Theranos Destroyed Crucial Subpoenaed SQL Blood Test Database, Can't Unlock Backups (theregister.com) 148
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Failed blood-testing unicorn Theranos trashed vital incriminating evidence of its fraud, prosecutors said on Monday. The imploded startup's extensive testing data over three years, including its accuracy and failure rate, was "stored on a specially-developed SQL database called the Laboratory Information System (LIS)," according to a filing [PDF] in the fraud case against Theranos's one-time CEO Elizabeth Holmes and COO Sunny Balwani. The database "even flagged blood test results that might require immediate medical attention, and communicated this to the patient's physician," we're told.
Theranos claimed to have perfected technology that would allow industry standard blood tests to be run at great speed and with just a drop of blood, revolutionizing the health industry, and causing the business to be valued at $10bn. The reality, however, was that for one set of tests, the failure rate was 51.3 per cent. What does that mean? Prosecutors explain: "In other words, Theranos's TT3 blood test results were so inaccurate, it was essentially a coin toss whether the patient was getting the right result. The data was devastating."
So devastating that the database was subpoenaed by a grand jury digging into fraud claims against Holmes and Balwani. But when investigators turned to take a copy of the database, guess what? From the filing: "On or about August 31, 2018 -- three months after a federal grand jury issued a subpoena requesting a working copy of this database -- the LIS was destroyed. The government has never been provided with the complete records contained in the LIS, nor been given the tools, which were available within the database, to search for such critical evidence as all Theranos blood tests with validation errors. The data disappeared."
Theranos claimed to have perfected technology that would allow industry standard blood tests to be run at great speed and with just a drop of blood, revolutionizing the health industry, and causing the business to be valued at $10bn. The reality, however, was that for one set of tests, the failure rate was 51.3 per cent. What does that mean? Prosecutors explain: "In other words, Theranos's TT3 blood test results were so inaccurate, it was essentially a coin toss whether the patient was getting the right result. The data was devastating."
So devastating that the database was subpoenaed by a grand jury digging into fraud claims against Holmes and Balwani. But when investigators turned to take a copy of the database, guess what? From the filing: "On or about August 31, 2018 -- three months after a federal grand jury issued a subpoena requesting a working copy of this database -- the LIS was destroyed. The government has never been provided with the complete records contained in the LIS, nor been given the tools, which were available within the database, to search for such critical evidence as all Theranos blood tests with validation errors. The data disappeared."
Hope for the best... (Score:2)
Assume the worst.
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If the prosecutor had half a brain they'd subpoena the DBA and the Sys Admin for the backup password, and if they wouldn't cough it up threaten them with Contempt. Unfortunately for most lawyers AOL is still the cutting edge of technology.
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It's pretty simple, it was just last cleaned but the Hillary Clinton computer scrubbing team.
Just wipe it with a cloth.
Did it ever bother anyone that she thought you were all that stupid?
Re:Hope for the best... (Score:4, Insightful)
Assume the worst.
Isn't that how destruction of evidence works? Wasn't this part of the Enron fraud?
And if a lawyer advised them to destroy evidence, even if being guilty of destroying evidence is less than being guilty of whatever was in the evidence; isn't the lawyer in some deep shit?
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Aren't you generally allowed to assume deliberately destroyed evidence would have proven what you are charged with?
That being the case, the only logical reason to obviously destroy evidence is if you're guilty of additional things you don't want the prosecution to discover while gathering evidence of what they already suspect you of?
Make one wonder what else they're guilty of, that's so bad they're willing to basically surrender the defense of what they're already charged with?
Re:Hope for the best... (Score:5, Informative)
Aren't you generally allowed to assume deliberately destroyed evidence would have proven what you are charged with?
In state court, that is up to the state. In criminal courts, probably not. In federal civil trials specifically, yes (more or less). Rule 37(e) of the FRCP states:
(e) Failure to Preserve Electronically Stored Information. If electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, and it cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery, the court:
(1) upon finding prejudice to another party from loss of the information, may order measures no greater than necessary to cure the prejudice; or
(2) only upon finding that the party acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information’s use in the litigation may:
(A) presume that the lost information was unfavorable to the party;
(B) instruct the jury that it may or must presume the information was unfavorable to the party; or
(C) dismiss the action or enter a default judgment.
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TY for the clarification
Re:Hope for the best... (Score:4, Interesting)
I was involved with a situation that involved lawyers and smart phones.
