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Are We Watching Failure Theater? Because Team Trump’s Actions Don’t Make Any Sense.
Maybe Giuliani, Murtaugh, Stepien, etc. have some different, better course of action planned that I cannot begin to guess at, but otherwise what’s happening (or not happening) isn’t making any sense.
Let’s be honest; everyone knew from the onset that no judge is going to set aside the results, or delay the certification of the election, and no state legislature is going to send a different slate of electors without incontrovertible evidence of election fraud in sufficient volume to change the outcome.
One would think the Trump legal team would therefore prioritize the pursuit of that evidence, and try and secure court orders to state and local authorities to provide full access to *everything* (documents, records, the ballots themselves) so that the Trump Campaign can conduct a full in-depth audit of the vote and forensic examinations of ballots in the suspect counties in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.
I am not in the loop on what the Trump team’s strategy is, but I have yet to see any filings in any state making such a request. At the very least we should be seeing requests for court orders to impound the records, documents, machines, and ballots. Instead, we’ve seen Trump suffering predictable defeat after defeat from lawyers aiming for the impossible. You cannot expect a judge to order a remedy, especially one like setting aside election results, based on a criminal allegation you cannot readily prove in court.
What bothers me even more is the lack of any evidence of the logistical ramp-up to carry out audits across multiple states that we should be seeing now. I’ve not seen anything like the level of recruitment and mobilization of equipment and manpower that will be needed to carry out the sort of investigation that can prove the election was stolen (or not).
It’s already been almost two weeks since the election and the clock is ticking. The only way this can be done within the timeline is by a massive mobilization of volunteers, crowdsourcing, data analytics, and forensic analysis on an industrial scale.
So where is the call for volunteers, for data and forensics experts, software testers, investigators, and auditors? Where are the logistics pros to orchestrate this operation?
The Trump Campaign is right now supposed to be recruiting folks like RedState’s Scott Hounsell*, data analysts and statisticians, to help identify locales with statistical anomalies and other red flags – e.g. 95% turnout, incredible vote swings, impossible margins – for investigation.
✱ Please read Hounsell’s analyses of the results in GA, WI, MI and PA.
Once so directed, investigators can do the document tracing and investigate and verify the audit trails. Who took custody of this ballot box? Who delivered it? How many people voted in the precinct? How many ballots were inside when it left the precinct? Where’s the voters’ register? Who received the ballot box at the counting center? When? How many ballots arrived at the counting center? etc.
Volunteers can be coordinated to methodically verify addresses (physically and otherwise) and check information against public records, identify potential signature mismatches, with separate verification teams and AI/ML applications to validate the data.
Volunteers in their thousands can also be deputized by the campaign to physically sort out ballots and identify the suspicious, e.g. ballots with only the Presidential race marked. These (and others) can then be subjected to extra scrutiny by forensic teams.
Out of the President’s 70 million voters, there are certainly more than enough who know something about ink forensics and the use of spectrophotometers and other forensic equipment. Thousands of people using the exact same pen brand in the exact same color in the exact same patterns across multiple jurisdictions with different races, particularly when it comes to absentee ballots, is incontrovertible evidence of fraud.
I also expect that the President’s 70 million supporters include computer forensics experts and software analysts who will only be too happy to examine the tabulating machines’ logs and validate the software.
In other words, this should be a coordinated endeavor involving a massive number of people, akin to a military operation. Even without Big Tech, with Parler, MeWe, Signal, etc. and 70 million passionate supporters from all walks of life, there is a no lack of avenues for coordination, manpower or expertise.
Given the deadlines, and the fact that even the very best logistics experts know you must respect the one most unforgiving resource, time, the lawyers need to start convincing some judges (Justices, preferably) that this is an accounting/audit problem; red flags mean we get to take an in-depth look at the books, it serves the public’s interest, and it can be done within the necessary deadlines. Most helpful would be securing the support of the Republican leaders in charge of the affected State Legislatures (GA, MI, PA, and WI) as amici for their petition.
The best time for this, mounting up the resources for the audits and filing the necessary suits, was last week. The next best time is *now*, and the very moment Alito, Kavanaugh and Thomas are able to receive petitions in their chambers.
Again, maybe there’s a better plan that we’re not privy to and I’m wrong, and we’re not seeing failure theater.
But bitter experience and Occam’s Razor suggests otherwise.
I just hope I’m wrong.
Published in Elections
To file and pursue lawsuits requires legal machinery. Trump can’t do that alone. For that he needs GOP Inc. And the only thing they are good at is looking like they are taking action.
We have to face reality — Trump lost the election. Sheesh.
I think Trump is setting the stage for the next phase.
But who knows.
