See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. Fact check: No, Joe Biden's brother-in-law does not own Dominion Voting Systems, Nashville police bodycam footage shows raw moments of chaos before and after explosion, Three firefighters hurt battling three-alarm blaze in Rochester, "Nashville bombing: What we know about downtown explosion on Christmas morning, FBI Memphis Special Agent in Charge Announces Identity of Remains Discovered in Nashville Explosion Site; Multi-Agency Investigation Continues, FBI identifies suspect in Nashville bombing, After devastating fire, City Blue Imaging looks toward future. Texas country-punk band Vandoliers are standing in solidarity with drag performers and the LGBTQ+ community. So we will clear it up: Its fake. the dominion voting system that was the subject of an enormous amount of controversy, is a dramatic improvement over prior forms of voting. "The specific steps taken would depend on the recommendation and the timeline required to make changes effectively.. On Monday, The Associated Press debunked claims that Dominion has any connection with AT&T. February 28, 2023, 1:26 PM. The company, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, contends that some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims by Trump supporters that Dominion machines had changed . Jake Rollow, director of communications for the Michigan Department of State, said in a statement to NBC News, Even though the results are unofficial, if these unofficial results were disrupted or manipulated, it could still cause confusion on Election Day., "The department will consider the advisory commissions recommendations to improve the security of the process," Rollow continued. The explosion injured three other people and damaged businesses in downtown Nashville, including an AT&T switching center, which resulted in widespread communications outages. Spokespersons for both Dominion Voting Systems and AT&T told Reuters by email that claims that Dominion voting machines related to the election were held in the building were untrue. More:Fact check: Joe Biden legally won presidential election, despite persistent contrary claims. On Dec. 27, U.S. Attorney Don Cochran said the explosion appeared to be a suicide bombing carried out by a Warner. Staple Street Capital has a managing director and co-founder named Stephen Owens. NBC News reached out to the Department of Homeland Security, which declined to comment on the topic of modem security in voting machine tabulators and scanners. In an email to PolitiFact, a Dominion spokesperson said the company and AT&T are calling on everyone to reject these baseless rumors: "Americans should continue to seek information from verifiable, trusted sources, such as law enforcement authorities.". Both sit on Dominion's board. Even in an election where almost all the voting was recorded on paper ballots and rigorous audits were done more than ever before, none of that helps if millions of people are working with an alternative set of facts, said Joe Kiniry, chief scientist of the open-source election technology company Free & Fair. Some of the posts (here) try connect the explosion to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama by claiming that William Kennard, Obamas EU ambassador and Clintons FCC chair, is on AT&Ts board and owns the Nashville AT&T building that was destroyed in the blast. A widely sharedpost on Facebook alleges that four days before the bombing, a rumor circulated that AT&T was awarded a contract to audit Dominion's voting machines, which were supposedly being sent to Nashville. The post implies that the bombing was an attempt to stop the audit and cover up voter fraud. The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has dismissed the claim of an election hacking and vote manipulation operation known as Hammer and Scorecard. (here). "When we're in the realm of coupling disinformation from both foreign and domestic sources, and government and nongovernment sources, and none of it is really grounded in reality evidence doesn't help much," he said. The claim implies the explosion was an elaborate plot to destroy voting machines that might have yielded evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. Last month Dominion filed a $1.6bn defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, accusing it of trying to boost ratings by amplifying the bogus claims. Read more about our fact-checking workhere . Dominion Lawsuit Showcases Paul Ryan's Influence over Fox News Channel's Editorial Control. