News Roundup: Presidential Coups and Election Reviews

• Ken Paxton’s Expensive Voter-Fraud Office
• Emergent BioSolutions

The Big Story

New and alarming details about the involvement of key figures — from members of Congress to Kanye West — in former President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn a free and fair election have continued to trickle out over the last week. And those details underscore the links from those efforts to the attempted coup of Jan. 6, to the ongoing election reviews that are seeking to help set the stage for what amounts to the next effort to upend democracy.
 
The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol building has released more text messages sent to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff. On Tuesday, the House voted to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate further with the investigation.

• Among the texts are frantic messages from Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and others, who asked Meadows to have Trump tell his violent supporters to go home. (Of course, those same hosts would later downplay the attack.)
• American Oversight on Wednesday sued the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security for the release of top officials’ communications with proponents of the Big Lie, including Fox News hosts, from the weeks surrounding the attack.
• Other records from Meadows — who the committee said conducted official business using a personal cell phone, personal email accounts, and the messaging app Signal — included a Jan. 5 email in which Meadows said the National Guard would be on hand to “protect pro Trump people.” The National Guard’s hours-long delay in responding to the Capitol Police’s requests for help on Jan. 6 is a major focus of the committee’s investigation (and ours).

• “I heard Jeff Clark is getting put in on Monday,” someone texted Meadows on Jan. 3, referring to Trump’s failed ploy to oust Jeffrey Rosen, then the acting attorney general, and replace him with a loyalist who would use the Justice Department to back up Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud.
• Several Republican members of Congress also worked closely with Meadows in various schemes, from the Justice Department pressure campaign to farfetched lawsuits based on outlandish conspiracy theories. The New York Times has a detailed run-through of how “a half-dozen right-wing members of Congress became key foot soldiers in Trump’s effort to overturn the election.”
• The Arizona Republic outlines how two of those Congress members, Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, are among Arizona politicians “continuing on the same path” and are “riding similar rhetoric to tout election integrity measures.” 
• The committee is also looking at the efforts of another one of those lawmakers, Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, who in late December 2020 sued Vice President Mike Pence over his refusal to assert control of the election certification.
• Also this week, Politico reported on two memos authored by Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis in the week before Jan. 6, which made widely disputed legal arguments about Pence’s ability to prevent the certification.

• During Trump’s infamous Jan. 2 phone call in which he urged the Georgia secretary of state to “find” the votes to change that state’s election outcome, a Georgia state official texted Meadows, “Need to end this call.”
• Text messages also revealed the Trump White House attempted to get contact information for Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich from a member of Congress.
• In another text, a member of Congress suggested that Republican-led state legislatures “just sent their own [pro-Trump] electors” to Congress and then “have it go to” the Supreme Court. Meadows responded that Trump believed legislatures “have the power” to overturn the results.

• On Thursday, the Jan. 6 committee announced it had issued a subpoena to Waldron, who two days before spoke at a meeting of the Louisiana Voting System Commission.
• We’ve been investigating Waldron’s involvement in the push for unnecessary election reviews in several states, and uncovered records showing Arizona Senate President Karen Fann consulted Waldron about hiring Cyber Ninjas to conduct the sham “audit” of Maricopa County results. Other records include evidence of his contact with prominent Big Lie proponents.
• American Oversight has issued a deposition notice for Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, directing him to answer questions about the company’s failure to release public records related to the partisan “audit.”

• Last week, we reported on the investigation’s multiple problematic ties to partisan people and groups involved in efforts to overturn the election. This week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Gableman ventured further into partisan politics at a Republican event, “telling the crowd he wouldn’t back down from Democrats and tipping his hand about his preferences in GOP primaries.”
• Vos, who this week declined to disavow election conspiracy theories, has continued to attack the state’s bipartisan elections commission. He has called for all the members to go — except for his own appointee.
• A top Republican in the state Senate has criticized Gableman’s election, calling it a “charade.” 
• CNN tried to track down Gableman to ask him questions. In its report, CNN cited the records obtained by American Oversight that revealed taxpayers footed the bill for Gableman’s August trip to the Arizona “audit.”

