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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — June 9, 2022

By June 9, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

What To Watch For Today: 

First hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack begins at 8:00 PM 

Must Read Stories

January 6 Committee Hearings Begin Today 

  • CNN: January 6 Panel Eyes Trump’s Culpability As Hearings Begin:  With public hearings kicking off this week, the House select committee investigating January 6 is zeroing in on former President Donald Trump, and is preparing to use its platform to argue that he was responsible for grave abuses of power that nearly upended US democracy. The committee’s central mission has been to uncover the full scope of Trump’s unprecedented attempt to stop the transfer of power to President Joe Biden. This includes Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 defeat by pressuring state and federal officials, and what committee members say was his “dereliction of duty” on January 6 while his supporters ransacked the US Capitol. Lawmakers will try to convict Trump in the court of public opinion — which is all they can do, because it’s not within their powers to actually indict Trump. But they have an emerging legal foundation to claim that Trump broke the law, thanks to a landmark court ruling from a federal judge who said it was “more likely than not” that Trump committed crimes regarding January 6. These highly choreographed hearings will be the panel’s first opportunity to show the public what they’ve learned from more than 1,000 witness interviews and 135,000 documents. An avalanche of new information about January 6 has come to light since Trump’s impeachment trial in February 2021, where he was acquitted of one count of “incitement of insurrection.”
  • New York Times: Jan. 6 Hearings Will Put Trump at the Center of Plot That Resulted in Capitol Riot: The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol plans to open a landmark series of public hearings on Thursday by playing previously unreleased video of former President Donald J. Trump’s top aides and family members testifying before its staff, as well as footage revealing the role of the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group, in the assault. Committee aides say the evidence will show that Mr. Trump was at the center of a “coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election” that resulted in a mob of his supporters storming the halls of Congress and disrupting the official electoral count that is a pivotal step in the peaceful transfer of U.S. presidential power. The 8 p.m. prime-time hearing is the first in a series of six planned for this month, during which the panel will lay out for Americans the full magnitude and significance of Mr. Trump’s systematic drive to invalidate the 2020 election and remain in power. “We’ll demonstrate the multipronged effort to overturn a presidential election, how one strategy to subvert the election led to another, culminating in a violent attack on our democracy,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the committee. “It’s an important story, and one that must be told to ensure it never happens again.”

The Committee And Congress Must Look Beyond 2020 To Ongoing Election Threats In 2024 

  • New York Times (Norm Eisen and E. Danya Perry): The Insurrection Didn’t End on Jan. 6. The Hearings Need to Prove That: The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol begins its hearings tonight for the American public, hoping to shine a spotlight on the discoveries from its months of painstaking inquiry. How should we measure success? As veterans of congressional and other official misconduct investigations, we will be watching for whether the committee persuades the American people that the insurrection didn’t end on Jan. 6, 2021, but continues, in places all across the country; motivates Americans to fight back in the midterm elections; and, if warranted, encourages prosecutors to bring charges against those who may have committed crimes, up to and including former President Donald Trump. […] The ultimate success of the committee rests on whether it uses the hearings to build a partnership with American voters to see the truth of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and what is still happening.
  • Washington Post (Richard Hasen): The Jan 6. Committee Should Be Looking Ahead To Election Threats In 2024: The special House committee hearings investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — which begin Thursday night in prime time — may serve multiple purposes: They could reveal more evidence that could be used to file criminal charges for attempted election subversion against some of former president Donald Trump’s lawyers, against people who tried to manipulate the count of electoral college votes and potentially against Trump himself. They could provide the most comprehensive account yet of the unprecedented attempt by Trump and his allies to disrupt the peaceful transition of power after the 2020 election — a gift to future historians.But the most important thing the hearings can do — given that, if someone tries to steal the next election, they won’t do it precisely the way Trump and his allies tried in 2020 — is to shift our gaze forward: They can highlight continuing vulnerabilities in our electoral system and propose ways to fix them, before it is too late.
  • NBC: Bipartisan Senate Group Eyes Deal ‘this Week’ On Bill To Prevent Future Coups:  As the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 plot prepares to kick off its first public hearing, a bipartisan group of senators huddled Wednesday in the Capitol to negotiate new laws to prevent future candidates from stealing elections. Two sources familiar with the group’s work said it is close to a deal, having settled on a series of new provisions and working through options on one major unresolved issue. “We’ve made a lot of major decisions,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a leader of the group, said in an interview before the meeting. “We’ve resolved a lot of issues, but we have some more work to do, which I hope we’ll finish up this week.” The areas of consensus, Collins said, include amending the Electoral Count Act to restrain the vice president’s role, raising the congressional threshold for objecting to electoral votes, overhauling the transition process and protecting election officials from threats.

