Friday, September 23, 2022

GREG WALTERS

Senior Reporter, VICE News

Washington, D.C. Bureau
@thegregwalters

Breaking the Vote is now a TV show. Check it out!

VICE News D.C. Deputy Bureau Chief Todd Zwillich hosts "Breaking the Vote" with new episodes every Friday on YouTube from now until the November midterms. In today's episode, election workers relive, in their own words, the threats and intimidation they received after Trump's election lies took hold.

Here's the episode (btw, it's Emmy-nominated!):

And now, for this week's BtV newsletter... I'm Greg Walters, and these days I cover the intersection between politics and the law. I'm taking over this installment while Todd works on our TV show. So here we go:

The Oath Keepers trial is here, and it's going to be weird

The Oath Keepers' trial for their role in the Jan. 6 insurrection kicks off Monday.

And it's going to be weird.

That's because the leader of the far-right militia group, Stewart Rhodes, ensured that it would be weird by having a public blow-up with his own lawyers just a couple weeks ago.

Rhodes will be represented by two lawyers he now says he wants nothing to do with, following a "near-complete breakdown" of communication. They'll be joined at the same desk by a newly-hired third lawyer, whom Rhodes sought to insert as their replacement in a bizarre and contentious pre-trial hearing three weeks ago.

District Court Judge Amit Mehta rebuffed Rhodes' request to ditch his old lawyers, rejected his attempt to delay trial, and blasted Rhodes' "incorrect and, frankly, bewildering" justifications for the delay.

Now, Rhodes will be fighting for his freedom with an awkwardly divided legal team that, amid all this infighting, has told the judge it's flat-out not ready.

"Neither Rhodes nor any of his attorneys are prepared for trial," Rhodes' new attorney, Edward Tapley, told the judge earlier this month. Rhodes was indicted in January.

Ready or not, jury selection starts Monday, and Rhodes and four other defendants linked to the group must defend themselves from the charge of seditious conspiracy—which could send them to prison for as long as 20 years.

Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, told The Washington Post via Getty Images, February 28, 2021 in Fort Worth, Texas, that the government is trying to inflate the rogue actions of a few members into an alleged conspiracy committed by the organization on Jan. 6, 2021. (Photo by Aaron C. Davis/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The Oath Keepers were early supporters in the broader Stop the Steal movement with Rhodes allegedly pushing his group in November 2020 to "oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power," according to the indictment. Rhodes allegedly attempted to contact Donald Trump on Jan. 6, pushing an unnamed individual believed to have access to Trump to get the president to call for groups like the Oath Keepers to fight to keep Joe Biden from taking power.

The trial will also be a high-profile test of the Department of Justice's use of a rare charge.

Seditious conspiracy is a felony defined as an attempt "to overthrow, put down or to destroy by force the government of the United States."

The last time the DOJ convicted anyone of seditious conspiracy was in 1995, when they went after the organizers of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That time, the perpetrators were Omar Abdel-Rahman, aka "The Blind Sheikh," and his co-conspirators.

This time, the defendants will be accused of attempting to stop the peaceful transfer of power by use of force. Failure for the DOJ to secure a conviction would be a public face-plant in the department's attempt to respond to Jan. 6.

But it also won't be their last chance. Another batch of four individuals linked to the Oath keepers will go on Trial Nov. 29, and high-profile leaders of the far-right Proud Boys will go on trial in mid-December.

We're reporting on democracy all the way to 2024, here, online, and on TV. Tell your friends to sign up for Breaking the Vote!

Just, like, so much Trump drama

The legal setbacks for the ex-president just kept comin'. Even Trump's handpicked special master judge scolded his lawyers in the classified-documents kerfuffle and an appeals court delivered an absolutely vicious takedown of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's initial ruling on the Mar-a-Lago case, saying the relatively inexperienced Trump-appointed justice "abused" her discretion. As a result, the DOJ probe of those documents can continue. Trump, for his part, told Fox News he can declassify documents with his thoughts. A very cool, but also not real, superpower.

I didn't even mention the Jon Bon Jovi-helped lawsuit by the New York attorney general against Trump and his adult kid, which could obliterate the Trump Organization and the clan's ability to do business in New York, a notoriously good place to do business.

Sir, this is a Hardee's update

In last week's BtV newsletter we wrote about famous pillow guy Mike Lindell and his troubles with the Justice Department as part of their probe of an election voting systems breach in Colorado. Of course, Lindell's run-in with FBI agents just so happened to occur at a Hardee's drive-thru. Now Lindell is suing because he wants his phone back.

Election lawsuits for everyone!

The Democrat-backed Democracy Docket media group says there is a massive increase in GOP election lawsuits in 2022 over 2021. That said, the group's own analysis shows that Democrat-backed folks are filing roughly the same amount of election lawsuits overall as their Republican rivals this year. The midterms are on November 8, so these numbers are only going up.

"With the help of his children and senior executives at the Trump Organization, Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and cheat the system." —New York Attorney General Letitia James announcing her massive lawsuit

Insurrection, Season 2 - The January 6 committee returns on Sept. 28, with all of your favorite heroes and villains reprising the roles that made them cable-news famous. What will Liz Cheney do to top her performance from earlier this year? Tune in at 1 p.m. to find out.