Explaining the False Allegations About Dominion Voting Systems

 https://factcheck.thedispatch.com/p/fact-check-explaining-the-false-allegations

Many of the claims about Dominion can be traced to its alleged role in vote-counting errors in Antrim County, Michigan, and several counties in Georgia. Antrim County revealed it had inadvertently misreported a number of votes in unofficial results, with state GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox claiming that the error was due to “tabulating software glitched and caused a miscalculation of the votes.” However, Michigan’s secretary of state announced that it was not a software issue, but “user human error” that led to the misreporting, and clarified that “the correct results always were and continue to be reflected on the tabulator totals tape and on the ballots themselves. Even if the error in the reported unofficial results had not been quickly noticed, it would have been identified during the county canvass.”

 

 

Dominion Voting Systems Fraud Claims

 https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rumor-alert-dominion-voting-systems-fraud-claims/

One of the most prevalent voter fraud claims to emerge in the days following the election was the accusation that a computer glitch in a software program from Dominion Voting Systems had mistakenly counted thousands of votes for President Trump as votes for President Biden. This claim was based on a half-truth: a tabulation error did occur in Antrim County, but the problem was a result of a human error, and the mistake was quickly caught and corrected.

 

 

Posts falsify ties between election tech firm and Democrats

 https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-us-news-media-michigan-43bdaa186e3b8d9d897cae3bd0c6cdc0

 Claims that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the Clinton Foundation have interest or influence in Dominion are all unsubstantiated. But that didn’t stop tens of thousands of social media users from amplifying them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram this week.

 CLAIM: Prominent Democrats including Pelosi, Feinstein and the Clinton family have a stake in or a deep relationship with Dominion Voting Systems, the second-largest voting vendor in the U.S., whose equipment was used in several battleground states in the 2020 election.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Dominion made a one-time philanthropic commitment at a Clinton Global Initiative meeting in 2014, but the Clinton Foundation has no stake or involvement in Dominion’s operations, the nonprofit confirmed to The Associated Press. A former aide to Pelosi has represented Dominion as a lobbyist, but so have lobbyists who worked for Republicans. Claims that Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, holds a stake in Dominion are baseless.

THE FACTS: When Michigan’s Antrim County initially reported a landslide win for Joe Biden in the U.S. presidential election, social media users grew suspicious about the Dominion election management system used to tabulate the data.

As it turned out, Dominion was not to blame, according to the Michigan Department of State. “There was no malice, no fraud here, just human error,” County Clerk Sheryl Guy told the AP.

The issue was quickly corrected, and President Donald Trump won a majority of votes in that county. However, in the days since Biden won Michigan and the presidential election, Trump supporters have continually tried to undermine trust in Dominion, which is used in at least 30 states, including key battlegrounds like Georgia.

An election worker in Georgia threw away a ballot.

 https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/nov/07/facebook-posts/georgia-election-worker-falsely-accused-discarding/

 The post claimed to show in a video that a poll worker committed voter fraud by throwing away a ballot.

The man was throwing away a paper with voter instructions, elections officials said. 

We rate this claim False.

Was Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Development Funded by Trump Administration?

 https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/covid-vaccine-funded-by-trump/

 The research and development of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, which was proven to be 90% effective against SARS-CoV-2 in November 2020, was funded by U.S. President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.

 Agreeing to a buy a vaccine once approved is not the same as funding its research and development.

 “Pfizer is proud to be one of various vaccine manufacturers participating in Operation Warp Speed as a supplier of a potential COVID-19 vaccine,” Sharon Castillo, a Pfizer spokesperson, told Snopes in an email. “While Pfizer did reach an advanced purchase agreement with the U.S. government, the company did not accept the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) funding for the research and development process. All the investment for R&D and manufacturing has been made by Pfizer at risk.”

Are 132K Ballots in Georgia Likely Ineligible?

 https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/georgia-ballots-likely-ineligible/

 In the days following the 2020 U.S. presidential election, some social media users posted baseless claims that a whopping 132,000 ballots cast in Georgia’s Fulton County were “highly likely” to be tossed out due to an unspecified issue stemming from changes of address.

 Posts claiming that 132,000 ballots from Fulton County are to be rendered ineligible from the state’s total vote count appeared to be based on a statement that was then taken out of context, and used incorrectly. We therefore rate this claim “False.”

