Research/Study

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

Written by Casey Wexler, Kaila Philo, Cydney Hargis, Alex Walker, Sergio Munoz & Julie Tulbert

Research contributions from Katherine Abughazaleh

Published 01/21/21 1:40 PM EST

Updated 03/26/21 7:15 AM EDT

Dominion Voting Systems, a U.S. and Canadian company that supplies election technology throughout North America, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump’s former attorney Sidney Powell due to the “viral disinformation campaign” she furthered “to financially enrich herself, to raise her public profile, and to ingratiate herself” with Trump in the wake of his reelection loss.

Powell’s efforts -- which claimed that Dominion had helped rig the election on behalf of President Joe Biden as part of an international conspiracy that originated in Venezuela -- did not exist in a vacuum. Almost all of Powell’s alleged false claims were promoted on Fox platforms and repeated by its personalities, in addition to appearing in other right-wing media.

Dominion’s lead attorney has stated that it is considering similar legal action against media outlets that participated in this campaign of disinformation.

Update (3/26/21): Dominion Voting Systems has reportedly filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

False Claim: Dominion was used to rig the election for President Joe Biden and the company has done this before.
False Claim: Dominion was used to rig the election for President Joe Biden and the company has done this before. (“It has been used to rig this election for to make it appear the votes were for Mr. Biden when Donald Trump won overwhelmingly,” Powell said, according to the lawsuit.)

Dominion’s Response: “Independent audits and hand recounts of paper ballots have conclusively and repeatedly disproven the false claim that Dominion rigged the 2020 U.S. presidential election by manipulating votes, shifting votes, installing and using an algorithm to modify or ‘weight’ votes such that a vote for Biden counted more than a vote for Trump, trashing Trump votes, adding Biden votes, or training election workers to dispose of Trump votes and to add Biden votes.”
Almost immediately after the election, Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs claimed Dominion Voting Systems’ machines caused inaccurate vote counts in battleground states:
Video file

Citation From the November 9, 2020, edition of Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight

LOU DOBBS (HOST): Also breaking, the election software blamed for what some humorists in Pennsylvania called “glitches” in Michigan and Georgia. Those glitches were, it appears, programmed in software used in not just a few states, in 28 states in this election. The software is in the voting machines of a company called Dominion Voting Systems. It is the largest voting company in this country. And quite a few problems occurred. In addition to the 28 states in which they operate, the company boasts that its customers include nine of the top 20 counties in the United States. In Antrim County, Michigan, the software initially awarded thousands of votes to Joe Biden. They were meant for President Trump. The error, we’re told, was corrected, and the county flipped in favor of the president by 2,500 votes. My, my, my. Georgia’s Gwinnett County in suburban Atlanta also faced a day-long delay in reporting their votes Friday because of a, quote, technical issue with Dominion. And this appears to be the type of thing Joe Biden might have had in mind when he hailed his voter fraud apparatus last month, what do you think? Listen.

...

DOBBS: This election a lot of strange things happened and many of them highly suspicious. For example, Dominion's software. And there is software as well at play here. But their -- this does not look, well, it doesn't look good, to put it mildly. Your thoughts.

TOM FITTON (PRESIDENT, JUDICIAL WATCH): Yeah, I agree. And the question is are the courts going to do anything about it? In Pennsylvania, there's more than enough evidence, I think, or substantial case of -- substantial evidence that calls into question the whole result. In my view, the Pennsylvania result of the election is irredeemably compromised. And the question is will the courts fix it but throwing out the ballots that have been really not subject to any scrutiny and can never really be fixed or, if the courts fail to act, will the Pennsylvania state legislature ratify what we saw go on over the last week, or will they take independent action to appoint a clean slate or will Congress, the Senate, and the House, reject Pennsylvania electors who were placed there as a result of what looks to be systematic fraud or misconduct?
Even in December, Dobbs continued to raise allegations that Dominion’s algorithm was rigged and that foreign influence might be to blame:
Video file

Citation From the December 4, 2020, edition of Fox News' Lou Dobbs Tonight

LOU DOBBS (HOST): Breaking news now, hackers have stolen the personal information of more than 100,000 Alaskan voters. Hackers gained access to the voter data through the state's online voter registration system. Alaska's lieutenant governor says no other election systems or data were affected or so they believe. We also believe that Dominion, according to the company, is doing business in Alaska. We don't know if this was a direct entry through any of their equipment or software. Our next guest is a retired Army colonel. He spent half of his 30-year career in information warfare. He has testified in a number of battleground states before state legislatures about how our voting systems have been manipulated in this election. Joining us now is Col. Phil Waldron. Phil, it's good to have you with us. We appreciate it. We have -- your testimony has been fascinating before each of these state legislatures, and I believe that you have been absolutely, I'm going to say, persuasive because you've been so informative. At the center of it all, Dominion Voting Systems. Are they the culprit here? Not the only culprit, but are they the principal culprit?

PHIL WALDRON (RETIRED ARMY COLONEL): Thanks for having me, Lou. I like to explain this as a campaign plan. If -- in the military we were going to attack a target, we would have a specific air campaign plan to take out radars, to take out electronic warnings, to take out communication, to take out critical functions. Then you'd have the ground forces that were, you know, coming across and attacking another, you know, critical pieces of infrastructure. And looking at the whole battlefield here, which I truly believe we are in the middle of an information warfare, unconventional warfare. That's what's happening. There's multiple ways that are being interdicted. There's obviously the electronic pathway, there appear to be ballot-shipping and storage as we've seen --

DOBBS: Right.

WALDRON: -- in affidavits in Pennsylvania, as well as Arizona. You know, in the state of Michigan, there were 17,000-plus dead people or people who voted in Michigan who had obituaries. So each one of those is a willful attempt to strip rightful voters in America of their civil rights. So it's a multifaceted attack.

DOBBS: A multifaceted attack. We also know that the radical Dems carried out part of that attack through their insistence upon mail-in balloting, and Republicans committed folly when they permitted it in state after state in this country, particularly in those battleground states in which you've been testifying. But concomitantly, Dominion Voting Systems, with -- you have described it, with algorithms which were designed to be inaccurate rather than to be a secure system. Give us your sense of who is driving all of this. We know the Dems are, we know the deep state has had others -- other areas of responsibility in this overall attack. I mean we're talking about command and control. The president of the United States is being censored by Silicon Valley and social media. We are also watching this disinformation campaign waged by social media against the conservatives in this country, Republicans, and without consequence. Give us your sense of exactly who is driving this.

WALDRON: All of the above. I've spent the better part of my career studying warfare, unconventional warfare, and understanding the dynamics of how things are run. In an unconventional warfare, you've got the underground, which is the covert piece of the unconventional warfare that drive intelligence, money, and ideology. You generally have a shadow government, a government in exile, and then the guerilla forces and the auxiliary. So all of those pieces, now you can really template into what's happening here. You mention specifically Dominion, and I think what this is is a situation that is -- it's not easy to understand. It's a complex situation that there's been a narrative built around it and again, narrative warfare is a real part of information warfare and information operations.

DOBBS: Absolutely.

WALDRON: Part of the narrative is that these machines are not connected to the internet. And I don't know if you saw the Georgia testimony yesterday. A lady that testified just a few minutes after I did, said that she got to her polling place, the systems were coded for a different polling place, she called the help desk in Colorado, and they were able to fix both of her polling pads as well as the scanning -- the ballot recording devices. So the fallacy that these systems are not connected to the internet is just beyond my grasp. If you're seeing live votes come up on mainstream media and social media, where's that information coming from? It's connected to a system. It's connected to the internet and servers. And if you look on the contracts for these, the counties and the states that use these systems, you've got servers, you've got firewalls, you've got all this equipment that is communications equipment. So it is communicating and it is live, and that's what -- I just can't understand why people don't understand that.

DOBBS: And nor do I. Nor do I understand why there is such resistance by some state legislatures who are frankly betraying a very important reality. I'm glad that they have, because as a result of your testimony, of the hearings that we've seen, we've seen state legislatures obviously sincerely and very concerned, irrespective of party in most cases. But right now it's also very clear that those legislatures, elected officials don't even know how the hell they were elected. They have no understanding whatsoever of the technology that's being used. The state election officials look like absolute buffoons. They've signed multimillion dollar contracts, not only with Dominion but others, and they haven't got a -- you can, you have to watch their vacant eyes when they start talking about algorithms and software systems. I mean, my God -- Phil, this is an outrage. And I can't even imagine what the redress here is, but I would like to have your opinion about what we should do knowing what we know now.

