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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — November 3, 2022

By November 3, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

President Biden And Barack Obama Emphasize Threats To Democracy In Next Week’s Election 

  • New York Times: Biden Warns That ‘Big Lie’ Republicans Imperil American Democracy: President Biden issued an impassioned condemnation of his predecessor and other Republicans on Wednesday night for encouraging political violence, voter intimidation and “the Big Lie,” framing next week’s elections as a pivotal test of American democracy. While candidates and voters have focused on economic and other issues, Mr. Biden sought to use a nationally televised evening speech to put the future of the nation’s system of elections front and center for the final days of debate before midterm elections on Tuesday that will determine control of Congress and numerous state offices. “As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America — for governor, Congress, attorney general, secretary of state — who won’t commit, they will not commit to accepting the results of the elections that they’re running in,” Mr. Biden said at Union Station, just blocks from where a mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to disrupt the transfer of power. “This is the path to chaos in America. It’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful. And it’s un-American.”
  • Arizona Republic: Former President Barack Obama Urges Arizona Voters To Keep Focus On Saving Democracy:  With election deniers up and down the Republican ticket this year, Arizonans need to vote for Democrats to help preserve American democracy, former President Barack Obama said Wednesday in Phoenix. The choices for governor and the U.S. Senate are stark, and will help determine the state’s near-term future, he told about 2,000 supporters at Cesar Chavez High School in the city’s Laveen area. “If we have election deniers serving as your governor, your senator and your Secretary of State and your attorney general, then democracy as we know it may not survive in Arizona,” Obama told the boisterous crowd. “You shouldn’t have to be a Democrat to care about that.” It capped an emotional and rare, major rally for Democrats in Arizona as they look to boost turnout in a bid to match the energy that propelled them to success in statewide races since 2018 and transformed Arizona into the nation’s newest swing state.

Following The 2020 Playbook, Republicans Prepare To Deny And Challenge Election Results 

  • New York Times: Lawyers Who Advanced Trump’s Election Challenges Return For Midterms: At least three dozen lawyers and law firms that advanced Donald J. Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election are now working for Republican candidates, parties and other groups, filing lawsuits and other complaints that could lay the groundwork for challenging the results of midterm elections, according to a New York Times analysis of campaign finance records and legal filings. Though the 2020 legal push failed, with just one victory out of more than 60 lawsuits, scores of lawyers behind it have continued to work on election litigation. That includes partners at large law firms like Consovoy McCarthy and Snell & Wilmer, which filed challenges shortly after Mr. Trump’s defeat and dropped them within weeks. But it also includes lawyers who for months argued cases based on groundless allegations and dubious legal theories, giving Mr. Trump’s false claims a veneer of legitimacy and propelling a swirl of misinformation about elections. On that list are Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman, two lawyers who helped devise Mr. Trump’s legal strategy in 2020 and are now mobilizing activists to hunt for evidence of fraud in the midterm count. Lawyers with the Thomas More Society, a conservative legal group that tried to push the so-called fake electors proposal through the courts after the 2020 election, have recently filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania disputing how officials handle absentee ballots. In Michigan, Erick Kaardal, another lawyer with the group, told a group of right-wing organizers in late October that he was already preparing to challenge the results if the Republican candidate for governor, Tudor Dixon, loses narrowly to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.
  • The Guardian: ‘The Trump Playbook’: Republicans Hint They Will Deny Election Results:  Almost two years after Trump launched his unprecedented election subversion push, culminating in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, the doubts he sowed around election integrity are now blossoming. A new poll from NBC News found that 65% of Republican voters still view Biden’s presidency as illegitimate. “The cancer that former president Trump injected into our electoral system has spread in 2022 to any number of candidates for important positions. They’re following the Trump playbook,” Wertheimer said. Arizona is the ground zero of the 2022 threat of election subversion. All four of its Republican candidates in statewide races – Lake, together with the nominees for US Senate, attorney general and secretary of state – are out-and-out election deniers. […] Similar signs of Republican candidates manoeuvring for possible mischief can be seen in other swing states that were at the epicentre of Trump’s efforts to destroy democracy. In Michigan, the Trump-backed gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, who is challenging the incumbent governor Gretchen Whitmer, has cast aspersions on the way the state’s midterm elections are being conducted under a top election official who is Democratic. “We have to wonder what the secretary of state will do when it comes to the ’22 election,” she has said. In Wisconsin, another state that has become a hotbed of election denial conspiracy theories, both the Republican US senator Ron Johnson who is up for re-election and gubernatorial nominee Tim Michels gave opaque responses to the Wisconsin State Journal. Asked by the paper whether they would unconditionally accept the certified results of their races, Johnson’s spokesperson said: “It is certainly his hope that he can.” Michels said he would live with the results “provided the election is conducted fairly and securely”.

