Driving the Day:
254 Republicans have either said the 2020 election was stolen or cast doubt on its legitimacy, including 185 current governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general or US Senate and House members, many of whom are seeking re-election this year. https://t.co/1mbeo3rtFI
— Defend Democracy Project (@DemocracyNowUS) September 7, 2022
Must Read Stories
Judge Bars New Mexico County Official From Public Office Because Of His Participation In January 6 Riot
- Bloomberg: ‘Cowboys for Trump’ Founder Tossed From Elected Office Over Jan. 6: A state judge in New Mexico on Tuesday ordered Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin removed from his position as an Otero County Commissioner and permanently disqualified from holding elective office for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. Griffin, who was convicted of a misdemeanor crime earlier this year for illegally being at the Capitol, is the first person associated with the Jan. 6 insurrection to be kicked out of office under the US Constitution. It’s the first time since 1869 that any official has been removed under what’s known as the “Disqualification Clause” of the Constitution, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group involved in suing for Griffin’s removal.
Hundreds Of Election Deniers Will Appear On The Ballot This Fall
- Bloomberg: The Real Winner of GOP’s 2022 Primaries Was Denial of 2020 Election: Candidates who insist that Donald Trump was robbed of victory in 2020 were nominated by Republican voters for key positions in the five states most likely to determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential race, setting them up for jobs where they could throw the election into chaos. Nominees for governor in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as those for secretary of state in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada, pose an especially big risk for disruption because of the outsize role those battleground states play in determining the Electoral College victor. If these contenders win in November, they could upset the 2024 election by refusing to allow certain voting machines to be used, forcing large groups of voters to re-register, making it harder to vote by mail or, in a worst-case scenario, declining to certify an election result. Some have already promised they would take these actions. They are among a group of 254 Republicans Bloomberg News has identified who have either said the 2020 election was stolen or cast doubt on its legitimacy, including 185 current governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general or US Senate and House members, many of whom are seeking re-election this year, and 69 additional nominees.
- Five Thirty Eight: More Than 1 In 2 Americans Will Have An Election Denier On The Ballot This Fall: From the Carolinas to California, Montana to Florida, election denialism has spread across the country. Candidates who support former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen will appear on ballots in nearly every state this fall. FiveThirtyEight drew on news reports, debate footage, campaign materials and social media and reached out to every single Republican nominee for the House, Senate, governor, secretary of state and attorney general to determine their position on the 2020 election. There are a lot of election deniers on the ballot. Out of 529 total Republican nominees running for office, we found 195 who FULLY DENIED the legitimacy of the 2020 election. These candidates either clearly stated that the election was stolen from Trump or took legal action to overturn the results, such as voting not to certify election results or joining lawsuits that sought to overturn the election. Moreover, an additional 61 candidates RAISED QUESTIONS around the results of the 2020 election. These candidates haven’t gone so far as to say explicitly that the election was stolen or take legal action to overturn it. However, they haven’t said the election was legitimate either. In fact, they have raised doubts about potential fraud.
Trump Backers And Conspiracy Theorists Repeatedly Visited Georgia County Office At The Center Of Criminal Probe Of Election Tampering
- Washington Post: Election Deniers Repeatedly Visited Ga. County Office At Center Of Criminal Probe, Video Shows: Technology consultants who sought evidence that Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat was fraudulent made multiple visits to a county elections office in rural Georgia in the weeks after an alleged post-election breach of voting equipment there that is the subject of a criminal investigation. Surveillance video reviewed by The Washington Post shows that the consultants, Doug Logan and Jeffrey Lenberg, made two visits in January 2021 to the elections office in Coffee County, about 200 miles south of Atlanta. Lenberg made an additional five visits on his own. The two men are under investigation for separate alleged breaches of voting machines in Michigan. The footage also shows that earlier in January, Cathy Latham, a teacher and then-chairwoman of the county Republican Party, greeted a group of outside data forensics experts when they arrived at the elections office shortly before noon on the day of the alleged breach. Latham has said in sworn testimony that she taught a full day of school that day and visited the elections office briefly after classes ended. She was one of 16 Republicans who signed certificates declaring Trump the rightful winner of the 2020 election as part of the “fake elector” scheme now under investigation by federal and state prosecutors. The new video adds to the picture of the alleged breach in Coffee County on Jan. 7, 2021, and reveals for the first time the later visits by Logan and Lenberg. It also provides further indications of links between various efforts to overturn the election, including what once appeared to be disparate attempts to access and copy election system data in the wake of Trump’s loss.
