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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — September 14, 2022

By September 14, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Far Right Election Denying Candidates Sweep Federal Primaries In New Hampshire 

  • CNN: Trump-Aligned Candidate Triumphs In New Hampshire Senate Primary: New Hampshire state Senate President Chuck Morse conceded the Republican Senate primary Wednesday morning to Don Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general and election denier who has embraced former President Donald Trump’s approach to politics — a letdown for the GOP establishment in the race to take on Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. Bolduc joins a list of candidates national Republicans worry won’t be able to appeal to the broader November electorate. The race was the final puzzle piece as 2022’s primary calendar wrapped up, with the eight-week sprint to November’s midterm elections now underway. New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware held their primaries Tuesday. […] Bolduc aligned himself closely with Trump. He said he “concurred with Trump’s assessment” about the 2020 election — that is, Trump’s lie that President Joe Biden’s victory came as a result of widespread fraud. “I signed a letter with 120 other generals and admirals saying Trump won the election, and damn it, I stand by” that letter, Bolduc said in an August primary debate. Bolduc has also called Sununu, the Republican governor who national figures attempted to recruit into the race, “a Chinese communist sympathizer.” He has said he would repeal the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which requires states to directly elect their senators, and raised the prospect of abolishing the FBI.
  • New York Times: Leavitt Upsets Mowers, Winning New Hampshire House G.O.P. Primary: Karoline Leavitt, a 25-year-old hard-right Republican who served as an assistant in President Donald J. Trump’s White House press office, won her party’s nomination on Tuesday for New Hampshire’s First Congressional District, according to The Associated Press. The race had devolved into a nasty battle with Matt Mowers, a former Trump administration colleague, over who carried the mantle of Trumpism. “Unfortunately, tonight’s results did not go our way,” Mr. Mowers wrote in a concession statement on Twitter at 11:25 p.m. Ms. Leavitt’s upset victory means she will face off in November against Representative Chris Pappas, a two-term Democratic congressman representing the highly competitive district in the eastern and southern parts of the state. Mr. Pappas is one of the most vulnerable Democrats this cycle, with his re-election race considered a tossup. If she wins, Ms. Leavitt would be among the youngest people ever elected to Congress. The Constitution requires House members to be at least 25 years old to serve. Ms. Leavitt turned 25 last month. Ms. Leavitt defeated Mr. Mowers, 33, a veteran of Mr. Trump’s State Department and of his 2016 campaign, who entered the race a year ago as the presumed Republican front-runner and benefited from an infusion of cash from an outside PAC aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican from California and minority leader, who is campaigning to become speaker. The candidates have few discernible differences on policy, and the race ultimately turned less on any ideological divide than on style and tone. It divided the House Republican leadership, exposing lingering rifts inside the party over Mr. Trump’s influence. Ms. Leavitt, who adopted Mr. Trump’s brash style and taste for inflammatory statements, was backed by a host of hard-right Republicans in Congress, most notably Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 Republican, who has also styled herself in the former president’s image. In her campaign, Ms. Leavitt unequivocally repeated Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

New Report Details Election Denying Candidates On The Ballot For Key State Positions In 27 States 

  • NBC: Election Deniers Advanced To November Ballots In 27 States, Report Finds: Candidates who deny the results of the 2020 election have advanced to November ballots in statewide races for positions that will oversee, defend or certify elections in more than half of the states, according to a nonpartisan group tracking the races. In the races in 27 states for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, at least one election-denying candidate will be on the ballot who has echoed former President Donald Trump’s continuing false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, according to a report to be published by States United Action, which has closely tracked the progress of election deniers throughout the 2022 primary season. NBC News obtained the report ahead of its release this week.  Many of the general election contests will be competitive races in critical battleground states — among them Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Michigan — whose outcomes could have enormous impacts on the results of the next presidential election in those states.

DOJ’s January 6 Investigation Now Touches Every Aspect Of Trump’s Plot To Overturn The Election, But Charging Decisions May Not Be Imminent 

  • CNN: Justice Department Criminal Investigation Now Touches Nearly All Efforts To Overturn 2020 Election For Trump: Justice Department criminal prosecutors are now examining nearly every aspect of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — including the fraudulent electors plot, efforts to push baseless election fraud claims and how money flowed to support these various efforts — according to sources and copies of new subpoenas obtained by CNN. The investigation is also stretching into cogs of the sprawling Trump legal machine that boosted his efforts to challenge his electoral loss — with many of the recipients of 30-plus subpoenas that were issued in recent days being asked to turn over communications with several Trump attorneys. The sweeping effort has many in Trump world concerned about the potential legal significance of being caught up in a federal investigation.
  • New York Times: After a Wave of Subpoenas, Notes of Caution About the Jan. 6 Investigation: From outside the walls of the Justice Department, the sprawling investigation into efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election seems only to be accelerating, with prosecutors last week subpoenaing about 40 associates of former President Donald J. Trump and seizing phones from at least two of his aides. But that flurry of activity should not be mistaken for a signal that Mr. Trump will imminently be prosecuted for his attempts to remain in office or the impact that those actions had on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to two people familiar with the investigation. They noted that prosecutors are still going through evidence and are far from determining whether any charges could be brought against the former president. The notes of caution appear to reflect the complexity of the investigation, the methodical pace at which the Justice Department conducts its work and the politically explosive nature of an inquiry involving a former president and likely presidential candidate. They also stand in contrast to signals emanating from the narrower investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of government records and sensitive intelligence information, including possible obstruction charges.

