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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — June 3, 2022

By June 3, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

First January 6 Committee Hearing Set For Primetime On June 9, Trump Allies Plot Counterprogramming 

  • CNN: January 6 Committee Announces First Prime Time Hearing Will Feature Previously Unseen Material And Witness Testimony:  The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection of the US Capitol formally announced Thursday that its first public hearing will take place on June 9 at 8 p.m. ET. The advisory does not list any witnesses for the hearing but says additional details will be released next week. “The committee will present previously unseen material documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, preview additional hearings, and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power,” the advisory from the committee states.
  • Axios: Trumpworld Plots Jan. 6 Counterprogramming Blitz: Former President Trump and his allies, in conjunction with top House GOP leadership and conservative groups, have begun pulling documents and coordinating a behind-the-scenes effort to counterprogram the Jan. 6 committee’s televised hearings this month, Axios has learned. Why it matters: Republicans face a daunting challenge in the coming messaging war. The committee has been building toward this moment for months, hoping to use the blockbuster summer hearings to paint a vivid picture of how close Trump and his supporters came to subverting democracy. Republicans are plotting to compete with wall-to-wall cable coverage by using their own platforms to argue the committee is a partisan fishing expedition that lacks legal legitimacy. That framing will be central to their hopes of defanging whatever negative revelations come to light during the hearings.

Republicans Who Texted Mark Meadows On January 6 Believed Trump Could Stop The Violence 

  • CNN: Republicans Who Texted Meadows With Urgent Pleas On January 6 Say Trump Could Have Stopped The Violence: Within minutes of the US Capitol breach on January 6, 2021, messages began pouring into the cell phone of White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Among those texting were Republican members of Congress, former members of the Trump administration, GOP activists, Fox personalities — even the President’s son. Their texts all carried the same urgent plea: President Donald Trump needed to immediately denounce the violence and tell the mob to go home. “He’s got to condem (sic) this shit. Asap,” Donald Trump Jr. texted at 2:53 p.m. “POTUS needs to calm this shit down,” GOP Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina wrote at 3:04 p.m. “TELL THEM TO GO HOME !!!” former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus messaged at 3:09 p.m. “POTUS should go on air and defuse this. Extremely important,” Tom Price, former Trump health and human services secretary and a former GOP representative from Georgia, texted at 3:13 p.m. “Fix this now,” wrote GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas at 3:15 p.m. One of the key questions the January 6 House committee is expected to raise in its June hearings is why Trump failed to publicly condemn the attack for hours, and whether that failure is proof of “dereliction of duty” and evidence that Trump tried to obstruct Congress’ certification of the election. The Meadows texts show that even those closest to the former President believed he had the power to stop the violence in real time.

Georgia Secretary Of State Brad Raffensperger Testifies Before Grand Jury, Bill Bar Speaks To January 6 Committee 

  • Georgia Public Broadcasting: Secretary Of State Brad Raffensperger Testifies In Investigation Of 2020 Georgia Election Meddling: The top Georgia election official who refused to “find” votes for former President Donald Trump testified Thursday about the infamous call and other attempts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is one of the first subpoenaed witnesses to testify in front of a special grand jury impaneled in Fulton County as part of a wide-ranging investigation into efforts by Trump and others to subvert Georgia’s election process and undo President Joe Biden’s narrow victory. Raffensperger’s testimony lasted for four hours and his wife, Tricia, spoke for about 10 minutes, according to someone briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak on his behalf. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is seeking information from a number of witnesses that will guide her decision to potentially bring charges against Trump or others in his orbit for meddling with Georgia’s election.
  • Bloomberg: Trump’s Attorney General Barr Questioned by Jan. 6 Committee: Former Attorney General William Barr was interviewed privately Thursday by the House Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, an official familiar with the meeting said. The deposition under oath in Washington lasted about two hours, according to the official, who asked not to be identified because the session wasn’t public. One of the committee’s interests in Barr is his interactions with former President Donald Trump. Barr has said he told Trump after he lost the 2020 election that his claims of widespread voter fraud were not true. Barr has become more openly critical of Trump since leaving office. He rejected any claim that fraud affected the 2020 results, and wrote in a recently published memoir that Trump “lost his grip” after losing. 

