Taking the president's attorney's word for it when there is no third party corroboration is like trusting Charles Manson's attorney when he says Charles Manson is innocent. Obvious conflict of interest on the source of the information.
Let's see some actual proof. So far nobody with any credibility, including the company that was ostensibly raided, claims a raid happened.
Friendly reminder that Reuters is a UK news agency and has nothing in particular to gain from lying about this sort of thing (and everything to lose, since news agencies trade on credibility). but I'm sure QAnon already assumes they're part of the conspiracy. It has to. It is the nature of the conspiracy theory to address contradictions of fact by growing the conspiracy without bound until it encompasses everyone except the "true believers," who know what's "really going on." Somehow, it sadly never occurs to them that it is far more likely that the world is in fact round than a multi-decade multi-nation conspiracy is keeping a flat Earth secret.
And the UCMJ is irrelevant to the outcome of the election. With the sole exception of the process of collection of military overseas ballots, the election is an entirely civilian and mostly state-level process that has no involvement from the military.
As he allows the person running his Twitter account to speak for him, and does not correct the record, it can be considered primary source information.
(... it's pretty clear, however, that most of the time Trump is in charge of Trump's Twitter account)
Fine. Don't take the word of the President regarding who was on the President's "truly great team." The National Archives will log it as his words, as per their mandate to collect the writings of the President in his official capacity, but you don't have to believe them.
Then when we evaluate her claims, we still find them to be utterly baseless accusations, detached from demonstrable fact.
The court cases are being thrown out consistently, and the hearings in front of state legislatures have been downright embarrassing.
If the Deep State exists in the sense this conspiracy theorist believes it does, I guess it doesn't matter where we live, does it? The CIA bogeyman will get you anyway ;)
Some fun tips from this video:
* He completely misunderstands the information that came from the "Pennsylvania legislature." It came from the Republican caucus. And specifically, it was spearheaded by a member of the caucus that essentially has no political cachet in the state. He can do what he wants, it's a free country, but everyone knows he's a nutter and his belief in a conspiracy theory is about a surprising as somebody reporting the sky is blue on a clear day. He also completely misunderstands what's going to happen in Pennsylvania, because that Republican caucus doesn't have the political power to block either certification or the slate of electors in the electoral college. And it's all irrelevant because deadlock in the electoral college would result in a president Pelosi, as per the House nuclear option mentioned in the last video I cited.
* The "pigtail lady" is the scandal du jour. It hasn't been presented in a court of law, and the simplest explanation for what the video shows is that nobody attempted to hide it (she didn't change her hair or top) because it was business as usual. I've worked elections, and I haven't seen anything in that video that looked out of sorts. When conspiracy theorists go looking for irregularities, they always find them. But that's more a psychological function of people finding what they're looking for than any particular changes in reality.
* The law is a little unclear, but what Michael Flynn has done is probably actually sedition. It also ought not to be illegal. I don't think it's illegal. But Flynn is by no means the good guy in this story; he is openly calling for an illegal overthrow of the Constitutionally-mandated electoral process via the military. Right or wrong, that's fundamentally the end of American democracy were it to occur. If he wants to put himself on the side with people who have tried to overthrow America with military might, from Aaron Burr through Robert E. Lee onwards, that's his choice, and if he ever makes good on his threats, the US military is more than willing to remind him what happens to traitors.
Anyway, this whole video is classic conspiracy theory claptrap, from the need to imagine a conspiracy so vast that it encompasses all possible counterindications to the need to invent an enemy the conspiracy is happening on behalf of (looks like he's dragged the old communist fear out of the woodwork and repurposed it for China; that's a fun one that Americans are fond of). Nothing in here is convincing unless you already believe the conspiracy theory, and then it's just reinforcing delusion.
I plan to live in the US for the next 25 years, for what it's worth. ;)
States can't change their rules for certification of electors without a governor's signature. If a state tried to pull some nonsense like changing the selection of electors away from the process as encoded in law before Nov. 3, that'd be new law and (a) would require a governor's signature or a veto-proof majority and (b) may actually be ex-post-facto if the current law is structured such that it declares how electors related to the votes cast on Nov. 3, so could be stopped by state courts. [1]
But Praying Medic counters your argument with a citation from the SCOTUS ruling in Bush v. Gore. Chief Justice Rehnquist summed it up: "Or put differently, when the legislature acted pursuant to the power granted to it by Article II, it stands above any limits imposed by state law."
If it goes to SCOTUS again, the five conservative justices will likely follow the Constitution.
All that has been needed to be done was that there was enough election fraud demonstrated that state legislators could feel they are not required to honor the popular vote when choosing electors, because the popular vote, as counted, is not reflective of the will of the people.
