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The New York Attorney Generals office said they could not confirm nor deny any investigation. A Dec. 14 Facebook video, viewed more than 23,000 times, claimed in its caption that "Trump WON The Election NEW Evidence Shows" because "a forensics report done on Dominion voting machines . 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 . Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. Before starting Staple Street Capital, Yaghoobzadeh worked as a senior vice president for private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. These two tech experts also agree on the path forward, saying they are comforted by the fact that most Americans will vote this year on hand-marked paper ballots which are counted by machine and can be recounted by hand if the situation warrants. However, there are no news reports available online that mention that the business was involved with an investigation related to the election, and Google searches for any mention of the company and an investigation into ballot fraud from the start of September to the date of the fire do not reveal even online rumors to that effect circulating before the fire broke out (here), The companys Facebook page has addressed rumors that have spread since the fire, saying: To the misinformed people on @Twitter and @instagram #cityblueimaging does not print #ballots (here). "It does appear that the intent was more destruction than death," said David Rausch, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, inan interview on NBC's "Today." AT&T did not have a contract to audit Dominion machines and was not holding Dominion machines in its Nashville building, both companies confirmed to The Associated Press. Posts online claim that the Christmas Day bombing in Nashville was an attempt to cover up election fraud because AT&T was conducting an audit of Dominion Voting Systems machines and that the equipment was recently relocated to the companys building that was damaged in the blast. "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.. All of these businesses were reported to be damaged in the blast (here). Others are not so sure, and the state has set up an advisory committee. DNA found at the scene matched Warner's, according to an FBI press release. A team of election security experts used a Google for servers to challenge claims that voting machines do not connect to the internet and found some did. Both companies have also denied that AT&T held a contract to audit machines from Dominion Voting Systems (other Fact Checks on these claims can be seen here and here ). In the wake of the Christmas morning explosion in Nashville, Tenn., a baseless conspiracy theory started circulating online that claims Nashville's downtown AT&T complex, which was damaged in. ", 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.". . In a Dominion-themed segment, an Infowars host speaking during a November Washington, D.C., rally presaged the January 6 violence by hyping the . The City of Rochester government and police did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment. he instructions and videos shown here have been prepared by the manufacturers and are general in nature. We rate thisclaim as FALSE, because it wasn't supported by our research. On Nov. 21, a group protested in front of Dominion's Denver headquarters, waving American flags and signs saying "fraud equals arrests." Staple Street Capital took part in a deal with management to acquire Dominion in 2018 (here and here). Once a hacker starts talking to the voting machine through the modem, the hacker cannot just change these unofficial election results, they can hack the software in the voting machine and make it cheat in future elections, he said. Tim Walz signed into law one of the largest voter . He believes there is time to make real change before the 2020 election. Texas country-punk band Vandoliers are standing in solidarity with drag performers and the LGBTQ+ community. You cansubscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. 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. Americans should continue to seek information from verifiable, trusted sources, such as law enforcement authorities, Dominion Voting Systems added. There are currently two voting systems which are certified by the State of Florida's Division of Elections. Dominion provides election equipment and software to 28 states, including many of the swing states on which Trump has focused his post-election ire. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Across the country on Christmas Eve, a printing press company in New York burned to the ground. So did the type of explosives used to detonate the blast. 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. 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. In 2020, the controversy revolves around Dominion's voting machines, sparked by an erroneous result out of a Michigan county that's been blamed on human error, allegations of rigged Dominion software in Georgia and the fact Texas rejected Dominion's system due to security concerns. Jim Greer, associate vice president for corporate communications at AT&T, was blunt in an email response to PolitiFact: "That is not true," he wrote. Fact-checkers have debunked claims that the explosion was the result of a missile strike. Some on social media have speculated that AT&T was contracted to audit Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology supplier that has become central to false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. . There is no evidence to support the claim that the explosionin Nashville and fire in Rochester, New York,that occurred around the holidays point toward a broader conspiracy to hide election malfeasance. 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. Jim Greer, Assistant Vice President of Corporate Communications at AT&T, told Reuters via email: None of the things in the post are true.. And we knew that wasn't true. The House Committee on Administration held a congressional hearing yesterday which was the first time the heads of the three major vendors, representing at least 80 percent of U.S. voting machines, appeared together for questioning. False. It also claims the AT&T building that was affected by the bomb is where those machines were being stored. 