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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — November 4, 2022

By November 4, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

GOP Voter Intimidation Reported Across The Country 

  • New York Times: Election Officials Say Efforts To Intimidate Voters Are Widening: In the final stanza of the midterms, election officials in several states are warning that efforts to intimidate voters and undermine public confidence in the electoral process are intensifying, even as voter fraud is rare. At the same time, those officials have sought to reassure Americans that voting is safe and secure despite vigilante drop-box watchers and a disinformation campaign targeting mail-in voting.
  • Reuters:In The Hunt For Voter Fraud, Republican Door Knockers Are Intimidating Residents: Officials: The canvassers in California’s Shasta County in September wore reflective orange vests and official-looking badges that read “Voter Taskforce.” Four residents said they mistook them for government officials. But the door knockers didn’t explain where to vote or promote a candidate, the usual work of canvassers ahead of a big election.Instead, they grilled residents on their voting history and who lived in their homes, probing questions that might have violated state laws on intimidation and harassment, according to the county’s chief election official.  […] In at least 19 states, pro-Trump canvassers are using their findings to press election officials to clean up what they claim are inaccurate voter-registration lists, saying they could open the door to fraudulent voting. In at least one state, Michigan, they plan to use their list of alleged irregularities to challenge voters in the Nov. 8 election. Canvassers believe such efforts are uncovering evidence that voting machines were rigged in 2020 to steal the election from Trump, according to a review by Reuters of the groups’ literature and reports.
  • Vice: A GOP Official Is Allegedly Knocking On Doors To Tell People They Can’t Vote: Voters in Texas are facing an onslaught of voter intimidation tactics in the lead-up to the midterm elections next week—and in at least one instance the intimidation is allegedly being carried out by a prominent member of the local Republican Party. Last week, a woman in Austin reported an incident of voter intimidation at her home allegedly carried out by a member of the Travis County Republican Party to the Texas Civil Rights Project. “We received a very alarming report over the past week about a precinct chair of the Travis County Republican Party, knocking on people’s doors, accusing them of illegally voting by mail, even though the people we spoke with were clearly eligible to vote by mail,” Christina Beeler, a voting rights staff attorney with the civil rights group, told VICE News. “They were being extremely aggressive.” The voter in Austin said that the person at the door identified herself as a precinct chair and the voter was later able to identify the person as a precinct chair for the Travis County Republican Party. The woman was accompanied by an unidentified man and accused the voter of illegally voting by mail. Beeler said the campaign appeared to be targeting people who have been voting by mail because the list of people who vote by mail is available publicly. The hostile and confrontational nature of voter intimidation tactics in Texas has increased significantly in recent weeks.

At An Iowa Rally Full Of Election Lies, Trump Gives His Strongest Indication That He Will Run For President In 2024

  • Bloomberg: Trump Makes Strongest Suggestion Yet That He Plans 2024 Run: Former President Donald Trump sent the strongest signal yet that he plans to run again in 2024, saying at a pre-election rally in Iowa that he will “very, very, very probably” make another White House bid. “And now, in order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again,” Trump said during the rally on Thursday night, which was billed as an event supporting Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and his other endorsed candidates but was also held in the state that has the first presidential caucuses. After the crowd started chanting “Trump, Trump, Trump,” the former president said, “That’s nice, well, get ready, that’s all I’m telling you, very soon. Get ready.” Trump has teased for months that he plans to make another White House run, routinely telling supporters they will “be very happy” with his decision.  But he’s sending increasingly strong signals he plans to run.
  • Time: ‘I Ran Twice, I Won Twice’: Trump Rallies Iowans Ahead of Midterms Warped by His Election Lies: Two years after declaring victory in an election he had lost, former President Donald Trump made clear in Iowa Thursday night that he would never accept the result and that none of his supporters should either. “Your favorite President got screwed,” Trump said to the crowd, apologizing to the children in the audience for his language. Trump took the stage in Sioux City, his first in a final sweep of rallies before the Nov. 8 midterms, on the two-year anniversary of the 2020 election. His refusal to admit defeat has since been fully embraced by the Republican Party, and has set the stage for Trump-aligned candidates in communities across the country potentially refusing to concede next week. Trump became visibly irritated as he described a recent court decision in Pennsylvania about undated mail-in ballots. Trump claimed that if that same decision had been applied to ballots in 2020, he would have won instead of Joe Biden. “This is a very unfair thing to your favorite President but what the hell, I’ve been treated so unfairly,” Trump said.

