Originally published at: Fake MAGA electors in Michigan claim they are not guilty — they were "brainwashed" | Boing Boing
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Lame-ass defense. It doesn’t matter if they genuinely believed Trump had won the election, because what they did would still be a crime in any event.
If I genuinely believed that the bank made an error on my account balance that wouldn’t make it legal for me to show up with a gun and demand the teller give me the extra money I felt I was owed.
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“Listen, your honour, I totally believe that money was mine! How can that be theft?” 
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“I understand now that they were children, but at the time that I went to get my AR-15 from the car, I sincerely believed that they were tiny menacing extraterrestrials bent on exterminating the human species.”
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Are there any laws against brainwashing (gummit officials)? And if so, they should be demanded of whom are they implicating as doing the brainwashing (“and why their brains are so in need of washing in the first place?”)
now updated to “a maga/fascist consipracy”:
The Manchurian Candidate is a novel by Richard Condon, first published in 1959. It is a political thriller about the son of a prominent U.S. political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for a Communist conspiracy. [wikipedia]
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Good luck to them establishing in court that brainwashing is an accepted mainstream scientific idea.
That battle was fought decades ago, and the cults and academic friends won that round.
http://web.archive.org/web/20001203192600/http://linguafranca.com/9812/allen.html
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The charges have nothing to do with belief. They have to do with actions. They intended to represent themselves as legally-chosen electors, which they were not, regardless of any beliefs or what they were told.
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Hey, it worked for Squeaky Fromme.
checks Wikipedia
Uh oh.
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It wasn’t me, it was the lyrical speaker of my life…
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Party of personal responsibility, folks…
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“Your personal responsibility, of course, not mine.”
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If they were not legally responsible because they were brainwashed, would it then be legal to kidnap and deprogram them, and have them give after-the-fact permission? (That happened during the yahoo days of cult deprogrammers, who were frequently ex-military thugs.)
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Imperio!
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yeah, it’s not whether they were deceived about the election, it’s whether they intended to deceive by posing as electors. and they sure the @#$! knew they weren’t the legitimate electors.
hopefully the prosecutor is able to make the distinction clear to the jury
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These days, whenever I hear mens rea, the first thing that comes to mind is biological excretions.
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So, in the original scheme of things (before parties), the electors were sold as people of good judgement who would come together in the electoral college and appoint a consensus president.
Which seems frighteningly naive, but maybe it made for good propaganda. Now, here we are when fake “electors” are arguing that no one in their right mind would appoint them for their good judgement.
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… to prove rich white people crimes, we always have to read their minds and have Anubis weigh their hearts to see if they’re heavier than a feather
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Is it still brainwashing when it’s done willingly?
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What is the MAGAmorons’ excuse?
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