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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — December 2, 2022

By December 2, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Appeals Court Ends Special Master Review of Trump’s Seized Classified Documents

  • NBC: In Major Setback For Trump, Appeals Court Ends Special Master’s Review Of Seized Mar-A-Lago Records: A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that a judge’s order appointing a special master to review documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort should be dismissed. The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit lifts earlier restrictions on the Justice Department’s examination of classified documents and other records and allow investigators to proceed with the probe more quickly. The panel said U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order in September to appoint an arbiter and prevent the government from using a trove of documents it retrieved with a search warrant from Trump’s resort in Florida on Aug. 8 was incorrect. “The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant,” the panel wrote. “Accordingly, we agree with the government that the district court improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction, and that dismissal of the entire proceeding is required.”
  • Reuters: U.S. Appeals Court Rules Against Trump In Documents Fight, Ends Arbiter:  A U.S. appeals court on Thursday dealt a blow to Donald Trump, reversing a judge’s appointment of an independent arbiter to vet documents seized by the FBI from his Florida home and allowing all of the records to be used in a criminal investigation of the former president. The Atlanta-based 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Justice Department in its challenge to Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s September decision to name a “special master” to review the records to decide if some should be kept from investigators. The three-judge 11th Circuit panel said Cannon lacked the authority to grant Trump’s request for a special master made in a lawsuit he filed two weeks after FBI agents carried out a court-approved Aug. 8 search at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. It also overturned Cannon’s decision to bar investigators from accessing most of the records pending the review and threw out Trump’s suit. Trump faces a federal criminal investigation into his retention of sensitive government records after leaving office in January 2021, including whether he violated a 1917 law called the Espionage Act that makes it a crime to release information harmful to national security. Investigators also are looking into potential unlawful obstruction of the probe.

January 6 Committee Meets Today To Finalize Unfinished Business, Including Potential Criminal Recommendations to DOJ Investigators

  • USAToday: House Jan. 6 Committee Members To Meet Friday On Potential Criminal Recommendations To DOJ: The House panel investigating the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, will meet in private Friday to discuss potentially urging the Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against former President Donald Trump and others and potential civil complaints against lawyers who allegedly behaved unethically, lawmakers said Wednesday. The possible recommendations will come from a subcommittee of four lawyers on the nine-member panel: Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.; Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.; and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. The group is developing recommendations for possible criminal referrals to the Justice Department or civil referrals to state bar associations, but no decisions have been made, said Raskin, who heads the subcommittee. “We just want to make sure nothing falls between the cracks,” Raskin said. “We want to make sure that the committee is emphatic that those crimes that are of sufficient gravity, that one branch of government essentially needs to tell another about it.” The closed committee meeting Friday comes as the panel drafts its final report about its investigation. The committee expires on Dec. 31 and the chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said he expects the report to be released by Christmas. He said the committee reached a consensus the report will consist of eight chapters.
  • Politico: The Jan. 6 Select Committee Is Done Interviewing Witnesses. Now It’s Turning To Unfinished Business, Including Potential Criminal Referrals. The Jan. 6 panel is closing the book on its investigative work Wednesday with the interview of Wisconsin House Speaker Robin Vos, Chair Bennie Thompson said Wednesday. Up now: What to do with the book. “I think that’s it. That’s the last subpoena that I’ve done,” Thompson said in an interview, indicating the committee had now turned to finalizing its report, legislative recommendations and more explosive final decisions — including whether to make criminal referrals for witness tampering, perjury or contempt of Congress. Thompson told POLITICO the select committee will meet Friday to discuss recommendations from a subcommittee, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, about those referrals and about how to handle the five Republican lawmakers — including GOP leader Kevin McCarthy — who declined to comply with the panel’s subpoenas. Congress has limited power to make criminal referrals to the Justice Department, except for witnesses it holds in contempt for refusing to comply with testimony or document demands. However, referrals for perjury or witness tampering could also carry some force with prosecutors — if lawmakers can make a compelling case that a witness was criminally defiant. That information isn’t publicly known because the select committee has kept a tight grip on its evidence and has generally declined to publicly comment on witnesses.
  • CNN: DOJ Wants ‘all’ Transcripts And Evidence In House January 6 Probe, Garland Says: The Justice Department is seeking access to “all” transcripts and other evidence collected in the House January 6, 2021, investigation, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday. The comments from Garland, in response to a question from CNN’s Evan Perez, nodded to the monthslong effort by the department to access the witness testimony the House select committee took behind closed doors. “We would like to have all the transcripts and all the other evidence collected by the committee so that we can use it in the ordinary course of our investigations,” Garland said at a brief news conference. “We are asking for access for all of the transcripts and that’s really all I can say right now.” […] Responding to Garland’s request to see transcripts, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack, told reporters he expects the Justice Department to first see the panel’s interview transcripts when they are released to the public. “We will share whatever we have with any agency that requests it just like the public will have access to our report and material too,” the Mississippi Democrat said Wednesday, adding, “We are about a month away. So, I don’t think there would be any rush to speed that time up.”

