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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — November 9, 2023

By November 9, 2023No Comments

Driving the Day

Must Read Stories

DOJ Special Counsel refutes Trump’s attempts to dismiss the charges against him in federal election case

  • Washington Post: Trump’s belief that the 2020 election was stolen is not a defense, DOJ says: “Special counsel prosecutors said Monday they plan to show at trial that Donald Trump lied repeatedly about the results of the 2020 election as part of a conspiracy to subvert the legitimate results. But they also said they don’t need to prove whether Trump believed he lost the race. Legal experts have debated the importance of Trump’s state of mind in his federal election subversion case in D.C., with some arguing that to win a conviction the government must pin down the true beliefs of a politician who amassed a long record of making false or misleading claims while president. The Justice Department weighed in on the debate for the first time, saying that what they need to prove is not that Trump believed the ‘Big Lie’ of the election being stolen but that he knowingly spread associated lies in a criminal scheme to stay in power.”
  • NBC News: Jan. 6 riot was ‘culmination’ of Trump conspiracies to overturn 2020 election, special counsel says in new filing: “Donald Trump is responsible for the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 because they were the ‘culmination’ of his conspiracies to overturn the 2020 presidential election, special counsel Jack Smith’s office says in a new filing in the former president’s federal election interference case. The filing is in response to Trump’s motion to strike ‘inflammatory’ references to the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, from his criminal indictment on four charges related to his alleged efforts to interfere with the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.”
  • New York Times: Prosecutors Assail Trump’s Bid to Have Federal Election Case Dismissed: “Federal prosecutors on Monday asked a judge to reject a barrage of motions filed last month by former President Donald J. Trump that sought to toss out the indictment charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election and said his claims were full of ‘distortions and misrepresentations.’ In a 79-page court filing, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, went one by one through Mr. Trump’s multiple motions to dismiss the case and accused him and his lawyers of essentially trying to flip the script of the four-count indictment filed against him in August.”
  • CNN: Special counsel urges judge in federal election interference case to reject Trump’s dismissal attempts: “Prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s office urged the judge overseeing the federal election interference case against Donald Trump to reject the former president’s attempts to dismiss the charges against him on constitutional grounds, saying his arguments rely on ‘distortions and misrepresentations.’ While Trump has repeatedly attacked the case against him on the campaign trail and in court filings, the special counsel’s court filing on Monday marks the first time prosecutors have defended their historic criminal prosecution against the former president in court.”

FBI hunting for former New Jersey National Guardsman charged in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol

  • NBC News: FBI SWAT team on the hunt for ex-National Guardsman wanted on Jan. 6 charges: “Federal authorities are searching for a former New Jersey National Guard police sergeant wanted on charges related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Online sleuths who go by the name ‘Sedition Hunters’ have known Gregory Yetman’s identity since early 2022, referring to him by the nickname #GreenHeavySprayer because he was seen in Jan. 6 footage using a large sprayer on law enforcement at the Capitol, they told NBC News. The FBI posted photos of #GreenHeavySprayer on its Capitol Violence page, referring to him as 278-AFO, meaning he was wanted for assault on federal officers.”
  • USA Today: FBI hunting for Jan. 6 riot suspect identified in USA TODAY investigation: “A search was underway in Middlesex County, New Jersey, on Wednesday for Gregory Yetman, who is wanted for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, according to the FBI. Yetman was the subject of a USA TODAY investigation in March that revealed that hundreds of people who could be identified from photos and videos of the riots had not yet been charged or arrested. Many of those people had been identified by volunteer sleuths online and reported to the FBI. USA TODAY verified and sought out some of those people, including Yetman.”

In The States

TEXAS: DOJ report finds that the election website in multiple Texas counties violates the Americans with Disabilities Act

  • CBS News: Justice Department finds multiple Texas county election websites inaccessible to people with disabilities: “The Justice Department has announced its findings that four Texas counties violated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by maintaining election websites that discriminate against people with vision or manual disabilities. In public letters issued to Colorado County, Runnels County, Smith County, and Upton County, the department detailed its findings following its investigation and asked the counties to work with the Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices for the Eastern, Northern, Southern and Western Districts of Texas to resolve the identified civil rights violations. ‘Voting is fundamental to American democracy,’ said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. ‘It is imperative that all eligible voters with disabilities across the country have the information they need to access the ballot and exercise their right to vote in state and federal elections.’”

ARIZONA: Two recently passed Arizona voter suppression laws go to trial

  • AZ Capitol Times: Lawsuit aiming to remove two voting laws calling for more checks debated in trial: “A federal lawsuit seeking to strike down two state voting laws calling for further checks on proof of citizenship and residency went to trial today. The long-running lawsuit includes a long list of voting rights advocacy groups and tribal governments who allege the laws pose concerns of voter suppression and violate federal laws. U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton already struck down provisions of the laws requiring documented proof of citizenship and residence to vote in federal elections and allowing for systematic purges of voter rolls. The questions left for the court to decide cover whether county recorders should be required to further vet, reject and flag state voter registration applications that do not provide ‘satisfactory’ evidence of citizenship. Plaintiffs in the case claim the remaining provisions are discriminatory, place an ‘undue burden’ on the right to vote, tread on due process and make for ‘disparate treatment’ of state and federal voters.”
  • Courthouse News Service: Trial begins over Arizona voter registration laws: “Witnesses on the first of a 10-day Arizona voting rights trial said two recently passed voter registration laws will disproportionately harm Latinos, who make up more than 33% of the state’s population. The trial, scheduled to continue until Nov. 21, stems from four lawsuits concerning the same two voting laws consolidated into a single case against the state of Arizona, the secretary of state, the attorney general, and all 15 county recorders. Plaintiffs include political advocacy groups Mi Familia Vota, Voto Latino, and the Arizona Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander for Equity Coalition, as well as the Tohono O’odham Nation, the Democratic National Committee and others. The challenged laws are House Bill 2492 and House Bill 2243. Passed in 2022, the laws are blocked from taking effect until the conclusion of the trial.”