WALDRON: I think it's just a lack of understanding, and I would happily send a list of questions and the user's manual for the Dominion Systems to any state legislator that asked for it, any county administrator that asked for it. It's -- all you have to do is open the book. All you have to do is open the book. We have a set of laws, but it appears that the legislators don't understand election law or, you know, the federal laws that govern federal elections. Any one of a number of things should be disqualifying these systems. And again, this is an American issue. This is not a Republican or a Democrat issue. As a matter of fact, there was a document that we found on Stacey Abrams' website that was put together by one of her staffers that was over 40 pages long of problems with the ESNS system. I mean, so it is recognized by the few of us who actually look at these systems and look at the vulnerabilities that are present in them. These systems all have back doors. These systems all have multiple -- you mentioned a sleight of hand with USB drives. There was photographs of a gentleman in Pennsylvania walking around with a Ziploc bag of USB drives, not to mention that a batch of those USB drives and a laptop were stolen from the election's storage facility, I believe on September the 30th, so a month before the elections. And those USB drives can be built to bypass encryption, to upload different algorithms of voting software, and they're easy to conceal in the move, like you said, the sleight of hand.

DOBBS: Have you found evidence of foreign involvement -- and I'll leave that open as a question: of foreign involvement in our elections? Particularly through Dominion.
After the election was called in November, Fox’s Sean Hannity pushed the narrative that Dominion machines had suspiciously switched votes in Pennsylvania:
Video file

Citation From the November 9, 2020, edition of Hannity

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): All right. Let's look at the law, OK? Pennsylvania: “Partisan observers may observe at polling locations and may still until the time that the counting of votes is complete.” That means every vote. Out in Erie, Pennsylvania, a mail carrier has now in a sworn affidavit that would make them a real whistleblower that he was ordered by supervisors to collect and submit late ballots, another violation of election law. Also, a Supreme Court case, oh, it’s actually pending over the extension of the mail-in deadline, something that Ken Starr, who will join us later, called a constitutional travesty with Mark Levin yesterday. He will be here. Now, in reaction to all of this, President Trump tweeted, quote, “Pennsylvania prevented us from watching much of the ballot count. Unthinkable,” and he's right, “illegal,” if it turns out to be true, and people are saying, “I wasn't allowed.” Out in Nevada, a sworn affidavit from a whistleblower -- again, a real one -- in Clark County, says mail-in ballots were filled out on the side of a Biden-Harris van. Nevada GOP has said thousands of criminal referrals to the DOJ over alleged illegal voting. And in the state of Michigan, Republicans are moving in to investigate this software glitch called Dominion that actually changed thousands of votes from Trump to Biden. They caught it. Now, the same software also, quote, “glitched” in Georgia and was used in as many as 28 states, according to John Solomon. We need real answers. Why should we, as a country, be OK when that happened? And shouldn't we investigate it so that every American has confidence in the outcome?
Just the News’ John Solomon appeared on Lou Dobbs and claimed Dominion machines were used to stuff ballot boxes:
Video file

Citation From the November 12, 2020, edition of Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight

LOU DOBBS (HOST): Dominion voting systems. These are ugly, ugly charges we're hearing. What do you know, and are you digging deeply on this one?

JOHN SOLOMON (JUST THE NEWS): We are. And I'll tell you, the more we dig on it, the less we're convinced that there's any computer fraud going on, meaning someone swapping numbers around. What we think we're beginning to see is the possibility that Dominion machines were used to ballot stuff, meaning people would bring in -- just like what Mayor Giuliani said -- extra ballots, and they weren't qualified to vote, but someone would make them eligible and run them through the system real quickly. Tonight, we're going to have a new story -- late tonight on Just the News that will divulge -- in Detroit which is, I think, ground zero for the investigation -- you’re going to see the city of Detroit hired a very interesting company with ties to a very corrupt political figure to provide the muscle, the bodies that would work and staff the election centers in Detroit on election night. Now, we know from one of the election workers, a longtime civil servant, her name is Jessie Jacobs, she's filed an affidavit in which she states flatly, “I witnessed over several weeks thousands upon thousands of ballots fraudulently being processed.” Now we're going to find out who were the people processing those ballots. We're going to give you some answers tonight in an exclusive story on Just the News.

DOBBS: Will you give us a hint? I mean, you’re here and all, why not?

SOLOMON: Well, the -- yeah, we shouldn't tease you that much without giving you a little bit more. So, the company that was hired to provide 2,000 workers to the city of Detroit's election center on election night is tied directly to a longtime adviser and operative around the convicted mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick is still in prison for all sorts of corrupt deeds he committed as the mayor. This is one of his insiders. That company got the contract and provided 2,000 bodies. What were those bodies supposed to do? Run the Dominion machines that night. That's what the contract says.
Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt raised the possibility of “nefarious” election interference, invoking an investigation into Dominion voting systems in Arizona because of “glitches” in Michigan:
Video file

Citation From the December 15, 2020, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): And to Bill Barr, you know, when you look at that, there are a lot of people that voted for Trump, and it's hard to watch that because a lot of people do agree with the president, they think that there was something nefarious, they don't trust the election system. And Bill Barr wrote a beautiful letter to the president and part of that he said, "We need to ensure the integrity of the elections and promote public confidence in their outcome." And this morning, I was reading that in Georgia, they are going to have a signature matching audit.

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Good.

EARHARDT: The Secretary of State has agreed to that. And then in Michigan, there was one county that used those Dominion Voting Systems, and it turns out in this one county, it's Antrim County in Michigan, Joe Biden beat President Trump by 3,000 votes, and that raised eyebrows. Everyone said, "This is a Republican district. Something had to be wrong." They found glitches and so now an Arizona state senator has said he will issue subpoenas for an audit of the Dominion Voting Systems that were used in Maricopa County. So, we'll continue to follow that.
On Fox & Friends Weekend, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani pushed claims that Dominion machines were “developed to steal elections” and that “statistical analysis” of the machines showed they produced inaccurate results:
Video file

Citation From the December 12, 2020, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends Weekend

PETE HEGSETH (CO-HOST): We'll ask the same question of you. In the legal challenge, what's next?

RUDY GIULIANI (TRUMP LAWYER): Well, what's next now is to take each one of those complaints that were against different states, to break them down into individual complaints and over the next two days bring them in those states where we would have standing. Namely, in Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin -- we already have an ongoing case, so we may or may not supplement it. It's going to be heard today.

So, basically we'll take the advice of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court says, I think incorrectly, that the state of Texas doesn't have standing, but certainly the president of the United States has standing. Certainly the electors like that gentlemen that spoke to you have standing. So, we will be bringing those cases in their names in the states in which we were cheated.

Georgia is probably the most dramatic example of cheating because it was done live on tape. You know, I say that that tape is going to live after this election like the Zapruder tape with the Kennedy assassination. Twenty years from now when they look back on this election, they're going to show that tape, and whatever happens with the result of this election they're going to say "Oh my goodness, it really was stolen." Because you can see, you can see 30,000 votes being stolen, right in front of your eyes. And how the governor of Georgia, the lieutenant governor can ignore that is pretty close to a crime. I mean, the people of Georgia have every right to be outraged. Their state was stolen on television.

Now we get to Detroit, and we have a truck that pulled in at 4:30 in the morning with 100,000 votes, and we have a machine, the Dominion machine, that is as full of holes as Swiss cheese, and was developed to steal elections, and being used in the states that are involved. So there's a lot that's going to come out here over the next month or so. And you know the shame of it? If this all comes out six months from now the way the Biden thing is now coming out. You know, six months ago, eight months ago, I was being accused of being some kind of Russian spy for merely bringing out the fact that the Biden family has been involved in 30 years of racketeering activity, which is all proven. I have the video tapes, the documents, the hard drives, I've got every piece of evidence, and I've got a mountain full of evidence. And nobody would believe me. But you're going to find out it's true. You're also going to find out that this election was stolen. I hope it's not too late.

WILL CAIN (CO-HOST): Mr. Mayor, I'd love to ask you about timing and that evidence that you bring up. First of all, on timing, do you have time -- you said in the next two days you'll be bringing many of these suits where someone will have standing. Do you have the time to bring these and put forward the evidence, and what is your strongest piece of evidence? You bring up that video but you also mention the computers. So, what is your strongest piece of evidence you look forward to presenting?

