ChiGoose

Even if that’s what happened, that would not be overturning an election. It would be influencing the voters before the election. Trying to change the results after the election to nullify the voice of the people is a bit different.

Part of the problem with actually charging some of these people is that a lot of the election crimes require mens rea, which is difficult to prove. Evidence that they were asking everyone to work in secret would help with that (why make it secret if you believe it’s legal?) but is by no means dispositive.

Yes, from what I can tell, if they made a material lie, that could constitute fraud and give Musk an out.

It wouldn’t be that hard for him. He could either sell stock or borrow against it. Though he would try to avoid that by claiming Twitter was in breach of the deal. In any case, I believe the billion dollar penalty would be paid to Twitter, not the SEC. Likewise, if Twitter pulls out, they would owe the penalty to Musk.

Did not realize that the Department of Justice was in charge of gas and grocery prices. You learn something every day! Can someone tell Merrick Garland to turn the gas price dial down a bit?

Apparently: https://www.investopedia.com/musk-says-twitter-deal-temporarily-on-hold-5272098

I suppose it’s good that somebody is doing the due diligence since Musk waived that in the deal.

Could be. I would not be surprised at either Lauren Boebert or MTG since they’ve used the 1776 language around Jan 6 before.

From the DoJ:

I would avoid using the word "case" because it implies this is a legal hearing, which it is not. It is not analogous to a judicial proceeding. I do not know who they are going to interview on the hearings. Is there a specific person you wish they would interview?

So you're assuming that the witnesses are all going to lie under oath?

Why there wasn't adequate police present is exactly the kind of question we should expect the committee to address. There was plenty of evidence beforehand that there might be a problem. The committee should address what the failures were here. Why is this controversial? Also, please do not put words in my mouth. I do not think the committee is going to "get" Trump. I have never said I do, and I honestly am doubtful that Trump will ever face consequences for his actions beyond losing his re-election bid. Despite this, I think it's worthwhile to see what the committee has since some of the members are talking a big game, but I'm not going to judge it before I see it. The whole "we finally got him this time!" thing is very tiring and, as I stated multiple, is not even the purpose of the committee. I think it betrays a kind of bad faith to just ignore everything the committee does because of an assumption of political bias, especially since they take testimony under oath and should provide evidence to back their findings (whatever those findings are).

It would be nice if the article actually showed all of the questions and crosstabs. Generally polls will ask respondents which party the identify with and that's how the pollsters do the party breakdown. I would expect CBS did the same here but, while the article shows some of the questions, it does not provide a link to all of them, so we cannot say for certain how CBS came to the partisan breakdown on the questions.

Once again, the purpose of the committee is to get to the bottom of what happened and recommend legislation to prevent this from happening in the future. I do not know what they are going to find. I am not on the committee, so I do not have access to their evidence and testimony. But since we keep rehashing this misunderstanding of what the committee is doing and its importance, I'll give a hypothetical example of something they might find (not saying this is true, just that it could be) that is not criminal but is important to know: They might have evidence that Trump's advisors came to him to tell him the Capitol had been breached and that Mike Pence's life was in danger. They advise him to release a statement to tell people to go home and to also call in the National Guard to secure the Capitol Instead, Trump says that Pence deserves what he gets and refuses to issue the statement or the order for hours None of that is likely criminal. It is not something that the FBI would charge and therefore, we would not even know if they had evidence of the conversation (the FBI typically does not release underlying evidence when declining to indict). But it would probably be good to know if the President of the United States was refusing to take action because he was hoping for harm to come to the Vice President (or at least had a callous disregard for the VP's safety). It would also be a good idea to clarify the authorities around calling the National Guard into DC and who would have the authority to do so if the President refused.

For (I think) the fourth time: The January 6th Committee investigation is NOT a criminal investigation. It is looking for things that would be out of scope for a criminal investigation by an institution like the FBI. I do not understand why this is such a difficult concept to grasp.

Under this logic, there is no point to making any laws because bad people would ignore them. So let's just get rid of all laws then.

I'm trying to be fair here, but I don't see how the 2020 riots are relevant to the Jan 6th investigation as they are not part of the committee's scope. It's fine to argue that there should be an investigation into them, but that would be better off in its own thread.

I'm not condoning anything. This is a thread about Jan 6th and the investigation. If you'd like to discuss the riots in 2020, I suggest creating a thread for that.

It's not germane to this thread.

And I am continuing to say that a congressional investigation is not an FBI or even criminal investigation. I don’t know why this is so hard to understand. The committee’s remit is NOT to look for crimes. It’s to understand what happened and recommend legislation to prevent it in the future. Continued deflection to the FBI and saying that nothing went wrong if there was no chargeable crimes is just asinine.

I think this is the big problem. If you are looking for a prediction or clear marker, I cannot give it to you. I do not know what the hearings will show. But I also know that the standards for a criminal investigation and a congressional investigation are very different. If people don't understand that, then I'm not sure what the point of further discussion is because we'd just be talking past each other.

Once again, there is a tremendous difference between an FBI investigation and an congressional investigation. There are also things that could be bad that don't amount to be crimes. There are things that might amount to crimes but lack sufficient evidence to bring a charge (since the DoJ is only supposed to charge when the believe they will convict, with few exceptions) I don't have any real expectations of the hearings. I do not know what they have. I do not believe this is the final "we got him!" of Trump. I am not confident that actual criminal charges will follow the hearings But I do know that there are things a congressional investigation might uncover and disclose that the FBI never would reveal. And I know that if we want to prevent insurrections in the future, we better have a clear idea of what happened on January 6th, regardless of whether or not it sends people to jail. I find the idea of "it's either actual chargeable crimes or nothing" to be a bright line that does not reflect reality and allows people to take political coverage to defend their own side from bad behavior. It's a handwaving dismissal of potentially real issues that people will claim for their own political interests.

All of the above is complete nonsense.

I am not arguing that at all because I understand the difference between an FBI investigation and a congressional one.

Believing someone like Dinesh D’Souza is like believing Occupy Democrats. Just grifters looking for easy marks.