SocraticGadfly: #DNCFraudLawsuit news with various updates: I'm glad Jared Beck ain't my lawyer

February 26, 2018

#DNCFraudLawsuit news with various updates:
I'm glad Jared Beck ain't my lawyer

Maybe, like Actual Flatulus, I mean Actual Flatticus Chris Chopin, he's OK with divorces and other family law.

But, in the case of federal civil law, he's ... well, he's a fucking idiot.

I'm referring to the DNC Fraud Lawsuit. I'm not a lawyer myself, so I couldn't tell you whether the DNC's actions during the 2016 presidential primaries are civilly actionable or not, let alone whether there's a reasonable chance of proving actual civil fraud.

Update, Oct. 29, 2019: This suit is dead, dead, dead on appeal at the 11th Circuit. I highly doubt it will be reheard en banc, and the Supremes will certainly not grant cert. The judges say, affirming district court, that the plaintiffs lack standing, primarily because they cannot trace any alleged financial injury to the defendants. Specifically, the court notes that while the donors list specific dollar amounts of donations, they don't list dates. Therefore, they can't prove that Debbie Wasserman Schultz et al injured them because donations and DWS statement dates can't be correlated.

The appellate court, like the district court, also says that plaintiffs do not state what particular statements defrauded or otherwise injured them, and how. Thus, between that and the DNC being a non-profit and the plaintiffs not being "consumers," they don't have a statutory cause, either, the court said.

And that, friends is Jared Beck in a nutshell IMO.

Oh, for additional fun, the appellate court told the district court to dismiss most claims with prejudice.

I DO know, though, reading the DNC's response to Beck's appeal of the federal district court's dismissal of the case, that, if the DNC is civilly actionable, it ain't gonna be by Jared Beck. (Sidebar: Any lawyer who puts "Esq" after his or her name, per his Twitter profile, strikes me as pretentious. And the older I get, the more I hate pretentiousness. Eddie Stephens, Twitter lawyer of April Deming, I'm looking at you too. And people more famous, with no connection to Flatty.)

Setting aside the fact that him spouting Seth Rich conspiracy theories undercuts his credibility (it does, and they ARE conspiracy theories and on March 14 his parents sued Fox and here is the official filing), he does appear to have failed to established "standing." And as the DNC notes, on both the issue of standing and First Amendment issues (freedom of association, mainly), the Supreme Court has set the bar pretty high. (And yes, I Googled a couple of the cases mentioned in the response.) This is an Olympic-level high jump bar, and Jared Beck is at the high school level if that.

Further undercutting the standing issue is that nobody sued the Iowa Democratic Party when it refused to do a recount. Caucuses involve not just voters, but more than primaries, people who hold actual Democratic Party positions.

Bernie the "Indy," good sheepdogger that he was, didn't sue Iowa Dems himself. (He did join, though not initially file, a lawsuit against the Arizona Secretary of State, and other legal actions. But that was against the SoS in Arizona, and likewise in other states; nothing against the Arizona Dem Party or any other.) Nor did anybody holding an office of say, president of the Polk County Democratic Party in Iowa.

The DNC's special agreement on hiring with the Clinton campaign, as documented by Donna Brazile,  and discussed in detail elsewhere, certainly would give Sanders standing, should he choose to sue. Don't hold your breath.

Update, Aug. 22: The Becks won't give up, trying to tie this suit to the DNC suit against Russia. Frankly, I think the DNC suit has little more legal validity, and even if you do win, how do you collect?

Update, Oct. 5: Looks like the Becks will get gifted a blind-hog acorn after all. The 11th Circuit will hear their appeal on Dec. 11.

Now, a sidebar issue or two.

==

First, smaller one.

If the Democratic Party, via its national organization the DNC and its affiliated (or franchised) state parties, were a dues-paying membership party, THEN, donors to Bernie Sanders who were also dues-paying members might be presented as having standing. (Sidebar: Even without the dues-paying, the fact that Bernie has that "I" after his last name as a senator further undercuts Beck's case, as I see it.)

This is an argument for the Green Party to go this way. It's also an argument for a related issue, to stop the overhyping of the "decentralization" plank of the Ten Key Values and to make the Green Party national a national party, not a 51st state party. Would indirectly help keep the Bob Fitrakises of the world from making the Ohio Green Party etc. into private domains.

==

Wholly separate What the Fuck sidebar: Beck is getting close to "drama actor" territory on the Parkland school shooting, specifically with David Hogg. See here and here.

And, I screenshotted that first link, just in case:


You had about zero credibility with the Seth Rich conspiracy theories. Now this. And, I'm sure DNC legal counsel is reading your Twitter feed, too. (You also didn't post an editing or apologizing Tweet, even though you later Tweeted that the school's surveillance was on a ... wait for it, wait for it ...

29-minute delay, which precisely undercuts you.

I said on Twitter last week that when Flatty groupie and self-anointed wingman ShirtLost DumbShit Zack Haller started promoting the "drama actor" angle, that Flatty surely wouldn't sink that low. Seeing Beck engage in this, too, I retract that; maybe Flatty would have gone down this road, too.

Beyond that, Beck also self-delusionally thinks the DNC or somebody might off him, too.

That said, and getting back to the pretentiousness, this is another argument for a Harvard degree (both he and Elizabeth are Harvard Law) being worth bullshit other than as a resume marketing tool. And, along with Preznit Kumbaya, he also proves that being editor of the Harvard Law Review doesn't necessarily mean everything.

(Sidebar within the sidebar: His isn't the only pretentiousness in all of this. The pushing of the suit by Gnu Media sites like "Disobedient Media" is another.)

Per Beck's currently pinned Tweet, I wonder if he filed the suit to gin up publicity for the Berniebro book that he's getting published.

Given that he's now lying about being "banned from Twitter," (as his spiritual quasi-mentor Alex Jones lied about being banned from YouTube) I wouldn't put anything past him. (He actually came back to Twitter on his own in late May, three months after I first wrote this.)

Further update on that? Beck said he was going to go to Gab, the Twitter alternative largely known for having a membership that largely starts with wingnuts and goes further right from there to the alt-right.

Yes, there may be some less winger people than that there, but they're a minority and that doesn't whitewash Gab's reputation. (When your icon looks like a Pepe the Fascist Frog knockoff, what else is there to say?)

And, he didn't have to go there. He could stay on Twitter (he may decide to keep a secondary presence) or he could go to another Twitter alternative besides Gab (and other alternatives do exist).

Oh, and that a winger like Hard Bastard is defending Beck on Twitter only confirms that Gab, and its general angle, is his true home. Surprised that ShirtLost DumbShit Haller hasn't headed there too. And, back to the dead and "sainted" mastermind behind these people? It again raises suspicion in my mind that Actual Flatticus, aka Chris Chopin, was a kind of double agent.

And, he's a 9/11 truther, too, it seems.

Shock me.
==

Back to the original thread.

If a Harvard Law SCL grad and Review editor can't write a complaint better than this, I agree with the DNC — he's forfeited the chance to amend.

Hell, a proto-conspiracy theory of mine, that he did this deliberately, makes more sense than his conspiracy theories.

That would be for two reasons.

One, perhaps due to some past legal expertise, he knew he couldn't win a suit like this, so he made sure to screw it up from the start.

Two, maybe someone paid him to tank.

Of course, some of this may parallel Ty Clevenger's legal actions vis-a-vis Seth Rich and Seth's family — stirring the legal shit pot just to gin up conspiracy theories (and fame and money). Speaking of, Beck appeared with Clevenger at some conference called MAGA Rising. Both were featured speakers.

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