dominion voting machines nashville dominion voting machines nashville

Then Acting Undersecretary for Cybersecurity and Communications at the Department of Homeland Security Jeanette Manfra said those words in 2017, testifying before Congress while she was responsible for the security of the nations voting system. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. 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. 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. Speaker 13 . There are currently two voting systems which are certified by the State of Florida's Division of Elections. The post implies that the bombing was an attempt to stop the audit and cover up voter fraud. 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. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. The wishes are that I forever have to look over my shoulder," Coomer said. 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). Modems in voting machines are a bad idea, said Appel. 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. 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. Next theory: The bombing was an attempt to stop an AT&T audit into Dominion software and cover up election corruption. ", 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. Thats an interesting coincidence.. On Monday, The Associated Press debunked claims that Dominion has any connection with AT&T. "And I probably will. Earlier this week, Skoglund showed NBC three election systems were still online even after officials had been told they were vulnerable. 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. The reason? 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. Fact-checkers have debunked claims that the explosion was the result of a missile strike. 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. There may not be answers to the Christmas Day bombing in Nashville anytime soon. And then run the ballots through the machine a few times. These claims are groundless. Dominion Lawsuit Showcases Paul Ryan's Influence over Fox News Channel's Editorial Control. We found over 35 [voting systems] had been left online and were still continuing to find more, Kevin Skoglund, a senior technical advisor at the election security advocacy group National Election Defense Coalition, told NBC News. The services and oversight found in the Secretary of State's office reach every department and agency in state government. Federal officials have identified the man believed to be behind the bombing, and they are working to discern a motive. However, he is not tied to Joe Biden and is not his sister Valerie Biden Owens husband. Dominion Voting Systems previously sent OAN letters threatening to sue, accusing the network of spreading the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that the election-technology company manipulated. The claim implies the explosion was an elaborate plot to destroy voting machines that might have yielded evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. Those modems that ES&S [and other manufacturers] are putting in their voting machines are network connections, and that leaves them vulnerable to hacking by anybody who can connect to that network.. Please note the instructions and videos shown here have been prepared by the manufacturers and are general in nature. Dominion did not respond to numerous requests from NBC News for their sales numbers. In counties that used Dominion systems, Biden got 888,259 votes to Trump's 851,069. causing widespread communications outages. The West Bend clerk wrote, "The wrong marking device was used to mark the . ( here and here ). That building is located at 333 Commerce St., roughly a quarter mile from where the bomb went off. If you have super majorities, Tennessee is like an R plus twenty state. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. There is no evidence that suggests that the explosion was election-related. While federal investigators are still looking into the bombing, law enforcement officials have said Warner was responsible and died in the blast. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. The cities of West Bend and Mequon's Dominion machine audit found one vote changed each after their hand counts. Thank you for supporting our journalism. February 28, 2023, 1:26 PM. No available external evidence suggests AT&T was involved in any such audit, either. CNN didnt report that Anthony Warner, the person authorities have identified as the bomber, died from COVID-19. View list by county(.pdf) and learn more about each system using the links below. He was present when the bomb went off, and he perished in the bombing," Cochran said. "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?,"onefrom Dec. 26 reads. More:Fact check: Joe Biden legally won presidential election, despite persistent contrary claims. The explosion injured three people and damaged several businesses, including the AT&T Building. Its crazy, the amount of misinformation that you see, Mealy said. One theory shared thousands of times on Facebook over the weekend tries to connect the explosion to voting machines used in the Nov. 3 election. But companies that specialize in the subject said it is getting exponentially worse. He believes there is time to make real change before the 2020 election. Its true that an AT&T-owned building in Nashville was one of many buildings damaged in Fridays. ", More:Three firefighters hurt battling three-alarm blaze in Rochester. James Murphy, a spokesperson for MetLife, confirmed the company owns the building. Owners of Dominion Voting Systems,(the company many people are accusing of voter fraud) are former executives from Cerebus," another post reads. Those networks are among the defendants Coomer is suing. The broadcast then began a 15-minute countdown,before the RV exploded, according to The Tennessean. 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. 