Behind The Attacks On US Elections | Breaking The Vote

the vote is under attack you said that your refusal to certify was quote not based on any evidence it's not based on any facts it's only based on my gut and my gut feeling my own intuition are you going to certify the election results in November if it sits where it stands right now I won't we live in a different world now people need to understand that [Music] thank you foreign and this is breaking the vote our Series where we track the ongoing assault on voting rights and efforts to undermine Democracy in America we're here to cover how the Democratic process a lot of us take for granted is being attacked and exactly who's trying to wreck it now that's a hard thing to get your head around we still vote for members of Congress and Senators we still vote for president the oats get taken the flags still wave but underneath the surface the foundation is cracking because bombarding the foundations of fair voting and voting representation isn't a side effect it's becoming a strategy for an entire political movement and we've had a front row seat to the assault we watched as government official after government official after government official sat before the January 6 committee and recounted all the ways the former president of the United States along with his lieutenants devised ways to rest control away from the people steal an election and stay in power there was the stuff we all saw like the Insurrection the storming of the capital and trying to stop the 2020 election from being certified by force there was the scheming behind the scenes like the attempted political takeover of the justice department and the outright fraud the plot from the president's allies to replace Joe Biden's electors with fake ones not chosen by the voters the attempted coup was Broad and multi-fronted and it didn't work or did it the political theater of screencap texts and presidential lunch being thrown at the wall seems like the story of the coup that failed but it also tells the story of the next attempt what if 2020 was just a dry run what if all the flailing and desperate lying what if the Rudy Giuliani of it all was just a stress test the kind that can point out exactly where our democratic system is the weakest so that those weaknesses can be exploited the next time around if all that sounds like well another conspiracy theory then all you have to do is look at the people and the places who operated in 2020 and are laying the groundwork for 2024. this week we'll take you from the Larger than Life plans that sought to install a tyrannical system in Washington to the conspiracies taking over and shaping local elections and I sit down with the one man who might have the best view on voting on criminal investigations of the president and getting to the bottom of Trump's attempted coup former Attorney General General of the United States Eric Holder but first Liz Landers kicks us off in Alamogordo New Mexico following the first public official to be removed from their job for taking part in the January 6th Insurrection as he threatened to hold the midterms hostage [Music] [Music] you've been staying busy oh yeah yeah so I think if we reset him and then I'd like to put shoes on that on that little black horse all right come on hey come on hey [Music] I'm watching the expression stubborn as a mule will play out in real life right now a stubborn mule is the least of coy Griffin's problems these days how's the politics been going oh you know every day's a new battle I got a deposition later this morning on a lawsuit where they're trying to remove me from Office I've seen something about that so now they're going to try to use the courts I don't know I don't agree with it you know if the people of this area didn't want me to be their commissioner that recall would have worked it's a circus race Griffin was convicted of trespassing on the capitol as part of the January 6th Insurrection in part on the basis of this video posted to his Facebook page [Music] it's a great day for America he founded a group called Cowboys for Trump and spoke at a q Anon conference don't ever let anybody shame you on January 6. I wear January 6 as a badge of honor but Griffin is also one of three Otero County Commissioners and he's being sued to be removed from office and possibly barred from public service and despite all his far-right connections he's on his own what's up Henry this fly is eating up see you're not gonna have a lawyer for this deposition why is that well honestly because I can't afford it there have been for some of the January 6 writers people have gotten crowdfund stuff going and some deep pocketed Republican donors have helped people out yeah have you gotten any of that are you disappointed you haven't gotten any of that you know I've I've been able to raise some money for for uh I raised about twenty thousand dollars I believe that I spend on a group of attorneys out of Albuquerque on another case against the Secretary of State where they're trying to force me to register as a political action committee and I don't meet the legal requirements but I I raise some money from that but yeah it's disappointing you know I I have an engagement letter with Sydney Powell Sydney Powell is a friend of mine she represented me in the 10th circuit a while back she orally argued a case in the 10th circuit but even defending the Republican Sydney Powell or have grown quiet you know it's like um so you haven't heard from her recently no no I haven't heard from any of them and they know what I'm going through right now and it's just I think the last time I heard anything from City Sydney I think she wished me luck so you're kind of abandoned