#Mark Brnovich

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Molly Redden and Andy Kroll, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey at Documented:

A key ally to former President Donald Trump detailed plans to deploy the military in response to domestic unrest, defund the Environmental Protection Agency and put career civil servants “in trauma” in a series of previously unreported speeches that provide a sweeping vision for a second Trump term. In private speeches delivered in 2023 and 2024, Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, described his work crafting legal justifications so that military leaders or government lawyers would not stop Trump’s executive actions. He said the plans are a response to a “Marxist takeover” of the country; likened the moment to 1776 and 1860, when the country was at war or on the brink of it; and said the timing of Trump’s candidacy was a “gift of God.”

ProPublica and Documented obtained videos of the two speeches Vought delivered during events for the Center for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank led by Vought. The think tank’s employees or fellows include Jeffrey Clark, the former senior Justice Department lawyer who aided Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election result; Ken Cuccinelli, a former acting deputy secretary in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; and Mark Paoletta, a former senior budget official in the Trump administration. Other Trump allies such as former White House adviser Steve Bannon and U.S. Reps. Chip Roy and Scott Perry either spoke at the conferences or appeared on promotional materials for the events. Vought does not hide his agenda or shy away from using extreme rhetoric in public. But the apocalyptic tone and hard-line policy prescriptions in the two private speeches go further than his earlier pronouncements. As OMB director, Vought sought to use Trump’s 2020 “Schedule F” executive order to strip away job protections for nonpartisan government workers. But he has never spoken in such pointed terms about demoralizing federal workers to the point that they don’t want to do their jobs. He has spoken in broad terms about undercutting independent agencies but never spelled out sweeping plans to defund the EPA and other federal agencies.

Vought’s plans track closely with Trump’s campaign rhetoric about using the military against domestic protesters or what Trump has called the “enemy within.” Trump’s desire to use the military on U.S. soil recently prompted his longest-serving chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, to speak out, saying Trump “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.” Other policies mentioned by Vought dovetail with Trump’s plans, such as embracing a wartime footing on the southern border and rolling back transgender rights. Agenda 47, the campaign’s policy blueprint, calls for revoking President Joe Biden’s order expanding gender-affirming care for transgender people; Vought uses even more extreme language, decrying the “transgender sewage that’s being pumped into our schools and institutions” and referring to gender-affirming care as “chemical castration.”

[...] As ProPublica and Documented reported, Project 2025 has launched a massive program to recruit, vet and train thousands of people to “be ready on day one” to serve in a future conservative administration. (Trump has repeatedly criticized Project 2025, and his top aides have said the effort has no connection to the official campaign despite the dozens of former Trump aides and advisers who contributed to Project 2025.) Vought is widely expected to take a high-level government role if Trump wins a second term. His name has even been mentioned as a potential White House chief of staff. The videos obtained by ProPublica and Documented offer an unfiltered look at Vought’s worldview, his plans for a Trump administration and his fusing of MAGA ideology and Christian nationalism.

[...]

A Shadow Government in Waiting

In his 2024 speech, Vought said he was spending the majority of his time helping lead Project 2025 and drafting an agenda for a future Trump presidency. “We have detailed agency plans,” he said. “We are writing the actual executive orders. We are writing the actual regulations now, and we are sorting out the legal authorities for all of what President Trump is running on.” Vought laid out how his think tank is crafting the legal rationale for invoking the Insurrection Act, a law that gives the president broad power to use the military for domestic law enforcement. The Washington Post previously reported the issue was at the top of the Center for Renewing America’s priorities. “We want to be able to shut down the riots and not have the legal community or the defense community come in and say, ‘That’s an inappropriate use of what you’re trying to do,’” he said. Vought held up the summer 2020 unrest following George Floyd’s murder as an example of when Trump ought to have had the ability to deploy the armed forces but was stymied. Vought’s preparations for a future Trump administration involve building a “shadow” Office of Legal Counsel, he told the gathered supporters in May 2023. That office, part of the Justice Department, advises the president on the scope of their powers. Vought made clear he wants the office to help Trump steamroll the kind of internal opposition he faced in his first term.

[...]

“We Want the Bureaucrats to Be Traumatically Affected”

Vought also revealed the extent of the Center for Renewing America’s role in whipping up right-wing panic ahead of the 2022 midterms over an increase in asylum-seekers crossing at the U.S.-Mexico border. In February 2022, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich released a legal opinion claiming the state was under “invasion” by violent cartels and could invoke war powers to deploy National Guard troops to its southern border. The legally dubious “invasion” theory became a potent Republican talking point. Vought said in the 2023 speech that he and Cuccinelli, the former top Homeland Security official for Trump, personally lobbied Brnovich on the effort. “We said, ‘Look, you can write your own opinion, but here’s a draft opinion of what this should look like,’” Vought said. The nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight later obtained an email in which Vought pitched the “invasion” framework to Brnovich.

Brnovich wrote in an email to ProPublica that he recalled multiple discussions with Cuccinelli about border security. But he added that “the invasion opinion was the result of a formal request from a member of the Arizona legislature. And I can assure you it was drafted and written by hard working attorneys (including myself) in our office.” In the event Trump loses, Vought called for Republican leaders of states such as Florida and Texas to “create red-state sanctuaries” by “kicking out all the feds as much as they possibly can.”

