Skip to main content
Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — December 16, 2022

By December 16, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

January 6 Committee To Consider Criminal And Other Referrals For Trump And His Allies In Final Meeting On Monday 

  • New York Times: Jan. 6 Panel to Consider Criminal Referrals Against Trump and Allies in Final Session: The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans on Monday to consider issuing criminal referrals against former President Donald J. Trump and his top allies during a final meeting as it prepares to release a voluminous report laying out its findings about the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The committee announced a business meeting scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday during which members are expected to discuss the forthcoming report and recommendations for legislative changes, and to consider both criminal and civil referrals against individuals it has concluded broke laws or committed ethical violations. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said the panel was considering referrals to “five or six” different entities, including the Justice Department, the House Ethics Committee, the Federal Election Commission and bar associations. Such referrals, which the committee is slated to approve as it adopts its report, would not carry any legal weight or compel any action, but they would send a powerful signal that a congressional committee believes that the individuals cited committed crimes or other infractions.

DC Bar Panel Recommends Rudy Giuliani Be Disbarred For  Misconduct Related To The 2020 Election As Newly Released Mark Meadows Texts Reveal More Details Of His Legal “Circus” 

  • Bloomberg: Rudy Giuliani Likely Committed Misconduct Over 2020 Election, DC Bar Panel Finds: Attorney disciplinary regulators recommended Rudy Giuliani be disbarred in Washington, DC, after a local bar association panel’s preliminary finding that he likely committed misconduct in pressing Donald Trump’s failed legal challenge to President Joe Biden’s 2020 win in Pennsylvania. Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton “Phil” Fox, whose office brought the ethics complaint against Giuliani, argued that the most severe sanction — losing his law license in Washington — was appropriate because Giuliani’s conduct in Pennsylvania was part of a broader effort to undermine the legitimacy of an election. “It was a fundamental harm to the fabric of the country that could well be irreparable,” Fox said. “Any lawyer that engages in this kind of misconduct, harming the country as this has done, has at least got to realize that his or her law license is at risk.” The hearing committee’s decision Thursday is tentative — it’s not final and could change as his case continues to wind through the DC bar association’s disciplinary process. But it’s a major initial setback for the former New York City mayor in his defense against a legal ethics complaint that carries potential discipline ranging from a warning to the loss of his license. 
  • Talking Points Memo: Texts Expose Giuliani Legal Team’s Divisive Election ‘Circus’ And Requests For Cash:  It was just shy of six weeks after the 2020 election and Jason Miller, a top campaign adviser to former President Trump, had a problem.  Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, who was playing a leading part in the campaign’s efforts to dispute the result, wanted to blast out a press release. It focused on thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories related to Dominion, a voting systems company that would later sue Giuliani for defamation.  In a text to Mark Meadows, Trump’s White House chief of staff, Miller indicated that others in Trumpworld had concerns about Giuliani’s release. Miller wanted Meadows to intervene and help shut it down.There was no response from Meadows in the log. Through a spokesperson, Meadows declined to comment.  The text from Miller, who did not respond to a request for comment, is one of more than a dozen related to Giuliani and his team in the trove of 2,319 messages that Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. TPM has obtained the Meadows text log, which dates from the period between the election, Nov. 3, 2020, and Trump’s final day in office, Jan. 20, 2021. While the texts are not a complete record of Meadows’ communications during that period, they provide a dramatic illustration of how Giuliani’s team was consumed by election conspiracy theories. They also show how Giuliani was both a key player in the former president’s push to reverse his election loss and a divisive figure in Trump’s world.  Meadows’ messages also include multiple instances of the Giuliani team asking for payment for its services. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, had initially publicly claimed he “never had a single expectation of being paid a penny” for his work challenging Trump’s election loss. 

