Breaking 1-06-21: MAGA terrorist attack on Capitol

DOJ/FBI Is now trying to get in front of what's going to come out about their involvement with Jan 6th by selectively leaking to lapdog NYT journalists.

 

well that's inconvenient

 

What's going to come out? ... Trump ran a false flag with the FBI and the NYT all to pin a bunch of morons with relatively minor charges? Well... Trump played his part well, advertising and promoting the event for weeks and promising it would be "wild."

hat tip to FBI collaborator Trump.

 

Your basic premise is that what happened with the 2020 election has happened before, and you largely attempt to support that premise by citing past examples of challenges.

But you know full well that that is just one piece of trumps broad attack on democracy that has never happened before. You cannot cite precedent or examples where:

- presidents declared BEFORE AN ELECTION that they could lose only if the election was rigged; and

- president’s team filed lawsuits across the country attacking the legitimacy of the vote and process (and losing every damn one of those suits), and

- president fabricating stories about dominion voting machines, and

- president openly calling for a Vice President to subvert the election, and

- presidents supporters attacking the Capitol, not a riot, BUT FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF DEFEATING OR DELAYING THE CERTIFICATION OF THE VOTE.

You do a decent lawyerly job of parsing the issues and citing past percent of challenges to vote certification, and you try to minimize what happen by falling what trump did as narcissistic, not malicious (it was both).

But focusing one just one element of what happened is intentionally myopic. There is no precedent for what Trump did and continues to do to destroy democratic institutions.

 

The most likely reason might be that the FBI is investigating already. There are about a dozen other reasons. But none are as fun as pretending that there is some sort of inside job conspiracy.

 

maybe, I am dumb and just don’t get it.

would you mind explicitly stating why that is?

 

Because Nacy, The Squad or Hillary did it with Biden's approval. He doesn't even know what he is signing. They just point and giggle.

Edit: I mean that is what I'm hearing from those who are saying what they say about a lot of people that are talking.

 

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2021/09/but-statements-from-informant-appear-to.html

September 25, 2021
"But statements from the informant appear to counter the government’s assertion that the Proud Boys organized for an offensive assault on the Capitol intended to stop the peaceful transition from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden."
by noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse)

"On the eve of the attack, the records show, the informant said that the group had no plans to engage in violence the next day except to defend itself from potential assaults from leftist activists.... Then, during an interview in April, the informant again told his handlers that Proud Boys leaders gave explicit orders to maintain a defensive posture on Jan. 6. At another point in the interview, he said that he never heard any discussion that day about stopping the Electoral College process.... According to the records, the informant first began to tell the F.B.I. what he knew about Jan. 6 in late December after a pro-Trump rally in Washington that month turned violent.... [T]he records contain no indication that the informant was aware of a possible plot by Proud Boys leaders to purposefully instigate those normal Trump supporters — or what members of the group refer to as 'normies'— on Jan. 6."
From "Among Those Who Marched Into the Capitol on Jan. 6: An F.B.I. Informant/A member of the far-right Proud Boys texted his F.B.I. handler during the assault, but maintained the group had no plan in advance to enter the Capitol and disrupt the election certification" (NYT).

ADDED: My hypothesis has been that if there had been a plan, the FBI would have known about it and it would have been defended against. If the government has evidence of a plan now, my question is why didn't they know in advance and defend the Capitol properly? The simplest answer is that there was no plan. ​

 

What Trump did to try to overturn the election result has happened before.

Hillary Clinton's supporters said she couldn't possibly lose to Trump. The New York Times said she had a 99.6% chance of winning, or something along those lines. Trump said that he was going to win unless the election was stolen because that is what he believed. Whether it was internal polling, listening to biased news sources, being misled by his advisors, or his own delusions of support; Trump thought he was winning in a landslide (and apparently still thinks he won in a landslide).

Gore challenged his election loss by lawsuit. Democrats challenge in 2004 in Congress. Republican's challenged Nixon's loss, but Nixon conceded (and an investigation determined there probably was fraud in Chicago and Texas). There were two contested elections in the 1800s as well. Most elections are not very close, so there won't be challenges. Close elections mean only a few hundred or a few thousand votes need to be found.