[...] Vought referred to the people detained for alleged crimes committed on Jan. 6, 2021, as “political prisoners” and defended the lawyers Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman, who have both faced criminal charges for their role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Federal law enforcement agencies, he added, “are keeping political opponents in jail, and I think we need to be honest about that.” The left, Vought continued, has the ultimate goal of ending representative democracy altogether. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said, “in which our adversaries already hold the weapons of the government apparatus, and they have aimed it at us. And they are going to continue to aim it until they no longer have to win elections.” When Democrats called Trump an “existential threat to democracy,” they were not merely calling for his defeat at the ballot box, he said, but were using “coded language the national security state uses overseas when they are overthrowing other governments” to discourage the military from putting down anti-Trump protests should he win. “They’re making Trump out to be a would-be dictator or an authoritarian,” he said. “So they’re actively working now to ensure, on a number of levels, that the military will perceive this as dictatorial and therefore not respond to any orders to quell any violence.”

ProPublica reports that Project 2025 co-author and MAGA apparatchik Russ Vought has plans to put civil servants “in trauma” as part of his fascistic agenda if it is implemented.

[porterdavis]

I hope his false testimony was under oath.

[bighermie]

Letter From Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich Exonerates Cochise County in Felony Witch Hunt - Brnovich Advised County That Alleged Criminal Act of Hand Count Audit is Perfectly Legal | The Gateway Pundit | by Jordan Conradson

[vote-democrat-president-congress]

“Nearly a year after the 2020 election, Arizona’s then-attorney general, Mark Brnovich, launched an investigation into voting in the state’s largest county that quickly consumed more than 10,000 hours of his staff’s time. Investigators prepared a report in March 2022 stating that virtually all claims of error and malfeasance were unfounded, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Brnovich, a Republican, kept it private.”

[vague-humanoid]

Arizona's then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) scuttled a report that debunked claims of election fraud following the 2020 election.

[wushigod]

An Arizona grand jury has charged 18 people involved in the scheme to create a slate of false electors for Donald Trump, including 11 people who served as those fake electors and seven Trump allies who aided the scheme. Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, announced the charges on Wednesday, and said the 11 fake electors had been charged with felonies for fraud, forgery and conspiracy. Beyond the fake electors themselves, high-profile Trump affiliates have been charged with aiding in the scheme: Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb and Mike Roman. Those charged over their roles as false electors include two sitting lawmakers, state senators Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern. The former Arizona Republican party chair Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, have been charged, as has Tyler Bowyer, a Republican national committeeman and Turning Point USA executive, and Jim Lamon, who ran for US Senate in 2022. The others charged in the fake electors scheme are Nancy Cottle, Robert Montgomery, Samuel Moorhead, Lorraine Pellegrino and Gregory Safsten. The indictment says: “In Arizona, and the United States, the people elected Joseph Biden as president on November 3 2020. Unwilling to accept this fact, defendants and unindicted co-conspirators schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency to keep unindicted co-conspirator 1 in office against the will of Arizona’s voters. This scheme would have deprived Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted.” Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes, a close margin in the typically red state that immediately prompted allegations of voter fraud that persist to this day. The state has remained a hotbed of election denialism, despite losses for Republicans who embraced election-fraud lies at the state level. Trump has not been charged in the Arizona case. The indictment refers to Trump himself as “unindicted co-conspirator 1” throughout, noting how the former president schemed to keep himself in office, and how those around him, even those who believed he lost, aided this effort. Some involved have claimed they signed on as an alternate slate of electors in case court decisions came down in Trump’s favor, so they would have a backup group that could be certified by Congress should Trump prevail. But, the indictment says, the defendants intended for these false votes to pressure former vice-president Mike Pence into rejecting the slate of accurate electors for Joe Biden during the electoral college vote-counting on 6 January 2021. Pence did not declare Trump the winner, use these fake electoral votes, or otherwise delay the official count. Arizona’s charges are the latest turn in the fake electors saga. Seven states saw similar schemes, but two states – New Mexico and Pennsylvania – hedged their language in their documents enough to prevent prosecution. Democratic attorneys general in Michigan and Nevada have indicted Republican fake electors in their respective states. In Georgia, three of 16 fake electors were indicted as part of a wide-ranging racketeering indictment against Trump and allies. The remaining were given immunity for helping in the district attorney’s investigation. In Wisconsin, the fake electors acknowledged Biden’s win as a way to settle a civil lawsuit over the issue. Mayes’ investigation fell behind other states because she narrowly won office in 2022, and her predecessor, Republican Mark Brnovich, had not pursued the line of inquiry. She had confirmed the investigation in early 2023. The investigation – along with a host of other disagreements – have put Mayes at odds with Arizona’s Republican-led legislature, which started a committee to investigate Mayes and her office over concerns she was working beyond her authority as attorney general. In a video on Wednesday, Mayes said the investigation was “thorough and professional” and would provide justice for the plot to overturn the state’s electoral votes. “I underst...