by this movement and I feel like it you know yeah absolutely and I know a lot of the bigger players if you will in this movement but honestly I believe the reason why I'm set by myself is because I can't be controlled and I think that that's a threat I think it's not only a threat to those on the right it's a threat to those on the left Griffin has other legal problems too he's facing trial for the money he raised through Cowboys for Trump which the state says violated campaign Finance laws and then there's his latest issue in June Griffin and his fellow Otero County Commissioners who are all Republican refused to certify the results of the County's primary election so you want us to certify something that we can't even verify well I mean it's election law I don't particularly want you to I mean it's the law I have huge concerns with these voting machines I really do I don't I just don't in my heart think that they can't be manipulated Commissioners Play No role in the administration of the election or the tallying of votes and certification is usually a procedural non-issue the New Mexico supreme court ordered the Commissioners to certify the election or be removed from office two of them reluctantly did which was enough to make the results official but Griffin wouldn't do it you you said in the County Commission meeting when the results did not end up getting certified that your refusal to certify was quote not based on any evidence it's not based on any facts it's only based on my gut and my gut feeling my own intuition sue you didn't have evidence I had evidence and I could have really said you didn't though I could through the canvas when our canvassers went and knocked on doors and there was 26. why did you say in the County Commission meeting you didn't have evidence though because let me get to that I had we had evidence I I could have I could have referenced the fact that our canvassers went and knocked on a house where there was 26 votes cast out of that act out of that residence and not a single one of those people lived there I could have said that in the County Commission meeting I could have referenced the fact that um Dominion won't let us inspect the machines I could have I could have given evidence and examples but the reason why I said what I did is because that's all I need as a sitting County Commissioner to cast my vote that's the power of the vote and that's you know I don't have to make my case to cast my vote according to New Mexico state law an official needs evidence to refuse to certify results he's never produced any but he's used his position to undermine the results and that's exactly what hundreds of other people like him across the country could do in future elections do you think that this episode in Otero County is a blueprint for the November midterms and for the presidential election in 2024 so if it was a blueprint I think it was a poor one Maggie Toulouse Oliver filed a lawsuit to get the Otero Commissioners to do their job and as the Secretary of State personally certified the election results do I have a motion to vote after the presentation for the certification of the 2022 primary election results so moved second all those in favor say aye aye aye great that it carries I certainly hope that we've sent a very strong message that you either follow the law uh or you will potentially be removed from office and someone else will follow the law and I do think that it was really important to put this Behavior to a stop as quickly as possible as we could in our state so that other counties in our state and other entities in other states didn't try to follow suit Otero is a bright red County tucked in a state whose leadership is mostly Democratic so Griffin hasn't succeeded but Republicans in other states like Arizona Nevada and Michigan have focused on getting election deniers into secretary of state jobs and that's a crucial part of what some experts are saying is the plan to steal the 2024 elections so we're at our Nas National Association of secretaries of State Summer Conference we have one every year and really this is our opportunity as secretaries of state of both parties from around the country to come together share best practices learn from each other hand counted which I think would extend elections over years but if that is the case then there's no technology to hack and we don't have to to worry about that so I just I think it's worth throwing out there and discussing so please because I think we're all facing this I think some of the folks who are advocating for hand counting are then going to be the same folks that say why don't I have my election results at 10 pm foreign so I don't recommend hand Counting Otero County uses voting machines made by Dominion a favorite Target when Trump and his allies are peddling election lies Robin Holmes's job is to make sure otero's elections happen without any Shady stuff so we are in our voting machine warehouse this is where we keep all of our voting machines they're obviously all locked up you all had elections here recently primary elections in June how did those go so everything went great all of our numbers were wonderful we were very excited about all the work everybody had done to get to that point there's a nationwide movement I guess you could say that's questioning the election results of still 2020 now of 2022 we're seeing and probably 2024 and Beyond how does that make you feel about your job and your work we've always taken pride in our work we're very transparent we're very fair we invite anybody to come and watch a certified machine is watch how they actually work we are actually going to bring a representative down from dominion and schedule a