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If I’ve understood 45’s argument, it’s that he found some lawyers who told him it was legal to overturn the entire election, which he really wanted to do. Then he spread lies about the election being stolen so others would be duped into helping him. So that means he’s…not guilty?
Sorry, that’s not going to fly, Donald.
No, you misunderstand his argument.
Firstly, it wasn't a question of overturning the election. The election hadn't happened yet, as it was legally scheduled to happen in January.
However, the Electoral Count Act, and various state laws, did provide Trump with legal opportunities to raise concerns over procedures that states used to pick their electors going into the election. Which he botched.
So his longtime legal advisors gave him legal advise that he was too stupid and ignorant to judge properly, so he really screwed things up.
But the fact remains: he was acting on legal advise about what laws said ahead of the upcoming January election, even if he really botched things in the process.
@volkris @georgetakei The key is conspiracy to commit fraud: the fake elector scheme. It's not a free speech issue at all. Speech in service of committing a crime isn't covered by the 1A.
So firstly, it's really relevant that you make this distinction since so many, including legal people involved in the case, muddle that distinction kind of going both ways with it.
But directly to the point, that was a legal strategy provided for by statute and by precedent.
Even if it was boneheaded, it was not fraudulent as it was a legal way of engaging with the laws that had been passed to govern the January election.
@volkris @georgetakei It was actually fraudulent, though. The fake electors signed paperwork attesting that they were something they weren't: the official electors of the state in question. The plan was to disrupt the electoral count proceeding, declare the fraudulent electors as the real ones, and thereby overturn the will of the voters in those states. The objections raised during the proceedings were allowable parts of the process, but the fake electors and switching to them? Nope.
@volkris @georgetakei The objection process exists when there are legit issues with whether an elector or slate of electors are the official ones. But there was no such situation here. There were the real ones, certified by the states, and the fraudulent ones. The latter were never legit. Ever.
But that stance begs the exact question that the objection process exists to adjudicate.
The objection process existed. Trump used it, poorly, because he is a moron.
But regardless, the objection process existed, and we'd be much better off to recognize that and call the guy out on having failed honestly instead of promoting his claims by revoking his access to the reasonable adjudication process.
@georgetakei
@volkris @georgetakei Again, the problem here isn't the objection. It the fraudulent electors, and the plan to use a legit process to install non-legit electors.
@volkris @georgetakei Imagine this scenario: A secretary of state doesn't like a candidate who legitimately won an election. So they use an obscure procedure to falsely declare that candidate ineligible and instead install their opponent. That's fraud, and denies the voting rights of the people who voted for the legit winner.
If they used a valid, if obscure, procedure, then it wasn't falsely declaring anything.
If that's the procedure, that's the procedure, no matter how obscure it may be, and we may very well need to elect better legislators who will fix the procedure, if it's a bad one.
These are the rules of the game. If the rules are bad, then fix them. But it's folly to fault people for using the rules of the game, no matter how bad they may be, to win the game.
We set this system up. Trump not only tried to use the system, but because he's an utter idiot he screwed up his own attempt to use the system. He lost. But now we're trying to yell at him for using the rules that we made instead of fixing the rules?
It's all so chaotic and backwards and undemocratic.
@volkris @georgetakei The false part of this example is declaring the candidate ineligible when they weren't, though. Filing your taxes is a legit process. Lying on that form to avoid paying isn't.
But that's not what happened in this case.
If you want to go into an analogy about taxes, in this case it would be a dispute over how much income is taxable under the law, and filing the appropriate forms to dispute the IRS claim that a whole bunch of your charitable contributions were actually taxable when by law they were not.
Again, there's a whole lot of begging of questions here.
Trump was advised to follow the law that allowed him to challenge election results, and he's being harangued for the fact that he did so.
Just saying that he was wrong doesn't change that he was abiding by the law that allowed him to challenge results to double check to affirm the rights of voters, to make sure that the voting system operated correctly.
@volkris @georgetakei You can't commit fraud in the process of challenging election results, my dude. The objection process is not what would have determined that those electors were fake. They were fake way before that ever happened, because the states had already certified the legit electors. There was no point in this process where those fake electors weren't fake.
You're still falling into the circular argument.
You say the states certified the legit electors, but the exact question was whether the states had legitimately certified electors.
You're still assuming the answer to the very question that was being raised through this legal process, as the law set out, and had we all focused on the legal process this would largely be a non-issue.
But instead we allowed everybody to assume the answer instead of letting the legal process play out, which allowed a whole lot of people to point out the break from the legal process, and fed into this whole chaotic situation.
In short, your line of rhetoric right here plays into Trump's hands. It would be for better if we simply applied the law instead of engaging in the circular arguments that just fueled his rhetoric.
I really believe the guy would not be running again if we had simply applied the law.
@volkris Whether the certified electors were legit is a matter for courts to decide, and theoretically, the objection process could have been part of that.
But the *fake* electors were never, ever legit. They never went through any legal process whatsoever to be certified as legit. They were, at every step, fraudulent. To use my secretary of state analogy, it would be like declaring that someone who wasn't even on the ballot was the legitimate winner of the election.
@volkris Trump's sole option with the objection element of the electoral count would have been the objections themselves. The objector would state that they believe the certified electors to be illegitimate, Congress would vote on whether that was the case, and if they voted in the affirmative, then there would be a process to determine new electors.
Creating a set of fake electors would *never* have been part of that process. He was entitled to object, but not to commit fraud.