GIULIANI: Well, I think that you know the strongest piece of evidence are that 1,000 affidavits from all different witnesses in six different states that all basically say the same thing. They go anywhere from one act of voter fraud to 50,000 acts of voter fraud. Then you have the statistical analysis of the machines that are done by experts that say they couldn't possibly have produced that number of ballots in that period of time. You have the 700,000 ballots in Pennsylvania of mail-in ballots that were sent in but never sent out. In other words, they were made up. You have 60,000 dead people voting in one state. You have 40,000 dead people voting in another state. You have people who aren't citizens voting in Arizona -- more than enough citizens that goes way beyond the margin of victory. I mean, just think about that alone. Biden supposedly wins Arizona by 10,000 votes. There weren't 10,000 illegals that voted for Biden in Arizona? You'd have to be stupid not to know that, right? I mean, you'd have to be absolutely dumb to not know that Arizona was stolen.
On America’s Newsroom, Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo promoted the claim that Dominion voting machines changed votes to swing the election to Biden:
Video file

Citation From the November 30, 2020, edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom

MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): [Trump’s] legal team is pressing forward, and they have identified several pieces of evidence that they believe will bring them to a path to victory. They've talked about the fact that tens of thousands of Republicans were not able to observe what was going on in terms of the actual ballot counting. They’re talking about up to 100,000 Republicans not being able to see what was going on. Dead people obviously voting -- that we have evidence of. They say they have a stack of affidavits of people, sworn testimony that say that they saw the Dominion machines change votes. They know how it works. So, this is all being compiled in lawsuits.
On Fox & Friends Weekend, Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis implied that Dominion machines intentionally switched votes in one county from Trump to Biden, calling it a “so-called glitch":
Video file

Citation From the December 6, 2020, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends Weekend

PETE HEGSETH (CO-HOST): President Trump rallying Georgia voters on what's at stake in next month's runoff election as he doubles down on claims of election fraud and vows to keep fighting. Here with an update on those legal challenges, President Trump's attorney, Jenna Ellis. Jenna, thank you so much for being with us this morning, we appreciate it. Give us that update. Where is the president's legal challenge at this moment?

JENNA ELLIS (TRUMP LAWYER): Yeah, well the big news coming out of Antrim County, Michigan, this morning, Pete, is that a judge actually granted our team access to 22 of the Dominion Voting machines for us to conduct a forensic audit. So, if you remember, this is the county that had the switch of 6,000 votes from President Trump to Joe Biden, and that was an unexplained and so-called glitch, and so our team is going to be able to go in this morning at about 8:30 and will be there for about eight hours to conduct that forensic examination, and we'll have the results in about 48 hours, and that'll tell us a lot about these machines.
False Claim: Dominion is of Venezuelan origin, created at the request of Hugo Chavez to alter election results in furtherance of an international conspiracy.
False Claim: Dominion is of Venezuelan origin, created at the request of Hugo Chavez to alter election results in furtherance of an international conspiracy. (“[Dominion was] created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chávez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out,” Powell said, according to the lawsuit.)

Dominion’s Response: “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.”
On his Fox Business show, host Lou Dobbs repeated Powell’s allegations that Dominion was “used to rig elections in Venezuela” and that Dominion is connected to Smartmatic:
Video file

Citation From the November 19, 2020, edition of Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight

LOU DOBBS (HOST): Trump's attorneys say they can prove illegal ballots were used to inflate Biden's vote tally in Georgia, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, in Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona. The legal team also expects to file new lawsuits in Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, perhaps even Virginia, and New Mexico. That's in addition to the 20 lawsuits that are now being litigated by the campaign or Republican Party attorneys. Another issue at the center of today's news conference, the use of Dominion voting machines and Smartmatic software. Defense attorney Sidney Powell cited a whistleblower's stunning affidavit. It says Smartmatic's technology was used to rig elections in Venezuela. It is now in the, quote, “DNA of every vote tabulating company software and system.” Smartmatic and Dominion deny those charges, but Sidney Powell argues that algorithms in the Smartmatic software were used to change results in the presidential election.
Dobbs and guest Rudy Giuliani promoted claims about Dominion’s ties to election fraud in Venezuela and to Smartmatic:
Video file

Citation From the November 18, 2020 edition of Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight.

LOU DOBBS (HOST): I want to share with the audience one of the affidavits that has been given to us by an unidentified whistleblower, and it pertains to Dominion.

RUDY GIULIANI (TRUMP ATTORNEY): Ah, Dominion.

DOBBS: A whistleblower who also saw what happened in Venezuela. And the very similar events that took place in the United States on November 3. If we could put this up, please, to share with the audience, because it is indeed alarming. The whistleblower says this -- if we ever get it up: "I am alarmed because of what is occurring in plain sight during this 2020 election for president of the United States. The circumstances and events are eerily reminiscent of what happened with Smartmatic software electronically changing votes in the 2013 presidential election in Venezuela. What happened in the United States was that the vote counting was abruptly stopped in five states using Dominion software. At the time that vote counting was stopped, Donald Trump was significantly ahead in the votes. Then during the wee hours of the morning, when there was no voting occurring and the vote count reporting was offline, something significantly changed. When the vote reporting resumed the very next morning, there was a very pronounced change in voting in favor of the opposing candidate, Joe Biden." That from a whistleblower who was present both in Venezuela in 2013 and in this country as we were counting votes overnight on November 3. Your thoughts.

GIULIANI: Well, Lou, I don't know if people can appreciate this but I think when they do they're going to be outraged. Our votes in 27, 28 states, did they count them by Dominion? And calculated and analyzed? They're sent outside the United States. And they're not sent to Canada. They're sent to Germany and Spain. And the company counting it is not Dominion. It's Smartmatic, which is a company that was founded in 2005 in Venezuela for the specific purpose of fixing elections. That's their expertise, how to fix elections. They did it a number of times in Venezuela, they did it in Argentina, and they messed up an election to a fare-thee-well in Chicago, and there's a whole congressional record that you can go look at about what a terrible company this is. Well, that's the company that was counting and calculating on election night, and they did all their old tricks.

DOBBS: Well, wait --

GIULIANI: They stopped it, they also switched votes around subtly, maybe 10 per district so you don't notice it. They got caught in Antrim County, which is how we found out about them, and we are in the process now of investigating this in great, great detail. But I mean, just the mere fact that we have a foreign country -- we have this in a foreign country, done by friends of an enemy of the United States, [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro, is outrageous! And has to stop immediately.

DOBBS: It's outrageous, and it's all the more outrageous because Dominion and Smartmatic were denied use in the state of Texas, which called them out for what they are. They have a clear record: Democratic senators sending letters in 2019, joining with Republicans now in decrying the reliability and the ability of that system to avoid manipulation and fraud without any one of these secretaries of state in various states responding and shutting them down.

GIULIANI: Well, Lou, the amazing thing is, Caroline Maloney, a congresswoman from Manhattan, wrote a letter in 2006, 2007, explaining everything I just said. We shouldn't be using this company that was founded by Chavez to call votes in America because their specialty in Venezuela is cheating. Apparently the governor signed them up and never bothered to do any due diligence of any kind. Also the company Dominion is a far-left radical company. Some of their people have written and tweeted the worst things about Trump and Republicans that you could possibly imagine. They've since taken it down but we have it, so we've got a very radical far-left company with some of their high-level people, supporters of antifa. Can you believe that? And they're using a Venezuelan company as the vote counter, which is known for changing votes, and also known to have the most insecure computers in this business. I think you'd only pick them because you want to cheat.
Jeanine Pirro promoted claims by Trump lawyers alleging that Dominion “started in Venezuela with Cuban money and with the assistance of Smartmatic software, a backdoor is capable of flipping votes":
Video file

Citation From the November 21, 2020, edition of Fox News' Justice with Judge Jeanine

JEANINE PIRRO (HOST): For four years we listened to unsupported allegations of a conspiracy by a foreign government to interfere with our presidential election, that Russia stole the election of 2016, implanting their Russian asset, Donald Trump, as president of the United States. For four years we were told Trump was a Putin puppet, a Russian asset, that we must do everything we can to get rid of him and save America. Almost on a daily basis, the Democrat medieval minstrels in Congress put on their conspiracy show as congressmen like Adam Schiff pontificated about real evidence, evidence that he had seen with his own eyes, evidence that required that Donald Trump be gone because America and democracy were at stake.

Never, ever, not once did we see a scintilla of evidence. Never. Were we supposed to take it all on faith? They put the president and the country through hell as the work of Congress was halted and as the media everyday reminded us we were getting closer and closer to the big Russian reveal of Russia collusion that fizzled much like Rob Mueller did when he showed up and testified. And then the medieval minstrels took another show down to the subbasement of the Capitol, where they regaled each other with fantasies of foreign interference in their medieval star chamber. In fact, they never stopped. And now, just over two weeks, the president's lawyers come forward alleging an organized criminal enterprise, a conspiracy by Democrats, especially in cities controlled and corrupted by Democrats.

