Hugo Chavez Ghost

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2nd 2 26 on tulsi gabbard reboot maduro snatch

THIS WILL BE GENERIC FOR NEW VOTING MACHINE BS

SEE VENEZ

SEE VOTING MACHINE BS 2

KRAKEN SIDNEY POWELL ITALIAN SATELLITES?

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MMA

After years of right-wing media and election deniers pushing outrageous claim Venezuela stole the 2020 US election, the Trump administration is now probing for evidence

For over five years, right-wing figures have falsely alleged voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic were based in Venezuela or had ties to Venezuelan leaders

Written by Alex Kaplan & Reed McMaster

Research contributions from Zachary Pleat

Published 02/10/26

For over five years, right-wing media and election deniers have pushed long-winded conspiracy theories claiming that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen by the Venezuelan government via Smartmatic and Dominion voting machines. Figures on the right have falsely claimed that these companies were based in Venezuela, had ties to former Presidents Hugo Chávez or Nicolás Maduro, used software in their voting machines that could override security features and flip votes, and were even used to rig Venezuelan and U.S. elections.

Following the Trump administration's recent capture of Maduro and the FBI's raid of an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, election deniers are now openly declaring that the government will prove that their baseless election fraud claims about 2020 are correct.

The Trump administration is probing 2020 election fraud claims, elating election deniers

• • The administration began a major push to investigate President Donald Trump's repeatedly debunked claims that he won the 2020 election, with Trump's Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard making herself a public face in the probe and being on-site for an FBI raid of a Fulton County, Georgia, election center. According to The Guardian, the warrant for the FBI's January 28 raid “sought all ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton county, tabulator tapes, ballot images and voter rolls.” ABC reported Gabbard arranged a phone call between Trump and the FBI agents conducting the raid. CNN, [1/31/26; ABC News, 2/2/26; The Guardian, 1/28/26]

• • Election deniers cheered the Fulton County raid, saying it's “exactly what” they previously asked Trump to do. Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne claimed that the raid shows “they’ve crossed the Rubicon” and it was “exactly what we were asking him [Trump] to do” in 2020. Trump's former lawyer Sidney Powell, who has promoted baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, said she was “hopeful that means this administration is taking seriously the massive fraud that I believe occurred in the 2020 election.” Byrne — who has been a prominent fundraiser of election denial efforts — attended the December 2020 Oval Office meeting, alongside Powell and Michael Flynn, where Trump was urged to seize voting machines. Media Matters, [2/5/26; The New York Times, 1/31/22; NPR, 10/19/23; The Washington Post, 12/6/21; The Guardian, 7/20/24]

• • Gabbard also led an investigation last spring that was reportedly related to “claims that Venezuela had hacked voting machines in Puerto Rico,” where a U.S. attorney has allegedly been in touch with figures who have prominently promoted unfounded claims Venezuela helped steal the 2020 election. The Guardian reported U.S. attorney for Puerto Rico Stephen Muldrow, “a staunch Republican and Trump supporter,” had been briefed on “the old voting conspiracy and the allegations that Venezuela helped rig elections worldwide” by former CIA officer Gary Berntsen and Venezuelan expatriate Martin Rodil. Byrne has hyped Muldrow’s involvement, saying it meant an investigation into these conspiracy theories is “about as clean and squeaky clean as you get.” Reuters, [2/4/26; The Guardian, 11/21/25; LindellTV, The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson, 2/5/26]

• • After the Trump administration captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a January 3 raid and brought him to the United States to face trial, MAGA influencers suggested it was linked to the conspiracy theory about Venezuela's involvement in the 2020 election. Trump appeared to endorse the suggestion that the raid was retaliation for 2020, repeatedly amplifying references to the purported role Venezuela played on Truth Social. CNN, [1/3/26; Media Matters, 1/5/26]

• ## Voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic — common targets of 2020 election conspiracy theories — were not based in Venezuela, nor did they have ties to the country's leaders

• • Right-wing media used Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines to create a boogeyman for the 2020 election. For years, right-wing media figures falsely claimed Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines switched votes from Trump to Joe Biden and created election irregularities. Media Matters, [11/2/21, 12/22/20, 9/6/24]

• • Smartmatic and Dominion have sued several right-wing outlets that promoted conspiracy theories tying the companies to the purported 2020 election theft, with some of the outlets paying out multimillion dollar settlements. Fox News, which currently faces a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic, ultimately settled a similar suit from Dominion for a record $787.5 million in 2023; filings in the case show that Fox executives and stars privately acknowledged that the election had not been tainted by large-scale fraud, even as the network broadcast false claims tying Dominion to Venezuela and suggesting it had rigged the 2020 vote. Business Insider, [4/18/23; Politico, 8/19/25; Media Matters, 1/21/21, 7/5/22, 3/2/23, 8/21/25]

• • Two Smartmatic founders are from Venezuela, but the company was founded in Florida and incorporated in the United States. A fact check from Reuters additionally reported that “Smartmatic confirms on its website that the company is not Venezuelan, adding, ‘Smartmatic has no ties to governments or political parties of any country.’” Reuters, [12/14/20]

• • Smartmatic voting machines were only used in one county during the 2020 election. FactCheck.org explained: “Apart from the dubious support for this conspiracy theory, the company it’s targeting doesn’t do much work in the United States. Smartmatic says it provided voting equipment to only one U.S. county in the 2020 election. Los Angeles uses the company’s VSAP touchscreen machines, according to the California Secretary of State’s list of certified voting equipment used in each county.” The article further explained that Los Angeles’ 2020 election results were similar to its 2016 election results. FactCheck.org, [11/25/20]

• • Dominion Voting Systems was founded in Toronto, Canada, and in recent years was based in Denver, Colorado. Dominion responded to false claims of Venezuelan ties in a lawsuit, stating: “Dominion was not created in or for Venezuela, has never been located there, and is not owned by Smartmatic or Venezuelans. Dominion has never provided machines or any of its software or technology to Venezuela, nor has it ever participated in any elections in Venezuela.” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, [10/10/25; US Dominion, Inc. v. Powell, 1/8/21]

• ## Right-wing media figures and election deniers repeatedly pushed false claims that Dominion and Smartmatic were Venezuelan or tied to Chávez or Maduro

• • On Fox Business, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani acknowledged Dominion was a Canadian company before claiming it was “a Venezuelan company that has Chinese parts in it.” Media Matters, [11/16/20]

• • On Fox News, Giuliani said that Smartmatic is “a Venezuelan company.” Giuliani further claimed that Smartmatic was “founded by Chávez,” and later claimed it’s “really being run by people that are close to Maduro and Chávez.” Fox News, *Sunday Morning Futures*, [11/15/20, 11/15/20]

• • :{:{On Fox Business, Sidney Powell argued Smartmatic “all Venezuelan and Cuban and essentially communist money.” Powell claimed, “This affidavit also explains it [Smartmatic] has been used to change election results all over the world. And it's all Venezuelan and Cuban and essentially communist money that's been doing this. It's a foreign-owned company.” :(style="background-color:#ffbb16ff"):}:Fox Business, *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, [11/16/20]}:

• • Newsmax contributor Dick Morris claimed, “The Dominion software is licensed from … Smartmatic, which is [a] Venezuelan-owned and -controlled company. So we’re dealing here with the most incredible kind of systemic fraud.” Morris added that “this is the exact same system they’re using in Georgia on January 5,” the date of a then-upcoming runoff election. Newsmax, *American Agenda*, [12/15/20]

• • Election deniers Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo argued that despite Smartmatic being founded in America, it was started with “source code” owned by the Venezuelan government. They also stated Smartmatic was “winning contracts in election districts all across the United States and it's Venezuelan owned,” that Smartmatic “bought another company called Sequoia,” and “from Sequoia, they were forced because of the CFIUS investigation to sell it to Dominion.” The Guardian reported that Berntsen promoted “the old voting conspiracy and the allegations that Venezuela helped rig elections worldwide,” and “in September, Pezzullo published an e-book called Stolen Elections: the Takedown of Democracies Worldwide, which described the Venezuela conspiracy theories.” The Guardian, [11/21/25; Going Rogue with Lara Logan, 11/21/25, 11/21/25]

• • Election denier Martin Rodil: “And then slowly but very steady, they were building a Smartmatic, then they purchased Sequoia in Colorado, and then they ended [up] controlling the software used by Dominion.” Rodil continued: “So you have two problems here. You have not just an election problem, but you have a counterintelligence problem where a country like Venezuela — which is completely ignored but it becomes some sort of proxy for China, for Russia, for Iran, for every enemy of the United States — was allowed to do everything they could inside the U.S.” According to The Guardian, Rodil promoted “the old voting conspiracy and the allegations that Venezuela helped rig elections worldwide” along with Berntsen. Patriot Party News, [11/19/25; The Guardian, 11/21/25]

• • One America News host Lilia Fifield, citing The Gateway Pundit, claimed “Smartmatic is partially owned by the Maduro regime and George Soros.” The segment’s chyron claimed the “Soros-backed firm installed socialism in Venezuela.” OAN, [11/17/20]

• • Mark Levin: “What in the hell are we doing with a company that had any ties with Venezuela’s government? ... This is Smartmatic with ties to the Hugo Chávez machine.” Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [11/16/20]

• ## Right-wing media and election deniers alleged that Smartmatic software could override security features and flip votes

• • Rush Limbaugh claimed that Dominion and Smartmatic “both have the same purpose ... to rig elections, and they are used in conjunction with one another.”Limbaugh: “Dominion is the software company out of Venezuela. Smartmatic is a piece of software that does all of the conniving. And they’re both manufactured — the same outfit — and they both have the same purpose, is to rig elections, and they are used in conjunction with one another.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [11/17/20]

• • Fox host Maria Bartiromo repeated claims by Sidney Powell that Smartmatic software has “built-in functionality allowing the administrators to override security features.” She said, “Smartmatic election software was developed, Sidney Powell says, in Venezuela, with porous security and built-in functionality allowing the administrators to override security features.” Fox News, *Sunday Morning Futures*, [11/22/20]

• • On Fox Business, Powell also argued Smartmatic “had been used to change election results all over the world.” Fox Business, *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, [11/16/20]

