Facing Conspiracy Evidence, Criminal Probe, ‘Voter Militia’ Suddenly Claims It Was A Hoax

This is not the smartest way to try weaseling your way out of a situation involving online criminal conspiracy.

That’s right: online criminal conspiracy.

Yesterday, the anonymous owner of the Facebook “Wisconsin Poll Watcher Militia” abruptly announced that the whole thing was supposedly a hoax:

The owner of the Facebook page that announced the “Wisconsin Poll Watcher Militia” recently changed the name of the page to “You’ve Been Trolled By Journalists With Zero Credibility” and has filled the page with posts describing how he created the page as a way to “troll liberals.”

The appearance of the Facebook page last week prompted a report at PoliticsUSA describing their efforts to organize Wisconsin conservatives to monitor the political activities of supposed felons. That in turn prompted news stories in the Madison Capital Times and elsewhere describing the “militia” and its activities, which included a supposed training session last Saturday.

Early this week, however, the page—originally a “Justice for Wisconsin” Facebook site—changed its content to make clear there was no militia, though it still claimed to be organizing poll-watching activities directed at Democrats.

Several posts made it clear that the “militia” was “fictional” and, indeed, just a one-person operation intended to spark liberal ire. …

Really? If that’s the case, that would make the owner of the page more a liar than a hoaxer. And given at least one exchange posted from Facebook onto Twitter over a week ago, it looks like the page was attracting armed fans ready to confront those awful dem’crat voters who were plenty more zealous than the page’s critics or detractors:

Whoops! That’s going to leave a mark:

Andrea Kaminski, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, told the Guardian that such an exchange constitutes conspiracy to commit a felony – voter intimidation. “They call themselves a militia, although who knows, it could be two guys with nothing better to do sitting in their basement,” Kaminski stated in a phone interview. Still, she said, “whether anybody will go to the polls or not, they’re already committing a crime because conspiring to commit a crime is a felony.”

And you really have to wonder about the timing of the “we’re just a hoax to make the liberal media look bad derp yadda derp” claim given coincidental event such as this…

Voting-rights advocates have asked Wisconsin’s attorney general to investigate a Facebook group that purported to call for armed individuals to confront voters at the polls in November.

… and this:

“We’re aware of the website, and we understand that law enforcement is looking into it,” [Reid] Magney [public information officer for the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board] told TPM.

Translation: a certain “troll” had better retain a criminal defense attorney, and fast. Voter intimidation and conspiracy to commit it during a federal election cycle are both federal felonies.

‘Nuff said

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