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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — November 7, 2023

By November 7, 2023No Comments

Driving the Day

Must Read Stories

Federal Appeals Court suspends gag order on Trump

  • CNN: Appeals court freezes gag order against Trump in federal election subversion case and will hear oral arguments this month: “A federal appeals court on Friday temporarily froze the limited gag order issued against Donald Trump in the former president’s election subversion criminal case in Washington, DC, allowing him to again speak freely with criticism of possible witnesses in the case. In a brief order, a three-judge panel at the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals said they were pausing the gag order issued by District Judge Tanya Chutkan to give them more time to consider Trump’s request to pause the order while his appeal plays out before the court. The appellate judges – Patricia Millett and Cornelia Pillard, both Barack Obama appointees, and Brad Garcia, a Joe Biden appointee – said they would fast-track Trump’s appeal of the gag order and hear arguments in the matter on November 20.”
  • New York Times: Appeals Court Temporarily Frees Trump From Gag Order in Election Case: “An appeals court in Washington on Friday paused the gag order imposed on former President Donald J. Trump in the federal case accusing him of seeking to overturn the 2020 election, temporarily freeing him to go back to attacking the prosecutors and witnesses involved in the proceeding. In a brief order, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the pause of about two weeks was needed to give it ‘sufficient opportunity’ to decide whether to enact a longer freeze as the court considered the separate — and more important — issue of whether the gag order had been correctly imposed in the first place.”

Trump’s combative testimony sparks tensions in New York fraud trial

  • CBS: Trump clashes with judge during testimony at New York fraud trial today: “Former President Donald Trump is on the stand in a New York courtroom Monday to testify in the fraud trial that could determine the fate of his business empire. His early testimony was marked by Trump repeatedly straying from the questions posed by a lawyer from New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office. He also stood by various property valuations at the center of the case, defending financial statements that other co-defendants have sought to distance themselves from. Sworn in and under oath, Trump took the opportunity to repeatedly lash out at the New York Judge Arthur Engoron, who is seated four feet to his right. Engoron is overseeing the civil case and will decide the outcome of the bench trial himself.”
  • PBS: As Trump testifies, a judge in civil fraud trial reminds him that it’s ‘not a political rally’: “The judge presiding over the civil fraud trial of Donald Trump admonished him to keep his answers concise, reminding him and the courtroom that ‘this is not a political rally’ as the former president and leading Republican president candidate began testifying in a lawsuit accusing him of dramatically inflating his net worth. ‘We don’t have time to waste. We have one day to do this,’ an exasperated Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engeron said at one point. At another, he said, ‘In addition to the answers being non-responsive, they’re repetitive.’ Trump’s turn on the witness stand, in a case that cuts to the heart of the business brand he spent decades crafting, represents a remarkable convergence of his legal troubles and his political ventures at a time when he also faces criminal indictments while vying to reclaim the White House in 2024.”
  • BBC: Backed into a legal corner, Donald Trump comes out swinging in court: “On the stand for a landmark fraud trial, he approached his testimony just as he had his real estate business and political career: ignoring the rules and technicalities and blustering and bragging his way through it. His aggressive and freewheeling appearance on Monday offered a glimpse at how he may behave as a defendant in the four upcoming criminal cases against him. The former president repeatedly angered Judge Arthur Engoron by refusing to directly answer the questions put to him by the attorney general’s office.”
  • Politico: Trump’s testimony quickly turns to shouting match: “Testimony by former president Donald Trump quickly descended into bitter sniping Monday among the judge, Trump’s attorneys and a lawyer for the New York attorney general’s office, as Trump’s discursive answers and outbursts prompted the judge to repeatedly admonish him and threaten to curtail his testimony. ‘I beseech you to control him if you can,’ Justice Arthur Engoron told Trump lawyer Chris Kise less than an hour into the former president’s turn on the witness stand. ‘If you can’t, I will,’ the judge said. ‘I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can.’”

