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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — December 14, 2023

By December 14, 2023No Comments

Driving the Day

Must Read Stories

Supreme Court to review Jan. 6 obstruction charge, affecting cases of rioters and former President Trump

  • The Hill: Supreme Court will hear challenge to Jan. 6 obstruction charge: “The Supreme Court indicated Wednesday it will take up a challenge to an obstruction law used against scores of Jan. 6 rioters — and former President Trump — this term. Joseph Fischer, a former police officer accused of being a Jan. 6 rioter, petitioned the high court to eliminate one of the several counts he faces: obstruction of an official proceeding. The charge criminalizes “corruptly” obstructing, impeding or interfering with an official government proceeding and carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Fischer’s case is joined with two other rioters’ cases: Edward Lang and Garrett Miller.”
  • The Guardian: Special counsel Jack Smith made a gutsy, momentous decision in his prosecution of Donald Trump: “Timing isn’t everything. But it certainly matters, and seldom more so than in special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump. The former US president intends to use timing – delay, delay, delay – to avoid punishment for trying to overturn the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, and for fomenting a violent coup. Nope, said Smith this week. A tough guy who has prosecuted war crimes in the Hague, Smith clearly recognizes that putting off the case until after next fall’s presidential election could let Trump off the hook.”
  • New York Times: Trump Urges Appeals Court Not to Rush Immunity Decision in Election Case: “Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to avoid setting an expedited schedule as it considered the issue of whether Mr. Trump was immune from charges accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. In a 16-page filing that blended legal and political arguments, the lawyers asked a three-judge panel of the court not to move too quickly in mulling the question of immunity, saying that a ‘reckless rush to judgment’ would ‘irreparably undermine public confidence in the judicial system.’ ‘The manifest public interest lies in the court’s careful and deliberate consideration of these momentous issues with the utmost care and diligence,’ wrote D. John Sauer, a lawyer who is handling the appeal for Mr. Trump.”
  • NBC: Supreme Court agrees to hear Jan. 6 case that could affect Trump prosecution: “The justices will hear a case brought by defendant Joseph Fischer, who is seeking to dismiss a charge accusing him of obstructing an official proceeding, namely the certification by Congress of President Joe Biden’s election victory, which was disrupted by a mob of Trump supporters. Two other Jan. 6 defendants, Edward Lang and Garret Miller, brought similar appeals, the outcome of which will be dictated by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Fischer’s case. Trump has been charged with the same offense as well as others in his federal election interference case. The court’s decision to take up the issue, as well as the timing of its ultimate ruling, could therefore affect his case.”
  • New York Times: Trump Urges Appeals Court Not to Rush Immunity Decision in Election Case: “Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to avoid setting an expedited schedule as it considered the issue of whether Mr. Trump was immune from charges accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. In a 16-page filing that blended legal and political arguments, the lawyers asked a three-judge panel of the court not to move too quickly in mulling the question of immunity, saying that a ‘reckless rush to judgment’ would ‘irreparably undermine public confidence in the judicial system.’ ‘The manifest public interest lies in the court’s careful and deliberate consideration of these momentous issues with the utmost care and diligence,’ wrote D. John Sauer, a lawyer who is handling the appeal for Mr. Trump.”

