Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
It seems entirely plausible that whomever had the video released it just to ruin Crawthorn without attempting to do any blackmail. Or that they did a "traditional" blackmail for money, not the kind of political favors blackmail I'm discussing here. And if they did a blackmail, why wouldn't Crawthorn tell the details, or go to the police?
Yeah, it seems like the only political favor anyone wanted from Cawthorne was that he would go away.
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Because there is more, even worse and possibly criminally actionable material in the offing?
Is that not how blackmail tends to work? This feels like a gimme question.
Is it? Blackmail works when the difference "what I'll release if you don't cave" minus "what I'll release if you do cave" hurts the target more than the cost of caving, so you want to maximize that difference. Releasing kompromat but not all-the-kompromat makes the difference smaller. It would be a good response to "I know you have material on me but I don't think you'll release any of it", but who wouldn't think that? Even bluffing blackmailers just pretend to have material they don't really have, they don't pretend to be willing to publish material they really wouldn't.
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Or because there was no blackmail. I know that most cases of political blackmail is in shades of grey and veiled from the public, that's why I'm looking for clear-cut cases.
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