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. These claims are groundless. Some of the posts (here) say: Dominion voting is owned by Cerberus Capital Management. Cerberus is run by Staple Street Execs. Dominion has no connection to AT&T, the building, Nashville, family members of the Bidens or the Clintons, and Staple Street is not owned by Cerberus, said Tony Fratto, a partner at the PR firm Hamilton Place Strategies who emailed the AP on behalf of Dominion. ", Dominion Voting Systems Employee Sues Trump Campaign And Allies, Alleging Defamation, Former Election Security Official Says It Will Take Years To Undo Disinformation, Barr Says No Need For Special Counsel For Hunter Biden Probe, Election Fraud Claims. Reuters Fact Check previously debunked this claim here . "The loud speaker was to warn people that the bomb was going to go off.. 5:30a on Christmas morning was picked to ensure that nobody was around.. AP'S ASSESSMENT: False. The services and oversight found in the Secretary of State's office reach every department and agency in state government. Bogus conspiracy theory spreading online claims the Nashville bombing was an attempt to cover up voter fraud. There is no evidence to support the claim that City Blue Imaging, a longtime Rochester, New York, printing business that went up in flames on Christmas Eve, was under investigation for printing fake ballots. AT&T and Verizon and so on try and protect as best they can the security of their phone network from the rest of the internet, but its still part of the internet, Appel explained. We should not connect our voting machines directly to the computer networks. It is no longer federally certified. The row housed Simply the Best $10 Boutique at 176 (here), Ensemble boutique at 174 (www.ensemblenashville.com/) and the Pride & Glory Tattoo Parlor at 172 (www.prideandglorytattoo.com/), as well as apartments on the upper floors (here). Note that aspects of Tennessee law may differ with what is seen on the videos. There can still be security holes that allow hackers to get into the phone network.. . The post's creator did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment. the post reads. His top goal right now is pretty simple hoping one day it'll be safe to return home. So many government officials like Manfra have said the same thing over the last few years that it is commonly accepted as gospel by most Americans. He is focused on New Technologies around AI led Predictive Analytics, Smart Machines, IT Process Automation etc.. through . Rumors about an investigation into the company do not even appear in web searches until after the fire. "The voting machine lobby, led by the biggest company, ES&S, believes they are above the law," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Intelligence Committee who co-signed the letter.. The extent of our relationship is this: In 2009, Smartmatic licensed the use of a Dominion voting machine for use in the Philippines. There's a third company, Clear Ballot Group which is currently under testing by the state of Florida, the official audit review of their software began May 17th, but that is not . But none of this is true. In 2006, Cerberus Capital acquired it, according to a 2006 News Channel 5 Nashville report. Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday morning filed three $1.6 billion defamation lawsuits against two pro-Trump media networks and an outspoken Trump ally, the latest in a string of suits from the . As of now, the person of interest identified by the FBI in connection with the explosion, Anthony Quinn Warner, is believed to have been "paranoid about 5G technology" (another frequent subject of conspiracy theories) rather than possessing any election-related motive. A public relations firmtold the Associated Presson behalf of Dominion that the company "has no connection to AT&T, the building, Nashville, family members of the Bidens or the Clintons, and Staple Street is not owned by Cerberus. Donate State Editions California Florida And I don't know that all these jurisdictions are aware of that because ES&S is advertising otherwise.. And then run the ballots through the machine a few times. THE FACTS: As federal officials work to piece together a motive for the blast that rattled downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, social media users have invented their own far-fetched theories. The companys sales manager, John Mealey ( here , here ), also spoke about the rumor to local ABC affiliate WHAM-TV, saying: Its crazy, the amount of misinformation that you see.. Theres a small percentage of jurisdictions in the country -- a lot of them are in Florida -- who have decided they want to modem unofficial results to the election office, he said. Statement:The Nashville bombing was an attempt to stop an AT&T audit into Dominion software and cover up election corruption. Kevin Monahan is a producer for the NBC News Investigative Unit. Dominion provides election equipment and software to 28 states, including many of the swing states on which Trump has focused his post-election ire. 4 min read. The bulletin circulated among state election officials earlier this week and publicly shared online, Friday marks the first time CISA has used its vulnerability disclosure program to probe . Its true that an AT&T-owned building in Nashville was one of many buildings damaged in Fridays. You cansubscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. With unfounded fraud claims swirling, red California county dumps Dominion voting machines. Shasta will be the first of 40 California counties that used Dominion in the November 2022 election to drop the voting system, Shasta County