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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — August 24, 2023

By August 24, 2023No Comments

Driving the Day

Must Read Stories

Trump Georgia indictment: surrenders and transfer requests in the spotlight

  • New York Times: Legal Battles Begin in Case Against Trump and Allies in Georgia: Some of Donald J. Trump’s co-defendants in the election interference case in Georgia began turning themselves in on Tuesday, while others tried to get the sprawling criminal case moved out of state court and into federal court. Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official, and David Shafer, the former head of the Georgia Republican Party, each filed motions on Tuesday asking to have the case moved to federal court, just as Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, did last week. Those motions lay the groundwork for what will be the first major legal fight in the case, which was filed in Superior Court in Atlanta last week. Most of the defendants, including Mr. Trump, plan to turn themselves in this week, as ordered by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., who is leading the investigation. But Mr. Clark filed a request on Tuesday for an emergency stay, in a bid to avoid turning himself in at the notorious Atlanta jail where the defendants are being processed. Mr. Meadows made a similar request later in the day.
  • Washington Post: Rudy Giuliani surrenders in Fulton County: Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who served as a lawyer for Donald Trump, is among the former president’s allies converging on Atlanta ahead of a deadline of noon Friday to surrender on charges that they illegally conspired to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. Prosecutors say Trump and 18 others broke the law when they sought to reverse Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia. In a case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D), Trump was charged last week with 13 counts, including violating the state’s anti-racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents. Trump is expected to surrender Thursday at the Fulton County Jail. At least six other defendants had turned themselves in as of midday Wednesday, while two others have appealed to a federal judge for permission not to show up.
  • Hill: Trump likely to get mug shot in Georgia: Like any other criminal defendant in Fulton County, Ga., former President Trump is expected to receive a mug shot upon surrendering at the local jail. Trump and 18 co-defendants are charged with plotting to subvert Georgia’s 2020 election results. The former president said Monday evening that he plans to turn himself in Thursday. If Trump receives a mug shot upon surrendering, it would mark a departure from the protocol in his other three criminal cases; the former president was booked for each of those cases but did not have a mug shot taken. Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat said earlier this month that his office will follow “normal practices, and so it doesn’t matter your status. We’ll have mug shots ready for you.”
  • Rolling Stone: MAGA Lawyer Doubles Down on Election Lie After Arrest for Trying to Steal Election Himself: Attorney John Eastman, one of the legal minds behind Donald Trump’s scheme to stay in office, surrendered to Georgia authorities on Tuesday for his arrest and arraignment on charges related to the efforts to subvert the 2020 election. While leaving the courthouse, Eastman reportedly resisted his attorney’s efforts to steer him away from an awaiting gaggle of reporters. Eastman then doubled down on the election lie used to justify the allegedly illegal effort to keep Trump in office, telling a reporter that there was “no question” in his mind that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump. “I am confident that, when the law is faithfully applied in this proceeding, all of my co-defendants and I will be fully vindicated,” Eastman added in a statement he read to reporters.
  • New York Times: How Mark Meadows Pursued a High-Wire Legal Strategy in Trump Inquiries: While Mr. Meadows’s strategy of targeted assistance to federal prosecutors and sphinxlike public silence largely kept him out of the 45-page election interference indictment that Mr. Smith filed against Mr. Trump in Washington, it did not help him avoid similar charges in Fulton County, Ga. Mr. Meadows was named last week as one of Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators in a sprawling racketeering indictment filed by the local district attorney in Georgia. Interviews and a review of the cases show how Mr. Meadows’s tactics reflected to some degree his tendency to avoid conflict and leave different people believing that he agreed with them. They were also dictated by his unique position in Mr. Trump’s world and the legal jeopardy this presented.
  • Hill: Fake electors, Trump attorneys surrender in Trump Georgia case: More defendants charged alongside former President Trump in Georgia are surrendering, including two of the three indicted fake electors and two Trump attorneys. David Shafer and Cathy Latham, both of whom signed documents purporting to be Georgia’s valid 2020 presidential electors, were booked early Wednesday morning before being released, jail records show. Ray Smith, a Georgia-based attorney who worked for Trump following the election, and Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who helped devise the fake elector scheme, also surrendered Wednesday, according to the booking records. Six of the 19 co-defendants charged have now surrendered. Willis has given the defendants a deadline of noon on Friday to surrender.

