SubJeff on 19/1/2021 at 19:58
This is his last night as president, isn't it?
Imma have to watch tomorrow. I feel bad for you guys, despite, you know, America lol
Nicker on 19/1/2021 at 21:28
We saved a mini bottle of sparkly from New Years to celebrate on Wednesday.
Cipheron on 19/1/2021 at 23:26
Quote Posted by Starker
Also, the question arises, how does the ex know all this? The type of ex-boyfriend who is well acquainted with their partner's life after the breakup is usually not a person whose word can be trusted.
That seems like kinda a stretch doesn't it? I'm still friends with one or two exes, does that mean I'm not someone to be trusted and only people who completely cut off previous people can be trusted? They clearly have friends in common, that's how he found out about it.
Think about it this way: if the guy's information is complete bullshit
he's going to prison over this. This isn't like one of those he-said / she-said types of things, this is a claim with real concrete evidence and a major federal investigation. Ask whether he'd willingly put himself in the firing line over this.
The facts are, we know she was a ringleader in the capitol riots because she's on camera imploring people to head towards the direction of Pelosi's office. We also know that a laptop disappeared from that vicinity. How would the person giving the tip have known that (1) where she was videoed lead to Pelosi's office and (2) that a laptop disappeared. His story matches too many real details he wouldn't have known by just seeing news footage. Clearly enough details matched that the FBI was convinced there's something to investigate. They have much more information than we do, and they don't reveal everything to the media.
Starker on 20/1/2021 at 00:59
What is a stretch? Noting that a whole lot of damning information is based on one adversarial person's account who based it on hearsay and doesn't seem to get the details straight? Which did she steal -- a laptop or a hard drive? Where did she steal it from -- from the office or from the vicinity of the office? And why do you think it's enough to jump to conclusions in this case? Why would you trust one person over the other in this with so few details? The whole thing smacks of sensationalism and rushing to conclusions.
Also, giving a tip to the FBI doesn't get you jailed, even if it turns out to not be true. And they seem to be in some conflict already with a suspicious person's report having been filed on them.
And yes, it might well be she's a 22 year old ringleader of the riot who planned to commit espionage. It's not out of the realm of possibility. I'm just saying it's a pretty big accusation to make based on so few and suspect details.
And no, the FBI hasn't revealed much information, but that's not necessarily something to draw conclusions from. It might also be that they are not revealing information because there is no information to reveal.
Starker on 20/1/2021 at 06:24
Predictably, Lord Dampnut pardoned his cronies like Elliott Broidy and Steve Bannon. Rudy seems to have been left hanging, however:
And of course some assorted crooks and real scumbags got one as well. Business is business, after all.
Quote:
(
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/01/19/trump-commutes-40-year-sentence-of-clearwater-ponzi-scheme-operator/)
Before an expected final flurry of pardons and commutations from the White House, President Donald Trump issued a single commutation last week to the mastermind of a $300 million vacation rental fraud that operated in Clearwater and 16 other sites.
A federal judge in 2016 sentenced Fred Davis Clark Jr. to 40 years in prison for his role as CEO in Cay Clubs Resorts and Marina, which promised to turn dilapidated properties in Florida, Las Vegas and the Caribbean into luxury resorts. Beginning in 2004, Clark raised more than $300 million from 1,400 investors who were promised steady rental income and an upfront leaseback payment of 20 percent of the sales price of the units.
[...]
The 40-year term had felt like justice to Kimball Pugmire, 71, who lost his life savings in the fraud.
“I thought well he will probably die in prison and he deserved it,” Pugmire said on Monday. “I was thinking that's justice because now he can sit there the rest of his life contemplating what he's done to other people.”
[...]
When he received an email last week from the Department of Justice notifying him of Clark's release, Pugmire said he was shocked. Pugmire had voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and supported his agenda. But he doesn't understand how the president could wipe away the prison sentence “of a lifetime crook.”
“I had been trying to forget all this, but it makes you wonder, even being a Trump supporter, about his honesty,” Pugmire said.
[...]
Cipheron on 20/1/2021 at 06:54
Quote Posted by Starker
What is a stretch?
Casting aspersions on a person when knowing literally nothing about their circumstances.
