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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — June 23, 2022

By June 23, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

What To Watch Today: 

The House select committee investigating January 6 will hold a hearing at 3:00 PM 

Must Read Stories

Today’s Hearing Will Focus On Trump’s Pressure On The Justice Department 

  • Associated Press: 1/6 Panel To Hear Of Trump’s Pressure On Justice Department: The Jan. 6 committee will hear from former Justice Department officials who faced down a relentless pressure campaign from Donald Trump over the 2020 presidential election results while suppressing a bizarre challenge from within their own ranks. The hearing Thursday will bring attention to a memorably turbulent stretch at the department as Trump in his final days in office sought to bend to his will a law enforcement agency that has long cherished its independence from the White House. The testimony is aimed at showing how Trump not only relied on outside advisers to press his false claims of election fraud but also tried to leverage the powers of federal executive branch agencies. The witnesses will include Jeffrey Rosen, who was acting attorney general during the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Three days earlier, Rosen was part of a tense Oval Office showdown in which Trump contemplated replacing him with a lower-level official, Jeffrey Clark, who wanted to champion Trump’s bogus election fraud claims.

DOJ Criminal Investigation Expands With New Subpoenas In Multiple States 

  • Washington Post: Jan. 6 Probe Expands With Fresh Subpoenas In Multiple States: Federal agents investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday dropped subpoenas on people in multiple locations, widening the probe of how political activists supporting President Donald Trump tried to use invalid electors to thwart Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. Agents conducted court-authorized law enforcement activity Wednesday morning at different locations, FBI officials confirmed to The Washington Post. One was the home of Brad Carver, a Georgia lawyer who allegedly signed a document claiming to be a Trump elector. The other was the Virginia home of Thomas Lane, who worked on the Trump campaign’s efforts in Arizona and New Mexico. The FBI officials did not identify the people associated with those addresses, but public records list each of the locations as the home addresses of the men.
  • KLAS: ​​I-Team sources: FBI seizes Nevada GOP Chairman’s Phone As Part Of Fake Elector Investigation: FBI agents served a search warrant Wednesday on Nevada’s top GOP official, sources told the 8 News Now I-Team’s George Knapp. Agents seized the cell phone of state Republican chairman Michael McDonald, reportedly as part of an investigation into the fake elector scheme initiated at the end of the 2020 presidential election. A second search warrant was issued for state party secretary James DeGraffenreid, who also signed the document, but FBI agents could not locate him Wednesday, sources told Knapp.
  • CNN: DOJ Subpoenas Georgia Republican Party Chairman As It Expands Trump Fake Elector Probe: Federal investigators subpoenaed the Georgia Republican Party chairman for information related to the fake elector scheme there — as the Justice Department has issued a fresh round of subpoenas to people from several states who acted as rogue electors after the 2020 presidential election, multiple sources familiar with the situation told CNN. The subpoena for the chairman, David Shafer, represents a significant step because he played a central role in organizing the fake slate of electors from Georgia and coordinated the effort with the Trump campaign. The focus on Shafer also comes as sources tell CNN the Justice Department subpoenaed Trump electors this week in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania — all states that former President Donald Trump lost.

January 6 Committee Expands Hearing Schedule To July To Accommodate New Evidence, Witnesses 

