I said they were all incompetent, deep-state bureaucrats.

DeSantis was a JAG lawyer. For one, I don't like lawyers and think that profession is overrated and overrepresented in politics, to a ruinous degree. Two, his employment in the military industrial complex indicates that he will support all of their moves.

I don't, because the best you've shown is that he didn't believe the people he was talking to, that he didn't repeat their claims, and the effect such behavior could have.

None of the supposed corrupts acts you stated, even if true, rise to the level of corruption, or fraud, or any other criminal or corrupt activity. The best you've shown is that he didn't believe the people he was talking to, that he didn't repeat their claims, and the effect such behavior could have. There is no crime. There is no victim of any crime.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/827679

I did respond and you ignored it, or missed it, one or the other. Do you need me to quote it for you?

Do you only speak in questions? Is this an interview?

I have responded to your three points.

As for Russian active measures, the activities and impacts were largely overstated. The Mueller case against Concord and the Internet Research Agency, for instance, was dismissed with prejudice, with the Federal judge in that case rebuking Mueller for his insinuation in that report that they worked at the behest of the Russian government. They couldn’t support that claim in a federal court because they could not produce any evidence.

First, I want to direct the parties to abide moving forward by Local Criminal Rule 57.7(b), and I want to make clear that any willful failure to do so will result in the initiation of contempt proceedings.

I am also going to direct the government to refrain from making or authorizing any future public statement that links the alleged conspiracy in the indictment to the Russian government or its agencies.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.193580/gov.uscourts.dcd.193580.144.0_1.pdf

In a later congressional hearing, Mueller probably lied to congress when he was asked if the judge’s threat to hold his prosecutors in criminal contempt was the reason for coming out in a press conference and fixing the record. He said “no”.

McCLINTOCK: Your report famously links Russian Internet troll farms with the Russian government. Yet at a hearing on May 28 in the Concord Management-IRA prosecution that you initiated, the judge excoriated you and Barr for producing no evidence to support this claim. Why did you suggest Russia was responsible for the troll farms, when in court you've been unable to produce any evidence to support it?

MUELLER: Well, I am not going to get into that any further than I -- than I already have.

McCLINTOCK: But -- but you -- you have left the clear impression throughout the country, through your report, that it -- it was the Russian government behind the troll farms. And yet, when you're called upon to provide actual evidence in court, you fail to do so.

MUELLER: Well, I would again dispute your characterization of what occurred in that -- in that proceeding.

McCLINTOCK: In -- in -- in fact, the judge considering -- considered holding prosecutors in criminal contempt. She backed off, only after your hastily called press conference the next day in which you retroactively made the distinction between the Russian government and the Russia troll farms. Did your press conference on May 29th have anything to do with the threat to hold your prosecutors in contempt the previous day for publicly misrepresenting the evidence?

MUELLER: What was the question?

McCLINTOCK: The -- the question is, did your May 29th press conference have anything to do with the fact that the previous day the judge threatened to hold your prosecutors in contempt for misrepresenting evidence?

MUELLER: No.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/full-transcript-robert-mueller-house-committee-testimony-n1033216

That was Trump's government. Sessions recused himself over undisclosed conversations with the Russian ambassador. Republican Trump appointee Rod Rosenstein appointed Republican Bob Mueller as special counsel. Republican Trump appointee Chris Wray led the FBI that cooperated with Mueller. Why do you think so many of Trump's own people ended up investigating him?

Also, did Biden get more votes than Trump in the 2020 election?

My guess is because they are incompetent, deep-state bureaucrats. But maybe it was to clear their names from the blizzard of lies by then surrounding the hoax.

Wrong. Some errors were made, but the investigation was warranted. It exposed crimes, exposed corrupt activities by the Trump campaign, and hit a brick wall because of Trump's obstruction of justice.

Are you going to respond to the corrupt acts of Trump's that I referenced in my last comment to you?

It wasn't warranted. Even those who started it said there was nothing to it.

