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When the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack reached out to Arizonas Kelli Ward in February, no one was especially surprised. After all, the right-wing chair of the Arizona Republican Party was a pro-Trump fake elector after the 2020 election.

Whats more, Ward has been accused of helping assemble the larger slate of fake electors in her home state, while filing lawsuits in the hopes of nullifying Arizonas election results. She also joined a lawsuit that hoped to force then-Vice President Mike Pence to help Donald Trump keep the presidency, despite the will of the voters.

Just a few months ago, we also learned of December 2020 email from a Republican lawyer who helped organize the bogus electors in Arizona. The lawyer wrote to the Trump campaign that Ward recommended trying to keep the scheme under wraps until Congress counts the vote Jan. 6th (so we can try to surprise the Dems and media with it) I tend to agree with her.

In other words, Ward has an important perspective. Evidently, shes not eager to share that perspective. Politico reported:

Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid answering questions from the Jan. 6 select committee, a lawyer for the panel revealed in federal court Tuesday. Dr. Ward was deposed by the select committee, and she declined to answer on every substantive question and asserted her rights under the Fifth Amendment, select committee attorney Eric Columbus said during a court hearing before Arizona-based U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa.

Its worth emphasizing that while we learned of this yesterday, its unclear precisely when Ward sat down with investigators and refused to answer questions.

Its also worth noting that the Arizona GOP chair has quite a bit of company. Lets circle back to our earlier coverage and review the list of high-profile figures from Trumps orbit whove invoked the Fifth recently:

The mob takes the Fifth Amendment, Donald Trump said in 2016, deriding those who assert their right against self-incrimination. If youre innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?

The relevance of the quote continues to linger.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

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Arizonas Ward latest Republican to take the Fifth in Jan. 6 probe - MSNBC

The truth has power. That is why an army of politicians, lawyers, political schemers, media personalities and admirers of former President Donald Trump have tried so hard to keep Americans from learning the truth about his effort to overturn the 2022 election.

Fortunately, he failed. And he and the corrupt members of his inner circle have failed to keep the truth hidden.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on our country and the criminal conspiracy that led up to it is an important exercise in truth-telling.

We have learned a lot thanks to the work of committee members and staff, principled members of Trumps own administration, and journalists whose work has shed light on things Trump and his cronies desperately tried to keep hidden.

Trump wanted to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. He wanted it so badly that he called his enraged supporters to Washington, D.C., to interfere with a key step in the peaceful transfer of power.

He sent them to the Capitol knowing that many were armed. And for hours, while members of the Capitol Police were being brutalized and members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pences security detail were calling loved ones, not sure they would live through the attack Trump did nothing.

Well, to be more accurate, he did nothing to stop the rampage. He did plenty of harmful things.

He did watch the violence on television. He did pour gasoline on the fire by denouncing Pence while the attack was under way. He did take calls from fearful members of Congress only to dismiss their pleas for help. He did reject direct appeals from his own daughter to call off the attack. He did tell his chief of staff that he didnt think the mob chanting Hang Mike Pence was doing anything wrong. He thought Pence deserved it for choosing the Constitution over Trumps desire to keep his grip on power.

Only when it was becoming clear that the attack would fail to stop Congress from affirming Joe Bidens victory did Trump grudgingly tell his troops to withdraw.

But even that was a tactical retreat. His attack on our democracy hasnt stopped. Or even slowed down.

Trump continues to lie about the election being stolen from him. His enablers in right-wing media and far-right social media networks spread the lie even further. MAGA activists harass election officials. State legislators use that lie to justify laws that make it harder for people Trump sees as his enemies to vote.

Even worse, they are trying to get more Trump loyalists and Big Lie believers into positions where they will have the power to succeed at what Trump and his team tried to do this time around: overturn the election results in key states.

Trumpists and election deniers are running for office as local election officials, state legislators and secretaries of state, where they will have power to interfere with how elections are run and how votes are counted.

And potentially even worse than that, they are also enlisting the far-right Supreme Court majority that Trump cemented with three justices who were preapproved by the far right-wing legal movement. They have agreed to consider a fringe legal theory pushed by the hard right.

If the courts new activist far-right majority embraces this legal theory, it would let state legislators violate state constitutions and ignore and override the will of the voters. And it would be impossible for courts to step in as a check on anti-democratic abuses of power. This is a battle plan for authoritarian rule.

Ben Jealous

It may be hard for many people to believe just how extreme Trumps movement and his political supporters have become, and just how much of a threat to democracy they pose as we approach this years congressional elections. The Jan. 6 committee has done democracy a big favor by dragging important truths into the light of day. We cant turn away from them. To preserve our country and our freedoms, we must recognize that they are threatened. And we must act to protect them.

Benjamin Jealous is an American civil rights leader who served as the youngest president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), from 2008 to 2013. He is the current president of People for the American Way and its associated foundation.

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Protect the truth-tellers to save democracy - The Miami Times

A nonpartisan road show for reality, the Trusted Elections Tour, stopped in Greensboro last week to stump for reason and common sense.

Led by former Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts and former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, the series of 14 town halls throughout the state is a rational and informed take on election security that rebuts unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud in North Carolina and beyond. And it has its work cut out.

According to a WRAL News poll, 44% of likely Republican voters express little to no confidence that their vote will be counted accurately in the Nov. 8 election.

Thats disconcerting, if not surprising.

Donald Trump claimed election fraud even after he won in 2016.

In 2017, he even created a commission to investigate. Established by executive order, the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and vice-chaired by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach a leading purveyor of dubious fraud allegations.