meeting to get our Board of County Commission over just for them or whoever else would like to come and see just look at the system and if they have any questions asked you know at that point and I know our County Commissioner Griffin he says well there's proof of all this fraudulent voting in it but I have yet to see any proof um we've had nothing but good results out of these systems and he is as well as the other commission they've all been elected on these systems I got an email from dominion and Dominion said that they're going to allow us three County Commissioners to inspect the machines yeah I was gonna say Robin says that you guys are invited to go look at them and and that would be like me going to inspect a rocket ship I know nothing about it I don't I can go I can go look I can outside forensics expert disqualify when we spoke with Griffin he was still in office and before his removal he was already signaling that he would refuse to certify the next batch of election results are you going to certify the election results in November that's to be determined if it sits where it stands right now I won't you know I didn't I held the line right after getting out of federal court in Washington DC the very same day that I was sentenced I had a vote that afternoon by telephone and I still voted no because I'm willing to make the sacrifice I'm willing to go the extra mile I'm willing to lay it all down for my country and for the future of our country which is what every American should do and what so many Americans have done foreign Landers is with me now for more Liz so koi Griffin there he's no longer an elected official he's done so what's happened since you did that interview well when we were with Kauai in New Mexico he was um being deposed in a lawsuit to remove him from office this liberal Watchdog group out of DC crew brought a civil lawsuit against him to remove him from Office using Section 3 of the 14th Amendment which basically says that if you participate in a rebellion against the government you can no longer serve in office that is stuck around from the Civil War and now people are trying to use it to remove some of these people that were at the Capitol on January 6 from public office a judge determined that that case and that argument was strong enough to remove koi from office I talked to him moments after that decision uh was released and he said he was shocked but he had no regrets about his activity and uh his conduct on January 6 and it kind of shows you how much of a True Believer of some of these uh Trump folks and these election deniers really are so Liz Griffin might not be the last to be ousted for his participation in January 6. so what other dominoes might fall here I think that we're probably going to see more um Watchdog groups and potentially more private citizens uh bring these kinds of civil lawsuits against people who attended the January 6 Insurrection who are public officials this has been used already against congresswoman Marjorie Taylor green and Congressman Madison cawthorne those were unsuccessful attempts but I do think that we might see this in the future against other public officials Liz Landers thanks for joining us coming up the costly legal Jeopardy the former president and his inner circle find themselves in after years of trying to subvert American democracy and how they're milking everything they can out of their supporters to foot the bill this is breaking the vote I'm Todd zwillich in this current iteration of American democracy you need money to become the nation's leader a lot of it but here's a question what's the price of attempting to overturn an election it's something that was behind the failed couper finding out the hard way is they learn that there's literally a price to be paid for perpetuating those stolen election lies here's vices James Hamilton on the grifting underway by those still unable to let go of their election denying past as they try to Stave off a costly future of lawyers and legal bills trying to steal an election it turns out really only guarantees you one thing legal fees lots and lots of legal fees it's something former president Trump and his crew have found out either get creative in covering those court fees or according to one former White House advisor you stop eating human food this is going to cost a half a million dollars from what I'm being told and I have a choice to make about a you know that's going to basically wipe out my retirement savings and I'll be eating dog food if I stay out of jail Trump's helpers fixers lawyers and Fanboys have been scrambling to keep their plates dog food free pretty much since last summer when Congress launched its special investigation into January 6th where it gets tricky is figuring out who's getting money through a grift as in questionably legal and who's getting it through something more like a Swindle meaning they're not breaking the law but they're also not telling the truth take lawyer and alleged January 6 co-conspirator John Eastman he's gone to court in hopes of keeping his phone out of the hands of investigators funding it with the same self-declared Christian crowdfunding site that has also helped raise money for Canada's trucker Convoy Q Anon supporters and proud boys Eastman's fund's description say he's being targeted by quote hardcore leftist activists and it links to an article called who are the real insurrectionists which is basically saying I know you are but what am I it seems the scare tactics worked Eastman originally asked for 150 thousand dollars and he's now raised over 240 000 and Counting donors have left comments cheering his fight against so-called evil and occasionally listing themselves anonymously