[garythingsworld]

Letter From Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich Exonerates Cochise County in Felony Witch Hunt - Brnovich Advised County That Alleged Criminal Act of Hand Count Audit is Perfectly Legal | The Gateway Pundit | by Jordan Conradson

[trmpt]

And here is a sample of what this particular trump ass kissing maga dumbass said:

“When we come to lynch your stupid lying commie a--, you’ll remember that you lied on the f---ing Bible, you piece of s---,” Rissi angrily said. “You’re going to die, you piece of s---. We’re going to hang you. We’re going to hang you.”

Weeks later, on Dec. 8, 2021, Rissi left a message for the attorney general. Rissi said he and his family members were victims of a crime — “the theft of the 2020 election,” court records said.

“Do your job, Brnovich, or you will hang with those son-of-a-b----es in the end,” Rissi said. “We will see to it, torches and pitchforks. That’s your future. … Do your job.”

[captainmdhridoyhossain-blog]

[ad_1] Normally, the Administrative Process Act calls for intensive note and remark earlier than repealing such laws, and Leader Justice John G. Roberts Jr. stated the Biden management’s means of forsaking its protection of the guideline in courtroom after which enacting a brand new one raised the query of “collusive motion.”Tale continues underneath commercial“I’m now not wondering anyone’s motives. I’m wondering the convenience with which a call to your choose will make it for an incoming management to keep away from notice-and-comment evaluate,” the executive justice stated to Deputy Solicitor Basic Brian H. Fletcher, representing the Biden management.From the opposite facet of the courtroom’s ideological divide, Justice Elena Kagan had an identical considerations. “The true factor to me is the evasion of note and remark,” she stated to Fletcher.Kagan instructed him that during protecting the management’s motion, he must “suppose that that may be a drawback and that we shouldn’t be greenlighting that conduct in your management or some other management.”Tale continues underneath commercialThe substance of the particular rule in query used to be now not in entrance of the courtroom. President Donald Trump’s “public rate” rule, licensed in 2019, denied inexperienced playing cards to immigrants if they'd relied an excessive amount of on social welfare methods akin to meals stamps. It used to be in impact a couple of 12 months, however courts around the nation judged it at odds with the Immigration and Naturalization Act, and a district pass judgement on in Illinois in November 2020 stated it would now not be applied national.Fletcher instructed the courtroom the incoming Biden management concept the guideline used to be flawed, in addition to useless. “We all know that it affected handiest about 5 of the roughly 50,000 adjustment of standing programs to which it used to be implemented,” Fletcher stated.The Biden management acquiesced to the Illinois pass judgement on’s determination, and moved to brush aside the remainder instances across the nation. That left states that appreciated the general public rate rule with out recourse, Arizona Legal professional Basic Mark Brnovich (R) instructed the justices Wednesday.“This used to be an extraordinary criminal maneuver,” Brnovich stated. He and different Republican state legal professionals normal wish to intrude to protect the guideline, however the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the ninth Circuit, which covers the West, became him down.However Brnovich used to be whipsawed by means of questions, additionally from all sides of the courtroom’s ideological divide, that every now and then seemed to go away him tongue-tied.Tale continues underneath commercialAmongst them: How may a state intrude in a rule now not in power? What gave his state status to be excited by federal immigration coverage? Had he attempted to overturn the pass judgement on in Illinois? Had he sued underneath the Administrative Process Act? Why can’t a brand new management merely agree to an opposed decrease courtroom ruling if it thinks the guideline is mistaken?“There’s one of those mismatch right here between what you’re pronouncing went flawed and what you’re pronouncing you wish to have,” stated Kagan, including that Brnovich used to be “seeking to intrude in a swimsuit that’s totally useless that by no means implemented to you within the first position.”When Brnovich once more stated the federal government’s movements have been extraordinary, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh interrupted. “It’s very a lot now not extraordinary, as Justice [Clarence] Thomas says, for the federal government to acquiesce in an opposed judgment invalidating a rule. That's not extraordinary in any respect.”Tale continues underneath commercialHelen H. Hong, representing California governments that hostile Trump’s rule, stated she agreed with Arizona that it used to be vital for state and native governments so that you could intrude

in instances, so the Ultimate Court docket don't need to make a huge determination within the case.“The 2019 Public Price Rule used to be vacated thru a last judgment in a separate case in a special circuit, and there is not any rule left for [Arizona] to protect within the courts underneath,” Hong stated. “This situation can also be resolved on that simple foundation on my own.”In the meantime, Fletcher stated the Biden management is at paintings on a brand new model of the immigration rule.The case is Arizona v. San Francisco. [ad_2] #Ultimate #Court docket #considers #Biden #correctly #dropped #Trump #public #rate #rule #inexperienced #card #seekers

[rjhamster]

Progress Arizona

Good morning, Rj! Happy Sunday! ☀️  Brnovich lied to Arizonans. Former Attorney General Mark Brnovich hid evidence that disproved allegations of widespread voter fraud, part of the Big Lie. His office conducted an extensive investigation spanning over 10,000 hours, and instead of telling Arizonans the truth – that the allegations were no more than conspiracy theories from sore loser candidates –…