Comments

Trump case glitch? — 32 Comments

1. One of the many ridiculous things about this case is that it treats the idea that fraud may have occurred in the 2020 election as so preposterous that of course Trump didn’t believe it.

   Given the vastness and heterogeneousness of a modern US presidential election with 154 million votes cast across a profusion of varied districts, it’s a virtual certainty that some fraud will always occur. As to whether that fraud was enough to swing the election or not, strictly speaking it may now be impossible to know that for certain as an objective fact. Perhaps that would require near omniscience.

2. The way the election rules are now in the swing states, true vote fraud isn’t really required. There just needs to be a large population that doesn’t bother to cast votes themselves, but is happy to let someone else harvest their ballot. That population exists in the blue cities of purple states.

   If you could imagine a world where people are required to keep their valuables on the sidewalk in front of their house, there could be a great deal of theft, but very little actual burglary as burglary would be unnecessary. That’s kind of where we are with voting.

3. Any of a number of books on the election have many facts and suspicions how vote fraud happened. Many states stopped counting around 10pm but returned many hours later with Sundowner in a lead and getting bigger by the last couple hours.
   There are so many statistical ways that would tell the winner and Sundowner broke every one of them.
   I have read 5 books on the 2020 election, I am positive DJT won.

4. “However, it’s something half of America believes.”

   That’s the point. They need to move the Overton window to not allow this discussion.

5. Fraud: Read 2000 Mules by Dinesh D’Souza, or see the movie. The book is more comprehensive than the movie, as it responds to Demo/liberal critiques of it.

   And not only that; it’s something that has never been proved or disproved..

   IIRC, the 2000 Mules book version has an update on a fraud example in the 2000 Mules movie version. Book version tells of a successful prosecution of a fraud example from the movie version.

   As to whether that fraud was enough to swing the election or not,

   2000 Mules gives a convincing argument that fraud in selected urban areas was sufficient to swing the election.

6. “…some fraud will always occur….”
   Well, er, um, yeah, sure.
   Except that in this case it was MASSIVE.
   And WIDESPREAD.
   And the Democrats did their absolute best to cover it up…under the rubric of “TRANSPARENCY”…but of course…
   Remind me:
   How many of those states had to stop ballot counting for a few hours?
   (True, this happens ALL THE TIME, but still….)
   And what were their excuses for stopping the ballot counting?—Actually, my absolute favorite was the burst water main in Atlanta. Now THAT was sheer GENIUS!! Even though there was no evidence of a burst water main after the fact; but that absolutely confirms the sheer genius and absolute creativity of the Party Of The People! Doesn’t it?..Doesn’t it?)
   And in how many of those states was Trump ahead at the time they stopped ballot counting?
   And in how many of those states did Biden eventually win?
   (Sheer coincidence, of course!)
   And by how many percentage points?
   (HYUGE number, right!)
   And how assiduously did the Democrats WORK to prove to the populace that NO FRAUD OCCURRED?
   Actually, yer’ right. Why should they even try to prove to the populace that no fraud occurred…
   No, there can be no doubt that not only were the elections fair and honest…and transparent…but it is clear that Joe Biden is THE MOST POPULAR president, given the votes he “won”, in American history!!

7. Jack Smith now claims that DOD lawyers can read people’s minds. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, a Nuremberg Trial prosecutor, said the “greatest danger to justice is an unscrupulous prosecutor who targets a person and then scours the law books to find an offense he can pin on that person.”

8. he lied about turning over the video footage in the superseding indictment as well,

9. I took the time to download the votes and the timing of when they showed up for the swing states, my home state (which is dominated by Portland), and New York from the online database the New York Times provided. There were very strange anomalies in the timing, amounts, and repeatability of the vote packets that certainly looked fraudulent. But I have never, ever seen any explanation for those same sized packets of votes coming in just in time to hand the election to Biden. Fraud hiding in plain sight, apparently.

10. also what of the dominion systems whistleblower which corresponds to the helderman report, now the former was a backstop to the avalanche of unverifiable
    mail ballots, that arrived under curious auspices,

11. Frederick on August 4, 2023 at 5:04 pm said:

    The way the election rules are now in the swing states, true vote fraud isn’t really required. …
    ___________________________________________________

    Precisely. I’ve said this to a few friends who are reliable Democrats. They see nothing wrong with it, and they don’t understand why it bothers me.

    I even know someone who volunteers for the Democratic Party during elections, and she’s been very productive at ballot harvesting. For this, she’s been widely praised by her friends, who laugh at people like me, as if we were virgins fainting at the prospect of sex. To them, politics is a dirty game, and that’s what makes it fun — as long as they win.