I asked the lawyer if I could erase the phone, do a factory reset and wipe on it. He told me that wasn't something he could discuss, but that phones get lost or destroyed all the time.
I think they can't advise you about destroying evidence, but they can kind of educate you on when destruction of evidence becomes presumed to be "destruction of evidence" and not just a coincidental destruction of something that is evidence.
I took the lawyer's statement as the advice that I could legally wipe the device, sell it, destroy it, etc, because the contact we had with law enforcement was extremely limited -- basically getting voicemails and us not responding to them, and we had no reason to believe we were under formal investigation and there had been no demands to examine any property, so we were free to do whatever we wanted vs. being compelled to preserve the device.
He actually said the best thing at this point was just keep ignoring them, and that it was slightly disadvantageous for us to even pay him a retainer and have him tell the cops to leave us alone and talk to him (the lawyer), as this often piques their interest and can move informal inquiries into more formal investigations because they smell blood in the water.
My involved situation ended, thankfully, with my one meeting with the lawyer but I think it becomes a more formal risk of being accused of destroying evidence once you are under some kind of formal investigation and this has been communicated to you, even if you are not charged (yet).
Corrected Headline (Score:5, Insightful)
"Theranos willfully destroys evidence, refuses to provide copies of evidence"
Throw the book at 'em from the top down.
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Indeed. Boot them off of social media!
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Throw the book at 'em from the top down.
Using what laws, exactly? Courts aren't allowed to lock up rich people without long legal arguments.
Re:Corrected Headline (Score:4, Informative)
Well, destruction of evidence, for one.
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First you have to prove it was done deliberately, not just a hard drive failure.
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The proper term is "Spoilation of Evidence" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence). The precedent case is Brookshire Brothers, Ltd. v. Aldridge, where a man who slipped in a grocery store and hurt his back sued for damages after reporting it 5 days later. The corporate policy was not to keep any surveillance video footage after 30 days, so when it came to court the surveillance video footage was not available. The judge then in
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I'm curious how big this database was. If it was over a TB in size and hosted on a cloud hosting service like AWS, it was probably costing Theranos a pretty penny to keep it.
Unless Theranos was contractually obligated to save it, I'm not sure why they would.
Re:Corrected Headline (Score:4, Informative)
I'm curious how big this database was. If it was over a TB in size and hosted on a cloud hosting service like AWS, it was probably costing Theranos a pretty penny to keep it.
Nothing prevented them from downloading it to a local disk.
Unless Theranos was contractually obligated to save it, I'm not sure why they would.
Because if you're under investigation and you start deleting things it looks a lot like destruction of evidence.
However, TFA provides the information you're "looking" for, which is to say, willfully avoiding looking for, emphasis mine:
So in short, this is an extremely clear case of willful destruction of evidence.
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Ah, I missed the part where they deleted the database after it was subpoenaed. Yeah, that's not legal.
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They were legally obligated to hand it over, and they continued paying to host it for 3 months after they knew this was required of them. It would have cost nothing extra to let someone in to make a copy during that time.
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A subpoena obliges them to save it.
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Even at the most expensive it's like 2 cents a month per GB on AWS [amazon.com].
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Once the lawsuits start, there is a general order to not destroy any potential evidence - even if you think it's useless. It's no longer for you to determine - everything up to that point should be preserved.
Second, the subpoena was issued for that data
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She did that at the recommendation of Powell and Rice, who had done the same thing. People forget that, but it's utterly relevant. Several tens of millions of Iraq Fiasco-era emails that were "accidentally destroyed with no backup" just recently turned up as being "misidentified"for the last decade-plus.
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> Throw the book at 'em from the top down.
Not going to happen - they're protected.
Theranos was an intelligence startup meant to gather a comprehensive DNA database on everybody. They bet that with enough money they actually could develop the technology before they got caught - they were wrong. And it seems like technologies like ClearView have satisfied their lust for biometrics by now.
Henry Kissinger, Emissary of Death, doesn't just sit on any young lady's startup's Board of Directors.
In some ways, t
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> Throw the book at 'em from the top down.
Not going to happen - they're protected.
Theranos was an intelligence startup meant to gather a comprehensive DNA database on everybody.
That makes a lot of sense. That also explains why Holmes got hyped beyond all sanity.
Also nicely shows that money and power cannot make everything happen. They screwed up massively there. Even the "intelligence" people are pretty dumb on average. (Yes, I mean _you_, I know you are reading this. With apologies to any non-intelligence people.)
