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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — July 13, 2022

By July 13, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Yesterday’s January 6 Hearing Revealed The Violent Attack On The Capitol Was A Premeditated Scheme By Trump And Extremist Groups 

  • Politico: ‘His Own Choices’: Select Panel Says Trump — Not His Advisers — Set Jan. 6 In Motion:   The Jan. 6 select committee’s Tuesday hearing, ostensibly focused on extremism, drove clearly toward a subtle goal: Stripping away doubt that Donald Trump was anything but a full participant in a plot to subvert the 2020 election. The former president wasn’t duped into disbelieving his own loss by fringe lawyers and advisers, select committee members argued. Rather, he assembled that squad of enablers, overrode his more sober-minded staff and forged the path that led to the chaos engulfing the Capitol, they contended during their nearly three-hour seventh hearing. “The strategy is to blame people his advisers called ‘the crazies’ for what Donald Trump did,” select panel vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said at the outset. “This, of course, is nonsense. President Trump is a 76-year-old man, he is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices.”
  • New York Times: Tears, Screaming and Insults: Inside an ‘Unhinged’ Meeting to Keep Trump in Power: The meeting lasted for more than six hours, past midnight, and devolved into shouting that could be heard outside the room. Participants hurled insults and nearly came to blows. Some people left in tears. Even by the standards of the Trump White House, where people screamed at one another and President Donald J. Trump screamed at them, the Dec. 18, 2020, meeting became known as an “unhinged” event — and an inflection point in Mr. Trump’s desperate efforts to remain in power after he had lost the election. Details of the meeting have been reported before, including by The New York Times and Axios, but at a public hearing on Tuesday of the Jan. 6 committee, participants in the mayhem offered a series of jolting new details of the meeting between Mr. Trump and rival factions of advisers. “It got to the point where the screaming was completely, completely out there,” Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer, told the committee in videotaped testimony. “I mean, you got people walking in — it was late at night, it had been a long day. And what they were proposing, I thought was nuts.” The proposal, to have the president direct the secretary of defense to seize voting machines to examine for fraud and also to appoint a special counsel to potentially charge people with crimes, had been hatched by three outside advisers: Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for Mr. Trump’s campaign who promoted conspiracy theories about a Venezuelan plot to rig the voting machines; Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser Mr. Trump fired in his first weeks in office; and Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com.
  • NPR: Jan. 6 Panel Shows Evidence Of Coordination Between Far-Right Groups And Trump Allies: The House select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol tried to make the case Tuesday that far-right groups and the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election are inextricably linked, detailing the mobilization of extremist groups after then-President Trump sent a tweet on Dec. 19, 2020, calling for supporters to protest in D.C. on Jan. 6. […] Trump’s Dec. 19 tweet, which read: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” spread like wildfire among far-right groups, said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. In the hours after that tweet was posted, Kelly Meggs, the head of the Florida Oath Keepers, posted a message on Facebook pledging that his group would “work together” with the Three-Percenters and Proud Boys, two other right-wing extremist groups. In a clip of video testimony, Donell Harvin, former D.C. homeland security chief, said his agency had intelligence of “very, very violent individuals” from these groups organizing to come to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6. “These non-aligned groups were aligning, and all the red flags went up at that point,” he said. “When you have armed militia collaborating with white supremacy groups, collaborating with conspiracy theory groups online, all for the common goal, you start seeing what we call in terrorism a blended ideology, and that’s a very, very bad sign.” The committee laid out evidence that people in Trump’s orbit were involved with these extremist groups.
  • Washington Post: Ex-Oath Keeper Outlines Dark Worldview Behind U.S. Capitol Attack: With his face tattoos and rocker-style denim jacket, Jason Van Tatenhove stood out among the buttoned-up Capitol Hill crowd at Tuesday’s select committee hearing examining the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Van Tatenhove spent years as the senior spokesman and a close aide to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who faces seditious conspiracy charges in connection with the violence. The ex-insider was perhaps a risky witness choice, having left the group around 2018 and apparently possessing no unique insights into its actions in the run-up to the assault. Instead, Van Tatenhove’s role was to lay out the apocalyptic worldview that underpins far-right movements such as the Oath Keepers, which he said dreamed of and trained for the kind of high-profile uprising that unfolded in the waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency. His grim warnings about the potential for future violence also underlined the House committee’s central theme that Jan. 6 was not a single event, but part of an extremist agenda to weaken public trust in democratic institutions and make political violence more palatable. “I think we’ve gotten exceedingly lucky that more bloodshed did not happen because the potential has been there from the start,” Van Tatenhove told lawmakers.