Praying Medic misunderstands Bush v Gore. SCOTUS took the extraordinary step in that ruling of declaring the circumstances so unique that the case should not be cited as common-law precedent. Anyone citing it has to explain why the Court should disregard SCOTUS's own guidance not to cite it. Even if they do, its particulars don't generally apply to the cases the Trump campaign is bringing (https://theconversation.com/trumps-pennsylvania-lawsuits-inv...).
Imposing martial law would simply be the death of American democracy, not some master chess move.
I don't dispute the President could try.
I doubt it would succeed (if it came down to it, plenty of generals see him as a tyrant and would follow their oath to uphold the Constitution, not a President in breach of his oath), and it renders all this discussion irrelevant because it's a suspension of Constitutional law.
But it proves nothing. We'd just be another nation where a tyrant tried military force to keep his power illegitimately. Sowing doubt in the legitimate process to justify a power grab is right out of the playbook.
It's sad that you're falling for it, but there were suckers who supported Hitler too. Every modern dictator claims they're upholding the will of the people. Every modern dictator drums up a secret conspiracy opposed to the people to justify their extraordinary measures.
> Praying Medic misunderstands Bush v Gore. SCOTUS took the extraordinary step in that ruling of declaring the circumstances so unique that the case should not be cited as common-law precedent. Anyone citing it has to explain why the Court should disregard SCOTUS's own guidance not to cite it. Even if they do, its particulars don't generally apply to the cases the Trump campaign is bringing
Bush v Gore isn't intended to apply in the cases the Trump campaign is bringing. It will apply to cases brought against state legislatures by Democrats. However, those cases will be too late to change anything.
> Imposing martial law would simply be the death of American democracy, not some master chess move.
But, blue states and cities are already under martial law, and most Americans can see it. The Insurrection act will end up invoked, like it has been in the past.
> We'd just be another nation where a tyrant tried military force to keep his power illegitimately. Sowing doubt in the legitimate process to justify a power grab is right out of the playbook.
Yet, conservatives see it the other way, where a dictator tried fraud, sedition and treason to seize power illegitimately. Doubt in the legitimate process started the moment election observers were ordered to leave, when counting was stopped the night of Nov. 3rd.
Its only a conspiracy theory until proven. I'm not telling you what should happen, I'm telling you to prepare yourself, because this will happen.
It wouldn't be the first time a population is gripped by a conspiracy theory explaining their woes with fantasy instead of fact. Again, Germany before World War II.
That doesn't make it right or just, and if it happens, the people that history will recognize as the freedom fighters will be ones who take up arms against it.
I don't see it as guaranteed as you seem to, possibly because I'm not watching conspiracy theorists at the level you seem to be. In the real world, while it's illegal to say so because military law prevents denigrating the commander-in-chief, 2/3 of the military hates Trump's guts and will not follow his orders if he tells them to turn guns on citizens nationwide. And were it to happen, the military at the federal level would be fighting the various national guards, because there's no way governors of most states will cede that power.
> It's only a conspiracy theory until proven
Conspiracy theories are never proven, that's what makes them conspiracy theories. They make wrong predictions and then move the goal posts when those predictions don't come to fruition. in this case, it's the same conspiracy that believed there was a pedophilia ring operating out of the basement of a pizza parlor with no basement.
I'll be interested, academically, to see how QAnon moves the goal posts yet again when the Supreme Court refrains from hearing the petitions to throw out Pennsylvania votes.
"""
But there is no evidence to suggest that any theft of voter registration data could’ve had an impact on the election in Arizona. It’s possible to simply buy voter data from Maricopa County, costing as little as $328 for 1 million or more records. The systems used to count votes in Maricopa County were not affected. And despite fears of foreign interference and voter fraud, the DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has stated the 2020 election was the “most secure in American history.”
"""
The story appears to degrade the stolen election conspiracy theory, not reinforce it.
To be clear, what they have to convince the state legislatures to do is throw out the votes of the states. That doesn't impact only the Presidential election; it takes votes away from legislators that picked up votes on split tickets and disrupts every other race that was run in November.
That's a short trip to never being reelected again, so it's a tall order. One state legislature might be stupid enough to do it. Two is staggeringly unlikely. The margin of victory is too high for it to matter if one does.
I don't know what evidence the link you just provided is supposed to be in this situation; True The Vote fails to indicate why the company in question isn't supposed to have access to that file. And given TTV's history, I don't assume that they know one way or the other.
I'm not a software engineer so this criticism directed at them will probably get down voted. Why isn't security - and that includes secure code - one of the first priorities in design?
Thanks this is helpful. It's limited to 2013-2015 but links to the following U of Arizona study which references an archive of IRC channels between 09/2016 and 01/2018:
https://www.gwern.net/docs/sr/2018-du.pdf
