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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — September 30, 2022

By September 30, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Ginni Thomas Interviewed By January 6 Committee, Repeats Stolen Election Claims 

  • New York Times: Ginni Thomas Denies Discussing Election Subversion Efforts With Her Husband: Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas and a conservative activist who pushed to overturn the 2020 election, told the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that she never discussed those efforts with her husband, during a closed-door interview in which she continued to perpetuate the false claim that the election was stolen. Leaving the interview, which took place at an office building near the Capitol and lasted about four hours, Ms. Thomas smiled in response to reporters’ questions, but declined to answer any publicly. She did, however, answer questions behind closed doors, said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, who added that her testimony could be included in an upcoming hearing. “If there’s something of merit, it will be,” he said. During her interview, Ms. Thomas, who goes by Ginni, repeated her assertion that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Thompson said, a belief she insisted upon in late 2020 as she pressured state legislators and the White House chief of staff to do more to try to invalidate the results. In a statement she read at the beginning of her testimony, Ms. Thomas denied having discussed her postelection activities with her husband.

Judge In Mar-A-Lago Documents Case Rules In Trump’s Favor Again 

  • Washington Post: Judge Rules Trump Lawyers Don’t Have To Clarify Mar-A-Lago Document Claims: Judge Aileen M. Cannon told Donald Trump’s lawyers Thursday that they did not need to comply with an order from special master Raymond J. Dearie and state in a court filing whether they believe FBI agents lied about documents seized from the former president’s Florida residence. Thursday’s ruling was the first clash between Cannon, a Trump appointee who has generally shown the former president deference in litigation over the Mar-a-Lago investigation, and Dearie, a federal judge she appointed as an outside expert in the case, who appears to be far more skeptical of Trump. After Trump’s lawyers requested a special master, Cannon chose Dearie to review approximately 11,000 documents seized Aug. 8 from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence and determine whether any should be shielded from investigators because of attorney-client or executive privilege. An appeals court separately overruled Cannon’s decision that about 100 additional documents that the government says are classified — some of them top-secret — should be part of Dearie’s review.

Election Denial Dominates Secretary Of State Races This November 

  • Bolts: Your Guide to All 35 States Deciding Their Next Secretary of State: In the weeks after his loss in the 2020 election, Donald Trump called the Georgia secretary of state and badgered him to “find” him more votes. Less than two years later, Trump’s infamous plea has morphed into a platform for a slate of Republican secretary of state candidates, who are vowing to bend and break the rules to influence future elections. If they win in November, Trump-endorsed election deniers like Arizona’s Mark Finchem and Michigan’s Kristina Kamaro could seize the reins of election administration in key swing states on agendas built on disproven fraud claims and destabilizing changes like eliminating mail-in voting. But these high-profile candidates are just the tip of the iceberg: 17 Republicans are running for secretary of state—or for governor in states where the governor appoints the secretary—after denying the results of the 2020 election, seeking to overturn them, or refusing to affirm the outcome. A handful of additional Republicans haven’t outright questioned Biden’s win but have still amplified Trump’s false statements about widespread fraud. Trump’s Big Lie, then, is defining the political stakes in most of the 35 states where the secretary of state’s office is on the line, directly or indirectly, in November.

In The States 

GEORGIA: Conservative Activists Push For To Remove Tens Of Thousands From Voter Rolls In Democratic Counties 

  • CNN: Conservative Activists In Georgia Wage Campaign To Purge Voter Rolls Ahead Of November’s Election: One morning in late August, Zach Manifold showed up at his job running the elections office in Gwinnett County, Georgia, to find eight boxes waiting, all filled with documents challenging the eligibility of tens of thousands of people to cast ballots. It was the physical manifestation of a law passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature in 2021, making it explicit that any voter in the state could challenge an unlimited number of fellow Georgians’ voter registrations. Conservative activists have seized on that power to attempt to remove thousands of voters from the rolls with just weeks to go before the October 17 start of in-person early voting in this battleground state. This year’s election in Georgia features a high-stakes rematch race for governor between incumbent Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams. It also has one of the marquee battles for the US Senate, pitting Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock against former NFL star, Herschel Walker, a Republican, the outcome of which could determine which party controls the chamber next year. Ahead of voting starting in those and other races, voter challenges have cropped up in at least nine counties – including Fulton, Cobb and DeKalb in the metro Atlanta area and Chatham, home to Savannah, according to the New Georgia Project, a voting rights group that’s tracking the developments. The group says more than 64,000 voters have been challenged statewide and at least 1,800 voters’ names have been removed from the rolls.

MICHIGAN: Republican-Affiliated Poll Worker Charged With Data Breach During Primary 

  • New York Times: Michigan Poll Worker Charged With Breach; Officials Say Primary Was Sound: A Michigan poll worker in the Aug. 2 primary has been charged with tampering with an election computer at a voting precinct, a breach that those in charge of elections said highlighted the insider threats to the system’s integrity that have proliferated since the 2020 election. While state and local officials emphasized that the breach had no influence on the outcome of the primary election, they said that the equipment involved would no longer be used. The episode happened after the polls closed in Gaines Township, south of Grand Rapids, where a person saw a Republican-affiliated election worker insert a personal USB drive into a special computer known as an electronic poll book, the Kent County Clerk’s office said on Wednesday. Chris Becker, the county prosecutor, identified the poll worker as James Donald Holkeboer. The computer stores voter registration data, including confidential, personally identifying information about all voters in the precinct, but is not connected to any of the tabulation equipment or to the internet, according to Lisa Posthumus Lyons, the county clerk.

What Experts Are Saying

Ryan Goodman, co-editor-in-chief of Just Security and Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, and Clara Apt, Assistant Editor at Just Security: “A central question in the Mar-a-Lago espionage and stolen documents investigation involves former President Donald Trump’s knowledge and involvement in retaining government records. We have compiled a comprehensive account of the publicly available information that addresses that question.” Just Security Tracker: Evidence of Trump’s Knowledge and Involvement in Retaining Mar-a-Lago Documents 

Renato Mariotti, former federal prosecutor, re: U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon’s Mar-A-Lago documents case order on Thursday: “This is a minor win for Trump’s team, because now they don’t have to essentially disavow their dubious claims that the FBI planted evidence. But this doesn’t change the difficult position Trump is in.  He still has to take a position regarding every seized document.” Tweet 

Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “The name of the game is delay. Judge Cannon countermanded Judge Dearie’s streamlined schedule, inserting more delay into the process at every step.” Civil Discourse 

Heather Cox Richardson, American historian: “With the Republican Party controlled by its MAGA members, it is not clear that a Republican-dominated House or Senate would allow the government to pay its bills…In 1879 the congressional fight was a continuation of the themes of the Civil War, played out over the funding of the government. If today’s Republicans retake power in the fall elections, a similar fight in 2023 will likely look much the same.” Letters from an American

Headlines

January 6 And The 2020 Election

HuffPost: Republicans Hail ‘Patriotic’ FBI Agent Who Refused To Work On Jan. 6 Cases

Washington Post: Boris Epshteyn, lawyer to Trump, testifies before Georgia grand jury

Washington Post: Jury seated in Oath Keepers Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy trial

In The States 

Five Thirty Eight: Two Election Deniers Are Facing Very Different Odds In Arizona