• • Then-Fox host and current U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro called Trump lawyers’ claims that Dominion was started in Venezuela and Smartmatic software could flip votes “serious allegations.” She stated, “The president's lawyers alleging a company called Dominion, which they say started in Venezuela with Cuban money and with the assistance of Smartmatic software, a backdoor is capable of flipping votes.” Pirro added: “These are serious allegations, but the media has no interest in any of this. But you and I do, as we should.” Fox News, *Justice with Judge Jeanine*, [11/21/20]

• ## Right-wing media and election deniers repeated the suggestion that Chávez or Maduro were behind Smartmatic and Dominion efforts to rig Venezuelan and U.S. elections

• • Patrick Byrne argued Chávez directed the Venezuelan immigrants who founded Smartmatic to build a “system that can rig me an election.” During a 2023 interview, he stated Chávez “went to these three young guys and he told them to build a system that can rig me an election. They moved to Florida, to Boca, and they started a Delaware company called Smartmatic. And then Smartmatic rigged the election.” In 2024, Byrne also said that he “hacked the government of Venezuela” and has “stolen everything. And everything we’ve been asserting from November 4 [of 2020] is true.” He went on to say he had Dominion “source code” and the software is “Venezuelan junk, just as we’ve been telling you from a week after the election. And we have all the proof. We have everything.” Rumble, *The Courtenay Turner Podcast*, [5/19/23; Media Matters, 7/29/24]

• • Discussing Smartmatic in a stream on Locals, Byrne read from an affidavit about the 2020 election claiming that “it took the voting system approximately two hours — the operator — two hours to make the adjustments to the vote for Radonski to Maduro” in Venezuela’s 2013 election. Byrne read, “Then when they turned the Internet back on and the online reporting was up and running, they checked each screen state by state. And then at that moment, the Smartmatic system changed the votes from Radonski to Maduro. By the time the system operator finished, they had achieved a convincing but narrow victory of 200,000 votes for Maduro.” He added, “Is any of this sounding familiar?” Locals, [12/7/24]

• • Then-Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson claimed that Smartmatic software was used to “fix elections in Venezuela” for Hugo Chávez. The Washington Post reported that as part of its lawsuit, “Smartmatic has pointed to a Nov. 17, 2020, remark by Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson, who falsely asserted that ‘Smartmatic software is what was used by Hugo Chávez and his successors to fix elections in Venezuela,’ and a comment made by Newsmax host Chris Salcedo, who said that Smartmatic software comes with a ‘directive’ on ‘how you change the results’ of an election.” The Washington Post, [9/20/24]

• • On Mike Lindell's streaming channel, Robinson talked up how a “team of wonderful American patriots” — naming “Patrick Byrne and Gary Berntsen” — had proof of the Venezuelan regime rigging U.S. elections. She stated, “This team had already recruited more than a dozen people, whistleblowers, who knew exactly how the rig system was built in Venezuela because they were former engineers from Venezuela who had worked for Smartmatic, and for Nicolás Maduro, and before that Hugo Chávez, who commissioned the building of this software so he could steal his referendum in 2004 to corruptly remain in power. Now, I've spoken to some of these whistleblowers myself. I've asked them about their information, their evidence, their work experience, the data, exactly how they steal it.” LindellTV, *The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson*, [12/1/25]

• • Following Trump's capture of Maduro, Infowars host Alex Jones argued it was about stopping Smartmatic from “stealing our elections.” He claimed, “So out of survival, out of existential threat, I understand why Trump went into Venezuela. The total election fraud — Smartmatic is in the five big voting machine companies. It's been certified, confirmed, stealing our elections. They steal elections in 100-plus other countries. They're a globalist command base with the CIA, the EU, NATO, the Chicoms, and the whole U.S. deep state has really been at the top of the pyramid in Venezuela. Trump's ending all that. And so the U.S. was already, through the deep state, in control of Venezuela. That's the big secret.” Infowars, *The Alex Jones Show*, [1/5/26]

• • Then-Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, citing “a whistleblower’s stunning affidavit,” claimed that “Smartmatic’s technology was used to rig elections in Venezuela.” Fox Business, *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, [11/19/20]

• • Powell told Fox Business that an independent investigation showed Dominion voting machines were “created for the benefit of Venezuela.” She stated, “We've known from early on in our independent investigation that the entire system was created for the benefit of Venezuela and Hugo Chávez to rig elections to make sure he continued winning. And then it was passed on to Mr. Maduro to do the same. And we know it was exported to other countries by virtue of some of the Dominion executives that proceeded to go about and essentially sell elections to the highest bidder.” Fox Business, *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, [12/10/20]

• • On Dobbs’ Fox Business show, Rudy Giuliani insisted that Smartmatic was founded by Chávez for “the specific purpose of fixing elections.” He stated that Smartmatic is “a company that was founded in 2005 in Venezuela for the specific purpose of fixing elections. That’s their expertise.” In the same show, he claimed, Smartmatic “was founded by Chávez” and was now being used “to call votes in America because their specialty in Venezuela is cheating.” Fox Business, *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, [11/18/20, 11/18/20]

//

1. ### “Exactly what we were asking him to do”: Election deniers cheer FBI's raid of Fulton County election center

:{02/05/26

2. ### MAGA media link Trump's overthrow of Maduro to 2020 election conspiracy theories

:{01/05/26

3. ### Right-wing media have spent a year trying to discredit the 2020 presidential election in promotion of the Big Lie

11/02/21

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An 2 26

President Donald Trump's administration seems very confused as to why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was in Georgia for the FBI's raid on the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center late last month. The story has now changed four times, and twice in the past 24 hours.

The first to comment on Gabbard was Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who claimed that Gabbard just happened to be in Atlanta when the raid happened. Gabbard then said that Trump asked her personally to go to Atlanta for the raid.

In a letter she sent to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), Gabbard wrote, "My presence was requested by the President and executed under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate and analyze intelligence related to election security, including counter-intelligence, foreign and other malign influence and cybersecurity."

By Wednesday, Trump appeared to forget about it.

In a conversation with "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Llamas, Trump spoke about his conspiracy theory that he lost the 2020 election. Llamas asked Trump point-blank, “Why is Tulsi Gabbard there?”

“I don’t know,” Trump answered. “But a lot of the cheating comes from, it’s international cheating.”

Less than 24 hours later, Trump's story changed again.

While he was speaking to the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump gushed over Gabbard for attending the raid.

“She took a lot of heat two days ago because she went in at Pam’s insistence,” the president said, referring to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“They say, ‘why is she doing it’… because Pam wanted her to do it. And you know why? Because she’s smart," Trump added, relayed The Guardian.

Georgia lawmakers are concerned about Trump's spreading of conspiracy theories and the purpose of the Fulton County raid. Georgia’s Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Bondi on Thursday morning, asking for specifics.

“We are deeply concerned that President Trump’s consistent spreading of misinformation and dangerous conspiracy theories about the 2020 election fundamentally undermines the electoral process, endangers election workers, and erodes public trust in our democracy,” the lawmakers wrote. “This unprecedented seizure only heightens those concerns.”

If "the Trump administration is investigating a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus," it would legally require "an immediate congressional briefing," said Sen. Raphael Warnock and Reps. Lucy McBath and Nikema Williams all Democrats from Georgia.

The search warrant that demanded "copies" of the necessary documents didn't come from a local judge. According to the lawmakers, “unusually, the warrant was filed by the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Missouri and follows the reported firing of the Atlanta FBI special agent in charge Paul Brown after expressing concern about this search."

The Associated Press reported that Brown was ousted the week before the raid. He was overseeing the Atlanta office. MS NOW confirmed in the days that followed that the Brown was pushed out because he refused to cooperate.

The group requested a briefing from the Department of Justice “concerning this activity and its related investigation by February 13, 2026."

The statute of limitations on the case has long expired. So, the only way the administration would be able to do anything about it is if there was some kind of ongoing conspiracy, said Georgia lawyer Michael J. Moore when speaking to CNN.

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Tulsi Gabbard is said to be conducting her own "solo" investigation into the 2020 election, according to a new report from The Guardian, one of multiple investigations currently underway as Donald Trump's obsession with his reelection loss nearly six years ago ramps back up.

On Friday, FBI agents conducted a raid at an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, seizing records and ballots related to the 2020 election. This came not long after comments from Trump indicating that he was ramping up his focus on the false claims that the election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was stolen from him due to widespread fraud.

Gabbard, meanwhile, generated headlines, confusion and controversy when she was spotted at the site of the raid, for reasons that were not clear. As the Director of National Intelligence, her focus would typically be far from issues pertaining to the FBI, especially since she otherwise lacks any sort of law enforcement experience.

According to a Wednesday report from The Guardian, three officials with knowledge of the matter said that Gabbard is conducting her own parallel investigation of Trump's accusations of voter fraud in 2020. One of the sources said simply, "She’s doing her own thing." This, the report argued, suggests the increased scope and focus that Trump's 2020 obsession is now taking up.

Gabbard has reportedly been briefing Trump and other "senior White House advisers" about her investigation on a weekly basis. The president was reported to have specifically requested that she be present for the raid to observe it. Administration officials had previously claimed that Gabbard had just so happened to be in Atlanta when the operation took place.

"The parallel investigations into the 2020 election underscore the extent to which it has returned as a priority for the president," the outlet explained. "And Gabbard being sent to the raid showed the interest on voting machine manipulation claims that Trump has cited as evidence the election was stolen. The review led by the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI), authorized on the basis that it is assessing election integrity, has been focused for months on potential vulnerabilities in voting machines and the possibility of foreign interference."

Trump's renewed focus on his 2020 loss gained significant attention during his address to the World Economic Forumin Davos two weeks ago, where he falsely claimed that his accusations had been proven and threatened that prosecutions would begin shortly.

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1 26 tulsi ed martin doj 3 grab ga ballots kraken sidney

Benny Johnson said “sources” have told him Nicolás Maduro was captured partially in relation to the 2020 election

01/30/26

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MMA 1 26 OMFG

MAGA media link Trump's overthrow of Maduro to 2020 election conspiracy theories | Media Matters for America

MAGA influencers are suggesting that the United States overthrew Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in retaliation for Venezuela, via election technology companies, purportedly rigging the 2020 U.S. election against President Donald Trump — a false conspiracy theory that the president appeared to endorse following Saturday’s military strikes.

Benny Johnson, a MAGA slop artist with close ties to the Trump administration, claimed on Sunday that “Nicolás Maduro might be Trump's final revenge for the election theft of 2020.”

“Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems were the voting systems being used at this time [in 2020] and in these states and all around the world,” he said. “They are Venezuelan by design and by systems, storage facilities and through their actual technology. These systems, I have on extremely good authority, can and do rig elections around the world.”