• Texas secretary of state sends ‘exhaustive’ election audit ask to Dallas, Tarrant, Collin counties (Dallas Morning News)
• Who’s at the door? It may be Trump loyalists, hunting for Michigan ‘ghost voters’ (Bridge Michigan)
• Pa. court to hear arguments over releasing voter information as part of election investigation (Pennsylvania Capital-Star)
• Republicans in Potter County, Texas, to run their own 2022 primary, seeking ‘election integrity’ (Votebeat)
• Texas election officials went looking for illegal voters. They found some U.S. citizens. (Texas Monthly)

• Meanwhile, a new Associated Press analysis of “every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states” disputed by Trump found fewer than 475 cases, a small fraction (0.15 percent) of Biden’s victory margin in those states. 
• “The cases could not throw the outcome into question even if all the potentially fraudulent votes were for Biden, which they were not, and even if those ballots were actually counted, which in most cases they were not.”

• Dominion Voting wins key decision in lawsuit against Fox News (CNN)
• The U.S. military men spreading Trump’s baseless fraud claims (Reuters)
• The network of election lawyers who are making it harder for Americans to vote (Guardian)
• ‘Big Lie’ proponent John Eastman uses Christian crowdfunding site to raise money for his legal bills (Forbes)
• Project Veritas nearly doubled its funding in 2020 while amplifying baseless election fraud claims (Washington Post)
• Former Houston cop who thought A/C repairman was a voter fraud mastermind indicted on felony assault charge (Houston Chronicle)
• When the myth of voter fraud comes for you (Atlantic)
• Guardsman in Jan. 6 mob gets probation, still serving in the Guard (Military.com)
• Inside Trump’s unprecedented nationwide hunt for ‘disloyal’ Republicans (Axios)

• The unvaccinated are pushing hospitals past the brink (Bloomberg)
• Five governors ask Pentagon to reconsider National Guard vaccine mandate (NBC News)
• Amtrak loosens worker vaccine mandate, will allow testing option to avert service cuts (Washington Post)
• Some hospitals cancel worker vaccine requirements with Biden rule tied up in courts (Washington Post)
• U.S. Air Force dismisses 27 members over vaccine refusals (New York Times)
• Kansas City doesn’t actually know how much of its police force is vaccinated against Covid-19 (KCUR Kansas City)
• Cass County, Mo., passes measure ending health department’s Covid orders and quarantines (Kansas City Star)
• Long Covid is destroying careers, leaving economic distress in its wake (Washington Post)
• Meat packers’ profit margins jumped 300% during pandemic (Reuters)

• USPS built and secretly tested a mobile voting system before 2020 (Washington Post)
• Operation Whistle Pig: Inside the secret CBP unit with no rules that investigates Americans (Yahoo News)
• Trends in Arctic report card: ‘Consistent, alarming and undeniable’ (New York Times)
• FDA will permanently allow abortion pills by mail (New York Times)

• Small group of GOP lawmakers, mapmakers controlled congressional line-drawing, depositions show (Columbus Dispatch)
• States’ high courts poised to draw new congressional maps (Politico)
• DeSantis pushes bill that allows parent to sue schools over critical race theory (Politico)
• Biden’s cash fuels DeSantis’s budget wishlist (Politico)
• Missouri AG’s ‘campaign of litigation terror’ sows fear, confusion among local leaders (Kansas City Star)
• ‘Prison gerrymandering’: How inmates are helping the Texas GOP maintain its power (Dallas Morning News)
• Official: License for Noem’s daughter got unusual treatment (Associated Press)

• Agency overseeing Trump’s D.C. hotel lease failed to examine ethical, constitutional conflicts, report says (NBC News)
• Trump’s longtime accountant testifies to N.Y. grand jury in criminal probe (Washington Post)
• Trump donor allegedly used embezzled money to support the former president’s campaign and lead a lavish lifestyle (Forbes)
• Trump rang in birthday by inflating golf club’s value by $42 million (Daily Beast)
• GOP agrees to pay up to $1.6 million of Trump’s legal bills in N.Y. probes (Washington Post)