The information that the FBI learned in July 2016 was that a Trump campaign advisor had suggested to the Australian diplomats that the campaign "had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist" the campaign. The OIG Review found that the FBI met the requirements of the AGG-Dom because the "articulable factual basis" standard for opening the investigation is a "low" one and the information from Australia, at least when considered along with what was known about Russia's efforts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. elections, met that standard. We are not confident, however, that this is the case. Our investigation gathered evidence that showed that a number of those closest to the investigation believed that the standard arguably had not been met. For example, both
Supervisory Special Agent-1 and UK ALA T-1 described the predication for the investigation as "thin." Even Strzok, who both drafted and approved the Opening EC, said that "there's nothing to this, but we have to run it to ground." Strzok' s view would seem to dictate the opening of the matter as an assessment or, at most, as a preliminary investigation. In any event, there are a number of other reasons to be concerned about the predication of Crossfire Hurricane...

Durham Report

None of the supposed corrupts acts you stated, even if true, rise to the level of corruption, or fraud, or any other criminal or corrupt activity. The best you've shown is that he didn't believe the people he was talking to, that he didn't repeat their claims, and the effect such behavior could have. There is no crime. There is no victim of any crime.

John Durham’s report in combination with the IG report shows it was a hoax and an utter failure in bureaucratic competence.

Simply because there is no crime, no victim, no corrupt activity. He is the victim. They are the guilty party. The government perpetrated the greatest fraud against the US in modern history with the Russia hoax, thereby crippling the people’s elected representative, the will of the voters, and the proper function of the US presidency, arguably leading to the war-torn landscape we see today. With that hoax and their fraudulent efforts they directly pushed Trump to doubt the results of the election, and now they are framing him for non-crimes and for saying things they don’t like while remaining unaccountable to their malfeasance.

Trump said some things. I want to know what crime he committed, and what evidence there is that he did so corruptly. What act, which thought, and what combination of words was the crime? Who is the victim of said crimes?

What do you infer from the Georgia phone call and why?

I’m sure he does believe it. He also believed he turned over all evidence to Trump's legal team as required by law and falsely claimed that he had. These guys believe a lot of things, I just suspect that, given the indictments, he does not know the truth of the matter. He doesn’t cite one quote or give any evidence that he does know. The evidence suggests his inferences are utterly baseless.

I’m glad you caught that. I used Smith’s proof by assertion to make the same baseless accusation. The difference is I did it in jest. Smith did it to indict a political opponent for crime. Which is worse?

Are you therefore predicting the charges will be dismissed? If not, why not?

I don’t know. Unlike Benkei I don’t pretend to know the future.

That's precisely what the prosecution will try to do in court. They believe they have the evidence to do so, hence the indictment.

You seem to be suggesting that they must prove to the public their case before the trial even starts? That's not how the legal system works. You're putting the cart before the horse.

There is no probable cause. There is no evidence of any crime or criminal activity. They have to stretch the plain meaning of language to argue their case, and the indictment reads as if it was written by a breathless MSNBC reporter. Like the Russia scam, the impeachment efforts, the J6 committee, the lack of probable cause and the proliferation of imaginary crimes are ruinous to their credibility as reasonable people. Since there is no crime and no probable cause, you’ve put the cart before the horse.

They continued to count votes after election day, on days when there is no election, after the election was over, and magically Biden pulled ahead.

The illegality of the charges is that he intended to corruptly defraud the United States or deny people their rights. No one proved he defrauded the United States or denied people their rights, and they certainly didn’t prove he did so corruptly. On top of that it isn’t up to the government to determine what is true or false, what people should believe, and what they can say about it.

The president has the authority to fire who he wants, and for whatever reason. Zero corruption there. You have to show that he corruptly defrauded the United States or denied people their rights, all of which is piffle.

I never said they were applicable in court. So yours is a mischaracterization and thus an evasion of my argument.

