Former U.S. Marine Intelligence Officer and U.N. Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter

[Scott75]

22 hours ago, User said:

23 hours ago, phoenyx75 said:

On 11/17/2024 at 2:08 PM, User said:

I provided that text to point out that at every step of the way the officer presented themselves as a minor. 

If true, that text clearly left out the rather important detail that that same officer presented themselves as 24 years old on their fake profile. Good that I'm here to point out where you get it wrong or who knows where you'd end up.

If true? 

No, it was true. I did not get anything wrong. 

That only makes the case against Ritter even worse, as "Emily" said she was 24 years old in "her" online profile. Obfuscating this fact suggests that Law Enforcement wanted to hide the fact that "Emily" had not been consistent about her stated age.

 

[User]

1 hour ago, phoenyx75 said:

First, can we agree that it's certainly a profitable thing for Law Enforcement in Florida? Secondly, the fact that it's a widely used LEO tactic doesn't change the fact that it fits the definition of entrapment quite well. After all, the definition of entrapment is:

No, entrapment involves the LEO trying to convince the person to commit the crime. Sting operations are not entrapment. Someone like Ritter is going to chat rooms all on their own looking for someone to exploit; the fact that LEO goes there to catch him is good Law Enforcement. 

Now, if LEO were to go find some random dude on the street, and start talking them into something they otherwise never would have done or been interested in doing, helped them along the way, that is entrapment. 

There is a reason why these practices by LEO continue and are not all stopped. 

[Scott75]

22 hours ago, User said:

23 hours ago, phoenyx75 said:

It's a good thing Mr. Ritter didn't take advantage of any minors.

It is a good thing that it turned out to be a LEO operations.

I've seen no evidence that Mr. Ritter would have engaged in innapropriate behaviour with anyone even -pretending- to be a minor if those LEOs hadn't groomed him to do it.

[Scott75]

1 hour ago, DUI_Offender said:

@phoenyx75 is now being ignored. 

 

I regret to add him to my ignore list, but his passionate defence of a convicted pedophile.

It gets rather tiring to point this out, but I've seen no evidence that Mr. Ritter is a pedophile. You certainly haven't presented any evidence of this nature. What we have is a man who'd done a lot of good things, fell into a depression after being punished for doing some of these good things, and then made some regretable decisions that only ended up hurting himself and his family by proxy.

[User]

2 minutes ago, phoenyx75 said:

I've seen no evidence that Mr. Ritter would have engaged in innapropriate behaviour with anyone even -pretending- to be a minor if those LEOs hadn't groomed him to do it.

Groomed him?

LOL, OK, you are just getting pathetically desperate now with your responses. 

I already provided the memorandum on the case to you. The officer clearly stated their age and it was Ritter who pushed them to share photos and to watch him. It was not the officer asking for any of that. 

 

[Scott75]

45 minutes ago, User said:

2 hours ago, phoenyx75 said:

There's no evidence Mr. Ritter ever pursued minors. In the case where he was charged, the undercover officer going as "Emily" actually stated in his online profile that he was 24. Only -after- Mr. Ritter started communicating with him did he suddenly claim that he was 15. Mr. Ritter testified that he never believed that "Emily" was a minor and he was right, "Emily" wasn't.

The evidence is that he was told by the undercover officer posing as a child, that they were a child.

As I pointed out in my previous post, "Emily" stated in their profile that they were 24. Clearly, there was some ambiguity from the get go as to what "Emily"'s age was.

45 minutes ago, User said:

He continued to pursue them.

He continued to chat with "Emily" after "Emily" had stated that they were 15. However, as I already mentioned, the fact that "Emily"'s profile had said that they were 24 may have gotten Mr. Ritter to believe that "Emily" was only role playing. As I've mentioned previously, Mr. Ritter testified that he never believed that "Emily" was actually a minor.

45 minutes ago, User said:

That is literally pursuing a minor. 

No, as there was no minor to pursue. Mr. Ritter made a bad judgement call in continuing to talk to "Emily" in a sexual manner, and he paid the price. But no minor was ever involved.

45 minutes ago, User said:

There was nothing sudden about it, which is why I provided the testimony to the fact that the undercover officer made it explicitly clear repeatedly they were a minor. He continued anyway. 

According to your own testimony, Law Enforcement didn't admit to the fact that "Emily" had stated that her age was 24 in "her" online profile. This suggests they may have wanted to hide the fact from the jury and perhaps even the judge that Mr. Venneman had been ambiguous as to "Emily"'s age. It took Mr. Ritter's lawyer to point out this rather salient fact.

