Trump Administration/Executive Ethics

Aunna Dennis, executive director of democracy non-profit Common Cause Georgia, said she was “encouraged” by the grand jury’s progress. “The coordinated attempts by former President Donald Trump and his associates to discount and ignore the will of Georgian voters during the 2020 election cannot be swept under the rug,” she told The Independent via email this week. “Georgia can not continue to be the testing grounds for sensationalized propaganda attempts that are designed to deter voters from the ballot box. We need to know those who broke our laws in their dangerous attempts to hold on to power be held accountable. The transparency in this investigation into potential criminal misdeeds has bolstered my hopes that justice will ultimately be served,” she added.

Recent headlines, from the January 6th Select Committee’s hearings to the Supreme Court rolling back the right to reproductive healthcare, profoundly implicate the freedom that many will celebrate this Independence Day. Opponents of democracy — a system that works best when it empowers people to have an equal say in decisions that affect their futures — have waged a well-coordinated attack on it. Freedom must be fortified, it must be protected at the ballot box, and it must never be taken for granted.

Then-President Trump and his chief of staff Mark Meadows were warned repeatedly of anticipated violence on January 6th yet did nothing. They were informed of semi-automatic rifles and pistols - AR-15s and Glocks - being carried by members of the audience on the Ellipse, hours before his speech, yet Trump incited the crowd and called on his heavily armed audience to march on the Capitol and ‘fight like hell.’

"It is clear from the evidence made public by the January 6th Committee that Rep. Perry does not respect the will of the voters. No elected official should remain in office, if they do not respect the voters who put them there. We must not continue down this path," said Khalif Ali, Common Cause Pennsylvania executive director.

Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, but he did not want to leave the White House and admit his loss publicly so he lied. He lied and he repeatedly tried to force the U.S. Department of Justice to back up those lies and “leave the rest to him.” He was asking his handpicked senior DOJ officials to participate in a criminal conspiracy orchestrated by Trump and his henchmen that at its heart was nothing short of a coup to illegally seize power and overturn the will and the vote of the American people.

Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, yet for months he continued to attempt to cajole and coerce state legislators and election officials into violating their oaths of office and overturn the 2020 election. Before he turned violent insurrectionists loose on the United States Capitol on January 6th, he turned mobs loose on the homes of local elections officials in an effort to intimidate those officials into breaking the law and falsifying election results to hand him an election he lost at the ballot box.