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"Theranos willfully destroys evidence, refuses to provide copies of evidence"
Throw the book at 'em from the top down.
Indeed. Otherwise this will become a common approach to things.
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Nobody want's to listen to an atonal cacophony performed by geriatric white men more than once.
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No. There are not.
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Actually there are, and there have been since the 2000 election when computerized voting was first rolled out on a large scale. It's not accidental that the official counts for every major election since then has been wildly divergent from the exit polls, which until that point matched very closely (with a few obvious exceptions like Chicago and Georgia.) Unfortunately that's not what is drawing the attention, the supposed fraud that they're claiming did not happen but there was no shortage of suspicious
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Correction: 1 American and a bunch of traitors.
Re: Corrected Headline (Score:2)
" 70+ million Americans voted against Biden,"
Yes, that was stupid.
"And it was nothing but corruption that put an man suffering from dementia and elder abuse above every other eligible American to run an entire country. "
But enough about Trump.
Re:Corrected Headline (Score:5, Informative)
Many courts had reviewed it, and guess what Biden won! Get over it.
For once try to be a patriot and stop hating America, because American core values is not following a person, but following on laws from a democratically elected set of representatives.
These rules had mathematical loophole in which Trump 4 years ago had became the president. Where even the liberals considered as a legal election, they didn't like it, they wouldn't respect the person, but they understood Trump won the election and knew he was president. They were some attempts by the liberals to see if they can change the Electoral Vote, but that mostly hanged on the idea that Trump was so obviously unfit to be president, that surly that some GOP Electors would change their vote. But that is about it.
After Trump Election, the Democrats basically reorganized their party, so in 2 years most of the Representatives who were voted in were far more moderate than previously, which allowed for a Majority in the House. In the presidential primaries, they picked a very moderate candidate. They pushed hard in Many States, that they felt they could flip. And Everyone on each side realized how important their vote was so a record number turned out.
So Biden won the Electoral Vote, and he had won The Popular Vote (While not legally binding, it does help mandate the principals).
Was every vote legal... Probably not, However there were also many cases of GOP Voter fraud as well, including putting up fake election drop off boxes. So the courts when pressed decided to take the results as it is better to allow the small number of fraud vs tossing out a whole states elections, where recount after recount didn't change the results. As well figuring out which vote was fraud and not, would be an impossible task, and probably would be equal to both political sides, balancing out the numbers.
So Biden Won. Get over it.
Re: More precisely (Score:5, Informative)
Many courts requested evidence, and declines to proceed when none was provided.
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Many courts requested evidence, and declines to proceed when none was provided.
When the best evidence you have to prove fraud is a drunk woman who simply accuses everyone in the room, claims the entire process was fraudulent (apparently that means Republicans who won their posts were in on the fraud) and even Nosferatu can't get her to shut up, you have no evidence.
If a person wanted to prove fraud, it isn't difficult. There is a number on the ballot that can be traced back to the individual when audited.
The number of untraceable ballots that would have to indicate voter fraud w
Re: More precisely (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost all laws about voting in all states in the USA and all countries around the world give a large amount of discretion to officials on the precise details of how the election is run. The simplest one to think of is how many and where should the polling stations be. So yes yes officials made changes in response to a global pandemic that where almost entirely within the law. There where a few occasions where they stepped outside the law and these where held up by the courts. I would note most other countries ariund the world looked on with bewilderment at some of the things Trump supporters where complaining about. The idea that you wiuld have an area with hundreds of thousands of voters and only one place to drop your vote off does not seem remotely democratic to the rest of the world for example.
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First, let's be clear that bad behavior is bad. Doing bad and illegal things doesn't become okay because somebody claims the same political beliefs as me, or you.
For example, Trump shouldn't have riled people up that way on Wednesday *in the same way* that people with opposite political beliefs should not have announced "if you get arrested for looting I'll bail you out" in August. Promoting a riot is bad, period. It doesn't matter who does it, it's bad.
A particular danger there is that if we endorse bad be
Re: More precisely (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, some changes were actually NEEDED due to the pandemic, and the state legislatures should have done those changes
The vast majority of the changes were within the laws those legislatures already passed. Legislatures can pass laws that delegate the implementation details to their state's executive branch and when it comes to elections they have passed many such laws.
The changes that have come to light that probably should have been approved by the legislature are so minor as to be irrelevant. For example, ~300 ballots without a date on the outside privacy envelope. First, that date being present proves nothing. It's not like I can't write "November 2, 2020" right now, despite it being January 2021. Second, the ballots were segregated and only counted after a court ruled they could be counted. Because the court looked that the legislature's intent when they put that date requirement in, and ruled that the intent was less valuable than the right of the voter to have their vote count.
