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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — June 22, 2022

By June 22, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Yesterday’s Hearing Recounted Trump’s Pressure And Threats Of Violence Against Election Workers And Officials In His Attempt To Overturn The Election 

  • New York Times: Panel Ties Trump to Fake Elector Plan, Mapping His Attack on Democracy: The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack directly tied Donald J. Trump on Tuesday to a scheme to put forward fake slates of pro-Trump electors and presented fresh details on how the former president sought to bully, cajole and bluff his way into invalidating his 2020 defeat in states around the country. Using sworn in-person testimony from Republicans and videotaped depositions from other officials, the panel showed how the former president and a group of allies laid siege to state lawmakers and election officials after the balloting in a wide-ranging plot to reverse the outcome. The campaign led to harassment and threats of violence against anyone who resisted. The hearing on Tuesday amounted to the most comprehensive picture to date of a president who directed an attack on democracy itself and repeatedly reached into its essential machinery — the administration of free and fair elections.
  • Washington Post: Trump’s Pressure Drew Violence, Threats To Local Officials, Committee Shows: In the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump engaged in an unrelenting campaign targeting state and local officials — many of them fellow Republicans — riling up his supporters and putting in physical danger officials who refused to help overturn his election loss, according to new information outlined Tuesday by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. At its fourth public hearing, the committee laid out how menace and violence trailed Trump’s election falsehoods, afflicting everyone who resisted, from high-level elected officials to ordinary election workers. And it showed how a several ominous episodes foreshadowed the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, as Trump’s supporters invaded a state legislative building in Arizona, barged into the home of an election worker’s grandmother in Georgia to make a “citizen’s arrest,” and sent thousands of threatening text messages to officials around the country. The committee Tuesday disclosed new evidence of Trump’s personal involvement in one element of the effort to overturn the election: Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, testified that Trump himself called to ask for the party’s help organizing the false elector strategy. This scheme, orchestrated by Trump’s outside advisers, convened Trump’s electors in December 2020 in key swing states won by Biden, even though the White House Counsel’s Office and his own campaign’s top lawyers agreed they had no legal standing. McDaniel’s testimony offered the first evidence of Trump’s direct ties to the fake electors plot.

Senator Ron Johnson And Rep. Andy Biggs  Implicated In Fake Elector Scheme 

  • Politico: Ron Johnson Tried To Hand Fake Elector Info To Mike Pence On Jan. 6, Panel Reveals: A top aide to Sen. Ron Johnson attempted to arrange a handoff of false, pro-Trump electors from the senator to Mike Pence just minutes before the then-vice president began to count electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. The aide, Sean Riley, told Pence’s legislative director Chris Hodgson that Johnson wanted to hand Pence lists of the fake electors from Michigan and Wisconsin for Pence to introduce during the counting of electoral votes that certified Joe Biden’s win. The attempt was revealed in text messages obtained by the Jan. 6 select committee during its fourth public hearing on Tuesday. “Do not give that to him,” Hodgson replied. The attempted handoff shows just how much former President Donald Trump and his allies tried to lean on Pence to introduce false slates of electors that could have thrown the 2020 election from Biden to Donald Trump. The committee laid out an intense pressure campaign, led primarily by Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani, to push state legislatures to appoint pro-Trump electors and override the will of voters in their states.
  • The Hill: Bowers Says Biggs Asked Him To Sign Letter To Decertify State’s Electors: Rusty Bowers, the Republican Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, said that Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), the former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, called him on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, asking him to support the decertification of electors. “He asked if I would sign on both to a letter that had been sent from my state, and/or that I would support the decertification of the electors,” Bowers said at a Tuesday hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. “I said I would not,” Bowers added. A representative for Biggs did not immediately return a request for comment. The Jan. 6 select committee subpoenaed Biggs last month, along with several other GOP members of Congress. They have not complied with the subpoenas.