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. And the president's lawyers alleging that American votes in a presidential election are actually counted in a foreign country. These are serious allegations, but the media has no interest in any of this. But you and I do, as we should, because 73 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. Republicans took seats in the House they said would be won in a Democrat blue wave that never came, and so far we've held the Senate. They say the risk of our giving false hope should be enough to stop us two weeks later. I say the risk of not looking at what is staring us in the face is too great to not stop us. Now, the President's lawyers offered evidence by way of affidavits, which I told you last Saturday as a Judge, from a legal perspective, are sworn statements of individuals signed under penalty of perjury, meaning they know they face the penalty of prosecution and five years if they lie. These sworn statements are factual allegations are part of virtually every lawsuit. It's how you start a case. The President's lawyers have indicated that they have 250 such affidavits under oath, people ready to testify. People ready to face the hate that the left has inflicted upon all of us from day one. And you know what I'm talking about? Let's not kid ourselves. There's not a lot of violence going on right out there now because they believe they got their way. Forgive me. But I believe the only important thing is making sure that the American people and Lady Justice get their way, consequences be damned.
Well into December, Dobbs tried to connect the Russian hack of American government organizations to Dominion, suggesting the company was involved in an international conspiracy:
Video file

Citation From the December 16, 2020, edition of Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight

LOU DOBBS (HOST): Breaking news now, incredible new details emerging about the cyberattack by Russian actors. The attack, by the way, against a number of federal agencies and departments and immensely successful, we are told by a number of experts. The password for SolarWinds, which was the tool used by the hackers, they used the password "solarwinds123." That was then distributed to 18,000 of SolarWinds' clients. Well, a suspected client of SolarWinds is none other than Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion CEO, however, outright denied that the company ever used SolarWinds in a hearing before the Michigan state Senate. Yet on part of Dominion's website, SolarWinds is actually contained within the page's source code. We cannot resolve the conflict for you at this point, we will be talking to Dominion to see what led to that result.
False Claim: Dominion’s scheme was run by a deputy of George Soros.
False Claim: Dominion’s scheme was run by a deputy of George Soros. (George Soros’s “number two person” Lord Malloch Brown was “one of the leaders of the Dominion project,” Powell said, according to the lawsuit.)

Dominion’s Response: “[Dominion] has no ties to the Venezuelan government, Hugo Chávez, Malloch Brown, or George Soros.”
Dobbs continued to promote Powell’s claims, including an alleged Dominion connection to George Soros, in December:
Video file

Citation From the December 10, 2020, edition of Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight

LOU DOBBS (HOST): Sidney, great to have you with us. You say these four individuals led the effort to rig this election. How did they do it?

SIDNEY POWELL (FORMER TRUMP LAWYER): Well, Lou, they designed and developed the Smartmatic and Dominion programs and machines that include a controller module that allows people to log in and manipulate the vote even as it's happening. We're finding more and more evidence of this. We now have reams and reams of actual documents from Smartmatic and Dominion, including evidence that they planned and executed all of this. We know that $400 million of money came into Smartmatic from China, only a few weeks before the election, that there are George Soros connections to the entire endeavor. Lord Malloch-Brown was part of it, along with the other people from Dominion. Eric Coomers, the person who also holds patents on some of the software and was operating out of the Denver office, I believe. We know that one of the Smartmatic people has went to Tarrant County, Texas, and turned that county blue after having been an executive with Smartmatic and all of a sudden this one election, Tarrant County, is purportedly blue. We have evidence of how they flipped the votes, how it was designed to flip the votes, and that all of it has been happening just as we have been saying it has been.

DOBBS: What is the evidence that you have compiled? How have you constructed the architecture of this relationship among these four individuals?

POWELL: Well, we're still reviewing the massive amount of documents that we have, but we have communications between them, and all different kinds of messages that indicate their involvement in it. It's a massive amount of additional information to go through that's only been in our hands a short time, but we will be producing more and more of it. It will be coming out more by the day. And then also the connections with the Chinese and other countries that were attacking us in this massive cyber Pearl Harbor, as we called it.

DOBBS: Jorge Rodriguez, I want to go through -- we're going to put up on the screen so people can follow the conversation here, because these are names that most of us are not familiar with. You say that Jorge Rodriguez, the Venezuelan, former Venezuelan communications minister, is the ringleader, the CEO of the enterprise, as you put it. What is the evidence that this former communications minister could reach into the U.S. electoral system and raise the havoc and commit the fraud that obviously we have witnessed in 2020?

POWELL: Well we've known from early on in our independent investigation that the entire system was created for the benefit of Venezuela and Hugo Chavez 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. We know, for example, that Mr. Rodriguez has been on TV incessantly, trying to and actually mocking the United States. He is one of the highest --

DOBBS: Venezuelan television?

POWELL: Yes, Venezuelan television. And he's been one of the leaders of the whole election stealing project. But keep in mind, Venezuela has been highly influenced by the Chinese, and we know from filings with the SEC and otherwise that the Chinese put $400 million into Dominion only four weeks before the election, and they shared office space with George Soros' companies, as well as the leadership of Lord Malloch-Brown in the U.K. and Canada. It is a very concerning and troubling and illegal web of conduct that all of which focused on rigging the election in this country, and we're seeing the results in multiple states where we're now identifying specific votes flipped, like in a couple of Georgia counties. In fact, Coffee County, Georgia, just yesterday, I believe, refused to certify the results of the election in Coffee County because of the vote disparities and flipping. We're getting more and more evidence out of other counties across the country about the same kind of conduct. We knew from Antrim County, for example, in Michigan, that 6,000 votes magically were flipped on election night. I think the cause of that is going to become more and more apparent as we proceed in the investigation. And frankly our National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency need to be all over this immediately. The evidence is overwhelming and extremely troubling that this has been going on, and it didn't just start this year.
False Claim: Kickbacks were paid to state officials -- including those in Georgia - to utilize Dominion machines.
False Claim: Kickbacks were paid to state officials -- including in Georgia -- to utilize Dominion machines (“We’re collecting evidence now from various whistleblowers that are aware of substantial sums of money being given to family members of state officials who bought this software,” Powell said, according to the lawsuit.)

Dominion’s Response: “Dominion did not bribe or pay kickbacks to Georgia officials or their families in return for a no-bid contract to use Dominion systems in the 2020 election.”
On Sunday Morning Futures, Maria Bartiromo hosted Sidney Powell to allege that state officials received “kickbacks” for purchasing Dominion machines, a claim Bartiromo repeated. From the November 15, 2020, edition of Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo:
Video file

Citation From the November 15, 2020, edition of Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo

MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): Attorney Sidney Powell is leading the charge against Dominion, and she says she has enough evidence of fraud to launch a massive criminal investigation. Sidney, thanks very much for being here. We appreciate your time this morning. I want to get right into it. We just heard about the software made by Smartmatic from Rudy. And I want to get your take on what you and I spoke about just a few minutes ago and that is a gentleman named Peter Neffenger. Tell me how he fits into all of this.

SIDNEY POWELL (ATTORNEY): Yes, well he is listed as -- it's former Adm. Peter Neffenger or retired Adm. Peter Neffenger. He is president and on the board of directors of Smartmatic. And it just so happens he's on Mr. Biden's presidential transition team that's going to be nonexistent, because we're fixing to overturn the results of the election in multiple states. And President Trump won by not just hundreds of thousands of votes, but by millions of votes that were shifted by this software that was designed expressly for that purpose. We have sworn witness testimony of why the software was designed. It was designed to rig elections. He was fully briefed on it. He saw it happen in other countries. It was exported internationally for profit by the people that are behind Smartmatic and Dominion. They did this on purpose. It was calculated. They have done it before. We have evidence from 2016 in California. We have so much evidence, I feel like it's coming in through a fire hose.

BARTIROMO: Wow. So, Sidney, you feel that you will be able to prove this? Do you have the software in your possession? Do you have the hardware in your possession? How will you prove this, Sidney?

POWELL: Well, I have got lots of ways to prove it, Maria, but I'm not going to tell on national TV what all we have. I just can't do that.

BARTIROMO: OK, but you have a very time -- a small time frame here. The elections are supposed to be certified in early December. Do you believe that you can present this to the courts and be successful within this just couple of weeks?

POWELL: Well, let me put it this way. First of all, I never say anything I can't prove. Secondly, the evidence is coming in so fast, I can't even process it all. Millions of Americans have written, I would say, by now. Definitely, hundreds of thousands have stepped forward with their different experiences of voter fraud. But this is a massive election fraud, and I'm very concerned it involved not only Dominion and its Smartmatic software, but that the software essentially was used by other election machines also. It's the software that was the problem. Even their own manual explains how votes can be wiped away. They can put -- it's like drag and drop -- Trump votes to a separate folder and then delete that folder. It's absolutely brazen how people bought this system and why they bought this system. In fact, every state that bought Dominion, for sure, should have a criminal investigation or at least a serious investigation of the officers in the states who bought the software. We have even got evidence of some kickbacks, essentially.

BARTIROMO: Kickbacks. I want to take a short break and come back on that. And I want to ask you about the kickbacks and who took kickbacks in which states. Sidney, stay with us. Quick break, and we have got more breaking news from Sidney Powell. Stay with us.
Video file

Citation From the November 15, 2020, edition of Sunday Morning Futures

MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): Sidney, before we went to the break, we talked about -- you said that there may have been kickbacks to some people who accepted the Dominion software. Tell me what you mean.