  • Politico: Jan. 6 Panel Revises Hearing Schedule, Citing New Evidence: Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the Jan. 6 select committee, said Wednesday that significant new streams of evidence have necessitated a change to the panel’s hearing schedule, including the potential for additional hearings. After the committee’s Thursday hearing — which will focus on former President Donald Trump’s effort to deploy the Justice Department to help overturn the 2020 presidential election — House investigators will resume hearings in July, Thompson said. Thompson (D-Miss.) cited newly received footage from documentarian Alex Holder, who had access to Trump and his family before and after Jan. 6; new documents from the National Archives; and a flood of new tips received during the committee’s first four public hearings.
  • CNN: Rep. Mo Brooks Says He’s Willing To Testify In Public As Jan. 6 Committee Prepares To Reissue Him A Subpoena: Rep. Mo Brooks — one of the Republican lawmakers facing calls from the January 6 committee to testify about his interactions with former President Donald Trump — said Wednesday that he is willing to testify but only in public. “My basic requirement is it be in public so the public can see it — so they don’t get bits and pieces dribbled out,” the Alabama Republican said. He also said he’d testify only about matters related to January 6, 2021, and wants to see copies of any documents beforehand that the panel may ask him about. Even though the House select committee announced subpoenas for Brooks and four other Republicans last month, he had yet to be served with one because he had been campaigning for the GOP Senate nomination in Alabama. Brooks lost in a runoff Tuesday night. Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, told CNN that the panel has “redone his subpoena” and “he’s the only member we hadn’t been able to serve.” “So we are in the process of either redoing it or it’s out the door already,” Thompson said Wednesday night.

Violent Threats Against Members Of The Committee Increase 

  • CNN: ‘Hang Them All’: January 6 Committee Members Target Of Violent Rhetoric On Right-Wing Social Media Platforms: Calls for violence against members of the January 6 committee are circulating on some of the same online platforms that helped fuel the lies that led to the insurrection, a new analysis has found. Users on these platforms are openly calling for the execution of committee members, with Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney appearing to be a specific target. Calls for former Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged, that were chanted throughout Washington DC on January 6, continue to be echoed online. Determining what is just rhetoric and what might be an active threat is a challenge for law enforcement.
  • Washington Post: Lawmakers On Jan. 6 Committee Ramp Up Their Security As Threats Increase: In the past 24 hours, there has been an uptick in the number of violent threats against lawmakers on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and all lawmakers on the committee are likely to receive a security detail, according to three people involved with the investigation. The committee on Tuesday held its fourth hearing, which focused on efforts by former president Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the resulting political violence and harassment experienced by many of those who resisted

In The States 

January 6 Committee Counsel Leaving To Explore Independent Campaign For Senate In Missouri

  • Kansas City Star: Jan 6. Counsel John Wood Leaving To Explore Senate Bid: One of the senior investigators for the U.S. House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is leaving his post to explore a run for U.S. Senate in Missouri as an independent candidate. Steve Crim, a political consultant working for a political committee attempting to recruit investigator John Wood into the race, confirmed that Wood has left the House Select Committee. He said he is hoping it means Wood will officially launch a campaign. “We deserve leaders who believe that our democracy must be held together – not torn apart by partisan politics that have divided our country for too long. John Wood embodies this principle,” Crim wrote in a statement. ”We are encouraged by John’s decision to leave the select committee on Friday as an important next step in providing Missourians a principled, common-sense choice this November.”

Trump-Endorsed Candidate For Wisconsin Governor Won’t Say Whether He Would Certify The Next Presidential Election 

  • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: GOP Governor Candidate Tim Michels Won’t Say Whether He Would Certify The Next Presidential Election: Former President Donald Trump’s preferred candidate for governor won’t say whether he would certify the next presidential election if Trump makes another run for the White House and again loses the key battleground state of Wisconsin.  Tim Michels, a wealthy construction executive endorsed by Trump, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the question is too hypothetical to answer at this point, adopting a similar position his Republican primary opponent Rebecca Kleefisch took when asked whether she would have certified the 2020 election. 

What Experts Are Saying

Joyce Vance, former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama: “Hearings planned for next week have now been continued into July…My impression is that this is good news, that the committee is learning new information and trying to figure out where it fits in. This is a phenomenon prosecutors are familiar with. Success breeds success. When investigations start to roll, more witness[es] want to get on the bus. They come in, they provide information. Sometimes, they’re very good witnesses with high quality information.” Civil Discourse 