Former Trump State Department official sentenced to 70 months for assaulting police in Capitol Riot

  • NPR: Ex-State Department aide sentenced to nearly 6 years in Capitol riot attacks: “A Marine Corps veteran who served as a politically appointed State Department official in former President Donald Trump’s administration was sentenced on Friday to nearly six years in prison for attacking police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Federico Klein joined other Trump supporters in one of the most violent episodes of the Jan. 6 siege — a mob’s fight with outnumbered police for control of a tunnel entrance on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace. Klein repeatedly assaulted officers, urged other rioters to join the fray, and tried to stop police from shutting entrance doors, according to federal prosecutors.”
  • Washington Post: Trump appointee sentenced to nearly 6 years for attacking police on Jan. 6: “A Trump appointee to the State Department who assaulted multiple police officers at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to nearly six years in prison Friday by a fellow veteran of the administration. Judge Trevor McFadden said he was ‘disturbed’ that Federico Klein, 45, considered it part of his ‘duties’ to attend the Trump rally that day and join the protesters at the Capitol agitating for lawmakers to throw the election to Trump.‘This is a government of laws, not of men,’ McFadden said before imposing the 70-month sentence. In addition to the eight felonies he found Klein guilty of at a bench trial earlier this year, the judge said Klein’s participation in the riot was ‘almost certainly a violation of the Hatch Act,’ an anti-corruption law that limits government employees’ engagement in partisan politics.”

In The States

KANSAS: Kansas Supreme Court considers case challenging two state voter suppression laws

  • Kansas Reflector: Kansas Supreme Court set to consider protections for voting rights: “Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach made his case to Supreme Court justices on Friday that voting rights should not be given the same protection as other constitutional rights, hoping to sway them over to his side in the latest twist of a long-lasting legal battle over 2021 election laws. ‘If any of us wishes to exercise our freedom of speech, we may do so whenever we choose,’ Kobach said, making his case. ‘If we wish to worship, we may do so whenever we choose. We have absolute autonomy, and we really don’t rely on anyone or any entity for us to do that. The same cannot be said of voting.’ The decision could have long-lasting legal implications for statewide elections — an institution that voting rights groups both locally and nationally have declared under attack.”

NEW HAMPSHIRE: State judge dismisses voting rights group’s lawsuit over 2022 photo ID law

  • Associated Press: Judge dismisses challenge to New Hampshire’s provisional voting law: “A judge has dismissed a pair of lawsuits challenging New Hampshire’s new provisional ballot law. The law, which took effect in January, created a new type of ‘affidavit ballot’ for first-time voters who don’t show proper identification and proof of residency at the polls. Those who fail to provide the documents within seven days will have their ballots thrown out, and the vote totals will be adjusted. Previously, such voters filled out affidavits promising to provide documentation within 10 days, and those who didn’t could be investigated and charged with fraud. But the votes themselves remained valid. Several individual voter and advocacy groups filed lawsuits last year, days after Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed the bill into law. They argued that it violates the right to privacy the state added to its constitution in 2018 because it would diminish the secrecy of ballots and tie voters’ names to the candidates for whom they voted. But a judge recently granted a request from the secretary of state and attorney general to dismiss the cases.”

MICHIGAN: Detroit-area redistricting commissioner testifies in trial over Michigan’s legislative maps

  • The Detroit News: Race wasn’t only factor in Detroit map drawing, redistricting commissioner testifies: “A Detroit-area redistricting commissioner told judges Friday that the commission’s Metro Detroit maps were not driven by race, but by ‘multifactorial’ efforts to balance population, keep communities of interest together and achieve partisan fairness. Part of the reason majority-Black Detroit districts were drawn across Eight Mile and into predominantly White suburbs in Oakland and Macomb counties was to follow recent population shifts north and undo past redlining that segregated Detroit from the suburbs, said Anthony Eid, a member of the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. There were no racial targets the commission was trying to achieve, he argued. Eid’s testimony contradicted a few of his fellow map drawers who told a three-judge panel earlier this week that race and an effort to lower the concentration of Black voters in Detroit-based districts were the driving factors in how the commission drew district boundaries for the Michigan Legislature.”
  • Detroit Free Press: Judge asks Michigan, redistricting member, about decision to pair Detroit and Birmingham: “A member of the state’s redistricting commission testified in a voting rights lawsuit challenging the new maps on Friday that race was not the driving factor behind drawing new Detroit-area districts, offering a stark contrast to the former chair’s earlier testimony stating race predominated the mapping process. Independent Commissioner Anthony Eid was the first witness lawyers for the commission called to the stand in the lawsuit brought by Detroit voters who argue the new lines illegally disenfranchise them. Eid repeatedly said race was one of many things the commission weighed while drawing districts, including those at issue in the trial. He denied that the commission aimed to hit a racial target with a certain share of Black voters in each district.”

