1. On AG Bill Barr
Since I am hearing a lot of people saying AG Barr didn't do a good job because no significant convictions for Crossfire Hurricane so far, I thought I should mention it takes a long time to make an airtight case for convicting anyone accused of political crimes.
2. And by the way, John Durham may soon be bringing new information to a grand jury.
4. "He has done an outstanding job!" -- President Trump on AG Barr on December 12, 2020
Is that not clear enough?
5. But back to why it takes so long to get a conviction of anyone who behaved badly on Crossfire Hurricane? Because hating Donald Trump may be a very unchristian thing, and it may also be extremely unseemly and disgraceful for a federal employee, but it is not a federal crime.
6. To get a conviction in a court of law, you need two crucial things:
a) A statute that has been clearly violated, i.e. a crime according to laws of the United States, not just a shameful, disgraceful, or an unchristian act
b) Evidence of the crime committed
7. So anyone who says, "Why so-and-so has not been jailed yet?" please try to specify:
a) Which federal statute did they violate
b) Evidence of the crime
It is easy enough to malign anyone on social media, and oftentimes even justifiably so. It is very hard to get a conviction.
8. For one thing, many of the disgraceful things people in government do are unwise, deranged, and unprofessional, but all too often are not criminal in the sense of violating a specific federal statute (e.g. sending text messages hating on Trump).
9. For another, these people may be suffering from TDS, but they usually have more than an average IQ. They don't go around leaving hard evidence of their crimes. They cover their tracks well. So, they don't make it easy for investigators to gather hard evidence of their crimes.
10. It takes a long time to iteratively go from circumstantial pointers to incrementally tighten the noose one careful step at a time to home in on sufficient hard evidence to take to a federal grand jury and have any hope of getting a conviction.
11. Don't be too quick to judge the kind of work prosecutors like John Durham have to do to do their jobs well. That is not to say that every prosecutor in DoJ is highly competent, but that is to say let us be patient with the good ones.
12. Once they wrap up their work, we will have time enough to pass judgment.
The End
By the way, some unscrupulous characters on social media have spread the propaganda that Bill Barr is somehow connected with Dominion Voting Systems because he served on the board of Dominion Energy. Dominion Energy is an entirely different and totally unrelated company.
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1. On Covid Testing: What We Have, And What We Need
This is a thread on a few basic scientific concepts, but they can be very, very confusing. Bookmark this thread so you can use it for reference, again and again.
2. First, be aware that there is no such thing as 100% certainty in testing, but for the sake of simplicity I will use the terms 'always' and 'never' in the following tweets not in a literal sense but in the sense of close to 100% (but not actually 100%).
3. Now three crucial terms: Sensitivity, Specificity, Frequency.
Sensitive: A test is sensitive if it never gives a false negative.
Specific: A test is specific if it never gives a false positive.
Frequency: How often you can easily and inexpensively be tested.
The only statistic that can be reliably used to track the trajectory of Covid infections & severity, in my opinion, is "number of new hospitalizations for Covid (i.e. with severe Covid symptoms at the point of admission)." Don't know if "hospitalization" statistics reflect that.
The reason I say that is because people don't fake severe Covid symptoms to get admitted to a hospital. Hospitalizations are real.
But we run into the same difficulty with "hospitalizations" statistic as with "number of Covid deaths" statistic.
Does the "Covid hospitalizations" statistic reflect "admitted because of severe Covid symptoms" or "admitted for any reason, but later diagnosed with Covid?"
(a) President Trump has been wronged by our election processes and what he has had to endure at the hands of deceitful media and disgraceful Democratic apparatchiks.
(b) President Trump still must not be cut any slack for violating Rule of Law.
Unfettered power is never ever an appropriate recompense for grievous wrong.
Breaching "Rule of Law" (which only those in power can do) is not the same as breaking a law (which anyone can do). President Trump has broken no laws. But I consider it a breach of "Rule of Law" when he threatens any American who is not convicted of a crime with imprisonment.
1. Trump Was Outmaneuvered By Democrats in Broad Daylight
Trump didn't lose the election on election day. On election day voting, he won big. But he had lost the election before the first vote was cast on election day.
Trump's strategic mistake was astounding.
2. Was there voter fraud? Of course there was, because there always is, but almost all of it happened before election day -- ballot stuffing, registering illegal voters, mailing ballots for dead voters, etc. -- the usual staple, nothing new, but probably on a larger scale.
3. But I don't think fraud alone, or even predominantly, cost Trump the election. Trump got so many more votes on election day that even fraud could not have cost him the election. It was something else. It was a strategic mistake that did the trick.
I thought I would explain my thought process. I do it for three reasons:
a) Vanity (let's get that out of the way)
b) If I think what I have said in my response to another tweet has wider applicability, I share it with all my followers
2 of 2
Why I Re-Tweet My Own Tweets
c) This is the most important reason. On important topics, I want feedback from the largest number of people so I can readjust my own thinking if what I am saying is wrong. I don't assume I am always right. Far from it.
P.S. In case you don't know how Twitter works in terms of who sees your tweets. When you write a standalone tweet, of course your followers see it. But when you reply to a tweet, only the person you respond to and any followers of that person who are also your followers see it.
This looked extremely suspicious the day it came out. All these weeks later, I cannot believe that Trump's team and DoJ have not been able to get to the bottom of this. I now believe they have looked into it, found nothing wrong, and are exploiting it for commercials like this.
I find it suspicious that this story, rather than moving from a CCTV video smoking gun to an FBI investigation, has moved into a campaign-like commercial, while Trump is still President and can order FBI to investigate. Where is the Trump tweet asking DoJ/FBI to investigate this?
If this video actually catches people committing a heinous crime against Americans, shouldn't the President be deploying all U.S. investigative agencies to catch the criminals (we know their names, they are on govt payroll) rather than asking voters to call their representative?