@volkris You're really hung up here on the objection process. But that process is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether Trump committed fraud. He was entitled to challenge results. He did so. He lost every single case. But he was *never* entitled to hand-pick his own electors and present them to Congress as legitimate.
You're missing that that entitlement was part of the objection process.
You're recognizing the legitimacy of the process but complaining about an element of the process.
That's what you're missing here.
No obviously he was not entitled to hand pick his own slate of completely illegitimate electors. That is not the question. That is absolutely not what is being argued. I don't know why you keep returning to that thing that is not being argued.
I mean yes, the Biden administration is whipping that straw man as much as it can, but it is absolutely not the argument on the table.
Nobody at all is arguing that Trump could hand pick illegitimate electors.
So why in the world keep going back to that?
@volkris You *literally* just said that was an element of the process, dingus.
He. Committed. Fraud.
@volkris I mean, FFS, that's literally what he's been charged with: conspiracy to commit fraud by creating a slate of fake electors to present to Congress. That's right there in the charging documents. Have you not read them?
Again, the electors are only fake if you assume the end of the process having rejected them.
It's like a claim of innocence being fake only if the trial came up with a guilty conclusion.
It just doesn't make sense. It's not what the law provided for.
It's not a slate of fake electors at all. It is a slate of electors that would be entirely countable should the process judge them to be so.
To be clear, I absolutely say that in the end that slate was not the one to be counted. But that's why we have this process inshrined in law, to determine which slate is the one to be counted.
Having a different opinion on which one to count is part of the law, part of the process set out in law.
@volkris I see where your problem is. You think the objection process is what would have decided whether the fake electors were fake. That's not actually the case. There's nothing in the USC covering the electoral count that would remotely allow for that. If you have citations that say otherwise, please link them.
@volkris If you would like to read the code in question (and I recommend you do), it's here:
@volkris Note that the only question covered under the objection process is, "is this slate of electors that has been presented here the official and certified one from the state?" It says nothing about allowing for the submission of a slate from a source other than the official one.
Trump and his lawyers would have known this. They therefore knowingly committed fraud when the fake electors signed the statements claiming they were the official ones.
@volkris If you sign something that says you attest that you are the real and true governor of Kansas, you're committing fraud, because you know when you sign it that you are not, in fact, the governor of Kansas. The only defense to being prosecuted for this fraud would be a claim of mental defect: that you're not connected with reality enough to know the truth of the situation. And I suppose Trump could go for that, but he wouldn't win.
Again, you're begging the question since Who is the real elector? is exactly the question that was to be adjudicated.
@volkris The certified ones from the state. The electoral count process is procedural, not judicial. The sole question: are these the electors the ones certified by the state, yes or no? And the fake ones were at no point certified, so the answer would *never* have been yes. Trying to pass them off as certified, as they did when falsifying the documents, is unquestionably fraud.
The objection process has NOTHING to do with whether a crime was committed. It cannot magically certify electors.
@volkris The point at which to challenge a state's electors is before they're certified. Once that certification is in, no other process or procedure can give that certification to another slate. The electoral count process doesn't make those decisions. Only the state does. It is not within the power or scope of the US Congress in this process to de-certify a state's electors. It's literally not possible.
@volkris This is, by the way, why the scheme would never have worked. It's not within the VP's powers to throw out certified electors or submit new ones. Even if the objection had gone to a vote and even if that vote had been to reject the certified slate, it would be up to the STATE, not Congress, to submit a new slate. You're arguing that the objection process has a power that it simply does not have.
@volkris It's also worth noting that being ignorant of how the law would see and react to your crime doesn't mean you haven't committed one. If you mistakenly believe you have the right to make a left turn on a red light, you're still going to get a ticket for doing so. Trump and co. making the same mistake you are re: the objection process doesn't mean they didn't commit fraud.
@volkris The legal question here is: were the fake electors the ones certified by the state? And the answer to that would always be "no." Congress is not allowed to usurp the state's power to certify its own electors.
You are incorrect, sir.
By law Congress is absolutely empowered to question and debate the certifications brought to it to determine whether the states did or did not legally properly certify a slate of electors.
That is the entire point of the law that was set in statute to resolve such questions.
So again, you seem to be begging the question, assuming the set of electors when the set of electors is the question that was on the table.
@volkris I've already given you the actual US code where this process is set out. It contains absolutely nothing like you're claiming. You're entirely pulling this out of your ass. Just because you WANT the electoral count process to be able to decertify a state's electors and replace them with uncertified new ones doesn't mean that actually can happen.
Unless you can come up with citations to back your claims here, we're done.
@volkris Also, I'm not a "sir." But at this point, I wouldn't expect you to have done the extremely basic research necessary to get that right, either.
You're making a lot of assumptions, and you know what they say about assumptions.
But where did you provide any of the USC? I did not see that. Apparently Mastodon decided to hide that for some reason.
@volkris I linked it several posts back. But you can look it up yourself. It's 3 U.S. Code section 15. It sets out the exact process for the electoral count.
Also, a general reminder that the legislative branch has virtually no judicial powers. The question of whether a state's process for selecting and certifying electors was lawful would go through the courts, not Congress. And--surprise!--the Trump team tried that angle before (and failed, just like their other 60+ election cases.)
@volkris He was not entitled to hand pick his own slate of completely illegitimate electors. Where on Earth would you get that from? Got citations for me?