 

Trump's Firings at the Pentagon Put Our National Security at Risk

 https://time.com/5910672/donald-trump-pentagon-firings/

 Over the past few days, President Trump has fired four of the top officials in the Pentagon – the Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (essentially the COO), the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (a highly regarded retired 3-star Navy SEAL Admiral), and the Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense (one of the most powerful positions in the Pentagon). In essence, he has (military term alert) “decapitated” our operational civilian leadership of the military. High fives are likely happening from Beijing to Moscow to Caracas. It appears to be a simple act of vengeance against a team Trump felt did not support him in the run-up to the election. In their place, he has installed a largely unknown group of political sycophants who have neither the stature nor the experience to undertake these jobs – each of which is vital to our national security.

 

Biden said two months ago he would not declare victory until election was independently certified

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-victory-election-independently-certified

 During the first 2020 presidential debate in September, former Vice President Joe Biden pledged that he would not declare victory in the election before the results were “independently certified.”

"Will you urge your supporters to stay calm while the vote is counted? And will you pledge not to declare victory until the election is independently certified?” moderator and “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace asked.

“Yes,” Biden answered. “Here's the deal: We count the ballots. As you pointed out, some of these ballots in some states can't even be opened until Election Day. And if there's thousands of ballots, [it’s] going to take time to do it.”

 But to millions of Trump supporters and allies, the outcome is not that clear, pending the Trump campaign’s many legal challenges in key battleground states.

A number of media outlets’ experts, including at Fox News, have called the race for Biden. The Electoral College is expected to formalize Biden as president-elect on Dec. 14, unless Trump prevails in court.

 Nevertheless, Trump has remained defiant, declining to concede the election and declaring on Twitter on Wednesday evening, “WE WILL WIN!”

Texas politician offers $1m for proof of voter fraud and pushes baseless claims

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/11/texas-dan-patrick-voter-fraud-reward

 There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud or malfeasance in Texas or any other state, despite the repeated efforts of Trump and his supporters to cast doubt over the integrity of the 3 November election.

Patrick’s press release also contained no evidence of mass voter fraud, and instead cited a single episode in which a care home social worker was arrested for allegedly attempting to register 67 of its residents to vote, apparently without their knowledge.

By comparison, Trump’s lead in Texas over Biden was 647,076 votes on Wednesday afternoon, with more than 99% of the state’s ballots counted.

Trump's fraudulent claims about voter fraud

 https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/525583-trumps-fraudulent-claims-about-voter-fraud

Trump roars like a wounded lion, but his legal team has produced only a mouse. Conspicuously missing from the lawsuits filed so far, many of which courts have already dismissed, are credible allegations of any “major fraud.” One example is Trump for President Inc. v. Boockvar, an 85-page lawsuit just filed in federal court by the Trump campaign against Pennsylvania state and county election officials. The lawsuit seeks an emergency order prohibiting Pennsylvania from certifying the results of the state election, in which Biden leads Trump by some 47,000 votes with 99 percent counted.  

Although the lawsuit is one of the most sweeping challenges by the Trump campaign to a Biden swing state victory, it nowhere alleges even one specific instance of deliberate voter fraud.

DHS is swatting down voter fraud claims Trump’s team is pushing

 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/10/dhs-fact-checking-trump-conspiracies-435821

 Since Election Day, President Donald Trump and his allies have pushed numerous merit-free allegations of voting irregularities.

The Department of Homeland Security’s top cyber official is swatting them down in near real-time — contradicting the president in a way that often ends in a pink slip.

State Department is preventing Biden from accessing messages from foreign leaders

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/11/politics/state-department-biden-messages/index.html

 A stack of messages from foreign leaders to President-elect Joe Biden are sitting at the State Department but the Trump administration is preventing him from accessing them, according to State Department officials familiar with the messages.

Traditionally, the State Department supports all communications for the President-elect, which is why many countries began sending messages to State over the weekend. But with Biden prohibited from accessing State Department resources by the Trump administration, because President Donald Trump refuses to accept Biden's victory, dozens of incoming messages have not been received.

GOP senator says he’ll ‘step in’ if Biden doesn’t receive intel briefings by Friday

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-senator-says-hell-step-in-if-biden-doesnt-receive-intel-briefings-by-friday

 President-elect Joe Biden should be able to receive intelligence briefings by Friday, a Republican member of the U.S. Senate said in a radio interview that aired Wednesday.

If Biden doesn’t receive the briefings, then U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said he is prepared to “step in” and make sure Biden does.

However, in a Twitter message Wednesday night, Lankford clarified that he continues to believe President Trump “is fully in his right to ask for recounts and for every legal question to be fully vetted and resolved.”

 

Famed Republican lawyer pens scathing op-ed about Trump