Quote:
Noting that a whole lot of damning information is based on one adversarial person's account who based it on hearsay and doesn't seem to get the details straight?
Quote:
Which did she steal -- a laptop or a hard drive?
Laptops contain a hard-drive, that's the valuable part information wise, and it's the bit you'd send overseas. Since laptops contain a hard-drive you are by definition stealing a hard-drive when stealing a laptop, so there's no actual conflict there. It's not like saying did you steal a motorbike or a campervan. This is more like stealing a motorbike then getting accused of selling a motorbike engine and someone asking "which was is that they stole? A motorbike, or a motorbike engine? The story doesn't add up!". When one thing is a required component of the other thing then it's a different type of question.
Quote:
Where did she steal it from -- from the office or from the vicinity of the office?
How would this person have known, in the first place, that she was anywhere near Pelosi's office?
It's the fact that she was videoed in that vicinity, and a laptop actually disappeared in the same vicinity that matches the salient points of the story, neither of which are details the guy should have known otherwise.
~~~
Additionally, if he was making it entirely up, he would be more likely to claim the information was from the ex directly. If he said the ex told him, then it would be purely a he-said/she-said scenario - his word vs her word.
By naming a third party as the source of the information, that means the named third party can either verify or deny the information. This makes it much less likely to be entirely made up - whoever he claimed told him would have to be in on the whole scheme.
Starker on 20/1/2021 at 07:11
So questioning someone's motives in accusing their ex of major crimes based on sketchy evidence is a stretch, but thinking a 22 year old set out to commit treason and espionage based on a second-hand story isn't?
Again, the part where there was confusion about whether she stole a laptop or a hard drive was not in how she intended to send it to the SVR, it was where the lover claimed to have seen a video of her stealing either a laptop or a hard drive and then either having kept or destroyed it. And it's all based on what the person reportedly heard from "her friends". Can you see how a game of telephone like that is not necessarily the most reliable source of information?
The part about a laptop being stolen was publicised on January 8 when the aide whose laptop it was tweeted about it. It has been public knowledge for a while.
Also, it makes no sense to assume that the whole story is either a complete fabrication or completely true with no grey areas in between. Eyewitness testimony is not necessarily the most reliable, especially when relayed from person to person. Where did "her friends" get the information in the first place? Was that first hand knowledge or did they hear it from someone else? Did everyone from that chain relay the information completely and accurately? These are all questions you have to contend with.
Starker on 20/1/2021 at 08:36
Okay, so let me present an alternative story. I don't think that's what necessarily happened, but it's just for the sake of making a point, so humour me for a bit, alright?
Quote:
Williams went to the Capitol to "take part in the revolution" with her friends (you're unlikely to do something like that alone) for whatever reason, whether it was because she got caught up in the alt-right conspiracy theories and general fearmongering about the left or anything else. When people started pushing past police lines and breaking in, she and her friends joined the mob and joined a group who were heading for Pelosi's office. Along the way she gave directions to her friends to not get separated. While in the office, she or one of her friends happened to find a random laptop and stashed it. They hang around the Capitol until the mob was pushed out by the cavalry.
When they got home, they posted some videos of them in Pelosi's office and maybe bragged in a chatroom or somewhere how they had gotten their hands on Pelosi's hard drives or something like that and then spitballed what to do with the laptop using typical edgy adolescent "humour" that's common online, rife with hyperbole and exaggeration in the vein of, "Let's sell it to Russia, I know a guy who lives there." And maybe they talked about how they should just smash it or something.
Some mutual acquaintances of her and her ex who were in the chatroom told about it to her ex who, in righteous anger and taking it at face value, went to the FBI and told them about everything they had heard without really knowing what had actually happened -- how she must have stolen a laptop or maybe a hard drive and tried to sell it to Russia and maybe had destroyed it or maybe not. Then, when the FBI published a Statement of Facts in the case including all the salacious accusations, the media picked it up and upon visiting her mother and hearing how she had not been home, jumped to the conclusion she must be on the run from the FBI (she actually surrendered to the authorities the very next day they started searching for her) and did you hear about how she was trying to sell the laptop to Russia!? Allegedly.
Now, which story do you think is more plausible? That or her being a ringleader who organised a mob of rioters to attack Pelosi's office and stole her laptop in order to deliver it to Russian Foreign Intelligence Service? At the ripe old age of 22.