Documentary Filmmaker Hands Over Hours Of Footage Of Trump And His Key Aides And Family Members To The January 6 Committee 

  • NPR: A British Filmmaker Gave Congress Unreleased Footage Of Trump And His Family: British documentary filmmaker Alex Holder confirmed on Tuesday that he had complied with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee to turn over never-before-seen footage of former President Donald Trump in the leadup to the insurrection. The committee will also conduct a deposition of Holder on Thursday, he said in a statement shared on Twitter. Holder had access to Trump, as well as his family members and associates, while directing a documentary series surrounding the final six weeks of the former president’s reelection campaign in 2020. He said the footage he turned over includes interviews with Trump and his family leading up to the election, as well as never-before-seen footage of the Capitol riot.
  • New York Times: Ivanka Trump Expressed A Different View On The Election To A Filmmaker: Ivanka Trump, the elder daughter of former President Donald J. Trump, told a documentary film crew in the middle of December 2020 that her father should “continue to fight until every legal remedy is exhausted” because people were questioning “the sanctity of our elections.” The video, which was played for The New York Times by someone with access to it, was part of a trove that the filmmaker Alex Holder turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. He recorded several hours of interviews with Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, some of Mr. Trump’s adult children and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Holder is expected to be interviewed by the committee on Thursday. Neither Mr. Holder nor the committee has disclosed the contents of the full trove of videos, and neither has commented on whether it provides substantial new information about Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss.

Tomorrow’s Hearing To Focus On Trump’s “Effort To Corrupt The Justice Department” 

  • Los Angeles Times: Thursday’s Jan. 6 Hearing To Explore ‘The Effort To Corrupt The Justice Department’: The House hearings investigating the catalysts behind the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will continue Thursday and is expected to explore then-President Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department in the days after the election. The hearing will examine Trump’s “attempt to corrupt the country’s top law enforcement body, the Justice Department, to support his attempt to overturn election,” House select committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said during his closing remarks at Tuesday’s hearing. “Just as we heard today that Donald Trump was deeply involved in the scheme to pressure state officials to overturn the election results, we will hear on Thursday that Donald Trump was also the driving force behind the effort to corrupt the Justice Department,” Thompson said. Thursday’s hearing will be led by Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), and will feature testimony from Richard Donoghue, who served as the acting U.S. deputy attorney general from December 2020 to January 2021. Former Assistant Atty. Gen. Jeffrey Clark is alleged to have repeatedly pushed his colleagues in the Justice Department to investigate new theories about election fraud and asked the department to instruct some states to “decertify” the results. Trump considered installing Clark as attorney general over acting Atty. Gen. Jeff Rosen, who said there was no evidence of fraud that could sway the election. Donoghue, in a deposition clip shown at the end of Tuesday’s hearing, said he would have instantly resigned if Trump did so.
  • The Hill: Cheney Calls On Ex-White House Lawyer To Testify Before Jan. 6 Panel: The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol is working to secure testimony from former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said Tuesday.  “Our evidence shows that Pat Cipollone and his office tried to do what was right. They tried to stop a number of President Trump’s plans for Jan. 6,” Cheney, who is a vice-chair of the committee, said at the close of Tuesday’s hearing.  “We think the American people deserve to hear from Mr. Cipollone personally. He should appear before this committee, and we are working to secure his testimony,” Cheney added.  Cipollone served as White House counsel from October 2018 through the end of the Trump presidency, and he defended the former president during both of his impeachment trials. 