Tom Nichols, former professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College: “Our elections work because they are run by ordinary citizens at the state and local level who either were elected or volunteered to help administer the vote as a matter of civic duty…The fight for democracy in America might soon look yet again like the fight for racial and political equality in the 1950s and 1960s, when racist state and local governments denied the franchise to Black Americans. Those battles were won not only in legislatures and courts but in public by people showing up together and demanding to exercise their rights as citizens. In the coming elections, Trump and a claque of liars and opportunists will continue their efforts to hollow out American democracy.” The Atlantic 

Legal experts Ryan Goodman, Norman Eisen, and Barbara McQuade: “For a number of the possible crimes the committee has identified, it doesn’t matter what Trump believed about the election. Focusing on that aspect misses the true test of criminal intent…prosecutors need not make these cases more difficult than they are. If they focus on Trump’s efforts to engage in vigilante justice, the intent element of these crimes is easily satisfied.” Washington Post 

Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale University: “The fact that we have democracies at all is kind of remarkable. Let’s just go back a century and think of Mussolini marching on Rome, and the rise of the far right in most places in Europe, and the rise of the far right, for that matter, in the United States. These things were barely held off then. FDR was a stroke of good luck…We’ve forgotten what the word democracy means, which is that the people have to rule. And if the people are going to rule, they have to want to rule.” Vox  

Barbara McQuade, former United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan: “In my latest note for @Cafedotcom, I discuss what could be an easy charge against Trump – wire fraud.  Convicting him of financial crimes may not hold him completely accountable for all his misdeeds, but it might do the trick, just as it did for Al Capone.” Tweet | CAFE Insider 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

Vanity Fair: January 6 Was Only The Beginning

Washington Post: Liberal groups devote millions to blocking GOP election deniers

January 6 And The 2020 Election

CBS: CBS News obtains images from documentary film footage given to Jan. 6 panel

Courthouse News: Texas judge refuses to dismiss disciplinary case against former Trump attorney

NBC: Judge delays Proud Boys’ Capitol attack trial because of Jan. 6 hearings

NBC: ‘Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!’ he yelled. Derrick Evans has now been sentenced for storming the Capitol.

Reuters: Fox News parent must face defamation lawsuit over election coverage

Washington Post: DOJ wants to know if Sidney Powell is funding Oath Keepers’ defense

Washington Post: Sen. Ron Johnson under fire over fake-electors disclosure at hearing

Republican Response to the January 6 Committee Hearings 

New York Times: A Year Later, Some Republicans Second-Guess Boycotting the Jan. 6 Panel

Washington Post: As Jan. 6 committee targets Trump, his consternation at McCarthy grows

Washington Post (Analysis): A sign the Jan. 6 committee is having an effect: GOP infighting about it

Opinion 

MSNBC (Jesse Holland): In Georgia, Trump supporters embodied the spirit of the lynch mob

New York Daily News (Dennis Aftergut): Why Trump may really be in criminal jeopardy now

USA Today (Michael Hayden, James Clapper, Stanley McChrystal, Douglas Lute and Mark Hertling): We fought to defend democracy. This new threat to America now keeps us awake at night.

Washington Post (Ryan Goodman, Norman Eisen and Barbara McQuade): Did Trump believe his big lie? It’s irrelevant to proving his guilt.

Washington Post (Margaret Sullivan): How journalists can spot the signs of autocracy — and help ward it off

Washington Post (Greg Sargent): Ron Johnson’s spin about Trump’s fake electors scheme is a bad joke

Washington Post (EJ Dionne): How many Rusty Bowers Republicans are out there?

Washington Post (Jennifer Rubin): A question for Garland: Do you know how it feels for POTUS to target you?

Political Violence 

CNN: Man charged with attempting to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh pleads not guilty

HuffPost: Rep. Eric Swalwell Shares Recording Of Death Threat After Marjorie Taylor Greene Attack

Vice: The GOP Paved the Way for the Far-Right to Terrorize Pride This Year

In The States 

Michigan Advance: Michigan, national election experts call fake Trump electors in 2020 ‘vigilantism’

WJBK: Congressional investigation into Jan. 6 Insurrection reveals Michigan’s role