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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — June 2, 2022

By June 2, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Former Federal Judge And Pence Advisor J. Michael Luttig To Testify In Public January 6 Committee Hearings

  • Axios: Blockbuster Witness For Jan. 6 Hearings: J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge and lawyer who advised former Vice President Mike Pence, is expected to testify in the Jan. 6 select committee’s public hearings this month, Axios has learned. Why it matters: The committee, which has until now been interviewing witnesses behind closed doors, has revealed little about its plans for the public hearings set to begin next week. The desire to showcase Luttig — a judge lionized within the conservative legal movement — matches what sources have described as the committee’s strategy to reach as broad an audience as possible, including conservatives. The big picture: Luttig, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, was a key behind-the-scenes figure in the lead up to Jan. 6. He furnished Pence with the legal argument the vice president used to publicly reject Trump’s unconstitutional order to overturn President Biden’s victory.

New Details Emerge About The Scheme To Overturn The Election In The Senate On January 6

  • Politico: Read The Trump-World Legal Memo That A Judge Ruled Was Likely Part Of A Criminal Effort To Overturn The Election: The Jan. 6 select committee last week publicly released a long-hidden memo that a federal judge previously determined was evidence of “likely” felonies by Donald Trump and attorney John Eastman. The document: It’s a Dec. 13, 2020, email from a little-known attorney who had been advising Donald Trump’s legal team, Kenneth Chesebro. He sent it to Rudy Giuliani, sketching out a plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021. He dubbed it the “‘President of the Senate’ strategy.” Chesebro’s memo became public last week as a little-noticed exhibit in a legal battle between the Jan. 6 select committee and John Eastman, who conferred with Chesebro about that last-ditch strategy to delay or prevent the certification of Biden’s election. U.S. District Court Judge David Carter described the memo in his March ruling as perhaps “the first time members of President Trump’s team transformed a legal interpretation of the Electoral Count Act” — the law that governs the transition of power — into a day-by-day plan of action.” Carter wrote in his opinion that this memo “likely furthered the crimes of obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States.” He ordered it released to the select committee under the “crime-fraud” exception to attorney client privilege.

Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Candidate Doug Mastriano Offers Limited Cooperation To January 6 Committee 

  • Politico: Pa. GOP Gubernatorial Nominee Shares Documents With Jan. 6 Panel, Agrees To Interview: The Jan. 6 select committee received materials this week from Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano — and with them, perhaps, a new dilemma. Mastriano’s previously unreported cooperation with the Capitol attack probe came in the form of a submission, obtained by POLITICO, that includes documents about his work to arrange buses that carried pro-Trump protesters to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. But when the select committee subpoenaed Mastriano, it specifically said he didn’t need to send any materials related to official actions in his current position as a Pennsylvania state senator. Given that sizable carve-out, the vast majority of the materials Mastriano sent to the committee are public social media posts. This leaves the committee with a tough choice: Does it accept the limited production from Mastriano, a Donald Trump stalwart who embraced the former president’s unsuccessful quest to de-certify the 2020 election, or fight for more?

In The States 

How The Proud Boys Took Over The Miami-Dade Republican Party 

  • New York Times: How the Proud Boys Gripped the Miami-Dade Republican Party: At the iconic Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach, just after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida rallied donors and activists to their feet during a well-attended April fund-raiser for the Republican Party of Miami-Dade County, a scuffle broke out by the valet parking station. Several men in suits and a woman in a cocktail dress tussled over who should and should not have been allowed at the $250-a-plate dinner. Someone alerted the police. The next day, a woman who had been escorted out of the dinner renewed a request for a restraining order against one of the men involved in the dispute, writing in her court petition that he was part of a “Far Right Wing Extremist Cult.” She was referring to the Proud Boys, the far-right nationalist group that was at the forefront of the riot at the U.S. Capitol last year. The man was one of at least a half-dozen current and former Proud Boys who have secured seats on the Miami-Dade Republican Executive Committee, seeking to influence local politics from the inside. Their ranks include adherents who face criminal charges for participating in the Capitol attack: Gilbert Fonticoba has been charged with obstructing Congress. Gabriel Garcia, a former Army captain who says he has left the group, has been charged with interfering with law enforcement officers during the civil disorder on Jan. 6, 2021. The concerted effort by the Proud Boys to join the leadership of the party — and, in some cases, run for local office — has destabilized and dramatically reshaped the Miami-Dade Republican Party that former Gov. Jeb Bush and others built into a powerhouse nearly four decades ago, transforming it from an archetype of the strait-laced establishment to an organization roiled by internal conflict as it wrestles with forces pulling it to the hard right. 

What Experts Are Saying

Clark D. Cunningham, a professor of law at Georgia State University: “said that while Trump faces other legal and civil investigations, the one in Georgia is ‘potentially the most significant’ of them all.‘The phone call to Raffensperger certainly seems like the clearest evidence we have of criminal wrongdoing by Trump,’ Cunningham told Newsweek. ‘It’s a recording, he acknowledges that it’s him, it’s his voice. There’s no question of authenticity,’ Cunningham added. ‘It seems to me that it’s very clear evidence of a violation of Georgia law called the criminal solicitation of election fraud.’” Newsweek 

Josh Ritter, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor and criminal defense attorney: “also said the Fulton County probe is the ‘closest to a criminal indictment that we’ve seen for the former president’ so far. ‘It’s pretty historically significant, especially given the fact that it’s a state investigation rather than a federal investigation,’ Ritter told Newsweek.” Newsweek 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

PBS NewsHour: Republican plans to use political operatives as poll workers alarm voting rights activists

Vice: Two-Thirds of Republicans Believe Great Replacement Theory, New Poll Shows

Washington Post (Analysis): Ballot collectors are ‘mules.’ Skeptical reporters are ‘terrorists.’

January 6 And The 2020 Election 

CNN: He helped decode texts from January 6th. What he found scared him

Talking Points Memo: What MAGA Had Planned For Pence On Jan. 6

Opinion 

Washington Post (Greg Sargent): Hapless Trumpist Mo Brooks gives away the GOP ‘vote fraud’ scam

In The States 

Arizona Mirror: GOP lawmaker calls on ‘vigilantes’ to film and follow voters to combat unproven ‘ballot mules’

NBC: ‘Outsider’ in Nevada’s GOP Senate primary surges, rattling Trump’s pick