The DOJ Is Considering A Special Counsel If Trump Announces A 2024 Run

  • CNN: DOJ Mulling Potential Special Counsel If Trump Runs In 2024: As Donald Trump inches closer to launching another presidential run after the midterm election, Justice Department officials have discussed whether a Trump candidacy would create the need for a special counsel to oversee two sprawling federal investigations related to the former president, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. The Justice Department is also staffing up its investigations with experienced prosecutors so it’s ready for any decisions after the midterms, including the potential unprecedented move of indicting a former president. In the weeks leading up to the election, the Justice Department has observed the traditional quiet period of not making any overt moves that may have political consequences. But behind the scenes, investigators have remained busy, using aggressive grand jury subpoenas and secret court battles to compel testimony from witnesses in both the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of national security documents kept at his Palm Beach home. Now federal investigators are planning for a burst of post-election activity in Trump-related investigations. That includes the prospect of indictments of Trump’s associates – moves that could be made more complicated if Trump declares a run for the presidency.

New Emails Reveal Cleta Mitchell’s Role In Attempt To Overturn The 2020 Election As Her Organization Prepares For “Hand To Hand Combat With The Left” Over The 2022 Election 

  • Axios: Exclusive Emails: Inside Trump’s Botched Georgia Fight: Late on the night of Jan. 6, 2021, as the world reeled from the shocking images of a pro-Trump mob ransacking the U.S. Capitol, conservative activist and Trump legal adviser Cleta Mitchell focused her attention elsewhere — on a crumbling voter fraud lawsuit in Georgia that could open the door to criminal exposure. The big picture: Axios has obtained dozens of previously undisclosed emails from the time period covering Dec. 30, 2020, to Jan. 8, 2021. They shed new light on the internal machinations, pressures and disagreements at the heart of the unprecedented legal battle to keep a defeated president in power. Why it matters: The central question of what then-President Trump and his lawyers knew when he signed sworn court documents attesting to false evidence of voter fraud in Georgia is now under scrutiny by the Justice Department, Atlanta prosecutors and the House Jan. 6 committee. Two lawyers advising Trump were revealed over the past several weeks to have raised concerns about the president signing the verification, which carried the penalty of perjury. The new emails show a third, Bruce Marks, also expressed concern but was overruled. The emails also reveal new granularity about the role of Mitchell, who since then has collaborated with the Republican Party to build an activist base of national “election monitors” — many of whom will be out in force in Tuesday’s midterms.
  • ABC: ‘Hand-To-Hand Combat With The Left’: Recordings Show Trump-Funded Lawyer Cleta Mitchell Readying For Midterm Elections: Earlier this fall, as the final sprint to the midterm elections was heating up, a Trump-funded election attorney joined a Zoom call with local election groups in Michigan to relay her vision ahead of Election Day. She described it as “hand-to-hand combat with the Left” — a provocative euphemism, given the threats of violence being reported in the run-up to the election. The comment, according to recordings obtained by ABC News, was made by former Trump campaign attorney Cleta Mitchell, who for months has been leading an effort to recruit and train poll workers around the country to deploy for the midterm elections — backed in part by funding from Trump himself.