Edited November 22, 2024 by phoenyx75

[Scott75]

48 minutes ago, User said:

2 hours ago, phoenyx75 said:

Let's not forget that "Emily" initially claimed they were 24. That being said, I do acknowledge that "Emily" later claimed they were 15. I also agree that at that point, Mr. Ritter -should- have stopped communicating with "Emily" in a sexual manner. I imagine he'd agree. Unfortunately, Mr. Ritter was not doing so well at the time. As he himself put it in an interview with New York Times reporter Matt Bai:

**

“I always sort of chuckle when people say, ‘What were you thinking?’ ” Ritter told me. “Well, what part of ‘depressed’ don’t you understand? Find me someone who says depressed people engage in coherent thought.”

**

Source:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/scott-ritter.html

Being depressed is not a defense against breaking the law and trying to engage in sexual relations with a minor.

First of all, there's plenty of evidence that he was groomed into breaking the law. Secondly, no minor was involved in Mr. Ritter's case. And thirdly, mental health or cognitive impairment has now become a factor when deciding court cases, at least in the UK, and I suspect in other places as well:

https://www.odpp.nsw.gov.au/prosecution-guidance/crimes-involving-mental-health-or-cognitive-impairment

52 minutes ago, User said:

This just means you agree and he agrees he is in fact guilty, now you are just making excuses for why he is guilty. 

Mr. Ritter was guilty of making some bad decisions, but I don't believe these decisions warranted him going to jail and being labelled a sex offender, especially since, as New York Times writer Matt Bai stated, Mr Ritter had:

"never displayed a sexually violent tendency"

Source:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/scott-ritter.html

[Scott75]

1 hour ago, User said:

2 hours ago, phoenyx75 said:

On 11/17/2024 at 2:08 PM, User said:

His belief that they were not minors is meaningless.

No, if he truly believed this, it's -not- meaningless. There are many types of role play- pretending to be younger than one's true age is one of them. An argument can certainly be made that simply because "Emily" initially stated she was 24 wasn't enough for Mr. Ritter to be confident that "Emily" wasn't in fact a minor, but it does grant him some defense.

Yet again, it is on BOTH parties to agree it is roleplay, not the person trying to engage in sexual relationship with a minor to just assume it. 

To be fair, "Emily" did state in her online profile that "she" was 24, so clearly "she" wasn't being very consistent in terms of what "her" age was.

1 hour ago, User said:

It doesn't grant him some defense.

I disagree. As a matter of fact, if Mr. Ritter had pleaded guilty instead of innocent, he may have avoided jail time just as he avoided jail time the first time he was charged back in 2001. Matt Bai, writing for the New York Times, made this clear:

**

It’s tempting to try to find some deeper connection between Ritter’s public crusade and his most private transgressions. Does he simply crave attention wherever he can get it? Does he need to feel admired? If there is a connection between Ritter the activist and Ritter the accused, though, it probably lies in the uncompromising, even heedless way in which he insists on his version of reality, and how he sees himself always as the victim of a system that is self-evidently corrupt. “I’m someone who believes the truth needs to be heard,” Ritter told me. “And if I’m empowered with the truth, I’m not going to shut up.”

 

Such stridency has repercussions. Taken in isolation, this latest case against Ritter — the one in Pennsylvania stemming from Ryan Venneman’s sting — is hardly the kind of thing that lands you on “America’s Most Wanted.” It’s not as though Ritter, who is the father of twin 19-year-old daughters, was trolling an adolescent site looking to prey on minors. Nor did he ever hint at meeting with the fictional Emily face to face. There’s little question the man needs help, but such cases are routinely disposed of through plea bargains, and prosecutors in Ritter’s case were willing, initially, to let him escape with a single guilty plea, which may well have meant probation rather than jail. Especially given Ritter’s previous arrests in New York, this seems to have been a more-than-equitable resolution, and most accused sex offenders in the age of Megan’s Law would probably have jumped at it.

 

But Ritter has forcefully insisted all along that he did nothing wrong, beyond betraying Marina’s trust. “Why would I plead guilty to something I didn’t do?” he asked me, when I raised the issue of a plea arrangement. I suggested he might have done it to avoid going to jail.

 

“No,” he replied. “Wrong answer. Then I’m not a man. Then I’m not a human being.”

**

Source:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/scott-ritter.html

Edited November 22, 2024 by phoenyx75

[Scott75]

1 hour ago, User said:

2 hours ago, phoenyx75 said:

On 11/17/2024 at 2:08 PM, User said:

Its his job to confirm that or if he wants to engage in sexual role play with someone pretending to be a minor (which is still a red flag) then it is on him to ensure he is doing so with another consenting adult, not just assume it.

I can agree to that. I imagine he would agree to that as well at this point. As you yourself said, hindsight is 20/20.

Then what is your point here in arguing about any of this?

It's a case of the punishment not fitting the crime. In this case, the only people who were hurt were Mr. Ritter and his family. And his family definitely didn't want him to go to jail for it.

[Scott75]

1 hour ago, User said:

2 hours ago, phoenyx75 said:

On 11/17/2024 at 2:08 PM, User said:

These are all lame excuses made by pedophiles and sexual deviants looking to rape and exploit minors. You are defending them. 

