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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — January 19, 2023

By January 19, 2023No Comments

Driving the Day:

Must Read Stories

January 6 Plotters Land Spots On Key House Committee 

  • CNN: Marjorie Taylor Greene And Paul Gosar Get Committee Assignments: Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona have been given committee assignments for the new Congress, after being booted from their committees by Democrats and some Republicans for their incendiary remarks, sources told CNN. The House GOP Steering Committee on Tuesday agreed to place Greene on the House Homeland Security Committee, which has jurisdiction over the border and will likely play a role in potentially impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. And Gosar got a seat on the House Committee on Natural Resources, where he previously served. Both decisions were made unanimously by the steering panel, sources told CNN, which is stocked with members who are close to and a part of House GOP leadership. The committee rosters will still need to be ratified by the entire House GOP, but typically the conference approves whatever the Steering Committee recommends. Greene and Gosar were also among several GOP hardliners – which also included Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania – added to the House Oversight Committee, according to Republican sources.

Election Conspiracies Fueled Attacks On Democratic Politicians’ Homes In New Mexico

  • Washington Post: Election-Fraud Conspiracies Behind Plot To Shoot At New Mexico Democrats’ Homes, Police Say: The arrest of a defeated candidate for the New Mexico legislature on charges that he orchestrated a plot to shoot up the homes of four Democratic officials in Albuquerque prompted widespread condemnation Tuesday as well as accusations that the stolen-election rhetoric among supporters of former president Donald Trump continues to incite violence. Following the Monday arrest, new details emerged Tuesday about the alleged conspiracy, including how close a spray of bullets came to the sleeping 10-year-old daughter of a state senator. Albuquerque police said in charging documents released Tuesday that Solomon Peña, 39, a Republican who lost a state House seat in November by a nearly 2-1 margin but complained that his defeat was rigged, hatched the plot. Police accused him of conspiring with four accomplices to drive past the officials’ homes and fire at them. Peña “provided firearms and cash payments and personally participated in at least one shooting,” the documents said. They alleged he intended to cause “serious injury or death” to the people inside their homes, the documents said. The group allegedly stole at least two cars used in the incidents, police said.

Trump Prepares To Return To Twitter And Facebook

  • NBC: Donald Trump Prepares For His Return To Facebook And Twitter: Mounting a comeback for the White House, Donald Trump is looking to regain control over his powerful social media accounts. With access to his Twitter account back, Trump’s campaign is formally petitioning Facebook’s parent company to unblock his account there after it was locked in response to the U.S. Capitol riot two years ago. “We believe that the ban on President Trump’s account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse,” Trump’s campaign wrote in its letter to Meta on Tuesday, according to a copy reviewed by NBC News.

Judge Finds That January 6 Rioter Was Following “Trump’s Instructions.” 

  • Axios: Judge: Jan. 6 Rioter Who Broke Into Capitol Followed “Trump’s Instructions”: A federal judge said Tuesday that a California woman who breached the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection “followed then-President Trump’s instructions” in breaking the law. Danean MacAndrew, who traveled to D.C. from California for Trump’s rally and filmed herself storming the Capitol with the mob of pro-Trump supporters, was found guilty on charges including violent entry and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building after a three-day bench trial. Before the Jan. 6, 2021, rally on Jan. 6, MacAndrew tweeted at him “that she too felt that ‘[t]raps had been set’ in the ‘#RiggedElection’ of 2020,” District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in the 18-page opinion. “And at the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally, then-President Trump eponymously exhorted his supporters to, in fact, stop the steal by marching to the Capitol. “Defendant marched to the Capitol where, she testified, she understood that only Congress had the power to fix the election’s outcome and that Congress was likely in session while she was around and in the Capitol,” Kollar-Kotelly said “Every step of the way, from the western boundary of Capitol grounds, to the West Lawn, to the Upper West Terrace, to the interior of the Capitol itself, she saw sign after sign that her presence was unlawful,” Kollar-Kotelly said. “Nevertheless, heeding the call of former President Trump, she continued onwards to ‘stop the steal.’ “Having followed then-President Trump’s instructions, which were in line with her stated desires, the Court therefore finds that Defendant intended her presence to be disruptive to Congressional business.”

