This content comes from the latest installment of our weekly Breaking the Vote newsletter out of VICE News’ D.C. bureau, tracking the ongoing efforts to undermine the democratic process in America. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday.
Dominion-o sancto
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Sure, Tucker Carlson IRL hated Donald Trump even as he perpetuated and wildly profited off of the propaganda environment Trump spun into overdrive. And sure, Fox hosts all knew Trump’s and his minions’ lies about a stolen election were bogus in the runup to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
But could they have stopped the riot?
Probably not. By Jan. 5, when Rupert Murdoch and other powerful executives debated having Fox News’ prime-time hosts go on air to denounce the “Trump myth” of a stolen election, it’s hard to imagine. The juggernaut of grievance Trump spent months rolling toward the Capitol would never have been diverted by a bunch of TV hosts going soft the night before. It’s a lot easier to imagine the “Hang Mike Pence!” and the “Hang Fox traitors!” crowds trying to outdo each other the next day, like one of those old Miller Lite commercials.
Murdoch’s contemplated denunciations never happened. The Dominion filings show that those pangs of hesitation at Trump’s madness were drowned out by an obsession with keeping a radicalized audience watching. (I asked a Fox spokesperson whether the network’s hosts should have denounced Trump’s misinformation prior to Jan. 6. In return I got a statement attacking Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation suit as a bunch of “private equity owners” trying to “silence the press.”)
“Radicalized” seems like a strong word to describe millions of everyday Americans who watch the leading cable news network. The term of course doesn’t accurately describe the majority of viewers. But 60% of Republicans believe the completely false idea that the 2020 election was stolen. On election night 2020, Fox’s audience was so convinced Trump couldn’t lose that they abandoned the network in droves when its decision desk accurately called Arizona for Joe Biden.
Would “radicalized” describe a party base that, like their champion Trump, see Jan. 6 rioters as the victims, and those who tried to investigate the insurrection as the culprits? Republicans definitely think that’s the kind of programming their voters want. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who more than any other Republican represents the sordid promises Kevin McCarthy made to become speaker, this week said she’d soon organize a congressional trip to the D.C. jail to support alleged Jan. 6 rioters being detained there.
Meanwhile, Republicans announced a new investigation to probe the Jan. 6 committee itself and how it conducted its inquiry. It’s been obvious since McCarthy and other Republicans attacked witnesses and refused to honor subpoenas that they would try to discredit the January 6 committee’s damning conclusions. This is it.
Both those announcements were in perfect accord with Tucker Carlson’s show earlier this week, where he used cherry-picked footage to lie to his audience about rioters he called “orderly and meek” and said had been falsely accused. McCarthy set the entire thing in motion by providing Carlson with the footage for an alternate reality both men knew the Fox prime time audience wanted to see.
Some Senate Republicans seemed, like Murdoch, a little uneasy with the whole thing. A handful of them criticized Carlson or Fox for airing “bullshit” or “whitewashing” Jan. 6. They, like Murdoch, would like their zealots—the ones with direct access to the audience—to maybe consider toning it down a little bit and moving on. Lying about stolen elections over and over not only invites lawsuits, after all. It also tends to lose elections.
On Tuesday Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell said it was a “mistake” for Fox to air the McCarthy-provided footage in a way that fooled audiences into thinking Jan. 6 was anything but a violent riot where a mob attacked police and assaulted the Capitol. Right around the same time, House Republicans tweeted a clip of Tucker Carlson’s broadcast.
It was surrounded by “siren” emojis and blared, “MUST WATCH.”
T.W.I.S.™ Notes
It’s the “put your life vests on” version of This Week in Subpoenas!
– Ready the charge
Here we (maybe) go: Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg just gave a pretty strong signal that Donald Trump is about to get charged with a crime for the $130,000 hush money payment to then-porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign. News broke Thursday evening that Bragg’s team has invited Trump to testify in front of the New York grand jury investigating the payments. A move like that almost always signals the subject is about to get charged.
If it happens, it’ll be a great, big, massive deal. But the case against Trump is not a lock. The book-cooking at the center of the likely case is a misdemeanor. Only if prosecutors can show that that misdemeanor was done in the furtherance of a second crime, like violating campaign finance laws, would a potential felony be in play. It’s a legal double-flip with a landing that’s hard to stick. Stay VERY tuned!
FWIW, former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks met with the prosecutors this week, though it’s unclear if she answered questions. Michael Cohen, who made the payments and later got reimbursed by Trump, still hasn’t testified in front of the grand jury.
Trump issued a meandering statement on Truth Social, casting himself as the victim of extortion and denying having an affair with Stormy Daniels.
– Pence-ile erasure
Former Veep Mike Pence consummated his steely-eyed adoration for the Constitution this week by striving not to answer questions under oath about the plan to subvert it. Pence’s lawyers filed a motion in federal court seeking to block the grand jury subpoena seeking his testimony about (many, many) things he knows about Jan. 6 and the coup attempt.