Clerk/Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen told the . These are conspiracies manufactured out of whole cloth. A post on Facebook theorized that the two disasters were connected by a plot to steal the election. (Read more about ourpartnership with Facebook.). John Bazemore/AP At its core is the prediction thatan alleged mass arrest ofhigh-profile Democrats and celebritieswould be carried out while now-former President Donald Trump secretly savedthe world from a satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Lindell told the Minnesota Reformer, that he and a friend were on their way home from duck hunting in Iowa and were in the Hardee's drive through when three cars with four FBI agents surrounded his vehicle. The AT&T buildingon Second Avenueis owned by BellSouth Telecommunications, an operating company of AT&T, according to local records. All rights reserved. A newly-released court filing in the Dominion voting machines defamation lawsuit . For Coomer, that means his life may be forever changed. causing widespread communications outages. Similar claims have been shared in hundreds of public posts, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool. So, the explosion just happened to be at the AT&T location where they just so happen to control the cooling system for the super computer and house the dominion voting machines and drives for forensic audit, Wait, the bombing in Nashville was at the AT&T data center right after they got the contract to audit the Dominion voting machines? read another post. James Murphy, a spokesperson for MetLife, confirmed the company owns the building. Hart said that it has approximately 1,600 such tabulators in use in 11 counties in Michigan. Other posts on social media have gone a step further, alleging that Dominion is tied to the bombing through ownership of the affected AT&T building. It really is. The company put the building back on the market shortly thereafter; MetLife Inc., throughsubsidiary Prefco Fourteen, now owns the building, public records show. A Facebook post (here) shared more than a thousand times has falsely claimed: In New York a printing press company, under investigation for printing and shipping fake voting ballots into Pennsylvania, burned to the ground Xmas morning.. Examples can be seen here , here and here . While the post does not specify which building they believed the machines were held in, a Dominion Voting Systems spokesperson said by email that none of their machines were anywhere in the. This references the claim that supercomputer Hammer and software program Scorecard were used to change votes in Bidens favor in the 2020 Presidential election. ( here and here ). No amount of transparency at the county and state level can really combat the sort of megaphone that Trump wields, Kiniry says. The explosion injured three other people and damaged businesses in downtown Nashville, including an AT&T switching center, which resulted in widespread communications outages. It wasn't meant to kill people, but to destroy a building. However, he is not tied to Joe Biden and is not his sister Valerie Biden Owens husband. Some posts have said the Nashville explosion was caused by a missile. Spokespeople for both AT&T and Dominion have confirmed that AT&T did not hold a contract to audit Dominion, nor had any of Dominions equipment been moved to Nashville in preparation for such an audit. The social media post states "AT&T got contract [sic] to do forensic audit on Dominion voting machines and those machines were being moved to Nashville this past week" before the bombing. Whether it's the standard online trolls, voicemails that are left almost on a daily basis, being called a traitor to this country, I can't even begin to describe what effect this has had on my life," he said. The question is.. Now the process of counting these votes . Even if an election is run perfectly, it doesn't matter to a sizable portion of the public who believes it was unfair. Dominionwas acquired by private equity firm Staple Street Capital, co-founded by financiers Hootan Yaghoobzadeh and StephenOwens, in 2018. "Thats an interesting coincidence.". The Trump followers believe that the explosion was actually a missile strike aimed at destroying. These are conspiracies manufactured out of whole cloth.. A spokesperson for Dominion Voting Systems confirmed to Reuters via email that the Stephen Owens at Staple Street has no family ties or business affiliations with Bidens sister, Valerie Biden Owens. Similar claims have already been debunked by Reuters (here). APS ASSESSMENT: False. More:Fact check: No, Joe Biden's brother-in-law does not own Dominion Voting Systems. He claimed on his podcast that he'd infiltrated a call with Denver-area antifa members that included a man identified as "Eric from Dominion.". Earlier this week, Skoglund showed NBC three election systems were still online even after officials had been told they were vulnerable. Some shorter posts here and here say: Wait, the bombing in Nashville was at the AT&T Data Center right after they got the contract to audit the Dominion