The Vaccine Chief Dog Muzzle Hoax?

Six words I never thought I'd write together.

Axios (Nate Rau & Adam Taburin) has the story:

A Tennessee investigation found evidence that the state's fired vaccine chief, Michelle Fiscus, purchased a dog muzzle that she previously claimed someone had mailed in an attempt to intimidate her.

Why it matters: Fiscus, who denied sending herself the muzzle in a Monday tweet, has characterized her firing as a political move driven by Republican state officials after she shared a memo citing state law about whether adolescents can seek medical care, including a COVID vaccine, without their parents' permission….

Details: The Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security found through a subpoena that the Amazon package containing the muzzle traced back to a credit card in Fiscus' name, according to an investigation report obtained by Axios….

Fiscus apparently claims that the Amazon account was set up by someone who impersonated her, but (Axios says) "did not discuss the use of the American Express card in her name." (Thanks to Prof. Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit) for the pointer.)

Comments

[DaivdBehar]

I always believe the accuser.

[santamonica811]

I guess it's a good thing for society's sake, but I'm always a bit disappointed in criminals (and bad actors) who just act as if they want to be caught. One possibility is that they are just dumb. Another possibility is that they have been doing similarly-dumb bad acts all their lives, have gotten away with these in the past, so they naturally think, "Hmm...my own credit card? Why not...who's gonna think about checking this out?"

I'm trying to engender some sympathy for this troubled woman. But I can't...people who cry wolf or cry victim unfairly really fvck things up for all true victims. It's just appalling. And if this story is true; I hope they throw the book at her.

[Bored Lawyer]

Why it's almost like someone rents a van, fills it with explosives, bombs a major public buiding, and then goes back to the rental place to get their deposit back.

[Brett Bellmore]

Just as a general matter, smart people tend to avoid outright criminality except where they can be reasonably confident of not being caught, so you mostly just see the stupid criminals.

[MatthewSlyfield]

"Just as a general matter, smart people tend to avoid outright criminality except where they can be reasonably confident of not being caught"

Which is more often than you might imagine.

The US national average clearance rate (arrest was made, not conviction) for murder is only 60% and it goes down hill from there.

The national average clearance rate for property crimes is under 26%, and that was before the anti-police riots and the pandemic.

[Greg J]

You might want to look at the vast number of very stupid "hate" hoaxes, and come to the conclusion that:

1: If there were actually much racism in America, people wouldn't have to fake it
2: If there were actually much racism in America, people who were actually victims of it would get really upset at those faking it
3: People pull these really stupid hoaxes because they expect that no one will look into the matter enough to blow through their lies.

Gee, I wonder why they expect that?

[F.D. Wolf]

Used her own credit card. What a criminal mastermind. Never heard of a gift card apparently.

[Krayt]

Paid for with cash.

Of course, the sale time and register number are in the store's records, so if the security cam footage still exists, oh look, who is that paying cash for something at that regisyer at that moment.

Though that would be a lot of investigative work for something not a murder or theft of many thousands.

[Brett Bellmore]

Apparently thought nobody would investigate, or that her flat claim would be sufficient.

Well, there's precedent for that in sexual harassment investigations, why not hate crimes?

[Calliope]

There's a pretty good precedent of hate crimes also being hoaxes. Basically every single one that happens on a college campus, for instance.
They mostly work out, as the press drops the story once it falls apart, so maybe she thought it would play out the same way with her hoax.

[Sarcastr0]

Screw this 'all hate crimes are hoaxes.'

It's anecdote used by people for whom the existence of real hate crimes is awkward for some reason.

There are some hateful racist people out there willing to break the law. There are also some weird desperate people yearning to be victims and willing to break the law to make it so.

[Brett Bellmore]

I would never say that ALL hate crimes are hoaxes, (Though I would say that "hate crimes" should not be a legal category.) but it's clear that a very large percentage of them are. Especially the ones that don't actually cause serious injuries or property damage.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

It's been going on for a long time. A young William Castle did it in the late 1930s, faking a Nazi attack on his theater, to drum up support for a German actress who didn't want to go back to Germany and to sell tickets. I'm sure it happened before that too.

[Bored Lawyer]

Screw this beating-up-on-straw men arguments. There are many hoax hate crimes. Enough to make one skeptical when news of one hits the press. There are also many real hate crimes. Which should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

No, hate crimes should not be a legal category. There are crimes, period. Either harm was done, or it was not.

[Brett Bellmore]

Not only are there many hoax hate crimes, but many of the actual hate crimes are deliberately not prosecuted as such, because the victims are the 'wrong' group.

It's a political category, not a criminal category.

[Sarcastr0]

Basically every single one that happens on a college campus, for instance.

Not a strawman, chief.

[Sarcastr0]

Also:
https://reason.com/volokh/2021/08/17/the-vaccine-chief-dog-muzzle-hoax/#comment-9051571

[Sarcastr0]

And if you want to see what an actual strawman looks like:
https://reason.com/volokh/2021/08/17/the-vaccine-chief-dog-muzzle-hoax/#comment-9051796

[Rossami]

For someone with your chosen username, you seem to have trouble with the identification of sarcasm and hyperbole.

I'll admit to frequently being sarcasm-impaired. But when even I can see it, I'd think given your username that it would be obvious to you too.

[Sarcastr0]

No, the sarcasm is what's creating the strawman. ML is sarcastically implying that people are arguing there are no hoaxes.

Which no one is.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Sarcastr0
August.17.2021 at 8:31 am
Screw this ‘all hate crimes are hoaxes.’"