SIDNEY POWELL (FORMER TRUMP LAWYER): Well, I mean we are collecting evidence now from various whistleblowers that are aware of substantial sums of money being given to family members of state officials who bought this software. I mean, we're talking about $100 million packages for new voting machines suddenly in multiple states, and benefits ranging from financial benefits for family members to sort of what I would call election insurance, because they know that they can win the election if they are using that software. It's really an insidious, corrupt system. And I can't tell you how livid I am with our government for not paying attention to complaints even brought by Democrats, Carolyn Maloney, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, over the last several years in written letters, with expert reports and some documentation of how corrupt this software is. And nobody in our government has paid any attention to it, which makes me wonder how much the CIA has used it for its own benefit in different places and why Gina Haspel is still there in the CIA is beyond my comprehension. She should be fired immediately.

BARTIROMO: Which governor or which government official accepted hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits for their family as they took on this software?

POWELL: If I said hundreds of millions of dollars there, I misspoke. I don't know the exact amount of money yet. We're still collecting the evidence on that, but it's more than one.

BARTIROMO: OK. So, you can't say who you believe took kickbacks.
Lou Dobbs and his guest, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), pushed claims that Dominion swayed the election due to the influence of money from “the swamp” and was “100% corruptible":
Video file

Citation From the November 23, 2020, edition of Fox News' Lou Dobbs Tonight

LOU DOBBS (HOST): It is great to have you with us, congressman. I want to start with first, Dominion. They are attracting a lot of attention, and I haven't found anybody yet who knows who owns the company. I'm just curious: They have quite a presence in Arizona over the election. Have you ever heard anybody talk about who owns them?

REP. PAUL GOSAR (R-AZ): Well, we've been trying, Lou, but it's interesting that even the Senate last year in a subcommittee review of the election machines basically called them 100% corruptible -- 100% corruptible. And we've got all these senators lining up, defacing the president. It's sad. And it's interesting that this software is in Phoenix and Maricopa County, and then also in Las Vegas, where a lot of the corruption actually shows it was happening.

DOBBS: And let's just take a look at the relationship between Dominion and the swamp itself, if we could put up that full screen, because it is really interesting to see that Dominion donated $25-50,000 to the Clinton Foundation, it has a $2.2 million contract from the Clinton Foundation, hired Pelosi's former chief of staff, employs former Jeb Bush/Paul Ryan operative Michael Steel, contracts with them, at least. And this, and it goes on, it really does. The state of Texas wouldn't have anything to do with Dominion, and it's surprising to see that any secretary of state anywhere in the country would, given the track record that they are building for themselves right now. The split in the vote in Maricopa County was 2%--50-48--in favor of the former vice president.
False Claim: Smartmatic owns Dominion and its software is embedded in Dominion machines.
False Claim: Smartmatic owns Dominion and its software is embedded in Dominion machines. (“Smartmatic owns Dominion...the Smartmatic software is in the DNA of every vote-tabulating company’s software and systems,” Powell said, according to the lawsuit.)

Dominion’s Response: “Hugo Chávez’s elections were not handled by Dominion, but by an entirely different company—Smartmatic—a competitor of Dominion’s...Dominion does not use Smartmatic’s software or machines.”
Teasing later interviews with Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, Fox’s Maria Bartiromo promoted the claims that Smartmatic owns Dominion, in addition to Venezuelan, Cuban, and Chinese ties:
Video file

Citation From the November 15, 2020 edition of Fox News' Fox and Friends Sunday

MARIA BARTIROMO (FOX NEWS ANCHOR): This morning on Sunday Morning Futures, I'm talking with Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney. He is my lead guest and he is breaking so much news on the software that was used on the voting machines on election night. There is much to understand about Smartmatic, which owns Dominion Voting Systems. They have businesses in Venezuela, Caracas, they have businesses in Cuba, and there are also links to China. We're going to talk about it with Rudy Giuliani and why he does believe he will be able to overturn this election with evidence. He will join me along with Sidney Powell to give us an update on their investigation. This is very important to understand what was going on with this software. Sidney Powell is also talking about potential kickbacks that government officials who were asked to use Dominion actually also enjoyed benefits to their families. We're going to talk about that coming up as well.
Fox’s Lou Dobbs hosted former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and both endorsed conspiracy theories about Dominion’s connection to Smartmatic:
Video file

Citation From the November 19, 2020, edition of Fox News' Lou Dobbs Tonight

LOU DOBBS (HOST): Breaking news now: Dominion Voting Systems today once again distanced itself from Smartmatic, saying, “Dominion -- Dominion is an entirely separate company and fierce competitor to Smartmatic,” end quote. “Dominion and Smartmatic do not collaborate in any way and have no affiliate relationship or financial ties.” Yet in a 2009 lawsuit in which Smartmatic sued Dominion, a very clear relationship between the two companies was laid out. Quote, “The license agreement granted Smartmatic rights to certain patents and patent applications that Dominion owned or controlled to all know-how, trade secrets, methodologies, and other technical information owned or possessed by Dominion. The license agreement contains a non-competition provision. This provision limits Smartmatic's rights to develop, market or sell products that embody the licensed technology.” So despite what appears to have been at least a relationship and it is all but impossible to find any record of either proving or disproving a relationship because the two firms are privately owned, it becomes a thorny matter at the very least.

Also breaking now, defense attorney Sidney Powell today promised to pursue President Trump's legal challenge until the very end.

(VIDEO BEGINS)

SIDNEY POWELL (FORMER TRUMP LAWYER): And I want the American public to know right now that we will not be intimidated. American patriots are fed up with the corruption from the local level to the highest level of our government, and we are going to take this country back, we are not going to be intimidated, we are not going to back down, we are going to clean this mess up now. President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it, and we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who vote for freedom.

(VIDEO ENDS)

DOBBS: And joining us now by phone is Sidney Powell. She's a member, obviously, of the president's legal team, also Gen. Michael Flynn's defense attorney. A great American, one of the country's leading appellate attorneys. Sidney, first of all, thanks. I know you are going every which direction right now, busy as you could possibly be. Let's start out right now with the president's path to victory here as you and the legal team see it. If you could give us just that canvas very quickly.

POWELL: Well yes, Lou, the entire election frankly in all the swing states should be overturned, and the legislature should make sure that the electors are selected for Trump, and it's going to have to follow the constitutional provisions that it go be decided according to the amendment.

DOBBS: Let's turn to Smartmatic and Dominion. Are they or are they not linked?

POWELL: Oh, they're definitely linked. I would call them inextricably intertwined. They have the same history from their inception. I'm sure they're trying to distance themselves from each other but the fact is that the Dominion machines run the Smartmatic software, or parts of the key code of it. And that is what allows them to manipulate the votes in any way the operators choose to manipulate them. And every time there was a glitch, as they called it, or a connection to the internet, they also violated state laws that required the machines to be certified and nothing to be changed before the vote. There are any number of legal grounds on which the use of those machines has to be stopped and the votes invalidated.

DOBBS: And now are you pressing forward with legal action against them for those violations?

POWELL: Not against the company and the software, but the suits will be against the election officials who invalidate the results of the election and force it to the legislatures and the Electoral College and then to Congress, if necessary.

DOBBS: There has been great controversy as well, as you know, about the reports of a raid on a company, Scytl, in Germany, which held election data, presumably, and a raid that was carried out by U.S. forces, or so goes the report, although the forces themselves were not clearly identified, nor the event actually proven. Can you tell us what actually did happen there and what you do know?

POWELL: Well, I know that is one of the server centers. There's also one in Barcelona. So it is related to the entire Smartmatic-Dominion software operation. We do not know whether the good guys got the servers or whether the bad guys got them. Being on the outside of the government, we simply don't know. I'm hoping it's the good guys, and if they have that, then there should be scads of evidence of frankly an international conspiracy, criminal conspiracy of the worst sort.

DOBBS: And it’s the presumption then, that they had the records of those servers of all of the votes that were processed by Dominion or Smartmatic?

POWELL: Yes, the way it works [is] the votes can be changed either on the ground as they come in, people can watch the votes stream in live -- for example, there was a Dominion employee, high up, high-ranking, at the Detroit center the night of the election, he could've watched the votes come in live and manipulated them in that process. It could've run an automatic algorithm against all the votes which we believe is what happened originally, and then the machines had the shop, the counting had to stop in multiple places because President Trump's lead was so great at that point they had to stop the counting and come in and back-fill the votes they needed to change the result.

DOBBS: And let me ask you as we wrap up here: What is the next steps for the legal team and when do you believe you will be prepared to come forward with hard evidence establishing the basis for a court to overturn all elections, or at least results of those elections, in a number of battleground states?

POWELL: Well, we are still in the process of collecting evidence. It's coming in in massive amounts. And even today we're getting more people coming forward telling us the truth about what happened. I would think we would have fraud complaints ready sometime by late next week at the latest, but like I said it's just a massive amount of information now. We’ve got -- Well, let me put it this way: There's thousands of people in federal prisons on far less evidence of criminal conduct than we have already against the Smartmatic and Dominion Systems companies, and most of the companies in the country run the same sort of software or have that code in their software. So it's farther and more widespread.

