Next theory: The bombing was an attempt to stop an AT&T audit into Dominion software and cover up election corruption. An executive at Dominion Voting Systems moved to dismiss Newsmax as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit Friday after reaching a settlement with the right-wing media organization. Videos from law enforcement officials and local businesses show that the explosion occurred on 2nd Avenue North in downtown Nashville. 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. While Kennard served at the FCC and as EU ambassador and he joined AT&Ts board of directors as Chairman in Nov. 2020 (here), Greer confirmed Kennard is not the former owner of the AT&T building that was destroyed in Nashville, as the posts claim. Some have also received threatening letters. This conspiracy theory has been debunked by various experts as reported by Reuters here and other fact checkers including Snopes, Factcheck.org and PolitiFact here , here and here . But now, some state officials worry that the machines may pose a security risk and are pushing to have the modems removed. All those. The 23-page report signed by a former Republican congressional candidate with a history of spreading misinformation about Michigan's election claims Dominion "is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results.". The bomb was located in a recreational vehicle that Warner owned. "I'm in fear for my family's safety. But Skogland points to some good news. Jim Greer, a spokesperson for AT&T, told USA TODAY the claims are "not true. 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. Modems in voting machines are a bad idea, said Appel. This weekend, both Fox Business Network and Newsmax appeared to answer those demands with segments debunking some claims. These are real, tangible things coming out of these baseless accusations.". Your membership is the foundation of our sustainability and resilience. Others are not so sure, and the state has set up an advisory committee. The following three posts were flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. 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. Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. 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 cities of West Bend and Mequon's Dominion machine audit found one vote changed each after their hand counts. Social media is home to several conspiracy theories about the explosion in Nashville on Christmas Day. The explosion in the heart of Nashville injured three people and damaged businesses including an AT&T switching center, disrupting mobile, internet and TV services across central Tennessee and parts of four other states (here). Trump fumes at Rupert Murdoch over his bombshell Fox News Dominion Cerberus Capital did briefly own an AT&T building, but the post is wrong about which one. 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. reads the post caption from Red Pill Radio, a Facebook account that bears the slogan of the, However, the firm cited in that version of the claim Cerberus Capital Management doesnt own Dominion nor is it connected to Staple Street Capital, which, PolitiFact's partnership with Facebook here, Our ethics policy for PolitiFact journalists, WRAL partners with PolitiFact NC to fact check political stories. 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. 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. That building is located at 333 Commerce St., roughly a quarter mile from where the bomb went off. 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. 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. The machines America votes on seem to be capturing the interest of some in Congress. It was an assurance designed to bolster public confidence in the way America votes: Voting machines are not connected to the internet.. 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. Were focusing on moving forward.. 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. "Coincidence? Its disgusting. 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. FACT CHECK: Does Joe Biden's Brother-In-Law Own Dominion Voting Systems? for the blast that rattled downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, social media users have invented their own far-fetched theories. Was Nashville bombing an attempt to stop audit of Dominion software? In February, Dominion filed a lawsuit against Lindell and his company, alleging he defamed them by repeatedly claiming to have evidence their voting machines fraudulently flipped votes. 4 min read. The Company offers voting systems and scanning devices, as well as resource planning, training management, quality control . The post implies that the bombing was an attempt to stop the audit and cover up voter fraud. Some of the posts attempted to further link AT&T to Dominion by claiming a former owner of the AT&T building was a board member of a firm that owns Dominion. 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. 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. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. 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. An executive for a voting machine company that has been the target of conspiracy theories in the aftermath of Donald Trump's 2020 election loss and been baselessly accused of swinging the. Hart said that it has approximately 1,600 such tabulators in use in 11 counties in Michigan. The report claims the results of the election in . AT&T got a contract to do forensic audit on Dominion voting machines and those machines were being moved to Nashville this past week, read one post. The post reads: In Nashville 2 days ago an RV pulled up to a building and over a loud speaker announced to clear the area..the RV then blew up taking half a building with it..oh, minor detail - inside that building were the Dominion voting machines being audited. 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 area of the explosion or were being audited in Nashville that day. "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. ", More:Nashville police bodycam footage shows raw moments of chaos before and after explosion. Even though it has a blue Nashville and a blue Memphis. False. 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 three largest voting manufacturing companies Election Systems &Software, Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic have acknowledged they all put modems in some of their tabulators and scanners. But the company did not account for the new voting centers, so the Williamson County. There can still be security holes that allow hackers to get into the phone network.. 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.. First, QAnon. It wasn't meant to kill people, but to destroy a building. Singer reportedly funded the original investigation 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. Then, a plume of smoke rises behind three light poles. A post on Facebook theorized that the two disasters were connected by a plot to steal the election. 