only to sign their names in the comments former Trump advisor and forever friend Roger Stone has also turned to his supporters Stone started fundraising on his own website back in 2017 as the Mueller investigation picked up five years seven felony convictions and one presidential pardon later stone is still collecting that sweet sweet cash his website makes it clear any donation is considered a gift to Stone meaning he can technically do whatever he wants with it though these days most of that money will go towards legal fees and settling a lawsuit from the Department of Justice saying he owes almost 2 million dollars in unpaid taxes and if crowdfunding isn't enough Stone has also tried a trendier way of getting money at the end of last year he tried to sell an nft of a magazine cover from 1990 signed by Trump that says to Roger you are the greatest if someone bid over twenty thousand dollars they would apparently also get the physical copy of the magazine too though that seemingly wasn't an exciting enough perk because it looks like the auction ended without a sale then there's Trump's economic advisor and man whose greatest fear is eating dog food Peter Navarro he's been charged with being in contempt of congress After ignoring a subpoena Navarro's made the rounds on TV in part to push his new book which says will help him with legal fees and once again protect his retirement I've got to raise that money I I can't kill my retirement by by defending this this these baseless charges Navarro was like some of Trump's other allies who now find themselves being held in contempt saying they shouldn't be in trouble in the first place Navarro says Trump's executive privilege gives him Navarro legal immunity which is not how that works but Trump and his guys have a history of treating executive privilege like some people treat old milk you can't know it's actually expired unless you've given it a try now that Navarro is in trouble he's also getting help from the Save America pack a pact controlled by Trump save America pack and make America great Pac another trump-controlled fund have paid out more than two million dollars combined just this year to law firms representing Trump loyalists who've been connected to January 6th and have refused to cooperate with the committee's investigation save America back has helped pay lawyers representing Steve Bannon Mark Meadows and former Special Assistant Dan scavino the pack was paying for a lawyer for Cassidy Hutchinson too but when it was clear she was going to testify she was forced to get a different lawyer but if you're not a big name witness there's money for you too the American conservative Union has a legal defense stash called the First Amendment fund that helps some aides who get subpoenaed the ACU's chairman says the fund has quote over seven figures from donors more than a dozen Witnesses have gotten help from this fund and anyone else hoping to get in on the action has to prove at least one simple point they can't agree with the committee's mission and they certainly can't cooperate with it members of the committee have pointed out that criteria could lead to Witnesses being coerced to stay loyal throwing Pac money around isn't illegal and paying to keep sycophants happy so they don't rat out the leader of a political party makes some kind of sense in a cynical Wicked sort of way but that's not the only thing that's shady about these political slush funds throughout the committee's investigation we found evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for So Not only was there the big lie there was the big off rip off or not one thing's clear Trump and his dudes need to raise a lot of money because they're being accused of a lot of crimes while stretching the truth or straight up lying to do it [Music] just ahead we sit down with former Attorney General Eric Holder and talk about the threats hitting democracy plus whether he would urge the current attorney general to indict Donald Trump more breaking the vote when we're back [Music] yeah he's a civil rights leader who served as the country's top prosecutor what former Attorney General Eric Holder now says about the battles over the justice department he once led the criminal investigations into Donald Trump and attacks on our democracy our democracy is under attack I'm not being hyperbolic I'm not being alarmist but the reality is that we have election deniers running for governor running for secretaries of State running for at local levels too much of one party is um turning its back on democracy and is embracing really authoritarian ideas that's coming up later in the show plus we've been learning more and more about the long-running and convoluted plan to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election through those fake electors but up next more than 60 percent of Americans will have an election denier on the ballot this fall that's according to 538 these are secretaries of State Governors members of Congress local officials all vying for office while backing the claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump in some cases these are people who've taken legal action to overturn the 2020 results but do they have a chance to get elected in nov November and just how much damage can they do to our democratic system Cameron Joseph has that report former president Donald Trump set out to stack the GOP decks with allies for the midterm elections and by and large he's essentially succeeded there are six key swing states where Trump fought hard to overturn his 2020 losses Arizona Georgia Nevada Michigan Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in those States 15 of the 21 candidates Republicans have nominated for