In The States 

ARIZONA:  How A Far Right Youth Group Transformed The Arizona GOP, Threatening Democracy 

  • Arizona Republic: Hostile Takeover: Turning Point Usa And The Remaking Of Arizona’s Republican Party: The buzz among attendees at the 2019 meeting of the Arizona Republican Party was that the machines being used to vote for party chair couldn’t be trusted. And that, instead, everyone should state their preference out loud in a voice vote. At the end of that noisy, chaotic process, Kelli Ward, a former U.S. Senate candidate, who twice couldn’t escape the Republican primary, became leader of the party that she felt had shunned her. Helping Ward get there, The Arizona Republic would report weeks after her election, were two people with connections to Turning Point, the umbrella name given to a group of organizations whose clout within the party has grown in recent years. The Turning Point men who served as unofficial advisers to Ward were Tyler Bowyer and Jake Hoffman. […] Ward’s election as chair of the Arizona Republican Party would prove a consequential choice. It deepened a seismic divide within the party. On one side stood the establishment members who had once supported the likes of former U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl. On the other were those who pledged loyalty to then-President Donald Trump. Under Ward’s leadership, the party would take a hard right turn and upend convention. It would take sides within primaries, tilting toward candidates who espoused conspiracies, including the myth of a stolen 2020 election.
  • Washington Post: How A Pro-Trump Youth Group Remade The Arizona GOP, Testing Democracy: The young conservative activist had a plan, and he wanted the veteran Arizona House speaker to push it. The two men huddled at a barbecue joint in January as the activist — Tyler Bowyer, the chief operating officer of the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA — unspooled his demands: Republican legislators, he insisted, should carve up booming and fast-diversifying Maricopa County, diluting the power of Democrats in a state that had helped deliver Joe Biden the presidency. But the Republican House speaker, Rusty Bowers, ultimately balked at redrawing the state’s map to seize partisan advantage. As the pair’s political differences grew, the activist, who was half the speaker’s age, vowed revenge. […] The takedown of one of the most powerful Republicans in the state illustrates the rise of Turning Point USA and its network of affiliates, which have pushed beyond their core mission of energizing college conservatives to turn Arizona into a laboratory for a new brand of Republican organizing. The decade-old nonprofit organization has helped transform the state GOP, seeking to elevate acolytes of former president Donald Trump and purge old-guard centrists who led in the tradition of the late Republican senator John McCain. The group’s success is reflected in the Republican midterm election slate — nearly every statewide candidate and many of those farther down the ballot have embraced Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. The political career of Kari Lake, the state’s GOP gubernatorial nominee, took off at a Turning Point event last year, and she has filled her campaign staff with former Turning Point employees. Lake has promised, if elected, to overhaul how votes are cast and counted in this pivotal swing state.

MICHIGAN:  Michigan Supreme Court Upholds Existing Guidance For Election Challengers

  • Detroit Free Press: Michigan Supreme Court Suspends Court Order Invalidating Election Challenger Guidance: The Michigan Supreme Court on Thursday suspended a Michigan Court of Claims order — celebrated by Republicans — that required revisions to the instructions for election observers that monitor polling locations and absentee ballot counting rooms. The Michigan Supreme Court’s order leaves in place for the general election the same poll challenger guidelines used in the recent August primary. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and election officials raised concerns that the last-minute revisions ordered by the lower court would cause confusion and chaos at the polls and counting rooms. Former Michigan elections director Chris Thomas worried it would potentially pave the way for intimidation against election workers. Republicans had heralded the earlier lower court order as a legal victory in response to a pair of lawsuits challenging the legality of the poll challenger manual: one from the Michigan GOP and Republican National Committee and another from GOP candidates and challengers representing organizations that deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

MINNESOTA: GOP Secretary of State Candidate’s Husband Calls For Sheriffs To Respond To Supposed Election Fraud 