No, I'm defending Mr. Ritter. I've never seen any evidence that he's actually pursued or engaged in inappropriate behaviour with a minor. 

Yes, you are defending a guy who was trying to do those things with a minor.

As I've told you repeatedly, Mr. Ritter testified that he never believed that "Emily" was a minor. If his statement is true, then your assertion is false.

[Scott75]

2 hours ago, User said:

4 hours ago, phoenyx75 said:

First, can we agree that it's certainly a profitable thing for Law Enforcement in Florida? Secondly, the fact that it's a widely used LEO tactic doesn't change the fact that it fits the definition of entrapment quite well. After all, the definition of entrapment is:

**

• noun law Action by law enforcement personnel to lead an otherwise innocent person to commit a crime, in order to arrest and prosecute that person for the crime.

**

Source:

https://www.wordnik.com/words/entrapment

Which fits what happened to Mr. Ritter and others. From the Atlantic article I linked to earlier:

**

After a year-long investigation, WTSP, a CBS affiliate in Tampa Bay, Florida, has uncovered an alarming pattern of police trying to entrap innocent adults in sex crimes. The stings follow the basic pattern familiar to anyone who has seen To Catch a Predator, except "many of the men whose mugshots have been paraded out by local sheriffs in made-for-TV press conferences were not seeking to meet children online. Instead, they were minding their own business, looking for other adults, when detectives started to groom and convince them to break the law."

**

Source:

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/01/to-entrap-an-innocent/384273/

But hey, it's a lucrative business for Law Enforcement, so I can understand, they just want to make some quick cash.

No, entrapment involves the LEO trying to convince the person to commit the crime.

That's exactly what I just said.

2 hours ago, User said:

Sting operations are not entrapment.

Many disagree:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-line-between-fbi-stings-and-entrapment-has-not-blurred-its-gone/

Here's the introduction to Natasha Lennard's article:

**

Rezwan Ferdaus is a 26-year-old US citizen of Bangladeshi descent. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to attempting to blow up the Pentagon and the US Capitol. This plot was devised with the direct guidance of a federal agent who infiltrated Ferdaus‘ mosque and even provided the fake explosives. An FBI agent said of Ferdaus to the convict’s father that he “obviously” is mentally ill. Ferdaus, who also suffered from severe depression, seizures, and had to wear adult diapers for bladder control problems, was the victim of the sort of FBI sting that crosses the fine line into entrapment. And these operations are no rarity.

 

In everyday parlance, the difference between a sting and an act of entrapment seems minimal. They carry the same gist: influencing an individual to carry out an act, in which they are then caught.

By the letter of the law, however, the difference between a sting and entrapment is significant. Sting operations are legal. A cursory glance at popular culture’s imagining of FBI work would suggest that stings are in fact the bread and butter of federal policing. It makes for entertainment — the unfolding of elaborate investigative schemes; an agent with a hunch and a five o’clock shadow catches dastardly criminals doing what they invariably would do anyway. Entrapment, meanwhile, is when law enforcement induces a person or group to commit a crime that they would otherwise have been unlikely to commit.

In the fanciful world of television policing, cops are the goodies, criminals are the baddies, stings are stings and stings are legal. In reality, sting operations regularly cross the line into entrapment. The line in US law is purportedly clear: entrapment is illegal, stings are legal. How this line is actually walked by law enforcement is, however, fuzzy at best.

A report released this week from Human Rights Watch highlights how, consistently, FBI sting operations are over aggressive and premised on the racist profiling of Muslim communities — that old building block of our contemporary national security state. Based on 215 interviews and focusing on 27 post-9/11 cases of alleged terror plot thwarting, HRW’s findings call into question the very legitimacy of the FBI’s counterterror work. The authors go as far as to call a number of stings “government-created” terror plots.

Introducing the report, HRW’s Andrea Prasow noted that “Americans have been told that their government is keeping them safe by preventing and prosecuting terrorism inside the US… But take a closer look and you realize that many of these people would never have committed a crime if not for law enforcement encouraging, pressuring, and sometimes paying them to commit terrorist acts.”

**

Edited November 22, 2024 by phoenyx75
Added information

[Scott75]

2 hours ago, User said:

Someone like Ritter is going to chat rooms all on their own looking for someone to exploit

So now it's "someone"? Mr. Ritter was going to adult chat rooms to find consenting adult women to be an exhibitionist with. I strongly suspect that Mr. Ritter's wife wasn't ok with this, but what he was doing wasn't a crime. I've seen absolutely no evidence that Mr. Ritter was looking to be an exhibitionist with a minor. The only incidences I've found where he did do or at least try to do exhibitionist things with someone who claimed to be a minor was with the 2 undercover cops that we've mentioned before. Persuading a person to do something that they wouldn't have done otherwise is the textbook definition of entrapment.

  

2 hours ago, User said:

Now, if LEO were to go find some random dude on the street, and start talking them into something they otherwise never would have done or been interested in doing, helped them along the way, that is entrapment.