So what evidence would convince you that Trump did the things he is accused of? Or put differently - are you open to the possibility that Trump did the things he is accused of?

You’d have to prove he did so corruptly. Any quote or admission would suffice, given proper context. Inference by projection or conspiracy theory just doesn’t cut it.

They are evidence that there was a plan to overturn the election results if Trump was losing or lost. Stone and Bannon were both confidants and advisors of Trump, and what they said in advance was exactly what Trump did on election night. This is in addition to Trump's own words leading up to the election. No one is saying Trump didn't have the right to doubt the election results or the fairness of the process, but he clearly had a plan ahead of time to declare victory regardless of the election results.

He said he would not concede and would contest the results if the election wasn't free or fair. He rightfully feared the dirty pool that occurred in the lead up to that election, with activists, their corporate overlords, and both social and legacy media engaged in a shadow campaign to fundamentally alter how elections were run, right beneath the nose of everyday Americans.

I’m sure you could find it if pressed. But comments from Stone and Bannon don’t mean much, I’m afraid.

The greatest conspiracy to defraud the United States this century was the Russian collusion narrative, which gripped American politics for a number of years and arguably altered American diplomacy, disrupted official business, and forever tarnished the standing of the intelligence community, leading to the war we see today. That episode and those kinds of people, like this indictment and Jack Smith, lays bare the incompetence of state bureaucrats and what they are willing to do to human rights in order to maintain deep-state power. Now they are criminalizing the contesting of an election and accepting of legal counsel; they are violating attorney/client privilege; and they a making a mockery of the bill of rights, all because their little “official proceeding” was protested. It’s all a joke.

And until this indictment dropped, deep-state supporters thought they had Trump dead-to-rights on insurrection and sedition, just like what their political handlers told them to believe. Now they are shown a shiny new charge and act like they knew it all along.

Juries can be wrong. How do wrongful convictions fit into your notion of democracy?

What if the jury finds him guilty based on evidence? Would that be enough to convince you that he did so fraudulently?

No. I am unable to pass off someone else’s judgement with my own, especially a Washington jury.

The way you frame it sounds criminal, but the alternate electors scheme has precedent in the JFK/Nixon election of 1960. The judge there seemed to think them legitimate. Would you call that scheme criminal? An effort to overthrow/subvert an election?

You don’t have to quote all of it. Just one would suffice. The first one was a swing and a miss.

Contesting an election isn’t criminal. But criminalizing political speech is.

Your description of evidence shows Trump did nothing except ask for a statement.

No, I’m quite sure he and his lawyers tried to contest the election. I’m not sure he did so fraudulently. The claims that he did so knowingly and fraudulently are without evidence and therefor bullshit. Maybe some evidence will drop in the future but here is nothing.

What it’s doing is criminalizing Trump’s beliefs and his legal counsel, so now the first amendment is thrown under the bus.

I guess the insurrection hoax can be put to bed. That was the crime people were told he committed, believed he committed, only to have it all fall apart more than once now. The charges aren’t even close.

They’ve moved on without any self-reflection. They’ve fallen back on the “overturning the results of the election” canard. “Contesting the election” sounds too legal so another string of The Narrative is chosen in its place because by now people are so used to hearing it.

Jack Smith admits he lied. He failed to turn over all evidence to Trump's legal team as required by law and falsely claimed that he had. Ouch.

Included in Production 3 is additional CCTV footage from The Mar-a-Lago Club that the Government obtained from the Trump Organization on May 9 and May 12, 2023, in response to a grand jury subpoena served on April 27. On July 27, as part of the preparation for the superseding indictment coming later that day and the discovery production for Defendant De Oliveira, the Government learned that this footage had not been processed and uploaded to the platform established for the defense to view the subpoenaed footage. The Government’s representation at the July 18 hearing that all surveillance footage the Government had obtained pre-indictment had been produced was therefore incorrect.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.92.0_1.pdf

Not only that but they’ll have to prove the statements were false. Maybe we’ll finally get some thorough and unbiased investigations into the matter.

