Driving the Day:
Donald Trump’s just-announced 2024 presidential bid won’t protect him from criminal probes. https://t.co/77IuOSOUly
— Defend Democracy Project (@DemocracyNowUS) November 16, 2022
Must Read Stories
Trump Files To Run For President Again, But It Won’t Stop Criminal Probes And Accountability For The January 6 Insurrection
- NPR: Trump, Who Tried To Overturn A Legitimate Election, Files To Run For President Again: Donald Trump, who tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and inspired a deadly riot at the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep himself in power, has filed to run for president again in 2024.
- Washington Post: Trump’s 2024 Candidacy Won’t Stop Justice Dept. Criminal Probes: Donald Trump’s just-announced 2024 presidential bid won’t protect him from criminal probes but could complicate the decision-making process at the Justice Department, as senior officials strive to show that investigating a political figure is not the same thing as a political investigation. Privately, Justice Department officials have discussed the possibility of appointing a special counsel to take over investigations involving Trump — such as the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case or the attempts to prevent Joe Biden from ascending to the presidency after the 2020 election — if Trump formally declares himself a 2024 presidential candidate, people familiar with the matter said. How serious those discussions were and how long ago they occurred are not clear. But Attorney General Merrick Garland and others may soon face a decision point, as Trump, who lost his bid for a second term in 2020, announced his next presidential campaign Tuesday night.
Republicans In Disarray As The MAGA Majority Chooses Its Leadership
- New York Times: Top Republicans Face Dissent as McCarthy Wins G.O.P. Nod for Speaker: Republican leaders in Congress are confronting fresh threats to their power and divisions in their ranks from an emboldened and embittered right flank, after a weaker than expected midterm election performance that has demoralized their party. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California resoundingly won the Republican nomination for speaker on Tuesday, but a right-wing challenger drew three dozen defectors, showing weakness in Mr. McCarthy’s hold on his party and pointing to a potentially rough fight ahead of him to secure the job at the start of the new Congress. The vote, which took place as his party was still clawing its way to what appeared likely to be a historically slim majority, came as Mr. McCarthy’s Republican counterpart across the Capitol, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, confronted a challenge for his position and a conservative mini-revolt of his own from colleagues who aired their anger about the midterm election results during a testy private luncheon that dragged on for nearly four hours.
- Axios: GOP Leadership Under Siege: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) have been drawn into battles for control over their respective conferences, inflaming a GOP civil war that’s getting uglier by the hour. Why it matters: The fights playing out in public and behind closed doors highlight the reckoning underway at all levels of the Republican Party following a worse-than-expected showing in last week’s midterm elections. In the Senate: Republican campaign chief Rick Scott (R-Fla.) announced plans to challenge McConnell in an extremely tense, closed-door lunch Tuesday afternoon. Several senators — including Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) — got involved in the crossfire to defend McConnell, multiple sources familiar with the lunch tell Axios. Scott made it official during the multi-hour session by sending out a letter to his colleagues declaring his intent to run against McConnell.
Two January 6 Protesters Were Elected To Congress
- Washington Post: They Rallied In D.C. On Jan. 6. Now They’ll Join Congress: As Republican Derrick Van Orden celebrated his victory with raucous supporters Tuesday night, he vowed to work with the Democrat he’d just defeated in a House race in western Wisconsin, saying, “We have to get back to a place where we represent everyone.” That bipartisan message was all the more remarkable given the journey that Van Orden has taken to Congress. Van Orden was at President Donald Trump’s “Save America” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, and then joined the crowd that marched down the Mall toward the Capitol, saying in a television interview that “I went there to stand with them, to stand up for electoral integrity.” Van Orden said he never entered the Capitol, which was ransacked that day by a pro-Trump mob seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election. But in two months, he will do so as one of at least two Jan. 6 rally attendees turned congressmen. The other, George Santos — a New York Republican who won in a district in Queens and Long Island — has described enjoying the “front-row spectacle” of an “amazing” Jan. 6 rally crowd on the Ellipse. While the Republican Party suffered surprising losses in the midterms, including defeats of many who bought into Trump’s false election claims, the arrival of freshman lawmakers who had come to Washington as pro-Trump activists on that violent day underscores the extent to which the House Republican caucus remains a haven for election deniers. As of Saturday, at least 150 election deniers were projected to win House races, compared with the 139 who voted against certifying President Biden’s election on Jan. 6, 2021.
A 2022 Lesson: Casting Doubt On Elections Is A Losing Strategy For Republicans
- New York Times: Republicans’ 2022 Lesson: Voters Who Trust Elections Are More Likely to Vote: It was early on Election Day when polling places in Maricopa County started experiencing a glitch. Tabulation machines were rejecting thousands of ballots, a result of a printer error, and the confusion was causing lines and frustration at the polls. There was a simple fix: Voters could place their ballots in a secure box — called Box 3 — kept at every polling station for just such situations. Their votes would be counted later, at the county’s central tabulation center. But for the state’s most conservative voters, a group primed by two years of former President Donald J. Trump’s stolen-election lies to see conspiracy in every step of the voting process, Box 3 smelled of trouble. Election deniers in the state’s Republican Party soon began warning voters away from the boxes, as suspicions flew across Twitter and right-wing media. “Do not trust them,” Charlie Kirk, the conservative leader, warned his followers. That message reinforced Republicans’ skepticism about elections, but it didn’t do much to help their candidates win. Later that morning, the Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, held a news conference to deliver the opposite message. Box 3 was safe, her campaign lawyer said. “Vote, vote, vote,’’ Ms. Lake added. “We’ve got to vote today.” Whether the suspicion and mixed messages around Box 3 made a difference in a race that Ms. Lake lost by a hair to her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs, might never be known. (Her campaign maintains the fault lies with the county.) But the moment crystallized one of the main lessons of the 2022 midterms: Casting doubt on the legitimacy of elections might be an effective tool for galvanizing true believers to participate in a primary — or, at its origins, to storm the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn a losing result. But it can be a lousy strategy when it comes to the paramount mission of any political campaign: to get the most votes.
