Thread by @ErrataRob

🧵Yesterday's conspiracy-theories are still conspiracy-theories. I thought I'd write a thread rebutting the points in this thread. 1/

The story hasn't change.
Sure, minor details get confused in stories like this. Conspiracy-theorists make mountains out of insignificant molehills.
This bodycam issue still shows DePape attacking Pelosi with a hammer.

Such stories always have a "fog of war" aspect. There are always small, insignificant details that people get wrong. Regardless about "open the door", the facts are the same: DePape broke in looking for Nancy, and shortly after police arrive, hit Paul Pelosi with the hammer.

Conspiracy-theorists still have no coherent claim, except that "they" are lying to us because some insignificant details are fuzzy. But no matter how clear the events, conspiracy-theorists always hunt for fuzzy details to pretend there's something else going on.

The documents are government property. The National Archives are in charge of them. They worked with Trump for a year trying to get them back. Trump refused. "Merely ego" was always the leading reason.

They are still of interest, because Trump is violating the law keeping them.

The government doesn't work on the principle "okay, you can break the law as long as you aren't selling nuclear secrets".

The government works on the principle "by law, you can't have them, they are government property, and we have to get them" -- no matter how insignificant.

Of course.
Trump's response to the Jan6 committee was a 14 page letter repeating his lies, misrepresentations, and baseless claims of election fraud.
The cause of the attack is a far bigger problem than police response.

Certainly, I would hope the Capitol Police would conduct an investigation of their own failure.

I would hope that congressional inquiries only take place when there's a national failure. Which there is -- Republicans refusing to acknowledge that Trump tried to stay in power.

FBI informants aren't FBI agents, they aren't undercover cops.
They are almost always committed members of the target enterprise who find it advantageous to occasionally give info to the FBI, such as getting out of parking tickets. They aren't necessarily on the FBI's side.

The chief benefit to being an FBI informant as a member of the Oath Keepers is to sic the FBI on fellow members you don't like. The best way to rise in the organization is to inform on rivals. Oath Keeper leaders have good reason to inform to the FBI while plotting insurrection.

BTW, the same thing works in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Intelligence is constantly struggling with informants who hate the United States, and who the next day may be shooting at US soldiers, but who find it convenient for their own purposes to inform.

This affects reliability. Such informations may be telling us the truth in order to dispose of one of their rivals. But they may also be lying.

Anyway, the point that FBI had informants involved in the attack doesn't mean the FBI was involved in the attack.

SBF gave millions to Democrats.
Caroline Edison, in charge of Alemeda, gave millions to Republicans.
Both were intended to get favorable regulations.

There's no Democrat conspiracy here, just fraudsters who commit fraud.

It's still conspiracy theories. I defended the documents as being unimportant months ago. The difference is that I wasn't using this to argue the raid was illegitimate. The documents are still government property, as true then as now.