At best, that's actually what they did with Mr. Ritter, only instead of on the street, it was in chat rooms. At worst, they were actually -targetting- Mr. Ritter.

2 hours ago, User said:

There is a reason why these practices by LEO continue and are not all stopped. 

Oh, I certainly agree with that. It can be a good source of income for Law Enforcement, for one:

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/01/to-entrap-an-innocent/384273/

[Scott75]

2 hours ago, User said:

2 hours ago, phoenyx75 said:

I've seen no evidence that Mr. Ritter would have engaged in innapropriate behaviour with anyone even -pretending- to be a minor if those LEOs hadn't groomed him to do it.

Groomed him?

That's right. I first heard of this term being used against LEOs in an article I've referenced in this thread. I've even quoted the passage in the article where it's mentioned. I'll do so once more as I'm guessing you didn't see it:

**

After a year-long investigation, WTSP, a CBS affiliate in Tampa Bay, Florida, has uncovered an alarming pattern of police trying to entrap innocent adults in sex crimes. The stings follow the basic pattern familiar to anyone who has seen To Catch a Predator, except "many of the men whose mugshots have been paraded out by local sheriffs in made-for-TV press conferences were not seeking to meet children online. Instead, they were minding their own business, looking for other adults, when detectives started to groom and convince them to break the law."

You're probably thinking, Wait a minute, I'd run from underage encounters. How could men who were really seeking adult sex partners be groomed to break the law?

According to the 10 News investigation, police officers used the following tactics:

• "Sometimes, the officers would act as an interested adult with a teenage 'sister' who was also interested. Even though many of the men had no interest in the underage decoys, if they traveled to meet the adult, they were arrested as a 'sexual predator' and charged with 'traveling to meet a minor.'"

• "In the case of a 27-year-old Cape Coral man ... deputies arrested him even though he didn't even travel to meet a child for sex. Law enforcement officers responded to the man's legal 'casual encounters' Craigslist ad, pretending to be a 14-year-old girl, even though the ad said, 'age for all women must be 18+ no one under email me plz.' The man repeatedly told the undercover detectives that he was 'not OK' with meeting up with an underage girl, but because he didn't immediately end the conversation, he was arrested for utilizing his phone to solicit a sexual act from a child. Detectives went to his house and arrested him as a sexual predator of children."

**

Full article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/01/to-entrap-an-innocent/384273/

2 hours ago, User said:

I already provided the memorandum on the case to you. The officer clearly stated their age and it was Ritter who pushed them to share photos and to watch him. It was not the officer asking for any of that. 

"Emily" stated in their profile that they were 24. Had that not been the case, I think it's quite possible that Mr. Ritter would have never chatted them up. As I've also mentioned numerous times, Mr. Ritter testified that he never believed that "Emily" was a minor and he was right too.

[Scott75]

 

5 minutes ago, DUI_Offender said:

Well I guess you changed your name from phoenyx75, after you were shamed for defending a pedophile. 

As I've mentioned numerous times in this thread, there has never been any evidence that Mr. Ritter is a pedophile. There -is- plenty of evidence that Mr. Ritter was targeted after he went against U.S. policy in regards to Iraq, starting with his 1999 book Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem - Once and For All. 

Perhaps the final straw for the military war machine was his documentary In Shifting Sands: The Truth about Unscom and the Disarming of Iraq, which came out in 2001. It was also in that year that he became the subject of two law enforcement sting operations.

 

[NAME REMOVED]

1 hour ago, Scott75 said:

 

As I've mentioned numerous times in this thread, there has never been any evidence that Mr. Ritter is a pedophile.

 

Ritter went to prison for sending dick pics to underage girls. There was concrete evidence of this on Ritters laptop and cell phone.  It should be noted that he is a habitual offender, as he was caught years before he was criminally charged, doing the exact same thing.

Shame on you for defending such a creep.

Edited January 29, 2025 by DUI_Offender

[Scott75]

2 hours ago, DUI_Offender said:

Ritter went to prison for sending dick pics to underage girls. There was concrete evidence of this on Ritters laptop and cell phone. 

False.

[NAME REMOVED]

27 minutes ago, Scott75 said:

False.

You are now making things up. Ritter was caught twice in Police stings, exposing himself to undercover officer posing as 15 year old girls. I think it is fair to say, that if one gets caught not once, but twice in Police stings, they likely have been exposing themselves to teen girls since the beginning of the internet, probably hundreds of times.

The pervert Ritter was put on probation for the first offence in 2001, then rejected a plea bargain in the second case in 2009. He serve 2 1/2 years in prison.  The pervert then resorted to treasonous activities for the past several years, to stay relevant. His home was raised in 2024, and his passport confiscated, for anti US activities.

Edited January 29, 2025 by DUI_Offender

[Scott75]

2 hours ago, DUI_Offender said:

2 hours ago, Scott75 said:

5 hours ago, DUI_Offender said:

Ritter went to prison for sending dick pics to underage girls. There was concrete evidence of this on Ritters laptop and cell phone.