I very much doubt Trump fabricated the stories about the dominion voting machines. I think it is much more likely one or more of his advisors told him that the Dominion voting machines were changing Trump votes to Biden votes and he repeated it.

Trump, doubting the validity of the vote, of course wanted the certification to be denied and for the appropriate legal remedy to be taken. That is just a follow on to point on.

This is something someone else did, so irrelevant.

Of course it is difficult to determine what is in someone's head. All we can do is look at statements and actions. My view of Trump's statements and actions are that he is a delusional narcissist, not a genius manipulator. Possibly someone much smarter than Trump had a nefarious plan to steal the election, but in my humble opinion, Trump just thinks he legitimately won.

I think there is substantial precedent for Trump's actions. I have provided precedent.

 

let's just say I don't expect anyone to ever be prosecuted for it

 

Not it hasn't. No president tried to persuade their VP to not allow the election to be certified. That has never happened. No President called the election fraudulent and urged his supporters to fight the process.

Hillary's supporters made a prediction. They didn't make a false accusation of fraud.

They knew the claims were bogus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/us/politics/trump-dominion-voting.html
They went ahead with the measures anyway. It wasn't an honest mistake on their part.

Trump knew he lost. He didn't think the result wasn't valid.
This is something someone else did, so irrelevant.

Nobody did what Trump did.

 

[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

There are meaningful differences and your know it.
I’ll respond one last time but you know the analogies you have cited are weak.

Hillary might have said she couldn’t possibly lose to trump. At no time did she say she could only lose if there was election fraud. That’s a meaningful difference tou deliberately gloss over.

The prior lawsuits you cited did happen. But there is no comparison between those cases and the widespread bullshit lawsuits filed by trump, which were part of his attack on the legitimacy of the system. You know these are not comparable in size, scale or legal viability either. Trump filed frivolous suits and was laughed out of court by judges he appointed. Again, your comparison is weak at best, disingenuous is probably a better descriptor.

Trunk did make the statements about the dominion machines, and it matters not where the original idea came from. He lied to the public deliberately. And no, it’s not a defense that maybe he felt it was true in his idiotic delusional mind.

Trump wanted pence to not certify the vote. Gloss over that all you want, but it happened. There is no precedent for it.

If you are a lawyer and you actually believe what you cite is persuasive, I hope you are fast and catch those ambulances. Or maybe you can convince trump to hire you to make his spurious legal arguments and get laughed out of court.

 

So I am guessing explicitly stating your beliefs breaks your character or what's the deal?

Are you hedging against the possibility of eventual prosecution by being able to say you never purported any conspiracy theories?

Like what are we doing here?

 

I provided you with multiple examples of the outcome of the election being challenged, including the certification of the electors, a process overseen by the vice president. I even posted a video of multiple members of the house of representatives literally asking Vice President Biden to disallow the certification of the electors and being denied (just like Pence certified the electors over Trump's objections).

Saying you are going to win absent fraud in an election that has not yet occurred can only be a prediction. No votes had been counted yet, how could it be anything but a claim about what he expected to happen in the future (ie a prediction).

Did Trump know, or did people in his campaign know?

I believe Trump still thinks he won and the result wasn't valid. As I said, it is very difficult to know what someone thinks, you can only try to determine it by their speech and their actions. Is it possible Trump is a wannabe dictator that tried to just strongarm his way to a second term? Sure, it's possible. He didn't take the steps that other dictators take to maintain power, but it is possible. Is it possible Trump thinks he won in a landslide and that he has been cheated out of a second term? I don't see how one can deny that possibility.

No one else did the exact combination of things Trump did, but there is precedent for all of the individual things. I already gave you the examples. You can't just say only Trump challenged valid electors, because the Democrats did it in 2016 and 2004. You can't say only Trump filed lawsuits, Gore did that in 2000. You can't say only Trump blamed a third party cheating him, because Clinton did that in 2016. Only Trump specifically blamed Dominion voting machines, because not every election used Dominion voting machines. Other elections the fraud was claimed to come from somewhere else, like the Daley Machine in Chicago (and before you point it out, yes I am aware that is not an actual physical machine)

That isn't a meaningful difference. He could have said I will only lose if a meteor kills Hillary. Both predictions mean the same thing, if all the votes are counted correctly, I will win. Trump's prediction just points out a potential confounding variable. Hillary's prediction was also wrong for the same reason as Trump's and would have meant the exact same thing if she had concatenated the phrase, "as long as there is no fraud."