Giuliani faces trial for defamation of election workers

  • Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Fulton election worker testifies Giuliani’s ‘crazy lies’ ruined her life: “Moss was an interim supervisor at the Fulton County election department. She oversaw absentee ballot counting at State Farm Arena, and things had gone well – so well, that she thought she might be in line for a promotion. ‘I was so proud. I knew I made my supervisor proud,’ Moss testified Tuesday in federal court. A month later, when she was summoned to her supervisor’s office, Moss thought she and her colleagues were up for an award. Instead, she learned she was being accused of voting fraud. That was also the day she saw the first racist threats from people who said she had committed treason and deserved to die. Three years later, those threats continue, and Moss said her life is a shambles.”
  • Politico: Judge: Giuliani may have defamed Georgia election workers again outside DC courthouse: “Rudy Giuliani’s defiant public statements outside a Washington, D.C., federal courthouse — just minutes after he departed the first day of his civil trial for defaming two Georgia election workers — may have defamed them yet again, the judge presiding over the proceedings said Tuesday. ‘Was Mr. Giuliani just playing for the cameras?’ wondered U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who has already found Giuliani liable for lying about the workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, by accusing them of manipulating ballots in the 2020 election.”
  • New York Times: Election Worker Tells Jury: ‘Giuliani Just Messed Me Up’: “Ruby Freeman, a former Georgia election worker, sat in a federal courtroom on Wednesday and told a jury: ‘Giuliani just messed me up, you know.’ She was referring to Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was sitting a few feet from her, as she described how her life has been upended since Dec. 3, 2020. That was the date, Mr. Giuliani, then the personal lawyer to President Donald J. Trump, directed his millions of social media followers to watch a video of two election workers in Fulton County, Ga., asserting without any basis that they were cheating Mr. Trump as they counted votes on Election Day. The workers were Ms. Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss. Ms. Freeman, who is Black, recounted what followed: a torrent of threats, accusations, and racism; messages from people who said she should be hanged for treason, or lynched; people who fantasized about hearing the sound of her neck snap.”
  • Washington Post: Giuliani’s wild reversal, and a contagious disrespect for the rule of law: “The former New York mayor and Trump lawyer appears to be facing financial ruin thanks to his false claims that a pair of Georgia election workers helped rig the 2020 election. Giuliani has already been found liable in civil court for defaming the women, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, with a trial beginning this week to determine how much he will be forced to pay them. As the matter was progressing toward trial, Giuliani appeared resigned to his fate. In an effort to beg off his obligations to provide evidence in the case, he signed a statement indicating he would no longer contest that his statements were false and defamatory.”
  • Vanity Fair: Rudy Giuliani’s Lawyer Wishes Rudy Giuliani Would Shut the Hell Up: “Rudy Giuliani, whose path from ‘America’s mayor’ to ‘Christ, somebody calls security’ will no doubt be studied for decades to come, has a lot of legal problems, most (but not all!) of which stem from his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. For instance, this week Giuliani is in court to determine how much money he should have to pay Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the election workers the former mayor has admitted to—and been officially found liable for—defaming. And so far, things are not going well for the guy, on account of his inability to stop pissing off the judge. Yes, after showing up 20 minutes late on the first day of the proceedings, and apparently coming very close to flashing the courtroom, Giuliani really provoked Judge Beryl Howell’s ire when he went on an extended rant to reporters in which he repeated the same election lies that got him sued by Freeman and Moss in the first place. ‘Everything I said about them is true,’ Giuliani shamelessly claimed Monday night. ‘They were engaged in changing the votes.’ Told there is no proof whatsoever of that, he insisted: ‘You’re damn right there is. Stay tuned.’”
  • New York Times: In Court With the Women He Defamed, Giuliani Faces Millions in Damages: “Rudolph W. Giuliani’s lawyer told jurors on Monday that the tens of millions of dollars in damages two Georgia election workers are seeking from him in a defamation suit “will be the end of Mr. Giuliani,” likening an award of that scale to a civil death penalty. The lawyer, Joseph Sibley IV, made the assertion in his opening statement on the first day of Mr. Giuliani’s civil trial in Federal District Court in Washington. The judge, Beryl A. Howell, has already ruled that Mr. Giuliani, who served as personal lawyer to President Donald J. Trump and helped spearhead the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office after his loss in the 2020 election, defamed the two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.”

In the States 

NEW YORK: New York’s highest court orders the state to redraw congressional map for 2024

  • New York Times: Top Court Clears Path for Democrats to Redraw House Map in New York: “New York’s highest court ordered the state to redraw its congressional map on Tuesday, delivering a ruling that immediately threw New York’s political landscape into chaos and reopened a process with sweeping national implications. State Democrats are now widely expected to try to shift anywhere from two to six Republican-held seats, from Long Island to Syracuse, toward their party — a major pre-election intervention in the 2024 fight for the House that could alter a key battleground. Powered by a new liberal majority, the State Court of Appeals effectively wiped out the highly competitive map that helped Republicans flip four seats and win the House majority. It said the neutral lines, which it had imposed just last year, were meant only to be a temporary fix.”
  • Associated Press: New York’s high court orders new congressional maps as Democrats move to retake control of US House: “New York’s highest court on Tuesday ordered the state to draw new congressional districts ahead of the 2024 elections, giving Democrats a potential advantage in what is expected to be a battleground for control of the U.S. House. The 4-3 decision from the New York Court of Appeals could have major ramifications as Democrats angle for more favorable district lines in the state next year. Republicans, who won control of the House after flipping seats in New York, sought to keep the map in place. The state’s bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission will now be tasked with coming up with new districts, which will then go before the Democrat-controlled Legislature for approval. The court ordered the commission to file a map no later than Feb. 28.”

