News Roundup: From the Trump White House to Wisconsin

It’s been more than six months since the presidential election, and the lies about a stolen election and large-scale voter fraud have not stopped circulating. 

And even after debunked reports, a continuing lack of evidence, and former President Trump’s own failed attempt to use the Justice Department to overturn the election, his allies in positions of power in state governments are still providing fuel for those lies. 

This week, new emails released to Congress revealed additional details about the extent to which the Trump White House exerted pressure on the Justice Department and acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to support those baseless claims and even bring a case to the Supreme Court. 

• In December, when Attorney General William was on his way out the door, Trump’s assistant forwarded Rosen a report, which was later debunked, alleging a conspiracy about election machines in a rural Michigan county. 
• Two weeks later, on behalf of the president, the same assistant sent a draft Supreme Court filing challenging the election results in six states. 
• Meanwhile, Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows was also pushing the Justice Department to investigate outlandish claims, including a theory that military satellites controlled in Italy had tampered with voting machines. 

The latest emails add further color to the already damning picture of a sitting president’s and his supporters’ attempt to reverse a free and fair election, from Trump’s pressure on the Georgia secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” to the plot to replace Rosen with an official more sympathetic to voter-fraud conspiracies. But just because Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue stood firm against those lies does not mean those lies died there. 

We can see them in the origins and operation of the Arizona Senate’s sham “audit” of votes cast in Maricopa County, spearheaded by Senate President Karen Fann who, as revealed in documents obtained by American Oversight, had been in contact with Trump and Rudy Giuliani in the weeks after the election. Lawmakers from around the country have traveled to Phoenix to observe the ballot review, voicing support for similar efforts in their home states.  

In one such state, Wisconsin, the speaker of the state Assembly, Robin Vos, said he was hiring three former police officers to investigate the 2020 election. Records we recently obtained show that Vos and allies have been laying the groundwork for this investigation for at least two months, with Vos having met in early April with one of those former police officers,  — Mike Sandvick, who once wrote a discredited report on voter fraud in Milwaukee and who has previously worked with a voting-restriction group. 

• Read more here about those records and the timeline of Wisconsin conservative leaders’ efforts to undermine the election. 

This week, American Oversight expanded our investigation of Wisconsin’s partisan election review, filing new requests for records related to the effort. And we continue our work to provide transparency for what’s happening in Arizona, where our requests and active litigation against the state Senate continue to produce new records.  

Here are some recent related headlines: 

• Arizona audit: Another subcontractor working at coliseum has come to light (Arizona Republic) 
• Yavapai sheriff: Beware fraudulent ‘election officials’ knocking on doors (Arizona Mirror) 
• OAN hosts’ AZ ‘audit’ fundraising group now bankrolling visits from out-of-state GOPers (Talking Points Memo) 
• Michigan Republicans demand ‘forensic audits’ of 2020 election, but party leaders say it’s time to move on (MLive.com) 

On the Records 

New Records About Trump Administration Protest Response
This week, American Oversight published a number of records related to the Trump administration and federal law enforcement’s aggressive crackdown on racial justice protests last summer. Among the records is a Secret Service timeline from June 1, the day federal officers used force and chemical irritants to disperse peaceful protesters from a park in front of the White House. 

Multiple law enforcement agencies — including the U.S. Park Police, D.C.’s police force, and the Secret Service — issued contradictory or shifting statements about the use of such irritants that day. The timeline notes the deployment of “Tear gas and/or flashbangs” at 6:35 p.m. 

Other records published in conjunction with our report provide details about the deployment of other federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Marshals Service, as well as contain emails regarding the federal response to protests in Portland, Ore. Read more here.  

Early Pandemic U.S.-China Relations
A March 2020 email from a State Department official, which we published this week, mentioned complaints from an official at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding Trump administration officials, including the president and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, referring to the novel coronavirus as the “Wuhan virus.” According to the email, the Chinese official had “said that if these comments were not taken down, they would narrow the window for Covid cooperation.”  

Other Stories We’re Following 

National 

• Congress approves bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday (Associated Press) 
• Obamacare survives latest Supreme Court challenge (New York Times) 
• Hunting leaks, Trump officials focused on Democrats in Congress (New York Times) 
• Biden administration keeps long-sought Trump hotel documents under wraps (Washington Post) 
• U.S. military guns keep vanishing, some used in street crimes (Associated Press) 

• A pricy new drug that may not work? Why drug pricing critics are staying quiet. (Politico) 

 In the States 

• Texas power grid operator ERCOT urges conservation to avoid blackouts (Texas Tribune) 

Immigration 

• ICE discussed punishing immigrant advocates for peaceful protests (Intercept) 
• Gov. Greg Abbott announces Texas is providing initial $250 million ‘down payment’ for border wall (Texas Tribune) 

 Voting Rights 

• GOP bills rattle disabled voters: ‘We don’t have a voice anymore’ (New York Times) 
• Georgia election investigation looks into Fulton ballot drop box forms (Atlanta Journal Constitution) 
• Hundreds of companies pressured to cut ties with group behind restrictive voting legislation push across U.S. (Forbes) 
• Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers (Reuters) 

The Jan. 6 Capitol Attack 

• He was at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Now, feds say he used his nonprofit to advocate violence. (Washington Post) 
• Boeing restarts donations to the so-called Sedition Caucus (Daily Beast) 
• Six men said to be tied to Three Percenters movement are charged in Capitol riot (New York Times) 

The Coronavirus Pandemic 

• The quest for a pill to fight viruses gets a $3.2 billion boost (Washington Post) 
• Vaccine effort turns into slog as infectious variant spreads (Associated Press) 
• Vaccine maker earned record profits but delivered disappointment in return (New York Times) 
• As pandemic recedes in U.S., calls are growing for an investigative commission (New York Times) 
• Top Trump officials pushed the Covid-19 lab-leak theory. Investigators had doubts. (Politico) 
• Scientists report earliest known coronavirus infections in five U.S. states (New York Times) 
• Many post-Covid patients are experiencing new medical problems, study finds (New York Times) 
• Some hospitals kept suing patients over medical debt through the pandemic (ProPublica) 
• Novavax’s coronavirus vaccine is 90 percent effective, study finds (Washington Post)