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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — June 8, 2022

By June 8, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Witnesses For January 6 Committee Hearings Come Into Focus 

  • ABC: Top Trump White House Lawyer In Active Talks With Jan. 6 Committee To Testify Publicly: The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is in active discussions with former White House counsel Pat Cipollone regarding a potential public appearance in one of their upcoming hearings, according to sources familiar with the matter. Cipollone and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin previously met with committee investigators for an informal interview in April. Cipollone was one of the few aides who was with then-President Donald Trump in the West Wing on Jan. 6. ABC News previously reported that in the days following the attack on the Capitol, he advised Trump that Trump could potentially face civil liability in connection with his role encouraging supporters to march on the Capitol.
  • CNN: Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen Invited By January 6 Committee To Testify Publicly: Former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his then-deputy, Richard Donoghue, have been invited by the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection to testify publicly during one of its hearings, multiple sources tell CNN. Rosen and Donoghue have previously spoken with the committee behind closed doors about former President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against top Justice Department officials to investigate baseless claims of election fraud prior to January 6, 2021. The two former Justice Department officials are not expected to be part of the first prime-time hearing, scheduled for Thursday, but rather one of the presentations that follow, sources said. CNN previously reported that Rosen and Donoghue were expected to be among the witnesses called for public hearings.
  • NBC: One Of The First Officers Injured On Jan. 6 Will Testify In Public House Hearing: A Capitol Police officer who was one of the first injured while trying to hold back a pro-Trump mob looking to storm the U.S. Capitol will testify at the opening hearing of the Jan. 6 committee on Thursday, two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News. Caroline Edwards suffered a concussion on Jan. 6, 2021, when she cracked her head on the steps outside the Capitol after being knocked to the ground by rioters pushing back a barricade. “Why are you standing in our way?” one of the rioters allegedly asked her, according to court documents.

Secret Service Tried To Prepare For Trump To Walk To The Capitol With Rioters On January 6 

  • Washington Post: Trump Call Jan. 6 To ‘walk Down To The Capitol’ Prompted Secret Service Scramble: Shortly before pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Secret Service agents scrambled to try to secure a motorcade route so then-President Donald Trump could accompany his supporters as they marched on Congress to demand he stay in power, according to two people briefed on witnesses’ accounts to congressional investigators. The hectic events that day followed nearly two weeks of persistent pressure from Trump on the Secret Service to devise a plan for him to join his supporters on a march to the Capitol from the park near the White House where he was leading a rally that he predicted would be “wild.” The agency had rebuffed Trump’s early entreaties, but the rushed effort on Jan. 6 to accommodate the president came as Secret Service personnel heard Trump urge his rally audience of nearly 30,000 people to march to the Capitol while suggesting he would join them. Their mission was clear, he said: pressure “weak” Republicans to refuse to accept the election results that made Joe Biden the next president.
  • Politico: Jan. 6 Committee Interviews Head Of Trump’s Secret Service Detail On Day Of Capitol Attack: The Jan. 6 select committee has interviewed the top Secret Service agent on then-President Donald Trump’s protective detail during the Capitol attack, according to three people familiar with the probe. Robert Engel was the special agent in charge on Jan. 6, 2021, meaning he was responsible for protecting the president from “socks on to socks off” — the whole work day. In that role, he rode from the White House to that day’s “Stop the Steal” rally with Trump in the presidential armored car called “The Beast.” Engel was also backstage at the rally and close to the then-president throughout the day as violence unfolded when thousands of pro-Trump rally participants marched to the Capitol to try to disrupt congressional certification of the 2020 election. Because of that work, Engel has detailed insight on a key select committee focus: how the Secret Service handled the day’s chaos.

