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Court documents show conservative rifts around Trump’s claims of a rigged 2020 election
- ABC: Rupert Murdoch said Trump, Giuliani were ‘both increasingly mad’ in wake of 2020 election, new documents show: Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch privately bashed then-President Donald Trump and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, following the 2020 election, according to court records made public on Tuesday as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Murdoch wrote that Trump and Giuliani were “both increasingly mad” — using the British expression for “crazy” — in an email whose contents were read during a deposition taken as part of the lawsuit. The voting machine company has filed court documents containing private communications from Fox News personnel appearing to cast doubt on claims that Dominion’s voting machines had somehow rigged the presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor.
- NPR: How a civil war erupted at Fox News after the 2020 election: The aftermath of the 2020 presidential election sparked a civil war within Fox News, as the network that had spent years building record profits and ratings by catering to fans of then-President Donald Trump saw millions of those viewers peel away. In private notes to one another, Fox’s top stars spat fire at their reporting colleagues who debunked Trump’s claims of election fraud, even as they gave those allegations no credence. “We are officially working for an organization that hates us,” said prime-time host Laura Ingraham. Reporters said they were being punished simply for doing their jobs.
- Washington Post: Revealing Fox News texts point to the right’s long war on the truth: Not long after Fox News correctly called the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden, a senior Fox Corp. executive privately lamented that the network’s brand was “under heavy fire from our customer base.” The executive suggested Fox viewers might “feel like they have been somehow betrayed.” This fear — that viewers might see telling the truth about Donald Trump’s loss as betrayal — was widespread inside the network, according to newly released texts among Fox News figures. In the texts, they fumed that candor about 2020 was driving the audience away, prompting viewers to defect to competitors who offered a more comforting cocoon. On the air, some of those personalities kept doling out what they privately admitted were lies.
Fallout continues from Tucker Carlson’s airing and mischaracterization of previously unseen January 6 footage
- New York Times: Republican Lawmakers Split Over Carlson’s False Jan. 6 Claims: Republicans on Capitol Hill split on Tuesday over a broadcast by Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, in which he falsely portrayed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as a largely peaceful gathering, with House G.O.P. leaders promoting his report while top Republican senators condemned it. The divide reflected a continuing rift in the party between those who want to move on from Jan. 6, regarding it as a political liability, and those who want to relitigate it publicly to feed the anger of the party’s hard-right base, which continues to revere former President Donald J. Trump, believe the lie that the election was stolen from him and insist that the riot at the Capitol two years ago was a justified response.
- Politico: DOJ takes on the Jan. 6 Tucker Carlson tapes: No Jan. 6 defendants should be able to delay their pending criminal trials based on speculation that the 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage — recently made available by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson — might contain exculpatory evidence, the Justice Department argued Tuesday. The filings are the first effort by the Justice Department to place limits on any potential efforts by Jan. 6 defendants to use the newly disclosed footage to prolong their criminal proceedings. Nichols’ attorney, Joseph McBride, urged U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth to delay his late-March trial in order to give Nichols’ defense team time to review the footage, which McBride said he’s been granted access to by the House.
House GOP puts a re-litigation of the January 6 insurrection back on the agenda, despite internal skepticism
- CNN: House GOP plots new January 6 probes despite internal backlash over McCarthy giving Carlson footage: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy often spent the last two years avoiding much discussion about the January 6, 2021, attack. Now, he’s effectively put the issue back in the spotlight and on the investigative agenda – a gambit that has divided House and Senate Republicans and reopened ugly wounds inside the GOP. While top Republicans had hoped when they took over the House to steer clear of re-litigating January 6, McCarthy had to reverse course when the election left his conference with a slimmer-than-expected majority. In his bid to win the speaker’s gavel, McCarthy made a number of promises to his right flank, which has been pressuring leadership to revisit the topic of January 6 under a GOP-led House. But some House Republicans are skeptical of the need for additional congressional investigations into the Capitol attack – a preview of the potential internal divisions to come.
In The States
GEORGIA: GOP legislators seek to shrink the number of signatures needed to seek the recall of a district attorney
- Washington Post: Ga. Republicans push for prosecutorial oversight amid Trump election probe: Georgia’s Republican legislators are pushing bills that would make it easier to remove local prosecutors from office, an effort that prominent Democratic prosecutors have decried as “dangerous” overreach. The move comes as Atlanta-area prosecutor Fani Willis considers bringing charges against former president Donald Trump and his allies over 2020 election interference. A bill passed by the Georgia House on Monday night would create a state oversight panel that could recall any of the state’s elected districts attorney or solicitors general for several reasons, including “willful misconduct” or “persistent failure to perform his or her duties.” The Georgia Senate passed a similar version of the legislation last week. Another proposed measure would dramatically shrink the number of signatures needed to seek the recall of a district attorney.
FLORIDA: Secretary of State withdraws from ERIC, after it became the subject of right-wing conspiracy theories involving George Soros.
- Orlando Sentinel: Florida ditches voter-fraud detection system amid Soros conspiracy theory: Florida abruptly pulled out of a nationwide system used to help maintain voter rolls and detect voter fraud Monday after it became the subject of right-wing conspiracy theories involving liberal billionaire George Soros.Secretary of State Cord Byrd announced the state was terminating its membership with the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, just months after he credited the multi-state organization for helping identify people who voted in Florida and another state. ERIC allows elections officials to cross-reference their voter rolls with those of other member states. It scours databases for voter and motor vehicle registrations, U.S. Postal Service addresses and Social Security death records to compare lists of voters and keep the rolls up to date. The system also detects when someone tries to vote in more than one state. Three residents of The Villages were charged with voting more than once in the 2020 presidential election, and Lake and Osceola counties flagged 13 additional cases that same year.