In The States 

Election Denier Katie Britt Defeats Election Denier Mo Brooks In Alabama Senate Primary  

  • Politico: Britt Beats Brooks In Senate Primary That Divided MAGA World: Republican voters in Alabama resolved a high-profile feud in MAGA world on Tuesday, casting votes in the GOP Senate primary runoff between one of former President Donald Trump’s most loyal acolytes, and the candidate who ultimately earned his final endorsement. Katie Britt won the runoff after Trump turned on Rep. Mo Brooks, a top election-denying ally, to instead support the establishment-backed candidate. Although the votes were still being tallied, Britt appeared on course to best Brooks by a 2-to-1 margin. Top national conservatives spent recent days fiercely divided over the two candidates. Britt, the former chief of staff to retiring Sen. Richard Shelby, was favored to win over Brooks, the firebrand conservative who led efforts in Congress to overturn the 2020 presidential election. While Brooks initially received Trump’s endorsement in the Senate race, the former president rescinded his support this spring as Brooks’ campaign floundered, eventually endorsing Britt, the frontrunner, after the state’s May 24 primary went to a runoff.

Two Trump Endorsed House Candidates In Georgia Were Defeated In Runoffs By Equally Conspiratorial Right Wing Candidates 

  • Atlanta Journal Constitution: Rebuked again: Trump’s Picks For House Seats In Georgia Go Bust: Georgia Republican voters rebuked Donald Trump for the second time in a month Tuesday by rejecting his picks for a pair of open U.S. House seats, another blow to the former president after his attempt to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp and other incumbents collapsed. Vernon Jones, a former Democrat who tried to transform himself into a far-right Republican, was walloped by Mike Collins in the race for the rural 10th District runoff despite boasting Trump’s endorsement. And Jake Evans fell to Dr. Rich McCormick in the 6th District race despite a late push by Trump that described the Georgia attorney as a “MAGA warrior” who would fight for his priorities in Washington. […] To be clear, the Republican victors aren’t shying away from Trump or his brand of politics. Kemp often reminds voters he supports Trump’s agenda and won’t say a foul word about him, and the runoff winners tried to position themselves as champions of the former president. Collins and McCormick have both vowed to back Trump at every opportunity, and they support a suite of conservative stances on abortion, gun rights and other cultural issues designed to energize the party’s right flank.

What Experts Are Saying

Renato Mariotti, former federal prosecutor: “The ‘fake elector’ certificates are the closest we’ve seen to straightforward criminal charges. They contain false statements, and if DOJ can prove that individuals knew those statements were false and were going to be submitted to the federal government, that’s a federal crime.” Tweet 

Daniel Richman, Paul J. Kellner Professor of Law at Columbia Law School: Actual Knowledge, Willful Blindness, and the Jan. 6 Hearings Lawfare 

Fred Wertheimer, founder and president of Democracy 21, and Norman Eisen, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institute: “As convening a Georgia grand jury suggests, Trump’s effort to fix the vote count implicates various state criminal statutes…But Trump’s actions also suggest federal violations — including interfering with a lawful government function by craft, trickery or dishonesty (18 U.S.C. § 371)…Trump’s efforts to change the vote count in Georgia with no factual basis for doing so were also part of an effort to interfere with a lawful function of the federal government — the congressional count of electoral votes. Pressuring a state official to change a state’s vote count, and therefore alter its slate of electors sent to the Jan. 6 meeting of Congress, raises the issue of obstruction of Congress. That is a federal criminal violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512, if proven.” NBC News THINK 

Elizabeth Wydra, president of Constitutional Accountability Center: “Moss’s testimony was essentially a victim impact statement for her and her mother, and for  American democracy.” Tweet 

Frank Figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation: “These hearings have already presented lots of evidence suggesting Trump and his team acted as a kind of criminal enterprise in their strategic attempts to overturn the 2020 election results…That’s why I’ll continue to carefully listen for evidence further incriminating Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and chief of staff Mark Meadows in their attempts to unlawfully pressure various state election officials.” MSNBC Hearing Live Updates 

Heather Cox Richardson, American historian at Boston College: “Taken together, today’s testimony showed the human side of the rule of law in the United States, and how Trump’s pressure on officials and weaponization of gangs to harass them threatens to destroy the system.” Letters from an American 