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. Mike Lindell Says FBI Surrounded Him and Seized His Cellphone But that is an overstatement, according to a team of 10 independent cybersecurity experts who specialize in voting systems and elections. Full text of Commercial and Financial Chronicle : April 6, 1940, Vol (Photo by James Leynse/Corbis via Getty Images). It's just the latest example of how people's lives are being upended and potentially ruined by the unprecedented flurry of disinformation this year. No amount of transparency at the county and state level can really combat the sort of megaphone that Trump wields, Kiniry says. Trump has repeatedly made comments about Dominion's voting machines and retweeted reports perpetuating the conspiracy theory, calling the company's voting machines "a disaster all over the . Georgia, the site of so much controversy in the 2020 election, hurriedly switched in response to a judge's order in 2019 from all-electronic voting machines to Dominion models that. You cansubscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. Rating: False About this rating On Christmas. And thats not what were about. His top goal right now is pretty simple hoping one day it'll be safe to return home. Shasta to become 1st California county to drop Dominion voting machines That team of election security experts say that last summer, they discovered some systems are, in fact, online. The Genesius Times describes itself as the "most reliable source of fake news on the planet" and that it strives "to provide the most up-to-date, accurate fake news on the Internet,", "Nashville explosion a missile strike??" Similar claims have been shared in hundreds of public posts, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool. On Christmas Day, an RV in Nashville, Tennessee, exploded, severelydamaging many of the buildings around it in the explosion. The investigation of the Nashville bombing is ongoing, but the Facebook post is inaccurate and ridiculous. "The FBI corralled me in Mankato, Minnesota, and took my cell phone," Lindell told the Reformer. Staple Street Capital has a managing director and co-founder named Stephen Owens. The state of Michigan is currently grappling with this issue. ", 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.". Ohio county rejects Dominion voting machines in response to pressure (Read more about, Breaking news meme generators are frequently used online to create fabricated headlines and chyrons such as this one. Sumit Ganguli is the CEO and Member of the Board at GAVS Technologies. There is no reason to suppose that it would be likely, or even possible, that these buildings, would be used to audit voting machines. Lin Wood Wins Restraining Order to Stop Georgia Elections Officials A Dominion voting machine in Georgia. Dominion Voting Systems Official Is In Hiding After Threats : NPR - NPR.org More on Dominion:Fact check: Viral photo shows fake logo and slogan for Dominion Voting Systems. Their evidence: a grainy black-and-white video. It also claims the AT&T building that was affected by the bomb is where those machines were being stored. Even if an election is run perfectly, it doesn't matter to a sizable portion of the public who believes it was unfair. 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. 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). Detailed voter instructions for the Infinity voting unit, How to Vote an Optical Scan Ballot with Unisyn Equipment, Public Records Policy and Records Request Form. Across the country on Christmas Eve, a printing press company in New York burned to the ground. Those modems connect to cell phone networks, which, in turn, are connected to the internet. 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? Its true that an AT&T-owned building in Nashville was one of many buildings damaged in Fridays bombing, causing widespread communications outages. 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. 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. "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." Dominion Voting Systems and Election Systems & Software. In an all-caps tweet on Saturday night, Trump highlighted a report from One America News Network (OANN), a right-wing outlet, that claimed voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems. The explosion injured three people and damaged several businesses, including the AT&T Building. Fact check: Nashville bombing, NY fire unrelated, not tied to election NBC News asked the two other major manufacturers how many of their tabulators with modems were currently in use. Powell was one of the faces of the Trump. Spokespeople for both AT&T and Dominion told USA TODAY that AT&T was not contracted to audit Dominion voting machines, and no Dominion voting machines were being held in the AT&T building outside of which the RV exploded. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. Dominion told AFP the claim is "another bizarre lie being spread by known conspiracy theorists.". The posts all tie AT&T with Dominion, holding the explosion to be alleged proof of conspiracy. He also serves on 16 boards and commissions, on two of which he is the presiding member. The AT&T buildingon Second Avenueis owned by BellSouth Telecommunications, an operating company of AT&T, according to local records. That agreement is long over, and they no longer have the . While the voting machines themselves are not designed to be online, the larger voting systems in many states end up there, putting the voting process at risk. The wishes are that I forever have to look over my shoulder," Coomer said. "I actually am in fear for my safety," Coomer said recently, speaking by video call from an undisclosed location to Colorado Public Radio. ES&S has repeatedly advertised its DS200 with internal modem a critical component to ES&Ss voting systems as being EAC certified when, in fact, it is not, the letter said. The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has dismissed the claim of an election hacking and vote manipulation operation known as Hammer and Scorecard. (here). That is just inviting trouble.. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Rupert Murdoch says some Fox hosts 'endorsed' false election claims PolitiFact - No, AT&T was not conducting an audit of Dominion Voting Speaker 13 . 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. 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. Fact-checkers have debunked claims that the explosion was the result of a missile strike. 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. This screengrab is being shared on social media without that context. Jim Greer, a spokesperson for AT&T,also told USA TODAY the claims are "not true.". That user did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment, either. Q&A of the Day - Voting Machines Used in Florida's 2022 Elections In counties that didn't use Dominion systems, Biden got 1.54 million votes to Trump's 1.52 million. Those networks are among the defendants Coomer is suing. Some of that money was spent on tabulators with wireless modems. This is bogus. 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 printing business took to social media to debunk the claim itself. The same Facebook post also said Dominion voting machines were being audited in the AT&T building that was destroyed by a bomb in Nashville. Much of the voting equipment was by Dominion. 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. "Very, very interesting.". The conservative network has seen its ratings surge in . Newsmax Settles Dominion Executive's Defamation Lawsuit, Apologizes 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. 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. 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. 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. And we knew that wasn't true. TheBatman-shaped skyscraper was first owned by Prefco XIV, a limited partnership ofPitney Bowes, which bought the building in 1994 for $100.8 million, according to the building's deed. Even for elections nights., Appel agreed. "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?," one from Dec. 26 reads. 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. Dominion did not respond to numerous requests from NBC News for their sales numbers. 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. Donate State Editions California Florida "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. ", 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. Chinese parts, hidden ownership, growing scrutiny: Inside - NBC News As of Friday, a motive in the bombing remained under investigation by the FBI, the ATF and Metro Nashville police. The coalition says it is no longer certain that the number of states is correct, so the figure has been removed from the article. Carroll County GOP claims Dems were behind Nashville bombing - WKYC