Fishing expedition by 1/6 commission (1 Viewer)

Pat Hartman

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Here's a link to the letter Congress sent to Gab asking them to produce enormous amounts of data. I especially like #2 on page w where Congress asks Gab to implicate themselves. Well, there goes the 5th amendment. Do we haven any left that the Democrats are willing to recognize?



I sure hope that whatever they provide, they do it on paper:)
 

moke123

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I especially like #2 on page w where Congress asks Gab to implicate themselves. Well, there goes the 5th amendment.
Corporations dont have any rights under the 5th amendment.

Secondly, I'd venture a quess that this is not a fishing expediton but is a method of adhereing to the rules of evidence. I think it's safe to say they already have most, if not all, of it already. It's just a formality.
"It contains pretty much everything on Gab, including user data and private posts, everything someone needs to run a nearly complete analysis on Gab users and content," Best wrote in a text message interview with WIRED. "It's another gold mine of research for people looking at militias, neo-Nazis, the far right, QAnon, and everything surrounding January 6."
 

Pat Hartman

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Corporations dont have any rights under the 5th amendment.
So, you're saying that the Biden DOJ would not actually prosecute the executives of Gab if they felt that Gab had violated the new rules which don't include the first amendment or any law that might be inconvenient? They've already been holding people for over 8 months for TRESSPASSING? Can you spell "POLITICAL PRISIONER"? I guess the perpetrators would have been better off burning a police station and throwing rocks at the Capitol Police or maybe looting Target. THOSE are crimes which don't get prosecuted. And they refused to prosecute the murder of Babbitt. They would be be raging mobs (oh, I mean peaceful protesters) circling the Capitol building if she had been black and he had been white. But no, the cop thinks he's a hero for shooting an unarmed woman (with cops a few feet behind her) and so do the Democrats. He saved AOC from being raped apparently. Video evidence be damned. That doesn't count in a banana republic if it is inconvenient.

Just FYI, the FBI recently said that there was no evidence of a planned uprising. Of course, that won't stop Nancy Pelosi who is determined to prosecute Trump yet again. And WHY is Pelosi establishing outposts of Capitol Police around the country? Are these the new Brown Shirts? Sure looks that way if they can get away with murder.

Marx told us that one of the things that needed to be done to win the revelation was to remove local police because they thought their job was to protect their community with federal troops who owe no allegiance to the community, only to their leader. I guess Nancy is following the direction of Antifa and starting to implement Marx's plan.
 

Steve R.

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In the video clip, the narrative of a potential federal police force begins after the one minute mark. Though not a direct imposition of a federal police force, the Obama administration made tentative steps in that direction by using the US Justice Department through a variety of strong-arm tactics (lawsuits, money grants) to "coerce" (force) local police to comply with federal "mandates". A 2015 article: Obama Unveils Plan to Further Nationalize Local Police.
 

moke123

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So, you're saying that the Biden DOJ would not actually prosecute the executives of Gab if they felt that Gab had violated the new rules which don't include the first amendment or any law that might be inconvenient?
Make up your mind. Are you talking about the 5th or 1st amendment? What I said is that corporations can not plead the 5th. They dont have 5th amendment protections.
I guess the perpetrators would have been better off burning a police station and throwing rocks at the Capitol Police or maybe looting Target. THOSE are crimes which don't get prosecuted.
Over 300 federal prosecutions.

Just FYI, the FBI recently said that there was no evidence of a planned uprising.
Thats not what the 4 anonymous sources reported to one news source. The anonymous sources said there was nothing tying trump and co. to the planning. I thought you didn't like anonymous sources?
 

Pat Hartman

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Are you talking about the 5th or 1st amendment?
What people post that doesn't violate the first is what the Federalies are attempting to elicit. So telling them that you allowed people to say X is violating YOUR 5th amendment right because they are going to prosecute you for not stopping the free speech, but the person whose post you are disclosing is going to have his first amendment right violated.

Over 300 prosecutions for over 600 riots, wow!! That's the justice system at work. Any given video shows dozens of people throwing things at the police, burning cars, and looting. Why are they not prosecuting 6000 people? It is hard to get past video evidence in court. How many people are they keeping imprisoned for trespassing?

The author of that article thinks that the people who have been prosecuted have been targeted because they were black and so were actually being persecuted. I would say that the people in jail for trespassing are actually political prisoners. That is what persecution looks like.
 

Isaac

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What people post that doesn't violate the first is what the Federalies are attempting to elicit. So telling them that you allowed people to say X is violating YOUR 5th amendment right because they are going to prosecute you for not stopping the free speech, but the person whose post you are disclosing is going to have his first amendment right violated.