Trump Attorneys Saw Clarence Thomas As “Only Chance” To Overturn 2020 Election Results 

  • Politico: Trump Lawyers Saw Justice Thomas As ‘Only Chance’ To Stop 2020 Election Certification: Donald Trump’s attorneys saw a direct appeal to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as their best hope of derailing Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election, according to emails newly disclosed to congressional investigators. “We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,” Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in a Dec. 31, 2020, email to Trump’s legal team. Chesebro contended that Thomas would be “our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress.” “I think I agree with this,” attorney John Eastman replied later that morning, suggesting that a favorable move by Thomas or other justices would “kick the Georgia legislature into gear” to help overturn the election results. The messages were part of a batch of eight emails — obtained by POLITICO — that Eastman had sought to withhold from the Jan. 6 select committee but that a judge ordered turned over anyway, describing them as evidence of likely crimes committed by Eastman and Trump. They were transmitted to the select committee by Eastman’s attorneys last week, but remained largely under wraps until early Wednesday morning. 

The Oath Keepers Tried To Communicate With Trump About Arresting Members Of Congress, Discussed Hanging Nancy Pelosi “From The Lamppost” After January 6 

  • NBC: Stewart Rhodes Wrote Message To Trump After Jan. 6 Calling On Him To ‘Save The Republic,’ Arrest Members Of Congress: Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes wrote a message intended for former President Donald Trump in the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, calling upon Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to stay in power and arrest members of Congress. “If you don’t then Biden/Kamala will turn all that power on you, your family, and all of us. You and your family will be imprisoned and killed,” Rhodes wrote in a message presented in court Wednesday. “You and your children will die in prison.” The message, which also called for Trump to have members of Congress and state legislators arrested, was not delivered.
  • CBS: In FBI Recording From Jan. 10, 2021, Oath Keepers’ Stewart Rhodes Talked About Hanging Pelosi “From The Lamppost”: Federal prosecutors played a recording of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes meeting with members of his far-right militia on Jan. 10, 2021, days after he and other Oath Keepers allegedly participated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol building. “My only regret is they should have brought rifles,” Rhodes says in the recording, which was obtained by the FBI. “We should have brought rifles. We could have fixed it right then and there. I’d hang [f******] Pelosi from the lamppost.” The trial revelation came five days after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was assaulted in their San Francisco home in an unrelated attack. The assailant allegedly told police he had intended to kidnap Nancy Pelosi and threatened to break her kneecaps.

In The States 

ARIZONA: Cochise County Ballot Hand Count Challenged In Court

  • Associated Press: Cochise County’s Ballot Hand-Count Plan Challenged In Court: An Arizona county’s plan to hand count all ballots cast in next week’s election has prompted a court challenge. A lawsuit filed Monday marked the latest twist in the effort in rural Cochise County to mollify skeptics distrustful of its vote-counting equipment. The lawsuit comes as Democrats have agreed to help provide volunteers to assist in the tally of an estimated 50,000 early and Election Day ballots in the Republican-heavy county. Cochise County strongly backed former President Donald Trump in 2020.

