Criminalize lies from candidates, proxies and elected/appointed officials that rise to the level of subversion or sedition

Liberty Election Reform & Political Integrity
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Let me preface with 100% support for First Amendment rights.

This proposal seeks a method for holding legally accountable those candidates, proxies acting for a candidate’s benefit, and elected/appointed officials who engage in intentional lying that rises to the level of subversion or sedition.

The First Amendment does not protect against making terroristic threats, nor should it be considered as a legal basis for the protection of a candidate, or proxy acting for a candidate’s benefit, or elected/appointed official who knowingly and willingly chooses to engage in lying that rises to the level of subversion or sedition.

The proposal is in response to candidates, proxies acting for a candidate’s benefit, and elected/appointed officials who willfully communicate known falsehoods concerning opposition persons, entities and issues, and whose corrupt communications drive the deterioration of the civil discourse. And whose corrupt communications deprive society at large of the ability to embrace our commonalities as Americans, and instead react to the falsehoods promulgated by such candidates, proxies acting for a candidate’s benefit, and elected/appointed officials who knowingly choose to engage in communicating falsehoods.

Examples of what the proposal seeks to remedy include: claiming an opponent holds a position or ideology that the opponent does not, misrepresenting a State’s law on matters such as abortion, willingly misrepresenting or withholding intelligence information, knowingly pursuing prosecution based on falsified information.

A comprehensive set of legal tests should be crafted in order for courts to be able to determine whether lies made by candidates, proxies acting for a candidate’s benefit, and elected/appointed officials rise to the level of subversion or sedition. Appropriately substantial penalties for offenses should be defined.

The policy should be highly restricted in scope, and crafted in a manner to only apply to individuals communicating during election activities, individuals acting as proxies (either directly or through an organization) for a candidate’s benefit at any time, to actively serving elected/appointed government officials communicating in their official capacity, and to prosecutors and judges acting in their official capacity.

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Yes! Should also apply to members of mainstream media who push those lies!

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Yes I totally agree! Lying that is politically motivated is propaganda and was prosecuted during war times and I think it must be prosecuted now. If we have subversive and deliberate lies to sway the public on our news casts and in Congress how are you to ever get to the truth? And without the truth how can any sound judgement be conceived! There must be new laws made since old ones do not seem to be acknowledged and the new laws must see lies as considered felony attempts to corrupt.
We need TRUTH in press or it’s no press at all and in our House of Representatives there is supposed to be honor and ethics with righteous men not lying thugs seeking lucre and power. By habitual lies. Just Another reason why there must be term limits. Prosecutions must be swift against liars so the harm can be minimum of the lies deceits.

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No clipping videos or cutting words out of something that was said. No violent rhetoric. If something is said, when they find out that it was a lie, they have to come out and say the truth. Or there is some kind of consequence.

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If you look closely, it does. “proxies acting on behalf of…”

And it has to be highly restricted in nature since at some point it will be used against us. Plus the point is not to restrict speech per se, but really is to shut down the over the top lies that are clearly damaging the country.

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A concrete example of a case under this proposal, would be to prosecute Collin Allred and people associated with his campaign for intentionally lying about Texas abortion law. The campaign ran a number of ads whose core message was that women cannot be treated for ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage in Texas due to Ted Cruz’s draconian abortion law that harms women.

The first outright lie is that Ted Cruz had anything to do with crafting Texas law. Ted is a US senator, not a Texas senator. SO the aspect of subversion in this lie is to undermine the publics understanding of how government works.

The second outright lie is the claim that it is illegal in Texas for a doctor to treat miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. Meanwhile this is the actual relevant verbiage cut-n-pasted from Texas code from the official Texas website (highlights mine):

Sec. 245.002. DEFINITIONS. In this chapter:

(1) “Abortion” means the act of using or prescribing an instrument, a drug, a medicine, or any other substance, device, or means with the intent to cause the death of an unborn child of a woman known to be pregnant. The term does not include birth control devices or oral contraceptives. An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to:

(A) save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child;

(B) remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion; or

(C) remove an ectopic pregnancy.

(2) “Abortion facility” means a place where abortions are performed.

(3) Repealed by Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1, Sec. 3.1639(62), eff. April 2, 2015.

(4) “Department” means the Department of State Health Services.

(4-a) “Ectopic pregnancy” means the implantation of a fertilized egg or embryo outside of the uterus.

So the outright lies by the Allred campaign are clear to see in just a few lines of the Texas Code. The element of subversion is to undermine the public understanding of legal rights, in this case potentially to the harm of an individual not seeking treatment because the Allred ads say it cannot be obtained in Texas.

All of this said, the way the proposal would actually work is that having it out there would have forced the Allred campaign to reign themselves in, and they could still argue their point but not disingenuously so. And of course nobody would be prosecuted if they argue their point without resorting to lies that rise to the level of subversion or sedition. So basically a stick to remind people to keep it real or else. Not a mechanism to shut down the market place of ideas.

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An example of what would not be prosecutable under this policy is to question election results. As long as the language used to question the results does not state as fact things that are not provably true, it would not fall under this policy. Stating “in my opinion…” or “the evidence strongly suggests…” or “the changing numbers strongly indicate…” and so forth, would not violate this policy, since none of these are objectively false.

And as stated earlier, the policy would only apply to candidates, proxies, and elected/appointed government officials, and not to private citizens.

Again the idea of the policy is just to have a stick out there reminding people to keep it real or else. It is not about slowing down in any way the market place of ideas.

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One final comment about this proposed policy. The legal tests should include the establishment of a pattern of repeating the lie that rises to the level of subversion or sedition. The policy is not intended to be a “gotcha” policy, but rather a “stick” to remind candidates, proxies, elected/appointed officials that their lies can cause very real damage to the country so they need to voluntarily reign themselves in or else. And again the policy does not apply to private citizens.

I would further suggest that the primary enforcement mechanism is to allow any person to sue any candidate, proxy, elected/appointed official who said person believes has violated the laws/regulations/rules that would emanate from implementing the proposed policy.