2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[N.E. Brigand]

Paxton was aquitted by the Texas Senate on all counts and was immediately reinstated. The votes on all the charges was 14 in favor of conviction, and 16 against. Only two Republicans voted in favor of conviction.

Crime pays.

[RoseMorninStar]

Paxton was aquitted by the Texas Senate on all counts and was immediately reinstated. The votes on all the charges was 14 in favor of conviction, and 16 against. Only two Republicans voted in favor of conviction.

Crime pays.

I cannot help but wonder.. this is behavior Republicans in Texas find acceptable? Hopefully voters will feel otherwise.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Axios has some interesting reporting on how the acquittal happen.

Scoop: How GOP pressured Texas senators over Paxton's impeachment trial

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Some, such as Roger Parloff, had predicted that Judge Mehta would overturn Caldwell's conviction, but he did not.

[N.E. Brigand]

Some, such as Roger Parloff, had predicted that Judge Mehta would overturn Caldwell's conviction, but he did not.

Here is Parloff's coverage of today's hearing. I thought the concerns he had shared were reasonable, and I'm also glad Judge Mehta ruled against Caldwell.

[N.E. Brigand]

NPR: "Fox News hit with another defamation lawsuit — this one over Jan. 6 allegations."

Fox News has been hit with yet another defamation lawsuit, this time by Ray Epps, a former U.S. Marine turned Arizona wedding venue operator who was in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.

The suit centers on the statements of Fox's former primetime star, Tucker Carlson, who repeatedly placed Epps, a supporter of then-President Donald Trump who says he sought to stave off any bloodshed, at the center of the violent siege on the U.S. Capitol.

Carlson's guests and his own remarks conveyed with seeming certitude that Epps helped instigate the violence unleashed that day and also that he must have been collaborating with a federal agency to do so. Yet Carlson never presented viewers with any concrete evidence of the claims.

Right wing conspiracy theorists have been claiming for more than two years that the fact that Ray Epps wasn't charged with any crimes in connection with his activities at the Capitol on January 6th prove that he was an FBI agent provocateur that day.

Today Epps was charged with "disorderly or disruptive conduct on restricted grounds." He is going to plead guilty.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That hasn't stopped right wing conspiracy theorists from claiming that the fact that Epps was not charged with more serious crimes is an indication that they were right all along.

[N.E. Brigand]

I missed the Vanity Fair story last week which offered yet another explanation: "Tucker Carlson’s Prayer Talk May Have Led to Fox News Ouster: 'That Stuff Freaks Rupert Out.'" That refers to the speech Carlson gave at a gala celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Heritage Foundation on Friday April 21 (he was fired on the morning of Monday April 24).

Although I now realize I did hear something about that story:

Rupert Murdoch was perhaps unnerved by Carlson’s messianism because it echoed the end-times worldview of Murdoch’s ex-fiancée Ann Lesley Smith, the source said. In my May cover story, I reported that Murdoch and Smith called off their two-week engagement because Smith had told people Carlson was “a messenger from God.” Murdoch had seen Carlson and Smith discuss religion firsthand. In late March, Carlson had dinner at Murdoch’s Bel Air vineyard with Murdoch and Smith, according to the source. During dinner, Smith pulled out a bible and started reading passages from the Book of Exodus, the source said. “Rupert just sat there and stared,” the source said. A few days after the dinner, Murdoch and Smith called off the wedding. By taking Carlson off the air, Murdoch was also taking away his ex’s favorite show.

Rupert Murdoch unexpectedly announced today that he is retiring from his position on the boards of Fox and the News Corp. (Posted to this thread as one of the several places Murdoch has been mentioned in the six months.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Cassidy Hutchison's former attorney, Stefan Passantino, is suing Andrew Weissman for a tweet the latter made last week casually saying (without naming him) that Passntino coached her to lie.



This strikes me as a very stupid move, which will attract much more attention to the issue than Weissman's tweet ever would have, and could lead to more information coming out about what Passantino actually did advise Hutchison to do or not do, which could expose him to discipline.

ETA: I am reminded that back in April, Passantino also filed a claim against the January 6 Select Committee, alleging $67,000,000 in damages. Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the committee had six months to respond to that claim before Passantino could then file a lawsuit. I am not aware of whether the committee ever responded (or even if it could respond, so it doesn't actually exist anymore).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Guess who Passantino's nutsy-cuckoo lawsuit against Weissmann has been assigned to?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This was just a matter of time.

[N.E. Brigand]

This was just a matter of time.

[Kyle Cheney: "Christopher WORRELL, the Proud Boy who went missing just before sentencing for Jan. 6 crimes, has been found and arrested."]

He was found at his home, and judging from the antics his neighbors are engaged in behind this reporter, he apparently has some support there:



Apparently the FBI had eyes on his house, where he hadn't been seen since before he went on the lam, but he showed up yesterday for unknown reasons. I've also read that law enforcement found him unconscious when they entered.