QAnon Conspiracy Theories Find A New Home On Twitter While Elon Musk Bans Critical Journalists 

  • Washington Post: QAnon, Adrift After Trump’s Defeat, Finds New Life In Elon Musk’s Twitter: Twitter owner Elon Musk’s boosting of far-right memes and grievances has injected new energy into the jumbled set of conspiracy theories known as QAnon, a fringe movement that Twitter and other social networks once banned as too extreme. The billionaire has spread bogus theories about the violent attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband to his 120 million followers, and he called for the criminal prosecution of infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci. He has thrown around baseless accusations about adults sexualizing children, helping stir up an angry online mob against Yoel Roth, a former Twitter safety executive Musk praised in October for his “high integrity.” And on Tuesday, he tweeted a message with an emoji that many people interpreted as saying “follow the white rabbit,” possibly harking back to “Alice in Wonderland” or “The Matrix.” But many QAnon believers saw the rabbit as a wink to one of their foundational icons, a secret indicator shared in one of QAnon’s earliest online prophesies, known as “drops.” Musk mocked the suggestion that the tweet could be interpreted negatively but offered no clarification. Among QAnon promoters, though, the message was clear: Musk was speaking to them.
  • New York Times: Twitter Suspends Accounts of Half a Dozen Journalists: Twitter suspended the accounts of roughly half a dozen prominent journalists on Thursday, the latest change by the social media service under its new owner, Elon Musk. The accounts suspended included Ryan Mac of The New York Times; Drew Harwell of The Washington Post; Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist; Donie O’Sullivan of CNN; Matt Binder of Mashable; Tony Webster, an independent journalist; Micah Lee of The Intercept; and the political journalist Keith Olbermann. It was unclear what the suspensions had in common; each user’s Twitter page included a message that said it suspended accounts that “violate the Twitter rules.” The moves came a day after Twitter suspended more than 25 accounts that tracked the planes of government agencies, billionaires and high-profile individuals, including that of Mr. Musk. Many of the accounts were operated by Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old college student and flight tracking enthusiast who had used Twitter to post updates about the location of Mr. Musk’s private plane using publicly available information.

Political Violence Watch: Three Men Sentenced To Long Prison Sentences In Whitmer Kidnapping Plot, Two Men Charged In Separate Incidents For Threatening Elected Officials 

  • Detroit News: Three Men Get Longest Prison Sentences To Date In Whitmer Kidnapping Plot: Three men were sentenced Thursday to serve a minimum of seven to 12 years in prison for charges related to the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, representing the longest sentences to date in the federal and state conspiracy cases. The three Jackson County sentencings were the first in Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office’s cases against the associates of plot ringleaders Adam Fox and Barry Croft, who were convicted in federal court of kidnapping conspiracy and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. Two of the three defendants became emotional as they pleaded for mercy and heard their punishments on charges of providing material aid to terrorists, being members of a gang in connection with the kidnapping plot and a gun charge.
  • CNN: Man Who Allegedly Threatened To Kill Arizona Election Official Facing Federal Charges: An Ohio man who allegedly threatened to kill an Arizona state election official during the 2022 midterm election season is now facing federal charges, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. Joshua Russell, 44, allegedly left voicemails for an unnamed election official who worked for the Arizona secretary of state’s office in the lead-up to the midterm elections, according to prosecutors. “The only reason you’re still walking around on this planet is because we’re waiting for the midterms to see you prosecuted for the crimes you have done to our nation,” Russell said in a September voicemail, according to court documents. His arrest is the most recent case brought by the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, which Attorney General Merrick Garland announced last year to address the rise in threats against election officials. The task force has brought at least six federal cases so far, and local officials in Colorado, Arizona and Michigan have each pursued a criminal case for threats against election workers.
  • NBC: Washington Man Charged With Leaving More Than 400 Threatening Voicemails For Members Of Congress: A Washington state man has been charged with seven counts of making interstate threats after he was accused of leaving more than 400 voicemails over two years for members of Congress. Mark Leonetti, 48, of Longview, was arrested Wednesday after a criminal complaint was filed Monday by the Justice Department. He is due to appear in U.S. District Court in Tacoma on Thursday. Leonetti left more than 400 voicemails last year at the office phone numbers for numerous senators and representatives of both political parties, according to the criminal complaint. The voicemails were “not always coherent,” an FBI agent investigating the case said, but they made references to murder or killing. None of the lawmakers was identified by name in the complaint.

