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The US 2020 Presidential Election & Attempts To Overturn It

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  • GOP Rep. Scott Perry claimed 'the Brits' were manipulating the 2020 election results and asked Mark Meadows to 'immediately seize' Dominion voting machines
    Newly-revealed text messages between Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows show that the congressman pushed a variety of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

    According to CNN, Perry told Meadows — a one-time House member who became President Donald Trump's chief of staff during the final year of his administration — to have US intelligence agencies investigate Dominion voting machines.

    "From an Intel friend: [the Director of National Intelligence] needs to task [the National Security Agency] to immediately seize and begin looking for international comms related to Dominion," Perry texted Meadows on November 12, five days after major news networks called the the 2020 election for President-elect Joe Biden.

    A source told CNN that Meadows did not follow through on that request. That same day, Perry also reportedly told Meadows that foreign powers, including the British government, were involved in manipulating US elections, and that CIA Director Gina Haspel was part of a cover-up.

    "Gina is still running around on the Hill covering for the Brits who helped quarterback this entire operation," said Perry. "DNI needs to be tasked to audit their overseas accounts at CIA - and their National Endowment for Democracy."

    A month later, Perry texted Meadows a link to a YouTube video that purportedly revealed that Italian satellites had been involved in changing votes.

    "Why can't we just work with the Italian government?" said Perry.


    Meadows sent that YouTube link on to acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who agreed with deputy acting Attorney General Richard Donoghue's assessment of the allegations as "pure insanity" in email communications released by the January 6 committee last summer.

    Perry was elected chair of the House Freedom Caucus — a group of lawmakers defined by their hardline conservative politics and loyalty to Trump — in 2020. Meadows, a former North Carolina congressman, was one of the caucus's founding members and a former chairman himself.

    Other texts reported by CNN show that as January 6 and Biden's inauguration day neared, Perry grew increasingly frustrated.

    "Mark, just checking in as time continues to count down. 11 days to 1/6 and 25 days to inauguration. We gotta get going!" said Perry.
    _______

    Ohhh now it's the BRITS! I thought it was the Venezuelans? Oh wait, Italian satellites??

    And of course the CIA, because they were (are?) "at war" with Donald Trump.
    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

    Comment


    • Special Report-Trump allies breach U.S. voting systems in search of 2020 fraud 'evidence'

      KIOWA, Colorado (Reuters) - Eighteen months after Donald Trump lost the White House, loyal supporters continue to falsely assert that compromised balloting machines across America robbed him of the 2020 election.

      To stand up that bogus claim, some Trump die-hards are taking the law into their own hands – by attempting, with some success, to compromise the voting systems themselves.

      Previously unreported surveillance video captured one such effort in August in the rural Colorado town of Kiowa. Footage obtained by Reuters through a public-records request shows Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder, the county’s top election official, fiddling with cables and typing on his phone as he copied computer drives containing sensitive voting information.

      Schroeder, a Republican, later testified that he was receiving instructions on how to copy the system’s data from a retired Air Force colonel and political activist bent on proving Trump lost because of fraud.

      That day, Aug. 26, Schroeder made a “forensic image of everything on the election server,” according to his testimony, and later gave the cloned hard drives to two lawyers.

      Schroeder is now under investigation for possible violation of election laws by the Colorado secretary of state, which has also sued him seeking the return of the data. Schroeder is defying that state demand and has refused to identify one of the lawyers who took possession of the hard drives. The other is a private attorney who works with an activist backed by Mike Lindell, the pillow mogul and election conspiracy theorist.

      Schroeder said in a legal filing that he believed he had a “statutory duty” to preserve voting records. He declined to comment for this report.

      The episode is among eight known attempts to gain unauthorized access to voting systems in five U.S. states since the 2020 election. All involved local Republican officeholders or party activists who have advanced Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods or conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, according to a Reuters examination of the incidents. Some of the breaches, including the one in Elbert County, were inspired in part by the false belief that state-ordered voting-system upgrades or maintenance would erase evidence of alleged fraud in the 2020 election. In fact, state election officials say, those processes have no impact on the voting systems’ ability to save data from past elections.

      The incidents include a North Carolina case, first reported last week by Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exc...gal-2022-04-23, in which a local Republican Party leader threatened to get a top county election official fired or have her pay cut if she didn’t give him unauthorized access to voting equipment. In southern Michigan, a pro-Trump clerk who has expressed support for the QAnon conspiracy theory on social media defied state orders to perform maintenance on a voting machine on the unfounded belief that doing so could erase proof of alleged fraud. In another Michigan case, a Republican activist impersonated an official from a made-up government agency in a plot to seize voting equipment.

      Some of the people and groups involved in the vigilante election-investigator movement are drawing financial support from Lindell, the My Pillow Inc chief executive and one of the most visible backers of Trump’s false fraud claims. Lindell said he hired four top members of one group, the U.S. Election Integrity Plan, or USEIP. The group got Lindell’s backing about three months after its co-founder advised Elbert County Clerk Schroeder in his effort to copy and leak voting data. In all, Lindell told Reuters he has spent about $30 million and hired up to 70 people, including lawyers and “cyber people,” partly in support of Cause of America, a right-wing network of election activists.

      Lindell, who said he hasn’t been involved in any data breaches, said his quest aims to prove fraud in the 2020 vote and to reshape American elections by getting rid of electronic voting machines and returning to paper ballots. The Trump ally said his fraud claims will eventually be vindicated in spite of what he described as ridicule from the media.

      “We’ve got to get rid of the machines!” Lindell said. “We need to melt them down and use them for prison bars and put everyone in prison that was involved with them.”

      A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

      'DESTROYING VOTER CONFIDENCE'

      Four experts in voting law told Reuters the extent of these balloting-data breaches is unprecedented in modern U.S. elections. The violations are especially worrying, say election officials, because they break the chain of custody over ballots and tabulating equipment. Such safeguards allow for the tracking of exactly who has handled sensitive voter data; they are essential to making elections secure and to resolving any challenges or fraud allegations.

      “You need to make sure that those ballots are maintained under strict chain of custody at all times,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research. “It's destroying voter confidence in the United States.”