Trump Endorses Election Deniers In Arizona Senate And Wisconsin Governor Races 

  • Associated Press: Trump Backs Arizona Candidate Who Echoes 2020 Election Lies: Donald Trump on Thursday endorsed investor Blake Masters in the crowded Republican Senate primary in Arizona, citing the candidate’s strident support of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. The former president said in a statement that Masters is a “great modern-day thinker” and that Masters’ chief rival, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, has done nothing about the election fraud that Trump falsely claims cost him a second term. Republicans hope the winner of the Aug. 2 primary can unseat Sen. Mark Kelly, who faces no major opposition for the Democratic nomination, and flip control of the Senate back to the GOP in one of the most closely contested general election races in November. Trump’s endorsement could shake up a primary campaign that is without a clear front-runner and is largely defined by jockeying for Trump’s backing. Despite his reelection loss to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump remains popular with his party’s core supporters.
  • NBC: Trump Upends Wisconsin GOP Governor Primary By Endorsing Tim Michels: Former President Donald Trump endorsed Republican Tim Michels in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary Thursday, snubbing the state’s former lieutenant governor and injecting a new level of chaos into the race. Trump’s endorsement offers an immediate boost to Michels, a multimillionaire construction company owner who has flooded the airwaves with ads in recent weeks.

In The States 

Doug Mastriano’s Candidacy For Governor Of Pennsylvania Indicates Dangers Ahead For Democracy 

  • Washington Post (Greg Sargent): Doug Mastriano’s Unhinged ‘Nazi’ Claim Signals Deeper Danger Ahead: As a marker of the Republican Party’s ongoing radicalization, Doug Mastriano’s run for governor of Pennsylvania will prove revealing indeed. It isn’t just that Mastriano has openly advertised his zeal to subvert future elections. It’s also that he’s revealed this democracy-hating ethos to be underpinned by a profoundly messianic Christian nationalist streak. Will establishment Republicans rally behind such a toxic blend of extremist tendencies? Now Mastriano is bringing this question into even sharper focus. He has doubled down on the suggestion that even the most modest gun safety regulations are akin to Nazi tyranny. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Mastriano approvingly shared on Twitter this week a video of himself making a striking claim about guns and Adolf Hitler. “Anytime there’s a shooting, the left will jump on that as a way to advance an agenda to remove our right to bear arms. … We saw Hitler do the same thing in Germany in the ’30s.” Mastriano said in the 2018 video. “Where do the tyrants stop infringing on our rights?” Which provides an occasion to highlight the through line linking all these ideological toxicities. Once you free yourself to claim regulating guns amid extraordinary day-to-day carnage is tantamount to Nazism, it’s a small leap to stealing elections.
  • Philadelphia Inquirer (Will Bunch): Mastriano’s Crazy Scheme To Undo 2020 Election Could Be The First Item If He’s Governor: If you’ve been paying attention to the race for governor in Pennsylvania, you’ve probably heard — in the words of the Democratic candidate, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, and echoed by many political pundits — that “democracy is on the ballot this November.” Their case against the GOP’s far-right, antiestablishment nominee, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, hinges largely on the Republican’s past history with efforts to undo President Biden’s 2020 election win in the state and fears that if he’s elected — with the ability to hand-pick a secretary of state to oversee elections — he will disregard the results to make sure Donald Trump or some other GOP nominees get those 19 Electoral College votes in 2024. But voters need to understand: Mastriano’s plans are much, much crazier than that. Mastriano is closely aligned with a national network of election-denying activists who continue to believe that state legislators can still somehow “decertify” electors from that 2020 election, which would initiate a process that would magically restore Donald Trump to the White House long before Biden’s current term expires. It’s not implausible that a Mastriano win in November could make revisiting the 2020 vote the biggest issue in Harrisburg in 2023, even as state residents struggle with real-time issues like inflation and high gas prices.
  • Associated Press: If Elected, Could Pa. GOP Candidate Doug Mastriano Make Voters Re-Register? Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania’s Republican candidate for governor, is perhaps the state’s most prominent peddler of former President Donald Trump’s lie that widespread fraud cost him the 2020 election. A state senator and retired U.S. Army colonel, Mastriano says he wants to make everyone re-register if they want to vote again. The concept flatly violates federal law, legal scholars say, and may conflict with state law, not to mention constitutional protections. It is also a throwback to laws designed by white people in past eras to keep Black people or newer European immigrants from voting. But Mastriano, who was present at the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection and was endorsed by Trump, is undeterred, discussing his plan for re-registration both before and after winning the Republican nomination for governor on May 17.

