This week, as the country prepares for midterm elections next month, states are preparing for more trouble from election deniers. MAGA Republicans are already claiming they “won” the election, refusing to say they will honor election results, and putting more pressure on vote counting systems, all while more revelations continue to come out that Donald Trump made false claims of election fraud.
Here’s what you need to know for the weekend:
Main Points for the Weekend:
1. With midterm elections right around the corner, election deniers are threatening to cause more trouble. Election deniers are already claiming elections that haven’t even happened yet were stolen from them, and won’t commit to honoring the fair and free election results.
-
- Top point to make: MAGA Republicans are following Donald Trump’s election-denying playbook to a tee.
-
- If you read one thing: USA Today, 10/16/2022: Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake won’t commit to honoring election results. “Lake is among this election’s most prominent ‘election deniers,’ Republicans who agree with Trump’s false claims about his loss in the 2020 election and suggest they may file protests of their own after the November elections. Public interest groups said Trump and his denier acolytes are threats to democracy, sowing distrust in the system because they know they cannot command a majority of voters. They said more protests after the 2022 elections will only fuel doubts about elections, despite mountains of evidence that they are fairly run. Hundreds of election deniers are on ballots across the country this year… ‘This is absolutely disqualifying,’ said Hobbs, who is secretary of state in Arizona. ‘This is somebody who will have a level of authority over our state’s elections, the ability to sign new legislation into law, the responsibility of certifying future elections.’”
2. Former President Donald Trump signed legal documents describing evidence of election fraud that he knew was false. A US District Court judge ordered more emails from Trump’s former attorney John Eastman to be turned over to the House Select Committee on Jan 6, because they “show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public.”
-
- Top point to make: Donald Trump planned, promoted, and paid for a violent and illegal conspiracy to overturn the results of an election he knew he lost.
-
- If you read one thing: Politico, 10/19/22: Judge: Trump signed court document that knowingly included false voter fraud stats. “‘President Trump, moreover, signed a verification swearing under oath that the incorporated, inaccurate numbers ‘are true and correct’ or ‘believed to be true and correct’ to the best of his knowledge and belief,’ added Carter, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. ‘The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public. The Court finds that these emails are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.’… The judge’s latest decision could also provide legal fodder for ongoing criminal investigations being conducted by the Justice Department and by prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia into the efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the election. It’s unclear whether those investigators already have the emails at issue, but if they don’t, Carter’s latest ruling has put some on the public record and could ease access to others… ‘This email, read in context with other documents in this review, make clear that President Trump filed certain lawsuits not to obtain legal relief, but to disrupt or delay the January 6 congressional proceedings through the courts,’ Carter ruled.”
3. Across the country, MAGA Republicans are threatening avenues to count the votes and sow chaos at voting sites. They have built on the tactics used to try to overturn the 2020 election and are more than ready to try to overturn next month’s midterm elections.
-
- Top point to make: MAGA Republicans will stop at nothing to attempt to overturn elections they do not win and infringe on our right to choose who represents us.
-
- If you read one thing: New York Times, 10/17/22: Right-Wing Leaders Mobilize Corps of Election Activists. “The groups appear to be building on the tactics used two years ago: compiling testimony from G.O.P.-allied poll workers, the temporary employees who run polling places, and poll watchers, the volunteers who monitor operations, to build challenges and contest results. ’We are 100 times more prepared now,’ Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump who was involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said in an interview. Mr. Bannon hosts a podcast that has become a clearinghouse for right-wing election activists. ‘We’re going to adjudicate every battle. That’s the difference.’… Officials saw evidence of the new organizing in primary elections. In Michigan, a poll worker was charged with tampering with an election computer. In Texas, activists followed election officials to their offices and tried to enter secured areas. In Alabama, activists tried to insert fake ballots into a machine during public testing. In Kansas, activists funded a recount of a ballot measure on abortion rights that required Johnson County to count a quarter million ballots by hand, even though the measure failed by 18 percentage points… The Republican National Committee said it had placed more than 56,000 workers and monitors in primary and special elections this year and expected more in the general election. In several battleground states, the committee has also hired what it calls ‘election integrity’ officials.”