      Such breaches can also constitute privacy invasions by exposing information about individual voters. The Colorado data Schroeder leaked likely included ballot images that showed how people voted, according to the secretary of state’s office. If so, that would violate a core principle of modern American democracy: the secret ballot, which is intended to protect voters from politically motivated harassment or intimidation and to prevent vote-buying.

      The secret ballot “is a fundamental right in American elections,” said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that advocates for secure elections.

      The incidents examined by Reuters all took place in states that have been competitive in recent elections: Two occurred in Colorado, three in Michigan and one each in Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. At least five of the cases are under investigation by local or federal law enforcement, with three arrests and one conviction, according to state and local officials. Four of the breaches forced election officials to decertify or replace voting equipment that was no longer secure.

      The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment.

      The type of data leaked varies; in some cases, the full extent of the losses remains unknown. In Colorado’s Mesa County, the secretary of state accuses clerk Tina Peters of allowing an unauthorized person to make a “forensic image” of a voting-equipment hard drive. In addition, confidential passwords required to upgrade the county’s election software were published on the internet, according to an indictment of Peters. Like Schroeder, Peters said she was exercising her statutory duty to preserve election records. She accused Dominion and the secretary of state, without evidence, of conspiring to destroy evidence of election fraud.

      In three other attempts–in Ohio’s Lake County, Michigan’s Cross Village and North Carolina’s Surry County–no data is believed to have been accessed. In two other cases, Reuters was unable to determine what data, if any, was stolen.

      It’s also unclear what data, if any, may have been accessed in Michigan’s Adams Township, where a key component of an election tabulator machine went missing for four days in October 2021. It was eventually found in the office of a clerk who has posted memes indicating support for QAnon on Facebook. QAnon is a conspiracy theory casting Trump as a savior figure fighting a secret war against a cabal of Satanist pedophiles and cannibals, including prominent Democrats.

      The rise of what election-security officials describe as “insider threats” – officeholders who leak confidential election data or sabotage voting machines – coincides with the national pressure campaign by Lindell-backed groups and other Trump allies who are traveling the country and lobbying local officials to replace electronic voting systems with hand-counted paper ballots. The push comes ahead of the November midterm elections that will decide control of the U.S. Congress, now narrowly held by Democrats, and the 2024 presidential election, in which Trump has indicated he could seek a second White House term.

      County and town clerks are in the thick of things, in some cases as targets of the pressure, in others as the alleged actors. Clerks in the United States are often key election administrators, in addition to managing vital records, such as marriage licenses.

      The American right’s fixation with voting machines intensified in the days after Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump. The defeated incumbent and his lawyers, including former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, started making outlandish claims of rigged machines. The accusations were soon deemed bogus by courts and Trump’s own election-security chief, and spurred ongoing defamation lawsuits against Giuliani and others from a prime target of the Trump camp, voting-machine provider Dominion Voting Systems.

      Dominion’s machines have been the focus of multiple baseless election conspiracy theories, including that financier George Soros and the family of Venezuela’s late socialist President Hugo Chavez conspired with Denver-based Dominion to steal the election.

      Dominion said statements by Lindell and others “about Dominion have been repeatedly debunked, including by bipartisan government officials.”

      Despite the lack of evidence, many Trump allies continue to insist that electronic voting machines were rigged in 2020 and argue for a return to paper ballots. Election officials from both parties warn such a change would make voting less secure. They say electronic voting machines provide more fraud safeguards than paper ballots by reducing human errors and preventing delays that could be exploited by bad actors seeking to block the certification of results.

      A PHONY 'ELECTION INTEGRITY COMMISSION'

      The most recent known attempted breach came in March, when a county election director in North Carolina faced threats from a local Republican Party leader who demanded access to a vote tabulator – a machine which, by state law, may only be handled by election officials.

      William Keith Senter, chair of the Surry County Republican Party, told elections director Michella Huff that he would have her fired if she didn’t comply, the state board of elections told Reuters, which first reported news of the incident on April 23.

      Senter and a prominent election conspiracy theorist, Douglas Frank, met with Huff on March 28, falsely claiming that a “chip” inside voting machines was used to rig the 2020 results, the board said. Two days before, Frank had given a speech in which he espoused a number of debunked election conspiracy theories in Dobson, a town in the rural county of 72,000 people.

      Senter and Frank did not respond to requests for comment for this report.

      Huff refused Senter’s demands, made as part of a push by local activists to conduct a "forensic audit" of the 2020 presidential results. During one encounter, the state board found, Senter told Huff: "I can't wait to watch you fall." The state board said it reported the threats against Huff to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. No one has been charged in the matter.

      At one point, Senter told Huff that the county sheriff, Steve Hiatt, would help him get the keys to the voting machines, Huff told the state board. Hiatt, a Republican, did not respond to requests for comment.

      Huff, a registered independent, said she was dismayed by the threats and spread of disinformation. She said her office must now prepare for voters who may refuse to insert their ballot into the tabulator in the false belief the device will switch their vote.

      "I'm very concerned for the voters," Huff told Reuters. "Democracy starts here. It starts here in our office."

      To date, only one of the incidents has resulted in serious criminal charges over the voting data breaches: the case of Peters, the Mesa County clerk in Colorado. Peters, a Republican, was indicted in March on seven felony charges, including attempted influence of a public servant, criminal impersonation and identity theft, and three misdemeanors. The charges could carry a sentence of more than 25 years.

      She has not yet entered a plea; her arraignment is scheduled for May 24. Peters declined to comment. She has previously said she is a victim of a partisan attack.

      In Cross Village, Michigan, Tera Jackson faced felony charges after she allegedly impersonated a government official working for a non-existent agency – the “Election Integrity Commission” – and convinced three men to access the town’s vote tabulator on Jan. 14, 2021, and try to clone it, law enforcement records show. She told an investigator she was trying to "connect the dots" on a theory that the county voting tabulator was rigged.

      But the Emmet County prosecutor cut a deal with Jackson, 56, who in late February pleaded no contest to a single misdemeanor count of creating a disturbance. The felony charges of fraud and unauthorized access to a computer were dropped. She served no jail time. Jackson did not respond to requests for comment.