I’m not sure what to think. I take almost a “contrarian investor” attitude with Trump. When everyone is lined up against him and assures us that he’s already lost, that’s when he somehow pulls out a win. Right now the media and all the “smart” people have already popped the champagne corks, while Trump’s lawyers assure us he has the goods on a fraudulent election. I’ve been surprised by Trump too many times to write him off now.
Is it possible that pursuing this election fraud will force the voter rolls to be examined and purged?
Is Trump’s current pursuit giving the voter rolls a giant dose of ex-lax?
The Dems should reap the consequences of any fraud that can be proved, even if it doesn’t change this election. It can ve the biginnibg of making future elections mire closely align with our foundational principles.
In other thoughts, I think it is hilariously hypocritical how the Dems are all about the electoral college right about now.
Whatever the legal eagles think, if the Courts fail to get this election right, America as we know it is over. The idea that the Pubs slim majority in the Senate will hold is total folly if the Courts let the Dems get away with this , because this travesty is only the beginning of more and more tyranny if the Dems gain power.
All a judge has to do is say:
In that scenario, not only does Trump win, he wins big.
Oh yeah, that pointless diversion.
Never forget … old Sun Tzu’s side lost.
Why would the opinion about anything of a war mongering reprobate like John Bolton carry any weight with anyone? It is a quite reasonable criticism of Trump to have appointed the scourge.
Might the President’s legal team be putting all of their eggs in one basket?
They have multiple lawsuits in multiple states. But even with concrete evidence in addition to the many affidavits it is unlikely that judges in all swing states will prove both impartial and courageous.
Perhaps their best bet is to appeal to the Supreme Court that inherently unreliable and evidently fraudulent counting software and/or hardware necessarily means that vote counts in all swings states, among many others, are false. Where vote counts are false, and neither time nor extant local voting standards allow for more accurate recounts, those counts must be voided.
Then the electoral college must give way to Congressional delegates (as was required three times during the 19th century, if I correctly understood Alan Dershowitz).
There you go. In a nutshell.
Life is so simple when you can reduce tens of millions of people to a caricature of idiocy.
Same here.
The good news is that, win or lose, this election has opened the eyes of those tens of millions. The press, the opinion-shaping elite, the technocratic expert class, and the censorship-obsessed tech platforms are now seen more clearly.
Biden, if he in fact is elected on Dec. 14, will enter office weak and with a party that is divided between an enervated old guard and a radical fringe of tone-deaf political incompetents. (In fact, that will describe the new President and his Vice President as well.) It will be a fascinating four years.
A question for all you lawyers: Will the arguments and presented evidence of Trump’s legal team definitely be made public, during or following current hearings in court?
It seems unremarkable that Trump’s lawyers will not offer details to media that they intend to introduce in ongoing court proceedings. Regardless of the type of tort or trial, that is normal. Correct? Otherwise, opponents in court could use offhand statements against you or gain more time to prepare counter-arguments.
But I don’t know that even half of what is presented in these federal courts will necessarily be made public record.
I don’t understand how you can have an audit of a system that does not produce a paper trail as the systems of these two companies intentionally do not provide. That is exactly why these two companies’ products should be illegal since they do not provide a paper trail.
This is a political battle as much (or more) than a legal battle.
If they have evidence, the need to make it public yesterday.
If Trump loses the legal battle, there will be time before Biden takes office for Trump to fully employ the bully pulpit and his authority to declassify documents. Making the information public now won’t assist in the legal battles.
If they don’t win the legal battle, they lose the political battle. They need to play their cards as closely as possible. The politics will fall into place in good time. There will be no unnecessary doxxing of witnesses. Trump lawyers have already been physically and economically threatened by Pennsylvania counterparts:
Maybe he should forget about winning and just pull the whole damn façade down now?
And hand the government over to these grifters and thugs without a fight? Not in this bloody life. Not happening. And he has nothing to lose, they’ve already made clear they intend to bring the full force of the law down on him for unspecified charges the moment he is out of office. Giving up is the worst strategy possible.
Pulling the facade down is not the same as giving up. It’s saying that “we’re all going down together”.
Dershowitz told Glenn Beck that he had seen petitions to have Trump defenders disbarred and that he had been threatened with the same for defending Republicans. The Left is not interested in rule of law, let alone unity.
Like Ricochet does with American liberals and progressives?
That’s a little broad, Zafar. Some of us have tried not to reduce large groups to derogatory caricatures.
I commented on a single individual who was doing that. I’d comment similarly, and have many times, on someone who said, as people sometimes do, that liberals aren’t interested in truth, or capable of thought, or etc.
I think we have a pretty good crowd here, better than most. Sure, we have some who say sweeping and insulting things; I’m sure they exist in every group. We should encourage better. But I hope we’re not awful.