Former Trump Officials Testify To Federal Grand Jury Over Jan. 6 

  • CNN: Top Trump Adviser Stephen Miller Testifies To January 6 Federal Grand Jury: Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller testified on Tuesday to a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, as part of the January 6, 2021, investigation, CNN has learned, making him the first known witness to testify since the Justice Department appointed a special counsel to oversee the criminal investigations around the former president. Miller was at the federal courthouse in downtown Washington for several hours throughout Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the investigation. January 6 lead prosecutor Thomas Windom was spotted at the same federal courthouse on Tuesday. Windom is expected to join the newly created Special Counsel’s Office led by longtime public corruption prosecutor Jack Smith and will continue leading the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s role in efforts to impede the transfer of power following the 2020 election. Federal investigators have for months sought information from Trump’s inner circle in the White House, attempting to gather insight into Trump’s state of mind before his supporters rioted on January 6. Miller, a former White House speechwriter and senior adviser to Trump, could provide a firsthand account of the former president’s preparations for his speech at the Ellipse in Washington on January 6, including how he wanted to inspire his supporters, many of whom went on to attack the Capitol and disrupt Congress.
  • CNN: Federal Judge Orders Former Top Lawyers In Trump’s White House To Testify In Criminal Grand Jury Probe: A federal judge has ordered former top Trump White House lawyers to provide additional grand jury testimony, rejecting former President Donald Trump’s privilege claims in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of his effort to overturn the 2020 election, people briefed on the matter said. Pat Cipollone, the Trump White House counsel, and his deputy, Patrick Philbin, appeared in September before the grand jury in Washington, DC, as part of the Justice Department probe, which is now being overseen by newly appointed special counsel Jack Smith.

Trump Expresses Solidarity In Virtual Meeting With Jan. 6 Insurrectionists

  • Washington Post: Trump Expresses Solidarity With Jan. 6 Rioters Who Stormed The Capitol: Former president Donald Trump expressed solidarity with the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, sending a video of support to a fundraising event Thursday night hosted by a group called the Patriot Freedom Project that is supporting families of those being prosecuted by the government. “People have been treated unconstitutionally, in my opinion, and very, very unfairly, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” he said in the video, which appeared to have been shot at his Mar-a-Lago estate. “It’s the weaponization of the Department of Justice, and we can’t let this happen in our country.” Trump, who last month announced a 2024 White House bid, pledged that in coming months, he would take a close look at what he characterized as “a very unfair situation.” The Patriot Freedom Project advertises itself as “a non-profit organization providing legal, financial, mental-health, and spiritual support for individuals and their families — including young children — who are suffering at the hands of a weaponized justice system.” Trump repeatedly has made it clear that he stands with the mob that stormed the Capitol to stop Congress from counting the electoral votes for Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election. In September, Trump said he would issue full pardons and a government apology to rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and violently attacked law enforcement to stop the democratic transfer of power.

In The States 

ARIZONA: Election Deniers in Cochise County Finally Certify Election Results After Court Battle