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. subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Jim Greer, a spokesperson for AT&T, told USA TODAY the claims are "not true. An online search turns up segments on the pro-Trump outlets Newsmax and One America News Network discussing the allegations as well as people accusing Coomer of treason and calling for him to be publicly executed. The coalition says it is no longer certain that the number of states is correct, so the figure has been removed from the article. The conspiracy theory has grown into a movement that is promoted by right-wing extremists. 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. "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. 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.. Tre Hargett was elected by the Tennessee General Assembly to serve as Tennessees 37th secretary of state in 2009 and re-elected in 2013, 2017, and 2021. Your membership is the foundation of our sustainability and resilience. While lawmakers questioned them about foreign influence in their supply chains and whether they would comply with more federal reporting requirements, the presence of modems in some of their tabulators was mentioned but not pursued. A Michigan judge ordered the release Monday of an independent forensic audit report of the Dominion Voting Systems machines used in Antrim County, which flipped from a win for Democrat Joe Biden to President Donald Trump after a glitch was discovered and corrected. 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? The bomb squad was en route. The building of City Blue Imaging (www.cityblueimaging.com/), a printing company in Rochester, New York, burnt down on Christmas morning after catching fire the night before ( here , here and here ). Some have also received threatening letters. There was no evidence of a shooting, but both officers and witnesses heard a warning blare from the RV: "Evacuate now. Posts online claim that the Christmas Day bombing in Nashville was an attempt to cover up election fraud because AT&T was conducting an audit of Dominion Voting Systems machines and that the equipment was recently relocated to the companys building that was damaged in the blast. CLAIM: AT&T got a contract to do a forensic audit of Dominion Voting Systems machines and those machines were recently moved . In 2006, Cerberus Capital acquired it, according to a 2006 News Channel 5 Nashville report. The 35 systems Skoglunds team found represent a fraction of total voting systems nationwide, though he believes they only captured a portion of the systems that are or have been online. 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 . 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 . However, both AT&T and Dominion have disclaimed the notion that the former company was engaged in audit of the latter, or that any Dominion-related systems were being moved to Nashville in preparation for a "forensic audit" (by anyone). Cerberus Capital did briefly own an AT&T building, but the post is wrong about which one. The company put the building back on the market shortly thereafter; MetLife Inc., throughsubsidiary Prefco Fourteen, now owns the building, public records show. Dominion Voting Systems lost a sale of more than 1,400 new machines on Wednesday after commissioners for Stark County, Ohio, voted down the purchase against a recommendation from the. Serious political tensions and fears of COVID-19 have led record-breaking numbers of Americans to vote early this year, either by mail or in person. These are real, tangible things coming out of these baseless accusations.". On January 8, it filed a defamation suit against pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell, seeking $1.3 billion in damages. Conspiracy theorists say the suicide bombing that rocked downtown Nashville was actually the result of a missile strike. While William Kennard serves on Staple Street Capitals board, he is not one of the companys co-founders as these posts claim (here). There is no evidence that suggests that the explosion was election-related. Even for elections nights., Appel agreed. The FBI confirmed that a man named Anthony Warner was responsible for the bombing and was killed in the blast. The explosion injured three other people and damaged businesses in downtown Nashville, including an AT&T switching center, which resulted in widespread communications outages. "The FBI corralled me in Mankato, Minnesota, and took my cell phone," Lindell told the Reformer. While the companys website states that zero of its voting tabulators are connected to the internet, ES&S told NBC News 14,000 of their DS200 tabulators with online modems are currently in use around the country. 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.. Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. A sample ballot is shown via the Dominion Voting Systems that Georgians use to vote. Rumors about an investigation into the company do not even appear in web searches until after the fire. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has promised for months since the 2020 election that he had obtained Dominion, Smartmatic and ES&S voting machines, and they would be on full. 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. A spokesperson for Dominion Voting Systems told Reuters via email: Dominion calls on the media and the public to reject the baseless rumors circulating on social media, which suggest without evidence that there was some election-related connection to the Nashville explosion.. The electronic voting system company accused the television network of spreading lies that Dominion machines were used to rig the 2020 election against Donald Trump. That team of election security experts say that last summer, they discovered some systems are, in fact, online. NewsGuard, which vets news sources based on transparency and reliability standards, found recently that among the top 100 sources of news in the U.S., sources it deemed unreliable had four times as many interactions this year compared with 2019. "Dominion and AT&T have both called on the media and the public to reject the baseless rumors circulating on social media, which suggest without evidence that there was some election-related connection to the Nashville explosion," a spokesperson for Dominion told USA TODAY. In counties that didn't use Dominion systems, Biden got 1.54 million votes to Trump's 1.52 million. This is bogus. "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. Some posts take the claim a step further, alleging that the former owner of the building was a board member of a firm that owns Dominion. Some of Trump's supporters have focused on Coomer as the supposed evil mastermind. For election systems to be online, even momentarily, presents a serious problem, according to Appel. 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. Full Story. 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.