CALIFORNIA: After a year of controversy, Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters confirms that the county will not hand count this election’s ballots

  • The Sacramento Bee: In Shasta County, a tense special election draws scrutiny from California officials: “There was a time when the two special elections in Shasta County Tuesday would have made scarcely a ripple. The school board race and the contest for three seats in the fire protection district affected fewer than 9,500 voters. But in 2023, there is no such thing as a minor election in this MAGA-charged corner of the rural north state, where many residents believe President Donald Trump was cheated out of a second term in 2020. In a country with more than a little queasiness over the prospect of political violence in 2024, many eyes were on Shasta as a kind of bellwether. Three observers from the California Secretary of State’s office were on hand, along with the president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Recorders, and a hefty police presence. Tensions ran high in downtown Redding because this was the first election since the conspiracist majority on the county’s Board of Supervisors voted earlier this year to scrap its Dominion voting machines, citing baseless charges that the company had a hand in robbing Trump. The board said all ballots going forward would be counted by hand.”
  • The Guardian: Days before the election, far-right officials in California county insist on hand tally: “In Shasta county, California, voters will decide this week on a school board race, the formation of a new fire department and a local tax. What observers in California and across the US are watching most is not what they will choose – but how their votes will be counted. In the past months, Shasta has come to play an outsize role nationally as officials in this rural region of northern California have taken center stage in the election denial movement, which proposes ‘fixes’ like the sole use of manual tallies to enhance ‘election integrity’ based on the lie that the presidency was stolen from Donald Trump. For much of the year, the far-right majority of the Shasta board of supervisors, the county’s five-person governing body, has focused its governing efforts on throwing out voting machines and instituting a hand-count system.”

What Experts Are Saying

Norm Eisen and Samara Angel, on Donald Trump’s civil trial testimony, for MSNBC: “Trump damaged himself not only with his substance but also with his style. He repeatedly evaded questions with various rants, including one in which he alleged that the judge “ruled against me before he knew anything about me. He called me a fraud, and he didn’t know anything about me … The fraud is on the court; not on me.” The former president’s attitude killed what slight chances he had with Judge Engoron. His poor demeanor gives the judge another reason to find that the former president simply was not credible and that he was not honest. All of that is not only fatal to the former president at the trial court level but also on appeal. Appellate courts typically defer to the conclusions of the fact-finder — the trial judge — based upon firsthand observation. Should the judge rule as predicted, this aspect of his decision will be the most difficult to assail on the inevitable appeal of this case. Trump, moreover, created such a circus that the appellate court is likely to be sympathetic to the judge. They can’t allow this kind of behavior in the court system they oversee.”

Andrew Warren, about Donald Trump’s civil trial testimony, on X (Twitter): “Breaking: AG gets Trump to agree that the financial statements and Trump’s personal guaranty were to induce banks to lend money. Key fact for this fraud case.”

Jessica Pishko for Democracy Docket: “Electing diverse sheriffs — especially Black sheriffs in the ex-Confederate states of the South — has a history that dovetails with Reconstruction and the ensuing Redemption, when southern Democrats did their best to erase Black Americans’ hard-won rights. Once Black men could vote in the South, there was a surge in Black local elected officials, sheriffs among them. As historian Eric Foner points out in his book on Reconstruction, sheriffs impacted everyone’s daily lives. Republicans, who at the time opposed chattel slavery, sought the office of sheriffs in order to mete out some measure of justice by arresting white, racist terrorists.”

Harry Litman, about Ivanka Trump’s civil trial testimony, on X (Twitter): “A sharp contrast is evident just in Ivanka’s first few minutes of testimony. Trump, Junior, and Eric are all different versions of sneering frat boy jerks, dripping contempt for the process. She’s answering questions like a grown-up. Of course, she isn’t a defendant.”

Areeba Shah for Salon: “For four hours, the ex-president tested the patience of Justice Arthur Engoron, repeatedly dragging out his answers and spending his time on the stand engaging in a heated back-and-forth with the judge. At times, Engoron even told Trump’s lawyer Chris Kise to ‘control your client’ and threatened to have Trump removed as a witness. ‘The judge was clearly frustrated with his unwillingness to answer the question posed, and instructed him multiple times to answer the question,’ Gregory Germain, Syracuse University law professor, told Salon.”

Headlines

Extremism

Salon: Far-right MAGA theocrats: Most dangerous threat to America

NBC News: How the ‘MAGA’ movement has influenced Idaho conservatives

Trump investigations

Salon: “Defendant stands alone in American history”: Smith filing torches Trump claim, signals new evidence

Reuters: Trump’s free speech defense may fall short in election subversion trial

Washington Examiner: Trump gag order to take center stage in oral arguments this month

January 6 and the 2020 Elections

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Could Georgia’s Trump case help federal DOJ prosecutors?

Newsweek: Donald Trump’s January 6 Choir Comes Back To Haunt Him

Opinion

Washington Post: The Kafkaesque trial of Donald Trump

Newsweek: Could a Mike Johnson Speakership Lead to Another Insurrection?

In the States

MPR News: ‘My voice matters’: Felons vote at polls for first time after voting rights restored

Baltimore Banner: Mayor Scott vetoes City Council’s redistricting plan, likely cementing his own map

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: State Board of Election Commissioners director submits resignation