GOP Drive To Install Poll Workers Raises Alarms, DHS Warns Of Threats To Election Workers This Fall

  • CNN: The GOP Drive To Install Thousands Of Poll Workers Sets Off Alarms: State and local election officials in Michigan and other political battlegrounds are gearing up to deal with a new element in this year’s elections: a large influx of Republicans seeking to become poll workers, recruited by the Republican National Committee and other conservative organizations to play an active role in administering the midterm elections. The development — and a recent story in Politico detailing GOP recruitment sessions and how some of these would-be poll workers cling to debunked claims about fraud in the 2020 election — have raised alarms that Republican election deniers could infiltrate official election operations and undermine the process. The surge in interest also comes against the backdrop of efforts by former President Donald Trump’s allies, such as Steve Bannon, to carry out what he calls a “precinct committee strategy,” with the goal of installing Trump loyalists in local Republican Party positions and election posts.
  • Associated Press: US Sees Heightened Extremist Threat Heading Into Midterms: A looming Supreme Court decision on abortion, an increase of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border and the midterm elections are potential triggers for extremist violence over the next six months, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday. The U.S. was in a “heightened threat environment” already, and these factors may worsen the situation, DHS said in the latest National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin. “In the coming months, we expect the threat environment to become more dynamic as several high-profile events could be exploited to justify acts of violence against a range of possible targets,” DHS said. […] The bulletin, which is scheduled to expire Nov. 30, said calls for violence by domestic extremists directed at democratic institutions, candidates and election workers will likely increase through the fall.

GOP Divided On How To Respond To Hearings 

  • NBC: GOP Divided Over How To Defend Trump Ahead Of First Jan. 6 Hearing: A split is emerging among Republicans about how best to counter the House Jan. 6 committee’s opening hearing Thursday, as the party waits to see just how explosive the panel’s findings prove to be. One GOP faction believes the attack on the Capitol a year and a half ago is of so little interest to Americans by now that it’s hardly worth rebutting the committee’s presentation. More politically advantageous, that faction argues, is amplifying the message that President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats are to blame for rising gas and grocery prices. “I would not expect a full-fledged takedown of what’s going on at the committee hearings,” a Republican National Committee aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk freely about strategic planning. “They will draw attention, but at the end of the day our job is to win elections. This doesn’t help us, and we don’t think it helps them [Democrats] either.” But another wing of the party is preparing to blunt any revelations coming out of the hearings through press statements and news conferences with hand-picked outlets. On Tuesday, House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York and two leaders of the far-right Freedom Caucus — Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania — scheduled a conference call with conservative media outlets on what they called “Democrats’ prime-time political witch hunt hearing” and “[House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi’s sham committee,” according to a copy of an email invitation that was sent to a limited number of reporters.
  • Politico: The Latest House-Senate GOP Split: How To Respond To Jan. 6 Hearings: The Jan. 6 attack hit both chambers of Congress. But House and Senate Republicans are breaking apart in their response to riot hearings: One side’s pushing back, and the other is ready to move on. After months of investigations, the House select panel will begin revealing their findings about the Capitol siege and Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 win. There’s no unified strategy among Republicans on how much time and energy they should expend on rebutting the hearings, particularly with lawmakers questioning how much breaks through beyond the Beltway. On one side of the building, House Republicans are launching a full-on counter-messaging effort, including responses on social media, TV hits and conducting their own unofficial probe into Capitol security. In the Senate, GOP leadership is essentially shrugging at the hearings: Minority Whip John Thune (S.D.) indicated that he didn’t expect a formal response to the hearings and that his conference is focused elsewhere. “It’s the future, not the past,” Thune said in a brief interview.

In The States 

New Mexico Republicans Nominate Election Denier For Secretary Of State 

  • Washington Post: Another 2020 Election Denier Will Be On November’s Ballot: Last night, Audrey Trujillo became the latest 2020 election denier to win her party’s nomination to oversee a state’s elections.  The New Mexico Republican is part of a wave of candidates beholden to conspiracy theories about election hacking and fraud who are seeking to lead elections in more than a dozen states — including in many states that were decisive in President Biden’s victory. The candidacies are a stark contrast from decades during which Republican and Democratic election officials steered clear of partisan conspiracy theories and were largely on the same page about election security and how to fairly determine who won and who lost. 

