Welcome to Day +24, and  I hope you had a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday -- and are enjoying the tasty leftovers today… 

Kontemplating the Kraken…

Instead of watching television or napping, I confronted the dreaded Kraken, unleashed by Sidney Powell and her legal team in the form of two filings, one 104-page filing in Georgia, and one 75-page filing in Michigan.

Both documents looked like they were written by first-year law students, rife with misspelled and poorly-formatted paragraphs.

I would think that misspelling the court's name would set the tone for the filing and perhaps be taken as disrespect for the court.

CAVEAT: I am willing to give the legal team a pass if I found out that the original document -- possibly transmitted by FAX -- was processed using some form of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) into a PDF and nobody re-read the document Or if the errors were introduced by the court's scanning system during filing. ]

I would not bet on the outcome of these filings…

Both documents were a hodge-podge of theories previously introduced, some involving unconstitutional acts, some poorly defined rules, and procedures, some allegedly deliberate acts that appear to be nefarious, and some conflating the capabilities of hardware and software with deliberated ill-intentioned acts.

Evidence? Maybe!

Proof? No! -- Remember evidence does not become truth until it faces adversarial opposition in a court of law or stipulated by the opposition as accepted fact.

Convincing? Not really! -- However, let us not forget that all previous court cases have been about standing and procedural issues, and not one court has been presented with the evidence. 

In my humble and uninformed opinion, not enough to get a judge to issue a summary judgment to invalidate thousands of votes, call for an election do-over, or declare a specific winner -- but may be sufficient to initiate a hearing which might lead to discovery and a trial.

For evidence, we have sworn affidavits from unchallenged individuals with unexplored motives, observations, and possibly rabid partisanship.

There does not appear to be any whistleblowers, insiders who actually committed illegal acts in the 2016 or 2020 elections. As we have heard in the media, some of these individuals may require subpoenas to compel testimony and protect their government jobs. Others are fearful of physical harm and may require protection much as mob witnesses. The actual exhibits are unavailable for examination as they have been filed "under seal" with the court.

As for procedural issues, a clear case has been made that the election was, to some degree, unmonitored by poll-watchers. However, without specific proof of sufficient wrongdoing, it is unlikely the court would disenfranchise thousands of legal votes -- even though it expressed regrets that the system was not monitored and there were "integrity" issues. The court almost always leans toward system stability. However, Rudy Guiliani has a valid response, "If you don't punish them, they will do it again." Essentially saying that if you don't toss the votes and award the election to Donald Trump, you are guaranteeing bad behavior in the next election and promoting corruption of our entire voting system.

Better odds…

A more likely scenario involves convincing state legislators to refuse election certification or to select "faithful" electors who will cast their electoral votes for President Trump. A long shot, to be sure.

Most likely…

However, an even more likely scenario would see a president Biden, inaugurated under a cloud of illegitimacy. Whether or not the democrat-controlled House of Representatives would investigate and impeach Biden for alleged acts of corruption and seek to remove him from office as they attempted with president trump is unlikely given the alternative of a president Harris that nobody likes or, more importantly, trusts.

It may well be that the state legislators may take emergency action for the upcoming vote in Georgia, have limited “re-do” elections for close and challenged down-ballot candidates, and continue with committees and commissions in the pursuit of “election reform.” In Yogi Berra’s classic observation, Déjà vu all over again.”

It may be that the U.S. Congress will create national standards and certification programs through the non-partisan NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).

Should the evil-doers be worried? I think not, given the reluctance of politicians to point the finger at other politicians knowing that their party is also guilty of dirty tricks -- just not at this scale or this brazenness.

Red flag on the play?

Does one wonder if this is a scheme to monetize the issue to benefit Sidney Powell? The address shown is a UPS Store renting post boxes.

Bottom line…

I decided not to re-hash or analyze the specific and repetitive allegations because the situation is fluid and still a crap-shoot.

One of the disturbing allegations in the Georgia filing comes from a social media interview with Michelle Malkin (MICHELLE MALKIN LIVE: JOE OLTMANN EXPOSES DOMINION SYSTEMS RUN BY ANTIFA) where Joe Oltmann, identified as Colorado businessman and activist, claims he infiltrated an “Antifa call” and overheard Eric Coomer, a director at Dominion Voting Systems, allegedly saying: “Don’t worry. Trump won’t win the election, we fixed that.”

“Plaintiffs have also learned through several reports that in 2010 Eric Coomer joined Dominion as Vice President of U.S. Engineering. According to his bio, Coomer graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics. Eric Coomer was later promoted to Voting Systems Officer of Strategy and Security although Coomer has since been removed from the Dominion page of directors. Dominion altered its website after Colorado resident Joe Oltmann disclosed that as a reporter he infiltrated ANTIFA, a domestic terrorist organization where he recorded Eric Coomer representing: “Don’t worry. Trump won’t win the election, we fixed that.” – as well as social media posts with violence threatened against President Trump. (See Joe Oltmann interview with Michelle Malkin dated November 13, 2020 which contains copies of Eric Coomer’s recording and tweets).” [Page 58-59 of Georgia filing]

What makes this disturbing is that this is the type of information contained in the filing and, if true, needs to be presented to the FBI and DOJ rather than a media personality.

I am greatly disappointed in the official and unofficial Trump legal teams. However, I am amazed that noted attorneys like Sidney Powell or Lin Wood would attach their names and reputations to these sloppy filings.

The only reliable conclusion that I can faithfully draw is that our election systems are not secure and needs to be reformed.  They are not even as secure as the ones we implemented in Iraq with a photo-identification, one biometric ID-fingerprint, and in-person voting with purple dye to ensure one citizen-one vote), 

By the way -- the Turkey was great!

We are so screwed.

-- steve