False.

You are now making things up.

No, that's what you'd done, which is why I'd implied that your assertions were false.

2 hours ago, DUI_Offender said:

Ritter was caught twice in Police stings, exposing himself to undercover officer posing as 15 year old girls.

I'm beginning to think that simply implying that what someone said is false is something I should do more often. Simply doing this got you to admit that your initial statements were false. Your new statement isn't quite right either, as I've seen absolutely no evidence that Mr. Ritter exposed himself to anyone in those stings, but it's at least closer to the truth. Here's what a New York Times article had to say about the 2 encounters in 2001:

**

In fact, the police in Colonie, N.Y., encountered Ritter twice in 2001 — and quietly arrested him once — after he contacted cops posing as under-age girls in chat rooms. (Ritter was caught using the unsubtle screen name OnExhibit.) In both cases, Ritter agreed to meet the fictional teenagers in the parking lots of fast-food joints, with the intent of masturbating in front of them, only to be confronted by cops when he got there. [snip] ...the prosecutor dismissed the charges, on the condition that Ritter enter intensive counseling, and a local judge sealed the records.

The timing of the revelations about Ritter’s two-year-old arrests, which somehow became public just as the administration was preparing to invade Iraq, certainly seemed to indicate that his political adversaries meant to destroy his credibility. 

**

Source:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/scott-ritter.html

2 hours ago, DUI_Offender said:

I think it is fair to say, that if one gets caught not once, but twice in Police stings, they likely have been exposing themselves to teen girls since the beginning of the internet, probably hundreds of times.

No, it's not fair to say that at all. For staters, I have seen absolutely no evidence that Mr. Ritter ever exposed himself to a teen girl. But more importantly, I've never even seen any evidence that he was -looking- for a teen girl. All the sources I've seen are that Mr. Ritter spent time in -adult- chat rooms. The last time he met an undercover police officer in a chat room, this was evidently clear. Quoting from a New York Times article on the matter:

**

On a February afternoon in 2009, Ryan Venneman, one of only five full-time police officers in tiny Barrett Township, Pa., decided to spend some time hunting for sexual predators online. Venneman entered a Yahoo chat room, where the minimum legal age is supposed be 18, and passed himself off as a teenager named Emily. Before long, he was contacted by a man who said he was 44 and called himself delmarm4fun — a reference to Delmar, N.Y., an Albany suburb about three hours from where Venneman was sitting in the Poconos.

**

 

The undercover officers would then target him there. What's more, Mr. Ritter has explicitly stated that he never believed that the undercover officers were minors. He was right, they weren't. Mr. Ritter testified to this, as the New York Times article I referenced earlier points out. Below he testifies on all 3 times he encountered police, starting with the last time, in 2009, and then getting to the 2 times in 2001:

**

At trial, Ritter told the jury that he assumed Venneman was a housewife pretending to be 15, and that he had never for a moment believed he was talking to a minor, despite the fact that “Emily” repeatedly stated her age. When prosecutors were successful in moving to unseal his New York files and presented evidence from those arrests too, Ritter steadfastly maintained that he was aware, in both instances­, that he was talking to undercover cops. He knew his online activities needed to be stopped, Ritter said, so he arranged to meet the officers involved, playing along with the notion that they were teenage girls, so that he could get himself arrested and be forced to face his demons.

**

Now I do think the author makes a good point just after the above, namely that if Mr. Ritter was so interested in being stopped, he wouldn't have jumped a curb once he realized he was probably going to get arrested. Quoting:

**

This would have been a more persuasive defense, perhaps, had one of the arresting detectives not testified that Ritter, upon seeing the police lying in wait for him, tried to evade capture by slamming down the gas pedal and jumping a curb, T.J. Hooker-style.

**

But while Mr. Ritter's testimony that he was just playing along to get himself arrested seems to stretch his credibility, at no point have I seen any evidence that he actually believed the people he was chatting with were actually minors. Again quoting from the time he encountered an undercover officer in 2009, even the chat he had with the officer itself suggests that Mr. Ritter never believed the officer was below 18. Again quoting from the New York Times article:

**

“U know ur in a lot of trouble, don’t you,” Venneman typed.

“Huh?”

“I’m a undercover police officer. U need to call me A.S.A.P.”

“Nah,” delmarm4fun wrote. “Your not 15. Yahoo is for 18 and over. It’s all fantasy. No crime.”

**

I also remember another article wherein Mr. Ritter's lawyer pointed out that "Emily", the undercover officer's fictional persona, had said in "her" profile that "she" was 24, which certainly lends credence to Mr. Ritter's claim that he never believed that Emily was, in fact, a minor.

2 hours ago, DUI_Offender said:

The pervert Ritter was put on probation for the first offence in 2001, then rejected a plea bargain in the second case in 2009. He serve 2 1/2 years in prison.

