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As I have explained elsewhere, the state that I'm most familiar with definitely had quite a few illegal votes cast. With the fact pattern present, I don't think it's possible to determine how many of these votes were fraudulent in reality rather than just cast illegally, and I think it's a Very Bad Thing that an election was conducted where that is impossible to know with any degree of confidence.
That said, I think it is also true that a lot of right-wing content is produced by liars and grifters. I have no idea if TTV is lying and I tend to not think that's the simplest explanation. Instead, I would favor a model of them being largely disinterested in factual evidence, probably genuinely believing that Georgia was stolen, but having a lackadaisical enough relationship with truth and facts that when the rubber meets the road, they're forced to retreat. Since they lack strong evidence but have made strong claims to profit from people that agree with them, they're put in an awkward position - I bet they still think that the election was stolen, but they got far out over their skis with claims that they can't back. They certainly could be lying, but I have to say, I feel like I increasingly hear commentators claiming that people are "lying" for false statements that the speaker may or may not have actually had the relevant information and intent to deceive. I don't care about this group enough to defend them much at all, but I am not confident they're lying, even if I do think they're pandering and grifting without doing the work to prove their claims.
The standard of evidence I would accept for stating that they're lying would be a clear statement from one of their leads saying that they don't believe there is much fraud or that they know Georgia was above the board. I would absolutely grant the claim if they were saying things privately that directly contradict their public statements.
I draw intent to deceive through their strident refusals to cooperate with authorities once they're required to show their evidence, including their willingness to go to jail over it. The alternative theories are 1) they're telling the truth or 2) they're mistaken but don't know it. If they're telling the truth, I've seen no explanation for why they've refused to cooperate with election authorities. Presumably if you have extensive evidence of serious election fraud, you'd want to do something about the fraud itself besides just making a documentary. If they're mistaken but don't know it, I would still expect them to fully cooperate with election authorities who then would be in a position to further investigate their claims and thereafter inform them that they were mistaken. Instead, TTV's consistent refusals to share their evidence showcases they must be aware that their evidence is bullshit and that sharing it would expose that it's bullshit.
Because in that case, they think those are the guilty parties? Imagine a case where it's "You accused Peter of stealing from your bank account. Please hand all your evidence over to Peter, who is going to investigate these charges". Mm-hmmm, and when the evidence is all mysteriously shredded or lost in a fire? Pure coincidence?
I don't know anything about the merits of this bunch and their accusations, but a lot of the problem around credibility is the insistence that nope, this was the bestest, most rigorous, most securest, honestest election evah! when the measures introduced to accommodate voting during the Covid epidemic were not secure or rigorous. Honest error and the small amount of dubious votes or counts which happen in every election were surely going on here, and the whole "we'll take as legal any ballots without even a postmark so you have no idea if they arrived in time for the election" decisions don't fill me with confidence about "nope, every single vote was legit". As the linked article says, a vote could be legal in one state but be thrown out in another under the same circumstances. Of course that is going to give space to accusations of deliberate fraud, and the more denial about the chance of any honest mistake, on the part of those defending the result as "most secure ever", just makes the accusations of conspiracy worse.
If they think the election authorities are in on it, why would they bother filing a complaint with them only to retract it when the authorities asked for evidence? And if they had evidence, why would they ask their lawyer to lie in court and say they didn't have evidence? I posit it's because they're lying.
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Welcome to Federalism.
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I was unfamiliar with this incident, but it looks just plain weird. They were jailed at the end of October and conducted themselves in a way that I would say moves me in the direction of agreeing with you:
On the other hand, they were released a week later and the story is weird:
I don't know. I again decline to defend the competence of TTV or their honesty, but I don't find it particularly implausible that they thought they were working with a confidential informant, that they should not have to disclose that informants identity, and that they were either surprised to be jailed over it or willing to go to jail briefly as a publicity stunt. I don't think this incident provides strong evidence with regard to whether they're lying or not.
Oh wow, yeah that's my bad. I did not know details about this incident and just repeated what Newsmax/AP said in their article. I looked up the court of appeals decision that reversed the contempt finding and it describes an absurdly vindictive district court judge. The judge granted a preliminary injunction which is based on emergency arguments, but the judge included a requirement to disclose the identity of individuals involved and then almost immediately spun up contempt proceedings before anyone could get their bearings. Contempt findings are fairly rare, contempt jailings are extremely rare, and this is one of the most bonkers contempt jailings I've ever heard of.