VIRGINIA: Recent analysis shows that the absentee ballots of voters of color are being rejected at higher rates in Virginia

  • The Guardian: Virginia white voters’ mail-in ballots face fewer challenges, Democrats say: “Virginia Democrats are concerned that non-white voters in the state are getting their mail-in ballots flagged for possible rejection at much higher rates than their white counterparts ahead of a closely watched election day on Tuesday. Virginia, like all states, requires voters to fill out certain information on the envelope in which they return their ballot. In Virginia that includes their name, address, birth year, and last four digits of their social security number. If any of that information is missing, voters have until 13 November to provide it. If they don’t provide it by the deadline, the ballot is rejected. An internal analysis by the Democratic Party of Virginia shared with the Guardian, found election officials have flagged 6,216 mail-in ballots for possible rejection as of Friday – 2.89% of the total mail-in ballots cast. Voters have fixed issues with more than half of those ballots, the party said, so there are 2,783 ballots that could be rejected.”

What Experts Are Saying

Andrew Warren and Norm Eisen, on Ivanka Trump’s civil trial testimony, for the Daily Beast: “It’s possible to picture Trump attempting nonsensical explanations for the yawning gaps between the genuine numbers and those he put forth. Indeed, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that he tries that on the stand, in the hope that Ivanka may somehow back him up. But we cannot imagine Ivanka—with her meticulously crafted image and her penchant for cautious public statements—doing so. Because some of the valuations appear so fanciful, she would risk perjuring herself. But if she tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, she’ll be forced to contradict her father and her brothers and acknowledge what’s painfully obvious: that the valuations claimed by the Trump Organization are highly dubious.”

Robert Jones, founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute, in an interview on Salon: “The American people feel that the stakes are high and there is deep worry about the future of the country and its democracy. Three-quarters of Americans believe that the future of democracy is at stake in the 2024 presidential election. It’s one of the few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on, 84% of Democrats and 77% of Republicans. Now, of course, they mean very different things in terms of their concerns about ‘democracy.’ There is also great pessimism about the country. More Americans than not say that America’s best days are now behind us, which is overwhelmingly coming from Republicans. There is widespread economic anxiety. But the deeper disagreement, coupled with deep divides about the country’s identity. Who are we? Who is the country for? Who counts as a ‘real American?’ These deeper disagreements, rather than policy differences, are driving our partisan divisions.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in a joint release: “Since DHS and FBI issued the 10 October Public Service Announcement, the volume and frequency of threats to Americans, especially those in the Jewish, Arab American, and Muslim communities in the United States, have increased, raising our concern that violent extremists and lone offenders motivated by or reacting to ongoing events could target these communities.”

Rakim Brooks, for Democracy Docket: “We deserve a country where the administration of law reflects not just our hope for justice, but the beauty of our common struggle against racial hierarchy. Such a country will never be fully realized until our full diversity can don the black robes of an impartial judiciary. Indeed, if we want to get to the point where diversity is the norm on our courts and no longer a novelty, we must be intentional about reaching the day where we can say every court is magnificently diverse. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go.”

Joyce Vance, about potential bias toward Trump in Judge Cannon’s court, on X (Twitter): “A lot of folks are asking if it’s too late for Smith to seek recusal now. It’s more complicated than that—changing the judge now would delay the trial significantly. Smith may have an appeal down the road where he can seek recusal or the court orders it, but at what cost?”

Headlines

Extremism

Washington Post: Trump and allies plot revenge

The GW Hatchet: Researchers find far-right conspiracy theories drive antisemitism, violence

Washington Post: Government trust falls, democracy erodes, yet feds appreciated, reports find

Trump investigations

New York Times: Trump’s Credibility, Coherence and Control Face Test on Witness Stand

Rolling Stone: Trump and His Lawyers Dare NY Judge to Throw Him in Jail

Washington Post: Trump and media want a televised trial in D.C. The Justice Dept. doesn’t

Washington Post: Trump Trials: Donald Trump takes the stand

Newsweek: Aileen Cannon Faces Growing Calls to Be Removed Over ‘Partisan’ Action

January 6 and the 2020 Elections

CBS: A year after 2022 elections, former House Jan. 6 panel members warn of Trump and 2024 danger

KSHB 41 Kansas City: Raytown man armed with pitchfork during Jan. 6 capitol attack pleads guilty

Opinion

New York Times: David French: ‘MAGA Mike Johnson’ and Our Broken Christian Politics

The Hill: James Zirin: Trump’s Justice end game

In the States

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: DOJ defends Voting Rights Act in Georgia redistricting case

The Guardian: Ohio purged 26,000 voters days before abortion referendum deadline

Associated Press: North Carolina’s voter ID mandate taking effect this fall is likely dress rehearsal for 2024