Donald Trump: Truth About Dominion, Scytl Conspiracy Theory

ANALYSIS

It reads like a thriller: The US Army Special Forces launched a raid on a European software company to find evidence that President Trump won the election by an overwhelming margin. But that evidence was “disappeared” by a subversive clique.

The main protagonists even have sinister names: the ominous Dominion and the suitably foreign-sounding Scytl.

So far, there is no indication that this far-right Qanon conspiracy theory is more than a story.

But it is good and timely.

Hours after the polls closed on November 3, President-elect Donald Trump pulled the trigger on a stage that he had been hawking all year. Votes by mail were insecure. The choice was rigged. He tweeted about “surprise ballots.” He complained about the loss of seats “miraculously”. In later days, he escalated this to “widespread electoral fraud” and “illegal votes.”

Two weeks later, lawyers, activists and information bounties have not produced any concrete evidence. Republican and Democratic officials say the polls were safe. International observers confirm that they saw no evidence of wrongdoing. America’s national security agencies agree.

Trump’s search for fake ballots has so far not occurred. So now he has a new goal, thanks to Qanon.

These are the software companies Dominion Voting Systems and Scytl. They produce vote counting systems. The “failures” in his team apparently turned the votes in favor of President-elect Joe Biden. Or so affirms the outrage of social media.

President Trump has seized this as an opportunity. He has accused Dominion of being a “radical left” company that deliberately “rigged” the elections against him.

Meanwhile, his supporters are spreading incredulous claims.

Did the United States military storm Scytl’s headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, to seize its computer servers? Is Dominion a software company founded by the dead communist militant Hugo Chávez?

THE RAID THAT NEVER WAS

Qanon is convinced that it happened. But despite the suspicious computer servers apparently being located in a busy commercial precinct in Frankfurt, Germany, there is not even a clue that they did.

No photos. There are no videos. No eyewitness accounts. No police, military or vandalism records.

The US military says it didn’t happen. Anyway, you don’t have the authority to act that way.

Scytl points out that it does not have an office in Frankfurt. It is based in Barcelona. And that has not been raided either.

But the accusations are specific.

Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert elevated the conspiracy theory to the ranks of government officials earlier this week. He said he had heard from “former intelligence members” that evidence of the vote change could be “collected” from Scytl’s servers.

When asked about his source, he only said that a “German tweet in German” was behind his accusation.

But the story had already gone viral.

Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to allegations that he lied to the FBI about Russian contacts, tweeted: “Breaking: Congressman Louie Gohmert has stated that the US military has seized servers for Dominion in Germany “.

The United States Army affirms: “Those accusations are false.”

Since then, Scytl has issued its own statement: It does not “tab, count, or count votes in the United States.”

Scytl says its only link to Frankfurt was the temporary use of backup servers there in 2019 for a European Parliament project. Scytl’s US General Manager Jonathan Brill went on to say that the company’s US products were all safely housed in the US to meet electoral regulatory requirements. And those systems were used to train, deliver absentee ballots and show the results obtained from other sources. Not counting.

But the story has come to life on its own.

A MATTER OF DOMAIN

Dominion Voting Systems took to social media shortly after the election. Encrypts voting software for US state and regional governments Provides vote counting machines to election officials in 27 states.

President Trump has seized on the idea that he may have flipped the votes.

“Dominion is directing our election. Fixed!” Trump tweeted on Monday.

The president or any individual or organization behind the Qanon movement has not presented any evidence to support this accusation.

But Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was blunt in his criticism: “I don’t think people have any idea of ​​the scale of the national security problem Dominion creates. This Dominion company is a radical left-wing company. One of the People out there – a huge Antifa supporter and he’s been writing horrible things about the president for the last three or four years. “

Dominion had close ties to Venezuela, he told US media, “and therefore to China.” It used a code created by a company founded by Hugo Chávez (who died in 2013).

Giuliani said Sunday he had “evidence that I cannot yet reveal” about Dominion’s “corrupt machines.”

He has not yet published such a test.

Many of Dominion’s clients are solid Republican states. Florida and Ohio, states of the electoral battlefield that Trump won, use his equipment. And Republican state officials are going to defend the integrity of the voting systems they signed up for.

Dominion has issued a statement saying they have not seen any evidence of “any vote changes or alleged software problems with our voting systems.”

But Trump has seized on an apparent admission: “(There are) components in our products that come from China,” a Dominion executive recently said at US government hearings.

In those same hearings it was said that this was limited to LED displays, a product not made by the United States.

NAIPES CASTLE

Trump’s chances of regaining the top job through storytelling are slim. Biden leads by about 14,000 votes in Georgia. In Arizona, it’s 10,000. The largest margin to be overturned by a recount in recent decades was just a few hundred in the 2008 Minnesota Senate vote.

Any cause, beyond democratic election, to skew such results would have to be great.

Hence the shift in focus from mail ballots to software.

Scytl’s servers contain “non-tampered” election results that would reveal that President Trump won the election with a massive 410 electoral college votes out of a total of 538. Dominion’s tampered software changed two million votes in favor of Biden.

These accusations remain unsubstantiated.

“There is no evidence that any voting system removed or lost votes, changed votes, or was compromised in any way,” the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency Chris Krebs ruled last week after examining the allegations of interference.

President Trump fired him on Wednesday.

Trump has claimed that Georgia had lost military votes. Election officials there proved that they had not.

Trump posted a video of election officials handling ballots. “Is this what our country has come to?” He lamented. But then it was shown that officials were doing what they always do: collecting votes for the count.

He pointed to a Pennsylvania postal worker who claimed the ballots were backdated. But that worker then backed off from the conflicting evidence.

So far, the allegations against Scytl and Dominion appear to be heading for similar results.

Disinformation is flying hard and fast on traditional and social media forums in the US That’s why the Department of Homeland Security has put together its own website to debunk the conspiracy theory. It details the simple practicalities and specific security measures within the US electoral system that make many of those allegations of fraud unfounded, if not impossible.

But that’s not slowing down the conspiracy machine.