Over 300 prosecutions for over 600 riots, wow!! That's the justice system at work. Any given video shows dozens of people throwing things at the police, burning cars, and looting. Why are they not prosecuting 6000 people? It is hard to get past video evidence in court. How many people are they keeping imprisoned for trespassing?

The author of that article thinks that the people who have been prosecuted have been targeted because they were black and so were actually being persecuted. I would say that the people in jail for trespassing are actually political prisoners. That is what persecution looks like.

Pat, some people are like the spelling/grammar police. They got nothing against the main, over-arching argument you're making, as it's so obviously true....So instead, they point out spelling errors, and wear their fact checking vests with pride.
 

Steve R.

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1630613242034.png
 

Pat Hartman

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Here is a summary of Gab's response to Congress along with a link to the full text.
Following Gab’s receipt of a letter from the January 6th Committee investigating the protests at the U.S. Capitol, we responded to Congress today to set the record straight about Gab and its role, or rather its lack of a role, in the events of January 6th.

We told Congress that Gab exists to promote freedom of speech. By this we mean all written or spoken expression protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. No more, no less. We accordingly have a longstanding zero-tolerance policy towards threats of violence and use of our platform for criminal purposes.

As to controversial, but nonetheless legal, speech, we believe – as Justice Brandeis did – that “sunlight is the best disinfectant, electric light the most efficient policeman.” This means that Gab seeks to serve as an online home for dissent, whether it emanates from protestors in Hong Kong, Russia, or the United States.

Sometimes this means that Gab finds itself hosting people or ideas wide segments of a given population regard as loathsome or evil. It is not our place, nor should it be the place of any technology company, to interfere with Americans’ civil rights and sit in judgment over their lawful expression.

We also told Congress that official disfavor is a fluid concept capable of varying from place to place, time to time, and even, in this information age where new knowledge can be published and disseminated worldwide nearly instantaneously, day to day. Conflicts between the ruling class and disfavored ideas or people are not particularly novel phenomena.

Throughout history, men like Socrates, Galileo and Einstein, and Cheng Guancheng as well as women like Virginia Vallejo, have variously been murdered, targeted for assassination, imprisoned, fired, and/or seen their works publicly burned on account of their beliefs.

In each case, these people – good people, normal people without political power – were persecuted because their viewpoints were, in one way or another, perceived as a threat to the established order, a view often shared by substantial majorities in their respective societies as well as their rulers, and there was no legal, normative, or technological infrastructure to restrain wielders of power from abusing it.

For more than two centuries the U.S. Constitution, and in particular the First Amendment, has served as a bulwark against such abuses, not only at home, but for those abroad who seek safety here. Titans like Solzhenitsyn, Einstein, Guangcheng and Vallejo, and legions of others – including tens of thousands of urban Afghans evacuated by the United States in recent weeks – all sought, and will continue to seek, refuge beneath the impervious shelter for free thought that is the First Amendment and American rule of law.

But the normative foundation upon which that shelter was built is at risk. The reality of social media content moderation practices today is that large swathes of commonly-held viewpoints and belief systems are systematically discriminated against on the Internet’s largest websites.

That this censorship should be implemented by privately-owned technology platforms rather than by the government may reassure constitutional law professors, but it is of little comfort to the average Internet user on the business end of a non-appealable account ban. American citizens may have freedom of speech, but they find themselves with vanishingly few public forums in which to exercise it fully.

We believe, as the Framers did, that commercial activity that facilitates free speech is essential to the healthy functioning of American democracy. James Madison foresaw this presciently in his 1791 letter to the National Gazette:

The larger a country, the less easy for its real opinion to be ascertained, and the less difficult to be counterfeited; when ascertained or presumed, the more respectable it is in the eyes of individuals. This is favorable to the authority of government. For the same reason, the more extensive a country, the more insignificant is each individual in his own eyes. This may be unfavorable to liberty.

Whatever facilitates a general intercourse of sentiments, as good roads, domestic commerce, a free press, and particularly a circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people, and Representatives going from, and returning among every part of them, is equivalent to a contraction of territorial limits, and is favorable to liberty, where these may be too extensive.


Our web properties are among only a handful on the Internet where Madison’s “general intercourse of sentiments” can presently flow unimpeded by corporate interests, opaquely funded NGOs, and activist groups.

Gab has no doubt that the Framers would approve of our approach. Despite this, Gab has been the subject of a years-long smear campaign by activist groups and boycotted by virtually every technology company of consequence – Amazon, Apple, Coinbase, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Stripe, and Visa included – because of our refusal to change our First Amendment-based moderation policy.

