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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — September 12, 2023

By September 12, 2023No Comments

Driving the Day

Must Read Stories

Special grand jury in Georgia recommended indictments for 39, including Lindsey Graham, David Perdue, Kelly Loeffler, and Michael Flynn

  • NBC: Grand jury in Georgia Trump case recommended indicting Lindsey Graham, David Perdue, Kelly Loeffler and Michael Flynn: “A Georgia-based special grand jury that initially investigated efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election recommended the indictments of more than three dozen people, including 21 who weren’t charged last month. A report summarizing that special purpose grand jury’s investigation was released Friday after Judge Robert McBurney, who presided over the panel, ordered last week that it be made public. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; former Sens. David Perdue, R-Ga., and Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga.; and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn were among those whom the panel recommended for indictment but were not ultimately charged. Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn was also on the list recommended for indictment.”
  • NPR: Georgia panel recommended prosecutors seek charges against 39 people in Trump case: “A special grand jury that spent eight months investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and others to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results recommended nearly 40 people face criminal charges. In a 9-page report fully unsealed by a judge Friday, the special purpose grand jury told Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis they recommended prosecutors seek indictments against the former president for his Jan. 2, 2021 call with Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where he pressed the state’s top election official to overturn his already-certified defeat. The special panel, which interviewed more than 75 witnesses but did not have the power to issue indictments, found 39 different people allegedly violated more than a dozen state laws including making false statements and writings, solicitation of election fraud and Georgia’s sweeping anti-racketeering law.”

Judge denies Mark Meadows’s bid to shift Georgia case to federal court

  • Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Judge denies Meadows’ bid to move Fulton case to fed court: “A federal judge on Friday rejected a request from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to move his Fulton County election interference case to U.S. District Court in Atlanta. In a 49-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones said Meadows did not meet the legal burden for demonstrating the case should be removed. He remanded it back to Fulton Superior Court. “The Court declines to assume jurisdiction over the State’s criminal prosecution of Meadows,” Jones wrote. His ruling means that the entirety of the 41-count racketeering case that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis brought last month against Meadows, former President Donald Trump and 17 others will stay in Fulton court — at least for now. Meadows’ legal team swiftly filed an appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals late Friday. Meanwhile, four other defendants have also filed for federal removal, and Trump recently indicated he would do the same in the weeks ahead”
  • Washington Post: Mark Meadows’s credibility issue: “A whole lot of Donald Trump associates are now engaged in — or about to be engaged in — a delicate dance. Pushing them in one direction: a desire to extricate themselves from legal jeopardy in the plot to overturn the 2020 election. Pulling them in the other: a need to distance themselves from Trump in order to do so. Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows offered a particularly strained version of that dance last week. The subject most difficult for him appeared to be the fake electors. Meadows’s attempts to minimize his involvement in that effort quickly prompted Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis to call his credibility into question. Willis didn’t accuse Meadows of perjury, but she said in a court filing that he had demonstrated to the judge that he ‘has ample basis not to credit some or all of the defendant’s testimony.’”

Mar-a-Lago IT professional’s role in Trump document case unveiled

  • New York Times: He Was Just the I.T. Guy. Then He Got Caught in the Trump Documents Case: “One day in June of last year, at a time when federal investigators were demanding security footage from former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Yuscil Taveras shared an explosive secret. Mr. Taveras, who ran Mar-a-Lago’s technology department from a cramped work space in the basement of the sprawling Florida property, confided in an office mate that another colleague had just asked him, at Mr. Trump’s request, to delete the footage that investigators were seeking. Mr. Taveras later repeated that story to at least two more colleagues, who in turn shared it with others, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Before long, the story had ricocheted around the grounds of Mr. Trump’s gold-adorned private club and up the chain of command at Trump Tower in Manhattan, prompting Mr. Taveras’s superiors in New York to warn against deleting the tapes.”
  • Newsweek: Donald Trump Co-Defendants Should Be ‘Reevaluating’ Flipping: Attorney: “Lawyers for two defendants in Donald Trump’s classified documents case ought to consider whether their clients should cooperate with investigators after a key witness flipped, according to a legal expert. Former federal prosecutor Michael McAuliffe was reacting to confirmation that Mar-a-Lago IT worker Yuscil Taveras changed his under-oath testimony and provided evidence against Trump, his aide Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira in order to avoid perjury charges. Taveras had previously testified to a special grand jury in March that he was not aware of any attempts by Trump, Nauta, or De Oliveira to delete security footage which had been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors as part of the classified documents case, a claim investigators said they knew was false.”

In The States

TEXAS: Trial over Texas’ sweeping voter suppression law begins

  • Texas Tribune: What’s at stake in the long-awaited trial over Texas’s sweeping 2021 elections law: “Two years after voting rights groups challenged Texas Republicans’ sweeping overhaul of its voting and election laws, the case comes to trial Monday in a federal court in San Antonio. The lengthy roster of plaintiffs will argue certain provisions of the new law made it harder for voters of color to cast ballots, with some alleging the effect was intentional. More than 20 state and national organizations brought a collective five lawsuits against the law, often referred to as Senate Bill 1, that have been consolidated into this case. The groups claim several provisions of the law violate federal laws including the Voting Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act and the First, 14th, and 15th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The trial is expected to go until late October, and U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez may not issue a decision until months later. Experts say it’s unclear and too soon to tell whether a decision will come in time to affect elections and voting in 2024, especially since appeals could draw the process out.”