I agree with you completely that this incident is too weird to tells us much of anything about TTV and their honesty. I edited my post above to reflect that.
This sort of thing is a good part of why it's difficult to seriously prove matters, and why I push so hard about fair and quick access to neutral and open courts.
Konnech eventually sued LA County, which settled for 5 mill. It's not like this stuff would make TTV's claims credible even if they were true -- their claim was just that Konnech had run a poll worker software server in some way that stored data in China, which would have been a PII boo-boo (that a lot of places struggle with) but said nothing about the actual 2020 vote -- and Konnech had a fair defense that the LA criminal lawsuit was based on claims that, even if true, were more contract breach than criminal violation.
But I can't find much out about whether they were true. Given the LA County DA's office makeup at the time charges were filed, it seems weird to have gotten fooled by TTV shitpost-grade claims, but it'd I'm not sure if it's weirder than five million dollars.
If I had to bet, I'd say that TTV are lying (or being so extremely credulous or indifferent to the truth that the difference doesn't matter), but I don't think this is the best evidence for it, simply because whether or not they believe what they're saying, there's quite a lot of reasons to be willing to go to jail rather than reveal sources (or 'sources') or leave a lot of paperwork anywhere that would.
Remember the Biden Journal thing? Plea bargains aren't proof of anything, but the subsequent rulings make it extremely likely that the journal was real. Annnnnd Veritas founders were had their homes and offices stripped in morning raids that left them standing in their skivvies, the
fedssomeone who must have stumbled on random paperwork somewhere leaked privileged information to the New York Times who was in the middle of suing these guys, the informants/thieves singled out for felony prosecution (with a plea), and the whole mess was at least a small part of why decreasing trust from donors and potential sources drove Project Veritas bankrupt.EDIT: and that wasn't exactly a theoretical example for TTV specifically; they'd been slapped with a Voting Rights Act lawsuit pre-J6 that went to (bench) trial and is in the appeals process today.
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One possible explanation is that they don't believe the election authorities wish to cooperate with them in good faith. For example, look at what cooperation with the FBI got John Paul Mac Isaac: they sandbagged the case, seized his property and refused to give it back, tried to deny claims that he was cooperating with them, and tried to intimidate him into silence.
He wrote a whole book so it doesn't seem like the silence intimidation worked very well. What property was seized, are you talking about the laptop?
What reasons would TTV have to believe that election authorities in Arizona and Georgia would not cooperate with them in good faith? Why would TTV lie in court and tell a judge that they don't have evidence if they actually did have evidence?
So, no harm, no foul? Government abuse is fine so long as the person persevered in any case?
Are you asking, theoretically, or are you asking me if I know personally of specific reasons they believe this? I don't have first-hand knowledge, no. But I have personal first-hand experience with this sort of thing. I personally witnessed election malfeasance as an independent observer. Ultimately, I did nothing with that information for several reasons: A) I had no physical evidence. I knew what I observed but that's all that I had. I had no ability to corroborate my observations. B) The police and elections commission were involved. The same people that I could complain to. Did I expect they would seriously undertake efforts to investigate themselves of wrongdoing? No, I did not. C) Without physical evidence, I would actually be vulnerable to a defamation claim for taking my observations public. I would at a minimum be subject to the smears of people far more powerful than I am and who would be motivated to deny any wrong doing.
So, I know something was done improperly. I know nobody cares. I know that most people can't fight city hall.
No. You made a claim that the FBI tried to intimidate him into silence but provided no citations for this assertion. I googled his name to see if I could find this evidence of intimidation on my own and instead the first thing that popped up was the Amazon link to his book with hundreds of favorable reviews. Both the high SEO listing and the number of reviews are contrary to the claim that he was intimidated into silence, and since I haven't seen evidence to the contrary, I'm forced to conclude that whatever attempts that may have been made (which again, hasn't been established) were inconsequential. If they did try to intimidate him into silence, that's very bad even if it was unsuccessful, but the intimidation would be far worse if it was successful.
I appreciate you outlining the reasons why you were averse to reporting what you saw. Do you have any reasons to believe that TTV would have felt similarly stymied? Their work received extensive media coverage and widespread endorsements from powerful figures with deep pockets. If TTV is inadequately equipped to do something about the fraud they claim to have uncovered, is there anyone who is?
Not directly, I'm simply reasoning by analogy.
No, I've thought since the beginning it was a futile effort because much of what is alleged would require the cooperation of the accused to prove. If it's rigged, there's basically nothing that can be done from the outside. It's hopeless, as an outsider, to force accountability.
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