We’re officially on Georgia-watch. There’s a new regular grand jury, the type that indicts cases, showing up to work in Fulton County this week. So it’s entirely possible that this could be the week to expect the world to turn upside down. There’s usually no advance warning to the public of a grand jury indictment, because of the secrecy that shrouds the process. Indictments only become public once the grand jury has voted to “true bill,” or vote to issue an indictment proposed by the district attorney. After voting, the grand jury “returns” the indictment to the judge in charge of the grand jury, and the clerk’s office adds it to the official docket for the case…Of course, it’s not certain that anyone, let alone Donald Trump, will be indicted. But Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, certainly seems to be giving off all the signals that she means business here. If she does indict, there are a number of different types of charges she could be considering under Georgia law.” Civil Discourse 

Noah Bookbinder, president of CREW: “It’s important that Jenna Ellis face accountability for the key role she played in Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. It is positive that Colorado’s Attorney Regulation Counsel appears poised to take action against Ellis.” Tweet

Norman L. Eisen, special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee majority during the impeachment proceedings and trial of President Donald J. Trump, Siven Watt, legal fellow at Just Security, and Fred Wertheimer, founder and president of Democracy 21: “On Thursday, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals held a hearing on whether Rep. Scott Perry (R-Penn.) is protected by the Speech or Debate Clause from the Jan. 6 criminal investigation. Perry played an outsized role in the attempted interference in the 2020 presidential election and the court must decide whether criminal investigators can gain access to data on Perry’s cell phone. A DC Circuit case – the Rayburn House decision – makes clear that there is indeed a mechanism for conducting a criminal investigation into a representative’s activities. It also teaches that there is a lawful way to capture electronic evidence that is not covered by Speech or Debate protections and segregate it from what may be protected. In this article, we explain the law and how it should and will apply, including in light of the argument at Thursday’s hearing. We also discuss the possible en banc and Supreme Court review that could (and likely will) follow.” Just Security: Speech or Debate Immunity Will Not Protect Scott Perry’s Phone

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian at New York University: “It’s a reminder that any account of the decline of American democracy and the rise of polarization and political violence in this country must include Fox News as a protagonist. While Fox does not directly make policy, it heavily influences GOP lawmakers. And it indoctrinates millions to regard their fellow Americans as enemies and see autocrats as role models, whether in Brazil, Hungary, or Russia. At a fateful juncture in American media and political history, Murdoch and his minions chose the path of hatred and division, inflicting incalculable damage on our political system and society.” Lucid

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Roll Call: PAC money to electoral count objectors fell 10 percent

Rolling Stone: Steve Bannon’s MAGA Crypto Coin Has Lost 95 Percent of Its Value: Report

January 6 And The 2020 Election

ABC: Judge overseeing Trump Georgia grand jury speaks after foreperson’s controversial interviews

Bloomberg: Trump 2020 Fraud Backer Sidney Powell’s Texas Ethics Case Tossed

CNN: Top Republicans question McCarthy over release of January 6 footage as speaker vows deliberate approach

Daily Beast: Feds Inadvertently Reveal They’re Looking Into Trump’s Shady ‘Recount’ Campaign

Politico: Judge rejects ‘terrorism’ sentencing enhancement for leader of Jan. 6 tunnel confrontation

Politico: Trump-allied group wants J6 committee staffers blacklisted

Politico: Judge rejected Perry’s bid to shield thousands of emails from Jan. 6 investigators

Other Trump Investigations.

The Guardian: Classified Trump schedules were moved to Mar-a-Lago after FBI search – sources

Political Violence

Axios: All U.S. extremist mass killings in 2022 linked to far right, report says

In The States

Arizona Mirror: Arizona GOP legislators continue to give oxygen to disproven election conspiracies

MLive: Bills would ban guns at Michigan polls, punish election worker harassment

Washington Post: Arizona governor seeks ethics review of former attorney general

Washington Post: ‘Christian patriots’ are flocking from blue states to Idaho