My take on the Georgia indictments

Fascinating. Nineteen people are indicted so this is a contrast to the federal charges where Trump was the only named defendant. There is a lot of common territory though because Trump's plans to get states to overturn their elections results happened in Georgia as one of the primary places. These indictments are state-level charges, not federal, because states (unsurprisingly) also have laws against election hijinks. Nineteen defendants, 41 counts, and an average of over 7 counts per defendant since many counts have multiple offenders listed. 

Some of the charges:

A Rico conspiracy to do a bunch of bad shit with many threads and tentacles. 

Solicitation of violation of oath by public officers - trying to get officials to do illegal or unethical shit. 

Impersonating a public official, forgery, false statements for pretending you're an elector when you're not. 

Perjury and false statements galore - to the GA legislature, to investigators, committees. I assume that the perjury charges are based on lying when under oath in a legal proceeding. 

Can the Rico charges stand? Can defendants be charged in Fulton county with offenses that occurred in Coffee County? Is it a criminal false statement to wrongly characterize action in a video, or just a mistake that isn't criminal? This applies to statements about video of counting from the State Farm Arena. However before the State department of GA clarified the actions shown in the video, it may reasonably have been misinterpreted. 

When does conferring with a witness cross the line to the criminal act of influencing witnesses? 

Some of the incidents: Lying about the State Farm Arena video. Lying about election workers. Harassing election workers. Pressuring election workers over their testimony. Falsely saying and signing documents as a presidential electors. Unsanctioned access to voting machines in Coffee County. Lying about what you were doing with those voting machines. Pressuring the secretary of state of GA to find 11780 votes. 

These are the most satisfying indictments yet because the major players will be having to answer for their acts, unless they decide not to mount a defense. It's less complicated when Trump is the sole defendant, but it's fully complete when his henchman are there too. It's also great that they all had to come in and get mug shots. 

Image: PBS

Extras. The report from the investigative grand jury. They were considering indicting Sen. Lindsay Graham too. 

More great assorted links

I'm a fan of history especially history that helps explain the world I live in today. One piece I got to see personally was the science-led ban on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). I did independent study on the issue while in college in the late 70s, and it's fascinating to look back. Back then, science was more respected and not just a ping pong ball in adversarial politics. 

A great, passionate talk about race relations in the US. Insight after insight. Watch and learn so much that you need to learn. 

Unusual mail-in ballot numbers in Wisconsin. Probably some fraud, but not huge amounts. And during covid, nursing homes were making sure residents got to vote. But that makes sense because residents weren't getting visits. 

Explanation of US oil production and the effects of covid. Demand cratered, pumping didn't slow, the market was over saturated, prices cratered, producers went bankrupt, production dropped sharply. 

The view from Twitter employees on the Musk takeover. Nervous. (Funny, this one fell apart, but here's a historical record.)

Fact-checking the 'blockbuster' expose movie about voter fraud. The premise is very weak--the Dems supposedly had 2000 ballot harvesters, based on cell phone tower ping data. 

The military has a problem with white supremacists. But according to some conservatives, the military is actually trying to censor conservatives. Here are some cases. 

Mark Esper, former Secretary of Defense, describes how Trump was unfit to be president. Maybe compare that with Rick Scott's reasons for calling Biden unfit. 

How were voting rights for black people secured? It was a long process, where the federal government ignored the problem for years despite having the mandate right in the 14th amendment to enforce those rights. 

A pilot project sent mental health teams to respond to minor police calls in Denver. It was successful, so maybe we'll see more diverse response teams become more common rather than relying so much on police. 

An software engineer at Google has been suspended for sharing private information. It concerns his opinion that an artificial intelligence (AI) application has achieved sentience. That puts the engineer into an ethical dilemma.

Image: abcnews.go.com