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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — May 9, 2022

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Inside The Final Push To Overturn The Election And Keep Trump In Office

  • Washington Post: Inside Mark Meadows’s Final Push To Keep Trump In Power: Meadows, 62, had taken the job as chief of staff on the principle that his most important task would be “to tell the most powerful man in the world when you believed he was wrong,” he wrote in his memoir, “The Chief’s Chief.” But instead of echoing the administration’s own Justice Department to tell Trump that his claims of a stolen election were wrong, Meadows went to extraordinary lengths to push Trump’s false assertions — particularly during a crucial three-week period starting with his trip to Atlanta and culminating in the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. A review of Meadows’s actions in that period by The Washington Post — based on interviews, depositions, text messages, emails, congressional documents, recently published memoirs by key players and other material — shows how Meadows played a pivotal role in advancing Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. In doing so, Meadows “repeatedly violated” legal guidance against trying to influence the Justice Department, according to a majority staff report of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Meadows granted those peddling theories about a stolen election direct access to the Oval Office and personally connected some with the president, according to congressional reports and interviews with former White House officials. He pressed the Justice Department to investigate spurious and debunked claims, including a bizarre theory that an Italian operation changed votes in the United States — an allegation a top Justice official called “pure insanity,” according to email correspondence released by congressional investigators. He also pushed the Justice Department, unsuccessfully, to try to invalidate the election results in six states through federal court action.

How The January 6 Commission Has Overcome Obstruction And Stonewalling To Reveal The Truth About The Conspiracy To Overturn The Election  

  • Politico: How The Jan. 6 Panel Broke Through Trump Allies’ Stonewalling: Donald Trump’s top election-subversion wingmen have stonewalled the Jan. 6 select committee for months, but investigators have found a reliable workaround: their deputies and assistants. Time and again, the panel has managed to pierce the secrecy of Trump’s inner circle by turning to the aides entrusted with carrying out logistics for their bosses, according to interviews with lawmakers and newly public committee records. Some of the select panel’s most crucial information has come from Trumpworld staffers, who were often in the room or briefed on sensitive meetings, even if they weren’t central players themselves. It’s a classic investigative strategy that’s paid dividends for select committee investigators, many of whom are seasoned former federal prosecutors.

Trump’s Crew Of Election Conspiracy Theorists Are On The Ballot In Upcoming GOP Primaries 

  • New York Times: In Nebraska, a Trump-Inspired Candidate Cracks Open Divide in the G.O.P.:  Like his political role model — and chief backer — Mr. Herbster is proving to be a one-man political wrecking ball. In a state long known for genteel, collaborative politics and, for the last 24 years, one-party rule, Mr. Herbster’s bid has cracked his party into three camps, with Trump supporters, establishment conservatives and business-friendly moderates battling for power. A major donor for years to conservative candidates, Mr. Herbster has been abandoned by longtime political allies and seen his running mate quit his ticket to run for governor herself. The allegations of groping are coming from fellow Republicans. […] Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Herbster casts doubt on the legitimacy of American elections. In Wahoo, he posited an outlandish theory about the former president’s loss. “This is the truth,” he told supporters. “The pandemic came from China. It was timed perfectly to make sure that they could rig the elections so Mark Zuckerberg could put $400 million into the toll the last four months of the election. Because whether you like it or not, they didn’t want Donald J. Trump to be president for two terms, that’s exactly what happened.”
  • Politico: Idaho GOP Riven By Primary Civil War:  Idaho’s dominant Republican Party is at war with itself up and down the ballot ahead of its May 17 primaries. It’s not just Gov. Brad Little, whose reelection campaign became national news when Donald Trump endorsed a primary challenge from Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin. The state attorney general is staring down a challenge from a former rabble-rousing member of Congress. The senior of Idaho’s two GOP House members is facing a primary that has drawn millions in spending. And contentious open races for lieutenant governor and the secretary of state — Idaho’s chief election official — echo some of the national divisions within the party. […] The normally invisible secretary of state race illustrates the situation. Two of the three candidates running in the GOP primary — state Sen. Mary Souza and state Rep. Dorothy Moon — said they did not believe that President Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 election. Ada County Clerk Phil McGrane, who oversees elections in the state’s most populous county, said that Biden did win the election.
  • New York Times: A Blood Feud in West Virginia Involves a Familiar Figure: Trump:  The Republican-on-Republican blood feud developing in West Virginia is only over a single House seat, but the outcome of Tuesday’s primary between Representatives David McKinley and Alex Mooney will signal the direction of a potential Republican majority in Congress: Will it be a party of governance or one purely of ideology, driven by former President Donald J. Trump? […] The former president sided with Mr. Mooney after Mr. McKinley voted for the infrastructure bill as well as for legislation to create a bipartisan commission to examine the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — legislation that was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate. “Alex is the only candidate in this race that has my complete and total endorsement,” Mr. Trump says in a radio advertisement blanketing the state. The former president goes on to blast Mr. McKinley as a “RINO” — “Republican in name only” — “who supported the fake infrastructure bill that wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on the Green New Deal” and Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “phony narrative” on Jan. 6 that went “against the interests of West Virginia.” A television advertisement also featuring Mr. Trump tells viewers that Mr. Mooney defended the former president from Ms. Pelosi’s “Jan. 6 witch hunt.”

In The States

Federal Appeals Court Reinstates Florida’s Restrictive New Voting Law 

  • Tampa Bay Times: Appeals Court Reinstates Florida’s Disputed Voting Law: A federal appeals court panel has temporarily reinstated a Florida voting law that a federal judge recently declared unconstitutional for its limits on drop boxes, “line warming” activities at polling sites and third-party voter registration efforts. In March, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee struck down large parts of Senate Bill 90, passed by Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year. Pointing to the state’s “grotesque history of racial discrimination,” Walker ruled that lawmakers intended to discriminate against Black voters. In a drastic move, he also prohibited the Legislature from passing similar voting restrictions for the next 10 years without court approval. The state appealed, and on Friday, Walker’s decision was temporarily blocked pending the outcome of that appeal by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.

Headlines

The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

CNN: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shouldn’t be disqualified over January 6, judge recommends

January 6 Investigation

Associated Press: Call Pence or Trump? It’s decision time for Jan. 6 panel

The Hill: Jan. 6 committee drops request for select trove of documents from Trump lawyer

Washington Post: GOP donor described botched vote fraud probe in recording, prosecutors say

January 6 Trials

Washington Post: N.Y. judge’s son who dressed as cave man in Jan. 6 riot sentenced to 8 months

In The States

The Assembly: How to Overturn an Election