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A massive electoral fraud scandal in Puerto Rico has been revealed in Propublica today.
The TL;DR is that a gang was sneaking drugs into a prison, and exchanging those drugs with addicts in return for votes for the governor (Puerto Rico being one of the few places that lets current jailed felons vote). Federal investigators were planning an indictment against the gang, prison guards involved, and the prisoners who took the deal before orders from above in the upper echelons of government shut it down.
But there's a twist you might not expect, the votes were for the Republican governor and the higher ups who shut it down was the Trump admin. This might be the biggest this you style story yet. Trump is constantly claiming about stolen elections and voter fraud, and yet little evidence has ever shown up. We finally found a massive scheme, and it was a MAGA related plan. There is no direct connection with this plot to Trump or the governor, but the gang leaders did have some personal connections to the governor.
The scheme probably wasn't enough to secure the election (at least not with the inmates alone) as the numbers aren't, but it was closer than you might guess. Thus even with a relatively massive scandal, it probably didn't have a direct impact then but it's interesting how the investigation was spiked.
Erick Erickson (conservative radio host/podcaster) posted something interesting earlier that seems applicable here.
Perhaps Trump's focus on electoral fraud is not motivated by being against fraud, but instead just because he lost in 2020 and can't accept that hit to his ego, the shattering mythology of his victimhood, and that's why they won't push this Puerto Rico case further?
ProPublica has zero credibility, and I will bang this drum every time someone cites them favorably. They damaged my faith in journalism more than anything else has or will. Also a perfect example of what we discussed last week: They are members in good standing of the Journalism Club, which tells me what their standards are and how they deal with deceptive and manipulative content. It's even "notable reporting".
1, 2, 3 are my posts I could find easily, but there are more out there.
With that out of the way, let's look at the article.
Alright, cool.
"Just days after Trump won the election" is well before any real actions were taken to transition power from the Biden administration to Trump. Why did W. Stephen Muldrow (appointed under Trump I, dropped and immediately reappointed under Biden, and maintained in Trump II) do that? It's possible that Biden appointed someone disloyal, but it's also possible that it's completely mundane.
That's it?? I know that the election fraud offenders don't have to be a subset of the drug offenders, but it certainly suggests that it's a smalltime operation.
"Involving" and "Of" are two different words.
Wow. Such news.
Raquel Rutledge (the author) has not been charged in the disappearance of Jack and Lilly Sullivan. This is 100% factual and you can check the public records if you doubt me.
How is that even tangentially connected to this scheme? All a voting machine can do is properly and accurately (or improperly and inaccurately) record what is entered into it. The machines don't have mind-reading equipment that can distinguish a coerced vote from a free one.
I couldn't find any evidence that Los Tiburones "evolved", as it appears to have always been a criminal group. The Netas started as a legit advocacy group, and still use it as propaganda.
No evidence of what the within-party split was in the primary: Extrapolating to 6000 prisoners total, 5000 support the Progressives, and of those 5000 an unknown number supported Colon with the remainder supporting her opponent(s) within the party primary.
(Fake edit: Later in the article has "...being pressured to vote in the primary — some for González-Colón and others for her opponent, Pedro Pierluisi.". Why wasn't that in the Primary section of the article? Oh wait, they moved from "Colon is benefiting" to "Prisoners are compelled" and expected that you couldn't cast this point back in time to where it would undermine their argument.)
...of something else, not what was mentioned in the previous paragraph. They're just "deep into investigating a potential..." for that part of it.
God fucking damn it. There's a second breach of election security happening? Fix that, and vote buying becomes a pure game of trust. Given how trustworthy I find the prison population, I'd guess it would immediately kneecap any election influence operation.
Or both admins just appointed a careerist, like most US lawyers tend to be. Finding people who are competent and willing to give their careers so they can rock the boat is really hard. It got dropped because the careerist lawyers (rightfully!) predicted that the Trump admin upon assuming power would have no interest in further investigation here, and they being careerists don't want to bite the hands that feed them.
They aren't about loyalty either way. We know that, because the admin can't get the US attorneys to sign onto most of their blatant political prosecutions either.
Correct but also wrong! Relatively it's huge, electoral fraud schemes are incredibly rare and way smaller than this. Election fraud of course is just so much not an issue that even the big cases look smalltime.
Well yes, you don't typically charge people who haven't done anything. It seems to have been done in favor of the governor by gang leaders with connections to her, but it doesn't seem to have been orchestrated by her. Presumably the gang leaders just wanted her to win for their own personal gain.
If you're finding foul play, it is reasonable to suspect other forms might be taking place too and you would double check everything.
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