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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — August 15, 2023

By August 15, 2023No Comments

Driving the Day

Must Read Stories

Fulton County grand jury indicts Trump over alleged Georgia election intervention

  • New York Times: How Trump Could Be Arrested and Booked, and What Happens Next: Former President Donald J. Trump has until no later than noon on Aug. 25 to voluntarily surrender to authorities in Fulton County, Fani T. Willis, the district attorney, said on Monday. The script that officials in Atlanta will follow for his arrest and booking is likely to deviate from the standard operating procedure, just as it did when Mr. Trump was arrested on separate charges in New York in April. In New York, prosecutors contacted a lawyer for Mr. Trump on the evening of March 30 “to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s Office for arraignment,” according to a post on Twitter by the district attorney, Alvin Bragg. The move was unsurprising, as suspects in white-collar cases are often given a chance to turn themselves in.
  • Washington Post: 4 things revealed by Trump’s Georgia indictment: Donald Trump has been criminally charged for the fourth time this year, with Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis unveiling an indictment Monday night concerning Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia. The indictment features 41 counts — 13 against Trump — and charges against Trump-aligned lawyers including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The core of the indictment, a racketeering charge, implicates all 19 defendants. Former president Donald Trump and 18 others have been indicted in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in the state. That brings the total number of criminal charges this year against the runaway front-runner in the GOP presidential primary to 91.
  • New York Times: Trump Indictment, Part IV: A Spectacle That Has Become Surreally Routine: Another grand jury, another indictment. For the fourth time in as many months, former President Donald J. Trump was charged on Monday with serious crimes and what was once unprecedented has now become surreally routine. The novelty of a former leader of the United States being called a felon has somehow worn off. Not that the sweeping 98-page indictment handed up in Georgia accusing him of corruptly trying to reverse the state’s 2020 election results was any less momentous. But a country of short attention spans has now seen this three times before and grown oddly accustomed to the spectacle.
  • Washington Post: How Donald Trump tried to undo his loss in Georgia in 2020: In phone calls, speeches, tweets and media appearances, Trump and his allies pushed to overturn the 2020 election results in six swing states where certified results declared Joe Biden the winner, an effort that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as Congress convened to confirm the results. Nowhere was the effort more acute than in Georgia, where all of their strategies came together in a complex and multilayered effort that unfolded against the hyperpartisan backdrop of two ongoing U.S. Senate races. Those close to Trump prodded state officials to identify fraud that would cast Biden’s victory in doubt. In the process, they personally targeted individual election workers with false claims of cheating, unleashing waves of threats, and amplified conspiracy theories about rigged machines that persist today. In the end, after Trump sought to use every lever of power to overturn the results, top state Republicans stood in his way, refusing to buckle under the pressure. 
  • New York Times: Who is Fani Willis, the Prosecutor at the Center of the Trump Investigation?: Fani T. Willis strode up to a podium in a red dress last year in downtown Atlanta, flanked by an array of dark suits and stone-faced officers in uniform. Her voice rang out loud and clear, with a hint of swagger. “If you thought Fulton was a good county to bring your crime to, to bring your violence to, you are wrong,” she said, facing a bank of news cameras. “And you are going to suffer consequences.” Ms Willis is the first Black woman to lead Georgia’s largest district attorney’s office. In her 19 years as a prosecutor, she has led more than 100 jury trials and handled hundreds of murder cases. Since she became chief prosecutor, her office’s conviction rate has stood at close to 90 percent, according to a spokesperson.
  • Washington Post: RICO, the Georgia anti-racketeering law used to charge Donald Trump: You’ll see it referred to as RICO. It allows prosecutors to weave together several alleged crimes into one racketeering charge that calls for up to 20 years in prison. Former president Donald Trump and 18 others have been indicted in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in the state. “It allows a lot of different things to be pulled together into a single very serious criminal charge,” said Clark Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University. Fani T. Willis is the top prosecutor for Georgia’s Fulton County, which is home to Atlanta. She’s a Democrat elected to the job in 2020, and soon after she took office she launched an investigation of Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results in her state.

Judge in Jan. 6 case curbs Trump’s evidence-sharing ability, amid concerns of intimidation