ARIZONA: More lawsuits filed to decertify Maricopa County results from 2022, just two weeks after the Arizona Supreme Court dismissed a similar lawsuit

  • Arizona Daily Star: Two Kari Lake supporters file new claim seeking to overturn election: “Kari Lake supporters are mounting a new effort to void her loss in the 2022 governor’s race, less than a month after one supporter’s attempt was rebuffed by the Arizona Supreme Court. And the essential elements of the new claim, this one to Maricopa County Superior Court, remain the same as those the state’s high court refused to consider. The supporters’ attorney, Ryan Heath, contends now, as he did then, that it was illegal for Maricopa County to verify signatures on early ballots by comparing them with images from prior early ballots. He argues Arizona law says the only valid comparison has to be with the person’s original voter registration. What he has now that he did not last month is a ruling by Yavapai County Superior Court John Napper in a similar case seemingly agreeing with the argument.”

GEORGIA: Trial on the constitutionality of Georgia’s congressional maps enters its second week, two years after the original lawsuit was filed

  • Georgia Recorder: Challenge to political maps to proceed with state’s claim Black voting power isn’t diluted: “A federal trial that could force state lawmakers to redraw Georgia’s political maps ahead of next year’s election will enter its second week Monday. Five lawsuits have been filed challenging the GOP-drawn maps that came out of a special session in 2021, but this trial features three of them, including challenges from Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the Sixth District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Black voters across the state. So far, the action has centered on the attorneys for the plaintiffs who are trying to show that the maps dilute the Black vote and violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. If Judge Steve C. Jones rules in their favor, state lawmakers could be sent back to draw up new district lines. This week, lawyers representing the state will have a chance to present their defense of the maps, which they acknowledge were designed to protect the Republican majority but say they are fair to Black voters. They have so far framed the legal challenges as a veiled attempt to elect more Democrats, and they say the alternative district lines offered up by the plaintiffs are overly focused on race.”

OHIO: Ohio Supreme Court dismisses legal challenge to the state’s congressional map

  • Associated Press: Ohio will keep GOP-drawn congressional maps in 2024 elections, ending court challenge: “Congressional district maps previously deemed unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court will be used in 2024 after the high court dismissed legal challenges against the Republican-drawn districts on Thursday. The Ohio voting-rights groups that brought forward the challenges moved to dismiss their own lawsuits against the Republican-drawn maps earlier this week, saying the turmoil isn’t in the best interest of Ohio voters. The maps were found to be unconstitutional by the court several times for unfairly favoring Ohio’s GOP. The state’s highest court, which holds a 4-3 Republican majority, dismissed the cases without comment. The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Ohio and others, told the Ohio Supreme Court Tuesday that they are willing to live with the U.S. House map approved March 2, 2022, which was used in last year’s elections.”

What Experts Are Saying

Joyce Vance on X (Twitter): “Lesson of 9/11: take terrorists who let you know they’re taking aim at your country seriously. Doesn’t matter if the threat is foreign or domestic.”

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, on the impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, for the Wall Street Journal: “Texans need a conclusive resolution to the serious allegations raised by this impeachment. We’ve come this far in the process, and it’s critical that the Senate sees it through to the end. That means a fair trial that allows both sides to lay out all the facts and gives senators the opportunity to vote based on the evidence. All who swear an oath to serve must understand they will be held to the highest standard of integrity—particularly if they serve as a state’s top law-enforcement official. Texans can show the rest of the country that the rule of law applies to both political parties.”

National Security Attorney Bradley Moss on X (Twitter): “For those asking why certain individuals listed by the special grand jury were not indicted by Willis, bear in mind the following: 1) murky constitutional issues tied to Members of Congress due to their role under the Electoral Count Act; 2) some people, particularly fake electors, might have made cooperation deals with Willis; 3) some people might have been viewed as more helpful simply as material fact witnesses than as criminal co-defendants.”

Andrew Weissman on MSNBC’s “The Last Word”: “This is the second time, not the first, that Jim Jordan has tried to interfere with state criminal prosecutions brought by separate sovereign states. One was in New York, where he sent the same kind of letter to Alvin Bragg, the D.A. there, that he sent to Fani Willis. And the tone of the two letters is certainly different, but the strength of the case on substance, in terms of what Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis laid out, is identical. They really go to town on all of the ways that Jordan’s request here is not just improper but is really interfering with the criminal justice system.”

Dennis Aftergut and Austin Sarat for Salon: “Both the national and Wisconsin MAGA strategies also seek to undermine public trust in government and in the critical checks and balances that restrain political power. The more disillusioned citizens become with politics — ‘Both sides do it, I’m throwing up my hands!’ — the more power can be wielded by those with their hands on the controls.”

Headlines

Trump Investigations

Washington Post: A reminder of how one juror could save Trump

New York Times: Seeking Link to Trump, Prosecutors Questioned Proud Boys Leader

Slate: E. Jean Carroll Has Already Won a Second Trial Against Trump

January 6 and the 2020 Elections

Washington Post: No, most Americans don’t think that the 2020 election was stolen

New York Times: ‘Zip Tie Guy’ and His Mother Get Prison Terms in Jan. 6 Riot

NBC: ‘Gas Hat’ Jan. 6 rioter who first breached Capitol tunnel entrance arrested by FBI

New York Times: Jan. 6 shattered her family. Now they’re trying to forgive

Opinion

New York Times: A Breathtaking Contempt for the People of Wisconsin

Washington Post: The political perils of using the 14th Amendment on Trump

New York Times: I Watched a Democracy Die. I Don’t Want to Do It Again

The Hill: Alabama’s not the only state that’s drawing up racist voting maps

Washington Post: Mark Meadows’s failed removal spells trouble for Trump’s defense

New York Times: Wisconsin Republicans Try to Subvert Democracy, Again

In the States

The Guardian: The states where it’s impossible to vote if you have a felony conviction

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Changes in Pa. voting laws needed to avoid 2020 rerun, report says

The Guardian: Republicans threaten to impeach newly elected Wisconsin supreme court judge