I think American liberals and progressives are very often wrong. But I think that’s the nature of radicalism, to be wrong most of the time — just as significant mutations are likely to be harmful most of the time. I don’t think they’re stupid, by and large.
Yes, these are all open public record cases. One of the sides may have information they choose to keep secret, but then it can’t be used in the case. There could be a strategy to avoid showing their hand too soon, but you can only do that so long. The discovery process will force them to show their evidence to the other side before trial. If the hearings are expedited, that could come pretty quick, but you can’t withhold evidence to try to surprise the other side at trial.
I could be wrong but I don’t think they’re holding back good evidence. Some of these cases have already been presented and they just don’t have much. Hearsay that’s little more than rumors, suspicions of some poll worker here and there that end up obviously wrong as soon the claim is fleshed out, and so on… So far the Diminion software is looking fine in GA as they do the manual recounts. And that’s from the Republican Sec of State.
I think there’s no good evidence of anything that would make a difference. I think, while perhaps a little untactful in his pronouncements (but can Trump fans really complain much about a lack of tact?) Valiuth is closer to the truth about what’s going on here.
Trump’s lawyers fighting the good fight in Pennsylvania should contact both Ralph Nader and David Cobb. These are the two individuals who in Nov 2004 both paid for and organized the vote recount regarding the contesting of PA’s involvement in denying John Kerry a decent count on Election Night.
It should be pointed out that Kerry himself was not interested in this fight, despite his constituents and supporters having paid off millions of dollars to him to make it happen. But Nader and Cobb went ahead with this effort as part of the need for having fair, impartial and properly counted elections.
Anyway those lawyers would probably find out a lot of corroboration and evidence for whatever they are finding in terms of hanky panky with how that state’s entire set up allows whichever party has control to award the victory for the candidate of that party.
Anyone thinking about the matter of the corrupting of the electorates’ ballots need to consider Leah Dundas.
She is asking: Why aren’t more people talking about the Executive Order from 2018 regarding Foreign Election Interference? If you listen to this presentation by Leah Dundas, keep in mind that Dominion Voting Systems is Canada’s largest software company – it is not a domestic company.
https://youtu.be/p2MkvWh7poY
Yes, that’s true, but I see a lot of sentences starting with progressives/liberals/Democrats/Never Trumpers/Muslims/Leftists/etc. believe/think and ending in caricature or straw manning.
I know ‘a lot’ is an imprecise term – perhaps it’s eye of the beholder?
Perhaps. Certainly some people have a hard time reining it in.
I’m skeptical that you’ve seen many sweeping caricatures of Muslims here on Ricochet. It’s a subject that interests me, since I so dislike Islam, and yet I haven’t noticed. I’ll pay more attention.
If Trump and his lawyers had evidence, they needed to make it public twelve days ago. That they didn’t, and that they have only spun increasing bizarre conspiracy theories shows that they have nothing.
Donald Trump’s day has passed. The election was close, and could have gone the other way, but it didn’t. In 2016, the election could have gone the other way, but it didn’t. It is what it is.
Hillary could not compose herself to admit defeat on Election Night. Trump has not composed himself to admit defeat for thirteen days now.
The one positive is that Donald Trump’s character is being fully exposed in the light of day. He can not and will not admit reality. While many of his policies are good, Trump, himself can no longer do the job. His day has passed, and his inability to function is clear to everyone.
When Nixon had lost in 1974, the Senate Minority Leader, the House Minority Leader, and the last Republican Nominee, Barry Goldwater, all went to the White House and told Nixon that for the good of the nation, he had to resign and cede power. It is time for the Republican Leadership, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell and people like Lindsey Graham to go to Trump, and to tell him that he has lost, and that the nation must move on.
In the meanwhile, we face huge issues which demand leadership and the ability to make decisions, unshackled by regrets, resentments and magical thinking, and memories of the past.
The United States of America is a credal nation. In other nations, the military and government employees take an oath to the country, or a specific leader. But here, we take an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution. No one is above the law, means that Trump is not above the Constitution.
And it is statements like this why I call you fools and malign your intelligence or honesty because clearly one is deficient. There has been no demonstration of computer manipulation of votes. All I’ve seen from you people is references to changes in reported vote totals. These changes are caused by vote counting officials updating their results. When errors are made in the inputs they are corrected with later inputs that occur in batches causing a skipping effect if one is tracking the data in real time. If Mr. Powell really had the evidence you impute to him and he pretends to have when communicating to the MAGA idiots he would have presented it in court and a judge would have ordered a halt of the count.
It is precisely that I do love my adopted country that I find her infested with such credulous fools enslaved to the rhetoric of man who has done nothing but bring shame and dishonor to her name infuriating. She will be far better off once Trump and his followers are removed from power.