12. I highly recommend this Megyn Kelly show in which she talks about the indictment with Andrew McCarthy, two other guys, and Julie Kelly, whose insight into the D.C. Judge who would handle the trial is chilling. Kelly is by far the best reporter on the J6 demonstration, and what has happened to the people arrested.

13. To be fair to the devil, July 23 was only 2 weeks ago, and the minion that got Kurik’s records may not have passed on that information; it’s also a short window for evaluating them.
    On the other hand, as many pundits have noted, Smith & DOJ had 2 plus years to gather all their evidence, and Kurik should have been an easy call at the beginning, not right before the indictment launched.
    On the gripping hand, the wrench in the works of Hunter’s plea deal may have accelerated Smith’s timetable.

    Here’s another possibly fatal glitch; although not in the J6 case, it is typical of Smith’s operations, so we could probably say he’s done the same in both.
    IF Kurik did indeed turn over his material, and Smith didn’t pass it on to Trump’s lawyers, it seems to me that could also be prosecutorial misconduct.

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/08/04/jack-smith-may-have-doomed-his-case-against-trump-n1716160

    Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team has acknowledged they incorrectly claimed that they had submitted all the necessary evidence as mandated by the law in the classified documents case against Donald Trump.

    That’s basically a euphemism for getting caught committing prosecutorial misconduct.

    Prosecutors “discovered” that a crucial video intended to be presented as evidence had not been appropriately processed and uploaded to the designated platform for the defense to review during the investigation.

    This discovery occurred just as they prepared to indict Carlos De Oliveira, the Mar-a-Lago property manager, for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy with Trump to delete surveillance footage from the estate. Trump denies the allegations and says the videos were “handed over to the thugs.”
    …
    According to Just The News, “All CCTV footage obtained by the government has now been given to the defendants, according to Smith’s team. The so-called Brady rule requires prosecutors to disclose all evidence and information favorable to the defendant.”

    Why is this important? Well, Jack Smith, a hardcore partisan with a record of prosecutorial misconduct, in addition to failing to achieve convictions against Democrats, has a history of distorting the law in order to achieve convictions against Republicans.

    Smith successfully convicted former Republican Congressman Rick Renzi in a case involving a land swap deal, that was marred by prosecutorial misconduct, including witness tampering and illegal wiretapping of Renzi’s attorneys. Smith also led the prosecution against former Republican Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, but the case was poorly conducted and later overturned by the Supreme Court due to an overly broad interpretation of criminal acts.

    It sure feels like Smith is up to his same old dirty tricks in order to do the bidding of the Biden administration and make himself a hero of the left. Did Smith deliberately withhold evidence from the defense? Based on his record, it sure seems like he did. But there’s more. Smith may also have failed to review records that former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik provided in July that Kerik’s attorney described as “absolutely exculpatory.”

    Is Smith’s case against Trump destined to be overturned for prosecutorial misconduct? I think it’s very much possible.

14. Short of a video of Trump saying, “I am going to lie and say Joe Biden didn’t win the election fairly,” the prosecutors can’t make the case beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump knew he was lying. That is what makes this indictment so ridiculous- the case literally can’t be proven to criminal standards without a confession, which is never coming. However, that doesn’t even matter since if Trump really was lying, that doesn’t make his actions criminal.

15. Yancey Ward:

    Initially, courts decided the travel ban cases by reading Trump’s mind. See these posts. It was only later that the Supreme Court overruled those decisions, at least for the most part.

16. Skip: “I am positive DJT won.”

    As am I.

17. Just read an article about a 7-11 proprietor in Stockton, Ca who beat a would-be robber with a stick until he cried for mercy.

    What does this have to do with the Trump mess?
    Brit Hume’s observation is germane
    “This is what happens when authorities won’t, or can’t, enforce the law and some citizens decide they’ve had enough.”

    Every day the American people are being schooled that the “keepers of the law” have no respect for the law.
    I don’t believe that anyone could predict the consequences if broad sections of the populace reach “enough is enough” on a national level.

    A simplification perhaps, but also not be an unthinkable stretch to say that the various causes of the disastrous French Revolution reached a flash point when ordinary people simply had enough of the day to day excesses of the Nobility.

18. A statistical anomaly is the fact that 18 of the 19 bell weather counties in the U.S. voted for DJT.
    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/where-did-all-the-bellwether-counties-go/
    That’s not proof of fraud, but it points out how unusual the results were.

