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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — September 20, 2022

By September 20, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Newly Released Video Shows Trump Allies Spent Hours In Restricted Area And Handled Georgia Voting Equipment 

  • New York Times: Videos Show Trump Allies Handling Georgia Voting Equipment: Newly released videos show allies of former President Donald J. Trump and contractors who were working on his behalf handling sensitive voting equipment in a rural Georgia county weeks after the 2020 election. The footage, which was made public as part of long-running litigation over Georgia’s voting system, raises new questions about efforts by Trump affiliates in a number of swing states to gain access to and copy sensitive election software, with the help of friendly local election administrators. One such incident took place on Jan. 7 of last year, the day after supporters of Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol, when a small team traveled to rural Coffee County, Ga. The group included members of an Atlanta-based firm called SullivanStrickler, which had been hired by Sidney Powell, a lawyer advising Mr. Trump who is also a conspiracy theorist. “We are on our way to Coffee County, Ga., to collect what we can from the election/voting machines and systems,” one of the company’s executives, Paul Maggio, wrote Ms. Powell on that January morning. Weeks later, Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area Trump supporter and bail bondsman who also traveled to Coffee County, said “we scanned every freaking ballot” in a recorded phone conversation.
  • Washington Post: Video Appears To Undercut Trump Elector’s Account Of Alleged Voting-Data Breach In Georgia: On Jan. 7, 2021, a group of forensics experts working for lawyers allied with President Donald Trump spent eight hours at a county elections office in southern Georgia, copying sensitive software and data from its voting machines. Under questioning last month for a civil lawsuit, a former Georgia Republican Party official named Cathy Latham said in sworn testimony that she briefly stopped by the office in Coffee County that afternoon. She said she stayed in the foyer and spoke with a junior official about an unrelated matter at the front desk. “I didn’t go into the office,” Latham said, according to a transcript of her deposition filed in court. She said she had seen in passing a pro-Trump businessman who was working with the experts. She said they chatted for “five minutes at most” — she could not remember the topic — and she left soon after for an early dinner with her husband.Surveillance video footage reviewed by The Washington Post shows that Latham visited the elections office twice that day, staying for more than four hours in total. She greeted the businessman, Scott Hall, when he arrived and led him into a back area to meet the experts and local officials, the video shows. Over the course of the day, it shows, she moved in and out of an area where the experts from the data forensics firm, SullivanStrickler, were working, a part of that building that was not visible to the surveillance camera. She took a selfie with one of the forensics experts before heading out at 6:19 p.m. A Post examination found that elements of the account Latham gave in her deposition on the events of Jan. 6 and 7, 2021, appear to diverge from the footage and other evidence, including depositions and text messages.

In Mar A Lago Case Trump Attorneys Resist Special Master’s Request To Disclose Which Documents He Claims To Have Classified

  • NBC: Trump Attorneys Don’t Want To Disclose Which Mar-A-Lago Documents He Claims To Have Declassified: Donald Trump’s attorneys said in a filing Monday night that they don’t want to disclose to a court-appointed special master which Mar-a-Lago documents they assert the former president may or may not have declassified. In a four-page letter to the special master, Trump’s attorneys pushed back against Senior U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie’s apparent proposal that they submit “specific information regarding declassification” to him in the course of his review. Dearie issued an order Friday summoning both parties to the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, for a preliminary conference Tuesday. Trump’s attorneys have claimed that until or unless they decide to fight the FBI search warrant or if they decide to offer it as a defense following any potential indictment, they shouldn’t have to disclose details about declassification that would also be shared with the Justice Department.
  • Politico: Trump Discovers He’s Not In Cannon-Land Anymore: Donald Trump put the Justice Department on its heels, courtesy of a single federal judge who gave him the benefit of almost every doubt as he fought against the FBI’s probe of documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate. Now, his team of lawyers is preparing to test whether they can replicate their fortune in front of a potentially more skeptical audience. And the first indication, offered in a filing on Monday night, suggests a tougher road ahead. 

Independent Voters Repelled By GOP Embrace Of Election Conspiracy Theories And Extreme Positions 

  • Associated Press: GOP’s Election-Year Standing With Independents At Risk: Sarah Motiff has voted for Sen. Ron Johnson every time his name appeared on the ballot, starting in 2010 when the Wisconsin Republican was first elected as part of the tea party wave. Fond of his tough views on spending, she began the year planning to support his reelection again. She became skeptical this summer as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection reported his office discussed giving then-Vice President Mike Pence certificates with fake presidential electors for Donald Trump from Wisconsin and Michigan, part of a broader push to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. Johnson has downplayed the effort and the certificates were never given to Pence, but Motiff, a political independent, wasn’t convinced. “I’m not going to lie when I say I’ve had some concerns about some of the reports that have come out,” the 52-year-old nonpartisan city councilwoman from Columbus, Wisconsin, said. “It just put a bad taste in my mouth.” Nudged further by the June U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, Motiff is opposing Johnson and supports his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, in one of the most fiercely-contested Senate races this year. “Which was really a hard decision for me because I do think he’s done good things in the past,” Motiff said of Johnson. “But this is pretty damaging.” Motiff’s evolution represents the challenge for Republicans emerging from a tumultuous summer, defined by the court decision, high-profile hearings on former President Donald Trump’s actions during the insurrection and intensifying legal scrutiny of his handling of classified information and efforts to overturn the election. Now, a midterm campaign that the GOP hoped would be a referendum on President Joe Biden and the economy is at risk of becoming a comparison of the two parties, putting Republicans in an unexpectedly defensive position.

