Skip to main content
Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — December 22, 2022

By December 22, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

January 6 Committee Releases Transcripts Of Witness Depositions 

  • Los Angeles Times: House Jan. 6 Committee Releases 34 Transcripts From Investigation: The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection delayed publishing its final report Wednesday, but provided new details with the release of 34 transcripts of depositions taken during its investigation. Many of the released transcripts are from lesser-known figures who played behind-the-scenes roles in the attempt by former President Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election, though the list includes some of the biggest names involved, such as California attorney John Eastman, the architect of the legal theory embraced by Trump that posited the vice president could reject certain states’ electors.
  • New York Times: A Common Answer to Jan. 6 Panel Questions: The Fifth: The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol released a batch of 34 transcripts on Wednesday that showed witnesses repeatedly stymying parts of the panel’s inquiry by invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The conservative lawyer John Eastman, who advised former President Donald J. Trump on how to try to overturn the 2020 election, cited his Fifth Amendment right 155 times. The political operative Roger J. Stone Jr. did so in response to more than 70 questions, including ones regarding his communications with Mr. Trump and his role in the events of Jan. 6. The activist Charlie Kirk took a similar stance, citing the potential for self-incrimination in response to most of the committee’s questions, even about his age and education (he was willing to divulge the city in which he resides). Time and again, the panel ran into roadblocks as it tried to investigate the effort to overturn the election, the transcripts show. “Trump lawyers and supporters Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Phil Waldron and Michael Flynn all invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when asked by the select committee what supposed proof they uncovered that the election was stolen,” the committee wrote in an executive summary of its final report. “Not a single witness — nor any combination of witnesses — provided the select committee with evidence demonstrating that fraud occurred on a scale even remotely close to changing the outcome in any state.”

Expected Today, The Full January 6 Committee Report Will Address Foreign Exploitation Of Trump’s Lies 

  • Politico: Jan. 6 Panel’s Final Report Will Tackle Foreign Exploitation Of Trump Election Lies: The Jan. 6 select committee’s final report will include analysis of foreign adversaries’ attempts to capitalize on Donald Trump’s election disinformation, according to a person familiar with the investigation’s long-awaited culmination that’s now set for release Thursday. […] The full report’s publication is still expected Thursday, a departure from the original expected publication date. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s surprise address to Congress scheduled for Wednesday evening and the last-minute machinations over the year-end $1.7 trillion government funding bill likely complicated planning at the committee. The final report will include eight chapters, and the foreign influence section will appear as one of four appendices. The first two appendices are focused on Capitol security and the slow mobilization of the National Guard to respond to the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters intent on disrupting the certification of his loss to Joe Biden. The third appendix covers the work of the select committee’s so-called “green team,” which scrutinized the money trail behind the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse that Trump headlined on Jan. 6, which quickly metastasized into a Capitol siege. Committee members have raised the prospect of potential campaign finance violations related to the pre-riot rally. The full report is expected to surpass 800 pages in length, cataloging Trump’s multi-front bid to subvert the 2020 election and prevent Biden from taking office. When those plans failed, the select committee has outlined, Trump exhorted his supporters to descend on Washington and pointed an angry crowd to the Capitol, where outnumbered and under-prepared police officers were quickly overwhelmed by the violent mob.

An Informant Warned The FBI Weeks Before January 6 That The Far Right Saw Trump’s Tweets As “A Call To Arms” 

  • NBC: Informant Warned FBI Weeks Before Jan. 6 That The Far-Right Saw Trump Tweet As ‘A Call To Arms’: On Dec. 19, 2020, the day then-President Donald Trump sent a tweet summoning his supporters to a “wild” protest in the nation’s capital on Jan. 6, one of the FBI’s own confidential sources warned the bureau that the far right considered Trump’s message “a call to arms,” according to an email reviewed by NBC News. That tip to the FBI, from a source who is still used by the bureau and spoke on the condition of anonymity, warned there was a “big” threat of violence on Jan. 6. It was among hundreds of pages of reports viewed by NBC News that this source sent to the FBI in the weeks before the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. The email, which has not been previously reported, warned that the Trump tweet was “gaining hold” on social media. “Trump tweeted what people on the right are considering a call to arms in DC on Jan 6,” the confidential source wrote on the afternoon of Dec. 19, the day of Trump’s 1:42 a.m. “will be wild” tweet. The information the source sent to the bureau in the weeks before the attack, pulled from extremist chatter on a variety of social media forums, included discussion of civil war, talk of hanging traitors and calls for militias to take up arms. It highlighted messages like “war is inevitable”; “hell is going to break loose”; “locked and loaded”; “my powder is dry, my guns are clean”; and “I’m not afraid of death and I’ll gladly take lives for the preservation of our country.” It included information on a “boogaloo” extremist who was prepared to die in D.C.