  • New York Times: Judge Limits Trump’s Ability to Share Jan. 6 Evidence: The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of seeking to overturn the 2020 election rejected his request on Friday to be able to speak broadly about evidence and witnesses — and warned Mr. Trump she would take necessary “measures” to keep him from intimidating witnesses or tainting potential jurors. The caution from the judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, came during a 90-minute hearing in Federal District Court in Washington to discuss the scope of a protective order over the discovery evidence in Mr. Trump’s case, a typically routine step in criminal matters. Later Friday, Judge Chutkan imposed the order but agreed to a modification requested by the Trump legal team that it apply only to “sensitive” materials and not all evidence turned over to the defense. She concluded the hearing with a blunt warning to Mr. Trump, and an unmistakable reference to a recent social media post in which he warned, “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” — a statement his spokesman later said was aimed at political opponents and not at people involved in the case.
  • Politico: Trump jabs at judge in election case, testing warning against ‘inflammatory’ statements: Donald Trump slammed the judge presiding over his newest criminal case early Monday, testing her three-day-old warning that he refrain from “inflammatory” attacks against those involved in his case. In a Truth Social post just before 1 a.m., Trump assailed U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan as “highly partisan” and “very biased and unfair,” citing as evidence a statement she made during the sentencing of a woman who participated in the mob that breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “She obviously wants me behind bars,” Trump wrote. Trump was alluding to Chutkan’s remark during the October 2022 sentencing of Christine Priola of Ohio. Chutkan admonished Priola, before sentencing her to 15 months in jail, about the Jan. 6 mob’s threat to the peaceful transfer of power.
  • Washington Post: Trump ups the ante on going after judges and witnesses. Where’s the line?: The question, as it often is with Trump, is whether he has gone too far — and where the line is for those charged with determining where it is. Experts say the situation could be coming to a head. Trump made his comments about Chutkan after he was explicitly told to abide by limits on what he can say about the federal Jan. 6 case. Trump signed a pretrial release form acknowledging that it would be a crime to “intimidate or attempt to intimidate a witness, victim, juror, informant, or officer of the court.” A judge is an officer of the court. “This could be interpreted as an attempt to intimidate Judge Chutkan,” said Joshua Dressler, a law professor at Ohio State University. But Dressler said he doubted that Chutkan would find Trump to be in violation, in part because it would train the focus of the proceedings on her.

In The States

Tennessee: Tennessee redistricting maps face legal challenge, voters allege ‘racial gerrymandering’

  • The Tennessean: Tennessee sued over ‘racial gerrymandering’ in redistricting maps: A group of Tennessee voters, including former state Sen. Brenda Gilmore, filed a lawsuit Wednesday over Tennessee’s newly drawn congressional maps, alleging the redistricting effort in early 2022 intentionally discriminates against Black voters and dilutes the voting power of communities of color. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Nashville, points to the Republican supermajority’s effort to break up Davidson County into three congressional districts and the splitting of state Senate District 31 in Shelby County. The complaint alleges Tennessee’s new maps amount to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering by breaking apart a Davidson County-centric Black, urban voting population and parsing it into three largely rural, white districts with differing “social, cultural, policy, and community-oriented concerns.”
  • The Washington Post: Lawsuit accuses Tennessee of ‘racially discriminatory’ redistricting: A group of civil rights organizations and Tennessee residents filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging the state’s recently enacted congressional and state Senate redistricting plans, asserting that the state violated the U.S. Constitution by diluting the voting power of African Americans and other voters of color in the state. The lawsuit, filed in a U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, challenges aspects of the congressional and state Senate redistricting boundaries signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee (R-Tenn.) in February 2022, which the plaintiffs argue unfairly fractured the power of Black voters and other minority voters in the Nashville and Memphis areas. Specifically, the plaintiffs have taken issue with the three-way split of Davidson County — home of Nashville — in the latest congressional map, as well as the splitting of Senate District 31 in Shelby County, which includes Memphis.
  • CNN: Civil rights groups file lawsuit over Tennessee’s redistricting maps: Several civil and voting rights groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Republican Gov. Bill Lee and other state officials over Tennessee’s congressional and state Senate maps, which they allege are discriminatory and violate the constitutional rights of voters of color. The lawsuit alleges that the Republican-controlled state legislature particularly diluted the voting power of Black residents through redistricting around Memphis and Nashville. The groups are asking the court to prevent the “calling, holding, supervising, or certifying any further election in the challenged districts” as they are currently structured.

Arizona: Massachusetts man pleads guilty to bomb threat aimed at then-Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs

  • New York Times: Man Pleads Guilty to Sending Bomb Threat to Arizona Election Official: A Massachusetts man who searched online for an Arizona election official’s address and name along with the words “how to kill” pleaded guilty on Friday to making a bomb threat to the official, the U.S. Justice Department said. The man, James W. Clark, 38, of Falmouth, Mass., sent the threat on Feb. 14, 2021, by using a contact form on the website for the Arizona Secretary of State’s election division, prosecutors said. The message was addressed to the official, who is not named in public court documents, and said the official needed “to resign by Tuesday February 16th by 9 am or the explosive device impacted in her personal space will be detonated.” Prosecutors said Mr. Clark also searched a few days later for information about the Boston Marathon bombings, which killed three people in 2013.
  • AZ Central: Massachusetts man pleads guilty after sending bomb threat to Arizona election official: A man who sent a bomb threat from Massachusetts to an Arizona election official pled guilty on Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. James Clark, 38, faces up to five years in prison after signing a plea deal for threatening interstate communication. What happened: From more than 2,500 miles away, Clark sent an online threat to the Arizona Secretary of State’s elections office on Valentine’s Day 2021. He singled out an election official in his message, demanding that she quit by Feb. 16 “or the explosive device impacted in her personal space will be detonated,” according to the DOJ. The government did not identify the target by name.
  • CBS News: Falmouth man James Clark pleads guilty to threatening Arizona election official: A Falmouth man pleaded guilty Friday to sending a bomb threat to an Arizona election official in 2021. James W. Clark, 38, sent the message in February 2021, warning her that she had to “resign by Tuesday February 16th by 9 am or the explosive device impacted in her personal space will be detonated.” He sent the message through the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office website contact for the Election Division and addressed the message to the election official.

