UPDATE: No official confirmation to this point, although the three principle members of Trump's legal team have commented in one way or another. Rudy Giuliani declined to confirm whether or not he's had discussions with US intel officials. Sidney Powell and Lin Wood both appear to believe that there has been a seizure of election related servers at the Scytl facility in Frankfurt Germany. All we can do at this point is wait for confirmation.
To reaffirm what I say below and what I mentioned in an exchange with commenter Mike Sylwester, for the US to take possession of these servers the US agencies involved--which would ultimately, as I understand this to be a criminal investigation, would be DoJ/FBI--would need to satisfy German law. Alternatively, there could be some bi-lateral agreement between the two countries that the two countries would honor representations made by the other. The point is, the US would have to assert a justification for the seizure under either/both US and German law that would be equivalent to what we call "probable cause". German law could be easier or more difficult to satisfy as regards the evidentiary standard to be satisfied.
As a practical matter, DoJ would have had to examine allegations of fraud after the election and decide whether they were met a standard on which a criminal investigation could be predicated. That evaluation would need to be done specifically with regard to these servers in order to apply for a search/seizure warrant. 'Garden variety' voter fraud would not suffice--it would need to pertain to activity on the servers. At that point DoJ--and possibly DoS--could enter discussions with their German counterparts and, if all requirements were satisfied, arrange for the transfer/seizure of the servers into US custody.
The importance of this is that if, indeed, a seizure has been made, a prior evidentiary determination has been made--ultimately by Barr accepting it. That determination would not be dispositive of whether or not a crime occurred, but would be considered probable cause sufficient to get a search/seizure warrant--not a small thing.
As you know by know, Scytl is the company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, that has the servers that control and store the Dominion generated election data. (I probably haven't described that with 100% accuracy, but you'll get the picture.) We've all seen the highly improbable voting data for several swing states that strongly suggest computer driven manipulation, but without the data on the servers at Scytl proof--one way or another--may be lacking.
Earlier today there were reports that the US military had raided Scytl's facility in Frankfurt and seized the servers there. It was very difficult to track down the source of those reports, although Sidney Powell and Lin Wood--both on Trump's legal team--seemed to hint that those reports were true--I covered these early reports in I Can't Actually Confirm This.
Tonight there are additional reports confirming that the servers were seized by the US. Details remain sketchy and likely unreliable in some details, especially from a strictly legal standpoint. I offered my caveats on the other thread--that I believed DoJ (and probably the FBI, via its Legat Office in Germany) would need to be involved and would be required to go through some legal process before Germany would allow them to take custody of property that was on German soil. TGP offers what seems to me the most plausible explanation, if these reports are accurate, and confirms what I said on the other thread:
From our source: The US government, once they determined that this Dominion server was involved in switching votes, then the intelligence community began a search for the server and discovered that the server was in Germany. In order to get access to that server and have it available for use in a legal manner they had to have the State Department work in tandem with the Department of Justice. They had to request that the government of Germany cooperate in allowing this seizure of this server.
The appropriate documents required to affect that kind of seizure were put in place, signed off on, and it appears there was also US military support in this operation. The US military was not in the lead. But this helps explain why Esper was fired and Miller and Kash Patel were put in place — so that the military would not interfere with the operation in any way.
By getting ahold of the server they now are going to have the direct evidence of when they were instructed to stop counting. They will also discover who gave the direction to stop counting and who initiated the algorithm that started switching votes. The CIA was completely excluded from this operation.
Some observations--again with the caveat: If these reports are accurate.
First: "The CIA was completely excluded from this operation." This is a legal operation or, more precisely, it appears to be a criminal investigative operation, a search and seizure, and has to do with criminal violations of election laws in the US. The CIA has no role to play in such matters. Because this is a criminal investigation, that means--as TGP indicates--that this is being driven by DoJ, with FBI involved as well. State Department would be facilitating liaison between the Justice components of the two governments. It's not surprising that it's taken over a week to get this done, since each government had to jump through their own legal hoops.
Second: We read in the last paragraph the use of the pronoun "they". In my opinion, this must refer to DoJ, per what I just wrote. So, DoJ now has the evidence they will need for their investigation--the forensics being handled by the FBI or by others working at the direction of the FBI. DoJ and the FBI will be the ones finding out what happened.
Third: If anyone wants to substitute "AG Bill Barr" for "DoJ" in what I've just written--go ahead. Barr is surely the person who has been driving this process. Once he understood what was needed and what role DoJ could play, he wasted no time doing it. DoJ's role is to conduct a criminal investigation. Acquiring this server is the type of thing that DoJ can do quickly and efficiently. That would not be the case with trying to track down every instance of voter fraud across several states in the Midwest. The ins and out of election law will need to be handled by Trump's legal team.
Fourth: Note again that Powell and Wood, while hinting at these developments, are not fully in the know. That's because they are Trump's personal lawyers. DoJ is conducting this investigation on behalf of the US Government, not strictly speaking for Citizen Trump--although, depending on results, this could be of immense importance to Trump. Barr knows all that, knows what the stakes are for the government, knows all the deadlines, and will not dawdle. He also has the discretion to make what he learns public. He will also take every precaution to maintain the proper legal distinctions between the DoJ and Trump's personal legal team, which has no role to play in the criminal investigation--beyond offering information to DoJ/FBI.
Finally: It's not surprising that this operation has been conducted in the strictest secrecy.