In The States 

GEORGIA:  Georgia Secretary Of State Brad Raffensperger Calls For An End To Runoff Elections 

  • Washington Post: Georgia Secretary Of State Calls For End To Runoff Elections: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Wednesday called on the state legislature to eliminate runoff voting for general elections after another bitter overtime election gripped the state earlier this month. Raffensperger, a Republican, cited the added stress that conducting a runoff election puts on counties and voters as part of his reasoning. “Whether it is a four-week general election runoff or a nine-week runoff, voters do not want to deal with politics in the middle of their holidays,” Raffensperger said in a statement to The Washington Post. “And it puts significant pressure on our election officials who need to focus on certifying and auditing the election results.” The secretary also said in a statement that Georgia is “one of the only states that always seems to have a runoff.” Its peculiar runoff system is the product of post-segregationist election laws, which lawmakers later admitted were intended to suppress emerging Black political power.

PENNSYLVANIA: Baseless Recount Requests Delay Election Certification 

  • Associated Press: Recount Requests Delay Pennsylvania Election Certification: Five weeks after Election Day, winning candidates in Pennsylvania from governor to Congress are waiting for their victories to become official. An effort that appears to be at least partially coordinated among conservatives has inundated counties with ballot recount requests even though no races are close enough to require a recount and there has been no evidence of any potential problems. The attempt to delay certification could foreshadow a potential strategy for the 2024 presidential election, if the results don’t go the way disaffected voters want in one of the nation’s most closely contested states. Recounts have been sought in 172 voting precincts across 40% of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. That led to nine counties missing their Nov. 29 certification deadline, though all but one has since certified. The Pennsylvania Department of State, in a response to The Associated Press on Wednesday, gave no date for certifying the results statewide but said it planned to comply with a request from the clerk of the U.S. House to send certification documents to Congress by mid-December.

What Experts Are Saying

CREW: NEW REPORT: “Two members of Congress-elect and five state legislators-elect may have engaged in insurrection and should be investigated to determine if they meet the constitutional qualifications for office before they are permitted to take their oath of office and join the legislature. The 14th Amendment’s Disqualification Clause bars those who took an oath to uphold the Constitution  and then engaged in insurrection from ever serving again as a federal or state officer. Representative Paul Gosar and Representative-elect Derrick Van Orden as well as five members-elect of state legislatures should be investigated. Congress and state legislatures have a duty to uphold the Constitution, and that includes determining whether members-elect are eligible to be seated under the 14th Amendment.” CREW: Constitutional Disqualification: The case for investigating federal and state legislators who participated in the January 6th Insurrection 

Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of Public Citizen: “If Trump’s actions leading up to the attacks on Jan. 6 provide a blueprint for authoritarians to remain in power, the committee’s coming report will provide a guide for leading the United States out of another potential constitutional crisis in the future. We must seriously consider its recommendations if we want to close the door on other attempts to undermine elections by powerful people who lose them.” Finger Lakes Times Op-Ed: Panel’s work is crucial to preserving freedoms and democracy | Tweet 

Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College, and Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor: “Criminal referrals, however, will not in themselves save the nation from the damage the MAGA Republicans in the House are poised to do when their party comes into power in the next Congress. Their plan is to spend the next two years holding hearings — spectacles — to amplify election denialism and to attack President Biden, his cabinet, his family, the Department of Justice and the FBI.” The Hill Op-Ed: The Meadows texts must have George Washington turning in his grave

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Bloomberg: Tech Firms Are Giving Money to Election Deniers Again

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Axios: Jan. 6 committee teases new evidence ahead of final hearing

CNN: Justice Department has tried to access GOP Rep. Scott Perry’s text messages

The Hill: House Democrats introduce legislation to bar Trump from office under 14th Amendment

NBC: QAnon believer who chased officer inside Capitol to be sentenced

Talking Points Memo: Kari Lake’s Cameo In The Meadows Texts Shows How 2020 Election Denial Became An Enduring Movement

Other Trump Investigations

New York Times: Inside Mar-a-Lago, Where Thousands Partied Near Secret Files