2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[RoseMorninStar]

People who feel and act as of they are above the law and common courtesies applied to receive else are so infuriating and annoying, but they've learned they can get away with it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

If you're a doctor, and you have a patient who has a dangerous disease for which there is (at the time) no known cure, and you know your patient is regularly interacting with hundreds of people who have not been advised to take precautions in such encounters, do you have any responsibility for the possibility that your patient is infecting those hundreds of others?

Just off the top of my head, I think that it is possible that a viable legal argument could be made, though I don't know how far it would fly. The question would be whether the doctors had a 'duty of care' to people who were not their patients. It's an interesting question, but I don't know the answer. Here is an article from the AMA that addresses the question, but it was from 2018 and I don't know what was the resolution the Connecticut case referred to.

What duties do physicians owe to non-patients?

[N.E. Brigand]

Thanks! It appears that the briefs in that Connecticut case (in which a doctor's office may have mistakenly told a patient, and the patient his girlfriend, that he didn't have a sexually transmissible disease, which put her at risk) do touch on some aspects of this issue, although the circumstances are different.

There the health care provider apparently gave a patient an incorrect diagnosis by mistake, didn't know the patient was engaging in behavior that would spread disease to others, didn't know whom the patient might have infected, and didn't have the capability to inform people who could have been infected by the patient.

But in the case discussed in this thread, it seems very likely the health care provider gave the patient a correct diagnosis, knew that the patient was engaged in behavior that was likely to spread disease to others, knew that the identities of those people could easily be ascertained, and knew that it would be logistically very simple to inform those people that they might have been infected by his patient.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It would be an interesting case. My uninformed opinion without researching further is that it should be a viable case, but I doubt it will happen.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

With the caveat that I don't consider Meadows the most reliable source (or even in the top ten! ), I find this story very telling.

Mark Meadows says Trump was never more 'despondent' than when the Supreme Court rejected Texas' lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election

"My head hanging low, I informed him that the Supreme Court would not be hearing out [sic] challenges to the election results," the book said.

Meadows wrote that Trump didn't say anything for a moment. After a few seconds, he wrote, Trump looked up at the ceiling, folded his arms, and said, "Can you believe that?"

"No sir," Meadows recalled answering. "No, I can't."

[Dave_LF]

Cultists and other fanatics arrange their lives according to beliefs that, deep down, they know to be untrue. This creates enormous dissonance and gives rise to emotional outbursts when events manage to penetrate the self-delusion.

[N.E. Brigand]

With the caveat that I don't consider Meadows the most reliable source (or even in the top ten! ), I find this story very telling.

Mark Meadows says Trump was never more 'despondent' than when the Supreme Court rejected Texas' lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election

"My head hanging low, I informed him that the Supreme Court would not be hearing out [sic] challenges to the election results," the book said.

Meadows wrote that Trump didn't say anything for a moment. After a few seconds, he wrote, Trump looked up at the ceiling, folded his arms, and said, "Can you believe that?"

"No sir," Meadows recalled answering. "No, I can't."

This seems of a piece with comments a while back from Mike Pence's chief of Marc Short that Trump's plan for decertifying the election was "boneheaded" and that "those people giving that really, really bad advice were given carte blanche access to the president." To which I say: given access by whom? And isn't the president a big boy who should have the ability to spot "really, really bad advice"? In other words, it sounds like Meadows and Short both are making excuses meant to let Trump off the hook, either because he was supposedly being ill-used by others or because he's so delusional that he doesn't know right from wrong. Short is said to be cooperating with the Jan. 6 Select Committee. Here's hoping it's legitimate and that he won't be following Meadows's example.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Mark Meadows is now suing the January 6 select committee, for doing their job.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/politics ... index.html

[N.E. Brigand]

Mark Meadows is now suing the January 6 select committee, for doing their job.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/politics ... index.html

I wonder if Meadows should be suing himself for putting into a book matters that he won't talk about to the committee.

[N.E. Brigand]

Thanks! It appears that the briefs in that Connecticut case (in which a doctor's office may have mistakenly told a patient, and the patient his girlfriend, that he didn't have a sexually transmissible disease, which put her at risk) do touch on some aspects of this issue, although the circumstances are different.

There the health care provider apparently gave a patient an incorrect diagnosis by mistake, didn't know the patient was engaging in behavior that would spread disease to others, didn't know whom the patient might have infected, and didn't have the capability to inform people who could have been infected by the patient.

But in the case discussed in this thread, it seems very likely the health care provider gave the patient a correct diagnosis, knew that the patient was engaged in behavior that was likely to spread disease to others, knew that the identities of those people could easily be ascertained, and knew that it would be logistically very simple to inform those people that they might have been infected by his patient.

