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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — May 25, 2022

By May 25, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Trump-Endorsed Election Deniers Defeated In Georgia 

  • NPR: Trump’s Pick For Governor — Who Ran On Election Lies — Loses To Kemp In Georgia: Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has clinched the GOP primary for governor over former U.S. Sen. David Perdue, according to The Associated Press. Perdue was propelled into the race and endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Throughout the campaign, both continued to argue — without evidence — that Kemp allowed Democrats to steal the 2020 presidential election. After Perdue entered the race, the primary became a test of Trump’s grip on the Republican Party and whether relitigating 2020 election grievances continues to resonate with voters two years on.
  • Georgia Public Broadcasting: Raffensperger Declares Victory Over Election Denialism In Georgia Gop Secretary Of State’s Race: Incumbent Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has declared victory in Georgia’s Republican primary, offering a rebuke of false fraud claims and defeating Trump-backed Jody Hice with about 52% of the vote as of midnight. “It feels rewarding,” Raffensperger said in an interview after leaving his election night watch party late Tuesday. “I took an oath to follow the law, follow the Constitution, and that’s what we did.” Raffensperger faced an onslaught of attacks from Trump and other top Republicans for certifying the 2020 election and pushing back on misinformation, including an unprecedented call from former President Donald Trump to “find” enough votes to overturn the election. Hice ran a campaign based on the premise that the 2020 election should not have been certified and that Raffensperger allowed fraudulent ballots and practices to mar the presidential results.

January 6 Conspirator Mo Brooks Advances To A Senate Runoff In Alabama 

  • New York Times: Four Takeaways From Tuesday’s Elections: Representative Mo Brooks, an erratic, hard-right congressman who was once one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters in Congress, gained notoriety for wearing body armor to the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021. But Mr. Brooks came in second place in the Republican primary for Senate in Alabama to Katie Britt, who ran a campaign tightly focused on local issues and will now face Mr. Brooks in a runoff election next month. Even so, Ms. Britt told reporters she would have objected to the 2020 election results had she been in office at the time. Mr. Brooks attacked her anyway on Tuesday night. “Alabama, your choice is Katie Britt, who hid in her foxhole when a voter fraud fight was brought” he said, or himself, “who led the fight against voter fraud in the U.S. Congress.”

Appeals Court Rules That Insurrectionists Can Be Barred From Office 

  • Washington Post: Insurrectionists Can Be Barred From Office, Appeals Court Says: Participants in an insurrection against the U.S. government can be barred from holding office, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled Tuesday. The decision came in the case of Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R), who before losing his House primary this month faced a challenge from North Carolina voters arguing that his actions around the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack made him ineligible for future public service. Cawthorn suggested his case was moot given his primary loss, but the court disagreed, given that the election had not yet been certified and because the same issue could come up in another campaign. The voting rights group Free Speech For People is backing challenges to several Republicans under a post-Civil War law that blocks from taking office anyone “who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress … engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” Even though Cawthorn won’t be on a ballot this fall, the voters argued that the court had to overturn a lower court’s opinion that all insurrectionists, past and future, were granted amnesty under another law from the 1870s that forgave most Confederates

Hatch Act Offers Possible Path For Trump Prosecution  

  • The Hill: Ethics Law Offers Possible Path For Trump Prosecution: As federal investigators weigh the potential criminality of former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, legal experts say a decades-old ethics law — one routinely violated by members of Trump’s inner circle — could provide them a glide path to prosecution. The Hatch Act prohibits electioneering by executive branch officials, including the promotion of the president’s political interests, during the course of their formal duties.  The law was regularly flouted by the Trump administration while in office, a trend that continued throughout the two months between the presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. While the ethics law has been used almost entirely administratively since it was passed in the 1930s, experts say a rarely used criminal provision of the law could be a novel and relatively straightforward strategy to ensure consequences for Trump in what is sure to be a challenging atmosphere. Norm Eisen, who served as special counsel to Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment, called the actions leading up to Jan. 6 part of a “disturbing and endemic pattern of conduct by Trump enablers in the White House that implicates the Hatch Act, including criminal aspects.” 