Voting machines? Dominion was the first to snap. The bomb was located in a recreational vehicle that Warner owned. There was no evidence of a shooting, but both officers and witnesses heard a warning blare from the RV: "Evacuate now. "AT&T got a contract to do forensic audit on Dominion voting machines and those machines were being moved to Nashville this past week," one Dec. 27 post says. Coomer said in addition to his own information, the personal addresses of everyone from his parents and siblings to his ex-girlfriends have been posted online. Read more about our fact-checking work here . Cerberus Capital previously owned the AT&T Building, onceknownas the BellSouth Building,where the company has operated its Tennessee headquarters since the building's erection in 1994. All of these businesses were reported to be damaged in the blast (here). Some of Trump's supporters have focused on Coomer as the supposed evil mastermind. US Elections were November 3, 2020. AT&T was not contracted to audit Dominion Voting Systems' machines, and no Dominion machines were being held in the building outside of which the bomb exploded, spokespeople for both AT&T and Dominion confirmed. Shasta County has become a hotbed for unproven conspiracy theories about rigged voting, fueled by former . Nashville's date on June 7 at GEODIS Park will feature Kelsea Ballerini and BRELAND -- and now, The Boykinz. In the weeks following the election, the election technology firm Dominion Voting Systems has been the target of baseless allegations of election fraud, according to the Washington Post.Now a viral Facebook post attempts to connect President-elect Joe Biden to the company by claiming his sister is married to Stephen Owens, who, the post alleges, owns Dominion Voting Systems. For election systems to be online, even momentarily, presents a serious problem, according to Appel. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Spokespeople for AT&T and Dominion confirmed to the AP that AT&T had no contract to audit Dominion machines, and no Dominion machines were to be sent to Nashville. Select an Infowars smear of Dominion Voting Systems. The AT&T building in downtown Nashville. By the time the news conference occurred on Nov. 19, Mr. Trump's campaign had already prepared an internal memo on many of the outlandish claims about the company, Dominion Voting Systems, and. First, QAnon. Staple Street Capital took part in a deal with management to acquire Dominion in 2018 (here and here). Speaker 13 . Heres why:In the wake of theChristmas morning explosion in Nashville, Tenn., a baseless conspiracy theory startedcirculatingonlinethat claims Nashvilles downtown AT&T complex, which was damaged in the blast, had gotten a contract to conduct a "forensic audit" on Dominion Voting Systems machines. why?" Claims that two buildings that were destroyed on Christmas Day were both holding evidence related to the 2020 U.S. presidential election are untrue. More:Fact check: No, Joe Biden's brother-in-law does not own Dominion Voting Systems. New York State Police Director of Public Information Beau Duffy told Reuters via email they were unaware of any state police investigations relating to the claims linking the paper company to ballots. Thank you for supporting our journalism. The bomb was located in a recreational vehicle owned by Warner. CLAIM: AT&T got a contract to do a forensic audit of Dominion Voting Systems machines and those machines were recently moved to Nashville, Tennessee to the same AT&T building that was damaged in a Christmas morning explosion. The location of the heavily damaged buildings seen in the photograph accompanying the post appear to show 170 to 176 2nd Avenue North in Nashville after the explosion. AT&T had a contract to conduct a forensic audit of Dominion Voting Systems in Nashville just prior to a December 2020 explosion in that city. The post implies that the bombing was an attempt to stop the audit and cover up voter fraud. (Photo by James Leynse/Corbis via Getty Images). While William Kennard serves on Staple Street Capitals board, he is not one of the companys co-founders as these posts claim (here). False. On Nov. 21, a group protested in front of Dominion's Denver headquarters, waving American flags and signs saying "fraud equals arrests." Social media is home to several conspiracy theories about the explosion in Nashville on Christmas Day. Copyright 2023 Politifact. All those. Dominion has been the target of a wide range of false posts since American voters chose Joe Biden as their next president, despite no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities in the 2020 election. Cerberus Capital Management, the firm named in the posts, does not own Dominion, nor does it own the company that does own Dominion, Staple Street Capital. "Coincidence? EDITORS NOTE (Feb. 7, 2020, 11:15 p.m.): A previous version of this article stated that Kevin Skoglund and his team had found election systems using ES&S scanners with wireless modems connected to the internet in 11 states and the District of Columbia.
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