Nov 16, 2020: New York Intelligencer: Trump’s New Vote Fraud Theory Is So Much Crazier Than You Realize
Nov 14, 2020: New York Times: Giuliani adds fuel to discredited theories about voting machines.
Nov 17, 2020: MSNBC: Why Trump's Dominion conspiracy theory is so deeply odd
Nov 16, 2020: Washington Post: Giuliani’s fantasy parade of false voter-fraud claims
Nov 17, 2020: Associate Press: Smartmatic does not own Dominion Voting Systems
Nov 17: Wall Street Journal:
Snopes
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rumor-alert-dominion-voting-systems-fraud-claims/
Article: Trump “has become personally obsessed with the baseless Dominion claims and has asked campaign officials as well as national security officials in the government about the company,” reports the Washington Post.
Rudy Giuliani, who Trump has entrusted with running his election challenge operation, explained the theory this weekend on Fox News. I am quoting the entire explanation because it is intricate, sweeping, and utterly, utterly bonkers:
“It’s way beyond what people think, including a very, very dangerous foreign company that did the votes in 27 states, a company that’s not American, a company that’s foreign, a company that has close, close ties with Venezuela and, therefore, China and uses a Venezuelan company software that’s been used to steal elections in other countries.”
“I mean, I don’t think people have any idea of the dimension of the national security problem that Dominion creates. This Dominion company is a radical-left company. One of the people there is a big supporter of antifa and has written horrible things about the president for the last three or four years. And, the software that they use is done by a company called Smartmatic, a company that was founded by [Hugo] Chávez and by Chávez’s two allies, who still own it. And it’s been used to cheat in elections in South America. It was banned by the United States several — about a decade ago. It’s come back now as a subcontractor to other companies. It sort of hides in the weeds. But Dominion sends everything to Smartmatic. Can you believe it? Our votes are sent overseas. They are sent to someplace else, some other country. Why do they leave our country?”
“And this company had — and this company has tried-and-true methods for fixing elections by calling a halt to the voting when you’re running too far behind. They have done that in prior elections. Now, what happened on election night? He [Trump] was ahead by 800,000 votes in Pennsylvania. Impossible to catch up, unless you’re cheating, and same thing in Michigan, Wisconsin. He was ahead in all those states by numbers that, in prior times — and I can show this to you — networks would have called for him. But they didn’t call it for him.”
Nov 14, 2020: New York Times: Giuliani adds fuel to discredited theories about voting machines.
Article: Looking to sow doubt about the vote count in multiple swing states that were recently called for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Giuliani hinted support for a discredited theory that one of the companies that manufactures the voting machines used in some states, Smartmatic, is controlled by the billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
Nov 17, 2020: MSNBC: Why Trump's Dominion conspiracy theory is so deeply odd
Article: Apparently responding to something he saw on a far-right television station, the outgoing president highlighted a "report" that Dominion "deleted" and "switched" millions of Republican votes. It was the sort of tweet one might expect from a fringe conspiracy theorist with a handful of Twitter followers, except in this case, the missive was published by the ostensible leader of the free world.
Naturally, Trump's tweet was quickly discredited -- the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at Trump's own Department of Homeland Security has explained that the scenario just isn't possible -- but as the president's response has grown more manic, his fixation on Dominion has gotten creepier.
Nov 16, 2020: Washington Post: Giuliani’s fantasy parade of false voter-fraud claims
Article: Moreover, this nonsense has already been debunked by Trump’s own government. In a statement issued Nov. 12, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, and partners such as the National Association of Secretaries of State declared: “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Nov 17, 2020: Associate Press: Smartmatic does not own Dominion Voting Systems
Article: The latest of those claims, amplified by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell in recent television interviews, attempted to link Dominion and competing voting technology firm Smartmatic, despite the fact that the two companies have no active partnership or ownership deal.
“Dominion is a company that’s owned by another company called Smartmatic through an intermediary company named Indra,” Giuliani told Fox Business host Lou Dobbs in an interview on Nov. 12. “Dominion is a Canadian company but all of its software is Smartmatic software.”
Dominion, for one, is not a Canadian company. It has been majority owned since 2018 by Staple Street Capital, a New York private equity firm. And both Dominion and Smartmatic have issued statements saying Smartmatic neither owns Dominion nor provides it with any software or equipment.
Nov 17: Wall Street Journal:
Article: President Trump has so far been unwilling to concede to Joe Biden, and his latest argument is that the voting machines must have been rigged. Where’s the evidence? Strong claims need strong proof, not rumors and innuendo on Twitter.
Snopes
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rumor-alert-dominion-voting-systems-fraud-claims/