- Forbes: Most Republicans Believe Midterms Were ‘Free And Fair,’ Poll Finds As Fraud Fears Fall Flat: A small majority of Republican voters believe the midterm elections were “free and fair,” a new Morning Consult poll finds as the aftermath of the election has so far been largely devoid of the voter fraud claims that plagued the 2020 race.
In The States
GEORGIA: Democrats Sue Over Lack Of Saturday Early Voting For The Senate Runoff
- Georgia Public Broadcasting: Democrats Sue Over Lack Of Saturday Early Voting In Georgia’s U.S. Senate Runoff: A coalition of Democratic groups announced they are suing the state of Georgia over its interpretation of a state law that disallows an optional Saturday of early voting before the Dec. 6 U.S. Senate runoff. In a press release, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Warnock for Georgia campaign and the Democratic Party of Georgia are challenging a bulletin sent by the secretary of state’s office that says counties may not offer early voting on Saturday, Nov. 26, because of a 2016 state law that prevents certain Saturday voting if a state holiday is immediately before or after that date.
MICHIGAN: Failed Candidate For Attorney General And 2020 Conspiracy Theorist Matt DePerno Wants To Run The MI GOP
- Detroit News: Matt DePerno Announces Campaign For Michigan Republican Party Chair: Matt DePerno, who lost his bid for attorney general but has been a favorite of former President Donald Trump, announced Monday that he wants to be the Michigan Republican Party’s new chairman. The lawyer from Kalamazoo launched his campaign six days after the midterm election, in which the Michigan GOP suffered historic defeats, including Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel’s victory over DePerno. In addition, a special prosecutor is currently considering criminal charges against DePerno and eight others over an alleged conspiracy to gain improper access to voting machines. However, DePerno has gathered a loyal following among GOP delegates. He helped broker a deal to resolve feuding between factions of the party at the August Republican convention. At a February state convention, delegates will pick the party’s next leader.
What Experts Are Saying
Dennis Aftergut, a former assistant U.S. attorney: “For all the merit of those explanations, though, they pale in comparison to another: [Donald Trump] is scared witless at the possibility of prosecution. It seems likely that indictments are on their way from Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis (over Trump’s interference in the 2020 election in Georgia) and from Attorney General Merrick Garland (over Trump’s purloined national security secrets taken to Mar-a-Lago).” The Bulwark (Opinion): The Real Reason Trump Runs
Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in Trump’s first impeachment: “‘To the extent it is an effort to manipulate the system,’ Eisen said of Trump’s expected announcement on Tuesday, ‘’obviously prosecutors can’t allow potential defendants to game the criminal investigative process the workings of a grand jury or charging decisions in that way.’” Grid News
Debra Perlin, policy director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW): “Regardless of Donald Trump’s timing of making an announcement, it shouldn’t affect the prosecution when the entire investigation has been thorough, has been fair and has really been showing that the [Justice] Department can handle things that are political in nature[.]” Grid News
Ryan Goodman, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law at New York University School of Law: “said the Justice Department’s policy regarding election-related sensitivities would not apply this far in advance of the 2024 presidential election. The only open question for the Department of Justice, he said, would be about the appointment of a special counsel. ‘Attorney General Garland will have to consider whether it’s actually in the public interest to appoint a special counsel,’ Goodman said. ‘If that, in fact, does mean slowing down the process unnecessarily, I think it would be right to conclude that there’s no need for it.’” Grid News
Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “Sounds like Fani Willis will convene a regular grand jury to seek indictments based on the work of her special grand jury.” Tweet
Liz Hempowicz, David Janovsky, and Norman L. Eisen: “The disqualification clause contained in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment provides that public office holders who have taken an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and then engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or who give aid or comfort to enemies of the United States, are barred from serving ever again in public office. In this essay and an accompanying report, we build on the established collective understanding to analyze contemporary enforcement of the disqualification clause. Our analysis describes how the disqualification clause can currently be enforced.” Just Security Essay: Roadmap to Accountability: How the Jan. 6 Committee Can Help Enforce the 14th Amendment | POGO Report: The Constitution’s Disqualification Clause Can Be Enforced Today
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
New York Times: Claims of Voter Fraud Build, but Not to Same Degree as in 2020
Trump 2024
Washington Post: Trump, who as president fomented an insurrection, says he is running again
Other Trump Investigations
CNN: Judge throws out Mary Trump’s lawsuit against Donald Trump, saying her claim was barred by prior agreements
Politico: Ex-Trump Org. CFO Allen Weisselberg testifies against the company