      The three men – a computer technician, a town trustee and a former law enforcement officer who showed up with a bulletproof vest and a gun – talked their way past the town clerk, claiming authority to inspect voting equipment. The computer technician opened parts of the tabulator and attempted to insert a flash drive into several ports but it wouldn’t fit, according to video footage taken by the three men and obtained by Reuters in a records request. At one point, the technician used pliers and then tweezers to extract a piece of plastic stuck in the machine, the video showed.

      The men, who did not respond to requests for comment, believed they were part of an operation approved by the Department of the Defense, according to body camera footage and interviews by sheriff’s investigators. The town trustee told the investigators that Jackson said she was working with Sidney Powell, the pro-Trump lawyer who filed multiple unsuccessful lawsuits over the 2020 election, making wild and unfounded claims of voting fraud. Jackson told investigators that she had also been communicating with Phil Waldron https://www.reuters.com/investigates...ction-military, a retired Army colonel who worked with then-President Trump’s outside legal team on election-fraud claims.

      Emmet County Detective Matt Leirstein said investigators found no evidence of Powell and Waldron’s involvement in the scheme. Powell and Waldron did not respond to requests for comment.

      A judge signed an arrest warrant for Jackson in March, but she wasn't arrested until late October. Her whereabouts were unknown for months, said Leirstein, the detective.

      Some community members, including the township's Republican supervisor, have criticized the prosecutor for going too easy on Jackson and have called for others to be charged, including the three men who accessed the voting equipment.

      “Almost everything doesn’t add up,” said the supervisor, Stephen Keller, of the sheriff’s and the prosecutor’s handling of the case.

      Leirstein, the sheriff’s detective, said he did not seek charges against the three men working with Jackson because he believed their stories that she had duped them. He said he did recommend charges against the town’s former Republican clerk, Priscilla Sweet, who lost her position in the 2020 election. The prosecutor declined to pursue those charges, he said.

      Sweet was at the scene of the incident about the time law enforcement arrived, according to bodycam video footage reviewed by Reuters. The detective said Sweet told conflicting stories about how she knew it had happened. Phone records, he said, showed that Sweet and Jackson were in contact before the police were called to investigate. Sweet also admitted having told Jackson that she was concerned a pending voting system service would “wipe” the system of 2020 election data, according to a video of Leirstein’s interview of Sweet a few days after the breach.

      Sweet did not respond to requests for comment.

      Emmet County Prosecuting Attorney James Linderman did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

      PRESERVING 'PROOF'

      Another breach came in Michigan’s Adams Township, a rural area of about 2,000 people. Township clerk Stephanie Scott, a Republican, is accused of resisting state orders to perform testing and maintenance on the machine, which she claimed would erase evidence of potential fraud. At a town meeting in October, Scott said she wanted "to find out what's on this machine before destroying anything,” adding, “We need the proof. We can’t just make accusations.” On her Facebook page, Scott has expressed support for Trump, Lindell and QAnon.

      The office of Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, sent a letter to Scott in October 2021 pointing out that data from the November 2020 election was not even stored in the tabulator. Benson stripped Scott of her duties in October, citing her refusal to perform legally required maintenance needed to “ensure the security and safety” of upcoming elections, according to a news release from Benson’s office.

      When Hillsdale County officials, acting on state orders, confiscated the town's tabulator, a crucial component called the scan unit, referred to as the brains of the device, was missing. State police obtained a search warrant and recovered the part from Scott’s office. Scott has not been charged; state police say their investigation into unauthorized tampering with the machine remains open. Meanwhile, the town has had to spend $5,500 on a new tabulator.

      By the time police came to execute the warrant, Scott was represented by Stefanie Lambert, a Detroit attorney who – along with Sidney Powell and other pro-Trump lawyers – tried unsuccessfully to overturn the state’s election results, according to police records obtained in a public records request.

      Lambert did not respond to requests for comment.

      Scott declined to comment for this story. In February, she sued Benson and others in state court, claiming her powers were unconstitutionally usurped and that she had a duty to preserve election data under federal law.

      PRESSURE CAMPAIGN

      In Colorado, the breach of voting data came to light in early January, when Elbert County clerk Schroeder admitted to copying the hard drives in a lawsuit he joined with other Republican officials against Colorado’s secretary of state. The lawsuit argued that the company that tests Dominion election system software, Pro V&V Inc, was improperly certified and that state authorities illegally destroyed election records – allegations the state and the company deny. The suit also asserts Colorado’s top election official, Secretary of State Jena Griswold exceeded her authority when she adopted emergency rules last year to prevent election audits she considered partisan and illegitimate. The case is ongoing.

      So is the state’s own lawsuit against Schroeder. In legal filings, the clerk admitted to making a copy of the county election server’s two hard drives on Aug. 26. He said he got help from Shawn Smith, a retired Air Force colonel and self-styled election fraud activist, and Mark Cook, an IT specialist who supplied Schroeder with a digital forensic imager costing about $4,000 and capable of transferring data at high speeds. Both Smith and Cook then “provided instructions'' as Schroeder worked to take the data, Schroeder testified. On Sept. 2, he made a second copy of the hard drives, he said.

      Cook did not respond to requests for comment. Smith declined to comment.

      Secretary of State Griswold, a Democrat, opened a formal inquiry after discovering Schroeder’s leak in January and sued the clerk on February 17, seeking the return of the data. Schroeder said in written responses to the inquiry that he gave the copied hard drives to two attorneys, one of whom he refused to identify. The other is John Case, a longtime Colorado attorney who says on his website that he’s dedicated to representing citizens “petitioning for integrity” in elections. Case now represents Schroeder in the state lawsuit against him.

      Schroeder testified that he did not recall anyone asking him to copy the data. His decision to leak it to unauthorized lawyers, however, followed an intense effort to pressure county clerks across Colorado by an organization co-founded by Smith, one of the men who instructed Schroeder on how to copy the data. Smith’s organization, the U.S. Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), emailed all 64 Colorado county clerks and visited at least 10 of them, including Schroeder, demanding they investigate unfounded allegations of 2020 voter fraud, according to Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association.

      Smith emailed Schroeder directly in early 2021, messages reviewed by Reuters show. In some communications, Smith shared a statistical analysis that purported to suggest that Biden had a suspiciously high number of votes in one precinct of majority-Republican Elbert County. Colorado state officials said the county’s votes were accurate.