ICYMI:  No Fraud Detected In Yet Another Election Audit, This Time In Otero County, New Mexico 

  • Source NM: Analysis: No Election Fraud Detected So Far In Messy Otero County Audit: Election-deniers probing 2020 results in Otero County updated elected officials there this week on the status of their voter audit, which recently sparked a congressional investigation into its legality.  The evening’s heated conversation centered on the fragile state of contemporary democratic processes, but opening Monday night’s crowded special meeting of the Otero County Commission in Alamogordo was retired Sandia National Laboratories engineer Jeffrey Lenberg, a spectacled older man in a suit.  His demeanor was reserved next to local firebrand David Clements. Along with Clements’ wife Erin, they told commissioners and attendees about the status of a local 2020 general election audit contracted by the county in January — one of several launched across the United States in response to pressure from Trump adherents falsely convinced his election loss was the result of fraud.  Former President Trump won Otero County in 2020 by a wide margin. David Clements, a former district attorney and New Mexico State University law professor fired for non-compliance with COVID-19 prevention measures, has been the most vociferous driver of the Otero audit. In March, New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver decried the audit and its associated canvassing of registered voters as a “vigilante” effort that could further undermine public faith in elections.

What Experts Are Saying

Just Security’s January 6 Clearinghouse: Congressional Hearings, Government Documents, Court Cases, Academic Research LINK 

Just Security and Protect Democracy: Primer on the Hearings of the January 6th Select Committee LINK 

Project On Government Oversight’s Katherine Hawkins and David Janovsky: Is a Presidential Coup a Federal Crime? DOJ Owes Us an Answer LINK 

Harry Litman, former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General, on House January 6 Committee Hearings Announcement: “ Boom, there it comes!  Bland, formal language, but the fireworks are latent: ‘coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn.’” Tweet 

Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College: “We have reached a place where Republican leaders no longer believe in the principle the nation’s Founders articulated in the Declaration of Independence, that governments derive ‘their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ The idea that a government’s legitimacy comes from the fact its people choose it was the huge leap the Founders made to create a nation based not on monarchy but on democracy, and it is one of the two foundational principles of our government. Republicans appear to have rejected this principle and moved to the position that the election of Democrats is illegitimate and stopping such a victory—even if it is fairly won—is important enough to break long-standing laws in order to do it.” Letters from an American 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

Myrtle Beach Sun News: Trump’s ‘vengeance’ criticized by Paul Ryan during endorsement of Tom Rice for Congress

New York Magazine: Trump’s Insurrection Is Building Professionalized Institutions Next time, they won’t rely on amateurs.

January 6 And The 2020 Election 

CNN: Trump-backed gubernatorial candidate was questioned by FBI after photos emerged of him on January 6

Daily Beast: ‘I Am Willing to Go to Jail for This’: Peter Navarro Dishes to Ari Melber After Suing Jan. 6 Committee

Newsweek: DOJ Accelerating Trump Investigations Ahead of Jan. 6 Hearings: Kirschner

Opinion 

Washington Post (Jennifer Rubin): The anti-democratic threat remains very much alive

In The States 

Associated Press: Ex-Detroit top cop loses bid to get on ballot for governor

Bloomberg: Disputed Ballots in Pennsylvania Senate Race to Be Counted

Detroit Free Press: Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidates eager for Donald Trump’s endorsement

Seattle Times: Washington ‘election integrity’ group and lawyer fined for meritless vote fraud lawsuit