Mar-a-Lago IT worker changes testimony in classified documents case as grand jury ends

  • New York Times: Witness in Trump Documents Case Changed Lawyers, and Then Testimony: An employee of former President Donald J. Trump changed his grand jury testimony in the documents case after the Justice Department raised questions about whether his lawyer had a conflict of interest in representing both the employee and a defendant in the case, prosecutors said in a court filing on Tuesday. The prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, had asked for a hearing to address the fact that the employee, who is a possible witness in the case, was represented by the lawyer Stanley Woodward. Mr. Woodward also represents two other possible witnesses and one of the co-defendants, Walt Nauta, a personal aide to Mr. Trump. The employee was not named in the court filings but was identified by people familiar with the matter as Yuscil Taveras, an information technology worker at Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, Mar-a-Lago.
  • Washington Post: Special counsel says D.C. grand jury on Trump documents case has ended: The federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., that helped investigate former president Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents has ended, special counsel Jack Smith said in a court filing, which laid out new details about how the probe quietly expanded to look at alleged coverup efforts. The 12-page filing by one of Smith’s deputies, David Harbach, comes as prosecutors and defense lawyers are sparring over the use of two grand juries to investigate Trump’s alleged hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his home and private club. Trump is charged with illegally retaining national defense information after leaving the White House and obstructing government efforts to retrieve the material. In Tuesday’s filing, prosecutors defend the use of a federal grand jury in the nation’s capital, as well as one in South Florida, to hear evidence in the matter, saying the two-pronged approach was proper to investigate criminal conduct that allegedly occurred in both places.
  • Newsweek: Aileen Cannon Faces Huge Test After Yuscil Taveras Flips on Trump: The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case should hold a hearing to discuss potential conflicts of interest among the lawyers involved in the proceedings, after a Mar-a-Lago employee flipped on the former president, a legal expert has said. Legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance was reacting to news that Yuscil Taveras, an IT director at Trump’s Florida resort, has retracted “his prior false testimony” and now says the former president and two others charged in the classified documents case, Trump aide Walt Nauta and maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira, did take steps to delete security camera footage that had been sought by federal prosecutors. Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira have pleaded not guilty to all the charges against them in the classified documents case, including obstruction allegations.

In The States

TEXAS: Texas Supreme Court allows law targeting Harris County election administrator

  • Houston Chronicle: Texas Supreme Court denies Harris County request to run November election and delay state law: The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday denied Harris County’s request for an emergency order that would have allowed the Harris County Elections Administrator’s Office to run the upcoming November election by temporarily delaying the implementation of a new state law that abolishes the office. The decision puts to rest months of uncertainty over who will oversee an election that’s now just weeks away. A ruling last week from a Travis County district judge prevented Senate Bill 1750, a measure the Texas Legislature passed in May, from going into effect on Sept. 1. However, an appeal filed by the state hours later stayed that ruling, triggering the county’s request for an emergency order from the Texas Supreme Court to keep the judge’s injunction in place while the appeal was pending. The Supreme Court has denied that request from the county, clearing the way for SB 1750 to go into effect on Sept. 1 and putting Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth and the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Ann Harris Bennett in charge of the upcoming election. Both have prior experience with the responsibilities, as Hudspeth is a former election official and Bennett oversaw voter registration before the Elections Administrator’s office was created.

FLORIDA: Redistricting battle with national implications begins Thursday, a week after SCOTUS sides with the City of Miami over voting map

  • Tampa Bay Times: Florida’s redistricting case could have broad national implications: The state of Florida will square off with voting rights plaintiffs in Tallahassee this week in a high-stakes redistricting battle that could have national implications as both sides argue over the constitutionality of protections for Black voters. The one-day hearing on Thursday follows the state’s stark admission: Gov. Ron DeSantis’ congressional map violated the state’s safeguards against diminishing the electoral influence of racial minorities. DeSantis’ lawyers will argue those protections infringe upon the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and should be thrown out. The two sides will present their arguments in Tallahassee before Second Judicial Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh, a Rick Scott appointee, who could approve a new map in time for the 2024 elections. The judge’s ruling will likely be appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, where DeSantis has appointed the majority of justices. If DeSantis gets his way, Florida courts would go further than the U.S. Supreme Court has and would advance the legal argument, pushed by many conservatives, that it’s inherently wrong to preserve the political voice of Black voters.
  • NBC 6: Supreme Court sides with City of Miami in voting map controversy: The Supreme Court made a decision on the City of Miami voting map controversy. The court Thursday denied the American Civil Liberties Union’s application, meaning the city’s map will be used this November for the municipal election. “City of Miami residents won big today as our nation’s highest court recognized that political shenanigans by special interest groups will not be tolerated by an impartial Supreme Court,” said Miami Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla. “They said enough is enough and I agree. Our City Commission approved maps meet constitutional standards and protect our City of Miami neighborhoods. End of story.” A map drawn by the city will be used to determine who can vote and who can run for city commission seats in districts 1, 2 and 4 in the November elections. Commissioners de la Portilla, Sabina Covo and Manolo Reyes are currently running for reelection. The city was originally sued in December 2022 for racial gerrymandering — a tactic in which voting maps are used to reduce the voice of certain demographics — after new district lines were approved by city commissioners.