Johnson claimed to have a source who says that Maduro “told him directly that he has direct hard evidence of the election of 2020 being rigged, that he knows exactly how it was done, that they had a hand in it, but it wasn't really Venezuela running the op. It was probably more likely China. And that he is in possession of all of that evidence.”

Smartmatic and Dominion have sued several right-wing outlets and activists that promoted conspiracy theories tying the companies to the purported 2020 election theft. Fox News, which currently faces a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic, ultimately settled a similar suit from Dominion for a record $787.5 million in 2023; filings in the case show that Fox executives and stars privately acknowledged that the election had not been tainted by large-scale fraud, even as the network broadcast false claims tying Dominion to Venezuela and suggesting it had rigged the 2020 vote.

But both companies may be less willing or able to defend themselves as these conspiracy theories reignite. Dominion settled several other suits against Trump allies during its October 2025 purchase by (and at the reported behest of) Liberty Vote, an election technology company helmed by a former Republican official with ties to Trump Justice Department official Ed Martin. The same month, the DOJ indicted Smartmatic for allegedly bribing a Philippines official.

Trump has repeatedly referenced the purported role Venezuela played in his yearslong derangement over the 2020 election he falsely claims was stolen from him — most recently in the early hours of Monday morning.

Amid a stream of posts and reposts on his Truth Social platform suggesting that the 2020 election had been rigged in Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, the president highlighted QAnon influencer Chad Vivas’ claim that “the CIA outsources election rigging technology like Smartmatic and Dominion from Venezuela.” Vivas, known online as “KagDrogo,” suggested it was not “coincidence” that Trump had been promoting claims “about Dominion voting machine fraud” right after Maduro’s capture.

Several right-wing accounts with large followings highlighted Trump’s posts as “confirming” a connection between the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the purportedly rigged 2020 U.S. election.

While Fox hosts largely stayed away from conspiracy theories about election technology companies following the lawsuits, hardcore election deniers like former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell remained fixated on Dominion. In the fall of 2025 — as the Trump administration escalated its pressure on Maduro, surged U.S. Navy ships into the Caribbean Sea, and destroyed boats it alleged were carrying drugs while murdering those onboard — the purported Venezuela connection took on new life.

“There’s never been as necessary a war since the Civil War, that we go down and take care of Venezuela,” Byrne told host Emerald Robinson in an October 7, 2025, appearance on her show on Lindell’s LindellTV network. “It’s more important than World War I or World War II to the viability of the United States. The U.S. was overthrown, and Venezuela’s technology was part of it.”

Allegations of a Venezuelan role in the purported theft of the 2020 U.S. election reportedly jumped from the fever swamp to the hyper-partisan Trump Justice Department. On November 21, 2025, The Guardian reported U.S. attorney for Puerto Rico Stephen Muldrow, “a staunch Republican and Trump supporter,” had been briefed on “the old voting conspiracy and the allegations that Venezuela helped rig elections worldwide” by former CIA officer Gary Berntsen (who claims to have first convinced Trumpist lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani that the 2020 election was stolen) and Venezuelan expatriate Martin Rodil.

Berntsen and author Ralph Pezzullo rehashed the allegations in an interview with far-right podcaster Lara Logan which that same day. And on November 23, 2025, Trump himself reposted Logan’s post about that interview, commenting, “We must focus all of our energy and might on ELECTION FRAUD!!”

With Trump himself apparently convinced by the conspiracy theory, it seems plausible that the federal government will start putting the screws to Maduro, who appeared in a New York courtroom on Monday alongside his wife to plead not guilty to charges of drug trafficking, to get him to confirm it.

Benny Johnson is already telling his viewers that Maduro will “sing like a canary” about his purported accomplices and “how they stole the election.”

“Who will he give up?” Johnson asked Sunday. “Soros? China? Left-wing NGOs? Left-wing billionaires?”

“He'll sing,” Johnson added ominously. “He'll tell them everything. They got his wife. This is why they took him alive. I learned all this from my conversation, and it really checks out, quite frankly. It really checks out.”

MMA

//

1. ### MAGA influencer Benny Johnson’s job is to have no principles. Business is booming.

11/25/25 9:58 AM EST

2. ### It wasn’t just Sidney Powell. Fox repeated the same Dominion lies.

01/21/21 1:40 PM EST

3. ### FLASHBACK: When Pete Hegseth endorsed the military executing captured alleged combatants

12/01/25

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return of hugo chavez ghost!

MMA

Benny Johnson: “I have that from the highest possible sources that Venezuela runs election-rigging operations in our country and in others through their electronic voting machines”}:

12/18/25

December 17, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, posted to YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): So that's Tucker saying we are going to war tonight. That's what he's saying.

Now the administration has been ramping up a war on the narco-state Venezuela. I didn't vote for a new war. I don't want a new forever war. However, Venezuela is a very bad actor.

As we have said, the number one precursor to, well, punishing Venezuela would be the fact that they rig our elections. That is a matter of fact. I have that from the highest possible sources that Venezuela runs election-rigging operations in our country and in others through their electronic voting machines. I'm telling you, these are extremely serious people who have told me that because they've done the investigations themselves, and they were on Trump's team that hacked the election in 2024.

So did President Trump — is President Trump going to announce that he is going to war with Venezuela tonight? They've obviously been ratcheting up their activity in and around Venezuela, closing down the airspace, seizing tankers. I don't think that America has really, quite frankly, the stomach or appetite for a new war. It was bad enough, the bombing of Iran. And so, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to pray that that doesn't happen. I don't think this is the time for that. What do you think? I mean, I was like — I like — I'm not — I don't think that anybody in MAGA voted for new forever wars or regime change. Nonetheless, Venezuela is a very, very bad actor. You can see, sort of, the drums of war approaching. So we'll hope that there are ways to do this where it doesn't actually lead to boots on the ground. Nonetheless, it is important for us to dominate our own hemisphere, for us to not have bad actors that are poisoning Americans, rigging our elections, and engaging in terrorism across our borders. So this, ladies and gentlemen, is a positive — the collapse of the Venezuelan regime, just I don't want to do it with boots on the ground. Plus I hate communists.

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AN 11 25

President Donald Trump's Department of Justice has dispatched federal investigators to question "multiple people" who have been spreading conspiracy theories that Venezuela stole the 2020 election, the Guardian reports.

According to the report, the "discredited election-rigging conspiracy theory could strengthen Trump’s military action against [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro."

"Two promoters of the conspiracy theory have repeatedly briefed the U.S. attorney for the district of Puerto Rico, W. Stephen Muldrow, and have shared witnesses and documents with officials," the report said, citing four sources.

Muldrow refused to comment.

Other conspiracy theorists in Tampa, Florida, have also been interviewed, the report said.

The Guardian said, "an investigation of this sort underscores how Trump’s justice department is becoming a major weapon in the president’s efforts to rewrite the history of his 2020 loss – while potentially strengthening the administration’s case for military action against Venezuela."

Among the lies spread about the 2020 elections was that deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez somehow founded the electronic voting machine and software companies to change the election seven years after his death. Other conspiracy theories claimed that the impoverished regime of Venezuela was outright controlling electronic voting machines.

Read the full report here.

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MMA

How Newsmax spread conspiracy theories about Smartmatic in 2020

Written by Helena Hind & Jane Lee

Published 09/26/24

Smartmatic’s defamation case against Newsmax, which accuses the right-wing cable channel of spreading conspiracy theories about the voting technology company for profit and consequently damaging its reputation, is slated to begin soon.

After right-wing media competitor Fox News unexpectedly but accurately called Arizona for Joe Biden during the 2020 election, Newsmax seized an opportunity to attract conservative viewers by spreading conspiracy theories about the vote, including about Smartmatic. Smartmatic alleges Newsmax knew these conspiracy theories were untrue but continued to circulate them for the sake of profit. (Fox is embroiled in a lawsuit over its own conspiracy theories about Smartmatic and settled with another voting technology company, Dominion Voting Systems, last year.)

Below are details about the case and some examples of the conspiracy theories Newsmax told about Smartmatic:

• ### Smartmatic has sued Newsmax for defamation over airing false election fraud claims implicating the company

• As reported by The Washington Post, Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy “sensed a business opportunity” after Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden during its 2020 election night coverage, which prompted Newsmax to spread election conspiracy theories in an effort to juice its ratings and resulted in legal action by Smartmatic and Dominion.
• Newsmax’s ratings “surged” after the network repeated Trump’s election conspiracy theories, which had also been promoted by Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, “and then Trump, in turn, lavished praise on Newsmax while publicly castigating Fox.” The strategy was short-lived; in December, Smartmatic and Dominion sent legal demand letters to Newsmax, Fox, and OAN warning the networks to retract their false coverage, prompting Newsmax to issue “a lengthy ‘clarification’ that debunked its own reporting, noting that the company ‘would like to clarify its news coverage and note it has not reported as true certain claims’ made about the two firms.” Newsmax anchors read the statements on air. The Washington Post, [5/6/21, 12/21/20]

• • Smartmatic filed a defamation suit against Newsmax on November 3, 2021, alleging that the network spread false but popular election fraud claims implicating the voting technology company “in a bid to challenge Fox News from the right.” From The Washington Post: “Smartmatic says the claims it challenges as false include that Smartmatic voter software was more widely used than it actually was; that its technology was compromised during the election; that Smartmatic was founded in Venezuela to serve nefarious foreign interests; and that ‘Smartmatic fixed, rigged, and stole the 2020 U.S. election for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.’” The Washington Post, [11/4/21]

• • In May 2024, lawyers for Smartmatic accused Newsmax of destroying evidence that showed the network knew claims of voter fraud were untrue. MSNBC correspondent Sarah Fitzpatrick reported: “The filing references specific texts that were sent by the CEO and others at the company that it claims were deleted and that the company became aware of these communications because they showed up in other potential witnesses' electronic material. Smartmatic says that the deletions occurred after Newsmax employees had notice to preserve the evidence for a pending suit, which was a major no-no in, you know, legal circles. Newsmax told NBC News that they categorically deny all the allegations in the filing.” MSNBC, *Chris Jansing Reports*, [5/22/24]