In The States 

Florida’s New Secretary Of State Refuses To Bury The Big Lie 

  • South Florida Sun Sentinel (Editorial): Florida’s New Election Chief Won’t Bury The Big Lie:  Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new chief elections official, Cord Byrd, could have saved himself a whole lot of justifiable criticism Tuesday if he had simply acknowledged what most Americans know is true — that Joe Biden won the presidency fair and square in 2020. But he wouldn’t do it. At his very first news conference as Florida’s new secretary of state, Byrd double-talked his way around a question that persists because our democracy is under siege: Did Joe Biden win the election and the presidency in 2020 fair and square, or not? A yes or no question deserves a yes or no answer, but Byrd wouldn’t give one, even though his job is to instill public confidence in the reliability of election results. “Joe Biden was certified by the Congress after counting the electors, and he is the president of the United States,” Byrd said. It’s a fundamental question, and an easy one after Donald Trump’s baseless claims of fraud were tossed out in more than 60 courts, up to and including the Supreme Court. To not declare Biden the legitimate leader of America undermines democracy and perpetuates the “big lie” — period. For the chief elections official of the nation’s third-largest state to avoid the question is much worse.
  • Florida Politics: Cord Byrd: Setting Up Election Police Is A ‘Top Priority’: Newly-installed Secretary of State Cord Byrd said Tuesday that one of his top priorities is to get a new “Office of Election Crimes and Security” up and running ahead of this year’s election. Byrd has only been on the job for a week. He made the comments while spending one of his first few days at the summer conference of Florida’s local Election Supervisors being held at a resort hotel near Destin. During a brief availability with reporters, Byrd said that he plans to hire a director to head up the new office created as a result of SB 524 and that there were already “potential cases” of voter fraud that the new office, which will work in tandem with sworn law enforcement investigators at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, could handle. “Much of the information we already have in house,” said Byrd, who added he will likely hire former law enforcement officials, data analysts and investigators for the new office.

A Republican Fake Elector Is Running To Lead The Wisconsin Election Commission 

  • Associated Press: Republican Fake Elector Running To Lead Election Commission: One of the 10 Republicans who attempted to cast Electoral College ballot s for Donald Trump even though he lost Wisconsin said Monday he is running to become chairman of the state elections commission where he currently serves as a member. Robert Spindell has been an outspoken member of the bipartisan commission and supporter of the investigation into the 2020 election being led by a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice. Spindell has also traveled the state giving a presentation he calls “Thirteen Ways the 2020 Election was Rigged in Wisconsin.” “I am far and away the best qualified for (commission chair) and it would really help the image of the Wisconsin Elections Commission if I am chosen for that,” Spindell said Monday. The next chair of the commission will hold the position heading into the November election and in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election in battleground Wisconsin. The chair by state law approves the vote canvass following elections and certifies results. The chair also sets the agenda for the commission and can exert influence over how questions are framed, an important power on the board that is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.

What Experts Are Saying

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University: “Does political payback have limits? Elections can replace the bullies, as Mr. Trump has now seen. Mr. DeSantis faces the discipline of a balanced state budget. But these controls assume that constitutional government still works. The opposition in Hungary faces enormous obstacles (like a mostly one-sided media environment and rigged rules) to winning through elections. Mr. Orban has captured and dismantled all of the checks on his power. Will the Republican Party succeed in doing the same here? While elections still have consequences, voters will need to say no.” New York Times 

NYU Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat: “No amount of dead children will ever make Republicans regulate guns because they know that mass death primes us for authoritarianism. My @washingtonpost essay: LINK” Twitter  

Thomas B. Edsall NYT Column: “Today, even scholars of polarization are polarized. This was not always the case.” New York Times 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

Axios: Republicans parade Georgia’s record early turnout

New York Times: Marjorie Taylor Greene wins her primary, dashing establishment G.O.P. hopes.

Politico: Mail ballots spark bitter dispute in Pa. GOP Senate race

HuffPost: GOP Senators Now Fine With Pennsylvania Mail-In Ballots After Crying Fraud In 2020

January 6 and the 2020 Election

CNN: Video released of Oath Keepers, Proud Boys leaders meeting 24 hours before January 6 attack

Daily Dot: Rep. Loudermilk’s ‘dear friend’ delivered him wildly conspiratorial documents on Jan. 6 to help overturn the 2020 election

The Hill: Appeals court temporarily blocks Jan. 6 committee from getting RNC records

Opinion 

Bloomberg (Jonathan Bernstein): Six Capitol Riot Hearings Won’t Do the Job

New York Times (Ross Douthat): Donald Trump and the Romance of Regime Change

Washington Post (Dana Millbank): As Trump loses kingmaker status, he becomes more dangerous

In The States 

Las Vegas Review Journal: Conspiracies pushing rural counties to ditch electronic voting machines

Talking Points Memo: Charges Filed In Gaetz-Linked Florida Ghost Candidate Scheme