No doubt we will hear more details of the case, but there is this thing called Occam's razor to apply in situations like these -- when there are two theories that equally explain all the facts, there is no reason to prefer the more far-fetched one that is much more unlikely to occur.
Gryzemuis on 20/1/2021 at 10:33
Doesn't matter.
She's a witch.
BURN HER!
(Just kidding, I agree with you. I hate it when people who are supposed to be on the same side as I am, act as dumb and as vengeful as the people on the other side. You have to try and be fair, human, honest. Otherwise our side is just as bad as the other side).
Cipheron on 20/1/2021 at 13:09
Nobody's saying burn the witch, just reporting what the news is saying. I'm not making up stuff to make her look guilty, i was just saying there's no justification for fantasizing about supposed motives of her accuser. In this case, the FBI arrested her, and I believe the FBI to be competent enough that they did so with good information, so theorizing about ill motives of the informant which mean the charges are bullshit is really just making stuff up that's not even in the story. Yes, there can be stuff that's just rumor-mongering, but when that leads to actual arrests by the FBI it's safer to assume there was something to the rumors, on the balance of probability. They get a lot of tips, they don't act on most of them.
Update:
(
https://www.washingtonpost.com/2021/01/18/pelosi-laptop-riley-june-williams/)
Quote:
HARRISBURG, Pa. — A 22-year-old from Pennsylvania was charged Tuesday with helping to steal a laptop from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during the storming of the U.S. Capitol, one of two new alleged felonies for which the defendant could face decades in prison.
The FBI says Riley June Williams appears to have filmed and then shared a video of another person lifting an HP computer off a desk, according to an updated affidavit posted Tuesday night. The affidavit links to images of all-caps, typo-riddled social media posts from a user named “Riley” who declares that they “STOLE S — T FROM NANCY POLESI.”
It's pretty clear that the third party involved merely shared the video with the FBI.
Quote:
Williams was initially charged with trespassing as well as violent entry to and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. On Tuesday, authorities added new charges: aiding or abetting the theft of government property and obstructing, influencing or impeding an official proceeding.
[...]
Capitol Police confirmed that an HP laptop was stolen from the speaker's office, the FBI said. Drew Hammill, deputy chief of staff for Pelosi, said Jan. 8 that a laptop “only used for presentations” was taken from a conference room.
Hammill did not respond to questions from The Washington Post.
[...]
Law enforcement soon obtained video clips that W1 said were recorded and live-streamed by Williams, then captured by a friend, according to the amended affidavit filed Tuesday. One four-second video captures a female voice — which an agent believes to be Williams — saying “Dude, put on gloves,” before a black-gloved hand takes a computer from a table. A caption across the clip says, “they got the laptop.”
So we don't know whether this is the same thing that got taken from the conference room after all. What we do know is that the device they took in the video had the HP brand, and that WP claims the Capital Police said a HP laptop was stolen from Pelosi's office, and they posted a video to social media about it claiming that they got a laptop. Maybe the idea of selling it to the Russians was them blowing hot air, but I don't think there's much doubt they got their hands on it.
I'm not witch hunting anyone in this story, just assuming everyone is telling the truth**, and keep in mind that this guy is probably about 22 years old too, so if it's unlikely for a 22 year old girl to hatch some harebrained scheme, then it's much less likely for a 22 year old guy who wasn't even involved to be able to concoct the entire story as a pretend scheme, have that match her actual movements and known events by the FBI, to the point he could trick the FBI into arresting her.
Stealing something and saying you're going to sell it to the Russians is one thing, but tricking the FBI into thinking *someone else* who you don't even have physical contact with stole something and was going to sell it to the Russians, AND get them arrested over it. That would be master level shit.
** You can definitely be charged with a felony for lying to the FBI. 5 years is the sentence:
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements)
While it's *possible* that an ex could just be lying to the FBI about the whole story because of a grievance, it's exceedingly unlikely. I wouldn't assume that because the person is someone's ex (regardless of male ex or female ex) that this makes it at all probable that the testimony is bullshit. Maybe it goes up from 0.5% unlikely to 0.8% unlikely that it's bullshit if the person is their ex. But it's definitely not more likely than them giving accurate testimony.