• • CNN reported that during an August pre-trial hearing, a Smartmatic attorney “cited several instances of employees of the cable network admitting they had no proof of the election fraud claims” that they pushed on air.From CNN: “The attorney said that ‘some of the hosts were privately expressing doubt about the claims and accusations’ against Smartmatic as they were being promoted on the network’s air. Several of the network’s hosts, he said, never believed them and were ‘joking about the accusations in their text messages’ with one another.” Weeks after the hearing, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis ruled that the case would proceed to trial. CNN, [8/22/24, 9/13/24]

• ### Newsmax repeatedly spread Smartmatic conspiracy theories after the 2020 election

• Newsmax analyst Dick Morris: Election fraud “may well have originated in the Dominion software, in the Smartmatic software that the polling people, voting people used.” Media Matters, [12/22/20]

• • Newsmax host Chris Salcedo, citing Powell’s conspiracy theories: “There’s only one reason why you buy a Dominion machine and you buy this Smartmatic software: so you can easily change votes.” Newsmax, *The Chris Salcedo Show*, [11/18/20]

• • Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson claimed that Smartmatic software was used to “fix elections in Venezuela” for Hugo Chávez, while Salcedo said the software comes with a “directive” on how to change election results.From The Washington Post: “Smartmatic has pointed to a Nov. 17, 2020, remark by Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson, who falsely asserted that ‘Smartmatic software is what was used by Hugo Chávez and his successors to fix elections in Venezuela,’ and a comment made by Newsmax host Chris Salcedo, who said that Smartmatic software comes with a ‘directive’ on ‘how you change the results’ of an election.” The Washington Post, [9/20/24]

• • Morris: “The Dominion software is licensed from Smartmatic, which is [a] Venezuelan-owned and -controlled company. So we’re dealing here with the most incredible kind of systemic fraud.” Morris added that “this is the exact same system they’re using in Georgia on January 5,” the date of an upcoming runoff election. Newsmax, *American Agenda*, [12/15/20]

• • Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne said on Newsmax that there were Chinese, Pakistani, Iranian, Venezuelan, and Cuban “fingerprints” all over Smartmatic in an effort to “destroy our election system to take us down.” Newsmax, *Greg Kelly Reports*, [12/17/20]

• • Morris: “Actual intervention in the vote count … through Dominion software and Smartmatic” has “been proven in one county in Michigan.” Newsmax, *American Agenda*, [12/18/20]

===

an 12 22

The final report released by the Jan. 6 committee this week says that Donald Trump – who has spewed election fraud claims for two years now – was even stunned by an election fraud claim from one of his former allies, Sidney Powell, the New York Times reports.

Just weeks after the 2020 election, Powell, who's also a former Trump lawyer, said on a conference call that “communist money had flowed through countries like Venezuela, Cuba and perhaps China to interfere with the election.”According to Insider, Powell also believed technology company Dominion Voting Systems was in conspiracy with Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013.

Former Trump aide Hope Hicks said in response to Powell, the former president “muted his speakerphone and laughed at Powell, telling the others in the room, ‘This does sound crazy, doesn’t it?’”

READ MORE:**Sidney Powell facing possible sanctions by Texas regulators for filing frivolous election lawsuits**

NYT noted that, however, Trump proceeded to instigate the rioters by saying he “likes the crazies.”

Last month, Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said, "Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”

And the Daily Beast reports that Powell finds herself now on Trump’s “no-go list” and he no longer takes calls from the lawyer.

Dominion Voting Systems has since sued Powell and Giuliani for spouting “baseless voter fraud claims that hurt its business.”

The Jan. 6 committee wrote in its final report that, “Donald Trump was no passive consumer of these lies. He actively propagated them. Time and again President Trump was informed that his election fraud claims were not true. He chose to spread them anyway. He did so even after they were legally tested and rejected in dozens of lawsuits.”

READ MORE:**Mike Pence: John Eastman 'didn’t even believe what he was telling' Donald Trump about election fraud**

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/trump-election-lie/

By the time Leamsy Salazar sat down in front of a video recorder in a lawyer’s office in Dallas, he had grown accustomed to divulging state secrets. After swearing to tell nothing but the truth so help him God, he recounted that he was born in Venezuela in 1974, enlisted in the army and rose through its special operations ranks. He described how in 2007 he became thechief of security for Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan leader whose electoral victories had been challenged by outside observers and opposition parties. After Chávez died in 2013, Salazar said he provided intelligence on top Venezuelan officials involved in drug trafficking to American law enforcement agencies, which had helped him defect.

After about 45 minutes of Salazar telling his life story, the lawyer questioning him, Lewis Sessions, abruptly changed the course of the conversation. “I want to take a moment to get off the track,” said Sessions, the brother of Republican Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas. “Why are you here? What has motivated you to come forward?”

“I feel that the world should know — they should know the truth,” Salazar answered. “The truth about the corruption. About the manipulation. About the lies.”

“The truth about what?” Sessions asked.

“In this case, it’s the manipulation of votes,” Salazar said. “And the lies being told to a country.”

That morning of Nov. 13, 2020, Salazar had a new sort of intelligence to share. He claimed to know that the 2020 U.S. presidential election had been rigged — and how.

Speaking through an interpreter, Salazar said that when he worked for Chávez, he had attended meetings in which the administration discussed how to develop specialized software to steal elections with representatives from Smartmatic, a voting technology company whose founders had ties to Venezuela. He recalled that during the 2013 presidential election, in a secret counting center in Caracas, the capital, he saw officials use software to change votes in favor of Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, after the polls closed. Watching the 2020 American election, he said, he noticed votes for Joe Biden jumping in a pattern that he thought was similar.

When Sessions asked if Salazar could draw a connection between the events in Venezuela and the recent American election, Salazar replied, “I can show the similarity.” In the 2020 election, Smartmatic machines were only used in Los Angeles, but Salazar explained away this discrepancy. He claimed that the company’s software had been “purchased” by Dominion Voting Systems, whose machines were used in such battleground states as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — all of which had gone to Biden, sealing his victory over Donald Trump.

Salazar said in a subsequent court filing that he had taken his concerns about the election to “a number of reliable and intelligent ex-co-workers of mine that are still informants and work with the intelligence community.” (He did not specify whether he meant the U.S. or Venezuelan intelligence community.) From there, sources told ProPublica, his concerns reached a former intelligence officer active in Republican politics and then the conservative lawyer Sidney Powell.

Powell was on the hunt for just such information.

By the second week of November, it had become known in right-wing circles that she was working behind the scenes with the president’s legal team to challenge the results of the election. In an email to ProPublica, Sessions wrote that he “conducted the interview at the request of a person working with Sidney Powell’s legal team.” The day after the interview, Trump made Powell’s position official with an announcement on Twitter.

The following morning, Powell traveled to South Carolina, where a loose coalition of lawyers, cybersecurity experts and former military intelligence officers were gathering on a plantation owned by the defamation lawyer Lin Wood to search for evidence of election fraud. One person present at the plantation said that Wood and Powell treated the Salazar video “like the holy grail of evidence.” (In an email to ProPublica, Wood wrote that he was not part of any coalition and that he had only seen “a few minutes” of the video, in which he had “no interest beyond general curiosity.” Powell did not respond to requests for comment.)

There was just one problem. Salazar’s claims were easily disprovable. Hours after the video was recorded, Trump campaign staffers reviewed some allegations about Dominion that were almost identical, and it took them less than a day to discover they were baseless. The staffers prepared an internal memo with section headings that read: “Dominion Has No Company Ties To Venezuela,” “Dominion And Smartmatic Terminated Their Contract In 2012” and “There Is No Evidence That Dominion Used Smartmatic’s Software In The 2020 Election Cycle.” Independent fact-checkers came to the same conclusions. 

Dominion later released a statementcalling a version of these allegations that Powell pushed in a lawsuit, “baseless, senseless, physically impossible, and unsupported by any evidence whatsoever.” A lawyer for Smartmatic wrote to ProPublica: “There are no ties between Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic — plain and simple.” He added that “Salazar’s testimony is full of inaccuracies,” strongly denied that Smartmatic’s technology was designed to steal Venezuelan elections, and said the company, which operates worldwide, has “registered and counted over 5 billion votes without a single security breach.” (Salazar did not respond to requests for comment.)

Salazar’s story was just one of many pieces of so-called evidence that members of the coalition have offered as proof that the 2020 election was rigged. That unfounded belief has emerged as one of the most potent forces in American politics. Numerous polls show that over two-thirds of Republicans doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Millions of those Republicans believe foreign governments reprogrammed American voting machines.

ProPublica has obtained a trove of internal emails and other documentation that, taken together, tell the inside story of a group of people who propagated a number of the most pervasive theories about how the election was stolen, especially that voting machines were to blame, and helped move them from the far-right fringe to the center of the Republican Party.

Those records, as well as interviews with key participants, show for the first time the extent to which leading advocates of the stolen-election theory touted evidence that they knew to be disproven or that had been credibly disputed or dismissed as dubious by operatives within their own camp. Some members of the coalition presented this mix of unreliable witnesses, unconfirmed rumor and suspect analyses as fact in published reports, talking points and court documents. In several cases, their assertions became the basis for Trump’s claims that the election had been rigged.

Our examination of their actions from the 2020 election to the present day reveals a pattern. Many members of the coalition would advance a theory based on evidence that was never vetted or that they’d been told was flawed; then, when the theory was debunked, they’d move on to the next alternative and then the next.

The coalition includes several figures who have attracted national attention. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who served briefly as national security adviser to Trump before pleading guilty to lying to law enforcement about his contacts with Russian officials, is the most well known. Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com who left his position after his romantic relationship with the convicted Russian agent Maria Butina became public, is the coalition’s chief financier and a frequent intermediary with the press. Powell, who represented Flynn in his attempt to reverse his guilty plea, spearheaded efforts in the courts.

Before Powell arrived at the plantation, Wood had filed a lawsuit in federal court in Atlanta against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that sought to stop him from certifying Biden’s victory. Soon after Powell showed up, Wood submitted an anonymized declaration from Salazar as evidence of how the election was corrupted. He then filed an emergency motion that sought access to Dominion machines in Georgia to “conduct a forensic inspection of this equipment and the data therein.” The case was eventually dismissed, but it would serve as a template for the series of high-profile lawsuits that Powell would file in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia.

Salazar’s declaration was central to the four lawsuits, and it went further than the assertions he had made in the video. His claim that he could show “the similarity” between anomalies in Venezuelan and American elections expanded to become an allegation that “the DNA of every vote tabulating company’s software and system” in the United States was potentially compromised.