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. Rumors about an investigation into the company do not even appear in web searches until after the fire. But the company did not account for the new voting centers, so the Williamson County. 1995 - 2023 by Snopes Media Group Inc. Some just say AT&T had a contract to conduct a forensic audit on Dominion Voting Systems. So that unofficial election results can more quickly be relayed to the public. . Skoglund said that they identified only one company among the systems they detected on line, ES&S. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. It is no longer federally certified. Investigators say the explosion in Nashville was perpetrated by a 63-year-old Tennessean named Anthony Warner, who blared a warning to nearby people from his RV requesting they evacuate before the bomb detonated. The report claims the results of the election in . All rights reserved. hide caption. 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. In a letter obtained by NBC News sent to the EAC on Tuesday, the nonprofit public interest group Free Speech for People and the National Election Defense Coalition asked the agency to look into whether ES&S violated agency regulations by implying that DS200 voting machines with modems are EAC certified. The post displays a headline from a fabricated story by the Genesius Times, a satirical news website, that reads: "BREAKING: Nashville Bomber died from COVID-19 shortly after blowing himself up. Across the country on Christmas Eve, a printing press company in New York burned to the ground. 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. 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. Were focusing on moving forward.. Early Christmas morning, police in Nashville came across an RV parked on Second Avenue, outside an AT&T transmission building, whileresponding to reports of shots fired in the area, Metro Nashville P, Fact check: Joe Biden legally won presidential election, despite persistent contrary claims, Neighbor recalls warning, countdown before Nashville explosion, Fact check: Viral photo shows fake logo and slogan for Dominion Voting Systems, Fact check: No, Joe Biden's brother-in-law does not own Dominion Voting Systems, Nashville officials resolved to find bombing suspects, learn motive behind explosion, "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, AT&T outage Sunday updates: 'Progress continues' in restoring service after Nashville bombing, Dominion Voting Systems Acquired by its Management Team and Staple Street Capital. "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. Recently, however, there are signs that elections companies, like some election officials, are pushing back against the false accusations. CLAIM: AT&T got a contract to do a forensic audit of Dominion Voting Systems machines and those machines were recently moved . Americans should continue to seek information from verifiable, trusted sources, such as law enforcement authorities, Dominion Voting Systems added. Even though it has a blue Nashville and a blue Memphis. IE 11 is not supported. David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994 as a creative outgrowth of his wide-ranging interests in a variety of subjects (particularly folklo read more. "Conspiracy theory links false claim of AT&T election audit to bombing, Fact check: Hugo Chvez's family does not own Dominion Voting Systems, Fact check: Dominion voting machines didn't delete votes from Trump, switch them to Biden, Live politics updates: Dominion says it may sue over election conspiracy theories, subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy, Cision PR Newswire archive, July 16, 2018, ", The Tennessean archives, July 23, 2004, ", News Channel 5 Nashville archives, Dec. 18, 2006, ", Email correspondence withJim Greer, a spokesperson for AT&T, Email correspondence with a spokesperson for Dominion Voting Systems. Texas country-punk band Vandoliers are standing in solidarity with drag performers and the LGBTQ+ community. There can still be security holes that allow hackers to get into the phone network.. 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. Law enforcement authorities have suggested that Warner may have been paranoid about 5G technology, a QAnon-related conspiracy theory that makes an array of unproven claims including that ithelps spread COVID-19and is used as a spying tool by the government. "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. 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. Did AT&T Have a Contract to Audit Dominion Voting Systems? Previous claims had said the bomb had targeted the AT&T building and that Dominion Voting Systems machines were being audited there(here). He also serves on the boards of Ford Motor Company, MetLife and Duke Energy Corporation (here). He has independently become part of the broader Dominion conspiracy theories, though, with some claiming he's Joe Biden's brother-in-law. https://archive.is/qqjBh Paul E. Singer-Elliott Management, aka "The Vulture", reportedly controls CNN parent, AT&T, as well as Twitter. Behind it is the notion that if voting systems are not online, hackers will have a harder time compromising them. 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. It's the first . 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 . 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. Both companies have denied the posts claims, saying that there was no such audit and that Dominions machines were not recently transported to Nashville. Claims that two buildings that were destroyed on Christmas Day were both holding evidence related to the 2020 U.S. presidential election are untrue. "To the misinformed people on @Twitter and @instagram #cityblueimaging does not print #ballots, does not do work for #Phoenixgraphics and was never owned by the owner of #phoenixgraphics," the company wrote on its Facebook page on Dec. 27. But election integrity advocates worry the disinformation won't truly begin to recede until political leaders such as Trump stop questioning the election's legitimacy. Skoglund says those include the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida. So did the type of explosives used to detonate the blast. Dominionwas acquired by private equity firm Staple Street Capital, co-founded by financiers Hootan Yaghoobzadeh and StephenOwens, in 2018. More:Fact check: No, Joe Biden's brother-in-law does not own Dominion Voting Systems. More than a month ago, Eric Coomer went into hiding. 