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The commission disbanded in early 2018 with little to show for its efforts. Following his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump doubled down on his claims without credible evidence. More than 60 court challenges to the election results were dismissed. Yet if you repeat a lie often enough well, we continue to reap the results.

In the WRAL News poll, conducted among 677 likely North Carolina voters, only 15% of Republican respondents said they had full confidence that their votes would be counted accurately, versus 60% of Democrats and 42% of independent voters. Only 5% of Democrats and independents expressed no confidence in the voting process.

Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer traces the lopsided GOP skepticism to Trump.

A lot of that certainly gets laid at the feet of the former president, who continuously reinforced the idea of, If I lose, the system must have been rigged, Bitzer told WRAL. That is not a basic American norm or principle. If you lose, its because the other candidate won more voters or got more support. What hes doing is calling the system into question and this is the result.

Not that Trump hasnt had more than a few accomplices.

Remember, on the day rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, 139 House Republicans voted to object to the results of the election. They included seven of 10 North Carolina Republicans, among them Dan Bishop, Ted Budd, Madison Cawthorn, Virginia Foxx, Greg Murphy, Richard Hudson and David Rouzer.

At least one of them obviously knew better.

I know that Joe Biden will be president, Bishop said from the floor after police had cleared the House chamber of rioters. But I dont know that it hurts, or would hurt any of us, to have the generosity of spirit to continue to reflect on what might be better or what might seriously have gone wrong here, even if you reject the notion that the result was wrong.

Got that? Such muddying of the facts by GOP leaders with doublespeak and often outright fiction has made election workers jobs harder and in some cases, scarier.

And it has become more and more common for losers of elections to automatically declare fraud, whether theres evidence of it or not.

While fact-based inquiries into election irregularities are healthy, useful and necessary, blanket condemnations of the entire process based on flimsy premises are downright dangerous.

So are overly aggressive poll watchers with political agendas and gratuitous complaints and records requests from election deniers.

The Trusted Elections Tour is one way to shine light into that darkness. Whether these panels will wind up preaching mostly to the choir or actually reach some of the skeptics and the misinformed, we dont know.

Were disappointed that the tour didnt make its way to Forsyth County; we do hope a sequel is in the works. In the meantime, its worthwhile for readers to visit its website, especially to see the wide variety of participants: http://www.nctrustedelections.com

We appreciate the noble and worthwhile cause these public servants have adopted to counter the headwinds of ignorance, exploitation and self-interest.

Because, in an era in which sowing doubt in democracy has become a political strategy, every little bit helps.

Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!

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Our view: Blinded by the lie - Winston-Salem Journal

FILE - This Jan. 15, 2021, file photo, shows the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

Diego Morales (R), who is running for secretary of state in Indiana, has been previously fired from that office two times.

Documents obtained and first reported by the Associated Press in 2018 state that former Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita fired Morales in 2009 for inefficient execution and lack of focus. Two years later, then-Secretary of State Charlie White fired Morales for similar instances of poor work ethic. White himself was later removed as secretary of state after being convicted of voter fraud.

In addition to a shaky work history, Morales has been recently accused of sexually assaulting two women according to interviews conducted by Abdul Hakim-Shabazz, the editor of IndyPolitics.org. Morales denied the allegations in a statement and called them politically motivated. According to the interviews, the women were 20 and 22 years old respectively at the time of the assaults.

In response to the disciplinary actions, Morales said that he is facing a smear campaign and that he was probably fired due to office politics.

Morales also used to serve as an aide for Mike Pence when the former vice president was the governor of Indiana. Like other Republicans running for secretary of state positions, Morales has leaned heavily into former President Donald Trumps Big Lie rhetoric that contends the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the Republicans. He has also said that he would cut Indianas early voting period from 28 days to 14.

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Indiana Republican running for secretary of state has been fired from that office twice: report - Heartland Signal

Former Vice President Mike Pence seemed to show his true colors earlier this month when he confirmed that he would strongly consider testifying under oath before the highly partisan House Jan. 6 panel.

Since then, however, he seems to have given that promise some additional thought and appears to have backtracked on his earlier enthusiasm just a bit.

As Newsmax reported:

Although the former Vice President had recently said he would consider testifying, Pence told The Washington Times over the weekend, if the committee wanted to extend a formal invitation I would consider it, but we would reflect very carefully on my obligations to preserve the separation of powers and the constitutional framework that I served in.

I have real concerns about the partisan nature of the Jan. 6 committee, Pence continued. By essentially rendering this as a partisan committee thats operating on a very partisan basis and at times leaking information and leaking testimony I think in many respects it has squandered an opportunity to really thoughtfully examine what took place that day and where the failings were.

Of course, Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the media are chomping at the bit to secure an interview with Pence.

Its worth noting that the former vice president still hasnt ruled out appearing before the House panel, but he does seem to have some legitimate concerns.

Whether hes hedging his bets to appeal to as many potential voters as possible ahead of a likely presidential bid or hes actually had a moral awakening remains to be seen.

In any case, his latest remarks show a clear difference in opinion from when he first addressed the issue earlier this month during an appearance in New Hampshire.

As Politico reported at the time:

Former Vice President Mike Pence hasnt ruled out testifying before the Jan. 6 select committee investigating efforts by his former boss and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

If there was an invitation to participate, I would consider it, Pence told a packed room at the New England Council and Saint Anselm Colleges Politics & Eggs event on Wednesday morning.

I would have to reflect on the unique role that I was serving as vice president, Pence continued. It would be unprecedented in history for the vice president to be summoned to testify on Capitol Hill. But, as I said, I dont want to prejudge ever any formal invitation rendered to us.

Heres a clip from Mike Pences response:

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Mike Pence Might Not Testify Before Jan. 6 Committee After All