    Another anomaly was the fact that down ballot Republicans did well in states where Trump lost. Again, not evidence of fraud, but strange.

    Another anomaly was the increase in voters. There’s this from the Census Bureau.
    “More voters (154.6 million) turned out for the presidential election in 2020 than in 2016 (137.5 million), the largest increase between consecutive presidential elections since the inception of the CPS voting supplement in 1964.”
    **********************
    “Changes in election procedures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic did yield a dramatic increase in the use of nontraditional voting methods — casting a ballot by mail or in person prior to Election Day. For the first time on record in the CPS voting supplement, a majority (69.4 %) of voters cast ballots by a nontraditional method in the 2020 presidential election.”
    More at: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/2020-presidential-election-voting-report.html
    Again, not evidence of fraud, but an unusual election result. Non-traditional forms of voting certainly lend themselves to fraud. Consider also that a candidate who couldn’t draw a hundred people to his “rallies,” and spent most of his time in his basement tallied more votes that Barack Obama, the light bringer.

    The final point is that statisticians have found statistical anomalies galore. Paul in Boston linked to one in another comment thread. Here’s an article with a long list and some detail.
    https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2020/11/statistical_anomalies_in_the_2020_presidential_election.html

    This is why 50% or more people question the results.

    I hope Kerik’s information will allow the Trump legal team to get all the evidence of fraud contained there into the public consciousness.

19. “the left wants to label the half of America who thinks fraud probably occurred as being stupidheads brainwashed by Trump” neo

    Of course Bidet got 11,824,985 more votes than Obama. Uncle Joe was always more popular than Barack the Lightbringer, right? Why the prospect of Bidet as pResident must have had Chris Matthews feeling thrills going up both his legs…

    Kris,

    Moving the Overton window to not allow this discussion will only ratchet up the anger. To paraphrase JFK, ‘Those who make peaceful discussion impossible will make violent ‘discussion’ inevitable’. Of course many on the activist left want that, and if they’re very unlucky, they’re going to get what they’re wishing for.

    Yancey Ward,
    “Short of a video of Trump saying, “I am going to lie and say Joe Biden didn’t win the election fairly,” the prosecutors can’t make the case beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump knew he was lying.”

    Since when did a jury with murder in their eyes and a hanging ‘judge’ in a kangaroo court give any consideration whatsoever to reasonable doubt?

20. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/08/04/wsj-columnist-points-out-the-obvious-flaw-in-jack-smiths-j6-indictment-against-trump-n2626643

    The talking heads on CNN and MSNBC are loaded with left-wing legal clowns who fail to see that Smith’s charges set a precedent where everyone on the Hill would be jailed. Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel took a katana to the reasoning behind the indictment, noting that Barack Obama would have been jailed under the Jack Smith protocol of ‘saying things that I don’t like, so I’ll draw up federal charges’ paradigm:
    …
    While she didn’t go into it in full because that would be a novel, Strassel mentioned Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) peddling knowingly false claims about Trump-Russia collusion. Any Democrat who cited or used the Steele Dossier, the basis for the Russian collusion probe, in attacks against Trump or used as reasoning to impeach him is guilty of fraud. They’re not; this is free speech. And Democrats can be wrong. Often, they are. Donald Trump got bad legal advice and espoused opinions that some found disagreeable about the 2020 election. That’s not a crime.

    See Vespa’s lengthy excerpt from Strassel’s post for other examples.

    The only problem with Strassel’s theory is that the Democrat-controlled DOJ would never indict a Democrat using Smith’s legal reasoning.

21. The only problem with Strassel’s theory is that the Democrat-controlled DOJ would never indict a Democrat using Smith’s legal reasoning.

    AesopFan:

    I’m reminded:
    _____________________________

    The great tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

    –Thomas Huxley

22. Geoffrey,

    You misunderstand my point- I know they will convict him- the evil of this prosecution is that the prosecutors know their charges can’t actually be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. An ethical prosecutor would never bring such a charge where the only reasonable outcome was always a not guilty verdict

23. Yancey – the Democrats running this show are not ethical. Period. End of Story.
    To reiterate what you said, a not guilty verdict is the only reasonable outcome if you have a reasonable judge and jury, but that will not be the situation Trump faces.

    Some pundits are speculating that Smith knows the charges can’t be proven, assumes Trump will be convicted anyway, and is counting on the verdict being overturned by the Supreme Court, because it gives the Democrats an opportunity to continue agitating their voters to support curbing the “illegitimate” Court.