Wood told ProPublica, “I was not involved in the vetting, drafting or filing any of the lawsuits filed by Sidney Powell,” though his name appears as “of counsel” in all four. A judge sanctioned him in the Michigan case, writing that “while Wood now seeks to distance himself from this litigation to avoid sanctions, the Court concludes that he was aware of this lawsuit when it was filed, was aware that he was identified as co-counsel for Plaintiffs, and as a result, shares the responsibility with the other lawyers for any sanctionable conduct.”

All the lawsuits would fail, with judges excoriating the quality of their evidence. It wasn’t just the evidence in the lawsuits that was flawed. In fact, much of the evidence that members of the coalition contributed to the stolen election myth outside the courts was also weak. Yet the coalition’s failure to prove its theories has not hindered its ability to spread them.

This is the story of how little untruths added up to the “big lie.”

When Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who was leading the Trump campaign’s legal team in challenging the vote, began investigating election fraud in November 2020, they quickly were inundated with tips. This flood increased once Wood and others began soliciting evidence on far-right message boards and mainstream social media platforms.

Some of the participants at the plantation described the inundation of claims, which overwhelmed their inboxes, as a type of evidence in itself:There must be something to allegations of election fraud if so many people were making them. ProPublica spoke to eight sources with firsthand knowledge of the coalition’s efforts on the plantation, many of whom said they worked relentlessly in a chaotic environment. Tips that easily could have been dismissed as dubious instead were treated as credible.

In examining hundreds of emails sent to the plantation, ProPublica found that some were hearsay or anecdotes seemingly misinterpreting everyday events; others were internet rumors; and many were recycled narratives that some members of the coalition had pushed on social media. None of the tips that ProPublica examined provided concrete proof of election fraud or manipulation.

One of the first tips Powell and Giuliani promoted came from Joe Oltmann, a Denver-based conservative podcast host who said he had infiltrated an antifa conference call and had heard a high-level Dominion employee named Eric Coomer declare that he would make sure that Trump lost the election. Powell and Giuliani highlighted Oltmann’s claim at a press conference on Nov. 19, 2020, at the Republican National Committee headquarters.

By that time, Powell was paying for an investigator to travel to Denver, according to a person familiar with the events. The investigator, the source said, interviewed Oltmann at a brewery in Castle Rock, Colorado, and spent several days checking out his story. Not long after the press conference, according to the source, the investigator emailed Powell his assessment that Oltmann was at the very least embellishing, but she did not respond. Powell soon referred to Oltmann’s allegations in court filings in Georgia and Michigan; roughly a week later, she submitted an affidavit from Oltmann in the Arizona and Wisconsin lawsuits. Coomer has denied being on the call and has brought a defamation suit against Oltmann, Powell, Giuliani, the Trump campaign and others. Oltmann has never presented proof of Coomer being on the call, and in March 2022, the judge overseeing the defamation case sanctioned Oltmann, fining him almost $33,000 for failing to appear for a deposition. When Powell was asked in a July 2021 deposition if she had anyone look into Oltmann and “his background,” she said she did not recall. (Oltmann did not provide responses to questions about the investigator’s assessment.)

Within days of the investigator’s Oltmann probe, Powell turned to another dubious witness: Terpsehore Maras, a QAnon-promoting social media influencer and podcaster who goes by the online handle Tore Says.

In September 2020, in a civil consumer-fraud judgment in North Dakota, Maras had been found to have made false online charitable fundraising solicitations and to have created “an entirely fake online persona.” (Maras has claimed that the allegations against her remain “unproven” despite the legal finding and that “false identities were imperative for me to execute my duties,” which include being a “former private intelligence contractor, whistleblower, and investigative journalist.”)

Powell filed a declaration in early December 2020 from an anonymous individual in the Arizona and Wisconsin lawsuits. The individual claimed that there was “unambiguous evidence” that “foreign interference is present in the 2020 election” and pointed to a vast and unproven conspiracy that involved Dominion, George Soros, a company with an office in China, and the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations. The Washington Post later identified the declaration’s author to be Maras.

In the weeks after the election, Maras presented herself to Byrne as knowledgeable about election fraud. But he discovered that she was unreliable after he had a team of investigators debrief her. Byrne and Maras said the debriefing occurred after Powell filed the declaration.

In an email to another witness he had debriefed, Byrne described the investigators’ assessment: “Tore was taken out and interviewed by some people I know from the intelligence community who are absolutely on our side. They came back telling me: ‘She knows some things and has been behind the curtain, but she also lies, exaggerates, deflects, changes subject rapidly trying to throw people off, and we cannot rely on her for anything factual because we caught her in too many lies and exaggerations over three hours.’” (“I tried my best to deceive” the debriefers, Maras wrote on her blog in response to questions from ProPublica. “I was scared.”)

Byrne has since repeatedly promoted Maras’ right-wing activism, as he does in this September 2021 video, some of which revolves around questioning the legitimacy of the election. (“She’s a friend and an ally, and I know that she’s a little goofy,” Byrne told ProPublica in an interview, explaining that he had recently been impressed by work she had done on their shared causes. “I think she has relevant knowledge.”)

Byrne, Powell and other coalition members weren’t just relying on witness statements in their effort to prove the election was rigged. Some of them also pointed to multiple mathematical analyses. One that Powell and Byrne advanced came from a man named Edward Solomon. In the weeks after Nov. 3, 2020, Solomon produced a series of online videos purporting to demonstrate how algorithms adjusted the vote total in Biden’s favor.

Before Byrne and Powell highlighted Solomon’s voting analysis, he came to public attention briefly in 2016, after authorities seized 240 bags of heroin, 25 grams of cocaine and weapons from his home; he later pleaded guilty to selling drugs. (Solomon did not respond to requests for comment.)

One person who coalition members entrusted to vet Solomon’s analysis was Seth Keshel, a former Army intelligence officer who was brought into the group by Flynn and who acknowledged to ProPublica that his mathematical expertise drew from “a long track record of baseball statistics.” In the end, his level of expertise didn’t matter; because of a server error, the emailed request to vet Solomon never reached Keshel, who said he had no memory of checking Solomon’s claims.

Byrne used Solomon’s analysis in his book, “The Deep Rig,” to make the case that the election was fraudulent. In February 2021, a month after the book was published, the University of Pennsylvania’s FactCheck.org reported that officials at the college Solomon had attended said that, though he had been a math major, he had never received a degree. The article quoted experts who pointed to flaws in Solomon’s analysis, especially that the “vote shares” he suggested were suspicious were “not at all surprising,” and a Georgia elections official who said that Solomon “shows a basic misunderstanding of how vote counts work.”

A paper posted that month by University of Chicago and Stanford researchers found that the numbers Solomon had said were suspicious were normal for a fraud-free election and that by not considering this, his analysis was a classic example of how “fishing for a finding” can “lead an argument astray.”

Byrne kept promoting Solomon’s work until at least July 2021, when he described him in a blog post as a “Renowned Mathematician.”

Five months after the FactCheck.org story and the research paper, Powell was asked in a sworn deposition which mathematicians or statisticians she relied on to support her belief that the election was fraudulent. She cited among others a “Mr. Solomon.”

In addition to relying on the flawed claims of Salazar, Oltmann, Maras and Solomon, Powell also promoted the assertions of an Arizona woman named Staci Burk, who had contributed to two fraud rumors after the election. In the first, Burk claimed that she’d spoken with a worker at a FedEx operations center in Seattle who had observed suspicious canvas bags marked as “election mail ballots” passing through the facility. The second involved a South Korean airplane flying fake ballots for Biden into Phoenix a few days after the election; Burk said that she had recorded a man who had confessed to the scheme.

A lawsuit that Powell filed in Arizona on Dec. 2, 2020, later included a “Jane Doe” witness who would “testify about illegal ballots being shipped around the United States including to Arizona.” Burk told ProPublica that she was the “Jane Doe.” The same day that Powell filed the Arizona lawsuit, she claimed at a rally outside of Atlanta to have evidence of “a plane full of ballots that came in,” and she continued pushing the idea, declaring in a Dec. 5 interview with the host of a YouTube channel, “We have evidence of a significant plane-load of ballots coming in.” The judge tossed the case before Burk could testify.

Burk’s theories proved false, and at least three coalition members were informed of this. Byrne said that he passed Burk’s claims to a contact at the Department of Homeland Security, who told him about a week later that it “had been looked into and there was nothing there.” This was in November 2020, before Powell filed her lawsuit. Byrne said that he let some of his associates know that Homeland Security had dismissed the claim but was unsure if he informed Powell. (He also said that later his contact showed renewed interest in the idea.)

In late December, James Penrose, a former senior official for the National Security Agency who had been at the plantation and described himself as working for Wood and Powell, called Burk and explained that he had spent $75,000 on a team of former FBI analysts turned private investigators to check out the theories. On the call, which she recorded, Penrose said that the investigators had tracked the claims about the South Korean airplane to the person who first made them. “When he was pressed, that guy admitted that he made it up because he hated the MAGA people that he worked with. And he was purposely trying to troll them by saying he saw ballots on the plane,” Penrose told Burk. “That created the rumor.” The man whom Burk recorded confessing to his involvement in the ballot scheme told Penrose’s investigators that in trying to impress Burk “he fabricated everything.”

“I mean, are you saying that it — that none of it’s true?” Burk asked. Penrose replied: “Yes. I’m saying that the entire thing was fabricated. It’s all bullshit.”

Penrose’s team had also checked out the Seattle FedEx incident, and he told Burk, “We’re not able to confirm anything that looked like conspiracy along those lines.”

Neither Penrose nor anyone associated with the coalition ever publicly released the findings of the investigation. (Penrose did not respond to requests for comment.)

Burk has since renounced her belief in the rumors she had once backed. “I obviously made a mistake believing lies,” Burk wrote to ProPublica. She said she had come to believe that some members of the coalition had manipulated her and her stories to further their ends. “As things unfolded over time, it became apparent I [was] used as a theatre set piece.”

Burk’s stories would shape the audit of the election results that Arizona legislators would later authorize — and which Byrne, Flynn, Powell, Wood and other associates helped fund, contributing about $5.7 million. The 2021 audit was criticized by elections experts and uncovered no proof of fraud.

