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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30714 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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The first person to use the word fraud (without de-) was you. You stated that you didn’t think deception was an element. I commented that fraud would seem to always involve deception. That’s why it’s relevant.

I’ll ask you once again to consider the method by which Trump stole the relevant voter data. It involved lying. A lot. Do you think Trump would have been charged with theft if his claims about the election had been true? The indictment sure makes it seem like the fact he was lying is relevant.

Also, stepping back for a second, there are so many counts in the indictment related to forgery, false documents, and false statements, I don’t know how you managed to start a debate over the one count that (arguably, in your opinion) doesn’t involve deception.

The first person to use the word fraud (without de-) was you.

No, it was you. Here.

You seem to get confused easily.

I’ll ask you once again to consider the method by which Trump stole the relevant voter data. It involved lying. A lot. Do you think Trump would have been charged with theft if his claims about the election had been true? The indictment sure makes it seem like the fact he was lying is relevant.

Also, stepping back for a second, there are so many counts in the indictment related to forgery, false documents, and false statements, I don’t know how you managed to start a debate over the one count that (arguably, in your opinion) doesn’t involve deception.

I didn't start that debate. You did. You came into the thread arguing that the false electors could not have been guilty of fraud because they didn't deceive anyone. I responded by pointing out they hadn't been charged with fraud, and the only charge mentioning fraud didn't involve the false electors and didn't include deceit as an element of the offence.

I responded by pointing out they hadn't been charged with fraud, and the only charge mentioning fraud didn't involve the false electors and didn't include deceit as an element of the offence.

…at which point, I wrote that it’s hard to imagine a definition of fraud that would not involve deceit.

...which is both wrong and completely irrelevant.

Well, it may be wrong, but so far I’ve provided one definition of fraud from Georgia law and another from Merriam Webster that include deceit. You haven’t provided one that doesn’t.

Apart from the one that someone's actually been charged with.

From the indictment:

COUNT 11 of 41

And the Grand Jurors aforesaid, in the name and behalf ofthe citizens of Georgia, do charge and accuse DONALD JOHN TRUMP [et al.], [...] unlawfully conspired, with the intent to defraud, to knowingly make a document titled "CERTIFICATE OF THE VOTES OF THE 2020 ELECTORS FROM GEORGIA," [...] insuch manner that the writing as made purports to have been made by authority ofthe duly elected and qualified presidential electors from the State of Georgia, who did not give such authority

Read the above and recall that what AshLael wants anyone still reading this to believe is that for the purposes of the Georgia indictment, it makes no difference whether in creating the alternative slate of electors (aka "fake electors"), the accused parties intended for the "CERTIFICATE OF THE VOTES" to deceive Congress into wrongly counting Georgia's votes for Donald Trump.

To echo a favorite line of mine, I cannot imagine an interpretation of the phrase "with the intent to defraud," or really the entire context and meaning of Count 11 and several other counts like it, that would make AshLael's position reasonable.

Whether the intent of the "fake elector" document was to deceive Congress matters to the legal case. Of course it matters. Anyone who says differently either hasn't read the indictment or is a troll.

Well, hang on a sec. You started by objecting to the notion that "the electors committed fraud". You're now pointing to an offence which none of the false electors has been charged with.

Ok so maybe the relevant question is not whether the false electors themselves committed conspiracy to commit forgery, but whether Trump and the other people actually charged with that offence did. But if that's that's the case, the "contingent elector" explanation you proposed is a lot harder to justify:

Obviously the accurate term should be "contingent electors", in the sense that these would have been the correct electors if Trump prevailed in his various lawsuits. It's easy to imagine that in the case where he was able to establish fraud and the court determined that he had won the election, they wouldn't want the process to get held up by the need to quickly get some electors together to cast their votes and mail them to Washington, DC. The Georgia "fake slate" is dated December 14, so there would not have been much time to get these votes recorded if they had had to wait for all litigation to be resolved.

By Jan 6 all of Trump's legal challenges had failed. Nonetheless he still attempted to have these false electors accepted as the valid ones. So while the "contingent elector" theory may work as a defence for the electors themselves - and it may well be exactly why the electors have not also been charged with the same offence - it doesn't work for Trump and his inner circle.

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