governor Senator Secretary of State and Attorney General have embraced Trump's lies about the 2020 election that's nearly three quarters of the candidates there's at least one election denying conspiracy theorists nominated Statewide in every single one of these swing states that includes the GOP candidate for governor in three of these states Michigan Pennsylvania and Arizona anybody who was involved in that corrupt Shady shoddy election of 2020. lock them up and it gets even worse when we're talking about secretaries of State the candidates who actually run their State's elections if Republicans sweep this fall five of the six swing States could have election conspiracy theorists running their own elections in fact the entire Statewide GOP ticket in Arizona is made up of election deniers that would be remarkable if only Michigan didn't have the exact same deal and it runs even deeper than that according to the Washington Post more than 60 percent of all GOP candidates in these states are election deniers do you think the elections were Fair the problem is that the American people don't have all the answers because the media is part of the problem I think Trump won in 2020. there's no evidence though of widespread voter fraud that is absolutely crap and you know it you didn't look at the findings I did read the findings and a bunch of these Secretary of State candidates aren't just election deniers they're playing footsie with Q Anon they've teamed up with Q Anon influencers a form of Coalition of like-minded candidates and in case you think this is all for show some of these candidates actually do seem to believe the crazy human on conspiracy theories they're yelling about there's a lot of people involved in in a pedophile Network and the distribution of children and that makes me absolutely sick and unfortunately there's a whole lot of elected officials that are involved in that now not every Republican nominee has been willing to back Trump's fraud claims Dr Oz has danced around it for months in his forever flailing Pennsylvania Senate race and Nevada Governor nominee Joe Lombardo has said Biden won though he has said Democrats made voting fraud easier and Georgia is the big exception Republican Governor Brian Kemp Secretary of State Brad raffensberger and attorney general Chris Carr all one primaries over trump-back conspiracists even there Trump got his man in the senate race with Herschel Walker he's one of the four swing state GOP nominees who have embraced Trump's election lies but I can guarantee you Joe Biden didn't get 50 million people vote for him but yet people think that he's won this election and don't forget about the attorney's General they're the ones who actually bring criminal prosecutions of local wackadus violate campaign laws or they can join wild lawsuits trying to overturn their side's election loss like 17 different Republican AGS did in 2020 and four of the five GOP nominees for attorney general in these states are election deniers nowhere is this Choice Starker than in Michigan Democratic AG Dana nessel has been investigating a group that includes former Trump campaign lawyer Matt deperno for allegedly gaining unauthorized access to voting machines and a handful of counties after the last election she looked all set to bring charges until Republicans nominated to parano to run against her this fall now she's asked for a special prosecutor so there's no conflict of interest of course not all of these candidates are going to win these are swing States after all and they're out there views make it harder for them but here's the thing all of these conspiracy theorists don't need to win to wreak havoc on American democracy just a few of them getting into positions of power could so chaos for their states of 2024 results the more of these candidates that win the more chances there are for serious threats to free and fair elections and the higher the risk grows that the next presidential election will make the chaos of 2020 looks like a warm-up [Music] laughs foreign [Music] welcome back to Breaking the vote coups aren't always violent in fact they really don't need to be in order to succeed and despite appearances on January 6th the vice president's election certifying role isn't the most troubling part of our 240 year old system of government here's Liz Landers on the small but glaringly obvious issue at the heart of our great electoral experiment [Music] democracy is under attack from every direction it has been for years and we've been covering it and there's a small window in which the country can make sure those attacks don't succeed that window however starts to close a bit more in November while institutions start to Splinter and crack before voters eyes there's one part of the country's centuries-old Democratic Republic that has stood the test of time and will likely continue to that isn't necessarily a good thing political scientists lawmakers voters even late night comedy hosts have called the current system unrepresentative or undemocratic while shouting out loud about the one big glaring instance of false advertising underpinning the country's great experiment America is not a one-person one-vote democracy and never has been the question is does a seemingly outdated 200 year old system actually function is it Equitable the answer is pretty simple no enter the Electoral College consider this because of the Electoral College one of the two major parties needs 52 percent of the vote to have even a 50 50 chance of winning the presidency it's the Democrats which helps explain why two recent presidents both Republicans lost the popular vote but won the White House the Electoral College is also one reason why political