PENNSYLVANIA: State will start publicly reporting problems with voting machines

  • CBS News: Lawsuit settlement leads to Pennsylvania agreeing to publicly report voting machine problems: As the presidential election looms closer, a change in how voting is monitored in the Keystone State will be in effect. The new decision says that Pennsylvania will soon be tracking any malfunctions with voting machines. It comes on the heels of a 2019 lawsuit brought by several election security groups and this decision is the settlement of that suit. In the lawsuit, the election security groups said that new Express Vote XL voting machines acquired by the state and used in three counties were flawed. They alleged the machines’ access panels were insecure and frequently unlocked. They also alleged that the machines required poll workers to enter voting booths to help a voter who they said made a mistake. Lastly, they alleged the machine stored ballots in chronological order, thus compromising their secrecy. 

What Experts Are Saying

Pete Simi and Seamus Hughes: “Threats against public officials are ticking up, a disturbing trend that NCITE researchers are charting in a 10-year examination of federally investigated threats. Threats were most commonly made against members of the criminal justice system, from law enforcement officers to judges. Elected officials and those who run or manage elections comprised the second most-targeted category. Educators and healthcare workers also received threats.The research team is examining the extent to which that reflects a growing public acceptance of and tolerance for political violence — attitudes that threaten U.S. institutions and weaken democracy.” NCITE Report: Understanding Threats to Public Officials

Norm Eisen and Andrew Weissmann: “The federal January 6 case going to trial within the timeframe the government proposes (or slightly beyond that) follows standard operating procedure in criminal cases, and is by no means undue… An important consideration—to be balanced against a concern about a hasty prosecution—is a right to a speedy trial. This right does not belong exclusively to the defense or the prosecution—it belongs to the public. The government’s response, filed yesterday, convincingly demonstrates the lengths it has taken to ensure that Trump and his lawyers have sufficient time to mount a vigorous defense, while also fulfilling the public’s right to a speedy trial. And what could be more in the public interest than this case, whatever the result, getting to trial expeditiously?” Atlantic

District Attorney Fani Willis, from an email rejecting a request to defer Mark Meadows’ arrest until after the hearing is held on Monday: “I am not granting any extensions. I gave 2 weeks for people to surrender themselves to the court. Your client is no different than any other criminal defendant in this jurisdiction. The two weeks was a tremendous courtesy. At 12:30 p.m. on Friday I shall file warrants in the system. My team has availability to meet to discuss reasonable consent bonds Wednesday and Thursday.” Legal file via CourtListener 

George Conway, in reaction to Jeffrey Clark’s demand for a delay in his surrender in Georgia: “I must confess that in my thirty years as a litigator, not once did I have occasion to tell a federal judge that he had a deadline he had to meet so that I would not have to make ‘rushed travel arrangements.” Twitter

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Washington Post: 7 ways MAGA Republicans differ from other Republicans

USA Today: Threats are on rise across US

Trump Investigations 

Washington Post: Lawyers paid by Trump work for Trump

ABC: Trump indictments in DC, Georgia see overlapping charges, complications

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Dayton Daily News: FBI arrests Air Force Reserve pilot in Ohio on Jan. 6 riot charges

Axios: Baltimore man who “pushed police line” at Jan. 6 riot sentenced

ABC: Authorities seek answers in case of missing Proud Boy awaiting Jan. 6 sentencing

Opinion

Washington Post: Who’s leading the fight against MAGA? Women.

Midland Daily News: No surprise that black judges are MAGA targets

In the States

Associated Press: Wisconsin Republicans ask newly elected liberal justice to not hear redistricting case

VPM: Virginia in talks with Ohio, Florida, Texas in new voter fraud initiative

Ohio Capital Journal: As redistricting debate emerges again, Ohio Gov. DeWine says politicians shouldn’t draw maps