What Experts Are Saying

Norman L. Eisen, Joshua Kolb, Joshua Stanton, Andrew Warren, and Siven Watt: “This primer answers questions about what to expect in the days ahead: the operation of the Georgia grand jury, various arraignment and pre-trial legal issues that will arise as the case proceeds, and the consequences Trump and others are facing. We will update this essay as we learn more, including when (and if) we have the indictment in hand.” Just Security: What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Georgia Indictment of Trump

Norm Eisen, special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, re: CNN reporting of evidence connecting Trump legal team to Georgia voting system breach: “‘We now have evidence that goes from Coffee County to Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, and as CNN reports, right into the Oval Office because this was discussed on Dec. 18th in one of the very notorious meetings in the Oval Office, whether it’s possible to get access to these Georgia voting systems and others around the country,’ he said. ‘It matters, of course, because it is one of the most serious crimes that we have in the 21st century is unauthorized access, hacking of computer systems.’” CNN via Salon

Nearly a dozen Republican-appointed former judges and high-ranking federal senior legal officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and retired federal appellate judge J. Michael Luttig, submitted legal brief supporting Special Counsel’s speedy trial date in 2020 election case: “There is no more important issue facing America and the American people – and to the very functioning of democracy – than whether the former president is guilty of criminally undermining America’s elections and American democracy in order to remain in power notwithstanding that the American people had voted to confer their power upon the former president’s successor, President Joseph Biden…Nothing less is at stake than the American experiment in democracy and democratic government that began with our nation’s founding almost two hundred and fifty years ago.” CNN | Brief PDF

States United Democracy Center: Backgrounder: Fulton County Special Grand Jury Investigation Into 2020 Presidential Interference Fact Sheet 

Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “RICO laws allow prosecutors to hold groups of people accountable for ongoing criminal activity. Georgia’s law is one of those cases where the language of the statute itself is not particularly illuminating. It’s the worst kind of legalese. But in practice, it allows officials to connect what would on the surface appear to be unrelated crimes, so long as there are common objectives and a pattern of crimes used to achieve them can be established…Establishing a ‘pattern of racketeering activity’ is at the core of the statute. Prosecutors must show an individual or the group engaged ‘in at least two acts of racketeering activity in furtherance of one or more incidents, schemes, or transactions that have the same or similar intents, results, accomplices, victims, or methods of commission or otherwise are interrelated by distinguishing characteristics and are not isolated incidents.’ These are called ‘predicate acts.’” Civil Discourse

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW): “January 6th was an insurrection, and the evidence is clear: more than 1,000 people have been charged for federal crimes by the Department of Justice including 10 convictions for seditious conspiracy, and Donald Trump himself was recently indicted for multiple January 6th related charges, including conspiracy against rights and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. Beyond those criminal charges, expert reports submitted to the January 6th House Select Committee also resoundingly counter DeSantis’s claims, identifying the January 6th attack as an insurrection. These reports were submitted by professors and experts from think tanks and anti-hate groups like the Anti-Defamation League and NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund.” DeSantis vs. experts: Expert reports called the January 6th attack an insurrection

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Rolling Stone: The MAGA Right Has a New Martyr in Utah Man Gunned Down By FBI

Trump Investigations 

CNN: Former Republican legal officials endorse special counsel’s speedy trial date proposal in Trump Jan. 6 case

CBS: How an obscure law about government secrets known as CIPA could shape the Trump documents trial

CNN: NY judge overseeing Trump hush money payments case denies request to recuse himself

Atlantic: Is Trump Daring a Judge to Jail Him?

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Washington Post: With Trump now in their ranks, some Jan. 6 defendants see hope

Daily Beast: Chicago Cop, Sister Found Guilty for Jan. 6 Charges

WUSA9: Jon Schaffer, the first Capitol rioter to plead guilty, gets a sentencing date

St. Joseph News-Press: Local couple pleads in Jan. 6 case

Opinion

Washington Post: Judge Chutkan blows the whistle on Trump’s stay-out-of-jail plan

New York Times: Why Are So Many of Trump’s Alleged Co-Conspirators Lawyers?

Washington Post: Trump says, ‘I’m coming after you.’ We should take him at his word

Hill: 45 pages every American should read

Washington Post: DeSantis’s Florida shows the disaster of more competent Trumpism

In the States

CNN: Michigan’s fake GOP electors arraigned on state charges

Hickory Record: What you need to know about voter ID for upcoming Catawba County elections

Wisconsin Public Radio: Republicans seek to intervene in challenge to Wisconsin absentee voting