    That may be a trifle complex and sophisticated as a plot-line, but I have no doubt the Democrat Media will twist any outcome to fit their narrative.

    https://redstate.com/jimthompson/2023/08/04/jack-smith-will-get-a-dc-jury-to-convict-trump-scotus-will-vacate-the-conviction-in-fact-smith-is-counting-on-it-n787612

24. AesopFan:

    That was the premise of this post of mine.

25. My no-holds-barred opinion is that the Democrats are crazy to go after Trump in court at all, ethical prosecution or not, even if he is guilty of most of what they claim (and I don’t believe he is).
    Because in a trial the defense gets a shot at discovery and interrogating witnesses, and all those things the Left has spent years hiding are fair game for disclosure.
    Granted, the prosecutors will stonewall, obfuscate, and flat out lie about the evidence, but the questions asked can be enough to get “reasonable people” to start wondering about what really happened, and its importance.

    Not the complacent “liberals” who don’t know the media is deliberately suppressing most of reality for the last decade at least (including most recently the Biden Crime Family Scandal Sheet), but those who are actually paying attention.

    https://redstate.com/mccabe/2023/08/04/trump-lawyer-bobb-jack-smiths-new-indictment-empowers-trump-legal-team-to-get-j6-answers-n787833
    (some other parts of Bobb’s arguments are weak, but I think this is solid)

    Bobb says now that the Justice Department has brought charges, the Trump team has the opportunity to subpoena documents and videos that have been withheld from the public.

    Donald Trump has a constitutional right to defend himself. He’s got a right to seek evidence and get evidence from the government—and we all believe that, we being Trump supporters, all believed that the federal government, the FBI, the Capitol Police, Nancy Pelosi’s office was involved in orchestrating a lot of the violence.

    Bobb says Smith was clever in wording his indictment to allude to the J6 violence but not to accuse Trump of planning or directing it.

    “It’s on page 39,” she says. “‘The defendant’s exploitation of the Violence and Chaos at the Capitol,’ so he doesn’t accuse President Trump of starting it, but he is like: ‘Oh, this violence broke out—and he used it.’”

    Bobb says 20 months after J6; there are still questions.

    “OK, who started it? Did you start it, FBI? Did you start it, Department of Justice? Did you start it, Capitol Police? Because somebody moved to the barricades,” she said. “We gotta get all of that information.”

    She says another line of effort for the Trump legal team is the acquisition of the hundreds of interviews conducted by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

    After the committee issued its report, House Democrats sent their entire inventory of evidence and interviews to the National Archives, which were sealed from public view.

    Bobb says the transfer to the archives was done so that any access to those records must be done through a judge, which is what Smith’s indictment allows them.

    “The archives can’t do anything. Only the court can say: ‘You’re not entitled to that,’ –but we would subpoena those records.”

26. I’m not going to look up the details now, but half of the 1980-2012 belwether counties went to Clinton in 2016 and half went to Trump, so the 1980-2016 belwether counties were strongly predisposed to vote for Trump.

    I don’t doubt that there was fraud in key states that could have given Biden his victory. It’s hard to separate the massive ballot harvesting effort from the actual fraud, though. Also, as Trump was always underwater in public opinion polls, it’s not likely that he won the national popular vote.

    Trump did think he won the election, and he may have been right, though it can’t be proven in a way that would satisfy the courts. He also apparently believed or assumed that he got more popular votes than Biden, and that is much less of a possibility.

27. To answer the original question – I don’t see how its a glitch. It goes to a factual issue as to whether Trump actually believed that he lost. The DC jury will resolve the factual issue against Trump and then it will be nearly impossible to reverse the factual finding on appeal.

    Therefore – not a glitch – at least from Smith’s perspective.

28. Concerned Conservative™ replies – Because OMB. Not a “glitch.”

    Exculpatory evidence? Nothing to see – OMB.

    The Great Orange Whale must be slain,

    ‘I pursue thee, I stab at thee, …. even to the gates of Hell’ H. Melville.

29. I’m not cynical enough

    https://twitter.com/TheNatPulse/status/1687857138788601856

30. om – Do I need to add a “cynicism” emoji or something?

31. they want to destroy all opposition, to their twisted reign, and I’m not being metaphorical, a meme maker gets 10 years for a prank, they sought to sentence someone who was praying at an abortion clinic for some insane term of time,
    ‘

32. Yancy Ward:
    “Short of a video of Trump saying, “I am going to lie and say Joe Biden didn’t win the election fairly,” the prosecutors can’t make the case beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump knew he was lying.”
    I don’t know that he was lying, some two and a half years later.
    I think we could have known by now but the courts have determined that the American people lack standing.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>