Under Oath Fox News Stars Admit They Didn’t Believe Trump’s Election Lies 

  • New York Times: In Testimony, Hannity and Other Fox Employees Said They Doubted Trump’s Fraud Claims: On Nov. 30, 2020, Sean Hannity hosted Sidney Powell on his prime-time Fox News program. As she had in many other interviews around that time — on Fox and elsewhere in right-wing media — Ms. Powell, a former federal prosecutor, spun wild conspiracy theories about what she said was “corruption all across the country, in countless districts,” in a plot to steal re-election from the president, Donald J. Trump. At the center of this imagined plot were machines from Dominion Voting Systems, which Ms. Powell claimed ran an algorithm that switched votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Dominion machines, she insisted, were being used “to trash large batches of votes.” Mr. Hannity interrupted her with a gentle question that had been circulating among election deniers, despite a lack of supporting proof: Why were Democrats silencing whistle-blowers who could prove this fraud? Did Mr. Hannity believe any of this? “I did not believe it for one second.” That was the answer Mr. Hannity gave, under oath, in a deposition in Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, according to information disclosed in a court hearing on Wednesday. The hearing was called to address several issues that need to be resolved before the case heads for a jury trial, which the judge has scheduled to begin in April. Mr. Hannity’s disclosure — along with others that emerged from court on Wednesday about what Fox News executives and hosts really believed as their network became one of the loudest megaphones for lies about the 2020 election — is among the strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.

In The States 

ARIZONA: No Evidence Of Misconduct In First Day Of Kari Lake’s Election Trial

  • Arizona Republic: No Evidence Of Misconduct In First Day Of Kari Lake Election-Challenge Trial: The first day of an evidence trial based on an election-challenge lawsuit by Republican governor candidate Kari Lake raised plentiful suspicions but did not reveal evidence of the misconduct she alleged. Lake, a Republican endorsed by former President Donald Trump, alleges in her suit that malicious acts by election officials caused “vast numbers of illegal votes” to infect the election and that Democrat Katie Hobbs was wrongfully declared the winner. Election results showed that Hobbs beat Lake by about 17,000 votes in the Nov. 8 election. After basing her campaign on 2020 election conspiracy theories, Lake’s best chance of taking office now rests on convincing a judge she was robbed of a rightful victory. Roughly seven hours of court proceedings on Wednesday made it clear how difficult that will be.

What Experts Are Saying

Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW): “[L]ikely nothing in [the Select Committee on January 6’s] findings will prove more important — or could have a larger legal impact — than the committee’s conclusion that Trump, as a matter of law, incited an insurrection against the authority of the U.S. government. It should, and must, prevent those who tried to overthrow our government from ever serving in it again. And that starts with Donald J. Trump. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment makes it clear that no individual who engages in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution after having previously sworn an oath to support it can hold any federal or state office. This provision establishes a basic qualification for the presidency, no different than the qualifications for age, citizenship and residency. While federal prosecutors should move forward with investigating and charging Trump for criminal insurrection, it is crucial that courts and secretaries of state simultaneously remove Trump from the presidential ballot in 2024.” NBC (Think) Op-Ed: Why Trump’s insurrection referral is the Jan. 6 committee’s most important act

Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “While it’s important to examine law-enforcement & institutional failures of intelligence ahead of 1/6, nothing should remove the focus from Donald Trump, who sought to interfere with the will of American voters so he could stay in power. Accountability must start & end with him.” Tweet 

Andrew Weissmann, former Assistant United States Attorney (MSNBC Video): explains to @Lawrence what we can learn from the 34 new witness transcripts released by the January 6 Committee even though the majority of those witnesses invoked the Fifth Amendment in nearly all of their testimony. MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell | Tweet 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history and Italian studies at New York University: “I feel that we have been unable to adequately express our grief and shock about it [January 6] as a nation. This is, in part, because we lack a shared narrative of what it means. That is by design. Republican elites and media have led half of the population to see Jan. 6 as a patriotic and positive event, as a minor protest liberals exaggerate to demonize Republicans, or as something to forget about altogether.” Lucid 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

New York Times: Musk Lifted Bans for Thousands on Twitter. Here’s What They’re Tweeting.

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Bloomberg: Republicans’ Own Jan. 6 Report Focuses on US Capitol Security Lapses

Reuters: U.S. Capitol riot committee delays releasing final report on assault by Trump backers

Other Trump Investigations

Bloomberg: Trump Bid to Stall NY AG’s Probe Thrown Out by Florida Judge

New York Times: I.R.S. Routinely Audited Obama and Biden, Raising Questions Over Delays for Trump

Politico: Trump lawyers target Adult Survivors Act in attempt to invalidate rape lawsuit

Politico: House Dems plan another swing at Trump over his taxes

Washington Post: Skepticism before a search: Inside the Trump Mar-a-Lago documents investigation

In The States

NPR: Florida’s effort to charge 20 people with voter fraud has hit some roadblocks