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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — August 18, 2022

By August 18, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

For The First Time Mike Pence Suggests He Could Testify Before The January 6 Committee 

  • Politico: Pence: ‘I Would Consider’ Testifying To Jan. 6 Committee: Former Vice President Mike Pence hasn’t ruled out testifying before the Jan. 6 select committee investigating efforts by his former boss and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “If there was an invitation to participate, I would consider it,” Pence told a packed room at the New England Council and Saint Anselm College’s “Politics & Eggs” event on Wednesday morning. “I would have to reflect on the unique role that I was serving as vice president,” Pence continued. “It would be unprecedented in history for the vice president to be summoned to testify on Capitol Hill. But, as I said, I don’t want to prejudge ever any formal invitation rendered to us.”
  • Associated Press: Pence Tells GOP To Stop Lashing Out At FBI Over Trump Search: Former Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday implored fellow Republicans to stop lashing out at the FBI over the search of Donald Trump’s Florida home and denounced calls by some of the former president’s allies to defund the FBI, saying that was “just as wrong” as a push by Democratic activists to shift money from police. Pence also said he would give “due consideration” if asked to testify before the House committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His pleas for restraint come as law enforcement officials warn of an escalating number of violent threats targeting federal agents and government facilities since agents last week searched Mar-a-Lago as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into the discovery of classified White House records recovered from Trump’s estate earlier this year.

January 6 Grand Jury Has Subpoenaed White House Documents 

  • New York Times: Jan. 6 Grand Jury Has Subpoenaed White House Documents: Federal prosecutors investigating the role that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies played in the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have issued a grand jury subpoena to the National Archives for all the documents the agency provided to a parallel House select committee inquiry, according to a copy of the subpoena obtained by The New York Times. The subpoena, issued to the National Archives in May, made a sweeping demand for “all materials, in whatever form” that the archives had given to the Jan. 6 House committee. Those materials included records from the files of Mr. Trump’s top aides, his daily schedule and phone logs and a draft text of the president’s speech that preceded the riot. It was signed by Thomas P. Windom, the federal prosecutor who has been leading the Justice Department’s wide-ranging inquiry into what part Mr. Trump and his allies may have played in various schemes to maintain power after the former president’s defeat in the 2020 election — chief among them a plan to submit fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. The subpoena was not related to a separate investigation into Mr. Trump’s retention and handling of classified documents that were removed from the White House at the end of his tenure and taken to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Palm Beach, Fla.

Threats To The Rule Of Law Mount As Trump Supporters Threaten Judges And Far Right Sheriffs Ramp Up Involvement In Elections 

  • Associated Press: Trump Supporters’ Threats To Judge Spur Democracy Concerns: Hundreds of federal judges face the same task every day: review an affidavit submitted by federal agents and approve requests for a search warrant. But for U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, the fallout from his decision to approve a search warrant has been far from routine. He has faced a storm of death threats since his signature earlier this month cleared the way for the FBI to search former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as part of a probe into whether he inappropriately removed sensitive materials from the White House. Reinhart’s home address was posted on right-wing sites, along with antisemitic slurs. The South Florida synagogue he attends canceled its Friday night Shabbat services in the wake of the uproar. Trump has done little to lower the temperature among his supporters, decrying the search as political persecution and calling on Reinhart to recuse himself in the case because he has previously made political donations to Democrats. Reinhart has also, however, contributed to Republicans. The threats against Reinhart are part of a broader attack on law enforcement, particularly the FBI, by Trump and his allies in the aftermath of the search. But experts warn that the focus on a judge, coming amid an uptick in threats to the judiciary in general, is dangerous for the rule of law in the U.S. and the country’s viability as a democracy.
  • The Guardian: Rightwing Sheriffs’ Groups Ramp Up Drives To Monitor US Midterm Elections:  Two groups of rightwing sheriffs that echo some of Donald Trump’s false claims about widespread voting fraud in 2020 are ramping up drives to monitor this year’s elections for potential voting and election fraud. The two Arizona-led groups together boast over 350 sheriffs as members nationwide, and have forged various ties with Texas-based True the Vote, which has a history of making unverified claims of voting fraud, spurring watchdogs and law enforcement veterans to voice alarms of looming threats to voting rights and election workers. The burgeoning sheriffs’ drive to investigate so-called voting fraud was evident at a secretive Arizona meeting on 13 August that drew a crowd of some 200 allies, including former sheriff Richard Mack and current sheriff Mark Lamb, who each lead sheriffs’ groups. The True the Vote chief, Catherine Engelbrecht, arranged the event, Mack told the Guardian.

