Friday, June 04, 2021

What Does "Accountability" Mean?

 At the end of this long NPR article on the Arizona "audit" comes this interesting statement:

"The incentive structure that has been created is one in which so far we've seen zero accountability for lying and pushing these narratives," Masterson, the former DHS official, said. "We don't see anyone really, truly being held accountable."

Now, who would be "held accountable," and how?

First, keep this in mind:

Because I'm guessing "accountability" would mean, at the first "gatekeeper" level, having to answer questions from a legitimate reporter, say an NPR reporter, rather than questions put to you by OAN or Gateway Pundit.  But if that's in any way "accountability," it's a pretty weak standard, especially up against Facebook or Twitter.  Not that either of those imposes any burden of accountability, but they certainly uphold nonsensical standards of "truth" which neither WaPo nor the NYT are ever going to banish with "accountability" by their reporters.

"Accountability" is one of those terms everyone has appropriated for their own purposes, like "truth" or "justice."  But this isn't the result of "post-modernism" or of rampant, unchecked social media; it's always been this way. (Yes, that is another discussion entirely.)

The promoters of the idea Trump won the 2020 election base most of their claims (now) on "voter fraud."  They like that idea because as a legal principle, fraud vitiates everything.  It's true:  prove fraud, and you can potentially undo a contract, right back to zero.  You can undo a transaction, right back to its beginning.  Fraud corrupts everything it touches, and the corrective to that, under law, is to put back to square one what fraud touched.

That's the idea, anyway.

Non-lawyers like Mike Lindell (just as a stand-in for the group) think proving fraud in Arizona will be the thread that undoes the tapestry and returns Trump to office because:  fraud!  It doesn't work that way even if such massive fraud could be proven, but they choose not to understand that.  Besides, what do they care?  They are truth-seekers hell bent on arriving at the place of "accountability"!  And accountability under fraud means you don't get to keep the gains of your fraudulent actions.

Now, in one direction on this path lie the lawyers saying "Yes, and that's why fraud is so hard to prove."  Rather like murder, if you need an analogy:  we don't execute someone because they were near the dead body at some point, and also near the murder weapon, and we don't really have anyone else to blame so:  tag, you're it!  Capital murder has a fairly high bar to clear (for which OJ Simpson is still grateful), and fraud claims the same high bar.  If you're going to push everything back to square one, that's quite a serious exercise of power.  There has to be an equally serious reason to do it.  But I'm not interested in the merits of an electoral fraud claim (if there are any, which there aren't in Trump's case), I'm interested in the question of accountability.  It's not, in this matter of fake audits, whether the audits are fake (they are), but what do we do about it?

First, is there a civil or criminal action to be brought?  Against whom?  The Arizona Senate ordered the audit of Maricopa County ballots.  The handling of those ballots, the actual physical possession, storage, and preservation of those ballots, is subject to federal law.  If the DOJ is going to investigate and possibly prosecute under that law, it will take time.  That would be "accountability," but it won't happen tomorrow, and even if the DOJ filed charges today, would that be sufficient “accountability"?  Something like 450 people have been charged criminally for the Jan 6th insurrection, but some still fear more violence because...well, because of the 1st Amendment, to put a bottom line to it.  When does accountability do its job?

Can the Arizona Senate be sued for ordering such a clumsy and incompetent "audit"?  I don't see how.  The legislature can't be sued for taking legislative action.  The results of those actions can be questioned in court, but a court is overseeing the Arizona audit now, and hasn't shut it down.  Wanting someone to be held accountable is one thing; having the legal means to do it, is another.  The latter is the expression of society in protecting its interests; the former is just private opinion.  Which one should rule us all?

How else would we hold someone, somewhere, accountable for this foolishness?  Arizona is being fried over this audit. It has come to a halt, and while a few states have seemed "audit-curious," it's not exactly the latest dance craze sweeping the nation.  Arizona is an international embarrassment.  The audit is doing more to expose the stupidity of the arguments for election fraud than to promote them.  And yet the fact that we can't make a bad idea just disappear in a puff of smoke has "some people" worried.

"Some people say," ya know.

The fact is, we can't hold people accountable for stupid ideas and sheer nonsense. Oh, we can:  the people of Arizona can vote out of office all the clowns in the Senate who supported this audit.  If they are embarassed enough, maybe the people of Arizona will.  These "narratives" are purest moonshine and bullshit, and the place where they really matter, the courts, have never even entertained them.  When Rudy Giuliani made his one courtroom appearance on behalf of Trump's "Big Lie," he admitted in open court that he was not bringing a fraud claim.  Giuliani knew he couldn't show the elements of fraud in court, and he didn't even begin to try.  Contrast that with Mike Lindell's lunacy:

“The month of August, for this, is subjective,” he said in an interview. “It is my hope that Donald Trump is reinstated, after all the proof comes out, by the end of August, but I don’t know if it’ll be that month, specifically. I started saying August…about four weeks ago. That was my estimation. I spoke about it with my lawyers who said that they should have something ready for us to bring before the U.S. Supreme Court by July. So, in my mind, I hope that means that we could have Donald Trump back in the White House by August. That’s how I landed on August, and I’m hopeful that that is correct.”

Now, here's the fun part of that article, and where reality and legal Twitter collide, and the collision is hilarious rather than tragic:

However, not every luminary in Trumpworld is convinced that a grand reinstatement will occur. On Sunday, Trump’s former senior legal adviser and attorney Jenna Ellis tweeted that though she thinks the 2020 presidential election was “lawless,” she conceded, “No, President Trump is not going to be ‘reinstated.’” Ellis later tweeted, “I’ve spoken with President Trump several times over the past few days about election integrity.”

On Wednesday, Lindell said Ellis’s tweet was “ridiculous” and, “I’ve spoken to lawyers about this and she doesn’t know what she is talking about.”

Jenna Ellis is hardly the brightest luminary in the legal firmament, but even a blind hog finds an acorn.  And she's eating Lindell's acorn.

So, Lindell thinks if he produces the "proof," the Supreme Court will magically rule on it.  A) Lindell's original deadline for this dramatic reversal was April, or maybe May. B) He has yet to produce this "evidence."  C) The legal system simply doesn't work that way.  The Supremes, for example, have already announced their docket for the year.  Lindell is not going to produce anything that will make them reach down, pluck it from the internet, and issue a final ruling, by August.  Or anytime, really.  "Accountability" doesn't work that way, either. (Yes, since I first drafted this Lindell has filed the suit he was apparently talking about.  Ironically, it asks only for monetary damages for him, not that the courts reverse the elections on behalf of the American people. Mostly because, as stupid as that suit is, that’s something he simply can’t ask the courts to do.)

This isn't a TeeVee show, or an action movie.  The good guys don't win decisively and the bad guys are never banished from the field (or dissolve away conveniently into dust).  The results are actually more commonly like this:

That's as good a prediction of the future as any I've seen.
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