      Four of the emails from USEIP members and allies, reviewed by Reuters, referenced the debunked conspiracy theory about rigged voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems and asserted that clerks are legally bound to launch inquiries and preserve alleged evidence. “You have an obligation to investigate this evidence and take the appropriate actions,” read one message sent on March 15.

      “The heat is more on Republican clerks,” said Crane, a Republican who served as Arapahoe County clerk until 2018. “They really look at us like traitors.”

      In legal filings, Schroeder said he believed he had a “statutory duty” to preserve the 2020 voting records and the information he copied should be legally public information, without detailing what the files contained.

      In court filings, Schroeder said that he was careful to “preserve chain of custody” with the data he gave the attorneys, asserting on Feb. 3 that the copied hard drives remained in “sealed containers.” He said the lawyers who took possession of the data – including the attorney representing him, Case – told him no one had accessed it.

      Case declined to comment. He referred questions to USEIP co-founder Holly Kasun, who he described as his “media consultant.” Kasun did not answer questions about Case’s involvement in the data leak.

      Schroeder said he feared a state-ordered upgrade to the voting system would erase records relating to the 2020 election. State officials, however, said the 2020 election records would be retained after the upgrade.

      No charges have been filed against Schroeder or others involved in the breach of the voting system. The county’s district attorney’s office declined to comment. Elbert County Sheriff Tim Norton said his office had not investigated the incident, which he said was being “handled by the state.” A Colorado State Patrol spokesperson, Sergeant Troy Kessler, said state police do not handle “election matters.”

      NEW FINANCIER

      Three months after Schroeder leaked the data, USEIP’s members landed Lindell as a financial backer. The pillow magnate reached out to USEIP and said the group’s work in Colorado was “great,” Kasun, who co-founded the organization with Smith, said in an interview. Four USEIP members, including Smith, met with Lindell in Colorado Springs late last year and presented their work. At a subsequent meeting a few weeks later, Kasun said, Lindell told the group: “Let’s scale. Let’s do exactly what you’re doing with USEIP.”

      The four activists joined Lindell as full-time employees, Lindell confirmed in an interview with Reuters. They now lead the Lindell-backed Cause of America, which coordinates a nationwide network of right-wing election activists. “We talk to him every day,” Kasun said of Lindell. “We keep him updated on what we’re doing. He also counsels us on how to run things. He offers us what we need to ramp up.”

      Since joining Lindell, Smith has remained at the forefront of Colorado’s election conspiracy activism. At a February 10 event held in a Colorado church, Smith publicly threatened Griswold, saying: "You know, if you're involved in election fraud, then you deserve to hang.”

      Griswold, who did not attend the meeting, said she would not be “intimidated.”

      “These threats are being fueled by extreme elected officials and political insiders who are spreading the Big Lie” – that 2020 vote was stolen – “to further suppress the vote, destabilize American elections, and undermine voter confidence,” she said in a statement.

      Lindell told Reuters that Cause of America is just a small part of his overall effort to prove the 2020 election was stolen and to change election rules. He said he funds South Dakota-registered Cause of America and pays other election-focused employees through Lindell Management, a Minnesota-based LLC registered in 2018.

      “I have over probably 50 to 70 people that I pay, that all they're doing is on this election,” Lindell, 60, said in an interview. “I guess Cause of America would be a little piece of that.” The group helps connect other groups with lawyers.

      Lindell, who says he is a former cocaine addict and attributes his reform to his Christian faith, has said he believes God chose Trump to be president. Now Lindell says God endorses his pursuit of election-fraud claims.

      “God has given me an amazing platform,” he said. “I’m using it the best I can.”

      Lindell has publicly praised Tina Peters, the Republican clerk of Colorado’s Mesa County, who has been charged in connection with one of the most invasive breaches of voting systems. In an interview, Lindell said of the allegations against Peters: “She backed up her computers. She did her job.”

      He told Reuters he was paying her legal fees. “I’m sure it’s in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said. In a subsequent interview, however, Lindell said he was mistaken: “I thought I put money towards it, but I never had.”

      A lawyer for Peters, Harvey Steinberg, did not respond to a question about who was paying him.

      HOMETOWN SUPPORT

      Schroeder wasn’t the only Colorado clerk approached by the USEIP’s Smith for access to secure voting data. In May 2021, Smith told El Paso County clerk Chuck Broerman in a meeting that USEIP would conduct a “forensic investigation” of his voting systems, Broerman said.

      “Clerk Broerman, we will do this either with you or through you,” Broerman recalled Smith telling him.

      USEIP workers have also harassed Colorado voters in a door-to-door campaign, according to a lawsuit filed in March by the NAACP and other rights groups. Some USEIP workers impersonated government authorities from “the county,” wearing badges and carrying guns as they interrogated voters “about their addresses, whether they participated in the 2020 election, and – if so – how they cast their vote,” the suit alleges.

      USEIP did not respond to a request for comment on the allegations. The organization has sought to have the lawsuit dismissed, arguing it is speculative and without merit.

      Schroeder, who has described himself as a self-employed entrepreneur, became clerk in this rural, heavily Republican county in 2013. The area’s about 27,000 residents in 2020 overwhelmingly backed Trump, who took 74% of votes here. Political signs such as “Trump Country” and “Eat Meat!! Vote Republican” dot the town of Kiowa, with a population of about 750.

      Much of Elbert County supports Schroeder, according to interviews with local officials. The county’s Republican chair, Tom Peterson, and two county commissioners defended him. “Dallas is a highly respected clerk,” said Peterson, who also repeated the false theory that the state upgrade would erase election data.

      Schroeder isn’t letting the state investigation slow him down. He is campaigning for higher office in November, asking voters to elect him to the county commission.
      ___________
      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

      Comment


      • Yep, leave it to the Republicans to tamper with voter confidence as I do believe in most instances, as the one here, it is Republicans who are guilty.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post
          Yep, leave it to the Republicans to tamper with voter confidence as I do believe in most instances, as the one here, it is Republicans who are guilty.
          "You know, if you're involved in election fraud, then you deserve to hang.”

          Never thought I would agree with one of those pecker heads.
          Trust me?
          I'm an economist!

