This week, states across the country are diving further into their investigations into Donald Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election. The Fulton County, GA grand jury has completed its investigation, and in Michigan, the Attorney General is reopening a case to investigate fake electors. Donald Trump and his MAGA allies must be held accountable for their conspiracy to overturn an election and stop the ongoing threats to our democracy.
Here’s what you need to know for the weekend:
Main Points for the Weekend:
1. The grand jury in Fulton County, GA completed its investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election outcome in Georgia. This investigation could bring Trump and his allies one step closer to accountability for their attempt to overturn the election.
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- Top point to make: No one is above the law – including former presidents, members of Congress, and other elected officials.
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- If you read one thing: Politico, 1/9/23: Special grand jury completes Trump investigation. “The special grand jury is expected to make a charging recommendation related to Trump and other targets, about whether their efforts to overturn the 2020 election violated state law. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis must then make the ultimate charging decision after presenting the panel’s findings to a regular grand jury. The special grand jury has been operating for a year and hauled in testimony from some of Trump’s closest allies, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorney Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)… The panel spent months probing efforts by top Trump allies to deputize GOP activists to pose as presidential electors, even though Trump lost the state. That effort was a component of Trump’s strategy to overturn the 2020 election when Congress met to count electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. The special grand jury also probed Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, famously asking election officials to ‘find’ enough votes to reverse his defeat. Several witnesses, including Graham and Meadows, challenged the special grand jury’s authority. But Meadows lost a court battle that reached the South Carolina Supreme Court, and Graham similarly was required to testify after a legal push that reached the U.S. Supreme Court.”
2. States across the country are beginning investigations into the false slates of electors that were submitted or attempted to be submitted as part of the plot to overturn the 2020 election. Everywhere from Georgia, to Michigan and Wisconsin are diving further into investigations.
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- Top point to make: The attempt to overturn the 2020 election spreads further than just the former president. Allies across the country were involved in the illegal plot as well and all must be held accountable.
- If you read one thing: Detroit News, 1/6/23: Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel reopens investigation into false Trump electors. “But she cited new documents released by a U.S. House committee and said there was “clear evidence to support charges” against the group of 16 Michigan Republicans who signed a document that was submitted to the National Archives and was intended to help Trump supporters challenge his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. ‘I think that type of activity can’t go without any consequences,’ Nessel said.”
3. The Department of Justice has issued subpoenas to multiple Trump 2020 campaign officials. Subpoenas sought information and documents on legal representation, voting machines, fundraising around false election claims, and more, to assist in the DOJ’s criminal investigation following the January 6 Select Committee’s criminal referrals.
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- Top point to make: The only way to stop the ongoing threat to our country is to hold all those involved in the conspiracy to overturn the election accountable.
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- If you read one thing: Washington Post, 1/11/23: Trump campaign officials got subpoena asking new questions about Jan. 6. “The subpoena was received in early December, according to a former Trump campaign official who provided the document to The Post on the condition of anonymity because a criminal investigation is ongoing. The document seeks more than two dozen categories of information, and includes some questions that were not part of a series of similar subpoenas reviewed by The Post that were sent to several dozen people in September… The subpoena seeks any communications or information about Dominion and Smartmatic, two voting technology companies that were subjected to a barrage of false conspiracy theories floated by advisers to President Donald Trump. That request seems designed to gather what campaign officials might have been saying privately at the time Trump backers were publicly disparaging those firms in the wake of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory… Recipients were also asked for documents related to the genesis of an “Election Defense Fund,” an entity that Trump officials created to raise money from grass-roots donors after the election. Officials later testified to the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, that such a fund never technically existed but was a mechanism to generate funds from people who believed and were outraged by Trump’s false election-fraud claims…”
4. The Texas state legislature has filed over 100 bills since Tuesday, all of which are election-related. Many of these bills are aimed at suppressing the will of the voters and making it more difficult to vote.
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- Top point to make: The threat to our right to vote did not end on January 6. The threat is ongoing and growing.
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- If you read one thing: KUVE, 1/10/23: More than 100 election-related bills filed in 88th Texas legislative session. “The 88th Texas legislative session started on Tuesday. Already, more than 100 election-related bills have been filed, according to former state representative and University of Texas political expert Sherri Greenberg… Many of the bills that have been filed for this session are notable, but KVUE spoke to Greenberg about a few. HB 39 would make election fraud a felony again. SB 220 and HB 549 relate to establishing election marshals to prevent voting violations.”