One Of America’s Top Election Conspiracy Theorists Served With A Search Warrant For His Cell Phone At A Minnesota Hardees 

  • New York Times: MyPillow’s Mike Lindell Is Served Search Warrant: Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of 2020 election misinformation, was served with a search warrant, and his cellphone was seized, by F.B.I. agents who questioned him about his ties to a Colorado county clerk who is accused of tampering with voting machines, Mr. Lindell said. Tina Peters, the county clerk in Mesa County, Colo., is under indictment on state charges related to a scheme to download data from election equipment after the 2020 presidential contest. Ms. Peters has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The search is a sign that a federal investigation into Ms. Peters has reached a prominent figure in the national movement to investigate and overturn the 2020 election. Mr. Lindell, the chief executive and founder of MyPillow, is a major promoter of debunked theories that keep alive the false notion that the election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump.

In The States 

NEW YORK:  GOP Elections Commissioner Arrested By FBI In Ballot Fraud Scheme 

  • Albany Times-Union: Rensselaer County’s Republican Elections Commissioner Arrested by FBI: Jason T. Schofield, the Republican Rensselaer County Board of Elections commissioner, was arrested outside his residence Tuesday morning by the FBI and charged with fraudulently obtaining and filing absentee ballots last year using the personal information of at least eight voters without their permission, according to an indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court. The indictment handed up last week — and unsealed Tuesday during his arraignment — charges Schofield with 12 felony counts of unlawful possession and use of a means of identification.

PENNSYLVANIA:  Election Denying Groups Seek To Stop Use Of Electronic Voting Machines In At Least 16 Counties 

  • Pittsburgh Post Gazette: Election-Denying ‘patriot’ Groups Are Trying To Stop The Use Of Electronic Voting Machines Across Pa.: Across Pennsylvania, conservative activists are trying to stop the usage of electronic voting machines at the behest of former President Donald Trump and his allies who continue to claim without proof the 2020 election was stolen.  Activists began collecting signatures to get a referendum question on the November ballot to stop the use of electronic voting machines, following a directive from Mr. Trump and his top supporters, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and former Army intelligence officer Seth Keshel, who have made careers traveling the country to spread false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Now, these “patriot” groups have organized ballot referendum efforts in at least 16 counties, including Butler and Washington. “That’s what we have to do to save our country,” Mr. Lindell said in a pre-recorded message played at Mr. Trump’s rally in Wilkes-Barre on Sept. 3.

What Experts Are Saying

Robb Willer, professor of sociology, psychology and organizational behavior and the director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab at Stanford University, and Jan Voelkel, PhD candidate in sociology at Stanford University: “What worked to increase Americans’ commitment to democracy?

One of the most effective approaches showed respondents vivid images of societal instability and violence after democratic collapse in several countries, including Venezuela and Zimbabwe, before culminating in footage of the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, with narration highlighting the potential for democratic failure in the United States. The success of this approach — which on average reduced support for undemocratic candidates by 4.5 points on a 100-point scale — suggests that Americans simply aren’t imagining what might happen to their own society if democracy were to fail.” Washington Post (Monkey Cage): Here’s what persuades Americans to support democracy over party 

Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket (Video): “Republicans are intentionally overwhelming election offices with frivolous requests and mass challenges against thousands of voters, diverting resources when election workers should be focused on preparing for the midterms.  This is not an accident. This is part of the plan.” Tweet 

Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney, re: Trump’s Save America PAC: “Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney, points out that a Justice Department investigation into this scheme would likely build on what the Jan. 6 committee learned. Federal prosecutors have likely collected much of the same documentation. If so, McQuade says, it might implicate something such as wire fraud, which requires use of electronic communications. ‘Proving a fraud can sometimes be a fairly easy task,’ McQuade told me. ‘All you need to show is that people raised money by representing one set of facts, while knowing that those facts were false.’ McQuade characterized how these charges might look: ‘They said the election was stolen because they wanted to get people riled up and extract money from them.’ An alternate falsehood, McQuade said, might be that the cash was raised with the promise of fighting the ‘stolen’  election but was funneled to other purposes.” Washington Post 

Patrick Iber, associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, re: considerations of the 1930s and democratic reform today: “FDR just had very large majorities! So whether this is possible today is really going to depend on uniting left, center-left, and center around a democracy-protection agenda. Everybody’s got some work to do” Tweet 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

CNN: States pass new laws to protect election workers amid ongoing threats

Vice: Trump’s Not Even Pretending to Hide His Support for QAnon Any More

Washington Post (Analysis): Here’s what persuades Americans to support democracy over party

January 6 And The 2020 Election

The Atlantic: How Memes Led to an Insurrection

The Hill: Judge rejects Navarro request to investigate contempt charge

The Independent: Trump phones mother of shot Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt: ‘It’s a terrible thing that has happened’

Politico: Jan. 6 panel weighs new DOJ cooperation after Trump world subpoenas

USA Today: House hearings about the Capitol attack on Jan. 6 could resume Sept. 28, chairman says

Washington Post: 4 convicted in Jan. 6 Capitol west terrace tunnel attacks on police

Other Trump Investigations 

New York Times: Durham Inquiry Appears to Wind Down as Grand Jury Expires

NBC: ‘Irreparable harm’: Justice Department warns against further delay in Trump documents probe

Political Violence

Harrisburg Patriot-News: Pa. man wearing rainbow wig, ‘working to restore Trump to President King,’ arrested after carrying loaded gun into a Dairy Queen

In The States 

Miami Herald: Florida sees sharp rise in white power, anti-Semitic incidents, report finds