  • Washington Post: Ariz. County Ordered To Certify Election As GOP Lawyers Are Sanctioned: A judge in Arizona on Thursday ordered the governing board of a ruby-red county in the southeastern corner of the state to certify the results of the Nov. 8 election, finding that its members had no authority to shirk a duty required under state law. “You will meet today,” Superior Court Judge Casey F. McGinley told the three members of the Cochise County Board of Supervisors. “You will canvass the election no later than 5 o’clock.” When the board convened at 3:30 p.m., with one Republican absent, the two remaining supervisors, one Republican and one Democrat, voted to certify the results. The surrender, under court order, ended a standoff in Cochise County that threatened to upend the state’s process for affirming the will of more than 2.5 million Arizona voters. The ensuing chaos could have undermined the projected victories of Republicans in a U.S. House seat and the statewide race for schools superintendent.
  • Arizona Republic: ​​Secretary Of State’s Office Confirms It Has Received Cochise County Certification: Compelled by a court order, the Cochise County Board of Supervisors certified the results of the Nov. 8 election Thursday on a 2-0 vote. The vote means all Arizona counties have agreed to send their results to the Secretary of State’s Office and ends a weekslong election drama spooling out of the southeastern Arizona county. The board’s two Republican supervisors since October have raised doubts about the reliability of vote tabulation machines. Their actions resulted in a series of losing court battles, the most recent coming Thursday, when a judge ordered them to canvass the election results and get the results to the Arizona secretary of state by 5 p.m. The Secretary of State’s Office confirmed Thursday evening that it had received the Cochise certification, which will allow it to proceed with the statewide canvass, scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday. The canvass is the official proclamation of the winners from the November election and sets in motion the work on three automatic recounts required by law.
  • The Atlantic: The Bottom-Up Election-Denial Strategy: As millions of Americans returned to their jobs this week after the Thanksgiving holiday, several of the elected leaders of Cochise County, Arizona, opted not to do theirs. […] Nullifying the votes of some 47,000 people for no reason is certainly a choice—and a nihilistic one at that. These two board members are engaging in a strategy of bottom-up election obstruction, apparently to clog the gears of democracy with enough sand to spread distrust throughout the entire system. Nationally, the Cochise County supervisors’ strategy may prove inconsequential, at least for now. But it’s a perfect illustration of the state of American democracy—and could be a test run of much greater consequence for 2024. Even though prominent election deniers lost big in the November polls, in both Arizona and elsewhere, the election-denial movement is still alive, and even thriving, at the state and local level around the country. The “Stop the Steal” blueprint that Donald Trump drew up is there for anyone to follow, in the next presidential cycle and quite possibly beyond.

PENNSYLVANIA: Final Holdout County Certifies Election Results As Election Deniers Petition For Recounts

  • The Hill: Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County Certifies Election After Being Sued: The elections board in Luzerne County, Pa., certified their vote canvass on Wednesday after being sued for missing a state deadline earlier in the week. Board members on Monday had voted to defy the state certification deadline in a 2-2 vote, with one abstention, after polling places in the county experienced paper shortages on Election Day. But after progressive elections firm Elias Law Group sued the county on behalf of Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) on Tuesday, the Democratic member who previously abstained voted to certify at Wednesday’s meeting, paving the way for passage. The board’s two Republicans voted against certification again on Wednesday, continuing to seize on the paper shortage and arguing it amounted to a failed election process. […] The issues made Luzerne County one of multiple jurisdictions in battleground states this year to delay certification, a step that generally received little attention before the 2020 election. But former President Trump and his allies’ promotion of unfounded claims of mass electoral fraud have placed a renewed focus on the county meetings, leading residents to show up in Luzerne County and elsewhere to contest election results.
  • Bucks County Beacon: Bucks County Election Deniers File Multiple Petitions To Disrupt Certification Of The Midterm Election: Five days after the November 8 election, Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano conceded the race to Democrat Governor-elect Josh Shapiro. Done deal, right? Wrong. At last count 21 petitions, each containing three petitioners, have been filed in the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas. The purpose of the filings is to secure rulings to enable a recounting of ballots, by hand, pertaining to the November 8 election. A majority of petitions pertain to the governor and lieutenant governor race although other races are also being challenged. Specifically, the petitions allege that “through information or belief” – not any actual proof – “fraud or error” was committed in the computation of votes cast. The pending petitions are preventing some Pennsylvania counties from certifying voting results from the November 8 election. “These orchestrated moves to delay certification of the vote at the county level are a deliberate attempt to flout the will of the people as expressed in the election results,” announced The Pennsylvania Department of State, according to a recent Philadelphia Inquirer article. This is an organized effort and the petition is easily found and readily available online for anyone to print, complete and file with the court.

What Experts Are Saying

Just Security: Mar-a-Lago Clearinghouse: All Key Documents in the Special Counsel Investigation LINK

Joyce Vance, former US attorney, re: 11th circuit ruling striking down Mar-A-Lago special master: “In a rather painful dismantling of [U.S. District Judge] Cannon and Trump’s lawyers, the Court points out that the[y] read the law wrong, badly wrong, in an effort to serve Trump. In fact, the Court notes that even Trump’s lawyers don’t use the badly wrong theory Judge Cannon used to decide she had jurisdiction over the matter, instead they try to skip over proof of callous disregard, which is essential for the district court to hear the case, and rely on the Presidential Records Act to show an additional factor, that Trump has an interest in the items the government seized. Trump seems to think the Act gives him some kind of special status. The Court concludes it does not. And it doesn’t matter, because this factor alone, in the absence of any evidence Trump’s Constitutional rights were violated, isn’t enough for Judge Cannon to hear the case.” Civil Discourse 

