Comment by ls612
11 hours ago
Living through all of the events of 2020 in Minneapolis of all places led me to the conclusion that when push comes to shove there is no law, only hard power and the will to use it.
If you want examples of events that could be reasonably interpreted as “this sort of thing”, the son of the guy who tried to assassinate Trump the second time was mysteriously arrested for possession of CSAM a week after his dad was arrested. I’m inclined to believe that the base rate of people being into that stuff is reasonably low so whenever I hear about someone being charged with it in relation to a completely unrelated major news story it gets my spidey sense tingling.
That could also be related to his family being under more scrutiny by authorities
You're right that absent some colossal screwup you could never prove one way or another that it was legit vs planted, but stuff like that changes my priors on what I believe can happen. The fact that it is completely deniable also increases the incentive for the government to do it, and they no doubt have the capability. Capability and motive combined leads me to believe that it likely does happen.