Meadows is now backpedaling from what he wrote in his book, claiming that Trump's positive test on Sep. 26 was definitely a false positive. But as Will Saletan points out in a new Slate column, Meadows should be presumed to be lying, because he's told other lies on this subject. For instance:

In the book, as quoted by the Guardian, he claims that after getting the positive result, he “instructed everyone in [Trump’s] immediate circle to treat him as if he was positive.” But aides who were around Trump at the time say they got no such instruction and were never told about the positive test. According to the Washington Post, the list of people kept in the dark included then–Vice President Mike Pence. As late as Oct. 4, Kayleigh McEnany was still telling reporters that Trump’s “first positive test” was on Oct. 1. Either she was lying or Meadows had never told her about the positive result on Sept. 26.

And also:

Jonathan Karl of ABC News says that earlier this year, he asked Meadows whether Trump tested positive before the debate. According to Karl, Meadows “flatly denied it.”

There's a lot more in Saletan's column. Among other things, he notes that even a reporter for the right-wing Newsmaxx outlet stumbled into an honest question about Trump's test results that Meadows was unable to answer coherently.

Finally, the kind of test that Trump took almost never yields false positive results, but does yield false negative ones more than 30% of the time-- and the White House medical team would have known that.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Guardian reports:

"Hours before the deadly attack on the US Capitol this year, Donald Trump made several calls from the White House to top lieutenants at the Willard hotel in Washington and talked about ways to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win from taking place on 6 January." Some of these calls might have been made from the White House residence. A list of such calls might not be kept by the National Archives. (This is a separate problem for investigators than Trump's legal efforts to prevent investigators from obtaining a list of calls made from the West Wing, which the Archives would house.)

I can't help but feeling some déjà vu from the Russia investigation. Again these little bits of information are being trickled out that, if presented all at once, would be widely recognized as damning, but by the time a final report appears, much will seem like old news and thus less important than it really is.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes, it is déjà vu all over again.

[N.E. Brigand]

And the same Guardian reporter has now shared this news:

"Latest: Trump White House chief Mark Meadows turned over to Jan. 6 committee an email that referred to a PowerPoint calling for Trump to declare a NatSec emergency and have VP Pence delay Biden’s certification.

The PowerPoint titled 'Election fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN' and dated Jan. 5 came up in an email Meadows gave to Jan. 6 committee about a briefing that was to be provided 'on the hill'".

That's seems like a pretty big deal.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And yet Meadows has refused to answer questions about even the material that he provided to the committee, even though there is no plausible argument that such material would be privileged given that he has waived any privilege argument by providing the material.

[N.E. Brigand]

It has previously been reported that various militia groups who participated in the January 6th insurrection had weapons stashed just outside D.C. and additional members stationed nearby as a "quick reaction force" and that they expected an emergency would be declared, which they would use as justification to take up their arms at the Capitol.

And now we know that the possibility of declaring a "national security emergency" was included in materials in possession of the White House chief of staff.

What investigators need to determine is whether these things are connected.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I am very doubtful that they will be able to do so, sadly.

[N.E. Brigand]

Per Politico, staff at the National Archives are talking with Mark Meadows about official documents he may have failed to turn over to them as required by law. Apparently this came to light after he provided some of these documents to the House Select Committee.

[N.E. Brigand]

A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia has upheld a lower court's refusal to grant Donald Trump's request for an injunction to block the National Archives from releasing certain documents requested by the House Select Committee for which President Biden has waived claims of executive privilege.

On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden’s judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the Political Branches over these documents. Both Branches agree that there is a unique legislative need for these documents and that they are directly relevant to the Committee’s inquiry into an attack on the Legislative Branch and its constitutional role in the peaceful transfer of power.

More specifically, the former President has failed to establish a likelihood of success given (1) President Biden’s carefully reasoned and cabined determination that a claim of executive privilege is not in the interests of the United States; (2) Congress’s uniquely vital interest in studying the January 6th attack on itself to formulate remedial legislation and to safeguard its constitutional and legislative operations; (3) the demonstrated relevance of the documents at issue to the congressional inquiry; (4) the absence of any identified alternative source for the information; and (5) Mr. Trump’s failure even to allege, let alone demonstrate, any particularized harm that would arise from disclosure, any distinct and superseding interest in confidentiality attached to these particular documents, lack of relevance, or any other reasoned justification for withholding the documents. Former President Trump likewise has failed to establish irreparable harm, and the balance of interests and equities weigh decisively in favor of disclosure.

For those reasons, we affirm the district court’s judgment denying a preliminary injunction as to those documents in the Archivist’s first three tranches over which President Biden has determined that a claim of executive privilege is not justified.

This was a pretty quick decision. The case was only argued eleven days ago.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I've been checking the docket several times a day since the oral argument, and you still posted about it before I did!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

As I predicted earlier, the court granted a 14 day stay in order to allow Trump to petition the Supreme Court for review. It would be up to the Supreme Court to grant an extension of that stay and prevent the immediate release of the documents.

Meanwhile CNN reports "In a letter sent to the Meadows' attorney on Wednesday, the committee hinted at the content of the texts it has received from Trump's former chief of staff. The letter noted Meadows provided the committee with "text messages about the need for the former President to issue a public statement that could have stopped the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The source familiar with the communications tells CNN the texts may not reflect well on the former president."

Ya think?