ARIZONA: Election denier sanctioned
- NBC: Election denier Mark Finchem sanctioned by Arizona judge for ‘groundless’ challenge of 2022 defeat: A judge on Monday ordered sanctions against Republican Mark Finchem, the losing candidate in Arizona’s secretary of state race who challenged the election results in court. In granting the sanctions, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian said Finchem and his attorney, Daniel McCauley III, filed their lawsuit “without substantial justification.” Finchem lost the election to Democrat Adrian Fontes by 120,208 votes. Julian in December dismissed Finchem’s lawsuit, which requested a new election, alleged that then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs had engaged in misconduct and claimed that illegal votes were cast because of errors in the laboratory testing of voting machines and voting software issues.
- White Mountain Independent: Arizona Attorney General sues Cochise County over election agreement: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on Tuesday sued the board of supervisors in southeastern Arizona’s Cochise County, alleging that its decision to hand over complete control of its elections to the Republican county recorder is illegal because it delegates all the board’s responsibilities to another person. Mayes, a Democrat who took office in January, said in a statement that the actions by the Republican-controlled board also threaten the public’s ability to know how elections are being run. That’s because Recorder David Stevens assumed complete power to make decisions normally done – in public – by the board of supervisors. Stevens is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit. “While counties may appropriately enter into cooperative agreements with their recorders to manage elections, Cochise County’s agreement steps far over the legal line,” Mayes said.
What Experts Are Saying
Public Citizen, Obama White House ethics advisor Norman Eisen, and Bush White House ethics advisor Richard Painter: Complaint Against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for Release of Jan. 6 Tapes: “The Speaker’s release of security footage exclusively to Tucker Carlson is pure and simple using congressional resources for partisan gamesmanship – the very type of polarizing gamesmanship that has caused such damage to the public’s perception of the integrity of Congress,” notes the complaint. “For these reasons, we ask that the Office of Congressional Ethics and the House Ethics Committee investigate whether the apparent unauthorized release of the Jan. 6 security footage constitutes a violation of congressional rules.” Press Release | Complaint
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian at New York University: “Trump’s CPAC speech brings forth a century of rhetoric and agendas that have been used to destroy democracy, conjuring threats that are meant to build support for authoritarian action and leadership, starting with the idea of the head of state as a vengeful victim.” Lucid
Jason Stanley, philosopher at Yale University: “Let’s be clear: this talk of internal enemies, revenge, retribution is the core anti-democratic talk, demagoguery[.]” Yahoo News
Media Matters for America: “A recent filing in the case shows without a doubt that Fox News knew Trump lost the election but helped him lie about it anyway — almost 800 times according to our analysis. And Fox hosted Trump campaign officials such as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani dozens of times to advance lies and conspiracy theories.” FoxKnew.com
Aaron Scherzer, Senior Counsel at the States United Democracy Center, re: Colorado Supreme Court’s Presiding Disciplinary Judge’s censure of former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis for her role in spreading lies and conspiracies about the 2020 election: “Jenna Ellis repeatedly went on television and on Twitter to promote the reckless lie that the 2020 election was stolen. As counsel to former President Trump and the Trump campaign, she abused her law license as part of an attempt to overturn the will of the American people—a plot that ultimately led to a violent insurrection. As part of this public censure, Jenna Ellis agrees that she knowingly misrepresented the facts at least 10 separate times, including by falsely claiming that Donald Trump was the “true victor” in the 2020 election. Ellis rightly admits that her actions undermined public confidence in our elections. Her lies did lasting damage, and her name will forever be linked to this assault on our democracy. Elected officials, candidates for office, and the attorneys who represent them must uphold the principles of our democracy. When they don’t, there must be consequences. That’s how we make sure the will of the people is always respected. And it’s why States United filed an ethics complaint against Ellis in Colorado last year. Today’s result is an important step forward for accountability, which remains one of the strongest tools we have to prevent another attack on our democracy like on January 6, 2021. We encourage other state bars to follow the Colorado Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel’s example and take similar steps to hold attorneys involved in the plot to overturn the 2020 election accountable for their actions.” States United Democracy Center
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
Salon: MAGA sinks GOP trolling to genocidal lows
New York Times: Trump, Vowing ‘Retribution,’ Foretells a Second Term of Spite
Mother Jones: Kyle Rittenhouse, the MAGA Star That Wasn’t
Trump Investigations
Washington Post: FBI tested by attacks, politically explosive investigations
NBC: How Hope Hicks could fit into the Trump hush money investigation
Los Angeles Times: Is anyone investigating Trump allies’ multi-state effort to access election systems?
January 6 And The 2020 Election
Atlantic: The Mystery of the QAnon Shaman on January 6
MSNBC: Trump wants Jan. 6 committee members to be charged with ‘treason’
NBC: Republicans launch an investigation into the Jan. 6 committee that examined the riot
Opinion
Washington Post: Georgia Republicans go after prosecutors — and the rule of law
In the States
The Bulwark: A Pitched Battle for Wisconsin Supreme Court
News 8 Tampa: 3 GOP states, including Florida, pull out of effort to thwart voter fraud
WFAE Charlotte: North Carolina Senate advances House riot penalties bill
Washington Post: Video offers rare glimpse of police enforcing Arizona’s election laws
WRAL News: Citing GOP election misinformation, NC Democrats propose sweeping voting rights bill