In The States 

WISCONSIN: Fired GOP Vote Investigator Attorney Michael Gableman Is Defending A Conservative Activist Charged With Voter Fraud 

  • Wisconsin State Journal: Michael Gableman Back On Familiar Ground: Election Fraud: The man accused of using the identities of two other people to obtain their absentee ballots was in Racine County Circuit Court on Monday with some high-profile legal counsel. Michael Gableman is the former justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court who was hired by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos last year to investigate alleged irregularities in the 2020 presidential election — a post he was fired from in mid-August. Gableman had endorsed the conservative challenger to Vos, Adam Steen, in a contentious Aug. 9 primary election that Vos narrowly won, after which Vos called Gableman “an embarrassment to the state.” Despite claims to the contrary, Gableman found no evidence of widespread election fraud that could have swung the 2020 presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor. Multiple recounts and studies have affirmed Joe Biden won Wisconsin by a margin of more than 20,000 votes in 2020. Gableman appeared in court Monday on behalf of Harry Wait, 66, who is charged with two felony counts of misappropriating identification information and two misdemeanor counts of election fraud concerning absentee ballots. Wait admitted he requested the absentee ballots of Mayor Cory Mason and Vos. He alleges his intent was not to commit a crime, but to show how easy it was to get someone else’s ballot.

What Experts Are Saying

Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law: “Trump’s overt embrace of Qanon, a delusional and armed terrorist movement, is a terrifying sign that he is desperate and, realizing he will be indicted, is preparing to wage open war on the United States of America. It’s a testament to our tolerance that he isn’t under arrest.” Tweet 

  1. Kenny Fountain, associate professor focused on rhetoric and conspiracy thinking at the University of Virginia: “Trump’s tactics need not be exclusively Q-related to be disturbing. Very short [thread] on that video from Trump’s Ohio rally yesterday & the growing QAnon & spirituality intersection.” Twitter

Lila Hassan, New York-based investigative journalist who focuses on extremism, human rights, and immigration: “The Trace reviewed their campaign platforms, public appearances, posts on fringe websites and social media, analyzed engagement with their supporters, followed their newsletters, and closely tracked right-wing events and media. We found that their rhetoric mixes Christian nationalism with armed rebellion — presenting a threat that extremism experts do not take lightly. The groups that participate most in these spaces, which include The Proud Boys, Stop the Steal, and Christian nationalists, draw attention to a stew of political issues including supposed election fraud, abortion, school curricula, and COVID-19 restrictions.” The Trace: As Midterms Loom, Right Wingers Are Revving Up the Faithful with Talk of Religion and Guns

Democracy Docket: “New analysis by Democracy Docket reveals a steep jump in voting and election lawsuits filed by Republican-affiliated groups so far this year when compared to 2021. Democracy Docket is the leading platform dedicated to covering and tracking democracy-related activity in the courts and has a comprehensive database of nearly 400 democracy-related lawsuits filed since 2020.” Democracy Docket: GOP Anti-Voting Lawsuits Increase Nearly Five-Fold in 2022

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

Daily Beast: Congress Blows Its Shot to Stop Trump’s ‘Deep State’ Revenge

Fox News: 2024 Watch: Pompeo to accuse Biden of treating Americans ‘like enemies’ in high-profile New Hampshire speech

Minnesota Public Radio: Lindell must face Smartmatic defamation claims, federal judge in St. Paul rules

The Nation: The Coup Next Time

Politico: The Cheney 2024 conundrum

Politico: Congress’ latest House-Senate wrangle: Preventing the next Jan. 6

Washington Post: The House’s long-awaited electoral reform bill is ready. Can it pass?

Washington Post (Analysis): Trump asks QAnon to stand back and stand by

Washington Post (Analysis): What an election denier could do if elected secretary of state

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Axios: Report blames social media for boosting stolen-election lies

Other Trump Investigations 

New York Times: Trump Was Warned Late Last Year of Potential Legal Peril Over Documents

Politico: How Judge Cannon broke with conservatives in Trump documents case

Reuters: Trump may be called to testify at ally’s foreign agent trial, judge says

Opinion

New York Times (Jamelle Bouie): Glenn Youngkin Is Playing a Dangerous Game

Washington Post (Greg Sargent): Trump’s unhinged rage in Ohio shows the danger of a GOP Congress

Washington Post (Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman): The Democratic plan to avert a 2024 Trump coup quietly advance

In The States 

Atlanta Journal Constitution: Trump eyeing Georgia rally after Warnock-Walker debate