- Atlanta Journal Constitution: Video Shows Fake Trump Elector Aided Copying Of Georgia Election Data: Security camera video made public Tuesday shows that a phony elector who tried to reverse the results of the last presidential election escorted a group of computer experts into the elections office in Coffee County, where they copied confidential software and files in January 2021. The video also reveals later visits to the county elections office by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, who led a controversial Republican ballot review in Arizona after the 2020 presidential election, and Jeff Lenberg, a computer security consultant who analyzed voting equipment in Michigan and New Mexico. The recording is the latest evidence of an effort by supporters of former President Donald Trump to take sensitive data from voting equipment manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems in several states. Previously disclosed documents indicated that Trump attorney Sidney Powell paid Atlanta tech firm SullivanStrickler for the data extraction.
Material On Foreign Nations’ Nuclear Capabilities Was Among Documents Seized at Mar-A-Lago
- Washington Post: Material On Foreign Nation’s Nuclear Capabilities Seized At Trump’s Mar-A-Lago: A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about classified material stashed in the Florida property. Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special-access programs, according to people familiar with the search, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive details of an ongoing investigation. Documents about such highly classified operations require special clearances on a need-to-know basis, not just top-secret clearance. Some special-access programs can have as few as a couple dozen government personnel authorized to know of an operation’s existence. Records that deal with such programs are kept under lock and key, almost always in a secure compartmented information facility, with a designated control officer to keep careful tabs on their location. But such documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago, with uncertain security, more than 18 months after Trump left the White House.
In The States
MASSACHUSETTS: Trump-Backed Election Denier Wins GOP Nomination For Governor
- Politico: Trump-Endorsed Diehl To Face Democrat Healey For Massachusetts Governor: The race for governor in deep-blue Massachusetts is set to be a referendum on former President Donald Trump. Trump-backed former state Rep. Geoff Diehl has clinched the Republican nomination for governor, setting up a clash between the conservative and Democrat Maura Healey, the state attorney general who burnished her profile by repeatedly suing the Trump administration. Healey, who sailed through an uncontested primary after her last rival dropped out in June, is the overwhelming favorite to win in November — and one of Democrats’ two best hopes in the country to flip a governorship this fall. While the former president’s endorsement played well with an increasingly pro-Trump Republican base, boosting Diehl over political newcomer Chris Doughty in the GOP primary, it’s poised to be a hindrance for Diehl in a general election. Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly rejected Trump and his brand of Republicanism in both of his presidential bids. Trump endorsed Diehl to settle a score with popular Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who opted not to run for a third term. After initially veering away from Trump when he launched his campaign, Diehl embraced the former president and his rhetoric. He brought in Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, as a senior adviser, and he campaigned over the summer with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Trump ally. And he has falsely claimed the 2020 election was “rigged.”
MICHIGAN: Clerk Who Handed Over Tabulator To Election Denier Group Sues To Decertify 2020 Election
- Detroit News: Michigan Clerk Who Handed Over Tabulator Sues To Decertify 2020 Election: A Michigan clerk who allegedly gave a township tabulator to a group advancing unproven claims of fraud in Michigan’s 2020 presidential election has joined a lawsuit to decertify the results, according to court documents. Sharon Olson, the clerk in Barry County’s Irving Township, was one of six plaintiffs in a suit filed Friday in federal court in Michigan’s Western District. The other plaintiffs included the Macomb County Republican Party, U.S. Taxpayers Party candidate for governor Donna Brandenburg of Byron Center and a nonprofit called the Election Integrity Fund and Force. They asked the court to order Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson “work together to rerun the Michigan 2020 presidential election as soon as possible.” A past suit in federal court to overturn the results of Michigan’s presidential election failed with Eastern District Judge Linda Parker labeling it “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.”
MISSOURI: Missouri AG Files Radical Brief Supporting “Independent State Legislature” Doctrine
- Missouri Independent: Missouri Secretary Of State Throws Support Behind Controversial Election Theory: Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has lined up behind a U.S. Supreme Court case legal experts believe could radically reshape how federal elections are conducted by handing more power to state legislatures and blocking state courts from intervening. Ashcroft announced last week that his office had filed an amicus brief in support of Republicans in North Carolina who are asking the nation’s highest court to restore a Congressional map that was rejected as a partisan gerrymander by that state’s Supreme Court. The North Carolina Republicans argue the state court had no authority to throw out the map under the so-called independent state legislature doctrine. “Secretary Ashcroft is the first elected official to file an amicus brief in the US Supreme Court in support of state legislatures in historic elections case,” the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office tweeted last week. The independent state legislature doctrine would give state lawmakers the power to set election rules and draw congressional maps without any review by state courts. Some legal experts contend the doctrine could also be interpreted as allowing a legislature to refuse to certify the results of a presidential election and instead select its own slate of electors.
