The Trump campaign has yet to produce anything I would begin to consider a viable or coherent lawsuit concerning election fraud. Everything they've filed up to this point, seems to either have been hastily put together based on hearsay, or been entirely engineered to postpone state certifications beyond the safe-harbor date (they've all seemingly failed).
His administration doesn't particularly care for or about Democracy, and they (or their political allies, depending) are grasping at every straw they can find that might be provable in court, and are filing suits.
Any actual, deliberate voter fraud would likely be difficult to prove in a court, and committed by individuals at lower levels of the government, largely by unrelated individuals and small groups particularly concerned with the results.
An example likely impossible to prove in courts:
Richard Hopkins, a USPS mailcarrier came to James O'Keefe (conservative gotcha journalist), and anonymously asserted his belief that his supervisors had been backdating late ballots so that they could be counted in the Erie PA tally.
https://youtu.be/AR_XpJ287Iw
After it became clear that the USPS knew he was behind the claims, he did an interview with O'Keefe, admitting his identity to his identity, and claiming retaliation.
https://youtu.be/J-D-2GOswwA
The FBI opened an investigation to his claims, and did an interview with him that they hadn't been aware he was recording.
https://youtu.be/QkNkQ2nDQfc
Over the next couple of days, O'Keefe published the FBI recording, as well as a video of Hopkins denying that he had recanted his claims.
https://youtu.be/ibU5KVFCg4Y
By my estimate, none of this can be corroborated. It's an individual claim, concerning an activity likely only perpetrated by a small number of people in a manner unlikely to generate a paper trail fit for forensic investigation. In fact, it was included in one of Trump's PA lawsuits.
As a legal case, this is incredibly flimsy. A snippet of a conversation overheard from the sidelines could never be enough to convict anybody of anything on its own merit. There's a reason it wasn't successfully brought to court.
Nevertheless, the story itself is exceedingly plausible, and doesn't depend on a high level conspiracy in order to work.
I lean towards believing Hopkins' integrity, but have no ability to validate whether or not he had enough information to assert things happening as he claims they did with the confidence he has. I find the swiftness of WaPo's debunking to be much more interesting.
But stories like his are enough to turn the election into a political Rorschach test.
These doubts cannot be relieved. They'll be as interminable as the 'Obamas a Kenyan' rumors, the 'Trump's a Manchurian Candidate' narrative, and the 'Hanging Chad'.
Considering how dirty electoral primary processes have become (i.e. treatment of Tulsi, Yang, etc, McConnel's primary being marked by the unexptected closure of polling places…), the massive shift to mail-in voting due to covid… this whole bruhaha was inescapable.
His administration doesn't particularly care for or about Democracy, and they (or their political allies, depending) are grasping at every straw they can find that might be provable in court, and are filing suits.
Any actual, deliberate voter fraud would likely be difficult to prove in a court, and committed by individuals at lower levels of the government, largely by unrelated individuals and small groups particularly concerned with the results.
An example likely impossible to prove in courts:
Richard Hopkins, a USPS mailcarrier came to James O'Keefe (conservative gotcha journalist), and anonymously asserted his belief that his supervisors had been backdating late ballots so that they could be counted in the Erie PA tally. https://youtu.be/AR_XpJ287Iw
After it became clear that the USPS knew he was behind the claims, he did an interview with O'Keefe, admitting his identity to his identity, and claiming retaliation. https://youtu.be/J-D-2GOswwA
The FBI opened an investigation to his claims, and did an interview with him that they hadn't been aware he was recording. https://youtu.be/QkNkQ2nDQfc
Shortly thereafter, the Washington post ran an article citing three anonymous officials familiar with the investigation that he had wholly recanted his claims. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/postal-worker-...
Over the next couple of days, O'Keefe published the FBI recording, as well as a video of Hopkins denying that he had recanted his claims. https://youtu.be/ibU5KVFCg4Y
By my estimate, none of this can be corroborated. It's an individual claim, concerning an activity likely only perpetrated by a small number of people in a manner unlikely to generate a paper trail fit for forensic investigation. In fact, it was included in one of Trump's PA lawsuits.
As a legal case, this is incredibly flimsy. A snippet of a conversation overheard from the sidelines could never be enough to convict anybody of anything on its own merit. There's a reason it wasn't successfully brought to court.
Nevertheless, the story itself is exceedingly plausible, and doesn't depend on a high level conspiracy in order to work.
I lean towards believing Hopkins' integrity, but have no ability to validate whether or not he had enough information to assert things happening as he claims they did with the confidence he has. I find the swiftness of WaPo's debunking to be much more interesting.
But stories like his are enough to turn the election into a political Rorschach test.
These doubts cannot be relieved. They'll be as interminable as the 'Obamas a Kenyan' rumors, the 'Trump's a Manchurian Candidate' narrative, and the 'Hanging Chad'.
Considering how dirty electoral primary processes have become (i.e. treatment of Tulsi, Yang, etc, McConnel's primary being marked by the unexptected closure of polling places…), the massive shift to mail-in voting due to covid… this whole bruhaha was inescapable.