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. The conspiracy theory appears to have originated in a tweet by Lin Wood, an attorney and Trump supporter, who has pushed a number of false election claims. 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.. "That's all still speculation at this point as we continue in our investigation with all of our partners. This is bogus. Before starting Staple Street Capital, Yaghoobzadeh worked as a senior vice president for private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. Kevin Monahan is a producer for the NBC News Investigative Unit. There is a bomb. And we knew that wasn't true. That's false. Read more about our fact-checking work here . For Coomer, that means his life may be forever changed. Shortly afterwards, social media users began circulating variants of a conspiracy theory holding that AT&T had been engaged to undertake a "forensic audit of Dominion voting machines," the latter of which were frequent targets of false election fraud claims made by President Donald Trump and his supports after Trump lost his re-election bid in November 2020: The implication of the conspiracy theory was that the explosion had been intended to destroy the machines before they were audited in order to cover up evidence of massive voting fraud. The RV was parked on Second Avenue in Nashville, outside an AT&Ttransmission building, among other businesses and residences. Jim Greer, a spokesperson for AT&T, told USA TODAY the claims are "not true. The company recently threatened a number of groups repeating the claims with lawsuits, including One America News Network, Newsmax and Fox News. Three days later, on November 6th, AT&T named William "Bill" E. Kennard Chairman of its Board of Directors. SIOUX FALLS, S.D. the dominion voting system that was the subject of an enormous amount of controversy, is a dramatic improvement over prior forms of voting. In the wake of the Christmas morning explosion in Nashville, Tenn., a baseless conspiracy theory started circulating online that 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. The AT&T building the posts likely refer to was not the one outside which the bomb exploded on Christmas morning. One of the co-founders of Staple Street Capital (staplestreetcapital.com/ ), not Staple Street execs, Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, worked at Cerberus prior to starting Staple Street in 2009 (here). The extent of our relationship is this: In 2009, Smartmatic licensed the use of a Dominion voting machine for use in the Philippines. 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? After that podcast went out, the threats quickly arrived. DNA from human remains found at the scene matched Warner, and investigators found financial records for components that he may have used to construct the bomb. Both companies have denied the posts claims, saying that there was no such audit and that Dominions machines were not recently transported to Nashville. 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. There is no evidence that the AT&T switching center damaged by the explosion (here) housed a supercomputer being used to alter the elections outcome. Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine manufacturer founded in Canada, made equipment that is used in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Powell is named in Coomer's suit, along with the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. The bomb was located in a recreational vehicle that Warner owned. The voting conspiracy theories that have led millions of Republicans to feel as though the election was stolen from them, which are still spreading, have also led to calls for Coomer's head. Please note t he instructions and videos shown here have been prepared by the manufacturers and are general in nature. On Christmas morning of 2020, a recreational vehicle exploded on the streets of Nashville near a building owned by AT&T that lies one block from the companys office tower. 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. Last week, Dominion filed its fourth defamation lawsuit, this one a $1.6 billion whopper charging that Fox News spread the bogus conspiracy claim in order to boost ratings that plummeted after. You cansubscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. The post implies that the bombing was an attempt to stop the audit and cover up voter fraud. President Donald Trump's attorney Lin Wood reportedly experienced a series of ups and downs Sunday in a court battle to ensure Georgia elections officials do not wipe Dominion voting machines, and won a temporary restraining order following a night-time Zoom hearing. We therefore again respectfully request that EAC investigate and take action to correct this serious issue., Once you add that modem, you are de-certifying it, Skoglund said. The Nashville outlet found . "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. 27postsays. False. Some of that money was spent on tabulators with wireless modems. Its disgusting. Warner died in the blast, according to authorities. The voting rights of more than 55,000 formerly incarcerated Minnesotans were restored on Friday, as Gov. 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. In 2006, Cerberus Capital acquired it, according to a 2006 News Channel 5 Nashville report. This weekend, both Fox Business Network and Newsmax appeared to answer those demands with segments debunking some claims. 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.