You're no one?

[Ben of Houston]

The thing is that real hate these days tends to manifest in petty rudeness, snide remarks, and personal grudges, things that don't make good headlines. Then, most people who are victims of the occasional real hate crime just want to be left alone and to get on with their lives. However, people who want to be famous are much more likely to fake it and then go to the media. So while most hate crimes might not be fake, most HEADLINES about hate crimes are about the fake ones.

Also, you have the non-trivial issue of abused women pretending injuries were from a hate crime to protect "their man". We've seen it before.

[Sarcastr0]

most HEADLINES about hate crimes are about the fake ones.

Any support for that proposition? Or is it just something you want to believe?

[Ben of Houston]

I don't have any grand statistics, but we have multiple prominent incidents
1: The Jesse Smollett case, where he hired his coworkers to attack him in the middle of the night.
2: The college girl in Wisconsin who was "set on fire". Police announced months later that it was fake, after she had been on the entire talk show circuit.
3: The NASCAR "noose" which turned out to be a garage door strap.
Each of these got dozens or hundreds of headlines despite being fake.

Then you have "hate crimes" like swastikas drawn in sidewalk chalk, a childhood prank that was horrifically insensitive but harmless.

Unless you count George Floyd (which I don't think counts since it was general police excess force, not racially motivated), I can't recall a single major hate crime against minorities in recent years that had major press coverage. A real hate crime where someone was actually harmed that got a lot of press traction.

It's fairly clear that the fake ones are much more dramatic, tell a better story, and have people more willing to talk to the press. The more headlines, the more likely it is to be fake.

[Brett Bellmore]

"I can’t recall a single major hate crime against minorities in recent years that had major press coverage."

And there you have my beef with the whole concept of 'hate crimes'; Why should only hate crimes against minorities matter? But that's the way it works: When was the last time you heard of a hate crime against a white person being made a big deal of?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"It’s anecdote used by people for whom the existence of real hate crimes is awkward for some reason."

You sound like someone for whom the existence of hoax hate crimes is awkward for some reason.

[Sarcastr0]

I acknowledge they exist. I did in my OP.

Do you acknowledge real hate crimes occur?

[apedad]

I know I shouldn't be but I'm constantly amazed at the stupidity of humans.

This took time and planning and then execution - and to what end?

Fuck....

[JohnSteed]

"the account was set up by someone impersonating me" can now join "myTwitter account was hacked" as really, really believable excuses. (Along with "the emails that I don't question the validity of bear all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation".)

[Michael P]

"Our confidential source, a political opposition researcher, couldn't possibly be talking to the media."

"We found no clear evidence of specifically political animus that led to these violations."

"It is perfectly normal to hand out non-prosecution agreements instead of subpoenas."

[MikeFr]

She could be innocent.
Perhaps she just loaned her credit card to the same Nigerians that Jussie Smollett hired.

[Bored Lawyer]

Wow. Those guys get around. Chicago, Tennessee. Where next?

[DonP]

Get around? Well, Jussie's claimed his "White attackers" said; "This is "MAGA Country" so there's that. Funny, how all the "hate crime" attackers always seem to be from the right, while the left quietly goes about their business and burns the down the used car lot?

[Old Smokin' Egg]

In light of the credit-card business, my first inclination is to suspect that the dog-muzzle thing was a false-flag operation set up by Fiscus in order to portray herself as a victim.

But that said, to what extent can we discount the possibility that a bad actor got unauthorized access to Fiscus's credit-card number? If, for instance, I hand my card to the waiter at a restaurant, what assurance do I have that they're not quickly photographing it in the back room? And if there're generic lists of such stolen numbers up for sale on the dark web, it stands to reason that their proprietors could charge clients a considerable premium to search for specific names, in furtherance of blackmail schemes and the like.

The most straightforward explanation, of course, is that Fiscus did the muzzle thing herself, and got careless with the credit-card number. But how low a probability should we assign to the possibility that her card number was stolen and then used in order to discredit her?

And I'll mention in passing that after five or six months, I've finally got Amazon to stop using my elderly mother's credit card to pay for someone else's Prime membership, so their card-number management and security clearly isn't flawless...

[Rossami]

To be blunt, a very low probability. If I'm going to go to the trouble of stealing your credit card (which, as you point out, is not that hard), I'm going to make a lot more profit by running up fraudulent charges than by holding it against the possibility of using it to cause future political embarrassment. For that scenario to be plausible, you'd have to postulate that the credit card was specifically stolen just for the purpose of committing this embarrassment. Maybe you'd do that to sabotage a major political figure like Trump or Pelosi. Or maybe you'd do it to someone you really, really hated like your ex-spouse as part of a custody dispute. But Fiscus just isn't important enough. Nobody knows her that well, much less hates her enough to set up that kind of sting.

So, theoretically possible? Yes. LIkelihood? Vanishingly close to zero.

[Krayt]

Literally the person would have had to steal the number for the purpose of adding a silly self-incriminating embarrassment to her claim of being offended at being sent a dog muzzle.

I think someone wanting to send her a dog muzzle would have just done it.

"Hey! Let's send her a dog muzzle. Better yet, let's steal her CC number and use it to buy it and send it to herself. Then she'll also be implicated as a fraud which she will have to deny as well as feeling insulted and threatened!"

[wreckinball]

These things are ALWAYS hoaxes.

[M L]

Studies and statistics show that only 1 in 4 billion hoax hate crimes and other fake news stories are ever revealed as hoaxes. Facts.