DOBBS: And incredibly, one of the benefits of this may be that we will learn who actually owns these companies. We have just watched, everyone in this audience tonight, our election is run by companies, the ownership of which we don't know. Sidney Powell is among those trying to change all of that. Sidney Powell, thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate it.
Fox “straight news” anchor Bill Hemmer repeated Powell’s claims about the relationship between Smartmatic and Dominion and said that conspiracy theories about Dominion “sounded convincing":
Video file

Citation From the November 16, 2020, edition of Fox News' Bill Hemmer Reports

BILL HEMMER (ANCHOR): Did you hear this interview?

(VIDEO BEGINS)

SIDNEY POWELL (FORMER TRUMP LAWYER): We're fixing to overturn the results of the election in multiple states. And President Trump won by not just hundreds of thousands of votes, but by millions of votes that were shifted by this software that was designed expressly for that purpose.

(VIDEO ENDS)

HEMMER: So that is Sidney Powell, she is an attorney for the president, claiming they have evidence of voter fraud and she's tying it to a voting machine company called Dominion. The company denies all fraud accusations. The Trump team has not shared their evidence with Americans. Fox News has not seen any evidence. Want to bring in Andy McCarthy, former assistant U.S. attorney and Fox News contributor. Andy, good day to you. I don't know if we're in a different situation now than we were last Thursday when we talked. I saw that interview with Sidney Powell and Maria on Sunday, she sounded convincing. So what now?

ANDY MCCARTHY (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): Now is evidence. You know, at a certain point in time, Bill, it doesn't help anymore to say, you know, “a lot of things are rife with possibility for fraud.” You know, December 8 is the day that -- is the safe harbor provision in federal law where the states have to certify their electoral votes. If you want to block that from happening, it's put up or shut up time.

HEMMER: OK, when does that happen?

MCCARTHY: Well, it either happens promptly or it doesn't happen at all, and if it doesn't happen all then Joe Biden will be certified as the next president of the United States.

HEMMER: OK, but you and others like Ken Starr, you’ve been saying this is what’s called evidence gathering. That’s the period in which they find themselves. So are they doing that now? And what or when is our obligation to share that with the public?

MCCARTHY: Well, look, they presumably, according to what Sidney Powell said, they are building, you know, collecting evidence. She said it was like getting it out of a fire hose. In the meantime, people who are on the other side of this have gone public, including some of the people who have been implicated in the remarks made by Sidney Powell and others, and they say it's not true. So I think if you want to have credibility, you have to refute that with hard evidence. They should get their opportunity to do this in court but usually you don't get into court with something like this unless you have some solid evidence.

HEMMER: So they are saying the company Dominion has a software called Smartmatic. Would you need a computer software engineer to go in there and decipher that for us and put it on a sheet of paper and explain it to us?

MCCARTHY: You might but you know your more fundamental problem right now is Smartmatic says it’s not true.

HEMMER: OK.

MCCARTHY:You know, Smartmatic says they have no connection to Dominion. Now, I don't have a way of knowing or brokering that claim -- whether it's true or whether it’s not true. All I know is one party that would have direct knowledge says it's not true and the other party, which is president's team, keeps saying, you know, we are gathering evidence but they’re not putting anything on the table that refutes what the other side says.

HEMMER: In the meantime the clock is ticking and you’ve got people wondering what's next.
False Claim: Dominion machines are unreliable and cannot be truly audited.
False Claim: Dominion machines are unreliable and cannot be truly audited. (“Dominion Voting Systems do not maintain a truly auditable trail,” Powell said, according to the lawsuit.)

Dominion’s Response: Dominion “voting systems are certified under standards promulgated by the EAC, reviewed and tested by independent testing laboratories accredited by the EAC, and were designed to be auditable and include a paper ballot backup to verify results.”
On Lou Dobbs Tonight, Lou Dobbs suggested that Dominion is owned by someone nefarious and that its integrity cannot be assessed:
Video file

Citation From the November 23, 2020, edition of Fox News' Lou Dobbs Tonight

LOU DOBBS (HOST): Former congressman and former chairman of the House Oversight Committee is none other than Jason Chaffetz. He's also a Fox Business contributor and great American. Jason Chaffetz, tell me really what you think when you look at Sen. Cramer and Sen. Toomey. Do you think of like --.. I mean, do you hear a hallelujah chorus and a righteous bugle as you go off into political combat? I mean, those would be the guys, wouldn't they?

JASON CHAFFETZ (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): I was thinking like the Mormon Tabernacle choir like they come marching in and yeah, those would be the two. But Lou, look, I do think that they could, team Biden can start through their process through the GSA. I think that is important. But there's a reason why we go through this process, why states have not yet certified them, why the Electoral College has not yet gathered. You don't get deemed to be the president based on NBC Nightly News. You get it done through a process, and the president is exercising his rights to go to court to challenge these results. That's as American as it gets. And he's doing it the right and proper way and a respectful way.

DOBBS: Well good for you. Good for you. Because it's not only his right, it's his responsibility -- 74 million Americans voted for the man. And everybody who voted for him right now has a lot of questions. Maybe the people who didn't vote for him don't, but they do. And the truth is, we don't know a lot about this election yet. We didn't hear from Dominion about who owns the company, the company that has so many pieces of software and machinery involved in this election. And lots of questions. But I don't even hear a reporter worth their salt say, "Just who does own you, Mr. or Ms. Dominion?" whoever the spokesperson is. "Why don't we know who owns you? Why don't we know what your software does and how it does it and whether these algorithms are actually, actually having an effect on outcomes? And how do you get a decimal out of an election where there are only truly two candidates and every candidate gets whole votes?" I mean this is bizarre stuff. And don't you think somebody should be asking those questions?

CHAFFETZ: Well I hearken back to what Hillary Clinton said. It was Hillary Clinton ironically enough that said, "Never ever concede, never ever give up, no matter what happens." So, you know -- then Donald Trump does something like that and suddenly the world's coming unglued and he's going to get criticized. I do think it was incumbent upon Republicans and Democrats, election officials, to go through this exercise with Dominion and others before the election. I don't know why they couldn't have highlighted this and said "this is going to be a problem" before the election. I think that would've been better. But there are new technologies like blockchain technology and other types of ways to go through this process but, yeah I think they should answer some tough questions. What should we be afraid of? What might the answer be, Lou?

DOBBS: And why, why oh why, are these Democrats so, well, so overwhelmed with desperate urgency to wrap this thing up well before the deadline's set for the electors to meet to have their votes counted? Why are they so anxious? Because this is just -- we were talking about in 2000, that didn't get wrapped up until I believe it was December 12, and we're a ways away from that. And we could be even farther away from it: We could be into January without any problem at all. So this is really very suspicious: What is it they don't want the American people to know? Besides the fact that we have three election companies that we don't know who owns them, we don't know where their servers are located, and we don't know how they're counting and we don't know why they're destroying ballots that they just processed just now. Couldn't they find a place in the cloud to kind of hang onto that so that there wouldn't be any concern? Jason, this just looks really, really bad. And by the way, what happened to William Barr and to John Durham and the investigations? And you know, there are so many unanswered questions, because we know there are a lot of politically corrupt actors who have been involved in our headlines for a very long time who have suddenly disappeared.

CHAFFETZ: We're going to need another hour, Lou, because I can't answer all those questions in a quick time frame. But the bottom line is, they all hate Donald Trump, because Donald Trump changed America fundamentally. It's just like what you wrote about in your book: He fundamentally changed America and he did so for the better.

DOBBS: Absolutely. And it looks like he's got a real shot at continuing to make America even greater.
In an interview with a person who was fired as a poll worker in Georgia, Fox & Friends promoted “whistleblower” claims about the unreliability of ballots used on Dominion machines:
Video file

Citation From the December 8, 2020, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Well, President Trump once again repeating his claims of voter fraud.

(VIDEO BEGINS)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If you look at the polls, it was a rigged election. If you look at the different states, the election was totally rigged. It's a disgrace to our country, it's like a third-world country, these ballots pouring in from everywhere, using machinery that nobody knows, and now we find out what we can do about it. But you'll see a lot of big things happening over the next couple of days.

(VIDEO ENDS)

DOOCY: So we'll be watching for that. Meanwhile, whistleblowers from across the country have come out sharing their firsthand accounts of election irregularities. Our next guest is a Fulton County, Georgia, voting technician and says test ballots were handled in an unsecure manner and un-indistinguishable from live ballots. Here with more is Bridget Thorne. Bridget, good morning to you.

BRIDGET THORNE (FIRED POLL WORKER): Good morning.

DOOCY: OK, so, Bridget, what were you hired to do on Election Day?

THORNE: I was trained as a poll tech, and I was hired to come down to the warehouse to help. The 24 employees that normally work the warehouse were quarantined with Covid, so they had Dominion Software running the warehouse.

