In Front of Our Noses: Supporting Criminals (and Election Crimes)
And threatening states.
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”-George Orwell.
For previous entries, click here.
Because the President of the United States likes to communicate via social media, as all serious world leaders do, I keep finding myself on Truth Social. While looking for a specific post, I noted this.
For those who do not remember Peters, here’s a refresher via PBS: Republican election denier Tina Peters sentenced to 9 years in prison for voting data scheme
District Judge Matthew Barrett told former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters — after earlier sparring with her for continuing to press discredited claims about rigged voting machines — that she never took her job seriously.
“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” Barrett told her in handing down the sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”
Jurors found Peters guilty in August for allowing a man to misuse a security card to access to the Mesa County election system and for being deceptive about that person’s identity.
The man was affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from former President Donald Trump. The discredited claims trace back to Trump himself, whose supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol because of them and who still hints at them in his third run for president.
[…]
Later, the judge noted that Peters has kept up public appearances in broadcasts to sympathetic audiences for her own benefit.
“It’s just more lies. No objective person believes them. No, at the end of the day, you cared about the jets, the podcasts and people fawning over you,” Barrett said.
Peters had the right to be defiant, he noted, but it was “certainly not helpful for her lot today.”
The breach led by Peters heightened concerns that rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their access and knowledge to attack voting processes from within.
There is more at the link.
Not surprisingly, Trump has attempted to put pressure on Colorado over Peters’ conviction. The following is from back in May via Colorado Public Radio: Trump directs Department of Justice to try to free Tina Peters from prison in social media post.
President Donald Trump escalated the federal attempt to upend Colorado’s prosecution of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters in a social media post Monday night.
“Tina is an innocent Political Prisoner being horribly and unjustly punished in the form of Cruel and Unusual Punishment,” he wrote.
In the post, Trump directed the U.S. Department of Justice to “take all necessary action to help secure the release of former Mesa county clerk Tina Peters,” referring to her as a hostage that was “being held in a Colorado prison by the Democrats, for political reasons.”
“FREE TINA PETERS, NOW!” Trump wrote to punctuate the message.
While some may see this as some kind of distraction, it is a distraction the same way as an assailant punching me in the gut is a distraction from the fact that he just punched me in the face.
This is about the ongoing attempts at election interference by the Trump administration, dating back to the 2020 elections. He is laying the groundwork and sending signals about the upcoming midterms, and this is a serious matter. I have never thought that he could cancel elections; they are simply too decentralized. Instead, the goal is quite clearly, a la the kinds of things we see in Putin’s Russia, the sowing of seeds of doubt in the minds of supporters, so if there is some controversy, they are primed for a pro-Trump outcome. Along those lines, he is helping provide media narratives for his cronies on FNC, Newsmax, OAN, and so forth.
Worse, he is sending signals to possible allies at the state level that the kind of electoral manipulation that Peters engaged in is good and acceptable.
Note, too, the drumbeat about mail-in ballots.
I would remind readers that part of the point of the In Front of Our Noses series of posts is to remind us not to get inured to Trump’s nonsense. It does take effort to pay attention and to take seriously that which is happening out in the open, right in front of our faces.
I would go so far as to say that falling too far down the “it’s a distraction!” hole is, in and of itself, falling for the distraction trap.
Side note: the usage of Truth Social, which Trump owns a stake in, as basically an official media organ of the White House, is just another example of corruption. Trump is able to drive traffic to his site and sell advertisements. Wading through that feed is like reading all the links at the bottom of some random news piece online. It is a stew of supplement ads, questionable health recommendations, singles ads, and the like. Since online ad revenue is based on audience size, he is clearly monetizing his social media posts. This is not different than if Karoline Leavitt wore sponsored clothing like a NASCAR driver while the podium had logos all over it, during her “Daily White House Briefing Brought to you by Tide. Tide! Like the Trump cabinet, it makes your Whites bright!”
The grift is everywhere.
A beautiful bit of snark.
And yes, they’re deliberately flooding the zone, so saying this or that is a distraction is like saying some of the snow is a distraction from the blizzard.
Let me add in passing I have OTB open on my phone on cel service. Haven’t been able to open it on WiFi at home all morning. Get a message it’s timed out trying to get a connection.
If you see this soon, you’ll know for sure they’re reading your blog.
As bad as it is – and it is bad, very bad – the best thing to do politically is find the best lines of attack and stick to them.
Attack the weak line, not the strong line. Now, if it turns out that undermining democracy and voting isn’t the weak line, that’s a very, very sad statement. But I don’t know the answer to this. Does anybody have polling data?
Perhaps Trump thinks its better ground to fight on. Perhaps he merely shoring up support and assuming any pushback will be attributed to TDS. But is he right? I don’t know.
Have you noticed that everything…everything…is based in a lie? Not just most. All of it.
Not one of their positions can be justified by the truth.
It’s all so breath-takingly disgusting and wrong. He does 1000 things that ten years ago would have been an outrage to nearly everyone. We are a broken country.
So many election officials have left after the whole 2020 stress, there’s a good chance that (specially in Red states/counties) they will be replaced by people less interested in accurate election results than in getting a Republican win. After all, Mr “Find me 11,780 votes” has put out his next order: 100 more Republican seats.
@gVOR10: But, are Trump’s Whites very bright?
@Gustopher:
Yes, they are.
In Bizarro World.
I’m truly sorry for that. I appreciate the importance of reminding us not to get inured and all, but please exercise some self-care as you take the bullet for the rest of us. I’ve promised myself to never enter that cesspool of malinformation and grift.
Also today, Trump claimed “total victory” when a New York appeals court threw out the massive financial penalty in the NY State fraud case, even while upholding the state court’s finding that The Donald engaged in fraud for decades. The ruling on the penalty was justified in part by a Republican judge stating for the record that the fines were politically motivated.
I really need to start thinking about using this Politically Motivated Get Out of Jail Free card for myself now that it’s being normalized. Surely, it is not only meant for Republicans in high office, right? Maybe I could bitch slap Steven Miller and when they come to arrest me for assault, I’ll use political motivation as my defense.
Funny, I had no real interest in behaving criminally until now as I’m learning all the cool kids are doing it.
@Scott F.: Funny, I was just thinking today that if Dems ever get control of anything again, we have all these concentration camps we could put the worst offenders of the Trump administration in, with no due process. Fuck it. Just grab them, toss them in, throw away the key.
Dems won’t, of course, because….Constitution, but still…my give a fuck is becoming more and more broken the more lies, crimes and atrocities they commit.
If Mad King Don was willing to pervert US trade policy to try to get Brazil to drop prosecution of one of his MAGA buddies, trying to force a state to pardon a supporter is nothing.
@Jax: Along similar lines, I was thinking Democrats could adopt some of Trump’s tactics with private organisations. I’m sure there are some MAGA-leaning law firms that could be coerced into performing hundreds of millions of dollars of free work for the next Democratic administration, unless they want to be banned for working for clients that do business with the federal government.