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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — August 16, 2022

By August 16, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

What To Watch For Today:

Primary elections in Wyoming and Alaska. 

Must Read Stories

Trump-Allied Lawyers’ Scheme To Seize Voting Machine Data Reached Multiple States 

  • Washington Post: Trump-Allied Lawyers Pursued Voting Machine Data In Multiple States, Records Reveal: A team of computer experts directed by lawyers allied with President Donald Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment that was broader, more organized and more successful than previously reported, according to emails and other records obtained by The Washington Post. As they worked to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat, the lawyers asked a forensic data firm to access county election systems in at least three battleground states, according to the documents and interviews. The firm charged an upfront retainer fee for each job, which in one case was $26,000. Attorney Sidney Powell sent the team to Michigan to copy a rural county’s election data and later helped arrange for it to do the same in the Detroit area, according to the records. A Trump campaign attorney engaged the team to travel to Nevada. And the day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol the team was in southern Georgia, copying data from a Dominion voting system in rural Coffee County. The emails and other records were collected through a subpoena issued to the forensics firm, Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, by plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit in federal court over the security of Georgia’s voting systems. The documents provide the first confirmation that data from Georgia’s election system was copied. Indications of a breach there were first raised by plaintiffs in the case in February, and state officials have said they are investigating.

Trump Echoes His Post-January 6 Rhetoric As Threats Of Violence Against Law Enforcement Continue 

  • Time: Trump’s Messaging on FBI Search Echoes His Statements on Jan. 6: In the week since the FBI executed a search warrant on former President Donald Trump’s home, many of his supporters have continued to grow angrier, prompting a surge in threats against federal agents including an attempted attack on the FBI field office in Cincinnati that left the attacker dead. In such a fraught moment, Trump returned on Monday to a playbook he previously used on Jan. 6, 2021: seemingly offering to help calm his supporters while actually feeding their anger by describing that anger as justified. Trump told Fox News Digital in an interview on Monday that “the country is in a very dangerous position.” He said, “Whatever we can do to help — because the temperature has to be brought down in the country. If it isn’t, terrible things are going to happen.” He then added: “The people of this country are not going to stand for another scam.” Trump’s public offer of an olive branch, while continuing to stoke the rage of his supporters, echoed his handling of the mob that attacked the Capitol as Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s victory over him in the 2020 election. Ahead of that deadly riot, Trump’s statements helped whip up his supporters to action, according to evidence the Jan. 6 committee presented during dramatic hearings this summer.
  • Philadelphia Inquirer: Pennsylvania Man Arrested For Threatening To Slaughter FBI Agents And ‘water The Trees Of Liberty’ With Their Blood:  ​A Pennsylvania man who threatened to slaughter FBI agents and “water the trees of liberty” with their blood on social media last week after the search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate was arrested by federal authorities on Monday. Adam Bies, 46, of Mercer, faces one count of influencing, impeding, or retaliating against federal law enforcement officers — a charge punishable by up to six years in prison. His arrest comes amid heightened concern over the violent rhetoric spreading on pro-Trump internet forums against FBI agents. 

An Armada Of Election Deniers Are Seeking Power In Key Swing States 

  • Washington Post: Election Deniers March Toward Power In Key 2024 Battlegrounds: First came Kristina Karamo, a community college instructor from Detroit who claimed without evidence that she witnessed fraud as a 2020 election observer — and who in April became her party’s pick for secretary of state, Michigan’s top election official, after repeatedly touting those claims. Next was Doug Mastriano, the firebrand state lawmaker from Pennsylvania who urged his colleagues to throw out Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. In May, Mastriano secured the GOP nomination for governor, a position with the power to certify the state’s slate of presidential electors. Finally, this month, Arizona Republicans nominated Kari Lake for governor and Mark Finchem for secretary of state. Both are outspoken election deniers who have pledged that they would not have certified Biden’s victory in their state. The winners fit a pattern: Across the battleground states that decided the 2020 vote, candidates who deny the legitimacy of that election have claimed nearly two-thirds of GOP nominations for state and federal offices with authority over elections, according to a Washington Post analysis.