MICHIGAN: Judge Dismisses Republican Lawsuit Over Election Inspectors In Flint 

  • Michigan Public Radio: Judge Dismisses Republican Lawsuit Against Flint Over Election Inspectors: State and national Republican officials failed to convince a judge to force the city of Flint to bring on more Republican election inspectors ahead of next week’s election. The Michigan Republican Party and the Republican National Committee filed the lawsuit last week. In the lawsuit, they claim only about 10% of the election inspectors expected to be on hand in Flint for the general election are Republicans. “We believe this blatant attempt to skirt the law will negatively impact our elections and we’re not going to stand for it,” Ron Weiser, Michigan Republican Party chairman was quoted saying in a press release the day the suit was filed. However, Circuit Court Judge Mark Latchana dismissed the lawsuit Wednesday. The judge found neither the RNC nor Michigan GOP had standing to bring the lawsuit. Flint officials welcomed the decision. “This whole lawsuit is basically a frivolous attempt to disrupt the elections in Flint,” said Bill Kim, Flint city attorney.

MICHIGAN: Concern Grows Over Partisans And Conspiracy Theorists Working At The Polls 

  • Associated Press: New Poll Workers Raising Concerns In Michigan, Other States: A shortage of poll workers has concerned local election officials in some parts of the country as the midterm elections approach. Not so in Michigan. Conservative groups and local Republican Party operatives who have pushed false claims about the 2020 presidential election have recruited poll workers here by the thousands. Similar recruitment efforts on the right have bolstered the ranks of poll workers in some other states with nationally watched races. Seeding the ranks of front-line election workers with people recruited by groups promoting election conspiracies has raised alarms among some that the people at the foundation of the election system could try to undermine it. “It concerns me when the motivation to serve as a poll worker is fueled through misinformation and people who have been fed lies, in some cases, for years now,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. “Since the spring, clerks have come at us with concerning questions they’re getting and in some cases, hundreds of poll worker applications that seem to be motivated by nefarious intent.” 

NEVADA:  ACLU Asks For Probe Of Partisan Ballot Count In Nye County  

  • Associated Press: Nevada ACLU Requests Probe Into Alleged Partisan Hand-Count:  The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada asked the state’s secretary of state Wednesday to investigate what it called a “coordinated partisan election administration effort” during rural Nye County’s hand-count of mail-in ballots that was shut down last week until after polls close. The ACLU said a hand-count volunteer openly carrying a firearm removed an ACLU observer from a hand-count tally room, which the organization said it recently discovered was Nye County GOP Central Committee Vice Chair Laura Larsen. The ACLU said the situation “poses questions” surrounding Nye County interim clerk Mark Kampf’s delegation of authority to partisan officials to remove observers from hand-count rooms, particularly during a hand-count process that deals with tabulation of ballots. “A partisan official from the Nye County GOP Central Committee given free range to roam the halls and remove those engaging in observation violates the core principles underlying free and safe elections and makes an even greater mockery of our democracy,” ACLU of Nevada’s executive director Athar Haseebullah said in a statement.

WISCONSIN: Judge Orders Green Bay Clerk To Grant More Access To Republican Poll Watchers

  • Associated Press: Judge: Green Bay Clerk Must Expand Poll Watcher Access:  A Wisconsin judge on Wednesday ordered a clerk in Green Bay to grant poll watchers greater access to in-person absentee voting, siding with Republicans who alleged the clerk was improperly allowing them to only view certain parts of process. Judge Marc A. Hammer ordered City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys to allow poll watchers access to areas where voters complete witness certification and return their ballots in the city hall building. His order came a day after the Republican National Committee filed the lawsuit in Brown County. Poll watchers, referred to as election observers in Wisconsin, are legally entitled to view all the public parts of the voting process from an area designated by an election official. There are no residency requirements to be a poll watcher in the state. Jeffreys said Wednesday afternoon that her office has complied with the order. “In response to a legal action brought by the RNC regarding rules of observation, the city has provided additional areas of observation,” Jeffreys said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. “The modifications made will continue to preserve and protect the integrity of the in-person absentee voting process while protecting voter security and freedom.”