Republicans Prepare Dishonest And Distracting Pushback On The Hearings 

  • Axios: ​​4 Things To Watch In The Gop’s Defense Against The Jan. 6 Hearing: House Republicans, eager to get ahead of the barrage of revelations the Jan. 6 committee has planned for its prime-time hearing tomorrow night, launched their counter-programming blitz in earnest this morning. Driving the news: House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), one of former President Trump’s top Jan. 6 surrogates, accused Democrats of “scrambling to change the headlines, praying that the nation will focus on their partisan witch hunt instead of our pocketbooks.” Stefanik called the investigation “a smear campaign” against Trump and criticized the committee’s hiring of former ABC President James Goldston to produce the made-for-TV hearings. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) also went after the panel in a new op-ed for The Federalist titled: “The True Goal Of The J6 Committee Is To Slander And Shame Conservatives Out Of The Public Sphere.” Why it matters: This is just a taste of what Republicans have prepared for the coming messaging war — a counteroffensive crafted during private deliberations in which key Trump surrogates reviewed old documents, settled on talking points and plotted their media strategy.
  • Politico: Trump World Is Still Trying To Figure Out How Best To Respond To The Jan 6. Hearing: The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack will soon hold its first primetime hearing on efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump World is still figuring out what to do about it. Coordination remains underway between aides to former President Donald Trump, GOP allies on Capitol Hill, and the Republican National Committee. But aides in those circles say that with the Jan. 6 committee having not yet revealed its witness list or the content to be unveiled, their actual plans for pushback remain TBD. Allies say they expect Trump to weigh in on the hearings, but they don’t know if he will call into radio or TV shows or post to his social media site, Truth Social. The two Republican members on the committee who could theoretically provide insight — Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — have both been ostracized by the party. The absence of a game plan isn’t causing stress, at least overtly. The hope is that Republicans on the Hill, particularly Trump loyalists like Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), will play the role of Trump’s public defenders. But while the House GOP will be engaged in responding to the hearings, the Senate side is likely to lay low.

Senior Pence Aide To Testify That Trump Attorney John Eastman Blamed VP For The Violence At The Capitol 

  • Politico: Senior Pence Adviser To Testify Before Jan. 6 Committee: Gregory Jacob, a top adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, will testify publicly before the Jan. 6 select committee on June 16 about his involvement in staving off a campaign by Donald Trump and allies to pressure Pence to subvert the 2020 election. Jacob’s appearance will be under subpoena, according to a person familiar with the panel’s schedule. Jacob, who helped Pence fend off efforts by Trump attorney John Eastman to single-handedly disrupt the transition of power to President Joe Biden, testified at length before the House’s Capitol riot investigators in February. Excerpts of his deposition transcripts have previously been filed in litigation between the committee and Eastman.
  • Washington Post: During Jan. 6 Riot, Trump Attorney Told Pence Team The Vice President’s Inaction Caused Attack On Capitol: As Vice President Mike Pence hid from a marauding mob during the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol, an attorney for President Donald Trump emailed a top Pence aide to say that Pence had caused the violence by refusing to block certification of Trump’s election loss. The attorney, John C. Eastman, also continued to press for Pence to act even after Trump’s supporters had trampled through the Capitol — an attack the Pence aide, Greg Jacob, had described as a “siege” in their email exchange. “The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman wrote to Jacob, referring to Trump’s claims of voter fraud. Eastman sent the email as Pence, who had been presiding in the Senate, was under guard with Jacob and other advisers in a secure area. Rioters were tearing through the Capitol complex, some of them calling for Pence to be executed.
  • Politico: The Jan. 6 Hearings’ Missing Man: Mike Pence: The Jan. 6 select committee’s hearings are all about one man, and it’s not the one you think. It’s Mike Pence. At nearly every turn, Donald Trump’s crusade to stay in power ran through his vice president. Pence was the subject of Trump’s last-ditch, possibly criminal, pressure campaign to overturn the election and a necessary component of the former president’s plan to send friendly false electors to Congress. Not to mention that the domestic extremists who allegedly ignited the violent Capitol riot intended to prevent Pence from presiding over the transition of power to Joe Biden. Ultimately, Pence’s refusal to support Trump’s push enraged the former president, who used it to stoke his supporters’ fury even further. Now the only remaining question is whether Pence — who has been boosting his public profile for a potential 2024 bid — will play any direct role in the select panel’s effort to force a national reckoning with Trump’s plot to subvert the election. Democrats say they haven’t ruled out the possibility that he’ll testify. “We’ve always had the effort to reach out and get the vice president’s participation, so that’s still there,” the Jan. 6 committee’s Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told reporters, adding: “we’re still engaging [Pence’s lawyers].”