In other cases, courts ruled that the changes were too large to go without legislative approval, and those ballots were not counted.
The claim that there were vast changes without proper legislative approval is just as much of a lie as Trump claiming to have won. This claim is a core element of the "Stop the Steal" campaign. It's just designed to sound much more reasonable while still building doubt about the election result.
Re: More precisely (Score:4, Insightful)
This claim is a core element of the "Stop the Steal" campaign. It's just designed to sound much more reasonable while still building doubt about the election result.
the premise of the Stop the steal campaign is that it does not mattrer who won the populr vote. Trump won because they supported Trump.
Every single act since then, including the obvious final push for a riot, kidnapping and execution of Mike Pence was entirely predictble ever since TRump was asked if he would accept defeat in the debates against Clinton 4 years ago, and he didn't say "Of course".
The evidence is all there, including Guiliani's orders for "trial by combat" Trump's orders to not be weak, but show strength, and Trump Jr's declaration that it was Trump's party and they were going to go after people and enjoy themselves while doing it, show their plans.
Election results for people who are loyal to a person, not a country, are not relevant to them or the person they worship. They tipped their hand when they demanded Pence to personally decide that Trump was president.
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Yes, some changes were actually NEEDED due to the pandemic, and the state legislatures should have done those changes.
They should not, and had no need to. Every court in the land has long recognized the ability of the legislature to delegate its authority to its respective executive branch, as long as the law sets out some parameters and the parameters themselves are legal. Every state legislature delegated its authority to run elections to executive branch organizations and people such as election commissions and secretaries of state. Most of them did it a century ago, and no one has had one mumbling word to say about
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and the state legislatures should have done those changes. It's the state legislatures who have the Constitutional power and duty to make those changes, and they should have done their duty. The pandemic had been going for almost a year by election time - it wasn't a surprise and the legislature could have held a quick vote. They didn't
In what country is it the purpose of the legislature to micromanage everything? North Korea?
Trump's approval rating -10% from June-November (Score:3)
To put some numbers to the above, the President's approval rating was around negative ten all the way from June through November. Biden was well aware of that. He figured all he needed to do was avoid saying anything that would make most people dislike Biden too.
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Trumps Poll numbers were always low. They rose when he shut-up and he actually did some work. But the people knew Biden already, and he would just let Trump talk himself into defeat.
Re:More precisely (Score:5, Insightful)
You should really look at the court results, not right-wing media. You'll get better facts.
Very few cases were of the "will not touch" variety, and those were mostly the state-suing-state ones which nobody wanted to touch because letting Texas sue Georgia over election law would also let California sue Alabama over election law, so any conservative who thinks they wanted to win those cases is not very good at thinking things through. Also, conservatives once cared about state's rights, and suing a state in federal court is about as anti-states-rights as you can get.
But most of the cases were dismissed because THEY HAD NO EVIDENCE. They won't tell you this on OANN, but it turns out to be perfectly legal and consequence-free for someone to stand in a landscaping company's lot and tell lots of obvious lies to gullible people. But if you tell those same lies in a court, well, it doesn't go well for you. This is why the "mountains of evidence" became "a few bits of hearsay" when they actually went to court, and you need more than hearsay (much more) to overturn an election.
Your random whining about Biden is wierd. Biden did interviews and debates. He didn't do any big rallies, but he released lots on information about how he would govern. Also, people already know him from his previous stints as senator and VP. Sure, he didn't run around screaming "I am so great!" and complaining about being discriminated against, but some of us like our leaders to be more emotianally secure than an average 6-year-old, so there's that.
Finally, the US Supreme Court long-ago decided that "state legislature" in the constitution means "state government, however that state organized that". And a good thing, since the administrations of conservative states also tweaked their election rules during this emergency, so the same states suing (like Texas) would be just as vulnerable.
We lost due to the courts! And Trump-haters! And constitutional judges who don't know the constitution (unlike me who is a constututional expert after an hour listening to Newsmax!). I remember when conservatives claimed to care about personal responsibility; I wonder where those folks went?
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> Very few cases were of the "will not touch" variety
Care to point to a couple instances where they tried the case?
You know - discovery opening arguments, witnesses, cross-examination, closing argument - a trial.
