I remain doubting malaise

[Fiendish Thingy]

12. Easily refuted clickbait nonsense

Yesterday’s Atlantic:

The people who are still convinced Kamala won.

https://apple.news/AJFb2dghVTXWC1X3bIepozQ

One popular example alleges that an NSA audit of the 2024 election found that Harris, not Trump, had actually won, according to a former CIA officer who allegedly participated in the audit. On July 31, an anonymous Substack newsletter called This Will Hold, which claims to offer “the truth they’re not telling you,” published a post stating, “In an exclusive interview, former CIA operative Adam Zarnowski laid out pieces of an intricate network of bad actors and covert operations behind transnational organized crime and the stolen 2024 election.” It adds that “none of his revelations are classified” and that Zarnowski “is prepared to testify under oath.” The implication of this bombshell is clear to the author: “We have the authority and the obligation to remove this entire unelected, illegitimate regime.”

The theory has many problems. No evidence exists for Zarnowski’s claims about his background other than his own word. Elsewhere, a LinkedIn profile calls him a “former CIA paramilitary operations officer” and an expert in the subject of human trafficking, but nothing suggests his statistical or elections expertise; a self-published book is full of oddball claims. I attempted to reach Zarnowski using a couple of different methods but received no response. (Snopes, which was able to contact Zarnowski, reported that he did not provide definitive proof of his professional background or the alleged audit.)

Moreover, nothing in the Substack post actually supports Zarnowski’s claims; instead, it offers innuendo about voting-machine failures and the companies that sell elections equipment. Neither the NSA nor any other federal agency conducts elections audits, nor is there any plausible explanation for why they would do so. The absence of an actual audit here or anywhere else is notable: As with the claims offered by Trump and his allies in 2020 and 2021, the theory relies on implication, with hard evidence seemingly always just out of reach.

But there are more fundamental issues of logic in the theory. States actually do conduct audits of their votes, and unlike the supposed NSA audit, the process and results of those reviews are public. The theory appears to suppose that Democratic officials in key swing states conspired to help Trump and hurt Harris, for whatever unstated reason. These claims “ring as hollow and grifting as nearly identical claims made by those who profited off the Big Lie that Trump didn’t lose the 2020 election,” David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit, wrote in an email.

Much more at link, or go to the Atlantic site.