Ten Republican Members Of Congress Attended White House Meeting On Pressuring Pence 

  • Axios: Logs Show 10 House Republicans Attended White House Meeting On Pressuring Pence: Ten Republican members of Congress attended a Dec. 21 White House meeting focused on efforts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to help overturn the 2020 election, according to the Jan. 6 committee. Why it matters: The revelation underscores how deep the involvement of some lawmakers were in former President Trump’s schemes to overturn the election even after the electoral college met to affirm President Biden’s victory. Driving the news: Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) said at a hearing on Tuesday that White House visitor logs reveal 10 members were physically in attendance: Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Now-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)

Liz Cheney Indicates That Trump Is Inappropriately Contacting Witnesses Before The January 6 Committee 

  • Washington Post: Jan. 6 Panel Escalates Showdown With Trump Over Influencing Witnesses: Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) ended Tuesday’s hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol with a direct warning to former president Donald Trump. Sometime in the past two weeks, Cheney said, Trump tried to call someone whom she identified as a witness who has not yet appeared in the committee’s hearings. The person didn’t take the call and instead alerted their lawyer, who in turn told the committee. The committee reported the call to the Justice Department, Cheney said, suggesting the possibility of a crime. “Let me say one more time,” Cheney, the panel’s vice chair, said at the hearing. “We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously.” The revelation was extraordinary because the call allegedly came from Trump himself, rather than an intermediary, and followed a warning at the committee’s previous hearing on June 28 about messages to one of the committee’s witnesses. A person familiar with the committee’s work said both messages that Cheney read out loud during that earlier hearing were directed to Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House aide who was that day’s star witness.

In The States 

ARIZONA: Conspiracy Theorist Candidates In AZ Suggest Their Own Elections Will Be Stolen  

  • Axios: Lake, Finchem Suggest Election Fraud Could Affect Republican Primary: Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, GOP candidates for governor and secretary of state, respectively, are already suggesting that they’ll blame election fraud if they lose the Aug. 2 Republican primary. Both candidates have been endorsed by former President Donald Trump and have aggressively promoted the false allegations that the 2020 election was rigged against him. State of play: At a June 28 fundraiser in Chandler, Finchem suggested that batches of ballots were suspicious in Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s recent GOP primary win. Finchem said, “Ain’t gonna be no concession speech coming from this guy. I’m going to demand a 100% hand count if there’s the slightest hint that there’s an impropriety. And I will urge the next governor to do the same,” according to a video of the event posted on the conservative media website Rumble. Lake, whom Finchem called “Arizona’s next governor,” said she would “absolutely” do the same, noting that Trump never conceded his 2020 loss. “He did not concede, and I think that was really smart because that was the most dirty, filthy, rotten election I’ve ever seen,” Lake said.

What Experts Are Saying

Tom Dupree, principal deputy assistant attorney general in W. Bush administration: Fox News Video: “I think the committee succeeded today in establishing links that we hadn’t previously known about between the White House and some of these militia groups.” Tweet of Fox News Video

Julian Zelizer, Princeton University historian: “So, according to the hearings, the ‘party of small government’ sat still as a Republican president considered seizing voting machines in an effort to overturn the 2020 election.” Tweet 

Harry Litman, former US attorney: MSNBC Video: “There are always ragtag terrorists out there…there are people who are deluded or believe in a charismatic leader. What they aren’t, however, are normally following the direct commands of the President of the United States” MSNBC’s Deadline WH Tweet 

Kathleen Belew, Northwestern University professor and expert on the white power movement: “Encrypted group chat with Flynn, Stone, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, planning for militant action on Jan 6. It’s impossible to argue that there wasn’t coordination with Trump affiliates and the white power movement/militant right.” Tweet 

Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director: MSNBC Video: “We needed to see those dotted lines become more solid lines between Trump and illegality… rejecting the legal for the illegal, rejecting the rule of law for the rule of Trump. What’s the rule of Trump? Get it done by any means” MSNBC’s Deadline WH Tweet 

Neal Katyal, former acting US solicitor general: MSNBC Video: “There’s the tantalizing… bombshell at the very end that Donald Trump himself personally called a witness… That could be a very easy criminal case if the evidence is the way that Congresswoman Cheney suggested it might be” MSNBC’s Deadline WH Tweet 

Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW): “Significant that after it was made clear to Donald Trump that there was no legal avenue to overturn the election, he then changed course and tweeted to invite the mob to Washington. He very consciously chose to turn to mob violence as his next tactic. He knew what he was doing.” Tweet 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, NYU historian: “The rally was a pretext for the siege to come after —an excuse to gather supporters right near the Capitol. It is also fitting that a rally was integral to Trump’s coup attempt. As my report to the Jan. 6 committee argues, Trump used these gatherings not only to sow hatred and build his leader cult, but also to engage in an intensive emotional retraining of his followers that emphasized the positive qualities of violence and cruelty.” Lucid 