  • Minnesota Reformer: Crockett’s Husband Says ‘We Need’ Sheriffs, Deputies Ready To Respond To Election Fraud: The husband of Kim Crockett recently called on her supporters to get law enforcement lined up to crack down on fraud on Election Day. Crockett is the Republican nominee for secretary of state, Minnesota’s top election administrator.  Speaking at an Oct. 6 Liberty Tea Party Patriots event in Champlin, Crockett’s spouse, Marty Probst, said, “If you’ve got friends or family or whatever in sheriff’s deputies or sheriffs — we need them on Election Day. That’s part of the SWAT team to get out when certain places don’t follow the rules that they’re supposed to.”  He claimed there are 10 to 15 purposeful contradictions in the election judge manual, and that “they’re not following the law.” A spokeswoman said the Office of the Secretary of State is coordinating with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension “to ensure law enforcement know their role on Election Day.” “The state has guidelines for who can be in be in polling places and how they can behave,” Cassondra Knudson said. “This would not allow for law enforcement to be situated in a polling place for any purpose other than responding to a call for assistance.” And, she added, “We do not believe there are any contradictions in the election judge manual.”

NEVADA: Judge Dismisses RNC Lawsuit Seeking More Republicans Verifying Signatures 

  • Nevada Independent: Judge Dismisses RNC Lawsuit Seeking More Republicans On Clark County Signature Verification: A judge has ruled against the Republican National Committee’s legal request for Clark County to have equal political party representation on manual signature verification boards for mail ballots. Clark County District Court Judge Timothy Williams issued the order Thursday, a day after attorneys representing the RNC, Clark County and a cadre of Democratic groups argued the case  following oral arguments from the parties on Tuesday. The ruling, which comes just two days before the end of the state’s early voting period and after days of mail ballot processing, marks a defeat for the RNC, whose chairwoman had claimed the county’s lack of registered Republicans involved with the verification of signatures was “illegal.”

WISCONSIN: Milwaukee Election Worker Could Face Charges Making Fraudulent Ballot Requests To The Home Of A GOP State Rep 

  • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Milwaukee Election Commission Official Kimberly Zapata Fired After Fraudulently Requesting Military Ballots, Mayor Says: A Milwaukee election official could face criminal charges accusing her of fraudulently requesting absentee ballots reserved for members of the military and sending them to a Republican lawmaker known for embracing unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Milwaukee Election Commission Deputy Director Kimberly Zapata, 45, of South Milwaukee was fired by Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson this week after Johnson discovered she had requested the ballots. Johnson said Zapata’s actions may have been to show voter fraud was possible. “This has every appearance of being an egregious and blatant violation of trust,” Johnson said. “Election integrity is absolutely integral. It’s absolutely essential.” Milwaukee County prosecutors are considering charging Zapata with malfeasance in office, a felony, and illegally requesting a ballot, a misdemeanor, a source told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

What Experts Are Saying

NEW Protect Democracy Analysis + Farbod Faraji, counsel at Protect Democracy: “In a new analysis shared first with Nightly, the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy found 67 percent of all Republican nominees for governor, secretary of state, attorney general, Senate and the House of Representatives ‘have either denied or raised doubts about the validity of the 2020 presidential election.’…But what may be more interesting is the size of their winning margins. In its analysis of those candidates’ primary victories, Protect Democracy…found election deniers and doubters won their primary contests with smaller percentages of the vote than victorious Republicans who did not question the 2020 election results. They received, on average, 14 percent fewer votes in their primary elections. Jim Marchant, for example, a leading proponent of the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen, won his primary for Nevada secretary of state with less than 40 percent of the vote. The takeaway, said Farbod Faraji, counsel at Protect Democracy, is that ‘primary wins by election deniers are not indicative of the popularity of either these candidates or their election denialism positions, particularly among GOP voters.’” Politico Nightly

Marc E. Elias, founder of Democracy Docket (MSNBC Video): “We are seeing Republicans push for hand counting ballots to bog down the process of counting ballots in order to break democracy.” Tweet

Philip Zelikow, the former executive director of the 9/11 commission, who pioneered legal strategies to go after violent extremists earlier in his career: “I fear that the country is entering a phase of history with more organized domestic civil violence than we’ve seen in 100 years…We prohibit the existence of private military groups because they are a danger to society and to democracy. Unless we want to accept their presence and proliferation, we need to be willing to use the legal tools that we have to disrupt their activities[.]” NYT: America Can Have Democracy or Political Violence. Not Both.