[RoseMorninStar]

Yeah, that's the sort of thing I'd expect in (some sectors of) my neighborhood.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

But what an impressive job by that reporter to keep her cool and make her report clearly and understandably, despite the commotion.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Note who the judge is.

[N.E. Brigand]

One thing to be remember is that it takes a year or more for good voting data to be available for those trying to understand in fine detail which voters picked which candidates. Researchers need time to gather the detailed files listing all the voters, and the precincts they voted in, and how those precincts voted, and then to match that data to other information about those voters. Every supposedly detailed analysis you're seeing now is based on very incomplete information, often gathered from exit polls, which are notoriously unreliable. So take studies like this with a grain of salt: Data show Lincoln Project ads were often ineffective

It may be true! And there are some potentially important lessons in there.* But it's based on pre-election panels, and having seen how far from the final results even much more thorough and expansive polls were this year, we have no good way of matching these panels' results accurately to the actual vote.

*I am struck by viewers who became more likely to vote for Trump after seeing an ad that talked about him calling veterans "suckers" and "losers." To me, that implies that those viewers refused to believe that Trump had said such a thing and that the ad therefore was a smear against him.

In general, the findings seem to be that positive ads about Biden were the most effective at getting people to say they would vote for him.

Former National Security Adviser and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has at last confirmed that Donald Trump said that military servicemembers were "suckers" and "losers."

Kelly also confirms that Trump asked that a military parade not include wounded veterans because "it doesn't look good for me."

And Kelly says that Trump "is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women" and "has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

Next week, a man named Douglass Mackey will go on trial for his efforts to undermine the U.S. presidential election in *2016.* He was charged in January 2021. Mackey was apparently a prominent troll on social media using the nickname "Ricky Vaughan"; his true identity became public in 2018. Mackey is alleged, along with four unnamed co-conspirators, with having spread disinformation to Democratic voters in 2016 about how to vote. Today the judge in this case unsealed an order approving a request by prosecutors to keep the identify of one of Mackey's co-conspirators, who has pleaded guilty and is cooperating, secret from Mackey. Apparently Mackey only knew this person by his internet alias.

I'm noting this here because (1) I don't want to unearth the 2016 thread so and (2) journalists previously identified another of Mackey's alleged accomplices as Anthime Gionet, aka "Baked Alaska," who is "a pro-Trump white nationalist who was arrested on Jan. 16 [2021] for his involvement in storming the Capitol on Jan. 6. Gionet also participated in the deadly white nationalist 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017." It took four years to charge Mackey for what he did in 2016. That tells me that three more years may pass before the final charges are brought for actions on January 6th.

It hasn't been quite 3 years, but Mackey's case is instructive. With regards to the reported content of the recent target letter sent to Trump.

Charlie Savage:
Ironic twist: Citation to §241 on target letter raises the possibility that Jack Smith is thinking about charging Trump with election fraud conspiracy (in trying to flip Biden's wins in Georgia, Arizona, etc.)

Brandon Van Grack:
People interested in recent prosecutions of Section 241 should look at the case of Douglass Mackey for interfering in the 2016 election.

Douglass Mackey aka Ricky Vaughan, a social media influencer in 2015-2016, was sentenced today to 7 months in jail for posting false voting information. The government had asked for 6-12 months' imprisonment. Mackey, pretending to be associated with Hillary Clinton's campaign, had posted urging Black voters to "avoid the line" and vote by text. He was prosecuted under the Ku Klux Klan Act.

[N.E. Brigand]

I am very pleased to see that Judge Beryl Howell is not letting Guiliani get away with his bullshit stipulation without clarifying exactly what it means ...

Speaking of Rudy Giuliani:

"A veteran FBI agent told Congress that investigations into Giuliani and other Trump allies were 'suppressed''" (Business Insider).

This agent, Jonathan Buma, had submitted a statement to the Senate Judiciary about this claim in July. (I see that Marcy Wheeler feels some things Buma wrote give her pause about his credibility.)

Today Business Insider has new reporting on Buma. Per is statement, his job included handling confidential informants. According to that article, one of those informants, at least for the past couple years, has been the extreme libertarian, Trump-supporting tech billionaire Peter Thiel. (I first heard of Thiel because two of his companies are named palantír and Mithril.) The article's source is Charles Johnson, a far-right media figure funded by Thiel, who says that he also is an FBI informant who reports to Buma. I'm not sure how unusual this is. I believe that the FBI may often recruit well-connected individuals. There have been rumors for years that Donald Trump himself had been an informant (e.g., on his mob connections) which may have led the FBI to treat him with kid gloves as they started investigating possible Russian connections in 2016. Johnson says that Thiel "was directed by the FBI not to report on his interactions with Donald Trump or other US political figures." I think that also might be a standard policy to keep the FBI out of political affairs.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This news has been overshadowed by the news of Powell pleading guilty in Georgia, but this is also a big deal.