campaigns are pandering to older and mostly white voters in swing States like New Hampshire Colorado Wisconsin and Pennsylvania they literally have more Sway and Power so how do we get here Defenders of the Electoral College say the founding fathers wanted to protect the nation from Mob Rule and to make sure that less populous states get a voice let's be honest though depending on where you look now mob rule is exactly what some voters have but that's not the whole story because this system was also born from slavery racism in the late 1700s the Electoral College was backed by whites in southern slave holding States so they could include enslaved people in their population count but deny those people the vote the system would give slave owners and their supporters outsized political power in this fledgling so-called democracy but today undemocratic minority rule can be found in many parts of the country particularly in one pretty powerful governing body the U.S Senate take for example that more people live in California than in these 21 states combined yet Californians get just two Senate votes while voters in these smaller States get 42 combined Senate votes that means some Americans have more than 20 times the voting power of others and the results are Stark the U.S Senate is now six to seven percentage points redder than the country it's supposed to represent yeah 100 of our Focus is on stopping this new Administration and just look at what's become of the most activist Supreme Court in a generation where five out of nine of those of those justices who dismantled Reproductive Rights and are set to make Landmark rulings on Free Speech race and college admissions and States powers in federal elections were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote so is it fair to say our political system is becoming more undemocratic that it doesn't reflect the will of the people that it's broken maybe but one thing's for sure there are those out there trying to make that dystopian idea a reality up next Eric Holder tells us how those centuries-old Democratic structures need to be replaced plus the threat that wannabe autocrats are having on the country and whether there's any way to stop them [Music] foreign democracy is in a crisis and with these coming midterm elections we're now at an inflection point former U.S Attorney General Eric Holder says that what we're facing is no less than an existential National Emergency and that the time to act is now holder served in the Obama Administration and he was the first African-American attorney general in U.S history I talked to him about how the vote is broken and his blueprint for fixing it which he lays out in his new book our unfinished March [Music] Mr Attorney General Eric Holder thanks for joining us sure glad to be with you well uh democracy is under threat there are election deniers and conspiracists running for office All Over America there was just an attempted coup in this country it's hell of a time to come out with a book about American democracy yeah um unfortunately our timing was good um the our democracy is under attack I'm not being hyperbolic I'm not being alarmist but the reality is that we have election deniers running for governor running for secretaries of State running for at local levels too much of one party is um turning its back on democracy and is embracing really authoritarian ideas what's the state of this I'll call it a fight for now for democracy what's the state of it in this country are pro-democratic forces up to the battle right now I think pro-democratic forces are up to the battle and I think that you see increasing numbers of people uh moving to the pro-democracy side as they understand what is at stake and what the impact of this battle has on their lives on a day-to-day basis our people outraged about it are they outraged enough about it yeah I mean I think we certainly if you look at the Democratic party and progressives in 2011 not up to the task and we suffered that whole decade as a result when we formed up the national Democratic redistricting Committee in 2017. yeah I'd say that at that point people you know their eyes would glaze over when I started talking about about gerrymandering but I think people have now gotten to the point where they understand um what the impact is on their day-to-day lives when it comes to reproductive Choice um Criminal Justice Reform climate protecting the right to vote all of these things are impacted by gerrymandering and I think people get it now in 2009 the Obama Administration Democrats had control of the house control of the Senate control of the White House they didn't pass voting rights legislation they didn't protect voting rights at that time did you do enough we certainly did what we could to protect voting rights bringing cases that um we we could under the Voting Rights Act um I think it's safe to say however that I certainly did not anticipate that the court would do what it did in the 2013 Shelby County case to really gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965. one of the worst decisions I think we've ever seen in Supreme Court history you wrote in your book that when that decision came down 2013 Shelby V holder I know you don't like to talk about this I only call it the Shelby County case I don't want my name associated with that Abomination at all right let me ask you about something more current okay Mar-A-Lago have to talk about it you are in a unique position to really bring us on the inside of some of these decisions that are being made we've all read the warrant document violations of the Espionage Act potential obstruction is Donald Trump in trouble I mean Donald Trump is in a world of