Expert voices
Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Igarapé Institute: “called the ‘explosion of mob violence’ [in Brazil] an ‘insurrection foretold.’ ‘The similarities of Brazilian far-right mobs storming Congress, the Supreme Court and Presidential Palace with the Jan. 6 insurrection of the Capitol are not coincidental,’ he continued. ‘Like their MAGA counterparts, Bolsonaro supporters have been fed a steady diet of misinformation and disinformation for years, much of it modeled on the narratives pedaled by far-right influencers in the U.S.’” The Washington Post
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian at New York University: “The GOP, which has been Trump’s partner and accomplice in the diffusion of an authoritarian political culture in America, was ready for a strongman leader. By the time Trump took office in 2017 the GOP was on the way to abandoning the values and practices of democracy, such as mutual tolerance (respect for the political opposition) and trust in government. This is why Trump was able to quickly domesticate the GOP, controlling it completely by the time he lost the 2020 election.” Lucid
Heather Cox Richardson, historian at Boston College: “[E]mbracing Trump after his influence on the Republican Party has made it lose the last three elections suggests that, going forward, the party is planning either to convince more Americans to like the extremism of the MAGA Republicans—which is unlikely—or to restrict the vote so that opposition to that extremism doesn’t matter.” Letters from an American
Dean Jackson, served as an investigative analyst with the Select Committee on January 6, Meghan Conroy, served as an investigator with the Select Committee, Alex Newhouse, served as an investigative analyst with the Select Committee: “Our findings suggest that the intersection between social media and violent extremism remains pervasive and, in fact, a central component of the Internet. Recognizing and confronting the threat posed by this phenomenon is key to preventing another January 6th.” Just Security: Insiders’ View of the January 6th Committee’s Social Media Investigation
Andrew Weissmann, lead prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office, re: Fulton special grand jury completing Trump investigation (MSNBC Video): “It is inconceivable to me that the first grand jury having heard all of the evidence… that they’re not going to say that there is probably cause, which is a relatively low standard, to bring charges against the former president” MSNBC’s Deadline White House
Barb McQuade, former US attorney, re: state-level January 6 investigations (MSNBC Video): “I would think that anybody involved in a conspiracy to undermine the outcome of this election, would be fair game for a crime, but I would focus very much on the events occurring leading up to the 2020 election” MSNBC’s Deadline White House
Brian Klaas, associate professor in global politics at University College London: “You don’t need Sherlock Holmes to deduce the parallels between January 6th in Washington and the storming of government buildings in Brazil yesterday. Two defeated presidents who refuse to accept reality; two sets of lies aimed at discrediting elections they lost; two violent mobs on a doomed quest to put a loser in power. The similarities even extended to rioters in each mob stealing furniture from the government buildings they stormed, as though they were collecting trophies. This tale of two insurrections is no coincidence. Instead, it’s a classic case of what political scientists refer to as ‘authoritarian learning,’ the diffusion of autocratic tactics across borders. Part of the explanation lies in copycat dynamics, in which a high-profile effort to overturn an election is likely to spur others to do the same. But part of the explanation lies with a more insidious strategy, in which Trump’s political advisers actively sought to replicate January 6th in Brasilia.” The Garden of Forking Paths
Joe Lowndes, professor of political science at the University of Oregon: “The inability of the House GOP to choose the Speaker demonstrates the post-democratic dilemma. The party’s right is no longer concerned with institutional order, nor for that matter with liberal democratic governance at all. The 20 House members who have repeatedly blocked the election of Kevin McCarthy represent, in essence, an authoritarian regime struggling to be born. It contends with an establishment right that also has no interest in democracy, but one that still operates by the institutional rules that have long rewarded it.” Adventures in Post-Democracy: January 6 and The House Leadership Debacle
Democracy Docket: “Over the course of 2022, Democracy Docket covered and tracked activity in the courts pertaining to voting rights, elections, redistricting and democracy. As the year progressed, we saw a steep jump in lawsuits filed by anti-voting advocates. When the fight over voting rights shifted from legislative chambers to courtrooms this year, courts overwhelmingly protected the right to vote, particularly in advance of the midterm elections.Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2022, we tracked: 175 new democracy-related lawsuits filed across 31 states. 175 court orders that impacted voters across 28 states.” 2022 Litigation Report: How Republicans Lost and Voters Won in Court
Anne Applebaum, senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Agora Institute: “The Brazil event was, in many ways, a kind of copycat riot. Look at what happened in the run-up to the Brazilian election: Bolsonaro essentially said, as Trump did, If I lose, it’s because the results have been falsified. And after the election, like Trump, he refused to [concede defeat]. He refused to attend the inauguration; in fact, he left the country. He’s now in Florida, at least as far as we know, not too far from Trump, and conceivably even in touch with him. And some of the language that he’s used, and some of the language that his followers have used, is clearly an imitation of what they read in the United States. The most important hashtag that was circulating in Brazil last week was #BrazilianSpring, in English, as if this were an Arab Spring–style uprising against dictatorship—whereas, in fact, it’s an uprising against an elected leader. Public buildings have been attacked in Brazil before, so it’s not the first time this has happened. But the comprehensive nature of it—that it was the Congress as well as the Presidential Palace as well as the Supreme Court, that it involved using security barriers to break windows—this is, again, an imitation of what happened on January 6. That date, in the U.S., had an additional significance, which was that it was supposed to block the process of the change of presidential power. The Brazil attacks didn’t have that element but instead seem to have been timed to the anniversary of January 6.” The Atlantic
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history and Italian studies at New York University: “Jan. 6, 2021, and Jan. 8, 2023, are parts of a global attempt to subvert democracies and install authoritarian rule. We must be vigilant in calling out the new far-right networks that stretch from Moscow to Budapest, Rome, Brasilia and Washington and prosecute the instigators promptly, as Lula is doing in Brazil.” MSNBC Op-Ed: Trumpism is no longer just America’s problem