I don't think you'll find a bunch of those. I've read probably half the rulings and I haven't seen any that came after trying the case. All the ones I've read are pretty much "you're asking me to overthrow the election? Yeah right. I ain't touching this election. Go away." Which is probably
Re:More precisely (Score:5, Informative)
You know - discovery opening arguments, witnesses, cross-examination, closing argument - a trial.
First, these are civil cases. Not criminal. they don't flow the way a criminal trial does.
Second, the first steps of a civil case include the plaintiff showing they have 1) standing and 2) evidence. Then you go on to discovery and such. In a few cases, Trump's lawyers could not show they had standing. In the vast majority of cases, Trump's lawyers could not show any evidence of their claim.
You don't proceed to discovery, witnesses and such when the judge asks "Do you have any evidence?" and Giuliani replies "No".
The reason they were claiming a mountain of evidence in the media you consumed is because there's no penalty for lying in the media.
Re:More precisely (Score:5, Informative)
Very few cases were of the "will not touch" variety
Care to point to a couple instances where they tried the case?
You know - discovery opening arguments, witnesses, cross-examination, closing argument - a trial.
I don't think you'll find a bunch of those. I've read probably half the rulings and I haven't seen any that came after trying the case.
Correct, there are none. Courts don't bother holding trials when initial arguments from the lawyers show no reason to. This is true in every court, for every kind of case. For criminal cases, if the prosecutor fails to make their case before a grand jury, there are no indictments and no trial. For civil cases (as these were), if the lawyer can't demonstrate to the judge that there's some cause for action, there is no trial. Trump's lawyers, when pinned down (in a whopping five hour hearing in one case in Pennsylvania), were forced to admit there was no real evidence. So of course there's no trial. Why would you have a trial over literally nothing? That the plaintiff's lawyers admitted, up front, in the very first hearing, was literally nothing? There's nothing to try. Guiliani himself said so. Even that raging dipshit Lin Wood admitted it in court.
When even people that delusional admit to a judge they have nothing, of course the judge throws out the case without trial. You can't hold a trial over nothing. At least, not in a functional court system. The US court system has its flaws (ask black defendants), but it's not yet at the level of banana republic courts. It doesn't hold show trials over nothing to whitewash the desired outcome. Trump thought it would.
Trump was absolutely convinced the US courts were as venal and corrupt as he is. He was outraged to discover they were not.
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The court decided they weren't interested in trying the case, for various reasons. One of the several reasons is there isn't anything the court could reasonably do to remedy the situation if Trump were right.
Even when cases are dismissed early on, the judge writes an opinion describing the reasons. And pretty much ALL of them mentioned:
* Lack of evidence
* Lack of standing
So, when you say:
More precisely, many courts *declined to review it*.
To put the rulings in layman's terms "I'm not going to touch that with a ten-foot pole" was the theme.
you are unambiguously wrong. They did review all of the cases, and a cursory review showed that they were not going to succeed on merits. This is what happens when you file bad lawsuits with bad data and ask for expedited results.
Oh, yeah, a few also mentioned estoppel, where if you didn't like
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> So, when you say:
>> To put the rulings in layman's terms "I'm not going to touch that with a ten-foot pole" was the theme.
> you are unambiguously wrong.
"Maybe you should have filed suit about the election before it occurred, because now that the election has been held I'm not going to touch it with a ten-foot pole" == "I'm not going to touch it with a ten-foot pole".
BTW - Guess what happens if you DO try to file suit over something that hasn't happened yet? yeah ...
There's really no judicial
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What? Some suits about the rule changes *were* filed before election day. They failed, because as I said both the US and state supreme courts have decided that "state legislature" in the Constitution means "stave government" (since many states did not have constitutions at the time, so it was all pretty much in flux). So yes, you can file suit about an election rule change before the election, even if you are filing against judicial precident.
Also: "There's really no judicial remedy for state election o
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When the lawyer for the plaintiff alleges no evidence or cause for action, what would a witness testify to?
L: "So you're saying you don't know anything about any of this?". W:"That's correct.". L: "Thank you, next witness please!"
Re:More precisely (Score:4, Insightful)
> Very few cases were of the "will not touch" variety
Care to point to a couple instances where they tried the case?
You know - discovery opening arguments, witnesses, cross-examination, closing argument - a trial.
None of these cases were even close to the remotely solid ground you need to hold a trial, and were rightfully dismissed. Trials also take time, there are two cases that are proceeding, but the demands for a preliminary injunction to halt or pause the election process were rejected for lack of evidence. It would also be extremely optimistic to expect a large trial with huge consequences to the public to go from initial filing to end of trial in 2 months. 2 years would be a more likely time frame.