Other then your adding the word "pervert" in your first sentence, at last you are speaking the truth. Had he simply accepted a plea bargain in the second case, he may well have avoided jail time altogether. 

2 hours ago, DUI_Offender said:

The pervert then resorted to treasonous activities for the past several years, to stay relevant. His home was raised in 2024, and his passport confiscated, for anti US activities.

On the contrary, Mr. Ritter has been doing quite heroic work in recent years, but his passport was indeed confiscated and his home was indeed raided. Unfortunately, there are sinister forces within the U.S. government that wish to shut down the good work he's been doing. Mr. Ritter wrote a good article on all of this back in August. It can be seen here:

https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/17/scott-ritter-a-farewell-to-truth/

Edited January 29, 2025 by Scott75

[NAME REMOVED]

26 minutes ago, Scott75 said:

No, that's what you'd done, which is why I'd implied that your assertions were false.

I'm beginning to think that simply implying that what someone said is false is something I should do more often. Simply doing this got you to admit that your initial statements were false. Your new statement isn't quite right either, as I've seen absolutely no evidence that Mr. Ritter exposed himself to anyone in those stings, but it's at least closer to the truth. Here's what a New York Times article had to say about the 2 encounters in 2001:

**

In fact, the police in Colonie, N.Y., encountered Ritter twice in 2001 — and quietly arrested him once — after he contacted cops posing as under-age girls in chat rooms. (Ritter was caught using the unsubtle screen name OnExhibit.) In both cases, Ritter agreed to meet the fictional teenagers in the parking lots of fast-food joints, with the intent of masturbating in front of them, only to be confronted by cops when he got there. [snip] ...the prosecutor dismissed the charges, on the condition that Ritter enter intensive counseling, and a local judge sealed the records.

The timing of the revelations about Ritter’s two-year-old arrests, which somehow became public just as the administration was preparing to invade Iraq, certainly seemed to indicate that his political adversaries meant to destroy his credibility. 

**

Source:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/scott-ritter.html

No, it's not fair to say that at all. For staters, I have seen absolutely no evidence that Mr. Ritter ever exposed himself to a teen girl. But more importantly, I've never even seen any evidence that he was -looking- for a teen girl. All the sources I've seen are that Mr. Ritter spent time in -adult- chat rooms. The last time he met an undercover police officer in a chat room, this was evidently clear. Quoting from a New York Times article on the matter:

**

On a February afternoon in 2009, Ryan Venneman, one of only five full-time police officers in tiny Barrett Township, Pa., decided to spend some time hunting for sexual predators online. Venneman entered a Yahoo chat room, where the minimum legal age is supposed be 18, and passed himself off as a teenager named Emily. Before long, he was contacted by a man who said he was 44 and called himself delmarm4fun — a reference to Delmar, N.Y., an Albany suburb about three hours from where Venneman was sitting in the Poconos.

**

 

The undercover officers would then target him there. What's more, Mr. Ritter has explicitly stated that he never believed that the undercover officers were minors. He was right, they weren't. Mr. Ritter testified to this, as the New York Times article I referenced earlier points out. Below he testifies on all 3 times he encountered police, starting with the last time, in 2009, and then getting to the 2 times in 2001:

**

At trial, Ritter told the jury that he assumed Venneman was a housewife pretending to be 15, and that he had never for a moment believed he was talking to a minor, despite the fact that “Emily” repeatedly stated her age. When prosecutors were successful in moving to unseal his New York files and presented evidence from those arrests too, Ritter steadfastly maintained that he was aware, in both instances­, that he was talking to undercover cops. He knew his online activities needed to be stopped, Ritter said, so he arranged to meet the officers involved, playing along with the notion that they were teenage girls, so that he could get himself arrested and be forced to face his demons.

**

Now I do think the author makes a good point just after the above, namely that if Mr. Ritter was so interested in being stopped, he wouldn't have jumped a curb once he realized he was probably going to get arrested. Quoting:

**

This would have been a more persuasive defense, perhaps, had one of the arresting detectives not testified that Ritter, upon seeing the police lying in wait for him, tried to evade capture by slamming down the gas pedal and jumping a curb, T.J. Hooker-style.

**

But while Mr. Ritter's testimony that he was just playing along to get himself arrested seems to stretch his credibility, at no point have I seen any evidence that he actually believed the people he was chatting with were actually minors. Again quoting from the time he encountered an undercover officer in 2009, even the chat he had with the officer itself suggests that Mr. Ritter never believed the officer was below 18. Again quoting from the New York Times article:

**

“U know ur in a lot of trouble, don’t you,” Venneman typed.

“Huh?”

“I’m a undercover police officer. U need to call me A.S.A.P.”

“Nah,” delmarm4fun wrote. “Your not 15. Yahoo is for 18 and over. It’s all fantasy. No crime.”