Right on cue, Trump’s lawyers also sought to block Pence’s testimony with a claim of executive privilege. Both claims will have to be fought out in court, if they haven’t already been disputed in secret proceedings. One sticky detail for Pence is that he’s already written a book where he details a lot of stuff Trump did and said before and on Jan. 6. Would he say the same things under oath?
Esq-wire fraud
It’s been a censorious week for lawyers who undermined democracy to help Donald Trump! First, Jenna Ellis, the Trump lawyer who filed lawsuits and blanketed the airwaves with false claims after the 2020 race, who authored memos pre-Jan. 6 advising Trumpworld how Mike Pence could help steal the election, (and weirdly thinks someone wants to take away her religion) admitted that her public statements alleging a stolen election were rife with “misrepresentations” that amounted to “misconduct.” Ellis was censured by Colorado’s chief disciplinary judge, who wrote that Ellis agreed her conduct “undermined the American public’s confidence in the presidential election, violating her duty of candor to the public.”
Ellis would like you to know that the problem here is with her critics, and that “knowingly engag(ing) in any [non- criminal] conduct that involves dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation” means she did absolutely nothing wrong!
Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., a prominent group of attorneys asked to disbar lawyer Stefan Passantino for undermining the interests of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson when he represented her in front of the January 6 committee. Lawyers Defending American Democracy filed a complaint with the D.C. Bar accusing Passantino of unethically representing Trump’s interest when he urged Hutchinson to say she didn’t recall certain facts or events. They say the former White House ethics lawyer suborned perjury while being paid by Trump’s political organization.
Hutchinson’s blockbuster testimony—on everything from Trump’s alleged lunge at a Secret Service agent in an SUV to knowingly sending armed protesters to the Capitol on Jan. 6—only came after she fired Passantino and hired another attorney.
A test of Willis
Georgia Republicans appear to be giving themselves a backup plan should Fulton County DA Fani Willis prosecute Donald Trump. Legislators are putting the final touches on a plan giving a five-member board the power to investigate—and even remove—local prosecutors they deem to be underperforming. Willis is denouncing it as a “racist” power grab. VICE News’ Greg Walters has the story.
Payback’s a Finch
An Arizona judge sanctioned former state Rep. and conspiracist-in-a-hat Mark Finchem for abusing the court with a “groundless” lawsuit contesting his trouncing in the 2022 race for secretary of state. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian ordered Finchem and his attorney to pay $292 in court costs plus attorneys fees to be determined later this month.
Judge Julian said Finchem’s December lawsuit asking to redo the election “was not made in good faith” and had no chance of overturning his 120,204 vote loss to current Sec. of State Adrian Fontes. Finchem fundraised off the news and accused the judge of “doing the bidding of Marxists.”
Fatal ERIC message
More red states are leaving the non-profit and bipartisan Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). That’s the 30-state consortium that matches voter information and other data so states can keep their voter rolls clean. In January, I told you how Alabama’s secretary of state abruptly removed his state from ERIC under false pretenses. Louisiana left, as well. Now Florida, West Virginia, and Missouri are pulling out, too. Yes, this literally makes voter rolls and registrations, the things Republicans claim to want to keep clean, harder to keep clean.
One issue Republicans cite is “eligible but unregistered” voters. ERIC rules require state authorities to contact those voters and see if they’d like to register, but Republicans are increasingly against that mandate.
“The electorate’s confidence in the news being real is all-important… In the absence of any universally recognized standard or source of news, what happens? Rumors take the place of news… and in that environment all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories bloom and take the place of facts.” – Tucker Carlson speaking at U.C. Santa Barbara in 2006.
Ethics cleansing — Remember that old one about how House Republicans like Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, and Andy Biggs got subpoenas from the January 6 committee but refused to answer questions that could help with accountability? The committee referred the four to the House Ethics Committee for disciplinary action this week. The committee is evenly divided between Dems and Republicans and it takes a majority to order any action against a member. So expect exactly no consequences here!
Kevin sent — Here’s one less rap for McCarthy to worry about. For weeks, MyPillow CEO and Dominion-o theorist Mike Lindell has threatened to sue McCarthy for giving that Jan. 6 footage exclusively to Tucker Carlson. Alas, Lindell put his lawyers on it, and the plan fell apart.
Pleading from behind — In Jan. 2021, the feds rolled up Douglass Mackey and charged him with interference in the 2016 election. Mackey had allegedly used his large presence as “Ricky Vaugh” to mislead likely Hillary Clinton voters into falsely voting via text. Now one of Mackey’s accomplices has apparently pleaded guilty, flipped, and is cooperating with the government. (h/t Marcy Wheeler)
Tina time! — Fresh off her conviction last week for obstructing a government function, defrocked former Mesa County Clerk and MAGA stolen election heroine Tina Peters is ready to take power once again. Peters is in the running to take the gavel as the chair of the Colorado Republican Party. Elections are tomorrow… and a late candidate who says… wait for it… that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, just jumped in the race. Watch this space!
From Maricopa County, a troubling sign for 2024.
Who’s unsurprised by shocking Fox News revelations? Ex-Fox journalists.
Restoring rights for felons is a rare bipartisan voting change.