Expert voices
Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University: “The committee successfully unpacked the dark days that followed the 2020 election. They have been exposed in clear detail right in front of our eyes. The biggest mystery left is whether as a nation we will close our eyes and simply move forward without demanding accountability, justice and reform.” CNN Op-Ed: The biggest mystery after the dramatic January 6 revelations
Lara Putnam, professor of history at University of Pittsburgh: “Putnam said there is a growing distrust about the electoral system, despite the abundance of protocols in place to prevent voting fraud. ‘What’s so deeply ironic is that despite all of the safeguards that you’ve just heard about, as a result of the way the 2020 election played out, we have a real crisis of trust in the integrity of the electoral system,’ Putnam said. Pennsylvania’s election system is actually reliable in practice in contrast to the criticism it receives, according to Putnam. ‘We don’t have a crisis in actual integrity,’ Putnam said. ‘The actual integrity of the election system has never been stronger, but…only two thirds of Pennsylvanians say they trust that officials in their local county accurately counted votes in 2020.’” The Pitt News
Aziz Huq, constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago: “I think the big question presented today is whether the United States has a mechanism for addressing high-level criminality, acts by a very senior official within the government either that violate the law or that seriously break faith with the Constitution. The mechanism that is in the U.S. Constitution, which is impeachment, has not done the work that I think the framers expected. The problem today is that the Constitution has nothing else to say on the matter. Other countries which have more recently enacted constitutions create mechanisms for investigating high-level criminality and for dealing with it in a nonpartisan way that doesn’t risk witch hunts but that ensures what Representative Cheney calls accountability. We do not have those mechanisms, and that is a profound gap in our constitutional order.” NPR: All Things Considered
Norman Eisen, Brookings Institute senior fellow, Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, and E. Danya Perry, former deputy chief of the criminal division SDNY and former NY deputy AG: “As the committee waits for the (unlikely) testimony of Mr. Trump, the torch now passes to other actors who hold the power to achieve accountability for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — and to prevent another one from happening…The added proof of Mr. Trump’s involvement in the events of Jan. 6 renews the question of whether elections officials and courts can disqualify him from holding public office under the Constitution…The report could be modeled after the Watergate Road Map. That document laid out in painstaking detail the evidence of wrongdoing that an investigative body (there, a grand jury) had collected. It consisted of an inventory listing the evidence and then attached pieces of proof — whether it was a document, witness transcript or something else…One final handoff is perhaps most important of all: to voters. Well over 300 midterm candidates have embraced “the Big Lie” about the 2020 election being stolen. The committee has repeatedly warned of the danger this election-denial movement poses.” New York Times: The Jan. 6 Hearings Are Over. These 3 Things Must Happen Now.
Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, and Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor emeritus and a professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School: “Those soldiers are still out there marching. They pose a silent but clear and present danger to our constitutional republic. The New York State Bar’s grievance committee must send a powerful message of deterrence by expeditiously investigating [Trump lawyer Kenneth] Chesebro. It should help defend the nation—and honor our profession by expelling him from it.” Slate Op-Ed: How to Ensure Accountability for the Legal Foot Soldiers of Jan. 6
Harry Litman, former US attorney: “Whether or not Trump faces federal charges for his Jan. 6 conduct, the aggressive pursuit of all the president’s people, as with Watergate, will be crucial to society’s and history’s assessment of the outrageous offenses against democracy that took place after the 2020 election. The sooner it begins, the better.” LA Times Column: Are Jan. 6 investigators hot on the trail of ‘all the president’s people’?
Barbara McQuade, former US attorney, re: DOJ’s sentencing memo for Steve Bannon: “Although DOJ could seek 2 years in prison for Bannon, it requests 6 months, which is top of sentencing guidelines range. Anything less would be inadequate deterrence. Anything more would invite accusations of political bias from the extremists. Seems like the measured choice.” Tweet
Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law professor emeritus: “In a Sunday interview on CNN, Arizona Republican nominee for governor Kari Lake refused to say she would accept the results of the upcoming election — unless she wins. Playing that lethal anti-democracy Trump card should disqualify whoever stoops that low from public office.” Tweet
Joyce Vance, former US attorney, re: Lake’s refusal to accept results of upcoming election unless she wins: “This is the future of our Republic if Trump is not held accountable” Tweet
Thomas Carothers, a senior fellow and co-director of the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Benjamin Press, a research assistant at the Carnegie Endowment: “With the notable exception of the United States, however, backsliding has not affected any long-established peer democracies, such as those in Canada; Northern, Western, and Southern Europe; East Asia; and Oceania. Many of these countries have experienced troubling illiberal tremors in recent years, including the rise of anti-systemic political figures and parties on the far right. But their overall democratic systems remain intact. None show the signs of potential systemic failure that haunt the current U.S. landscape: rampant election denialism, an insurrection incited by a sitting president, and extreme political polarization laced with rising political violence.” Foreign Policy
Joyce Vance, former US attorney (MSNBC Video): “All of the appearances are that DOJ, the lumbering giants, spring to life in late December or in January and began to investigate approximately on a timeline with the Jan. 6 committee, and I honestly don’t know what to make of that first year” MSNBC Deadline WH Tweet
Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director (MSNBC Video): “We know from FBI data that… the most lethal, the most violent form of extremist ideology is that which comes from hate based violent ideology, that’s the most lethal, and there’s no sign of it going away” MSNBC Deadline WH Tweet
Norm Eisen, Brookings Institution senior fellow: “The new emails Eastman was trying to hide are evidence that Trump lied under oath about his 2020 election claims[.] The criminal case was already strong—these emails make it stronger” Tweet
Harry Litman, former US attorney (MSNBC video): “The big question… would a Department of Justice charge a former president with seditious conspiracy, the most serious charge that’s been brought to date in all of the January 6th cases” MSNBC’s Deadline WH Tweet
Erica Chenoweth, political scientist at Harvard Kennedy School, and Zoe Marks, political scientist at Harvard Kennedy School: “This report proposes nonviolent resistance strategies and support systems that could be relevant for protecting local communities and subjugated groups, and for informing a broad-based pro-democracy struggle under a hypothetical authoritarian administration. We suggest some immediate investments in infrastructure that could support effective pro-democracy organizing and mobilizing, both today and in the event of authoritarian decline or consolidation across all branches of government.” Harvard Kennedy School of Government: Faculty Research Working Paper Series