Matthew Baum, a professor of public policy at Harvard University, in Thomas B. Edsall’s NYT “Why Conspiracy Theories Flourish in Trump’s America” column: “We had a sitting president declare that an election outcome was illegitimate. This is historically unprecedented. Trump’s assertion is extremely influential to voters who look to him as the leader of the Republican Party in general, and as the leader of the MAGA movement in particular…’It is too soon to say [whether the United States can return to status quo ante],’ Baum writes, ‘whether this delegitimization is permanent. There is certainly a risk that once the genie is out of the bottle — that is, election losers are no longer willing to accept losing as a legitimate outcome and ‘live to fight another day’ — it will be hard to put it back.” New York Times 

What Elected Officials and Pundits Are Saying

WI Senator Tammy Baldwin: “Trying to deliver fake electors to Vice President Pence on #January6th is direct support for Trump’s conspiracy to overturn the will of the people in Wisconsin.” Tweet 

MI State Senator Mallory McMorrow: “Hold up. A US Senator FROM ANOTHER STATE tried to take away MICHIGAN’S votes!?!?” Tweet 

Tim Miller, Bulwark writer and MSNBC analyst: “Add @RonJohnsonWI to the list with @SenMikeLee as Republicans up for re-election who were actively pushing to overturn Bidens victory behind the scenes.” Tweet 

Michael Steele, former RNC chairman and MSNBC political analyst: “No evidence of fraud. No evidence the election was stolen. No. Evidence. And yet Trump, Guiliani and the #GOP persisted. To this day they continue to vomit up those lies and worse, those lies are still believed. #January6thHearings” Tweet 

Former MO Senator Claire McCaskill: “The witnesses so far today, that are all pointing out evidence that Trump was a liar, are all people who voted for him. All Republicans. But these are Republicans that care more about the Constitution and their country than their party.” Tweet 

Dr. Jason Johnson, MSNBC political contributor (Video): “What angers me so much… about that testimony, is that I know that those women are gonna get additional threats because they were brave enough to get on television and talk about what happened” Tweet of MSNBC’s Deadline WH with Nicolle Wallace 

Amanda Carpenter, Bulwark political columnist: “Former President Donald Trump is responding to the case being laid out against him by the House January 6th Committee by . . . proving its point…All of which underscores the committee’s central point that the threat to democracy continues as Trump and his supporters still deny the outcome of the 2020 election and what took place on Jan. 6th.” Bulwark+ 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

Axios: Oz drops Trump branding in general election shift

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Associated Press: Wisconsin’s Johnson under heat for fake elector revelation

Axios: Jan 6. panel witnesses recount post-election threats of violence

Axios: Jan. 6 committee weighs changes to hearing schedule, citing new evidence

The Guardian: Giuliani told Arizona official ‘We just don’t have the evidence’ of voter fraud

Mother Jones: A Republican Stood Up to Trump. So Right-Wingers Smeared Him as a “Pedophile.”

Rolling Stone: ‘What the F-ck Is This?’: Team Trump Blindsided by Jan. 6 Committee Getting Doc Footage

Washington Post: Election workers describe ‘hateful’ threats after Trump’s false claims

Washington Post: How the Jan. 6 hearings could complicate the upcoming Proud Boys trial

Washington Post: Alone in Washington, Rusty Bowers tells world what happened in Arizona

Washington Post (Analysis): The attempted revolution was televised — and filmed

Republican Response to the January 6 Committee Hearings 

CNN: Frustrated with January 6 hearings, Trump turns ire toward his allies

Opinion 

New York Times (Thomas Edsall): Why Conspiracy Theories Flourish in Trump’s America

Politico (Jack Shafer): The Tragedy of Mike Pence

Washington Post (Jennifer Rubin): Rusty Bowers proves to be the Jan. 6 committee’s most compelling witness yet

Washington Post (Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent): Emotional Jan. 6 hearing shows election workers were the real heroes

In The States 

Detroit News: Michigan Republican lawmaker wants Jan. 6 declared ‘Remembrance Day’