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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — August 19, 2022

By August 19, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Trump’s Legal Problems Are Just Getting Started As Judge Orders Partial Release Of Mar A Lago Warrant Affidavit 

  • Politico: Trump’s Legal Woes Enter Yet Another Protracted Phase: Donald Trump entered Thursday demanding answers about the basis for the FBI search of his private residence and calling for a swift end to the investigation. Instead, the former president got few new details about the probe and a piece of unwelcome news to boot: the feds are just getting started. That was the message from top Justice Department prosecutors during an hour-long federal court hearing Thursday over whether to publicly release elements of the probable-cause affidavit that led to the unprecedented search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. And it’s the latest sign that the Trump legal controversies that have clouded Washington for years may be entering a new protracted chapter. Trump has ricocheted from one legal crisis to another since 2015. But now, in addition to a grand jury probe of his efforts with allies to disrupt the 2020 transition of power, and an Atlanta-area election investigation that also may result in criminal charges, he is staring down a Justice Department review of his handling of classified documents that could present the most acute legal threat of all.
  • New York Times: Judge Orders Justice Dept. to Redact and Release Version of Affidavit Used to Search Trump’s Home: A federal judge ordered the government on Thursday to propose redactions to the highly sensitive affidavit that was used to justify a search warrant executed by the F.B.I. last week at former President Donald J. Trump’s private home and club, saying he was inclined to unseal parts of it. Ruling from the bench, the judge, Bruce E. Reinhart, said it was “very important” that the public have as “much information” as it can about the historic search at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida residence. He noted later in a written order that the government “had not met its burden of showing that the entire affidavit should remain sealed.” Judge Reinhart went on to say that he was leaning toward releasing portions of the document, adding that “whether those portions would be meaningful for the public or the media” was not for him to decide. He also acknowledged that the redaction process could often be extensive and sometimes turned documents into “meaningless gibberish.”

Mainstream Republicans Embrace Extreme Right Conspiracy Theorist Doug Mastriano In PA Governor’s Race 

  • New York Times: Once Alarmed, Mainstream Pennsylvania Republicans Unite Around Mastriano: Before Pennsylvania’s primary, much of the state’s Republican establishment agreed that Doug Mastriano would be a disaster as the nominee for governor. Andy Reilly, the state’s Republican national committeeman, had joined a stop-Mastriano effort by rival candidates, who feared that the far-right state senator and prolific spreader of election conspiracy theories would squander an otherwise winnable race. Yet on a warm evening last month, Mr. Reilly opened his suburban Philadelphia home for a backyard fund-raiser for Mr. Mastriano, who won his primary in May. Guests chipped in $150 for ribs and pulled pork and listened to Mr. Mastriano, fresh from an uproar over his presence on Gab, a social media site that is a haven for hate speech. Mr. Reilly later defended Mr. Mastriano as the better choice to lead Pennsylvania over his Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro. “The question is can Doug Mastriano keep the Republican Party base and all the factions together?” Mr. Reilly said. In one of the most closely watched governor’s races of the year, Pennsylvania Republican officials who had warned that Mr. Mastriano was unelectable have largely closed ranks behind him, after he proved to be the overwhelming choice of base Republicans. On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida plans to headline a rally with Mr. Mastriano in Pittsburgh, a bearhug from one of the party’s most popular national figures.
  • Yahoo News: DeSantis Knocked By Jewish Leaders For Rallying With Pennsylvania GOP Candidate: Florida Democrats and Jewish leaders joined religious groups in Pennsylvania in condemning Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., for his plans to appear Friday with Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania. Mastriano’s ties to Gab, a right-wing social media site that has become a hub of antisemitic and racist commentary, have come under fire for the last few weeks. “Do not go to Pennsylvania and do this. Be bigger than this. Be better than this,” Democratic activist Fred Guttenberg appealed to DeSantis. The Florida governor, a likely contender for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, is currently running for reelection.