trouble um he's in he's facing a big mess from his perspective you know the case that's being considered by the local prosecutor of the Fulton County prosecutor in Georgia is um that's a substantial case I mean he's on tape saying find me 11 780 votes what we have seen elicited by the January 6 committee shows his involvement in the um the attempted coup my guess is that as time passes more information will be found um you know his lawyers we now here have gone before a grand jury they're not going to lie one thing that's come out in the aftermath of the mar-a-laga search is I think I read a survey that said 41 percent of people considered that to be a politically motivated abusive power 41 seems like a crisis of confidence in the justice department and in the FBI the Trump base is they believe everything that Donald Trump says it's all misinformation their whole party is based on misinformation and he's been and those who surrounded him and I think people in the Republican Party have been irresponsible in a way in which they've characterized what happened and that's something that really pisses me off you know this notion that somehow or other you're going to go after federal agents and imply that they were planting information you know let out the names of the people the agents who were involved in this process knowing full well that that meant that they were going to be put in danger if the next time the Republican Party the leaders of that party and Donald Trump say that they are Law and Order people I hope the American people will remember how they treated people in law enforcement around this this Mar-A-Lago incident this is something that really really really makes me angry I think all people of conscience were shocked by the violence on January 6th the riot the breaking into the capital all of that and since then we've learned so much more about how broad and how deep the coup plot really was what pissed you off more the bid to take over the justice department and politicize it for a coup or threatening doj Personnel in the FBI that's a hard one I think I would have the same level of pissed off Fitness to the extent that there is such a word um you know to try to politicize one of the most powerful agencies in the executive branch the way in which people in law enforcement in uniform were treated on that day um the way in which the former president apparently waited for hours before he decided to come out and then give that half-hearted um speech so go home we love you you're very special and then as the January 6 committee has done its work and to find out you know who was involved the breadth and the depth of the um of the coup conspiracy that has has angered me as well you have people who just need a little bit of a push to have the lives threatened of people in the Justice Department FBI agents potentially um lawyers and then you end up with some idiot trying to storm an FBI office in Cincinnati Ohio and he loses his life as a result of that that's on the hands of the people who have been irresponsible in their reactions to what was a Justified law enforcement action that gives me great concern as well so both of them both of them pissed me off the reality is that this movement mounted violence on January 6th there's violence after Mar-A-Lago they seem to be promising more to come yeah but so but what do you do I mean you know if you are concerned that we can't hold them responsible because we fear violence well that in some ways just validates what it is that they did and makes it more likely that what they did on January the 6th and afterwards will be replicated in the future now people need to be held accountable that's one of the aims of the criminal law but another important part of the criminal law is to deter people from engaging in similar conduct and so if we want 10 years from now 20 years from now 50 years from now to try to ensure the peaceful transfer of power people who acted inappropriately around January the 6th before it and after it have to be held accountable are you worried they might also be violence producing if there's accountability for those things people own The Fringe who've been activated by the irresponsible language that has been used by um by too many that's what gives me concern and so when I say yeah you know we can reduce it but I'm also realistic that we have to be prepared uh to deal with not only threats but um but action by um you know some segments of our population but but I guess my thought is that you know we're not finished with these anger producing Revelations um the January 6 committee is going to continue um it's worth I suspect we're going to hear more negative things Christopher Ray the the head of the the FBI said in some form or fashion that his primary concern his main concern was domestic terrorism and what we have seen in the United States uh is a term that we've used overseas but I think we need to bring home we've seen the radicalization you know the radicalization of certain parts of our society and these radicalized people pose I think of clear and present danger to our nation that does it for this edition of breaking the vote when we're back how manufacturing fear operates for political gain we'll look at the targets of the fear-mongering and the fear mongers too plus how that good old fear and intimidation are worked to root out the workers and officials that make our elections function make sure to sign up for our weekly breaking the vote newsletter at vice.com breaking the vote and we'll see you next time [Music] I'm Michael 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Id: -ntYrPCNnso

Length: 44min 39sec (2679 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 16 2022