As Gab is a free-to-use online publishing platform, it is inevitable that criminal actors will seek to operate on the margins of what is legal and acceptable or even abuse our services, as indeed they abuse all online services. Gab believes in the rule of law and works hard to ensure that our services are denied to these bad actors. Sometimes bad actors slip through, however, and Gab relies on law enforcement to advise it of criminal use of the platform so it can ban criminal users and provide appropriate assistance to any investigation.

By aligning our policies with the First Amendment and adopting a cooperative stance towards U.S. law enforcement, we believe that we are providing an essential service for our democratic society in a socially responsible way.

We are cognizant our users are curious to know how we responded to the Committee’s request for production of documents.

Please find that response, in full, to all the questions sent to us by Congress, by clicking here.

Glory be to God,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

We anticipate that responding to Congress will cost a significant amount of money for legal expenses. If you would like to help us cover these costs we would appreciate you making a donation or upgrading to GabPRO to support us.


 

The_Doc_Man

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Corporations dont have any rights under the 5th amendment.

True enough, I suppose, but be careful. If you subpoena a corporation, it cannot testify in court. As a person, it is a legal fiction. Nor can it actually produce a document. A person who represents that corporation WILL have to show up in court to testify or to honor a subpoena duces tecum. That person will have to testify as to the accuracy of whatever was offered. And THAT person DOES have full rights.

To the extent that a corporation can be charged with a crime, penalties such as fines can be imposed, and divestiture (for example, after a finding of monopoly practices.) But that crime has no personal defendant unless you can show that a member of the board of directors actually violated a law. The whole point of incorporation is to isolate the link between the company and the person. And if the board of directors followed the votes of its voting stockholders, whom do you charge? This is one of the complexities of business/criminal law interfaces. (I can't recall who said it, but someone once opined that all law is REALLY made at the points of overlap/conflict between two general laws.)
 

moke123

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Nor can it actually produce a document. A person who represents that corporation WILL have to show up in court to testify or to honor a subpoena duces tecum. That person will have to testify as to the accuracy of whatever was offered. And THAT person DOES have full rights.
Having served thousands of subpeonas, it's safe to say that a corporation most certainly can produce documents, or more accurately perhaps, records. Those records do not neccessarily need a warm body to authenticate as in most cases they only need an written attestation that they are true and accurate by the custodian of those records. That is done under penalty of perjury. A person can only invoke a 5th if their testimony would implicate them, the person, in a crime. They can't invoke if it implicates someone else or the corporate entity in a crime. Failing to comply is a crime in itself. It would certainly be interesting to see a custodian of records try to invoke as to the very records he is putting before the court but it simply would not be allowed. There is some obscure doctrine about "testimonial documents" but it does not apply to business records.

A corporation can attempt to quash a supeona however the argument that it will incriminate the corporation just wouldn't fly.
 
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Pat Hartman

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The records wouldn't actually incriminate Gab and they certainly wouldn't incriminate the posters. But we live in times where the Constitution and inconvenient laws can simply be ignored. That's what happens in a Banana Republic. So the posters have no 1st amendment rights and Gab is going to be punished for not stomping on the poster's rights. The government can't revoke the poster's 1st amendment so they are attempting to force third parties to do it for them and sadly, way too many are going along with the joke.

If we actually lived in the country we thought we lived in, Biden would be accused of treason for providing our enemy with armaments paid for by the American taxpayer that they will now use against us as well as others
 

moke123

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The records wouldn't actually incriminate Gab and they certainly wouldn't incriminate the posters.
Your half right. They are not "Going After" Gab. They made a records request. There were 30 or so other requests to various companies. The records will certainly incriminate some of the posters. Many made posts which could amount to confessions. Someone posting "I'm in the capitol!" or "I just kicked in Pelosi's office door!" are not being denied their 1st amentment right. They should have invoked their 5th and exercised their right to remain silent as what they posted can and will be used against them. You would be amazed at the information that is logged by a single post. Most of my experience has been with facebook records. When someone posts to facebook, even the simplest sentence or smiley face, there is a full page of information logged for that one sentence. It logs the sentence, who sent it, all who recieved it and their account info, the I.P. addresses, the Mac addresses, IMEI #'s, location information, whether it was deleted and when (obviously it is never actually deleted) and much more. It literally fills a single spaced 81/2 x 11 sheet of paper. It is evidentiary gold . I'm sure all this was already requested by law enforcment, thus their request for all the other requests.
 