In The States 

Trump Endorsed Arizona Senate Candidate Blake Masters Called January 6 Attack A False Flag By The FBI 

  • CNN: Audio Shows Trump-Endorsed Arizona Senate Candidate Questioned Whether January 6 Attack Was Set Up By FBI: Blake Masters, the Republican Senate candidate from Arizona, met with conservative activists at a Phoenix IHOP this spring and was asked whether he would support investigating US intelligence operations to uncover the federal government’s “nefarious activities.” Masters replied, “Absolutely,” and then floated the conspiracy theory that the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol actually may have been a false-flag operation set up by the FBI, according to a recording of the March 30 meeting obtained by CNN. “Don’t we suspect that like one-third of the people outside of the Capitol complex on January 6 were actual FBI agents hanging out,” Masters asked at the GrassRoots Tea Party Activists of Arizona event. “What did people know and when did they know it? We got to get to the bottom of this. Masters is part of a wave of Republicans who have won the coveted endorsement of former President Donald Trump after parroting his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and downplaying the actions of the pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol last year.

GOP War On Democracy Hit A Wall In South Dakota 

  • Washington Post (Paul Waldman): In South Dakota, The GOP War On Democracy Hits A Wall: If you care about democracy — not whether your side wins the next election, but the future of the American system of government — these are dark times. The idea of majority rule is under relentless attack, and it’s hard to feel optimistic that the public cares that much. If you try to motivate them to confront threats to foundational American values, they’re likely to tell you that they care more about gas prices. But now and again, there are tiny glimmers of hope — indications that even in Republican states, there are limits to the attacks on democracy that people will tolerate. On Tuesday, we saw one such glimmer in South Dakota. It’s a deeply Republican state; former president Donald Trump won it by overwhelming margins twice. But by a resounding 2-to-1 margin, voters there just rejected an initiative put on the ballot by Republicans meant to ensure that poor people in South Dakota will remain without health coverage no matter what citizens of the state want.
  • New York Times: How South Dakota Voters Won a Power Struggle With G.O.P. Legislators: Coming on the same night that voters in San Francisco ousted their lightning rod of a district attorney, Chesa Boudin — in what was widely interpreted as a setback for progressive ideas on criminal justice — it would have been easy to overlook what happened on Tuesday in South Dakota. But the results there are no less consequential for national politics. Voters in South Dakota sent a resounding message of their own to the state’s conservative power structure: We’re in charge here, not you. The immediate issue was a constitutional amendment requiring that certain voter-initiated referendums must pass by 60 percent, rather than a simple majority. The measure was defeated decisively, with more than two-thirds of voters rejecting the proposed new threshold. But this wasn’t just a political process story. It was the latest round in a national fight between voters and state legislatures, who have been battling for primacy on issues like marijuana legalization, gerrymandering and health care. 

GOP Congressman In Mississippi Faces Runoff Primary Over His Vote For January 6 Commission 

  • Washington Post: GOP Miss. Congressman Faces Run-Off Over Support For Jan. 6 Commission:  Mississippi Republican Rep. Michael Guest is fighting to keep his seat partly because he voted to establish a congressional committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, another sign that incumbents who don’t take the hard line position that the 2020 election was invalid could find themselves struggling to survive primary elections. Guest, who is running for his third term, faced a primary challenge from Michael Cassidy, a former Navy pilot, who centered his campaign around the notion that Guest was not conservative enough for deep-red Mississippi. Cassidy narrowly beat Guest in Tuesday’s primary, but neither received more than 50 percent of the vote, forcing them into a head-to-head runoff on June 28. Cassidy is among several Republicans prevailing in primary elections this year who have continued to spread false claims that the 2020 election results were stolen from former president Donald Trump.

Pennsylvania Recount Proves How Accurate Vote Counting Was 

  • Philadelphia Inquirer: The Pa. Senate Race Recount Is Complete And The Results Show How Accurate The Vote Count Was: Pennsylvania’s recount is over, and the results are clear: The vote count was accurate the first time. Mehmet Oz beat David McCormick by 951 votes in the Republican Senate primary — roughly the same margin as after the votes were first counted. The numbers budged ever so slightly in some counties. But they didn’t change in any significant way. The recount didn’t magically find new votes, or expose major errors or any fraud. Elections officials and experts said the fact that the numbers barely shifted — in counties big and small, Democratic and Republican — should build public trust.

