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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — January 3, 2023

By January 3, 2023No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

In Its Final Hours The January 6 Committee Releases Massive New Trove Of Evidence Giving The Clearest Picture Yet Of Trump’s Coordinated Effort To Overturn An Election That He Lost 

  • Associated Press: Jan. 6 Panel Shutting Down After Referring Trump For Crimes: The House Jan. 6 committee is shutting down, having completed a whirlwind 18-month investigation of the 2021 Capitol insurrection and having sent its work to the Justice Department along with a recommendation for prosecuting former President Donald Trump. The committee’s time officially ends Tuesday when the new Republican-led House is sworn in. With many of the committee’s staff already departed, remaining aides have spent the last two weeks releasing many of the panel’s materials, including its 814-page final report, about 200 transcripts of witness interviews, and documents used to support its conclusions. Lawmakers said they wanted to make their work public to underscore the seriousness of the attack and Trump’s multi-pronged effort to try to overturn the election. “Accountability is now critical to thwart any other future scheme to overturn an election,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., wrote in a departing message on Monday. “We have made a series of criminal referrals, and our system of Justice is responsible for what comes next.”
  • New York Times: Trying to Trademark ‘Rigged Election,’ and Other Revelations From the Jan. 6 Transcripts: The nation’s top military officer saw the Jan. 6 attack as similar to the “Reichstag moment” that led to Nazi dictatorship. Aides for former President Donald J. Trump saw their future job opportunities slipping away, and predicted being “perpetually unemployed.” Mr. Trump himself saw the push to overturn the 2020 election as a financial opportunity, moving to trademark the phrase “Rigged Election.” These were among the latest revelations from the House Jan. 6 committee, which released a whirlwind of documents in its final days and wrapped up its work on Monday. Since Friday night, the panel has released several troves of evidence, including about 120 previously unseen transcripts along with emails and text messages obtained during its 18-month inquiry, totaling tens of thousands of pages. The evidence touched on nearly every aspect of Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election. It provided new details about how some of his top allies lobbied for aggressive plans to keep him in power, while others lamented how the dark day of Jan. 6, 2021, had negatively affected their employment prospects. The panel said it has now turned over an “enormous volume of material” to the Justice Department as Jack Smith, the special counsel, conducts a parallel investigation into the events of Jan. 6.
  • Politico: Inside The Jan. 6 Committee’s Massive New Evidence Trove: The Jan. 6 select committee has unloaded a vast database of its underlying evidence — emails between Trump attorneys, text messages among horrified White House aides and outside advisers, internal communications among security and intelligence officials — all coming to grips with then-President Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election and its disastrous consequences. The panel posted thousands of pages of evidence late Sunday in a public database that provide the clearest glimpse yet at the well-coordinated effort by some Trump allies to help Trump seize a second term he didn’t win. Much of the evidence has never been seen before and, in some cases, adds extraordinary new elements to the case the select committee presented in public — from voluminous phone records to contemporaneous text messages and emails. Trump lawyers strategized which federal courts would be likeliest to uphold their fringe constitutional theories; Trump White House aides battled to keep unhinged theories from reaching the president’s ears; as the Jan. 6 attack unfolded, West Wing aides sent horrified messages about Trump’s incendiary tweets and inaction; and after the attack, some Trump allies discussed continued efforts to derail the incoming Biden administration.

Fears Of GOP Meddling In Ongoing January 6 Investigations Grow 

  • CNN: January 6 Committee Warns White House It Can’t Ensure Identity Of Anonymous Witnesses Will Remain Protected: The House January 6 committee has warned President Joe Biden’s White House that it cannot ensure that the identity of personnel who cooperated with its probe on the condition of anonymity will remain protected once the panel dissolves on Tuesday. The select committee had agreed it “would do its utmost to protect the identity” of certain personnel if the White House allowed them to sit for an interview. But now the panel acknowledges it “cannot ensure enforcement of the commitment to maintain the confidentiality of the identity of the witnesses” because it will no longer exercise control over interview transcripts after it is dissolved, according to a December 30 letter. “Pursuant to long-standing House rules, the official records of the Committee will be archived and pass into the control of the National Archives,” the committee wrote to Richard Sauber, special counsel for Biden, noting the panel shares “concern for the safety, security, and reputations of our witnesses.”
  • Time: McCarthy Proposes Gutting Office of Congressional Ethics in Bid for Speaker: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy spent the first two days of the new year trying to shore up GOP support for his bid to be Speaker by releasing a series of proposals aimed at winning over hard-right detractors who stand to torpedo his ascension. The part of his proposed changes to House rules that drew the most attention was allowing just five House members to call for a vote at any time on ousting the Speaker; that would render McCarthy beholden to the most extreme members of his caucus, should he get on their wrong side. But buried in the text was another provision that could be highly consequential for the new Congress being sworn in on Tuesday: language that would effectively gut the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), as the independent panel faces pressure to investigate lawmakers who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The New Year Is Likely To Bring More Changes To Voting Laws And Ongoing Threats To Elections 

  • Associated Press: New Year Expected To Bring More Changes To State Voting Laws: State lawmakers around the country introduced thousands of bills to change the way elections are run after former President Donald Trump falsely blamed his 2020 loss on voter fraud. Hundreds became law. Even with proponents of Trump’s election lies roundly defeated during this year’s midterms, advocates on both sides of the voting debate are bracing for another round of election-related legislation. Republicans are eager to tighten election rules further while Democrats, who took control of two additional statehouses, will seek to make it easier to cast a ballot.