In Fulton County Investigation Rudy Giuliani Is Named As A Target, Lindsey Graham Is Ordered To Testify 

  • New York Times: Giuliani Is Told He Is a Target of Trump Election Inquiry in Georgia:  The legal pressures on Donald J. Trump and his closest allies intensified further on Monday, as prosecutors informed his former personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, that Mr. Giuliani was a target in a wide-ranging criminal investigation into election interference in Georgia. The notification came on the same day that a federal judge rejected efforts by another key Trump ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, to avoid giving testimony before the special grand jury hearing evidence in the case in Atlanta. One of Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers, Robert Costello, said in an interview that he was notified on Monday that his client was a target. Being so identified does not guarantee that a person will be indicted; rather, it usually means that prosecutors believe an indictment is possible, based on evidence they have seen up to that point. Mr. Giuliani, who as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer spearheaded efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power, emerged in recent weeks as a central figure in the inquiry being conducted by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., which encompasses most of Atlanta.
  • Politico: Judge Orders Graham To Testify In Atlanta-Area Trump Probe:  A federal judge on Monday turned down Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bid to throw out a subpoena compelling him to testify before the Atlanta-area grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. “[T]he Court finds that the District Attorney has shown extraordinary circumstances and a special need for Senator Graham’s testimony on issues relating to alleged attempts to influence or disrupt the lawful administration of Georgia’s 2022 elections,” U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May wrote in a 22-page opinion rejecting Graham’s effort and sending the matter back to state courts for further proceedings. The ruling is a victory for District Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading the grand jury probe that resulted in a subpoena for Graham (R-S.C.) to appear for an Aug. 23 interview. Investigators intend to query Graham about two phone calls with Georgia election officials, at the same time Trump was attempting to subvert his defeat, that included a discussion of the process for counting absentee ballots.

Trump’s Grip On The GOP To Be Tested With Primaries In Wyoming And Alaska Today 

  • Associated Press: Cheney Braces For Loss As Trump Tested In Wyoming And Alaska: Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a leader in the Republican resistance to former President Donald Trump, is fighting to save her seat in the U.S. House on Tuesday as voters weigh in on the direction of the GOP. Cheney’s team is bracing for a loss against a Trump-backed challenger in the state in which he won by the largest of margins during the 2020 campaign. Win or lose in deep-red Wyoming, the 56-year-old daughter of a vice president is vowing not to disappear from national politics as she contemplates a 2024 presidential bid. But in the short term, Cheney is facing a dire threat from Republican opponent Harriet Hageman, a Cheyenne ranching industry attorney who has harnessed the full fury of the Trump movement in her bid to expel Cheney from the House.
  • CNN (Analysis): Cheney’s Fate In Wyoming Is A Final Test Of Trump’s Hold Over The GOP: Rep. Liz Cheney’s uphill battle to keep her seat in Wyoming’s GOP primary on Tuesday underscores how Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party is tightening even as the former President’s legal challenges are mounting. That dynamic poses stark choices for the thin band of Republican elected officials and voters resistant to his dominance within the party. If Cheney loses Tuesday, as expected, the result will place an exclamation point on a summer that has seen Trump-backed candidates, almost all of whom echo his falsehoods about the 2020 election, win most hotly contested party primaries. Virtually no GOP elected officials have dared to criticize him over damaging revelations either from the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, or the Justice Department investigation of his handling of classified information. Trump’s muscle-flexing has dashed the expectations, or maybe the hopes, of many conservative commentators who took his losses in several late May Georgia primaries as evidence that his influence was waning. Instead, by rejecting multiple opportunities to move away from the former President, both Republican officials and voters in the three months since have sent an unmistakable message to Trump skeptics that they remain the subordinate minority in the party.