“You have no idea how widespread the belief is in Arizona to this day that there’s 300,000 ballots that were brought in via an airplane,” said Doug Logan, a coalition member who worked with Penrose on the plantation and whose company Cyber Ninjas would run the audit. Logan said that Penrose told him that the woman’s theories were false. Still, Logan said, he had auditors examine ballots to check a range of theories, including whether bamboo fibers were mixed into the paper, which auditors believed could show that they were imported from Asia. “Our goal in the audit was to figure out what’s really true and deal with it,” Logan told ProPublica. “That’s why we did paper examination.”

No fibers were found.

Few pieces of evidence were more consequential to the stolen-election theory than a report that claimed to have found evidence of intentional election fraud in Dominion voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan. It was heralded as technical proof that votes were stolen for Biden. It was repeatedly promoted by the president. And Byrne and other proponents of the stolen election myth continued to refer to it when speaking to ProPublica reporters.

...[quite long]

However, one of the authors of the report recently told ProPublica that the original version never found definitive evidence of election fraud in the Antrim voting machines.

“There was no proof at that specific moment,” the author, Conan James Hayes, said. He described finding what he considered a surprising number of errors in the data logs that he thought “could lead to” election fraud. “But there was no, like, ‘There was election fraud,’” he said, “at least at that time in my mind.”

Antrim had been the subject of national attention when, on election night, returns showed that Biden had unexpectedly won the Republican stronghold. The next day, the county clerk, a Republican who supported Trump, explained that officials had discovered that a clerical error had switched roughly 3,000 votes from the president to Biden. After the clerk’s office made corrections, Trump, as expected, had won the county with more than 60% of the vote.

Internal documents reviewed by ProPublica reveal that some members of the coalition almost immediately suspected that the mistake in Antrim was not human error. Rather, it was an incident in which the voting machine software hadn’t been surreptitious enough in stealing votes and unintentionally revealed itself. Their logic was simple: If they could do a forensic audit of the Antrim machines, they could finally establish how the election was stolen. The challenge was how to access the machines.

The day after Thanksgiving 2020, Byrne paid for a private plane to fly two cybersecurity specialists working with the coalition to Antrim: Hayes, a former professional surfer who had taught himself about computers, and Todd Sanders, a Texas businessman with a cybersecurity consulting business. Hayes and Sanders were turned away from the first two offices they tried, but at a third, a county worker agreed to unroll voting tabulation scrolls, which they photographed.

Highlighting discrepancies in the vote tally produced by the error, a Michigan lawyer won a court order to allow the machines to be formally accessed. On Dec. 6, Hayes, Sanders, a deputy for Giuliani and data forensic specialists engaged by Wood flew to Antrim, again on a private plane paid for by Byrne, and imaged the hard drives of a computer that was the county’s election management server.

Hayes and Sanders returned to Washington, where they examined the data and, in less than a week, assembled a report. Hayes and another individual familiar with the original version described it as a straightforward technical document, which noted aspects about the data that seemed suspicious but was cautious about claiming election fraud. Then the report was turned over to Russell J. Ramsland, the head of Allied Security Operations Group, a small security contracting company connected to Texas conservative circles.

When the report was released after a court hearing on Dec. 14, it was a very different document, according to Hayes and the other person familiar with the original version. It had “REVISED PRELIMINARY SUMMARY, v2” and Ramsland’s name at the top and his signature at the bottom, and it made an outright accusation. “The Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results,” it claimed. “This leads to voter or election fraud.” Allied Security, it said, had discovered enough proof of election fraud to decertify the results in Antrim.

Hayes’ and Sanders’ names were nowhere on the report. Hayes told ProPublica that the new “information must have been written by” Allied Security. (Sanders did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

It wasn’t just people associated with the original report who believed Ramsland’s version was flawed. An analysis commissioned by the Michigan secretary of state found that the report contained an “extraordinary number of false, inaccurate, or unsubstantiated statements,” including that “the errors in the log file do not mean what Mr. Ramsland purports them to” and were instead “benign” lines of code generated by processes that did not affect the vote outcome. A bipartisan investigation led by Republican legislators in Michigan declared that the Antrim theories are “a complete waste of time to consider.” (Ramsland did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about revising the report. But he did tell The Washington Post that the Michigan analysis only addressed 12 of Allied Security’s 29 “core observations.”)

Trump supporters immediately seized on the report as definitive proof that the election was rigged. Flynn tweeted, “MI forensics report shows a massive breakdown in national security & must be dealt w/ immediately. @realDonaldTrump must appoint a special counsel now.” Byrne and Flynn lobbied for Powell to become the special counsel.

In a statement, Giuliani said: “This new revelation makes it clear that the vote count being presented now by the democrats in Michigan constitutes an intentionally false and misleading representation of the final vote tally. The Electors simply cannot be certified based on these demonstrably false vote counts.” (Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment.)

Byrne described the report as a “BOMBSHELL,” posting it on his blog under the claim: “You wanted the evidence. Here is the evidence.”

Trump tweeted: “WOW. This report shows massive fraud. Election changing result!” Over the next three days, on social media, he promoted the Antrim report and suspicions about Dominion voting machines 11 times.

Late on the afternoon of Dec. 14, Trump’s personal secretary sent an email to the deputy attorney general with the subject line “From POTUS.” The Antrim report was attached to the email. An additional document included talking points (“This is a Cover-up of voting crimes”) and conclusions (“these election results cannot be certified in Antrim County”). That email launched Trump’s attempt to persuade the Department of Justice to assist in overturning the election results, according to a 2021 report by Senate Democrats. In the end, the deputy attorney general rebuffed the president, and officials in the department threatened to resign en masse if he was replaced.

When Trump demanded that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find 11,780 votes,” enough for him to win the state, in a recorded phone call on Jan. 2, the president mentioned the Dominion conspiracy 10 times.

At the Jan. 6 “Save America” rally on the Ellipse, directly before Trump spoke, Giuliani took the stage and suggested that halting the certification of Biden’s victory was justified because of “these crooked Dominion machines.”

Trump’s speech emphasized the “highly troubling matter of Dominion Voting Systems” and the events in Antrim to explain that the election had been stolen.

Not long after, while Trump supporters made their initial assault on police barricades,Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona was on the House floor objecting to the certification of his state’s electoral votes — the beginning of the effort to block the certification of Biden’s victory by Congress. He cited as evidence “the Dominion voting machines with a documented history of enabling fraud.” About a minute later, Gosar’s speech was interrupted and then cut off. The crowd was storming the Capitol. One person in the throng raised a sign that read, “No Machines Dominion STEALS.”

In the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, many of the same people who had pushed the claims about Dominion repackaged their theory of how the election was stolen. It relied on the same data and the same arguments, except now it had a new name.

This transformation happened after Dominion’s parent company filed a lawsuit against Powell for defamation in a Washington court on Jan. 8. She and others began talking less about Dominion and more about voting machines in general. Dominion would go on to sue Byrne, Giuliani and others for billions of dollars in collective damages, contending that they promoted and in some cases manufactured false claims. The defendants have each denied responsibility or wrongdoing. (Smartmatic USA Corp. also brought defamation suits against Powell, Giuliani and others, all of whom have denied wrongdoing.)

By the summer of 2021, Hayes and Sanders, the two cybersecurity specialists who had performed the Antrim operation, had become involved in an effort to prove a theory called Hammer and Scorecard. The theory had been making the rounds in conservative circles for more than five years, and Powell had promoted it before the 2020 election. It posited that a supercomputer called Hammer had been developed by the CIA and then commandeered by the Obama administration to spy on Americans, including Trump, Flynn and Powell. Around the time of the election, the theory expanded to suggest that Hammer was using a software called Scorecard to alter results in voting machines and that foreign governments had possibly gotten ahold of it.

Part of the usefulness of Hammer and Scorecard is that built into the theory is an explanation for why it can’t be disproven: It is so top secret that the person who could expose the conspiracy can’t. That person is a former Department of Defense contractor named Dennis Montgomery. The people promoting the theory claim he can’t reveal the evidence because he’s under a gag order imposed by the U.S. government.

Phil Waldron, a former Army colonel, a spokesperson for Allied Security and a member of the coalition who worked remotely with those on the plantation, said in an online interview that if the gag order against Montgomery were lifted, “Specifically what that would reveal is the level of foreign interference in the election.”

Montgomery has been accused of fraud by former associates, though no criminal charges have resulted from those accusations. In the aftermath of 9/11, he allegedly duped the Department of Defense and other federal agencies out of more than $20 million in part by selling them software that he claimed could unearth messages to terrorist sleeper cells hidden in Al-Jazeera broadcasts. (It does not appear that the government ever attempted to get the money back.) Once those claims collapsed, allies of Montgomery began spreading the idea of Hammer. In 2018, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed a suit Montgomery had filed against FBI Director James B. Comey, which attempted to expose an alleged government spy program, calling it “a veritable anthology of conspiracy theorists’ complaints.” (Montgomery did not reply to repeated requests for comment, but in the past he has denied the fraud accusations.)

The person behind the 2021 campaign pushing Hammer and Scorecard was Mike Lindell, the My Pillow magnate who has claimed to have poured about $35 million into efforts to prove the 2020 election was fraudulent. In July 2021, Lindell announced that he had gotten hold of a mysterious set of data that would prove the election was stolen. According to sources and messages reviewed by ProPublica, the data related to Hammer and Scorecard, though Lindell didn’t publicly name the theory or refer to Montgomery.

Lindell said he would reveal the data at a three-day “cyber symposium” he was hosting in August 2021 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Reporters, cybersecurity experts and elected officials — as well as anyone tuning in online — would finally see the proof that the election was fraudulent. Lindell said that independent cybersecurity experts would vet 37 terabytes of data at the symposium and posted an online offer of a $5 million reward to any attendee who could prove that “this cyber data is not valid data from the November 2020 election.” The event, he suggested, would result in Trump being returned to the presidency.

In the run-up to the symposium, before the independent experts did their analysis, the data was given to a group that included Waldron, Hayes, Sanders and Joshua Merritt, a self-described “white hat” hacker — all of whom had been associated with Allied Securityat one time or another. (They called themselves the “Red Team” but coordinated on a group chat named “Purple Unicorns.”) Also on the team was Ronald Watkins, who has been identified by two independent forensic linguistic analyses as “Q,” the anonymous figure behind the QAnon conspiracy theory. (Watkins has denied on numerous occasions that he is Q; he did not respond to requests for comment.) Private communications reviewed by ProPublica show that he was in contact with people at the plantation in November 2020, advising them on how to set up secure systems to transfer information and helping with research into the Dominion theory.