I don't think you'll find a bunch of those. I've read probably half the rulings and I haven't seen any that came after trying the case. All the ones I've read are pretty much "you're asking me to overthrow the election? Yeah right. I ain't touching this election. Go away."
If you actually read these rulings, then you did not understand them at all. These were as much of a slam dunk for dismissal as any cases I've ever seen. The majority of them presented literally no evidence - the prosecution/plaintiff is responsible for providing evidence of what they claim, and literally did not present any evidence at all to support their claims. Others were clear cases where the parties bringing suit had no right to do so. Others were barred by laches - watching an election rule get passed in March (and in Pennsylvania, actually passing the bill yourself), waiting until the election is over, seeing who won, and then claiming in a lawsuit that the rule is invalid and demanding emergency injunction to stop the election that has already happened, is not allowed. This has been part of the US legal system since it started. Another, and this is the closest to the wild misinterpretation above, were asking for remedies so ridiculous and unbalanced that they would never, ever be considered fair - one suit was on behalf of four voters who screwed up the outer envelope of their mail-in ballot, but lived in one of the counties who decided not to contact those with invalid outer envelopes so they could cast a provisional ballot, were suing not to have their 4 votes counted, which would have been a rational remedy; nor to invalidate the votes of those who cast provisional ballots in counties that did inform those voters, which would have been extremely unfair but there is at least a tiny bit of rationality to it; they wanted all 6,900,000 votes in the state invalidated. Many of these lawsuits asked for remedies that were actually illegal. One lawsuit the judge went point by point to explain how every single claim the plantiff made was invalid - not necessary, but a complete kick in the balls to the lawyer who brought that pathetic suit for wasting the court's time.
Good lawyers won't touch crazy lawsuits with insane remedies and no evidence. So the lawsuits got progressively worse lawyers resulting in comical mistakes - one suit in Michigan submitted to the court "evidence" which was actually a list of votes by county in Minnesota. Another submitted a group of ~1,000 "sworn affidavits" claiming fraud that were gathered on the internet, but under questioning admitted that he had not included at least 1,000 more of those "sworn affidavits" that were actually spam messages, which casts more than a little doubt as to the veracity of the ones submitted. Another failed to pay the filing fee.
These lawsuits and cases had no merit and were rightfully thrown out for obvious valid reasons, not because of some judicial avoidance of election suits.
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> It would also be extremely optimistic to expect a large trial with huge consequences to the public to go from initial filing to end of trial in 2 months. 2 years would be a more likely time frame.
Yes, that's right. So to claim that has happened is simply incorrect. There has been no trial and in all likelihood never will be. If there were, Biden would be at least halfway through his term before it was over, making the whole thing kinda pointless.
In order to get a judge to start such a trial, one woul
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> Very few cases were of the "will not touch" variety
Care to point to a couple instances where they tried the case? You know - discovery opening arguments, witnesses, cross-examination, closing argument - a trial.
I don't think you'll find a bunch of those.
You have a big issue. The investigations by the States, turned up the best witness presented, was a apparently Drunk lady whose testimony was that the entire thing was rigged. Her main testimony that could be called evidence was that lunch trucks cam in with boxes of ballots. After which she accused everyone in the hearoing, including people who were Reupublican and voted for Trump of being involved in the fraud.
And that is the problem. Coming in and simply saying there was fraud is not evidence. It isn'
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Certainly there are cases that did not need to be heard.
That's a different thing from saying there was a trial and Trump lost; that's all I'm saying.
It's going to take strong evidence indeed to get a judge to entertain a case seeking to throw out the presidential election, and the judges didn't think Trump had that kind of evidence, so they didn't order a trial.
> My vote can be traced back directly to me.
If that's true, your state is probably one that didn't follow their own laws. Secrecy of the ballot
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Certainly there are cases that did not need to be heard. That's a different thing from saying there was a trial and Trump lost; that's all I'm saying.
The question is, how is a trial to be conducted without evidence?
That's my issue. The evidence presented to the states is terribly lacking other than the idea that accusations are a form of evidence.
Especially since voter fraud is proven all the time. We're pretty good at catching people voting for dead relatives and registering and voting in multiple places.
And yet, who voted for who is easily traceable. The level of accusations of fraud that are claimed would be so immediately apparent that no one
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You're trying to cloud the issue. Rejecting the case due to lack of evidence or even actionable claims is not the same as refusing to touch it. There can be no trial when the plaintiff brings no evidence and when asked under oath turns out not to have brought any actual allegations. What would be tried?