TEXAS: Supreme Court declines to intervene in Voting Rights Act challenge to Texas county map

  • Houston Chronicle: U.S. Supreme Court allows Galveston County to keep new voting maps: “Galveston County will use maps for the upcoming 2024 election that courts have ruled violate the Voting Rights Act, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the case. The court issued a 6-3 ruling on Tuesday to grant the county’s request to keep the maps in place ahead of the election, handing a victory to Galveston County officials. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson were opposed. ‘In imposing a different map, acknowledged to violate current law – on the theory that the circuit might someday change that law – the Court of Appeals went far beyond its proper authority,’ wrote in the dissent. The decision cements what had been fluctuating circumstances surrounding the upcoming elections.”
  • Washington Post: Supreme Court allows Texas voting map challenged by civil rights advocates: “The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed a local Texas election to go forward under a map that a lower court had found diluted the votes of Black and Latino residents. The order came in response to a challenge from civil rights advocates opposed to the voting districts in Galveston County. While the case involves the boundaries in just one locality, it could have broader implications for challenges to election maps and the protection of voting rights nationwide.”
  • Washington Post: A fight for Black representation, with a civil rights landmark on the line: “A crush of litigation across the South alleges Republican lawmakers illegally drew district lines to limit the power of minority voters. The outcome of the suits likely will influence which party controls the next Congress. The cases will also test how much a 58-year-old landmark of the civil rights era still matters. Passed in 1965, the Voting Rights Act transformed who was eligibl­­e to enjoy the full rights of citizenship in the United States by effectively ending poll taxes and literacy tests. It gave the Justice Department oversight of state voting laws in jurisdictions with a history of discrimination, most of them in the South, and helped expand Black representation to levels unseen during nearly a century of Jim Crow segregation.”

GEORGIA: Voters object to Georgia’s new Republican-gerrymandered maps

  • ABC News: Plaintiffs in a Georgia redistricting case are asking a judge to reject new Republican-proposed maps: “The people who sued to overturn Georgia’s congressional and state legislative districts on Tuesday attacked plans that Republican state lawmakers claim cure illegal dilution of Black votes while preserving GOP power, calling them a “mockery” of federal law and a “total failure of compliance.” The three sets of plaintiffs in the case filed briefs with the federal judge who ruled in their favor in October, urging him to reject Georgia’s proposed maps and draw new voting districts himself in time for 2024’s legislative and congressional elections. U.S. District Judge Steve Jones has scheduled a Dec. 20 hearing on whether he should accept the plans. The state is supposed to file its defense of the plans next week.”
  • Atlanta Journal-Constitution: ‘Limbo’ Georgia candidates — and voters — await the fate of political maps: “When Cobb County Commissioner Jerica Richardson announced her bid for a deeply conservative U.S. House district in September, she and other Democrats were confident the state’s political boundaries were about to be redrawn to boost their chances. The U.S. Supreme Court had just paved the way for a new majority-Black district in Alabama, and a federal judge in Georgia was on the verge of tossing out the state’s maps on grounds that they illegally weakened the voting power of Black Georgians. Now Richardson and other office seekers — along with millions of Georgia voters — are in a state of limbo after Republicans seemed to defy the judge’s order and instead opened what could be a longer-term legal battle over the federal Voting Rights Act.”

What Experts Are Saying

Heather Williams for Democracy Docket: “For the last two decades, Republicans have been laser-focused and unfortunately wildly successful in seizing power in state legislatures. Following elections in 2010 and 2014, they built red majorities across the country and locked themselves into power with redistricting. The consequences of this takeover still play an oversized role in driving the direction of this country. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, it wasn’t just the conservative justices who were responsible — it was the Republican-controlled legislatures across the country who put the Court’s opinion into action, writing and passing the state laws that stripped rights away from millions of Americans.”