Juliette Kayyem, former Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, re: Oath Keepers verdicts: “‘(This) is a great day for the United States, for the rule of law, for the peaceful transfer of power and making sure that that is protected because that was essentially what was on trial,’ said Juliette Kayyem, a CNN national security, intelligence and terrorism analyst. ‘The opposite would have been very bad, I think, not just for the Department of Justice but for incitement and violence – people would have thought that they could have gotten away with it.’” CNN 

Dennis Aftergut, former federal prosecutor, re: Oath Keepers verdicts: “The verdicts confirm a core truth: The violent assault that day was designed, not ‘spontaneous.’ The mob was led, and by those committed to disorder, whatever the cost in bloodshed…The jury sent a message: Try to overturn our democracy by force and you’ll face a lot of years behind bars. It also confirmed that in courtrooms, facts matter.” CNN Op-Ed: Why the Oath Keeper verdict is so significant

Harry Litman, former US attorney: “The conviction of Oath Keepers leaders Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs on charges of seditious conspiracy is a historic legal victory for the Department of Justice, but it is much more than that as well. Tuesday’s verdicts in federal court in Washington will go a long way toward defining the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol melee, once and for all, as a heinous, purposeful crime orchestrated by enemies of democracy.” LA Times Column: A jury delivers the truth about Jan. 6. It was seditious conspiracy

Norm Eisen, served as co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, re: Oath Keeper charges: “‘Now we know D.C. jurors can be receptive to that count.’ He adds, ‘Perhaps a more likely charge against the former president is obstruction of Congress, and here again, DOJ can only be emboldened by its success on those counts in the Oath Keepers case.’” WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin Column: Trump’s very bad week leaves him teetering on the brink of disaster

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

The Hill: Congress can thwart conservative court’s looming election threat
NBC: Dispute over North Carolina congressional districts tees up major elections case at Supreme Court

US News: Election Certification Delays Few, but a ‘Test Run’ for 2024

HuffPost: New Polling Shows Democracy Mattered In The 2022 Midterms

Trump 2024

New York Times: Trump Embraces Extremism as He Seeks to Reclaim Office 

Slate: Trump Has Been Pushed Back to the White Supremacist Fringe. Is That a Problem for Him?

CNN: One of Trump’s biggest defenders thinks he has a chance to lead the RNC

January 6 And The 2020 Election

CNN: Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos meets with House January 6 committee

Washington Post: Trump expresses solidarity with Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol

The Independent: January 6 panel to release all evidence and witness transcripts alongside final report this month

The Hill: McCarthy indicates Republicans plan to investigate Jan. 6 panel

ABC: Garland hints at larger convictions in wake of Oath Keepers leader’s guilty verdict

Other Trump Investigations 

NBC: Trump’s tax returns now in the hands of House Democrats after lengthy court battle

CNN: 2 House Trump investigations, 1 month, many loose ends

NBC: Closing arguments get underway in the Trump Organization’s tax fraud trial

Business Insider: Trump Org hopes to win its Manhattan tax-fraud trial with an ‘ignorance’ defense — a Trump hallmark

Special Counsel 

Vice: Trump’s New Special Counsel Is Far More Dangerous Than the Last One

Ron DeSantis

Daily Beast: Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Controversial Power Grab Gets Its Day in Court

Politico: Southern Poverty Law Center sues DeSantis over Martha’s Vineyard flights

Political Violence

Axios: DHS warns of domestic terrorism threats to LGBTQ, Jewish, minority communities

CBS: Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson still facing threats stemming from 2020 election

The Bulwark: Here’s Why This Seditious Conspiracy Verdict Matters 

Opinion

Wall Street Journal (Editorial Board): Kari Lake Is the New Stacey Abrams

Washington Post (Jennifer Rubin): Trump’s very bad week leaves him teetering on the brink of disaster

Daily Beast (Matt Lewis): Republicans Are Losers if They Continue Using Same Playbook

New York Times (Charles Blow): Georgia Voters Defy Efforts to Suppress Them

MSNBC (Ja’han Jones): Arizona Republicans are running a shameless post-election con job

In The States

The State News: Michigan’s midterm results have been certified. What does that mean for election misinformation?

Minnesota Reformer: Norm Eisen: Trump ‘unbalanced’ by 2020 election, fell off tightrope

Politico: Judge says Georgia GOP chair may not share a lawyer with other ‘alternate electors’

MLive: Kristina Karamo running for Michigan GOP chair after losing Secretary of State race

Wall Street Journal: Early Voting in Georgia Runoff Hits Record Highs

Politico: Pennsylvania Republicans reconsider their war on mail voting