**

I also remember another article wherein Mr. Ritter's lawyer pointed out that "Emily", the undercover officer's fictional persona, had said in "her" profile that "she" was 24, which certainly lends credence to Mr. Ritter's claim that he never believed that Emily was, in fact, a minor.

Other then your adding the word "pervert" in your first sentence, at last you are speaking the truth. Had he simply accepted a plea bargain in the second case, he may well have avoided jail time altogether. 

On the contrary, Mr. Ritter has been doing quite heroic work in recent years, but his passport was indeed confiscated and his home was indeed raided. Unfortunately, there are sinister forces within the U.S. government that wish to shut down the good work he's been doing. Mr. Ritter wrote a good article on all of this back in August. It can be seen here:

https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/17/scott-ritter-a-farewell-to-truth/

I just received a DM from a member (who shall remain anonymous), that claimed that you are  Scott Ritter himself. It all makes sense now.

Edited January 29, 2025 by DUI_Offender

[User]

8 hours ago, Scott75 said:

There -is- plenty of evidence that Mr. Ritter was targeted after he went against U.S. policy in regards to Iraq, starting with his 1999 book Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem - Once and For All. 

No one made him solicit minors for sexual activity on these online chat forums. There is no evidence that any of this was targeted to get him. These were sting operations that would have gone after any sick pervert trying to meet up with kids or trying to solict sexual encounters with kids online. 

 

[Scott75]

16 hours ago, DUI_Offender said:

I just received a DM from a member (who shall remain anonymous), that claimed that you are  Scott Ritter himself. It all makes sense now.

My current guess is that it was User and he's having a laugh at you believing him :-p. I'm not even American, I'm Canadian Mexican. Anyone who's known me online for a while probably knows that. 

[Scott75]

15 hours ago, User said:

23 hours ago, Scott75 said:

There -is- plenty of evidence that Mr. Ritter was targeted after he went against U.S. policy in regards to Iraq, starting with his 1999 book Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem - Once and For All.

No one made him solicit minors for sexual activity on these online chat forums.

There's absolutely no evidence that he ever solicited any minor for sexual activity on an online chat forum or elsewhere. He chatted up some undercover cops -pretending- to be minors, sometimes. In the last case in 2009, the undercover cop even said they were over 18 in their profile. I went over this with DUI back in November, but I think he forgot or perhaps never even read the message in question. I know he never responded to it. Quoting from what I said back then:

On 11/21/2024 at 8:29 AM, Scott75 said:

I'm not claiming the claims leading to his conviction didn't have some evidence behind them, but it's important to understand what he was -really- convicted of, which is simply of engaging in a sexual interaction with an adult undercover officer -pretending- to be a minor. What I -am- claiming is that -your- claim that Mr. Ritter was "trying to meet up with underage girls for sex" was unsubstantiated. Here's some things I imagine you didn't know:

1- Undercover cop Venneman's "Emily" profile stated that her age was 24 years of age in his online profile. Furthermore, "Emily" met Mr. Ritter in an -adult- chat room.

2- I've seen absolutely no evidence that Mr. Ritter has ever gone to a chat room that was for people below the age of 18.

Both of these facts strongly suggest that Mr. Ritter was never looking to engage in any sexual way with minors and that, instead, he was lured by Mr. Venneman into breaking the law. Even then, he -still- didn't do anything with a minor, as Mr. Venneman [certainly] wasn't a minor.

It's also important to remember that he testified that he never believed any of the undercover officers he chatted with were minors. There's a thing called role playing you may have heard of.

[User]

14 minutes ago, Scott75 said:

There's absolutely no evidence that he ever solicited any minor for sexual activity on an online chat forum or elsewhere. He chatted up some undercover cops -pretending- to be minors, sometimes. In the last case in 2009, the undercover cop even said they were over 18 in their profile. 

You have already made this argument and it has already been refuted. 

The point being made here now is that no one set him up to target him. Regardless of what you think about the tactics used, no one made him go to a chat room to solicit sex and no one made him disregard someone telling him they were a minor. No one made him presume without verifying they were in fact not a minor before he continued. 

These are not things an average person does.

16 minutes ago, Scott75 said:

It's also important to remember that he testified that he never believed any of the undercover officers he chatted with were minors. There's a thing called role playing you may have heard of.

Again, you have already made this argument and it has already been refuted. 

It doesn't matter what he believes, the facts show otherwise. The onus is on him to not presume someone is not a minor, but to verify. 

Even if it is role playing... thing about that... you are here defending a guy who wants to role play in an online forum with someone as if they are minors so he can get his sexual gratification off of someone pretending to be a minor. 

That is not the winning argument you think it is. So, even if we accept your argument, we are to conclude he is infact a pedophile who wants to get his kicks of little children, only that he thinks they are adults just role playing for him. 

 

[Scott75]

22 hours ago, User said:

23 hours ago, Scott75 said:

There's absolutely no evidence that he ever solicited any minor for sexual activity on an online chat forum or elsewhere. He chatted up some undercover cops -pretending- to be minors, sometimes. In the last case in 2009, the undercover cop even said they were over 18 in their profile.

