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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — July 14, 2022

By July 14, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

January 6 Committee May Hold More Hearings In August 

  • NBC: The Jan. 6 Committee Won’t Rule Out More Hearings This Summer: House Jan. 6 committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said Wednesday he hopes next week’s prime-time hearing will be the last in its series of high-profile televised presentations. But Thompson, D-Miss., isn’t ruling out holding more this summer, saying new evidence uncovered by the committee could prompt additional surprise hearings like the one last month that featured key witness Cassidy Hutchinson. Asked whether he could promise that the July 21 public hearing — the panel’s eighth this year — will be the last, Thompson told reporters: “No, I can’t. I’m hoping it is, but something could come up, just like the Hutchinson situation that warranted what we felt was an immediate hearing.”

Potential Witness Tampering Revealed:  Trump Tried To Call A Member Of The White House Support Staff 

  • CNN: Trump Tried To Call A Member Of The White House Support Staff Talking With January 6 Committee, Sources Say: Former President Donald Trump tried to call a member of the White House support staff who was talking to the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. The support staffer was not someone who routinely communicated with the former President and was concerned about the contact, according to the sources, and informed their attorney. The call was made after former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified publicly to the committee. The White House staffer was in a position to corroborate part of what Hutchinson had said under oath, according to the sources. CNN was told the position of the witness Trump tried to call, but not the person’s name. Details about the witness Trump tried to contact have not been previously reported.

January 6 Committee To Share Fake Elector Evidence With DOJ

  • New York Times: Jan. 6 Panel Will Turn Over Evidence on Fake Electors to the Justice Dept: The Justice Department has asked the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol for evidence it has accumulated about the scheme by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to put forward false slates of pro-Trump electors in battleground states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, disclosed the request to reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, and a person familiar with the panel’s work said discussions with the Justice Department about the false elector scheme were ongoing. Those talks suggest that the department is sharpening its focus on that aspect of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, one with a direct line to the former president. Mr. Thompson said the committee was working with federal prosecutors to allow them to review the transcripts of interviews the panel has done with people who served as so-called alternate electors for Mr. Trump. Mr. Thompson said the Justice Department’s investigation into “fraudulent electors” was the only specific topic the agency had broached with the committee.

Senators Close To A Deal On Electoral Count Act Reform 

  • Politico: Senators In Both Parties Want To Prevent The Next Jan. 6. They’re Not Looking For The Select Panel’s Help: The Jan. 6 committee shares one major goal with a handful of GOP senators: modernizing the 135-year-old law that governs the transition of presidential power. Except those Republicans aren’t looking to the select panel for help. Politically speaking, their task is hard enough as it is. Working with a small group of Democrats, the GOP senators are aiming to get a filibuster-proof majority in their chamber backing an update to the 1887 law that Donald Trump’s allies used to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to block certification of the 2020 election. Senators involved in the monthslong effort say they’re getting close to a deal. Their goal is passing legislation on the Electoral Count Act by the end of the year, well in advance of the 2024 campaign — and before House Republicans are poised to take power with little interest in addressing the topic. But any standalone bill they can get through the Senate could compete for attention and floor time with the Jan. 6 committee’s still-unreleased legislative recommendations.

In The States 

KANSAS: Johnson County Sheriff Gives Details Of His Voter Fraud Investigations At Far Right Event In Las Vegas 

  • Kansas City Star: Johnson County Sheriff Tells Las Vegas Crowd His Election Fraud Investigation Continues: Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden told a “constitutional sheriffs” group in Las Vegas on Tuesday that he is continuing to investigate the county’s election results to determine whether any fraud occurred, despite repeated assurances from election officials that there was none. “President Trump did not carry our county,” Hayden told a gathering of the Constitutional Sheriffs & Peace Officers Association. “First time since 1914 that Johnson County didn’t vote Republican. “So I didn’t know anything about elections. We’re cops. So we’ve been educating ourselves about elections. I’ve sent my detectives through, I’ve got a cyber guy, sent him through, to start evaluating what’s going on with the machines.” Hayden has put forward no evidence to substantiate suspicions of fraud. Kansas election officials have repeatedly vouched for the security of Johnson County elections.

MICHIGAN: Rep. Peter Meijer Voted For Impeachment, Prepares For Trump-Fueled Primary 

  • Detroit News:  Meijer Seeks To Survive Trump Backlash In GOP Primary: On the third day of his new job as a congressman in 2021, U.S. Rep. Peter Meijer and his colleagues evacuated the House chamber as rioters supporting former President Donald Trump broke windows, fought police and surged through the Capitol. Later that night, he voted to certify the 2020 election results, and a week later he would be one of 10 Republicans to join House Democrats in voting to impeach Trump for inciting the insurrection. Meijer still argues it was “absolutely” the right decision. Whether Republican voters in his west Michigan district agree with him could determine his political future. On Aug. 2, primary voters in the new 3rd Congressional District — comprising parts of Kent, Muskegon and Ottawa counties — will choose between Meijer and his Trump-endorsed challenger, John Gibbs, in one of the nation’s most closely watched primary races.  A former official in Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development who grew up in Lansing, Gibbs was recruited to move from Washington, D.C., to west Michigan to challenge Meijer after his impeachment vote drew blowback among his party’s grassroots. 