GOP Leadership Endorsed House Candidate Calls For Execution Of AG Merrick Garland 

  • Rolling Stone: GOP Candidate Backed by Party Leadership Said Merrick Garland Should ‘Probably Be Executed’: Republican Congressional candidate Carl Paladino told Breitbart listeners last week that Attorney General Merrick Garland “probably should be executed” following the FBI’s raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last Monday. In an interview with Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle, Paladino said that “people like Garland, who should not only be impeached, he probably should be executed.”  “He’s a lost soul. He’s trying to get an image, and his methodology is just terrible,” Paladino elaborated. “To raid the home of a former president is just … people are scratching their heads and they’re saying, ‘What is wrong with this guy?’” “What’s wrong with this guy?” is a question that’s loomed over Paladino’s entire campaign. In Feb. 2021, he praised Adolf Hitler as “the kind of leader we need today.” On social media, Paladino boosted posts claiming that the Buffalo and Uvalde mass shootings were false-flag attacks. In July, he hired a man convicted on child pornography-related charges as his new assistant treasurer.  When Boyle later questioned Paladino about his comment that Garland should be “executed,” Paladino claimed he was “just being facetious.”

In The States 

FLORIDA:  After Months Of Investigation, Ron Santis’s Special Election Police Bring Charges Against A Handful Of Voters 

  • New York Times: DeSantis Hails Voter Fraud Crackdown, but Start Is Slow: Seven weeks after Florida’s state government opened a new office of election crimes and security, Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Thursday that 17 people had been charged with casting illegal ballots in the 2020 election, in which 11.1 million Floridians voted. The governor called the arrests “a first salvo” in a long-overdue crackdown on voting crimes. Critics called the announcement a publicity stunt that said less about voter fraud than about holes in the state’s election security apparatus that had allowed the violations to occur in the first place. Mr. DeSantis, who is seeking re-election this year and is widely considered to be running an unannounced campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has made action against voter fraud a centerpiece of his tenure as governor. He offered crucial backing last year to legislation tightening the rules for registering to vote and casting ballots. The State Legislature allotted $1.1 million for his 15-person election crimes office after he proposed its creation late last year. But while the specter of widespread fraud has become a staple of Republican political rhetoric, there is no evidence that election crimes are a serious problem in Florida or anywhere else in the nation. There and elsewhere, most violations appear to involve people who ran afoul of laws that restrict voting by former felons, or people who cast two ballots, usually in separate states where they spend different parts of the year.

What Experts Are Saying

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University: “‘The GOP is a party now dominated by authoritarian dynamics,’ Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University and author of the 2020 book ‘Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,’ told me. ‘It is so domesticated and subjected by Trump to this authoritarian style discipline that there is no space within the party for dissenters.’” CNN

Hakeem Jefferson, a political scientist at Stanford: “DIRKS: Whiteness, Jefferson says, is at the center of the events this hearing is interrogating. JEFFERSON: January 6 was a racial backlash. DIRKS: More precisely, he says, it’s part of an ongoing white backlash against the very perception of racial progress. JEFFERSON: Some white people are really concerned about a loss of power and status in American society. DIRKS: At the heart of January 6, Jefferson says, is a story about power – white power. JEFFERSON: It’s not about power that’s maintained by burning crosses. It’s about the power that’s maintained about telling some stories and not some others in schools. It’s about the power to elect people who you think will do your bidding.” NPR’s All Things Considered

Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington: “The irony here is that the real-life American revolutionaries were avowed enemies of monarchy, while today’s wannabe revolutionaries have as their leader and hero Donald Trump, the most arrogant, monarchical president in U.S. history, a man who truly imagines himself to be beyond the law that applies to everyone else.” The Bulwark 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

HuffPost: Ex-CIA Director Says Today’s GOP Is Most Dangerous Political Force He’s Ever Seen

January 6 And The 2020 Election

CNN: Peter Navarro asks court to dismiss contempt case against him

NBC:Trump supporter who flew on private jet to Jan. 6 riot and threw media equipment outside the Capitol pleads guilty

NBC: A Jan. 6 participant has been harassing police officers at a Capitol attack trial

Other Trump Investigations

CNN: ‘Ludicrous.’ ‘Ridiculous.’ ‘A complete fiction.’: Former Trump officials say his claim of ‘standing order’ to declassify is nonsense

In The States 

PIttsburgh Post-Gazette: Butler County finishes its review of 2020 election, finds no inaccuracies among 1,600 ballots

Washington Post: Hogan calls GOP gubernatorial nominee mentally unstable