Soon after arriving at Sioux Falls, it became evident to the Red Team that the data Lindell had provided wasn’t what was promised. “I have checked them all and they are NOT PROOF,” Watkins wrote in a text message to the rest of the team. “So there are a few files that could potentially be from hammer/scorecard in there, but that is only because it didn’t include a source. Since there is no source, it could be from anywhere — or even fake.”

“At the 11th hour, why do we still have zero proof,” another person on the chat wrote, frustrated that Montgomery hadn’t delivered on his guarantees. “If this software does exist, and the developer” — Montgomery — “is working with us, it shouldn’t take him 10 months to figure out how to extract data” that would prove his assertions.

According to Merritt, when the Red Team tried to inform Lindell two nights before the symposium was to start that the data contained no proof, the CEO yelled at them that they were wrong.

For months leading up to the event, conservatives who believed that the 2020 election was stolen had warned Lindell or an attorney working with him that promoting Hammer and Scorecard risked discrediting other efforts to prove the election was rigged. Two people, including election fraud activist Catherine Engelbrecht, the executive director of True the Vote, cautioned that they had had negative experiences with Montgomery and his representatives and that Hammer and Scorecard wasn’t credible, according to documents viewed by ProPublica and interviews with people familiar with the matter.

On the eve of the symposium, the Red Team learned that Montgomery would not be attending; he said he had suffered a stroke. The final proof of election fraud, which he was supposed to deliver last minute, was no longer going to arrive.

The event drew hundreds of thousands of viewers online, with more than 40 state legislators and others gathering in person. Onstage with Lindell, Waldron explained that the Red Team had looked at the data and “we’ve seen plausibility” and that a separate group of independent analysts would now comb through it.

By the end of the third day, the independent analysts — longtime election security and computer experts, some skeptical of Lindell’s claims and others sympathetic — appeared to have reached a consensus: None of the data contained the proof that Lindell had promised, according to accounts from five of them. In fact, much of the data turned out to be from the Antrim voting machines or harvested from other elections offices and was just a recycling of evidence that had already been discredited.

The data “was some gobbledygook,” said Bill Alderson, a cybersecurity specialist from Texas who had voted for Trump. Merritt told ProPublica that he feared that the hollowness of the data undermined other, more legitimate efforts to prove the election was stolen. Partway through the symposium, The Washington Times quoted him saying that “we were handed a turd.”

Waldron and Lindell, however, did not inform the crowd and those online what the analysts had found. On the last day of the conference, Waldron claimed to have “credible information on a threat in the data streams,” implying the evidence could have been sabotaged.

The day after the symposium ended — the day he had suggested that Trump would be returned to office — Lindell dined with the former president at Mar-a-Lago, a photo of which was leaked to Salon. At a rally, not long after, Trump called the symposium “really amazing,” and he has continued to praise Lindell’s efforts on his behalf. Lindell did not respond to a list of questions from ProPublica and instead wrote, “The election crime movement started November 3rd when the CCP” — the Chinese Communist Party — “and many others did a cyber attack on our election!”

In March 2022, ProPublica sent dozens of letters to the individuals named in this article and others that asked about factual problems with the evidence many had put forth as proof that the election was rigged.

Some of the responses were dismissive. “Stupid article,” wrote Michael T. Flynn’s spokesperson and brother, Joseph J. Flynn. “No one we care about will read it.”

Others contested the article’s findings. Russell J. Ramsland wrote, “So much of this narrative is false or highly misleading that I am not willing to respond point-by-point.”

Despite repeated requests, others did not respond. They include Sidney Powell, James Penrose, Phil Waldron and Todd Sanders.

Some, like Doug Logan, disputed that they had worked as part of a coalition. Others, however, felt it was an accurate description. “I was a member of said coalition,” wrote Seth Keshel.

“‘Coalition’ may not be the right word,” wrote Patrick Byrne, who said that he has spent $12 million on “election integrity” efforts through early 2022, often working in close coordination with Flynn. “We think of it as a network of fellow-travelers who were all volunteering to work to expose what we believed was a rigging of the election on November 3. But I can live with ‘coalition.’” Messages and documents reviewed by ProPublica reveal that the named individuals were in closer contact than has been publicly known, especially in the weeks immediately following the election.

On the whole, coalition members who responded to ProPublica doubled down on their belief in the stolen election myth. “I’ve not wavered on this,” Keshel emailed ProPublica. “I can spend hours with you showing you point after point after point to demand full investigation of this.” The single exception was Conan James Hayes, who wrote to ProPublica: “I don’t believe anything until I have all of the information to analyze, which to this point I do not have. So I can’t say either way.”

Over the course of months, Byrne acted as a champion of sorts for the coalition’s ideas, making himself available for numerous interviews and message exchanges. He also sent a 16,000-word letter in response to more than 80 fact-checking questions.

When presented with evidence that some of his past claims had proven incorrect, he acknowledged that there were instances when he and his allies had been wrong, especially when they were trying to interpret shifting information in the weeks after the election. He downplayed the weight they had put on claims about Dominion voting machines being exploited by foreign governments, though their own court filings and public statements from the time show this was their major claim. “I think that it’s picking at nits to look back at some of the stuff,” he said. He defended the coalition, saying, “I think they got the gestalt of it correct.”

Don’t pay attention, Byrne argued, to the many parts of the Antrim report that a technical expert commissioned by the Michigan secretary of state had debunked. (These errors included Allied Security’s central contention that Dominion machines were “purposefully designed” to create “systemic fraud” through a process known as “adjudication.” The machines in question did not have the “adjudication” software installed, according to the Michigan analysis.) Instead, Byrne stressed that what was now important was the claim that the voting machines’ security logs only went back to the day after the election, making it impossible to rely on any data on them. (The Michigan secretary of state expert found that logs were automatically overwritten to free up memory and that “the timing appears to be a coincidence,” though it said that having a limited amount of memory “is contrary to best practice.”)

Dominion voting machines, South Korean jets and Dennis Montgomery, Byrne suggested, weren’t central to the case. He repeatedly turned the conversation toward newer arguments for election fraud.He highlighted a March 2021 interim election audit report from a special counsel hired by Republican legislators in Wisconsin. The report’s primary claim was that a nonprofit had engaged in “election bribery” by providing funds to boost voter turnout in five urban areas, where voters are disproportionately Democratic. The special counsel raised the possibility that the report’s findings were serious enough that Biden’s victory in the state could be decertified. (A federal judge in October 2020 rejected the argument that the nonprofit’s work was illegal, and courts have repeatedly come to the same conclusion.)

Byrne continued to bring up new, supposedly bombshell claims. In his letter to ProPublica, he promoted a forthcoming documentary called “2000 Mules” by conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza that alleged that thousands of shadowy operatives filled drop boxes across the nation with ballots marked for Biden. “Videotapes of drop boxes, cell phone tower pings, and the testimony of a whistleblower,” Byrne wrote, “all point to about one million votes being stuffed” in Georgia.

There was always another report. Another debunking of the debunking.

Byrne acknowledged that no single piece of smoking gun evidence of election fraud had emerged, but he argued that the breadth of evidence that he and those with similar views had assembled made it inconceivable that elections weren’t corrupted.

What he was doing was necessary to save American democracy, Byrne had concluded. He was sure of it. “I’ve got my cards. You got your cards,” he said. “I’ll go all in.”

no lnx

Here’s How Hugo Chavez, Dead Since 2013, Became Responsible for Trump’s Election Loss

INSANE IN THE MEMBRANE

You probably guessed it from the headline: It’s truly nuts.

Will Sommer

Politics Reporter

Updated Nov. 19, 2020 / Published Nov. 19, 2020

The Trump campaign presented the public with a cornucopia of bogus new election fraud claims on Thursday, including one that seemed to have its roots in a 2016 conspiracy involving perpetual GOP boogeyman George Soros.

The press conference will be remembered best for Rudy Giuliani, who in between trying to wipe up the apparent hair dye dripping down his face, promised that he had over 100 affidavits showing voter fraud, but alas, just couldn’t show them to anyone. But the real star was attorney Sidney Powell, who has been at the vanguard of absolute election nonsense since election night.

On Thursday, Powell declared that she had found the real villains behind Trump’s election defeat: billionaire Soros and deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. In Powell’s telling, Chavez had been pulling the strings on American voting software this whole time.

“The Dominion Voting Systems, the Smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez,” Powell declared.

[Flynn’s Attorney Says She Told Trump Not to Issue Pardon

PLEASE DON’T]

Chavez died in 2013, which sounds like solid evidence that he isn’t playing an active role in any election seven years later. But the Chavez-Soros nexus has become a surprisingly thriving storyline as Trump’s legal team scrambles for proof that Biden’s election was illegitimate.

To understand where the focus on Venezuela is coming from, you have to realize that the Trump campaign and their allies have become fixated on voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems. In the days after the election, Trump and his supporters insisted that nearly huge tranches of Trump votes in Georgia and Michigan had been switched to Biden—often only citing evidence posted on anonymous pro-Trump forum TheDonald.Win.

In reality, though, the machines were only used in a handful of relevant counties, and they hadn’t changed votes.

With that claim foundering, Powell and the Trump internet grassroots became fixated on a totally different voting company: Smartmatic. In a Nov. 13 appearance on Fox Business, Powell promised to “release the kraken” on both companies, a term that’s been embraced on the right as the lead-up to proving widespread election fraud.

It’s hard to stress enough how wild the MAGA internet went over “release the kraken.” At the “Million MAGA March” in D.C. last weekend, I saw people chanting “release the kraken!” and holding kraken-themed signs. Trump forums have been flooded with images of Powell smiling next to a kraken.

[FBI Has New Questions About Giuliani’s Work in Ukraine: CNN

DEJA VU]

But there was also doubt about whether Trump supporters were just getting strung along once again.On 4Chan and TheDonald.Win, a handful of posters started to wonder whether Powell should just release her supposed proof of fraud rather than hyping it up with catchy phrases.

This week, Powell finally made an offering and it quickly sunk to the bottom of the sea. On Tuesday, allied attorney Lin Wood released “the kraken” — a heavily redacted affidavit from an anonymous former Venezuelan military official who saw Chavez many years ago playing around with a supposedly rigged Smartmatic machine.

“It is a stunning, detailed affidavit because he was with Hugo Chavez while he was being briefed on how it worked. He was with Hugo Chavez when he saw it operated. He made sure the election came out his way,” Powell said on Thursday.

