This is not a doompill or a blackpill. This is rigor, in the interest of helping you form the best concept of Trump's way forward. We accomplish this by cutting away the improbable and impossible. What is left is the good stuff.
@BicameralTrump #lawoffunny #moab

Thomas Wictor, et al. posit that Trump used the military to monitor the presidential election. It's a cool notion, but, barring any exceptions to policy (we will discuss), illegal, and therefore unlikely.

My points will either be sourced, or require simple reasoning. No insider information will be required to make my point, or to concede it.
Reference: https://social.quodverum.com/@ThomasWic/105522098724291363

Wictor: "My best guess is that Trump used VERY SMALL teams of US military cyberwarfare and reconnaissance specialists."
There is no precedent for a military operation under direct control of the president.

Wictor: "Somewhere in the continental US (CONUS) there was a central hub keeping a running vote count."
This does not square with the knowledge that not all states used the same voting systems, much less Dominion voting systems.

If each state is empowered to write its own election laws and send its own electors, why would there be a federal vote tally? The federal government has no constitutional (or otherwise) interest in the popular vote.

If a private national tally, consider that news networks get vote data from the Associated Press, which employs an army of on-the-ground journalists at polling places, who may or may not be getting accurate information from poll workers.

Wictor: "The military teams located that central hub and set up a temporary wireless network nearby."
This relies on the assumption that the "central hub" is wireless enabled. Is the idea that it is receiving vote tallies from all across the country via wireless communications?

Wictor: "Since the vote-counting was done over the Internet, the military boosted the wireless signals of the enemy devices. The signals were then transmitted to a data-collection server."

The complaint involving voting machines being connected to the internet involved local wi-fi networks at polling places. If the military was positioned at the central hub, why (and how) would it need to boost the wireless signals of the "enemy devices?"

Wictor: "Therefore the entire process was captured and recorded. They would've planted cameras and bugs to record voices and faces. The warehouses of ballots had already been located. The illegal vote counting was also recorded."

So, we're in legal trouble. This entire operation would be considered a "intelligence collection activity," and a domestic one, at that. We will reference USSID SP0018. https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/1118/CLEANEDFinal%20USSID%20SP0018.pdf

"3.1. The policy of the United States SIGINT System (USSS) is to TARGET or COLLECT only FOREIGN COMMUNICATIONS. The USSS will not intentionally COLLECT communications to, from or about U.S. PERSONS or persons or entities in the U.S. except..."

"...as set forth in this USSID. If the USSS inadvertently COLLECTS such communications, it will process, retain and disseminate them only in accordance with this USSID."

We'll get back to the circumstances under which U.S. persons may be collected against, but first a detour to get the intelligence community's definition of "collection," which may not be what you think it is.

Reference the OPSEC Intelligence Threat Handbook (1996), which is not the only source for this definition, but easy to access. https://fas.org/irp/nsa/ioss/threat96/part02.htm

"Collection. The second step [in the intelligence cycle], collection, includes both *acquiring* information and *provisioning* that information to processing and production elements." (Emphasis mine)

"Intelligence collection requirements are developed to meet the needs of potential consumers. Based upon identified intelligence, requirements collection activities are given specific taskings to collect information."

So, you can see that "collection" has three phases: tasking, interception (the "dictionary" definition of collection), and provisioning, which refers to the querying of the intercepted data.

Now, you understand how the Patriot Act amended the FISA and allowed all the bulk collection that Snowden complained about, despite the prohibition on intentional collection of U.S. persons in USSID SP0018. It's not talking about the interception phase of collection.

Back to SP0018, we can see what IS allowed: "Communications which are known to be to, from or about a U.S. Person [redacted] not be intentionally intercepted, or selected through the use of a SELECTION TERM (querying) except in the following instances:"

"a. With the approval of the United States FISC either under the conditions outlined in Annex A of this USSID or as permitted by other FISA authorities."

"b. With the approval of the Attorney General of the United States, if The COLLECTION is directed against the following: Communications to or from US. PERSONS outside the US if such persons have been approved for targeting in accordance with the terms of FISA, or..."

"...International communications to, from, [redacted, and] Communications which are not to or from but merely about U.S. PERSONS (wherever located). [and] The person is an AGENT OF A FOREIGN POWER, and..."

"The purpose of the COLLECTION is to acquire significant FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE information." This goes on and on in section 4. Read it all yourself.

Steelman: "4.1.d.2.d. A CORPORATION or other entity that is owned or controlled directly or indirectly by a FOREIGN POWER." This, an emergency situation requiring authorization from DIRNSA and trailing AG approval. Dominion, as a company under control of a foreign power?

My point is that there is no provision here that allows for the collection of domestic communications, which is exactly what vote counts going from states to a stateside central repository would be. No parties in the communication could be reasonably assumed to be foreign.

Foreign SIGINT collection is the military's job - it does not collect domestic communications, nor does it conduct domestic law enforcement operations. Section 7.2.c.4 allows for foreign collection of U.S. Persons who may be involved in criminal activity.

The job of monitoring domestic communications falls to law enforcement. If anyone could have done this, it would have been the FBI. Since we all know the FBI is a heap of dicks, it's easy to cast another technically capable party in the savior role.

How, then, COULD this have played out? It would require the synthesis of another theory - the idea that Dominion machines communicated with foreign entities. Then again, such an operation assumes require foreknowledge of that assumption.

As far as I have heard, the revelation of Dominion communication with foreign servers was learned after the election. Were it known, however, collection thereof would have required FISA authorization, and that's obviously a politicized body, and unlikely to help Trump.

I believe Trump is preparing to show us something. If it's proof of election fraud, I'm certain it is of the audit variety - forensic data prepared by examining machines themselves. It could also simply be proof of Biden's Chinese compromise, or something else.

However, there is a vanishingly, infinitesimally tiny chance that it will be information obtained in a domestic intelligence collection activity by the U.S. military. I intend to address comments in a timely manner, but it will at my leisure.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

@threadreaderapp unroll