You have already made this argument and it has already been refuted.

Anyone can make an assertion, the important thing is whether you can back it up.

22 hours ago, User said:

The point being made here now is that no one set him up to target him.

Do you have any evidence to support this assertion? Mr. Ritter was embarassing political officials long before his arrest, and not just the Bush Administration. Mr. Ritter himself pointed to an example of a staffer for then Senator Joe Biden not liking his revelations- they were embarassing the Clinton Administration, you see. Quoting from Mr. Ritter's article where he mentions this:

**

Article Distributed to Congress

I used these documents to write an article that was published in the June 2000 issue of Arms Control Today which was subsequently distributed to all members of Congress. As I previously wrote in an article published in TruthDig, then-Senator Joe Biden dispatched a senior member of the minority staff of the Foreign Relations Committee to meet with me. 

“This meeting,” I wrote, “was a singular disappointment. The staffer began by calling me a traitor for speaking out about Iraq and took umbrage when I backed up my claims with documents. ‘You are not supposed to have these materials,’ he said. ‘They are classified, and you are a traitor for publicizing the information they contain.’

“After reminding the staffer that he was walking a very dangerous line in calling a former officer of Marines a traitor, I pointed out that the information I cited was from my time as an inspector and was not classified in any way.

No U.S. intelligence sources or methods were compromised by my efforts. While U.S. policymakers may have been embarrassed by my revelations, this was only because truth did not comport with the policies they were pursuing.

I reminded the staffer of Biden’s stated desire to call on my ‘knowledge and expertise in the future,’ [note: this desire was expressed in a personal letter written by Biden to me in September 1998, following his much-publicized clash with me during my testimony before the U.S. Senate] noting that this meeting was supposed to be conducted in keeping with that intent in mind.

“Senator Biden will not be meeting with you,” the staffer declared. “You’re too controversial.”

I slid the Arms Control Today article across the table. “How are facts controversial?” I asked. “Point to one thing in this article that you believe to be false or misleading.”

The staffer agreed that the article was fact-based, even if he disagreed with its conclusion. “But this isn’t about facts. This is about politics, and Senator Biden will not go against the policies of the Clinton administration, even if those policies are failing.”

I couldn’t think of a more damning indictment of a public official.

**

Source:

https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/17/scott-ritter-a-farewell-to-truth/

The article also has a lot of examples where he embarassed the Bush Jr. Administration as well.

22 hours ago, User said:

Regardless of what you think about the tactics used, no one made him go to a chat room to solicit sex and no one made him disregard someone telling him they were a minor. No one made him presume without verifying they were in fact not a minor before he continued. 

These are not things an average person does.

I've seen no evidence that Mr. Ritter was ever soliciting sex. Secondly, as I mentioned before, in the 2009 incident, "Emily" stated that she was 24 in her online profile. Mr. Ritter may have thought that this was her true age and that she was just role playing when "she" said that "she" was 15. As mentioned previously, he testified that he never believed that "Emily" was actually 15 and he was right. He certainly broke no laws in going to an online adult chat room. 

Edited January 31, 2025 by Scott75

[Scott75]

43 minutes ago, User said:

1 hour ago, Scott75 said:

It's also important to remember that he testified that he never believed any of the undercover officers he chatted with were minors. There's a thing called role playing you may have heard of.

Again, you have already made this argument and it has already been refuted.

Again, making unsubstantiated assertions is easy. Providing evidence for assertions is the hard part.

43 minutes ago, User said:

It doesn't matter what he believes, the facts show otherwise.

No, the facts actually validate his professed beliefs. None of the undercover officers he chatted with were minors.

43 minutes ago, User said:

The onus is on him to not presume someone is not a minor, but to verify.

Too many negatives in that sentence, but I think I get your drift. Let's just say that I hardly think he's the only one who has skipped really verifying someone is the age they sometimes say they are online. I'm thinking of all those "Are you 18?" clicks minors have made to get into whatever they'd like to see.

  

43 minutes ago, User said:

Even if it is role playing... thing about that... you are here defending a guy who wants to role play in an online forum with someone as if they are minors so he can get his sexual gratification off of someone pretending to be a minor.

Mr. Ritter went to an -adult- chat room, not a teen chat room, or even an all ages chat room. That alone suggests that he wasn't looking to meet any minors. I've also never seen any evidence that Mr. Ritter wanted to role play with an adult pretending to be a minor. In the one detailed case, that is, the one from 2009, the undercover officer even said they were 24 in their online profile. It was only -after- Mr. Ritter started chatting with them that they said they were a minor. So what we have here is Mr. Ritter not looking for any adult woman roleplaying as a minor but rather finding himself in a situation where he apparently thought this was happening and decided to go along with it. 

Edited January 30, 2025 by Scott75