WISCONSIN: Gov. Evers Warns Of Threats To Future Elections And Says That Wisconsin GOP Will Keep Investigating 2020 Until Trump Is “Six Feet Under”

  • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Tony Evers Says GOP Will Investigate 2020 ‘until Donald Trump Is 6 Feet Under’: Democratic incumbent Gov. Tony Evers warned supporters Wednesday that if he is not re-elected, oversight of elections in Wisconsin could be at risk of being turned over to state lawmakers. “We will see elections change to the point where the Legislature makes the final decision and that should scare the living crap out of everybody in this room,” Evers said at a campaign stop in Madison focused on abortions. Evers’ top Republican rival Tim Michels, co-owner of Michels Corp., said Tuesday he isn’t ruling out signing legislation to overturn the result of the 2020 election that former President Donald Trump lost.  Trump, who has endorsed Michels for governor, has pushed lawmakers for two years to take action to overturn his election loss in 2020. But the idea is impossible, legal scholars say — including his own attorney.  But the idea persists as Trump and some of his supporters continue to push it.  “They will continue doing this until Donald Trump is 6 feet under,” Evers said about Republicans focusing on the 2020 election.

What Experts Are Saying

NEW: Center for American Progress Action Analysis: Guns and Political Violence Play Central Role in MAGA Republican Campaign Ads: “At least 104 MAGA Republican ads this cycle display and feature firearms or weapons, blowtorches, and even ‘Tommy’ gun auctions, with many including threats against opponents on both the left and right.” CAP Action 

Praveen Fernandes, vice president at Constitutional Accountability Center: Cheddar News Video: “I think, again, this shows the level of awareness, the level of planning, and the fact that this was not  a crowd that just suddenly on its own decided to go to the Capitol. This is about a plan to weaponize this crowd that had gathered and use that anger, use that frenzy that frankly the top officials and Trump had actually whipped up and weaponized because, of course, all other plans had failed.” CAC Tweet of Cheddar News 

Heather Cox Richardson, Boston College historian: “We are hearing now, 18 months after the fact, that our president tried to overturn our democracy, forcing his own will onto unwilling voters. And, at the time, no one in the White House said anything to the public or to our law enforcement officials to stop this deadly attack. Worse, it appears that a number of our lawmakers were complicit in the attempt to overturn our democracy…The silence from Republicans over what we have been hearing from the January 6th committee is deafening. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that they were willing to permit Trump to overturn the will of the voters—to overturn our democratic form of government—if it meant they could retain power. We ignore this willingness to destroy our democracy at our peril.” Letters from An American 

Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “Trump, like anyone else, is permitted to pick up the phone and call friends, acquaintances and former employees. That means there has to be more than just the bare fact that a call was placed here to raise this incident to the level of something that merits referral to DOJ…The statute most often used by DOJ in witness tampering situations is 18 USC 1512. You can read the full statute here…The statute is intentionally far reaching; it contemplates all the different ways someone might try to tamper with a witness, even an effort to delay testimony, so prosecution can be had.” Civil Discourse 

Andrew Weissmann, a former senior prosecutor in the 2016 election Mueller probe: “‘[I]n order to have a criminal conspiracy, there has to be some meeting of the minds.’ ‘So for instance,’ Weissmann continued, ‘the conversation that Cassidy Hutchinson described on Jan. 5, I believe, where the former president asked Mark Meadows to speak to Michael Flynn and Roger Stone … That is a conversation I’d be particularly interested in getting.’” Politico Nightly 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

Axios: Trump’s return to Washington

Newsweek: Every Republican Candidate to Be Asked if They Think Election Was Stolen

New York Times: As Faith Flags in U.S. Government, Many Voters Want to Upend the System

Politico: How one House Republican voted to impeach Trump and (maybe) kept his seat

Washington Post: John Bolton said he planned foreign coups. The global outcry was swift.

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Atlanta Journal Constitution: Graham moves to quash Fulton subpoena in Trump probe

New York Times: ‘It’s Just Been Hell:’ Life as the Victim of a Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory

Rolling Stone: Trump’s Lawyers Think Mark Meadows Is Going Down

Washington Post: Meet the fans who follow the Jan. 6 hearings as must-see TV

Washington Post (Analysis): The significance of the new Steve Bannon tape

In The States 

NBC: Trump-backed Kari Lake gets a hand from an unlikely source in Arizona: Democrats

Talking Points Memo: Pennsylvania Officials Sue Rogue Counties For Refusing To Certify Election

WOWK: Former West Virginia delegate sentenced for role in Jan. 6 says he might run for federal office