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Pat Hartman

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Congress has something like 14,000!!!! hours of video inside the Capitol. They know exactly who did what and when. They know for a fact that this was no insurrection. People trying to overthrow their government don't wander around looking at the art and taking selfies and chatting with the police. They bring guns and they threaten people. Congress should have prosecuted the people who did damage and given everyone else a ticket for trespassing, slapped them with a fine and been done with it. Instead we now have POLITICAL PRISIONERS here in the United States of America. Who would ever hat thought that possible? Congress has elected to keep that video secret and will not even give it to the defense attorneys to exonerate their clients. Now we're into the Spanish Inquisition yet again. This is NOT about 1/6. It is yet another impeachment attempt at Trump and a shot across the bow to companies like Gab who do NOT violate their client's first amendment rights. There's a new sheriff in town and this one doesn't believe in the Constitution nor any law that impedes their agenda.

I am not at all surprised regarding the info each FB post generates. They are after all in the business of selling your secrets. I'm not so sure about Gab. Sure they have the messages and some demographic info. But do they really not delete posts? Is there some law that says they shouldn't? That's one of the reasons Hillary needed her own email server. She wanted to be able to actually delete her emails rather than release them to a FOIA request and that wouldn't happen with a government email account since they would have backups with fairly long retention periods.

Since every action taken by Trump or Republicans is looked at as criminal or even downright evil, perhaps the crimes are actually being committed by the insane people calling everyone else racists while they try to take away their civil rights. There is a psychological term for that which escapes me at the moment. Either projection or transference, I think. I used to think the left were good people with poor solutions. Now I know that they are evil. That is how the last five years have affected me personally. People who's primary agenda is the destruction of Judeo/Christian values and the Constitution are evil. People who think Black and Brown people are victims are evil. It is the covert racism of low expectations. Blacks are just too stupid to be able to obtain a photo ID that allows them to vote!!!!! Somehow they manage to get on airplanes, buy guns, buy houses, get into federal buildings, open bank accounts, cash checks, buy boose, and access every other facility that requires a photo ID but somehow they can't get one to vote!! Who is stupid here? Bubus Americanas for buying that talking point. That's who. Sadly we have way too many useful idiots in the general population. That is my generation's fault for allowing the Marxists to take over our educational institutions and teach our children basket weaving and women's studies instead of history.
 

Isaac

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I used to think the left were good people with poor solutions. Now I know that they are evil. That is how the last five years have affected me personally. People who's primary agenda is the destruction of Judeo/Christian values and the Constitution are evil. People who think Black and Brown people are victims are evil. It is the covert racism of low expectations. Blacks are just too stupid to be able to obtain a photo ID that allows them to vote!!!!! Somehow they manage to get on airplanes, buy guns, buy houses, get into federal buildings, open bank accounts, cash checks, buy boose, and access every other facility that requires a photo ID but somehow they can't get one to vote!! Who is stupid here? Bubus Americanas for buying that talking point. That's who. Sadly we have way too many useful idiots in the general population. That is my generation's fault for allowing the Marxists to take over our educational institutions and teach our children basket weaving and women's studies instead of history.

I agree. The last few years have opened my eyes a lot.
However to be honest I think there are still good Democrats, good people whose primary motivator is compassion.
But taken as a whole, I think the left wing agenda is largely evil - even if some of the people are good ones, who have been hijacked by ridiculous subjects but those subjects are things we have to take seriously, regardless.

I'm under no illusions that Republicans will solve problems - even if Republicans win, the mere fact of continuous conflict between the two sides can make everything grind to a halt.

The most likely scenario is the general collapse of this nation, I think. It will be an interesting chapter of a History book some day, may be. All of the strange and meaningless things Americans became obsessed with, delusional in calling things real that weren't, and not which were, until confusion and chaos reigned. Until it dissolved and became annexed to some stronger nation who had kept pragmatism and reality firmly before it.
 

Pat Hartman

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The Republicans in Congress are feckless pieces of dog do do. They are the reason we are in this pickle. They preferred to have Biden elected than a second Trump term. They preferred to have an election stolen rather than Trump as president.
I think. It will be an interesting chapter of a History book some day, may be
We are living in 1984 and the Democrats have erased history.
 

Pat Hartman

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That was the report I got from my daughter who attended the rally. She and her friends left when they found out that the Capitol building had been breached.
 

Isaac

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That was the report I got from my daughter who attended the rally. She and her friends left when they found out that the Capitol building had been breached.

Lucky she made that decision. I can see a reasonable person going both ways - especially when there are videos of capitol police waiving people FORWARD. Very fortunate, she is, I'm glad she's safe. Other people went forward, took a picture, and have been in jail now for 8 months.

Who's proved themselves to be Dangerous from this event? Democrats.
 

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