In The States 

PENNSYLVANIA: Doug Mastriano Would Use Secretary Of State Appointment To Disrupt Democracy 

  • Bolts: Doug Mastriano Plans to Use His Secretary of State Pick to Disrupt Pennsylvania Elections: Doug Mastriano is a Donald Trump loyalist, and an ardent proponent of the former president’s baseless conspiracies about the 2020 election. He was outside the capitol on Jan. 6th, brought supporters to D.C. that day, and has been subpoenaed by the congressional committee investigating the riots. Now, Mastriano is also the GOP nominee in Pennsylvania’s governor’s race in November. His victory would hand over control of a large swing state to a hard right election denier in the lead-up to the next presidential race. “He has revealed the Deceit, Corruption, and outright Theft of the 2020 Presidential Election, and will do something about it,” Trump said of Mastriano when he endorsed him in May.  A centerpiece of Mastriano’s promise to revamp the state’s election system is to flex the governor’s authority to choose Pennsylvania’s secretary of state. “As governor, I get to appoint the secretary of state. And I have a voting reform-minded individual who’s been traveling the nation and knows voting reform extremely well,” Mastriano told Steve Bannon, former chief strategist for Trump, in an April interview. “That individual has agreed to be my secretary of state.” Mastriano rarely talks to the news media and mostly conducts interviews in far right venues, where his narrative about the 2020 election will not be questioned. As such, he has not publicly named the person he would name for secretary of state, though reporting from HuffPost and the Philadelphia Inquirer  revealed some possible contenders among his like-minded allies. Mastriano’s campaign did not respond to an interview request for this article. He has made it clear he would use many of the levers at his disposal to change rules he portrays as rife with corruption. “I saw better elections in Afghanistan than in Pennsylvania,” Mastriano, who spent much of his career in the U.S. Army, said during his campaign. He could work with the legislature, for instance, to pass new voting restrictions like rolling back mail-in voting or adopting harsh voter ID laws, measures he has promoted in the past. He has also proposed forcing voters to re-register and has said he could decertify all election machines in the state. The ability to reshape the secretary of state position gives him more options than he might have in a state where the position is an elected office.

What Experts Are Saying

Frank Figliuzzi, assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI: “There is no end in sight to the rising body count. That’s because a deliberate far-right strategy of ‘culture warfare,’ which encourages residents to see themselves as warriors in a life or death battle, is perceived as effective in turning out voters. This fact-averse strategy depends upon a steady stream of disinformation designed to spur people to action – even if that action is deadly. If left unchecked, this strategy won’t kill only people but also lead to the demise of the rule of law and our democracy. The dangerous rhetoric and violent actions of last week provide an ominous preview of what might transpire if Trump is eventually indicted in any of the investigations into his behavior.” MSNBC Op-Ed: Yet another person has died in defense of Trump’s lies. When will it end?

Norman Eisen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Asha Rangappa, senior lecturer at Yale University and former special agent in the FBI, and Dennis Aftergut, former federal prosecutor: “Trump’s groundless caterwauling this past week proves he’s concerned about possible prosecution. He should be. There are just too many ongoing investigations to think that he can dodge them all.” CNN Op-Ed 

Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor: “Our country could use more Republicans like Bowers, who witnessed Trump’s misdeeds and asked, ‘If I do not stop to help this Constitution, what will happen to it?’” The Hill Op-Ed: Republicans’ response to Mar-a-Lago search shows why we need more like Rusty Bowers

Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law, re: DOJ request to keep Mar-A-Lago search warrant affidavit under seal: “This suggests DOJ wasn’t just repatriating top secret docs to get them out of Trump’s unsafe clutches but is pursuing a path looking toward criminal indictment” Tweet 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Axios: “Defund the FBI” complicates GOP’s midterm messaging

Politico: ‘Hackers against conspiracies’: Cyber sleuths take aim at election disinformation

Vanity Fair: The Trump Convert Who Looks Like She’s About To Unseat Liz Cheney

Washington Examiner: Trump backs Texas Attorney General Paxton with pricey Bedminster fundraiser

Washington Post: After Mar-a-Lago search, can Dems run against Trumpism but not Trump?

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Politico: Justice Department subpoenas former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann

Other Trump Investigations

Associated Press: Feds oppose unsealing affidavit for Mar-a-Lago warrant

Axios: Bolton: Trump’s defense of Mar-a-Lago materials “almost certainly a lie”

Fox News: Trump ‘will do whatever’ he can to ‘help the country’ after FBI raid: ‘Temperature has to be brought down’

The Hill: House Judiciary GOP seeks White House, DOJ and FBI documents on Mar-a-Lago search

New York Times: Trump Executive Nears Plea Deal With Manhattan Prosecutors

Opinion

Washington Post (Greg Sargent): Trump’s latest eruption underscores the danger of a GOP House