Powell also claimed that Soros controlled the voting machines, because the former chairman of Datamatic is also on the board of a Soros foundation — a striking echo of a claim that appeared in The Daily Caller ahead of the 2016 election.

Even if you buy these vague claims, however, Venezuela is a different country from the United States. And Smartmatic and Dominion are different companies.

To bridge these gaps, Powell has focused on the fact that Dominion bought a company called Sequoia Voting Systems from Smartmatic in 2010. The implication is that, somehow, Smartmatic installed its Hugo Chavez code in Sequoia machines, which then went on to infect Dominion’s owner systems with this crazed election-stealing ten years later.

Intriguingly, Powell has turned these claims into an attack on American elections more broadly. She’s declared that any Republican who lost by less than six percent of the vote shouldn’t concede, with the implication that they were probably conned by voter fraud machines.At the Thursday press conference, Powell said that “Republican or Democrats candidates” may have given Dominion and Smartmatic money to “have the system rigged to work for them.”

Does this strike you as outlandish? Of course it does. On Thursday night, Tucker Carlson himself expressed utter bafflement with it all and portrayed Powell as a swindler.

“So we invited Sidney Powell on the show. We would have given her the whole hour. We would have given her the entire week, actually,” he said. “But she never sent any evidence, despite a lot of requests, polite requests. Not a page. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her."

But defenders of Powell, Giuliani, and Wood have a response for their detractors, saying that the lawyers’ reputations would be destroyed if it turned out they’re just making things up.

Rush Limbaugh said Powell and Wood would look like fools if their allegations failed to be true, comparing the claims’ fizzling to Geraldo Rivera’s much-hyped, disastrous excursion into Al Capone’s vault. Therefore, it had to be legit!

“I’m telling you that if you listen to Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, they continue to make it sound like it’s a slam dunk,” Limbaugh said Wednesday on his radio show. “And you know, you just know they don’t want to end up on the wrong end of Geraldo’s vault and that joke.”

Conservative pundit and “Intellectual Dark Web” member Dave Rubin went further, arguing that Powell and Giuliani can’t be lying, because they’d look nuts if it’s fake. As a result, Rubin said, the voter fraud claims obviously must be true.

“If they’re just making it up, then Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani are legitimately insane,” Rubin said.

HUGO CHAVEZ'S VOTING MACHINE - Jorgeramos.com

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HUGO CHAVEZ'S VOTING MACHINE Jorge Ramos Avalos August 6, 2012 The bitter arguments about accusations of vote-buying and illegal media spending that have engulfed Mexico since the recent election must seem laughable to Hugo Chavez.

Why is Hugo Chávez Involved With U.S. Voting Machines?

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Despite having no election experience, the tiny company rocketed from obscurity in 2004 after it was awarded a $100 million contract by the Chávez-dominated National Electoral Council to replace...

Hugo Chavez in the Voting Machine: SFist

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Hugo Chavez in the Voting Machine Our story begins last year when Sequoia was bought by a small software company, Smartmatic Corporation, a Venezuelan company. Of concern are some shady...

Eyewitness: How Hugo Chavez stole the ... - World Tribune

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One of the leading opposition voices against the socialist regime in Venezuela has detailed how dictator Hugo Chavez in 2004 put in place a voting system to rig the country's elections in the...

Voting machine firm: Venezuela vote rigged ... - CBS News

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Smartmatic was created by Venezuelans and began providing electronic voting machines in 2004 during the presidency of the late Hugo Chavez. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro casts his vote at a...

Images for hugo chavez voting machine

HUGO CHAVEZ'S VOTING MACHINE - Jorgeramos.comRabid Republican Blog Cowardly Fox Caves; Cancels Lou Dobbs - Rabid Republican BlogHugo Chavez created the voting machines they used to steal the election. Top Minds are on the ...Chavez' involment in voting machine company "baseless"US Investigates Voting Machines' Venezuela TiesTrump legal team is unravelling corrupt vote fraud network as deep state pushes COVID panic ...This day in WND history: Suspected Chavez ties to U.S. voting machines96% Of Dominion Voting Systems' Political Donations Went To Democrats - India Inc BlogThe well-greased vote machine Chavez leftThe Hugo Chavez Test | WIREDJoe Biden Appoints Dominion Voting Machines To Handle All Metrics For His Presidency

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Why is Hugo Chávez Involved With U.S. Voting Machines ...

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Despite having no election experience, the tiny company rocketed from obscurity in 2004 after it was awarded a $100 million contract by the Chávez-dominated National Electoral Council to replace Venezuela's electronic voting machines for the recall vote.

Here's How Hugo Chavez, Dead Since 2013, Became ...

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In Powell's telling, Chavez had been pulling the strings on American voting software this whole time. "The Dominion Voting Systems, the Smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes in...

Giuliani claims 'Chavez approved' Venezuelan election ...

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They were angered by the use of Dominion, a Canadian-based company. He was also upset at a Venezuelan firm, Smartmatic, being used - despite them only operating in Los Angeles County. "You couldn't...

ALERT: If You See THIS Voting Machine, Here's What To Do

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These machines were used in Venezuela and have been tied to the so-called "landslide" victory of President Hugo Chavez and his supporters, WikiLeaks is revealing. Stop the censors, sign up to get today's top stories delivered right to your inbox

Hugo Chavez created the voting machines they used to steal ...

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Hugo Chavez created the voting machines they used to steal the election. Top Minds are on the case. /r/Conservative. Close. 161. Posted by. Dean of Topmindology. 11 months ago. Archived. Hugo Chavez created the voting machines they used to steal the election. Top Minds are on the case.

Fact check: Dominion Voting Systems has no foreign owners

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Dec 18, 2020The claims about interference and fraud from the campaign's supporters range from Sharpies invalidating conservative voter's ballots in Arizona to Hugo Chávez — the deceased former president of...

Fact check: Dominion is not linked to Antifa or Venezuela ...

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Dominion is a front company for Smartmatic software. Smartmatic Dominion sent all voting results to Frankfurt and Barcelona, and we'll get into the raid that happened in Frankfurt later, which did...

Soros-Linked Voting Machines Used in 16 States

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LONDON ( ChurchMilitant.com) - Voting machines connected to Clinton-supporting billionaire George Soros, which according to WikiLeaks are thought to have rigged a 2004 election in favor of...

New Evidence: Dominion Voting Machines Do Contact Hugo Chavez!

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New Evidence: Dominion Voting Machines Do Contact Hugo Chavez! January 12, 2021 / Jay O'Three posted in Politics / No Comments. The Ghost In The Machine! LAS VEGAS - Well, well, well! It turns out the TEENY-WEENIE IMPOTUS and Rudolph GHOUL-IANI were right! For the last few years, the annual Hacking Conference, DefCon, has included a Voting ...

U.S. Investigates Voting Machines' Venezuela Ties - The ...

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Oct 29, 2006Smartmatic was a little-known firm with no experience in voting technology before it was chosen by the Venezuelan authorities to replace the country's elections machinery ahead of a contentious...

Family of Hugo Chavez does not own Dominion Voting Systems ...

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Citing statements from the meeting, the man in the video claimed Hugo Chavez's family owns 28% of Dominion, whose equipment is used for voting and vote tabulation in more than 30 states. "Hugo Chavez is dead, but his family owns this," the man said. "It was his business. Dominion was started by him. The software company was started by him."

The Hugo Chavez Test | WIRED

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There's been much ado over whether electronic voting machine manufacturer Sequoia Voting Systems has ties to Venezualan President and Chief Bush-Baiter Hugo Chavez, sparking the company to ask a...

Why NY Times report on Trump and seizing voting machines ...

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The voting machine theories, promoted by fringe characters around Trump, were the wackiest of all, said to include machinations involving Venezuela and Hugo Chavez. Think, for a moment, of the ...

United States digs for voting machine links to Hugo Chavez

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Federal officials are investigating whether Smartmatic, owner of Oakland, Calif., Sequoia Voting Systems, is secretly controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the Miami Herald and the New ...

The Hugo Chavez Test for Voting Machines | Emergent Chaos

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3 thoughts on " The Hugo Chavez Test for Voting Machines " Allan Friedman on October 30, 2006 at 4:29 pm said: Adam, that's a great test, for voting technology and a large swath of policy. Assuming that an adversary can manipulate the process is a great recipe for transparent process. If Hugo Chavez had a controlling share of Halliburton ...

CNN fact-check on Dominion Voting Systems connects them to ...

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Powell claimed that widely used voting machines from the election technology company Dominion Voting Systems featured software created "at the direction" of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to swing his own election results, and that the company has ties to the Clinton Foundation and Soros.

voting-machine shocker: Does Hugo Chavez own 'em?

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WASHINGTON - Just 10 days before Americans vote in midterm congressional elections that could result in a historic shift of power, the federal government is investigating whether anti-American Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may control the company that operates electronic voting machines in 17 states.

Yes, those 'glitches' are from the same ... - American Thinker

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That Venezuela smell was back in U.S. election news when the press reported that a voting machine 'glitch' flipped some 6,000 votes cast for President Trump to Joe Biden in Michigan. Hadn't we ...

Flashback: Soros-linked firm used in Venezuela supplied ...

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Flashback: Soros-linked firm used in Venezuela supplied voting machines to 16 states in 2016 added by World Tribune on November 7, 2020 View all posts by World Tribune →

Rudy Giuliani Fingered In Voting Machine Seizure Scheme

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The team claimed that the presidential election in 2020 had been stolen from Trump, in part because the manufacturers of Dominion Voting Systems vote-tabulating machines were in cahoots with Democrats, Italy, and the long-deceased Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Giuliani and some of his associates over claims about Dominion made publicly.

Voting Machine Company Vows No Connection to Venezuelan ...

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Following news reports last week alleging a connection between the Smartmatic Corp. and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. and its parent the Smartmatic Corp, on Sunday ...

Fox News, Newsmax Walk Back Election Fraud Claims ... - Forbes

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Dec 21, 2020Voting machines manufacturer Smartmatic earlier this month demanded the conservative networks retract their baseless coverage of its suggested role in unproven election fraud. ... Hugo Chavez, or ...

Hugo Chavez wants your vote - American Thinker

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Now, Chavez has moved on to far more ambitious things like getting a grip on the U.S. voting apparatus itself. Venezuela's electoral system is based on a system of highly suspect electronic machines.

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