Garen Wintemute, director of University of California, Davis’ Violence Prevention Research Program: “Roughly 5 million Americans would be willing to kill someone to achieve a political purpose, according to a new UC Davis study. ‘These are just eye-popping results,’ says Garen Wintemute, who heads the university’s Violence Prevention Research Program. ‘I have never seen [survey results] like this. We decided we had to get this paper out right away.’” George Skelton’s LA Times Column: ‘Eye-popping’ new survey on Americans’ acceptance of political violence should be a wake-up call to leaders 

Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “‘When 3 to 5 million Americans voice willingness to consider concrete acts of violence such as assassination, America is at risk of stochastic terrorism — the idea that if MAGA leaders call for a target, it’s impossible to know who will answer the call or where or when, but [it’s] very probable that someone will.’ She added: ‘The current period feels like the 1830s when Abraham Lincoln noted that the only way the U.S. could be felled was ‘through suicide.’ We nearly reached it that time around.’” George Skelton’s LA Times Column: ‘Eye-popping’ new survey on Americans’ acceptance of political violence should be a wake-up call to leaders 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Bloomberg: Candidates Keep Pushing Election Denial Online — Because It Works

New York Times: Between Kanye and the Midterms, the Unsettling Stream of Antisemitism

NPR: The ReAwaken America Tour unites conservative Christians and conspiracy theorists

NPR: How documentary-style films turn conspiracy theories into a call to action

Slate: What The Far-Right Fringe Online Is Planning For Election Day: 

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Bloomberg: Marjorie Taylor Greene Ballot Fight Sputters to an End in Court

CNN: January 6 committee interviews more Secret Service witnesses, including head of Pence’s detail

NBC: DOJ rests in Oath Keepers trial without calling witnesses who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy

New York Times: Gingrich Is Willing to Testify to Jan. 6 Panel, His Lawyer Says

Politico: Judge shoots down Mike Lindell’s bid to reclaim seized phone, access warrant affidavit

Other Trump Investigations 

Axios: Judge approves New York AG’s bid for monitor to oversee Trump Org

New York Times: Trump Files a Suit Against N.Y.’s Attorney General, and Against Advice

Opinion

CNN (Michael Fanone): American indifference will be the death blow for democracy

New York Times (Editorial): America Can Have Democracy or Political Violence. Not Both.

New York Times (Michelle Goldberg): What if Every Moment Since Jan. 6 Was Just the Calm Before the Storm?

Philadelphia Inquirer (Editorial): With democracy on the line, voters must reject the threat posed by election deniers on the ballot

Political Violence

ABC: FBI says it has ‘credible information of a broad threat’ to synagogues in New Jersey

Los Angeles Times: Leading up to attack, GOP and its allies spent $50 million on anti-Pelosi ads

Miami Herald: Trump supporter convicted of shooting at men after argument over Biden flag on Jet Ski

NJ.com: Man in ‘Where is Nancy?’ T-shirt, posing with skeleton, is N.J. school board candidate

Politico: Paul Pelosi at home after release from hospital

In The States 

Associated Press: Wisconsin courts won’t change rules for witness addresses on absentee ballots

Detroit Free Press: Lawyer in Karamo lawsuit targeting Detroit yells at judge, cites debunked film

Mother Jones: Evan McMullin Put Democracy On the Ballot. Utah Voters Probably Won’t Care.

Rolling Stone: This Democrat Has Less Than A Week to Save Democracy

Vice: ‘Complete Setup’: Florida Crackdown Has Ex-Felons Afraid to Vote

Washington Post: In a county rife with conspiracy, a GOP clerk fights to win voters’ trust