Rudy Giuliani Testifies Before Fulton County Grand Jury 

  • Atlanta Journal Constitution: Giuliani, New Target Of Fulton Probe, Testifies Before Grand Jury: Rudy Giuliani, the onetime personal attorney of former President Donald Trump, testified before the Fulton County special purpose grand jury examining Georgia’s 2020 elections for roughly six hours on Wednesday. Pryor Street in downtown Atlanta took on a circus-like atmosphere as some three-dozen reporters and camera-people from local and national news outlets jockeyed for the best view of the former New York City mayor. He arrived around 8:30 a.m., accompanied by his lawyer, Robert J. Costello, and former GOP gubernatorial candidate Vernon Jones. Giuliani left the Fulton County courthouse through a private exit shortly after 3 p.m. with a sheriff’s escort. Bill Thomas, Giuliani’s local attorney, declined to answer reporters’ questions. “I can tell you that we were ordered to be here, we showed up, we did what we had to do,” he said. “The grand jury process is a secret process and we’re going to respect that.”

In The States 

FLORIDA: Ousted Prosecutor Sues DeSantis For Removing Him From Office 

  • Politico: ‘Blatant Abuse Of Power’: Ousted Florida Prosecutor Sues Desantis Over Suspension:  Ousted Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit arguing Gov. Ron DeSantis abused his power when suspending him from office over, among other things, a pledge to not prosecute women who violate Florida’s new 15-week abortion ban. DeSantis detractors immediately condemned Warren’s Aug. 4 suspension as political overreach and targeting a political foe. The governor framed the move as maintaining his “law and order” philosophy and characterized Warren’s suspension as removing a progressive prosecutor who refused to enforce laws. Warren has twice been elected to serve as State Attorney for the 13th Judicial Circuit. “This morning I filed a suit in federal court to challenge that blatant abuse of power by Governor DeSantis in suspending me as state attorney,” Warren said during a Wednesday morning press conference in Tallahassee. “There is so much more at stake here than my job.”

What Experts Are Saying

Michael Hayden, retired United States Air Force four-star general and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, re: assertion that “never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous & contemptible than today’s Republicans. Nothing close”: “I agree.  And I was the CIA Director” Tweet 

Norman J. Ornstein, political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute: “Fealty to the law meant nothing to [Donald Trump] him. The country’s interests meant nothing to him. The only oath he has taken is to his own greed and self-preservation.” The Washington Post 

Norman Eisen, co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment hearings, re: Trump taking the 5th as part of NY’s investigation in the finances of his businesses: “there is a ‘bond’ between an official and the people of the nation, which is ‘created by election or appointment and also cemented by the oath of office.’ Just as a civil jury can draw an adverse conclusion from Trump’s refusal to answer questions, ‘it should be disqualifying for Trump if he seeks to run again.’” The Washington Post

Asha Rangappa, former FBI agent, re: Donald Trump amplifying the likelihood of “payback” for the FBI “raid” of Mar-A-Lago:  ““I don’t get this. So the claim is that the FBI is unfairly targeting Trump and the response is… ‘ha! we’ll do this back!;? Just spitballing here but it seems like maybe they aren’t actually interested in the rule of law” Tweet 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, New York University scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders: “The news that former president Donald Trump was keeping highly classified documents at Mar-A-Lago, his private residence in Florida, sheds light on how strongmen leaders think and operate and why they are such risks to national security. Authoritarian leaders have an entirely proprietary view of governance. They don’t recognize boundaries between public and private. They believe that as head of state it is their right to possess and exploit anything in the nation, from natural resources to economic assets to information—the latter being the most valuable currency, as the former intelligence official Vladimir Putin well knows.” Lucid 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

New York Times: After Loss, Cheney Begins Difficult Mission of Thwarting Trump

Talking Points Memo: The Christian Right Plots How To Avenge The FBI Raid: 

Vice: Liz Cheney’s Crushing Loss Was the Final Blow for Anti-Trump Republicans

Washington Post: Trump’s dominance in GOP comes into focus, worrying some in the party

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Atlanta Journal Constitution: ​​Kemp accuses Fulton DA’s office of playing politics as he fights subpoena

Newsweek: Donald Trump Warns Jan 6 Probe After Liz Cheney ‘Political Oblivion’

Other Trump Investigations

ABC: Weeks before Mar-a-Lago search, ex-Trump DOD official vowed to publish classified documents from National Archives

Associated Press: Media to ask judge to release Trump search warrant affidavit

CNN: Trump considering releasing surveillance footage of FBI Mar-a-Lago search

New York Times: Plea Deal Requires Weisselberg to Testify at Trump Organization Trial

Washington Post: Trump rakes in millions off FBI search at Mar-a-Lago

Political Violence

Daily Beast: ‘Watching Your Ass’: School Worker Made Wild Threats to Anti-Trump Elections Official, Feds Say

Vice: Far-Right Extremists Are Threatening to ‘Execute’ Doctors at a Children’s Hospital

In The States 

Politico: Trump’s Man in Arizona Might Get the Last Laugh