          Comment


          • Originally posted by DOR View Post

            "You know, if you're involved in election fraud, then you deserve to hang.”

            Never thought I would agree with one of those pecker heads.
            One would think but as we know they are all about this, "don't imitate my behavior but obey my instructions"

            Comment


            • Sean Hannity told Mark Meadows his team was 'digging' into the 2020 election, claiming that Biden's win was 'mathematically impossible' and that 'everyone knows it was stolen'
              Weeks after Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Fox News host Sean Hannity had his team "digging into the numbers" as he claimed to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that the victory was "mathematically impossible."

              In text messages sent to Meadows on November 29, 2020, Hannity appeared to embrace false claims about the 2020 election that former President Donald Trump spread. By then, Fox News, along with every other major network, had already declared Biden as the election winner.

              "I've had my team digging into the numbers. There is no way Biden got these numbers. Just mathematically impossible," Hannity texted Meadows, according to messages obtained by CNN. "It's so sad for this country they can pull this off in 2020. We need a major breakthrough, a video, something."

              The texts are among the 2,319 messages that Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot. CNN published a total of 82 texts exchanged between Hannity and Meadows between Election Day 2020 and Biden's inauguration, revealing his fixation on the election results and his support for Trump.

              Trump and his team at the time had been pursuing dozens of legal efforts to overturn the election results. One challenge that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton brought to the Supreme Court, asking to toss out the results in key battleground states that Biden won, seemed to catch Hannity's attention.

              In a message sent on December 8, 2020, Hannity told Meadows: "Texas case is very strong. Still a Herculean climb. Everyone knows it was stolen. Everyone."

              "I vacillate between mad as hell and sad as hell. Wtf happened to our country Mark," Hannity said in a follow-up message.


              Three days later, the Supreme Court dismissed Texas' bid to overturn the results. Still, Hannity maintained that the election was stolen, telling Meadows in a December 11, 2020 text that: "They steal an election. What am I missing Mark? We r so F'd as a country."

              There is no evidence that widespread voter fraud occurred in the election, and federal, state and local officials have repeatedly said the results were fair and accurate.

              A Fox News spokesperson did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
              _________



              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

              Comment


              • DHS watchdog says Trump's acting DHS secretary changed intel report on Russian interference in 2020 election
                Former Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf changed and delayed an intelligence report detailing Russian interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, according to a new review by the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) top watchdog.

                The decision to deviate from DHS standard review procedures "rais[ed] objectivity concerns," according to the report, and led to the perception that unorthodox interference by a top DHS official was intended to help Donald Trump's reelection bid.

                The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at DHS, through its Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), released the redacted results of its investigation into Russian interference in the election — "DHS Actions Related to an I&A Intelligence Product Deviated from Standard Procedures" — on Tuesday.

                "We found that DHS did not adequately follow its internal processes and comply with applicable [intelligence community] policy standards and requirements when editing and disseminating an I&A intelligence product regarding Russian interference with the 2020 U.S. Presidential election," the DHS OIG report states, in part.

                "The acting secretary participated in the review process multiple times despite lacking any formal role in reviewing the product, resulting in the delay of its dissemination on at least one occasion," the DHS inspector general report continued. "The delays and deviation from I & A standard process and requirements put [them] at risk of creating a perception of politicization."

                Analysts in DHS' Cyber Mission Center (CYMC) began drafting the original intelligence product titled, "Russia Likely to Denigrate Health of US Candidates to Influence 2020 Electoral Dynamics" in April 2020, to warn state and local governments of a noticeable uptick in Russian state media efforts to question then-candidate President Joe Biden's mental health after Super Tuesday.

                The DHS analyst who first raised the concern "believed foreign efforts questioning a candidate's health were worth exploring because they could impact voters' willingness to vote for that candidate and began drafting the product," the OIG report read. "In its initial form, the product was approximately two pages in length and included information relating to one 'current Democratic presidential candidate' and to Russian activities to influence the 2020 U.S. Presidential election."

                At a July 8, 2020, meeting, Acting Secretary Chad Wolf — who is referenced to by his title but never named in Tuesday's OIG report — determined that the intelligence document should be "held" because it "made the President look bad," according to a whistleblower complaint.

                The whistleblower, Brian Murphy, who was then principal deputy under secretary at I&A, also alleged that Wolf ordered him to shift the focus of future assessments to interference efforts by China and Iran, and that instructions to do so had come from White House national security adviser Robert O'Brien. Murphy declined to comply, he said in the complaint, because "doing so would put the country in substantial and specific danger."

                "Russian disinformation was something [DHS leadership] didn't want to report on," Murphy previously told CBS News, in an October 2021 interview. "It mattered. It had a material impact on life and safety of how the events unfolded during 2018 and forward."

                "Wolf told me that the plan with respect to the administration was to downplay Russian disinformation, that was supporting the Democrats… and instead, upscale the threat from China," Murphy continued. "That's where the real manipulation by the politicals came into effect. The same thing with Iran. I'm not dismissing China and Iran as threats, particularly in the disinformation space, but they differ on scale and their objectives. The Russians are the best at it. There's no one that even comes close."

                Murphy was later reassigned amid reporting that his office compiled "intelligence reports" about journalists and protesters in Portland.

                Tuesday's report found that, after months of delay, analysts inserted a "tone box" – a highlighted section of text – detailing efforts by Chinese and Iranian influence actors to amplify unsubstantiated narratives questioning the mental health of former President Donald Trump.

                When watchdog investigators probed the CYMC manager on why the additional material – outside the scope of the initial report – was added, the DHS officials contradicted themselves.

                "He told us it was a feature intended to draw a contrast between the actions of Russia and those of Iran and China, but also described the tone box as a 'blunting feature' meant to balance the product. When asked whether intelligence products require balancing, he said the addition of the tone box was not politicization, yet also said it showed I & A's political savviness, as the state and local customers of their products tended to be political," the OIG report reads.

                The analytic ombudsman from I & A flagged serious concerns with the September version of the intelligence product, noting in his review that "problems with the piece undermine the original message and give the perception of a lack of objectivity or an attempt at political influence."