DOOCY: OK. So one of the things that -- I've read your affidavit, it's about three pages long, it's very interesting stuff. One of the things that concerned you is with each of the machines, you're supposed to run sample ballots, test ballots, that is to say. You think they should've been run on just regular paper but instead they were run with the heavier cardstock that people normally vote on. So you're worried that a sample ballot, a test ballot, is indistinguishable from a real live ballot.

THORNE: Correct, correct. They are. It's the same Roland vetter paper. There are reams of it all over the warehouse. Anybody could print. You could print whatever ballots you wanted, not only test ballots.

DOOCY: Yeah. So all these ballots, and I think there were over a dozen per machine, were printed, and then what happened to them?

THORNE: I don't know. I assume there was a big suitcase in the middle of the warehouse that you could put stuff in to go to the shredder. I -- since anyone had access, I would spoil a ballot before I put it in the shredder, but nobody else was directed to do anything of that, like we can't let these ballots get in the wrong hands.

DOOCY: And when you say "spoil a ballot," you would run something through a QR code in the corner so that it was unusable or else you'd rip it apart, and you'd do thousands of those so that they could not be used or, you know, as a real ballot. And that's one of the things that concerns you: You don't know exactly -- the chain of custody -- you don't know what happened to those ballots.

THORNE: Correct. Correct.

DOOCY: All right. Tell us also a little bit about -- apparently there was a guy who was working there by the name of Mike, and you had some problems with the way Mike was operating.

THORNE: So the last night I was there, we were done printing test ballots but they lost, they would lose these test ballots, so we'd have to reprint them. And it was a very disorganized process. And I decided to go out on the floor and leave the test ballot station, so there was nobody at the test ballot area or tables. And when I came back, late at night, 10 o'clock at night, thinking "I need to get my purse, I'm going to go home," there was a Dominion employee and a consultant from the elections group from Chicago who had been there pretty much all week, but stayed in the back of the warehouse. And he was -- I assumed they needed test ballots so I just sat down, "How can I help?" the Dominion employee soon left, and the the consultant was just printing random ballots and so I corrected him. I'm like "Let me give you a lesson, this is how you print test ballots," and so I taught him and then he's like "Do I have to vote for Trump?" and I'm like "Yeah you're going to have to vote for Trump," and then he shortly left. And I later find out, I thought he was a warehouse consultant, I have a background with some industrial engineering, my daughter, my husband, everybody's an industrial engineer, so I was talking to him about Georgia Tech and how great it would be to get students to come down here and help. And he never corrected me that he wasn't a warehouse engineer. The elections group had nothing to do with warehousing.
Other right-wing media platforms similarly recycled Powell’s alleged lies.
Despite receiving a warning from Dominion about his promotion of misinformation, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell continued to allege Dominion was responsible for election fraud on One America News Network:
Video file

Citation From January 20, 2021, coverage on One America News

JENN PELLEGRINO (WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT): Joining me now is inventor and CEO of MyPillow and, of course, close friend of President Trump, Mr. Mike Lindell. Mike, thank you for being here. It's good to see you.

MIKE LINDELL (MYPILLOW CEO): Thanks for having me on.

PELLEGRINO: I want to talk with you about Dominion. Obviously a lot of news lately. You've seen a lot of what's going on behind the scenes with Dominion. Can you give us the latest?

LINDELL: Well, the -- you know, a few days ago, they, they sent me a letter about three weeks ago when this new evidence came out from in, you know, from the machines that prove 100% that China and other countries took our election that they were behind it. So, I dove into it, and I, and I, I reposted stuff. They had put out a little piece of this evidence. All my -- all the platforms started to be taken down and Dominion sent me a letter that said, “You have been warned.” It sounded almost like a mafia thing or like it was, it wasn't like, “Hey, we have a lawsuit against you.” You know, like my other friends got -- a lot of other people got actually sued by them. Well, for me, it was different. They let it sit there. So for two weeks, it sat there, for two and a half weeks. Now, I went very public because I have other evidence. This guy came to me that does forensic -- mathematical forensic -- cyber forensics. That's what he did for two months. He worked on this for 15 to 20 hours a day and he can't -- finally he was done. He brought this, and this matches perfectly with three other ones that shows who did it, when they did it, the latitude and longitude, the IP addresses of the computers, but you married these two and it's just -- it's like you look at it and go, “Wow I can't believe the extent that they did this.” And there's five countries, at least, involved. So, they -- and Dominion knows this, so I'm putting this out there and talking about it.

Well then, they dropped that letter four days ago, like it's going to scare me. We dropped the letter and all the media’s attacking me, going, “You know they're going to sue you.” I'm going, “Please, Dominion, please sue me,” so that we can -- we'll actually get it out faster then because they're gonna have to show everything in depositions and so on. But we're going to get it out a lot faster than that would be anyway. But you know that’s man -- that's manifested now to many things, attacks from everywhere boycotting me. I mean, there's all kinds of companies that have dropped MyPillow now, but it's -- but I'm not giving up and I'm not stopping.
Guest hosting on The Rush Limbaugh Show, Ken Matthews alleged that “analysis of election night data from all states shows millions of votes were either switched from President Donald J. Trump to Biden or lost using Dominion and other vote count systems." From the November 12, 2020, edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Rush Limbaugh Show:
KEN MATTHEWS (GUEST HOST): Analysis of election night data from all states shows millions of votes were either switched from President Donald J. Trump to Biden or lost using Dominion and other vote count systems. Now, you hear a lot of gibberish in the media, like voter fraud doesn’t exist, irregularities don’t exist, nobody’s trying to steal the vote. Please don’t believe them. You have to stop this -- the only reason we are this far in this -- now, what has become a fractured voting process -- we, we’re in the middle of a third world voting process because in many states, these Dominion machines, just like the Diebold machine of 2001 that patriots and conservatives tried to reform and that was shut down, you don't know what's going in and you don't know what's coming out.
On December 14, 2020, Infowars published an article claiming a report shows that Dominion voting machines “were intentionally programmed to create massive voting errors meant to affect the outcome of the election.”
McLaughlin & Associates’ John McLaughlin said on The Sean Hannity Show that “this election easily was stolen and these drop boxes and the Dominion systems, that voting system, are definitely the culprits":
John McLaughlin: There was election fraud between Donald Trump and Joe Biden last November

December 18, 2020

Audio file

Citation From the December 18, 2020, edition of Premiere Radio Network's The Sean Hannity Show

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): I got to believe there’s got to be some concerted effort this time to protect the integrity of the vote. And that would include voter ID. Now, on mail-in ballots, is there a need for voter ID, John McLaughlin?

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN (MCLAUGHLIN & ASSOCIATES): No, Jennifer Klein, we would need for signature verification. And the voters in Georgia wanted to have a special session for signature verification, 58% to 38%, and Gov. Kemp didn’t call it. And the country is watching this. We have a poll this week, where we said -- it’s on our website, McLaughlinonline.com -- do you believe there was election and voter fraud in the presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump back in November? And among all voters in the United States, they said 46% yes, only 45% no. So people are seeing this — President Trump, I saw the president last week at the White House and he said, “You know, they stole the election,” and I said, “Yeah, I said it yesterday on Hannity Radio,” and he said, “Keep saying it!” And it’s like, your listeners understand the more evidence that comes out, this was a national scandal where the two candidates, Biden and Trump, are separated by 43,000 votes in three states, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, out of 158 million votes that decided the election, 37 electoral votes. So this election easily was stolen and these drop boxes and the Dominion systems, that voting system, are definitely the culprits. And the more evidence that comes out that gets examined, the voters in the United States are seeing that there was fraud in the election. And Georgia needs to stop it right now before Jan. 5.
An alleged Dominion whistleblower told Fox’s Sean Hannity that Dominion’s voting machines were “created” to “drop votes":
Hannity speaks to Dominion contract worker in Michigan

December 1, 2020

Audio file

Citation From the December 1, 2020, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): You apparently were a Michigan Dominion contract worker, and I assume that’s the Dominion voting machines. We know you had the one problem in the one Michigan area where votes had switched. The company had claimed that it was human error. We know that -- we don’t know that it happened elsewhere that I specifically have heard. What can you tell us about this company and your experience working there?

MELISSA CARON (WHISTLEBLOWER): I can tell you that the company -- I mean, well, my experience working for them was awful. They were very secretive. Every single person that was there that was a permanent employee of Dominion, which was three -- consisted of three people that were permanent employees — they were all Democrats, they were all making very rude comments about Republicans. They -- it was not a mistake, that’s in their software to drop votes. The software was created to do that, for that purpose.

HANNITY: How do you know that? I mean, did you watch votes get changed? Did you see it with your own eyes?