I don’t care if God himself told him the election was legit. You, like Smith, are trying to read Trump’s mind. You in fact do not know that he knowingly made false claims. You know you don’t know because you in fact cannot read minds. You’re guessing, making it up, or being told what to believe, and I’m not sure which is worse.

Every statement and action he has made during and since that election says that he believes the election was a sham. You haven’t quoted him saying otherwise; you have not provided the results of a lie detector test; nothing.

Now we’re on the road to criminalizing political speech because a man dared to doubt the results of an election.

They knowingly made false accusations that Trump knowingly made false claims.

More fake word crimes levied from a political DOJ towards the regime’s biggest opponent. What’s new?

No, that's not what mind-dependent means. Mind-dependent simply means that mind is comprehending/shaping/experiencing the reality in order for it to appear as it does (or in some constructions, for it to exist but then that gets into the schools of ontological and epistemological idealism). It does not mean that what is being comprehended is necessarily "the mind".

It does necessarily mean that what is being comprehended is the mind because the contents of the mind (like “conscious experience” or “phenomenal consciousness”) are necessarily mental.

This I don't get at all. Quite the opposite. Every object and thing I think about is dependent of my mind. Name one thing that is not comprehended by the mind?

The device you’re using to type those words. What sort of shape did you make of this device? What of it has changed and become of it since you comprehended it? Can you point to these changes?

What do you mean "then it is comprehending itself"? That doesn't seem like you are characterizing it correctly.

If it was comprehending anything that wasn’t mind it would be comprehending something that was independent of mind.

It's comprehending all the things that the mind comprehends. I don't get the question. All we know (literally) is what the mind has comprehended. How are you confused about that. Or how are you skeptical about that?

It’s a circular answer. And you could never point to, illustrate, or show me a picture of something the mind comprehends. So why do you believe it?

I do not get them, and I don’t know how one could. If mind-dependent objects are everything the mind is comprehending, then it is comprehending itself. It’s too circular for my own tastes. It perpetually raises the question: what is it the mind is comprehending? Again, no one could produce such an object.

I think you overshot their arguments and went right to incredulity. Implicitly direct realism presumes animals like humans have a god-like (near) perfect view of reality. Too many problems arise from this.

I've read their arguments but they cannot show me a single mind-dependent object. Hence my incredulity. Are you able to point to one without pointing to your own forehead?

A better explanation for me is that the idealist holds a naive view of his own biology (he cannot see his optical nerve, for instance), and so assumes that the observable parameters of biological arrangements cannot explain mental phenomenon.

I get the explanation, but my naive and common-sense understanding of the world prohibits me from following the arguments. I don’t know if I lack the brain power, or what, but I am unable to afford any reality to any one of the objects, substances, and things in their ontology. It may not be the case that they are arguing that world is wholly in their mind, but every object or substance they claim constitutes reality cannot be found anywhere else, which is suspiciously convenient.

My own common-sense, naive view prohibits me from following along with any of these arguments. I become stuck on what I find to be an unresolvable problems: the adjectives used here to describe the world— mind-dependent and qualitative—cannot be applied to anything in particular. If I were to apply them to anything in particular I’d have to find and point to things independent of my mind in order to do so.

What I mean is, If I were to ask the idealist to show me a mind-dependent and qualitative apple, and then observe his immediate actions, he could neither find nor produce one unless he went to a place where his mind was clearly absent, like the inside of a fridge or the fruit bowl in the kitchen. He’d need to go to places independent of his mind and find apples in order to prove their mind-dependence, which to me is contradictory.

So the very act of finding qualitative and mind-dependent objects proves their mind-independence, according to my common sense view. Ask the idealist to point to a mind-dependent sun, for instance. Why does he point away from his mind and towards something else? Is mind up there too, then? Doesn’t the fact that idealist points away from his mind and towards something else betray his own argument?