                That assessment also suggested the addition of Iran and China "[seem] to almost avoid the main message that is made explicit in the key judgment — that Russian influence actors are targeting the Democratic candidates in 2020… The tone box on Iran/China seemingly unrelated to the main message are all areas that could be seen as 'being political,' whether intentional or not," the assessment read.

                DHS' top watchdog determined that DHS deviated from its own internal requirements for editing and disseminating the report to state and local partners.

                "Since January 2021, the [Office of Intelligence and Analysis] has renewed its commitment to continually assess the policies, guidelines and processes that govern the review and dissemination of its finished intelligence products, including to identity and implement and necessary improvements," wrote John Cohen, senior official performing the duties of the under secretary for the office, to Joseph Cuffari, DHS inspector general, in a memo responding to the report.

                Cohen has since left his role, which is currently being filled by Melissa Smislova. President Biden's nominee to lead the office, Kenneth Wainstein, is awaiting Senate confirmation.

                "This troubling report raises concerns over the prior Administration's inappropriate interference in the review and clearance process for an intelligence product," a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News. "Under the Biden-Harris Administration and the leadership of Secretary Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security is focused on ensuring the safety and security of communities across our country, while conducting our work with integrity and in ways that protect privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. Since January 2021, DHS has renewed its commitment to providing accurate, timely, and actionable information and intelligence, free from politicization and bias, to the public and our partners across every level of government, in the private sector, and local communities."

                Describing its methodology, the DHS watchdog wrote that Wolf requested an interview in writing rather than orally or in-person. According to the report, DHS Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli "did not provide any responses despite agreeing to do so."

                Wolf resigned his post in January 2021, after the Government Accountability Office and several federal judges deemed that he had served illegally, a judgment that he disputes.

                In March 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on the 2020 elections that found Kremlin-backed agents authorized by President Vladimir Putin tried to use President Trump's inner circle and right-leaning media to undermine his opponent. The report also concluded that while Iran had expanded its efforts to meddle in the 2020 presidential election, China fell short of interfering after determining it was not worth the risk.

                The intelligence community found "no indications" that any foreign actor made attempts to alter technical aspects of the voting process, despite making false claims meant to undermine confidence in election results.
                _________

                Can't imagine why Putin would want Trump to win a second term....
                “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                Comment


                • This seems relevant today. Accuracy good enough for prosecutors, OnStar/911, Google Maps etc.....

                  https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/perf...20m%20(16%20ft.)

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by zraver View Post
                    This seems relevant today. Accuracy good enough for prosecutors, OnStar/911, Google Maps etc.....

                    https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/perf...20m%20(16%20ft.)
                    Is there more to this or do we have to guess
                    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by TopHatter View Post

                      Is there more to this or do we have to guess
                      Claims and competing claims about 2000 Mules centering on the accuracy of cellphone hps based geo-locating.

                      I have not seen it yet. Witholding judgment until I do. But posting the link to the actual accuracy standard.
                      Last edited by zraver; 09 May 22,, 21:44.

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by zraver View Post

                        Claims and competing claims about 2000 Mules centering on the accuracy of cellphone hps based geo-locating.

                        I have not seen it yet. Witholding judgment until I do. But posting the link to the actual accuracy standard.
                        And for those who don't live in a right-wing echo chamber of idiotic conspiracy theories about the 2020 election "fraud", here's what "2000 Mules" means:

                        The faulty premise of the ‘2,000 mules’ trailer about voting by mail in the 2020 election

                        IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT
                        • The 2020 presidential election was secure and evidence from state and federal officials and courts shows no indication of widespread fraud. While authorities identified isolated cases of voter fraud, these instances were in such small numbers it would not have changed the election’s outcome.
                        • A documentary by Dinesh D’Souza, a far-right commentator, furthers the myth that something sinister occurred with mail ballots during the 2020 election. D’Souza told Fox News that “mules” delivered 400,000 illegal votes. Experts say the evidence D’Souza points to is inherently flawed.
                        • Many states have laws allowing people to return completed mail ballots on behalf of others, such as family members. Ballot drop boxes are more secure than standard mail boxes.
                        "2000 mules," a new documentary from a right-wing filmmaker with a history of spreading false claims, promises to give evidence to millions of Americans who believe something went wrong in the 2020 election.

                        The trailer for Dinesh D’Souza’s movie resembles a sci-fi flick, set to dramatic horror movie music with grainy video footage of what appears to be people dropping off ballots at ballot drop boxes.

                        The trailer suggests a nefarious conspiracy in which so-called "mules" – people it defines as collecting and returning completed mail ballots – submitted ballots en masse. The movie’s allegations are based on surveillance footage of ballot drop boxes and cell phone tracking data.

                        "This is organized crime," the trailer states, adding, "Bold accusations require bold evidence."

                        But experts on mail voting who viewed the trailer said it can’t support the allegations.

                        "If there is credible evidence, where is it?" said Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "This is not it."

                        The trailer has been widely shared on social media and promoted by former President Donald Trump. The full movie was slated to air in theaters during the first week in May.

                        Dinesh D’Souza’s poor record with the truth

                        D’Souza is a far-right commentator, author and documentary filmmaker whose provocation and incendiary rhetoric traces back to his time at Dartmouth College. There, a conservative publication under his leadership published an interview with a former Ku Klux Klan member and publicly outed members of the college’s Gay Student Alliance.

                        D’Souza worked briefly on domestic policy issues in former President Ronald Reagan’s White House and for conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute. He spent two years as president of King’s College, a small Christian school in New York, before resigning amid reports that he was seen at a hotel with a woman who was not his wife.

                        In 2014, D’Souza pleaded guilty to a felony campaign finance violation after he used straw donors to donate in excess of the personal limit to a friend who was running for a U.S. Senate seat in New York. Trump pardoned D’Souza in 2018, just months after D’Souza publicly mocked survivors of the mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

                        D’Souza’s numerous books and films have stirred controversy around topics such as race; one 1995 book said people born into slavery were treated "pretty well."

                        D’Souza once said he "never advanced a conspiracy theory in my life," but he has promoted several: questioning President Barack Obama’s birthplace; suggesting that billionaire philanthropist George Soros collaborated with the Nazis and bankrolls antifa; and tweeting that the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, might have been staged.