In The States 

GEORGIA:  Kelly Loeffler Brags That Voter Suppression Helped Republicans Win In 2022

  • The Nation: A Georgia Republican Brags That Voter Suppression Helped Them in 2022: Just last week, we learned that a Wisconsin Republican election commissioner boasted of the party’s success in dampening Black turnout, especially in Milwaukee, last November. Thanks to the state GOP’s “well thought out multi-faceted plan,” commissioner Robert Spindell e-mailed colleagues, 37,000 fewer voters cast ballots there than in 2018, “with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.” It could have cost Democrat Mandela Barnes a Senate seat. Now comes news that former Georgia GOP senator Kelly Loeffler is bragging that her party reelected Governor Brian Kemp and scored big wins in the state legislature at least partly because of voter-suppressing Senate Bill 202, the February 2021 law that severely curtailed the state’s absentee ballot and vote by mail programs and limited other polling options. Loeffler doesn’t quite claim that the bill suppressed Black votes—though it probably did: After the bill imposed restrictions on voting by mail, mail-in ballots plunged by 81 percent from 2020, and Black voter turnout dropped from 2018 midterm levels. But Loeffler says the law did something equally important: it reassured conservative voters “disenfranchised” by the myth of Democratic voter fraud that their votes would count, and thus boosted white GOP turnout.

OHIO:  Ohio Republicans Enact “Alarming” Voting Restrictions 

  • The Guardian: Ohio Republicans Quietly Enact ‘Alarming’ New Voting Restrictions: Ohio Republicans quietly enacted a measure earlier this month that imposes sweeping new restrictions on voting access in the state, including more stringent voter ID requirements, cutting the early voting period and giving voters less time to return their mail-in ballots. The new law puts Ohio among a handful of states with the strictest voter ID rules in the country. The state had already required voters to show identification at the polls, but allowed an exception for voters who couldn’t produce one, allowing them to present a bank statement, paystub or other document to prove their identity. The new law gets rid of that exception and only allows someone to vote if they provide certain forms of photo ID. Those new restrictions will make it harder for people who tend to lack identification – elderly people, the disabled and the poor – to vote, voting rights advocates said.

What Experts Are Saying

Ryan Goodman, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, re: Trump Mar-A-Lago investigation: “Another incrimination admission. In a Truth Social post, former president Trump claims he held onto empty classified folders as a ‘cool keepsake.’ It’s an admission he knew they were there (46 of them). Notably found alongside 103 docs marked as classified.” Tweet 

Richard L. Hasen, law professor at UCLA, in April 2022 Harvard Law Review: “The United States faces a serious risk that the 2024 presidential election, and other future U.S. elections, will not be conducted fairly and that the candidates taking office will not reflect the free choices made by eligible voters under previously announced election rules. The potential mechanisms by which election losers may be declared election winners are: (1) usurpation of voter choices for president by state legislatures purporting to exercise constitutional authority, possibly with the blessing of a partisan Supreme Court and the acquiescence of Republicans in Congress; (2) fraudulent or suppressive election administration or vote counting by law- or norm-breaking election officials; and (3) violent or disruptive private action that prevents voting, interferes with the counting of votes or interrupts the assumption of power by the actual winning candidate.” NYT’s Thomas B. Edsall Column: ‘You Don’t Negotiate With These Kinds of People’

Jacob Ware, research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR): “Republican leaders too have often turned a blind eye to the party’s extreme fringe, perhaps reluctant to be seen as more interested in internecine criticism than battling political opponents on the left. But what they have failed to calculate is that the violent extremists are not easily controllable—and intend to stick to their demands…whether rank-and-file Republicans care about the safety of their leaders or supporters, about the future of the country and its constitution, about the reality that political opponents are successfully painting them with the same brush as this radical fringe, or about their own chances of victory in 2024, it is past time for them to vigorously denounce and excommunicate the violent far-right whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head.” CFR: The Violent Far-Right Terrorist Threat to the Republican Party and American Conservatism

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Forbes: Trump’s Business Took In At Least $81,000 From Election-Denying Candidates For Secretary Of State

The Guardian: Republicans Have Already Filed Dozens Of Bills To Restrict Voting In 2023

Other Trump Investigations

New York Times: Trump’s Former Lawyer Meets With Prosecutors About Hush Money

Washington Post: Trump thought photo of accuser was of ex-wife during deposition

In The States

Atlanta Journal Constitution: Georgia legislator fined for campaigning when he gave water to voters

Bolts: Alabama’s New Election-Denying Secretary of State Leaves Group That Helps States Clean Voter Rolls