Trumps lawsuits were largely dismissed for lack of standing. Clearly his legal team was crap, as they couldn't even find a person with proper standing to sue. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if you sue in one state or five or ten. Both lawsuits were to overturn the election result. Both were unsuccessful.

Of course that is a defense. It isn't lying to say something you believe is true. It is being wrong. Lying involves an intent to deceive. If Trump was convinced that the Dominion voting machines cheated him, saying so is not deceptive.

I literally posted a video of the Democrats wanting Biden to not certify the vote. I posted an article about the Democrats in 2004 trying to prevent the certification of the electors. That is two precedents.

Fortunately for me, your view of my persuasive abilities has no effect on my career, which is going quite well.

 

Show me a way where I can tell the public we are taking our allegations to the courts and at the same time not have to go into discovery discussing the actual alleged evidence and not have to express their claims under oath....

Oh wait I think your quote is exactly a method to do that.

Dude, the Trump administration knew the second they made the claims about Dominion and other fraud claims were full of ****.

You try to equivocate by just using reductive claims like "others challenged the election". Reductive in the sense that you hope that point sticks if we just ignore things like context, scope, what was the point of disagreement...

For example Trump's claims and desires would literally dismiss and violate millions of citizens' voting rights by tossing their ballots for no other reason besides being the ballots that got Biden ahead of Trump.

The fact that I don't even know which Democrats asked Joe Biden not to certify the election shows how little that was discussed. Unlike 2020, where everyone from the actual president to a large contingent of GOP legislators we're asking Pence to not certify the election.

On top of that you didn't have Hillary calling Democrat State secretaries and election officials to change vote counts. Like when have candidates called and tried to convince election officials to change votes? Candidates in an election having discussions about vote counts is banana Republic like.

 

You aren't being serious. The VP was always there. That was never the issue. The issue was that in this case and only this one. The President tried to keep the VP from certifying the election. Then sought to ostracize and punish him, when he wouldn't. The simple fact that the VP did his job doesn't change the difference in what Trump did and what other losing politicians did.

Trump knew he lost fairly. He is responsible for his campaign.

Would someone with the resources he had, have the legal team he had, if he truly thought he had a chance to win? Trump's campaign knew he lost. Trump knew he lost.

 

Possibly relevant for some posters?

https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Fallout-begins-for-far-right-trolls-who-trusted-16487175.php

99% sure it wouldn't be Commodore, but an interesting story.

 

Woman who said she wanted to shoot Pelosi in the ‘brain’ pleads guilty to misdemeanor

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...f0bbb8-209b-11ec-9309-b743b79abc59_story.html

excerpt

A woman who said as she left the U.S. Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6 that she had hoped to murder House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pleaded guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor charge.

“I would like to accept my responsibility for what I did, for my part in January 6,” Dawn Bancroft, 59, of suburban Philadelphia said in federal court in Washington as she admitted to illegally demonstrating.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan questioned why Bancroft was not being asked to take more responsibility, given the comment she admits making in a video as she left the building during the storming of the Capitol: “We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain, but we didn’t find her.”

Calling those words “horrible” and “clearly troubling,” Sullivan asked prosecutors why Bancroft was not charged with threatening a government official, which is a felony.

Bancroft pleaded guilty alongside her friend Diana Santos-Smith, a fellow Bucks County resident, to a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Murphy said Bancroft made the comment while leaving the building and there was no indication she intended to act on it.

“It was a dumb, stupid comment,” Bancroft told the judge, one she said she made in jest. “I did not mean it.”

Her attorney added that Bancroft did not post the video online; she shared it with her children and a few others, including a friend who provided it to the FBI.

Sullivan said Bancroft was “fortunate” not to face more charges but that the “outrageous statement” would come up again at her sentencing. He asked her to think about how “good people who never got into trouble with the law” on Jan. 6 “morphed into terrorists.”
​

more at the link

​

 

Dude, that is a bit of an understatement. The insurrectionists wanted to kill Pence for "crimes" against Trump.