                        D’Souza repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was stolen in the days and months after Election Day. Following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, D’Souza defended the rioters with false claims that they were "political protesters" who had been unarmed, unfairly attacked by police and wrongly labeled as insurrectionists. "This was a bunch of rowdy people walking through a hallway," he said on Fox News less than two months after the attack.

                        D’Souza did not respond to our questions for this article.

                        The allegations in the trailer stem from cell phone data

                        The "2,000 mules" trailer begins with an out of context clip of Joe Biden talking before the election about pulling together "the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics." Biden was describing a project to help people learn where and how to vote legally, but the trailer falsely frames his quote as an admission to election fraud.

                        The trailer then casts doubt over the security of the election, asking, "Do we know the truth about what really happened in the 2020 election?"

                        The movie is based on research by Texas-based True the Vote, a national conservative organization founded in 2010 that has spread misinformation in the past.

                        True the Vote didn’t respond to our questions, but the group’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, told Newsweek that her group obtained geospatial information and ballot drop box surveillance video from counties and cities in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

                        She said her team cross-referenced the two to determine who visited drop box location zones multiple times. D’Souza said on Fox News that the movie identifies 2,000 mules "harvesting, in total, something like 400,000 illegal votes. More than enough to tip the balance in the 2020 presidential election. … We've kind of caught the criminal operation on tape."

                        D’Souza’s argument ignores that in many states, it is legal to drop off a ballot on behalf of another voter, which is especially helpful for voters with disabilities or the elderly. Critics of this practice call it "ballot harvesting," while election administrators typically use other terms such as "ballot collection."

                        In 31 states, someone other than the voter – often a family member or designated person – is allowed to return a completed ballot on behalf of another voter, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some states only allow the voter to return the ballot, while others do not explicitly specify who may or may not return a ballot on behalf of a voter.

                        Ballot drop boxes were used for about two decades without controversy before the 2020 election including in Republican-led Utah. They typically weigh more than 600 pounds and have tamper-proof mechanisms, making them more secure than standalone mail boxes.

                        There have been isolated cases of fraud associated with ballot harvesting, such as a North Carolina Republican in a 2018 congressional race. It’s possible some people in 2020 collected and returned mail ballots in violation of their state laws. But D’Souza’s portrayal of the practice as leading to fraud on the scale of 400,000 illegal votes is not supported by evidence.

                        In fact, True the Vote told Wisconsin lawmakers that they aren’t alleging that the ballots were illegal, but that the process was abused.

                        "There is no way to know who the votes were cast for. But what we do know is the claim that 2020 was 'the most secure election ever' is false," Engelbrecht told Newsweek.

                        Mayer, the University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist, said it’s not credible to rely on the cell phone data to conclude that these 400,000 ballots were illegal.

                        "It is conspiracist thinking," he said. "They are interpreting data that confirms their pre-existing conclusions. It’s a zombie claim; no matter how many times you kill it, it keeps coming back."

                        Such geospatial data is not precise enough to prove without uncertainty that a person submitted a ballot to a drop box, only that they came within a short distance of it, the Associated Press reported. There are many reasons why a person might repeatedly enter the zone where a drop box is stationed, as the boxes are often strategically placed in busy areas.

                        D’Souza’s trailer also doesn’t explain why the supposedly overwhelming evidence of "criminal" activity he found hasn’t made its way into the hands of prosecutors.

                        Such a scheme employing people to collect ballots would likely have come to light by now, said Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist: "There would be a paper trail and social media trail and there would be some witnesses out there to verify this was going on."

                        True the Vote and the Georgia Republican Party in 2021 made allegations about ballot harvesting in Georgia, but the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said there wasn’t enough evidence to proceed on the allegation. State officials said that cell phone data that allegedly showed 279 cellphones tracked multiple times within 100 feet of an absentee drop box was not evidence of a crime, Georgia Public Radio found.

                        True the Vote has since said it has a witness but has yet to reveal the person’s identity.

                        We asked True the Vote if it had turned over information to prosecutors and, if so, in which jurisdictions. In response, the group said it will release information in the coming weeks. State election officials in Michigan and Wisconsin were not aware of any such prosecutorial investigations by state agencies based on True the Vote’s allegations. A spokesperson for the Philadelphia district attorney said such claims were not referred to local law enforcement for investigation.

                        "The actual evidence hasn’t been made public so it's hard to evaluate the claims when the people making the allegations won’t share the information that is the basis for their claims," said McDonald.

                        More than a year after the presidential election, the evidence has only grown that there was a secure election.

                        The Associated Press found in December 2021 fewer than 475 potential voter fraud cases in six battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

                        "Have there been isolated incidents of fraud? Yes," McDonald said. That’s true in any election in which tens of millions of people cast ballots. "But is there any evidence of some sort of mass fraudulent voting of any sort? No."
                        __________

                        tl;dr The right-wing conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was fraudulent is alive and well and nothing - NOTHING - will change these idiot's minds.

                        After all, if the 2020 election was fraudulent, then by default, the right-wing insurrection January 6th to overturn the results of the election and install Donald Trump as president wasn't actually an insurrection at all.

                        And even that was too long to hold your attention, look closely:

                        Click image for larger version

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                        “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                        Comment


                        • There is a reason people don't trust fact checkers. The author of the above peace had to hastily change an entry on Bongino after a threat of legal action because the fact checker lied.

                          In the above article the author forgets to mention that ballot harvesting is illegal in every state TTV bought geofenced data for. He also hopes you forget that the cell phone data is married to government cctv info required via FOIA requests. Funny how a fact checker ignored/ glossed over those two actual facts.

                          I'll watch with an open mind. If the cell data matches the same face visiting a drop box....

                          BTW, it doesn't excuse J6, at least not for me. What it might do is reenforces the need for better ballot security/ ban on unmanned drop boxes.

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by zraver View Post
                            There is a reason people don't trust fact checkers.
                            I think you mean Trump's cult of right-wingers that survive on a diet of "alternative facts" and the non-stop river of lies about election fraud, COVID and the January 6th insurrection.

                            If I was one of those gullible idiots, I'd hate fact-checkers too because reality is a real bitch.

                            Originally posted by zraver View Post
                            What it might do is reenforces the need for better ballot security/ ban on unmanned drop boxes.
                            To prevent the non-existent voter fraud? Right, that's what the Republican's brown-shirted "election police" are for.