Norm Eisen and Joshua Kolb, On Trump appealing decision on immunity, for CNN: “We think the Supreme Court will agree with Chutkan. In Trump v. Thompson, she authored the now-famous line that ‘Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,’ referring to Trump. She thereby harkened back to our nation’s origins to reject Trump’s claim that sweeping executive privilege blocked the January 6 Committee from subpoenaing his presidential records. That is a close cousin to Trump’s claim here that sweeping executive immunity blocks the special counsel from prosecuting him.”

Joyce Vance, on Jack Smith’s investigating Trump’s personal communications, for X (Twitter): “Jack Smith got into Trump’s phone & the expert who did it will testify to ‘the usage of these phones throughout the post-election period, including on and around January 6, 2021,’ when a mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol after Trump urged them to fight to ‘stop the steal.’ The expert’s review also included ‘analyzing images found on the phones and websites visited.’ Really bad news for Trump.”

Amanda Marcotte, on Christian nationalism, for Salon: “That this all got supercharged under Trump is a little odd, no doubt, because Trump’s ‘Christianity’ is as transparently false as Barton’s historical research. Perversely, however, Trump’s fake faith likely boosted the widespread embrace of an ‘evangelical’ identity by Republican voters who previously weren’t especially religious. By waving around a Bible he doesn’t read and talking up a Jesus he doesn’t believe in, Trump has underscored how much ‘Christian’ is a tribal identity marker more than a faith tradition, at least in the MAGA world. That’s encouraged a lot of people who don’t really want to get involved in a church community to start projecting a ‘Christian’ identity out into the world, without worrying much about their lack of faith at home.” 

Barbara McQuade, Tom Joscelyn, Andrew Warren, and Norm Eisen, on the Michigan false electors court case, for Just Security: “The fake electoral votes for Michigan state that the undersigned are ‘the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Michigan.’ But the fake electors had no basis for making this assertion. (Note: The fake electors in the neighboring state of Wisconsin have recently admitted in a statement submitted to state and federal authorities, ‘we were not the duly elected presidential electors;’ they did so as part of an agreement pursuant to a civil settlement.) Joe Biden won the popular vote in Michigan and, as in other states, the winner of the popular vote receives Michigan’s electors. Biden’s victory was certified by Michigan’s State Board of Canvassers on Nov. 23, 2020. And there was no real dispute about the vote count in the weeks that followed. For example, there were no ongoing recounts. Biden won the state by more than 154,000 votes.”

Headlines

Extremism

Washington Post: Trump is still breaking new ground in ridiculous 2020 denialism

Counterpunch: MAGA’s Revanchist Roots: A Tale of Tropes

The Hill: 83 percent in new poll concerned about political violence

Trump investigations and cases

Washington Post: The history behind Jack Smith’s Trump-Supreme Court gambit

CBS: Investigators accessed Trump White House cellphone records and plan to use them at trial, special counsel says

New York Times: Why Jack Smith Is Taking Trump’s Immunity Claim Straight to the Supreme Court

Newsweek: Clarence Thomas Under Pressure to Recuse Himself From Donald Trump Case

New York Times: QAnon Supporter Pours Cash Into a Legal-Defense Fund for Trump Allies

January 6 and the 2020 Elections

NBC: FBI arrests an ‘internet pornography personality’ on Jan. 6 charges

ABC 6 Columbus: Columbus man arrested for allegedly assaulting law enforcement amid Jan. 6 capitol breach

Opinion

Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin: D.C. Circuit largely backs up Chutkan and curbs Trump’s threats

USA Today: EJ Montini: MAGA conspiracy theorists must be thrilled Elon Musk got Alex Jones back on X

In the States

ABC News: Ranked choice voting bill moves to hearing in front of Wisconsin Senate committee

AL.com: Many areas dropped from lawsuit alleging gerrymandering in Alabama legislative districts

THV11: Arkansas’s congressional map continues to see challenges two years after introduction