Ryan Goodman, Defense Department former special counsel: “Cipollone’s testimony points to Meadows’ criminal exposure.👇Evidence that Meadows knew full well Trump lost, and it was and should be over. In those and following weeks, Mark Meadows ran point in helping to “corruptly” obstruct congressional proceedings. Corrupt if knew lost” Tweet 

Norman Eisen, senior fellow at Brookings, and Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor: “[T]he committee should now negotiate with [Steve] Bannon to determine whether, remote a prospect as it seems, he is actually ready to provide useful information. At the same time, the prosecutors and the court must keep moving forward resolutely if — as is likely — Bannon and his patron are playing games. Truth is the only answer to these kinds of manipulations.” CNN Op-Ed: Steve Bannon’s new ploy

What Pundits Are Saying

Tim Miller, Bulwark writer-at-large and former Republican National Committee spokesperson: “Some political context for today’s January 6th meetings. All the preposterous lies, the Sidney Powell weirdness featured today: it is all being repeated as fact to this day by nearly every major Republican running for major office. Mass formation psychosis.” Tweet 

Ben Rhodes, Obama administration deputy national security advisor for strategic communications and speechwriting: “One of the most chilling aspects of the 1/6 hearings is reliving how much the worst elements in American life had reached the apex of American power under Trump. Extremism lent the veneer of presidential power.” Tweet  

Sarah Longwell, long-time Republican strategist and Bulwark publisher, re: former Oath Keepers spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove’s testimony “I do fear for this next election cycle because who knows what that might bring”: “Right. Because the threat is ongoing. These ‘Stop the Steal’ lunatics are appearing on a 2022 ballot near you.” Tweet  

Amanda Carpenter, Bulwark writer and former communications director to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz: “Donald Trump’s defenders can finally drop the idea that he just happened to extemporaneously order the mob that he knew was armed to march to the Capitol in the course of his speech on January 6, 2021. On Tuesday, the House January 6th Committee revealed new evidence that activists coordinating activities for the day were well aware of Trump’s desires in advance. And at least one of them knew that the planning was supposed to be kept secret because of all the trouble it would cause.” The Bulwark 

Claire McCaskill, former Senator (D-MO) and former prosecutor: MSNBC Video: “I really think that there is enough evidence here to indict… Will he be convicted? I don’t know, but the risk of not indicting, I think, is so grave to this country in terms of respect and accountability under the rule of law” MSNBC’s Deadline WH Tweet 

Michael Steele, former Republican National Committee chair: “On Trump’s role in Jan. 6, @MichaelSteele: ‘The point made by Liz Cheney is an important one: all of this happened because a grown man wanted it to…He may act like a petulant child, people may try passing off as unintelligent and unengaged. None of that is the case.’ #AMRstaff” Tweet of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports 

David Axelrod, Obama administration senior advisor: “We learned today that @Jim_Jordan was among the congressional plotters who huddled with Trump in the hours before the insurrection. He’s also in line to be House Judiciary chair in a @GOP congress.” Tweet 

Bill Kristol, Bulwark editor-at-large and chief of staff to Republican Vice President Dan Quayle: “Have Senators Cruz and Hawley, who gave such a shot in the arm to the mob by announcing they’d challenge the returns, apologized? Have Reps. Jordan and Stefanik apologized? Have any of the 147 members of Congress who voted to overturn the election results apologized?” Tweet 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Trump uses Wisconsin Supreme Court decision on ballot drop boxes to re-stoke baseless arguments about the 2020 election

Politico: Election officials fear copycat attacks as ‘insider threats’ loom

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Associated Press: Jan. 6 rioter apologizes to officers after House testimony

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ron Johnson’s effort to pass false electors to Pence not a priority of Jan. 6 committee, chairman says

Mother Jones: Leaked Audio: Before Election Day, Bannon Said Trump Planned to Falsely Claim Victory

Politico: The secret support system for former aides taking on Trump: The other women

Reuters: Former senior U.S. official John Bolton admits to planning attempted foreign coups

Washington Examiner: Biggs calls for hearings into election fraud claims in 2000 Mules: Report

Washington Post: Trump hid plan for Capitol march on day he marked as ‘wild’, panel says

Washington Post: Bannon contempt of Congress trial echoes Nixon burglar Liddy’s

Opinion

USA Today (Jill Lawrence): The Trump GOP is in ruins and every Jan. 6 committee hearing digs the hole deeper

Washington Post (Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman): Dramatic moments from deprogrammed right-wingers indict the whole GOP

Washington Post (Eugene Robinson): Trump, and Trump alone, turned Jan. 6 into a debacle for our democracy

Washington Post (Greg Sargent): Shocking new Trump revelations may actually move a few GOP voters

Political Violence

KIRO: Man accused of threatening Rep. Jayapal could face hate crime charges

WCCO: Charges: Man lit his camper on fire, defaced own garage to appear targeted due to Trump flag