What Experts Are Saying
Noah Bookbinder, director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, re: Couy Griffin being removed from office under the 14th Amendment: “This just went from being theoretical to being something that is legally recognized and legally possible…That’s hugely significant. It could have real implications for protecting the country from people associated with the effort to overturn the last election.” New York Times
Nancy MacLean, American historian at Duke University: “[W]e do not yet have accountability at the highest levels for the events of January 6 and the ongoing criminal conspiracy against our country that has been more than demonstrated by the House Select Committee to investigate the events of January 6. And the problem is that if you don’t have accountability, those acts become normalized, and the people who engage in them become emboldened to become more aggressive, more violent, more threatening. And I think, you know, something that Biden said at the very top of his remarks is extremely important, that so much that has happened in recent years, and certainly in the last year, is not normal. And the problem that I see as an educator is that there are young people growing up who have known nothing else but this moment. And there are many of us who have been so bruised by the pandemic and inured by years of this Trump rhetoric and aggression, and that coming from his followers, that we can start to think that this is how a normal democracy functions. But it is not. The United States has slipped radically down the scale of healthy democracies.” Democracy Now!
Joyce Vance, former US attorney, re: Washington Post reporting that material on foreign nation’s nuclear capabilities were seized through search warrant at Mar-A-Lago: “1/2 Trump’s damage to our national security includes relationship damage with friendly countries we work with & rely on the gather intelligence. If they believe it’s no longer safe to work with us, we are in a much less secure position. & why wouldn’t…2/2 think that with this? Compromising sources & methods of collection leads to long term damage to our security, compliments of the guy who blathered about making America great again.” Tweet | Tweet
Paul Rosenzweig, a former homeland security official in the George W. Bush administration and prosecutor in the independent counsel investigation of Bill Clinton: “said it was egregious to block the Justice Department from steps like asking witnesses about government files, many marked as classified, that agents had already reviewed. ‘This would seem to me to be a genuinely unprecedented decision by a judge,’ Mr. Rosenzweig said. ‘Enjoining the ongoing criminal investigation is simply untenable.’” New York Times
Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., a Harvard Law School professor: “said anyone targeted by a search warrant fears reputational harm, but that does not mean they can get special masters appointed. He called Judge Cannon’s reasoning ‘thin at best’ and giving ‘undue weight’ to the fact that Mr. Trump is a former president. ‘I find that deeply problematic,’ he said, emphasizing that the criminal justice system was supposed to treat everyone equally. ‘This court is giving special considerations to the former president that ordinary, everyday citizens do not receive.’” New York Times
Samuel W. Buell, a Duke University law professor: “‘To any lawyer with serious federal criminal court experience who is being honest, this ruling is laughably bad, and the written justification is even flimsier,’ he wrote in an email. ‘Donald Trump is getting something no one else ever gets in federal court, he’s getting it for no good reason, and it will not in the slightest reduce the ongoing howls that he is being persecuted, when he is being privileged.’” New York Times
Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington: “Biden understands now—as FDR understood in 1940—that imminent threats to democracy require a broad-based coalition politics, a kind of ‘democratic united front’ that gives pride of place to the defense of democratic procedures and the rule of law and places a temporary hold on more ambitious social and economic reforms. But he also understands that ‘delivering’ for the citizenry is an essential dimension of democratic self-defense, and that the promise of a more just, social democracy should always be kept alive.” Common Dreams
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
Associated Press: Elected officials, police chiefs on leaked Oath Keepers list
New York Times: Cameras, Plexiglass, Fireproofing: Election Officials Beef Up Security
New York Times: Biden Puts Defense of Democracy at Center of Agenda, at Home and Abroad
Reuters: Explainer: How new U.S. laws could trip up voters this November
Rolling Stone: Pro-MAGA D.C. Cop Secretly Worked to Undermine Seth Rich Investigation
Washington Post: Steve Bannon faces state indictment in N.Y., will surrender Thursday
Washington Post (Analysis): In praise of iron fists: Trump leans into his authoritarian instincts
January 6 And The 2020 Election
Arizona Republic: Cyber Ninjas CEO tied to alleged breaches of voting machines in Georgia, Michigan
The Hill: Oath Keepers leader wants trial delayed at least 90 days
NBC: Jan. 6 defendant turned in by ex he called a ‘moron’ gets nine months in prison
Other Trump Investigations
CNN: Barr: Justice Department should appeal ‘deeply flawed’ ruling approving special master in Trump documents case
NBC: Judge’s order for Trump special master is deeply flawed, legal experts say
New York Times: Trump Ruling Lifts Profile of Judge and Raises Legal Eyebrows
Politico: All the former president’s lawyers (that we know of)
Politico: DOJ’s setback in Mar-a-Lago probe could be profound… or merely a blip
In The States
The Hill: Oz says he would have certified Biden’s win over Trump