What Experts Are Saying

Constitutional Accountability Center’s President Elizabeth B. Wydra and Vice President Praveen Fernandes: “The despicable acts of January 6 must be laid out for all to see, and their perpetrators identified and held to account—not just those who physically breached the Capitol, but also all those who directed and helped plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which evidence suggests was the entire goal of that attack. On June 9, the Select Committee will begin to show the immense amount of work it has done. And everyone who cares about our nation should tune in.” CAC’s Rule of Law 

Protect Democracy’s Policy Advocate Grant Tudor: “Just as Watergate was not only about the Watergate break-in, January 6 shouldn’t come to stand only for the events of that date.” The Atlantic 

Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University: “Trump conducted most of the campaign against the election in broad daylight, which helped give it a sense of legitimacy in the eyes of his supporters. Couple that with intense polarization, and it is almost impossible to move voters away from their party regardless of what elected officials do.” CNN Opinion 

Elie Honig, former federal and state prosecutor: “This is a moment of truth for the committee. It has done remarkable work over the past year to gather facts about January 6. With the hearings slated to start this week, the challenge is to present that work in a manner that will make the American public, and federal prosecutors, fully understand the magnitude of the attack on our nation’s Capitol — and on our democracy.” CNN Opinion 

Norman Eisen and E. Danya Perry, among authors of Brooking’s Report “Trump on Trial”, in NYT op-ed: The Insurrection Didn’t End on Jan. 6. The Hearings Need to Prove That. New York Times 

Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “the Washington Commanders defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio complained to reporters that there have been “two standards” in the way we have seen the vandalism at some of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and the January 6 insurrection. ‘We have a dust-up at the Capitol, nothing burned down, and we’re going to make that a major deal.’ This is a common charge on the right, but it is a myth.” Letters from an American 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

NBC: House GOP candidate shares post claiming Buffalo, Uvalde shootings were false flag operations

New York Times: Only one House Republican who voted for a Jan. 6 inquiry has lost a primary so far.

Reuters: Brazil’s Bolsonaro casts doubt on Biden’s 2020 election win ahead of meeting him

Reveal: She Helped Create the Big Lie. Records Suggest She Turned It Into a Big Grift.

Vice: Election-Denier Who Tweeted Weird Things About Jews Nominated by GOP.

January 6 And The 2020 Election 

Atlanta Journal Constitution: January 6 committee to hear from Raffensperger, Sterling

Axios: The Jan. 6 committee’s Trump targets

CNBC: Trump and his kids, Don Jr. and Ivanka, set to testify in New York attorney general investigation starting July 15

CNN: Democrats fret as Garland’s January 6 investigation creeps closer to pre-midterm deadline

NBC: D.C. chiropractor who stormed Capitol arrested on Jan. 6 charges

NBC: Cheney’s Jan. 6 committee spotlight burns her in Wyoming primary

NPR: Jan. 6 committee Chair Bennie Thompson says the U.S. came close to losing democracy

New York Times (Podcast): The Proud Boys Path To January 6 

Politico: Dems know the Jan. 6 hearings won’t help in November. They’re leaning in anyway.

Politico: A group of Democrats who were trapped inside the House chamber on Jan. 6 will have reserved seats at Thursday night’s hearing. 

Rolling Stone: Inside the Capitol Cops’ Jan. 6 Blame Game

TMZ: Commanders Coach Jack Del Rio On Jan. 6 Insurrection … It Was ‘a Dust-Up’

US News: The Challenge for the Jan. 6 Committee: Protect Democracy, Avoid Politics

Washington Post (Analysis): A new erosion in Trump’s defense against criminal prosecution

Opinion 

MSNBC (Glenn Kirschner): Why the ‘investigative sloth’ of the DOJ’s Jan. 6 inquiry could be a smart play

New York Times (David Brooks): The Jan. 6 Committee Has Already Blown It

New York Times (Frank Bruni): Liz Cheney Will Not Tolerate Trump’s Lies

Politico (Jack Shafer): The Democrats Plan a Full Media Blowout Over Jan. 6

USA Today (Former Rep. Charlie Boustenay and the Issue One National Council On Election Integrity): Jan. 6 committee conducted a serious investigation. This is no time for a partisan circus.

Washington Post (Greg Sargent): Fox News’s blackout of Jan. 6 points to a hidden crisis for Democrats

Washington Post (Editorial): Ignore the GOP spin. The nation still hasn’t reckoned with Jan. 6.

Political Violence 

Washington Post: Man with weapon detained near Brett Kavanaugh’s home

In The States 

Charleston Post and Courier: By phone, Trump urges South Carolina voters to get behind his 2 GOP picks for Congress

Nevada Independent: Laxalt Senate bid gets a Trump boost through 10-minute ‘tele-rally’  

Where Do We Go From Here: The true believers in election lies running Georgia’s elections