                            Originally posted by zraver View Post
                            BTW, it doesn't excuse J6, at least not for me.
                            Oh bullshit it doesn't As usual you've forgotten what you've posted in the past.

                            Here's a recap:

                            You don't believe that January 6th was anything more than a nasty little shoving match and certainly not an insurrection.

                            You "don't give a fuck" (your words) why the protestors were there in the first place because to you, the idea of intent is a "thought crime" (your words), rather then the 'a necessary component of mens rea in virtually every modern legal system' that it actually is. And also because their intent was clearly an insurrection, that would collide with your fantasy of "not an insurrection".

                            You attach equal weight to attempted overthrow of the United States government with <insert left-win protest> despite the fact that left-wing protestors were never dispatched by a Democratic President with the intent of violently overthrowing the government and came within minutes or seconds of waylaying members of Congress and killing them for the "crime" of denying Trump his 2nd term in office.

                            How's that, did I miss anything?
                            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                            Comment


                            • Yeah you missed the salient facts
                              1. I've always said people should be charged for the crimes they committed

                              2. Despite the largest collection of evidence ever, by the most powerful investigative force in human history headed by a AG who swore to leave no stone unturned only something like .002 of the people charged have caught any sort of conspiracy charge and no one in the former administration has been charged. At this point a year and half in with half the time off the clock it's starting too look like the DoJ continues to consider it a riot. At least 1 defendant walked through open doors and out of court aquitted.

                              3. The fact checker you cited has a history of lying and lied in the peace you posted. If the case is so airtight why the lie from someone who is as a job descriptor supposed to be a beacon of truth?

                              4. Thought crime is different from intent. You want the J6 rioters charged with what you say thier intent was, not what it actually was. I trust the DoJ to establish the truth of various motivations behind alleged crimes and charge as the truth merits. So no I don't give a fuck. They will/are/have been getting charged for what they actually did.

                              5 insert attempt to storm the White House injuring dozens of law enforcement. Insert declaring autonomous zones free from the authority of the states aka an actual insurrection.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by zraver View Post
                                Yeah you missed the salient facts
                                Like you're missing the salient fact that January 6th was an attempted insurrection. Because to do that would rupture your cognitive dissonance. And we certainly can't have that now can we.

                                Originally posted by zraver View Post
                                1. I've always said people should be charged for the crimes they committed
                                And several of Trump's Oath Keepers have been charged with Seditious Conspiracy. To date, two of them have pleaded guilty to those charges. But you don't give a fuck about that. So please, spare me the bullshit.

                                Originally posted by zraver View Post
                                2. Despite the largest collection of evidence ever, by the most powerful investigative force in human history headed by a AG who swore to leave no stone unturned only something like .002 of the people charged have caught any sort of conspiracy charge and no one in the former administration has been charged. At this point a year and half in with half the time off the clock it's starting too look like the DoJ continues to consider it a riot. At least 1 defendant walked through open doors and out of court aquitted.
                                First it was "antifa" (because there's no way that law-and-order right-wingers would do such a dastardly criminal act)

                                Then it was "the FBI" (because that's the only way right-wingers could possibly be prompted to storm the U.S. Capitol Buidling

                                Then it wasn't an insurrection because no one had any firearms (because firearms are somehow required for an insurrection)

                                Then it wasn't an insurrection because no one was charged with insurrection. (because people are always charged with what actually happened)

                                Now there weren't enough people charged with insurrection to satisfy your moving goalposts.

                                Can't wait to see how far you'll move the goal posts tomorrow.

                                Trump was right: He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a voter. Oh right, in your case it's merely an apologist parroting the Cult45 script. Big difference.

                                Your defendant that walked free was exactly one out of 820+ (and counting) of Trump's followers arrested for January 6th. Yet you latch onto him like a dying man because somehow, in your twisted logic it proves your point.

                                Originally posted by zraver View Post
                                3. The fact checker you cited has a history of lying and lied in the peace you posted. If the case is so airtight why the lie from someone who is as a job descriptor supposed to be a beacon of truth?
                                I could bury you in a mountain of evidence about the election (in fact, I already have for nearly 2 years). I could quote Trump's own Attorney General, the top law enforcement official in the country that said accusations of serious fraud were bullshit (in fact, I already have) and it wouldn't faze you in the slightest. You'll still refuse to believe that Donald Trump could've possibly been defeated by Sleepy Joe without fraudulent means.

                                Originally posted by zraver View Post
                                4. Thought crime is different from intent. You want the J6 rioters charged with what you say thier intent was, not what it actually was. I trust the DoJ to establish the truth of various motivations behind alleged crimes and charge as the truth merits. So no I don't give a fuck. They will/are/have been getting charged for what they actually did.
                                As above, so far 10 of them have been charged with Seditious Conspiracy. Because that's what they actually did. But you don't give a fuck about that.

                                Also here's a hint about their intent: They were literally screaming it in the hallways of the Capitol Building, bragging about it on social media afterwards and then finally testifying under oath in a court of law what they were there on that day to do. Take a wild guess what that intent was.

                                What I actually asked you was what you personally thought their motivation/intention was. You then hemmed and hawed and danced around the question multiple times before sneeringly dismissed intent as a "thought crime" and then finally admitting that you don't give a fuck what their intention was. Yet again you can't even remember your own words.

                                Of course you don't give a fuck about a mob of right-wingers attempting to overthrow the government in favor of Donald Trump. Why would you?

                                Originally posted by zraver View Post
                                5 insert attempt to storm the White House injuring dozens of law enforcement. Insert declaring autonomous zones free from the authority of the states aka an actual insurrection.
                                As usual you don't even know what an insurrection is. An insurrection is attempting to overthrow the government. And, once again, let me know when a Democratic President directly incites a mob to storm a branch of the government.

                                All you've got are false equivalencies and a basic sympathy with what Trump and his mob of criminals attempted to do on that shameful day. The least you could do is have the balls to admit it. After all, you've already admitted you're a nativist. (Of course you had to quickly make up your own bullshit definition so you couldn't be called a racist.)

                                I'd say it's only a matter of time before you come out again with another confession.
                                “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                                Comment

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