The cases you saw where the judge reacted to the requested relief were cases where Trump's team was making claims that wouldn't have actually changed the result but requested the entire election be overthrown
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It is Trump's legal team even suggesting that as a remedy (repeatedly) that I find offensive. Especially in conjunction with demanding that a Secretary of State "find" a few thousand extra votes for Trump, then threatening him with vague "consequences" and finally throwing him under the bus. THAT is an attempt to steal an election!
I'm honestly not seeing what it is that you want to see tried in court. Honestly, the vast difference between what is said in press conferences and what is said under oath in Cour
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It's mostly because that's a Trump supporter argument claiming the courts didn't look at those mounds of evidence they're sure existed. More properly, Trump DID get his day in court, it just didn't take long because he didn't brink anything. Essentially, it is not (as Trump's supporters would have it) that the courts denied him his day by refusing to hear it. They DID hear it and found it lacking.
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They seem to be not only missing in action, they are persona non gratis in the current GOP.
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Having read the supreme court claim there was a lot of really STUPID crap in it.
What really sicked out to me.
Biden won the election without Ohio and Florida. The claim to the Supreme Court of the United States was the fact that a president hasn't won without Ohio... There is no law that Grants Ohio any credence as a must win state, it was just an interesting factoid. Also they brought up that Arizona had been a solid red state as well.
This wasn't worth the time for the courts to debate. It would be like
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If you think about it, it's really, really unusual for someone *running for president* to pretty much remain silent for weeks at a time; they are normally doing whatever they can to get in front of cameras
Actually, it's pretty usual. If you remember back to a time before candidates like Trump, who has been running his 2020 election campaign continuously through his four year presidency. All those rallies are campaign events. It's always been very, very weird that Trump has been doing those through his whole Presidency. True, even before Trump, Presidential campaigns have been getting longer and longer. Still though, most of the intensive campaigning by candidates traditionally happened pretty close to the el
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> legislatures can, in fact, delegate authority to set policy in their particular area to parts of the state bureaucracy.
They *can*, within certain limits. Perhaps they should have done so. On several instances they did not. Now, that's their fault - they should have acted. In at least one instance, the state legislators said that the action the SoS took was illegal, not authorized by statute. They failed to pass a resolution making that abundantly clear.
Re:More precisely (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. If there was a problem, it needed to be taken care of in a timely manner. Attempts to disenfranchise voters who voted in good faith after the fact are simply unconscionable. Nevertheless, over 2/3rds of the Republicans in the House just made a play to steal the election. I think, at this point, we're beyond the point where we can pretend that these are just normal people that we can have normal discourse with.
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That drowned out any discussion of the fact that the Constitution says the state *legislature* controls how elections are run - random bureaucrats don't have the authority to make new laws changing the deadlines and such. THAT would have been Trump's best argument, but I guess he was too worked up emotionally to be logical about that. Still, if you recognize that certain state workers messed up the election process, what the heck are going to do about it? Let Trump remain president and have another election next year? There's not really any way to fix it, so fuck it.
I generally agree with you but this is one of the things I am most angry (as Trump supporter) at Trump and his team over. In cases like MI where rules were interpreted in ridiculous ways like "I am afraid of the covid, means I am confined so I can vote by mail" is utter garbage. The decision facing the voter is changed according to if its done at the kitchen table where family members can see etc, or the ballot both in private. I really believe that! I also believe that we can have a societal discussion on
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In that case you'll be happy to know that they did file lawsuits before the election [apnews.com]. It's a game that's been going on for decades, actually [washingtonpost.com].
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More precisely, many courts *declined to review it*.
Since there was nothing worth reviewing, what else were they supposed to do?
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Um, okay ...
Nothing relevant to say? That's too bad, because sometimes you have some really good comments, nitehawk.
One thing that stands out about you is that sometimes you're wise enough to *learn* something when someone points out something that doesn't match your initial impression. That stands out in contrast to the people who insist on remaining ignorant, defending their error and therefore never learning anything.
If you think of something interesting to say relevant to this thread, I look forward t
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Went great except for some delusional violent idiots who live streamed their own crimes and cried like a baby when an airline kicked them off for not wearing a mask. We can only hope that Trump gets to the Jim Jones level and has them drink Kool Aid. Everything would be resolved.