In The States 

ARIZONA:  A Recount Confirmed Democrat Kris Mayes Victory Over MAGA Extremist Abe Hamadeh In The Arizona AG Race 

  • New York Times: Recount Confirms Democrat’s Victory in Arizona’s Attorney General Race: Kris Mayes, the Democratic candidate for attorney general in Arizona, prevailed on Thursday in a recount by a razor-thin margin over Abraham Hamadeh, a Republican, bringing clarity to one of the last undecided races of the midterms. The margin of victory for Ms. Mayes was 280 votes out of about 2.5 million ballots cast in the November election, said Judge Timothy J. Thomason of the Maricopa County Superior Court, who announced the recount’s results in a brief judicial hearing. The recount reduced the margin between the two candidates by about half, with the Election Day results showing Mr. Hamadeh trailing Ms. Mayes by 511 votes. Mr. Hamadeh, whose legal effort to have himself declared the winner was dismissed by a judge on Friday, continued to sow doubt in the election results, saying in a post on Twitter that “we must get to the bottom of this election” and calling for ballots to be inspected. But during closing arguments in last week’s trial, Mr. Hamadeh’s lawyer, Timothy La Sota, acknowledged that he did not have any evidence of intentional misconduct or any vote discrepancies that would make up the gap between the candidates.

FLORIDA:  Another DeSantis Election Fraud Case Was Dismissed 

  • Associated Press: 3rd Case Brought By DeSantis’ Election Police Dismissed: A third case of a defendant who was arrested by an elections police unit created by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and a Republican-controlled Florida Legislature has been thrown out. Terry Hubbard, 63, was among 20 people arrested last August on criminal charges of illegal voting in 2020 in what was the first major action taken by the the Republican’s controversial new Office of Election Crimes and Security. A judge in Broward County this week tossed out the case on the grounds that the Office of Statewide Prosecution does not have jurisdiction to prosecute since it can only prosecute crimes that occurred in two or more counties. Two other cases were dismissed on similar grounds. The elections police unit drew widespread criticism from Democrats and voting rights groups who feared it would serve as a political tool for the governor.

PENNSYLVANIA:  A Century Old Law Was Weaponized By Conspiracy Theorists To Delay Certification Of PA Elections 

  • Spotlight PA: Century-Old Law Let Voters File Baseless Recount Petitions And Delay Pa.’s Election Certification: Good-government advocates and voting experts say Pennsylvania should change a recount law that was weaponized by activists and delayed the state’s certification by several weeks. A Votebeat and Spotlight PA review of historical legislative records and news articles found that the 1927 provision has not been substantially updated in the near-century since its passage, and was designed to combat a type of fraud now easily detected by modern improvements to election administration. The recount petition fee, for example, has never been updated from the $50 amount set in 1927. Adjusted for inflation, the modern equivalent is $860. By design, the authors of the law specifically didn’t require citizens submitting recount petitions to include proof of fraud. That means almost none of the petitions submitted this year offered actual evidence of malfeasance.

What Experts Are Saying

Ryan Goodman, founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security and Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law, and Justin Hendrix, co-founder and CEO of Tech Policy Press: “What follows are highlights of the January 6th Select Committee’s final report from our initial review…With so much at stake for American democracy, the January 6th Report provides the public an opportunity to reflect on persistent threats to the rule of law, elections, racial justice, and freedom from political violence.” Just Security: Major Highlights of the January 6th Report 

Norm Eisen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution: “‘The (Jan. 6) committee takes us through day-by-day, step-by-step, call-by-call and contact-by-contact with the blizzard of activity targeting Georgia,’ he said. ‘We now have a much more complete picture.’” WXIA-TV

Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “People don’t just obstruct justice in a vacuum. They obstruct to conceal other crimes. Here, the possible crimes include inciting obstructing a congressional proceeding because Donald Trump wanted to stay in power after the voters told him no. That’s not just a ‘process crime.’ And DOJ would do well to take up the mantle the Jan. 6 committee has handed them and hold Trump (and his friends) accountable.” MSNBC Op-Ed: Trump’s obstruction of justice criminal referral matters. And prosecutors know it. 

Julian E. Zelizer, professor of political history at Princeton University: “Optimists mistakenly argue that a few more midterm elections like 2022’s and the failure of Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign are all that’s needed for the country to return to normal. That mentality would keep the nation spiraling down a dangerous path, always one step away from another Jan. 6. Watergate taught us not to sit on our hands. It was the story of a coalition that fought tooth and nail for reforms that would make it difficult for another Nixon to succeed. Without those corrections, we would live in a political world that is even more broken than it is today.” NYT Op-Ed: The Jan. 6 Report Is Out. Now the Real Work Begins.

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

New York Times: Republicans Step Up Attacks on F.B.I. as It Investigates Trump

Trump 2024

Associated Press: Trump rings in 2023 facing headwinds in his White House run

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Axios: Kinzinger says he fears for country’s future if Trump isn’t charged over Jan. 6

Wall Street Journal: Ample Jan. 6 Evidence Helps Secure High Conviction Rate in Capitol Riot

New York Times: Jan. 6 Transcripts Shed New Light on How Trump Considered Blanket Pardons

Washington Post: Ex-Capitol police chief: FBI, DHS, Pentagon failed on Jan. 6

Other Trump Investigations

Washington Post: House panel releases Trump tax returns in another setback for former president

Political Violence

Washington Post: Architect of Mich. governor kidnap plot sentenced to more than 19 years in prison

In The States

CNN: Arizona judge orders Kari Lake to compensate Katie Hobbs for some fees for election lawsuit, but declines to sanction her