What Experts Are Saying

Joseph Mernyk, Stanford University sociology PhD student, Sophia Pink, Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania PhD student, Robb Willer, professor of sociology, psychology, and organizational behavior at Stanford University: “[R]esearch suggests it’s worth trying two strategies. First, broadcast that members of both parties generally do not support violence. Second, encourage political leaders to denounce violence, and publicize statements by those who have denounced violence in the past. Neither will end the threat of violence. But they could help strengthen long-standing U.S. norms against it.” Washington Post (Monkey Cage): How can the U.S. help prevent more political violence?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, NYU expert on authoritarians: “Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University professor who studies authoritarian systems, sees [disinformation about Pelosi attack] as the latest example of ‘autocratic political culture’ taking over parts of the GOP and the right. ‘The ability to assert a false reality in the face of empirical evidence is itself an act of power,’ Ben-Ghiat tells me. Those on the right pushing this line, she says, are placing themselves ‘above the truth’ and ‘above democratic custom.’ At the core of this politics, says Ben-Ghiat, is the flaunting of the ability to ‘get away with it,’ whether the ‘it’ is serial lying, the abandonment of basic norms, or even deliberate cruelty to a longtime colleague and member of the political opposition.” Washington Post 

Barbara McQuade, former US attorney, re: Kash Patel granted limited immunity for testimony in Mar-a-Lago case: “This is a big step for prosecutors. Granting a witness immunity is not done lightly, but sometimes you must sacrifice a small fish to land a big whale.” Tweet

Joyce Vance, former US attorney, re: recent AZ drop box legal cases: “1/ This was the second of two voter intimidation cases assigned to Judge Liburdi. In the first case, he ruled in favor of the sometimes-armed people trying to intimidate voters using drop boxes. Why did the 2nd case come out differently than the 1st? 2/ In the 2nd case, lawyers amassed evidence of actual intimidation. Voters were videoed, harassed & threatened with doxxing. The judge imposed stricter rules for armed people who can’t go within 250 feet of a drop box. Armed intimidation of voters feels like 1963 in Alabama.” Twitter Thread | Civil Discourse: A Tale of Two Arizona Voter Intimidation Cases

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Vice: ‘You Will Be Beaten’: Pro-Trump Extremists Are Posting Violent Threats Against Voters

Washington Post: Trump hasn’t announced a 2024 bid. But he’s acting like he’s running.

Washington Post (Analysis): GOP’s biggest election-denier secretary of state candidates lag in polls

Other Trump Investigations 

New York Times: Trump Settles With Protesters Who Said His Bodyguards Attacked Them

Wall Street Journal: Trump Aide, Granted Immunity, Set to Testify at Grand Jury Probing Mar-a-Lago Documents

Opinion

The Atlantic (Rick Hasen): The Courts Are the Only Thing Holding Back Total Election Subversion

Washington Post (Greg Sargent): Why the right keeps telling awful lies about the Pelosi attack 

Political Violence

Daily Beast: ‘Kill Feds, Kill Police’: FBI Nabs Boogaloo Boi With Grenade Launcher

NH Journal: Libertarian Activist Assaults Bolduc Outside NHIOP

Washington Post (Analysis): Trump pitches a Pelosi conspiracy theory, which quickly goes up in flames

In The States 

HuffPost: Oregon Is About To Vote On Whether To Send GOP Election Deniers To Congress

KLAS: Nye County submits proposal to hand count ballots in silence

Minnesota Public Radio: Nearly 1 in 4 Minnesota GOP legislative candidates questioned 2020 election

ProPublica: They Were Trying to Help Run Elections. Then They Got Criminally Investigated.

Time: In Heated Arizona Governor’s Race, Calls Grow for Democrat to Recuse Herself as Elections Chief

Vox: Elaine Luria dedicated herself to investigating January 6. Do her voters care?