South Dakota Voters Reject Republican Effort To Dismantle Direct Democracy 

  • Bolts: South Dakotans Refuse to Weaken Ballot Initiatives, Keeping Hopes Alive for Medicaid Expansion: South Dakotans rejected a constitutional amendment on Tuesday that would have drastically weakened direct democracy in the state. The measure, known as Amendment C, was defeated 67 to 33 percent. The result is a stinging defeat for the latest conservative effort to shut down popular initiatives, which in recent years have been a rare tool for progressive policies in red states. And it salvages a path for tens of thousands of people to newly qualify for public health insurance this fall. Republicans rushed to place Amendment C on the June ballot to thwart a voter-initiated referendum on expanding Medicaid, scheduled for November. If Amendment C had passed on Tuesday, it would have changed the rules of that upcoming referendum—raising the threshold for passage to a tricky 60 percent. Instead, the Medicaid expansion now only needs to clear 50 percent in November. 

What Experts Are Saying

Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution: “The MAGA Caucus is antidemocratic, authoritarian, and completely divorced from reality and truth. The squad embraces left views well within the democratic spectrum. What’s striking about the MAGA Caucus is that they are closer to the Republican mainstream these days, given the reticence of Republican officeholders to challenge Trump. We worry about the future of American democracy because the entire Republican Party has gone AWOL. The crazy extremists have taken over one of our two major parties.” Thomas B. Edsall in New York Times: How to Tell the Squad and the MAGA Caucus Apart

Norm Eisen, Brookings Institute senior fellow and former ambassador: “The 1/6 committee must tell the WHOLE story of the insurrection to the American people. I discussed @CNNnewsroom @CNN @PoppyHarlowCNN The build-up, the events of the day, and the aftermath are all connected, as we detail in our new @BrookingsGov report: LINK” Twitter 

Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics and former federal corruption prosecutor, re: Proud Boys indictment: “Monday’s charges ‘are very significant and definitely a step in the right direction. They show a growing recognition by prosecutors that this was not a case of isolated or spontaneous violence, but rather an organized and deliberate effort to use violence to try to overturn the results of a free and fair election.’” WaPo Jennifer Rubin Column 

Joyce Vance, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, launches NEW Substack: Civil Discourse: “Early in the Trump administration I was asked to go on TV to help explain the deviations we were seeing from democratic norms. As things progressed and I spent more and more time trying to help people understand how deeply troubling the Trump administration was, I learned that many of you cared about justice and the rule of law and were passionate about protecting our democracy. That’s what’s kept me going.” Civil Discourse 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

FiveThirtyEight (Podcast): More Than Half Of The GOP Primary Winners So Far Believe The Big Lie

January 6 And The 2020 Election 

Associated Press: ‘Will we do our duty?’ Cheney lays her legacy on the line

Axios: 4 things to watch for in the prime-time Jan. 6 hearing

CNN: Bannon subpoenas Pelosi and House January 6 committee members to fight contempt charges

CNN: House Democrats investigating whether foreign gifts to Trump went missing

The Guardian: Inaugural January 6 hearing to track activities of Proud Boys during Capitol attack

New York Times: The Jan. 6 Inquiry’s Only Endangered Democrat Prepares Herself for a Fight

New York Times: How Jared Kushner Washed His Hands of Donald Trump Before Jan. 6

New Yorker: Mark Meadows Was Trump’s “Matador” for His Election Lies

Politico: Judge sends another trove of Eastman emails to Jan. 6 committee

Rolling Stone: The Jan. 6 Committee Wants Twitter’s Internal Slack Messages. Twitter Is Fighting It

Washington Post (Analysis): Of course Fox News isn’t airing the Jan. 6 committee hearings

Opinion 

The Bulwark (Podcast): The Hearings Matter Because the Threat Is Ongoing

Los Angeles Times (Kurt Bardella): It’s not partisan for the media to expose the GOP’s lies

NBC (Dennis Aftergut): Why the DOJ did not indict Mark Meadows (and what it should do next)

New York Times (Podcast): Best and Worst Case Outcomes of the Jan 6 Public Hearings 

Washington Post (Greg Sargent): A shocker in the Proud Boys indictment exposes the right’s long game

Washington Post (Katrina vanden Heuvel): The Jan. 6 committee’s audience won’t match Watergate’s. But it should.

Political Violence 

Associated Press: Man accused of killing Wisconsin judge dies in hospital

In The States 

Atlanta Journal Constitution: Georgia Voting Touchscreens Pose Cybersecurity Risk