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Brat! (Score:2)
Did they look in her hair? (Score:2)
Theranos (Score:4, Funny)
Thanos... er Theranos has data disappear in a snap, news at 11.
How did the database fail? (Score:2)
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The subpoena was 3 months old. It doesn't take 3 months to copy a database to comply with a subpoena.
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The title says "Can't unlock backups", which means "The court can't unlock the database without the credentials that the company refuses to provide." Admittedly the backup might be gibberish rather than the real thing, but that seems unlikely.
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I read TFA (but it was before it was posted to /., so it's ok). The original database was deliberately decommissioned while it was under subpoena, and prosecutors have e-mail trails proving this, including the IT guy's arse-covering e-mail saying "If we do this, we probably won't be able to restore it later". They also have e-mails involving the company's internal lawyers discussing the idea of supplying a copy of the data without any of the executables necessary to interpret it, because apparently they wer
Unwise, to say the least (Score:2)
It's called spoliation of evidence, and the court will have remedies for this behavior that Theranos won't like.
Lol (Score:2)
Theranos (Score:3)
It was obvious BS that it could detect pathogens in a drop of blood. In many clinically relevant infections, the patient can have as low as one pathogen per milliliter. References: https://jcm.asm.org/content/36... [asm.org] and https://cmr.asm.org/content/31... [asm.org] (note: a CFU is a single viable bacteria) --and doctors need to be able to detect that. Note also, indirect methods such as checking for antibodies, which is unreliable anyway, won't reveal active infection. A drop of blood is only about 10 microliters (10 microliters is 1/100th of a milliliter). Basic math shows that the chance of Theranos detecting an infection with 1 per mL is low. So how did Theranos get $1 billion for making up shit?
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No.
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Wait until the government decides to rape your daughter.
Which is essentially what happens in the military — some other enlisted rapes your daughter, then the government covers it up because it makes it look bad — making it a willful accomplice.
Of course, the coverup is actually handled by people, but since they are paid by a government which engages in no meaningful oversight over them, that's really just splitting hairs.
None of this is intended to be an endorsement of the mob, but only to provi
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Whistler:
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward men.
Bernard Abbott:
We're the United States Government! We don't deal with that sort of thing.
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That sounds like advice from a very bad lawyer.
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That reasoning may be good enough for a mob, but that is not how the court will see it.
Not sure what you mean by that. The legal rule of thumb here is that if evidence is subpoena'd and shown to be deliberately destroyed to prevent the court from seeing it, then the court may choose to presume that the evidence was unfavorable in a "fairly plausible" way. This happens all the time, although courts are also supposed to use discretion with these things.
From readingTFA it appears this may not have been an Opps but a willful attempt to destroy evidence, which is obstruction of justice; which they could add on to the fraud charges and depending on the statute could send them to prison for up to 10 years. I would guess prosecutors are looking to see who they can squeeze with an obstruction charge to get someone to flip; especially someone lower in the food chain.
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Probably the DBA or Sys Admin, to get the backup password.
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Probably the DBA or Sys Admin, to get the backup password.
My thoughts exactly. I'm guessing someone made a backup "just in case..."
Re:Hey, I've seen this one (Score:4)
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If they "misplaced" the database AFTER it was subpoenaed, it becomes a crime.
If they destroyed the database to prevent it from becoming evidence, that's also a crime.
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If they deliberately destroyed it it's because they know the destruction was less of a crime than the contents.
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I don't think
FTFY. Gibberish, dude.
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Mod parent up. This is a description of "spoliation" and the remedy of an "adverse inference". It happens often in a civil case.
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Apropos of nothing, I've noticed that troll rhetoric isn't of the highest quality.
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I'd suggest at least trying to work in something about the following:
- Dominion voting systems and Venezuela's secret president, Zombie Chavez
- Biden campaign vans dumping out ballots in parking lots
- Hidden ballot suitcases
- Prohibited observers
Additional points may be awarded for working in the Illuminati, Antifa, the Trilateral Commission, or reptoids. There is a whole universe of fictitious, inflamma
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I'm sorry, but Antrim County? You seriously think there are people in Antrim County competent to actually deliberately delete a forensic database? Sorry, but most of those folks would be lucky to find the ON switch 4 out 5 times. I grew up in Grand Traverse County, there are good reasons why refugees from the area refer to it as North Redneckistan.
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They are claiming it is legitimate medical data. A quick look at the database would show this is a lie. Suddenly the database disappears!
Are they dumb enough to think the courts will just shrug and let everyone go free?