CARON: I did not see that with my own eyes. That’s from research that other people have done and that I have -- Dominion supplied me with a binder that really states that their, their hardware is online. It was connected to the internet, which it’s not supposed to be.
The host of One America News Network’s The Tipping Point with Kara McKinney claimed Dominion owned Smartmatic and suggested Dominion was chosen as the voting system “precisely because” it is “so flawed":
Video file

Citation From the November 17, 2020, edition of One America News Network's The Tipping Point with Kara McKinney

KARA MCKINNEY (HOST): The even bigger issue at play here are systemic. For example, the voting system used in around 30 states -- Dominion and its subsidiary. Smartmatic -- it just so happens that a member of Biden’s transition team, Peter Neffenger, is a member of the board of directors for Smartmatic. The chairman of that company is also a board member for George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. That very same software was used a few years back to rig elections in Venezuela. Even The New York Times reported on it, saying the software was, quote, “manipulated to report a skewed tally.” The failing paper of record tried to downplay its own reporting by saying the problem was an anomaly that was caused by a lack of election monitors. Now, that's funny. Would you call Republican poll watchers being kicked out of the oversight process to the sound of cheering Democrats in cities from Detroit to Philadelphia other than a lack of election monitors? Even the poll watchers who were allowed to view the ballot counting process were kept so far away they couldn't see anything. But it gets even worse. According to Dominion's own words, their software allows staff to adjust tallies based on a review of scanned ballot images. And just one year ago, Democrat Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Ron Wyden issued a formal complaint to Dominion Voting Systems, accusing their voting systems of switching votes and causing problems that threatened the integrity of our elections. Sound familiar?

Even though Dominion is a Canadian company that has made donations to the Clinton Foundation and hired a top Pelosi staffer as a lobbyist, even Canada doesn't want them. This is what their official Twitter account posted Monday. Quote, “Elections Canada does not use Dominion Voting Systems. We use paper ballots, counted by hand in front of scrutineers and have never used voting machines or electronic tabulators for federal elections.” Imagine that.

So, this begs the question -- why are we using foreign companies to count our votes in the first place and allowing that information to reportedly flow through servers overseas? And, secondly, if even Democrats knew about these vulnerabilities with Dominion and Smartmatics, years before this election, then why did they allow them to be used in so many states? What didn’t more states follow in the lead of Texas in saying no? Perhaps that means they were chosen by election officials precisely because they are so flawed. Remember Biden’s longtime aide and now member of his transition team Robert Klain said back in 2014, “U.S. elections are rigged.”
Newsmax’s Benny Johnson alleged that Dominion voting machines are untrustworthy, “easily hackable,” and “used in Venezuela":
Video file

Citation From the November 23, 2020, edition of Newsmax's The Benny Report

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): Finally, we get to Dominion Voting Systems. This voting system is about as trustworthy as Ilhan Omar’s marriage certificates. Its software is easily hackable. We know this. Its machines can mark votes. The company employs Trump-hating antifa members as security engineers, who then go ahead and delete their profiles. Their voting systems are used in Venezuela, and their votes are counted off of American soil, if that tells you anything. The company entrusted with counting our votes in America is not even American; it’s Canadian.
One America News Network promoted and repeated the allegation that Dominion machines were easily manipulable and compromised:
Video file

Citation From the November 17, 2020, edition of One America News Network's Real America with Dan Ball

DAN BALL (HOST): And a former guest on our show and a contractor for Dominion -- you remember this last week -- Melissa Carone stated in an affidavit she witnessed firsthand illegal activity at the TCF Center in Detroit during the ballot counting process. Connecting all the dots here with Dominion, folks? Now, spearheading our investigation into the allegations against Dominion is our Washington, D.C., reporter, Chanel Rion. She joins me now with more on what she has uncovered. So, Chanel, let's set this up for folks. Yesterday, you had a gentleman on our show named Joe Oltmannn. He was a guy who tried to infiltrate antifa and during his undercover operation figuring out more about antifa, he learns about this guy who’s the head of security for Dominion, and how he's connected with antifa, and pretty much says he’s got an insurance plan to make sure Trump doesn't win. That was yesterday. What do you got for us today in your investigation?

CHANEL RION (REPORTER): Dan, today we ask the question of just how easy is it to delete, swap, copy, and paste ballots at the machine level? So, we found an individual. He’s a large-systems data analyst. His name is Ron Watkins. He has been pouring over the user manuals for Dominion systems for the past week and a half. And he’s an experienced white hat hacker -- that is a good guy hacker. And he knows -- he’s been reading this manual with that mindset. His takeaway was stunning, Dan. You'll see all of this in our special coming up this weekend. But I want to show you just a little bit of what he shared with us right now. Take a listen to what Ron Watkins tells us about how easy it is to move votes around.

(VIDEO BEGINS)

RON WATKINS (8KUN CO-OWNER): With the Dominion system, you need to be most concerned about activist IT people. The operators of the Dominion system, in my opinion, have way too much power to control the internal features and settings of the system. So, for example, an administrative user would have the ability to delete ballots, reset counts, delete entire batches, etc. There are many ways that this can be abused. Dominion will train between two to six workers per county, who are appointed by the county to undergo election systems trainings. And these two to six workers are trusted to not tamper with the final tabulations and counts while transferring data between the ICC, which is the ImageCast Central tabulation software, and the country. So, this transfer process is literally just dragging some folders on a Windows computer onto a flash drive, then physically handing the flash drive to the county. What I want to know is during this handoff, are these people being watched by auditors to make sure the flash drive isn’t switched off for something else? Are these folders being dragged correctly onto the flash drive? Has the data been altered before or after it's been handed off? We can't know.

(VIDEO ENDS)

…

RION: Well, I was going to say the bottom line -- having spoken to this individual for a long time -- the bottom line is the handling of thousands of votes at a time were entrusted in two to six county workers, and it was all controlled by one digital key. If you alter or compromise one of those digital keys, it affects the entire system.

BALL: Wow, and we know from your great investigating yesterday that this gentleman Joe Oltmann had heard about this Dr. Eric Coomer, who you’re going to have a lot about on your special, as you said, this Saturday here on One America News. Eric Coomer is like the director of security or something for Dominion software. And now when you Google and look him up, a bunch of his stuff from social media, poof, gone, right? They're starting to delete his background.

RION: In fact, in fact, his entire profile showing any affiliation with Dominion has been deleted. In fact, if you've been watching any of the LinkedIn profile pages for Dominion Voting Systems, the counter for how many employees are publicly listed is going down by the day. So people are scrubbing their affiliation with Dominion right now --

BALL: Wow.

RION: -- knowing that we are looking into this at this very second. So, here's what I want to leave you with, Dan. Here's what should scare all Americans, regardless of who you voted for. The fact that we're even wondering whether or not the FBI is going to lift a finger and ask any questions about this -- the fact that we’re even wondering about it should be of huge concern to all of us --

BALL: That should scare --

RION: -- regardless of your politics.

BALL: Yeah, pardon me, that should scare the living hell out of every American out there, period. That this election and this voting system was compromised at the highest level by the people put in charge of making it a free election, according to their software -- which should have been unhackable and not touched. But obviously it’s not hacking if the people that created it are the ones making the changes.
One America News Network’s Pearson Sharp asserted, “More and more evidence is piling up that Dominion Voting Machines are vulnerable to tampering and can be easily hacked":
Video file

Citation From the December 8, 2020, edition of One America News Network's One America News

PEARSON SHARP (REPORTER): More and more evidence is piling up that Dominion Voting Machines are vulnerable to tampering and can be easily hacked. That means the results of our election are suspect and cannot be trusted without verification. This used to be common sense; we didn't need to be called conspiracy theorists for thinking that mountains of evidence of voting fraud means you should probably do an investigation. We've collected a series of clips of the mainstream media, some from today after the 2020 election and others from back in 2006 when Democrats and the left-wing media actually claimed that voting fraud was a national security issue. See for yourselves.

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

These are Powell’s allegedly false claims that were amplified by Fox

False Claim: Dominion was used to rig the election for President Joe Biden and the company has done this before.

False Claim: Dominion is of Venezuelan origin, created at the request of Hugo Chavez to alter election results in furtherance of an international conspiracy.

False Claim: Dominion’s scheme was run by a deputy of George Soros.

False Claim: Kickbacks were paid to state officials -- including those in Georgia - to utilize Dominion machines.

False Claim: Smartmatic owns Dominion and its software is embedded in Dominion machines.

False Claim: Dominion machines are unreliable and cannot be truly audited.

Other right-wing media platforms similarly recycled Powell’s alleged lies.

John McLaughlin: There was election fraud between Donald Trump and Joe Biden last November

Hannity speaks to Dominion contract worker in Michigan

Media Matters weekly newsletter, April 19

Myths and facts: Debunking right-wing lies and misinformation about Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial

Climate groups say big polluters benefit from inconsistent ad labels on Facebook

Jesse Watters attacks new jurors in Donald Trump’s hush money trial

Fox host and GOP senator agree that Republicans “got the facts wrong” and intentionally “torpedoed” border security bill to help Donald Trump’s campaign

Fox News

Voter Fraud and Suppression

Fox Business

Maria Bartiromo

Lou Dobbs

Sidney Powell

Rudy Giuliani

2020 election lawsuits

Fox/Dominion Lawsuit