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. More:Neighbor recalls warning, countdown before Nashville explosion. No available external evidence suggests AT&T was involved in any such audit, either. Texas country-punk band Vandoliers are standing in solidarity with drag performers and the LGBTQ+ community. Voting Systems in Tennessee | Tennessee Secretary of State Proposed Constitutional Amendments Voting Systems in Tennessee View list by county (.pdf) and learn more about each system using the links below. It wasn't meant to kill people, but to destroy a building. According to Dominion, vote-switching and software malfunction allegations are "all baseless claims" that "have been debunked by election officials, subject matter experts and third-party fact. Newsmax TV aired a stunning fact-check on Monday of claims made on the network about voting companies used in the 2020 presidential election. 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. APS ASSESSMENT: False. Oltmann claimed that Coomer said with a laugh on the call that he would make sure Trump didn't win the election. The claim: Dominion Voting Systems is tied up in the Nashville bombing, based on the affected AT&T building's ownership and that the cellular company was contracted to audit Dominion's. ", More:Three firefighters hurt battling three-alarm blaze in Rochester. Facebook post:The Nashville bombing was an attempt to stop an AT&T audit into Dominion software and cover up election corruption. On January 8, it filed a defamation suit against pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell, seeking $1.3 billion in damages. Didi Martinez is an associate producer with the NBC News Investigative Unit. It really is. US Elections were November 3, 2020. 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? read another post. "The specific steps taken would depend on the recommendation and the timeline required to make changes effectively.. Earlier this week, Skoglund showed NBC three election systems were still online even after officials had been told they were vulnerable. Similar claims have already been debunked by Reuters (here). Rating: False About this rating On Christmas. 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. Read more about our fact-checking workhere . The voting rights of more than 55,000 formerly incarcerated Minnesotans were restored on Friday, as Gov. After that podcast went out, the threats quickly arrived. 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. SIOUX FALLS, S.D. It is true Kennard serves on the board of Staple Street Capital (not Staple Street execs as the posts say). 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. He was present when the bomb went off, and he perished in the bombing," Cochran said. Cynthia McFadden is the senior legal and investigative correspondent for NBC News. Note that aspects of Tennessee law may differ with what is seen on the videos. Now the process of counting these votes . Full Story. he instructions and videos shown here have been prepared by the manufacturers and are general in nature. City Blue Imaging Services' Facebook, Dec. 27. The media intelligence platform Zignal Labs, in an analysis performed at NPR's request, found that misinformation narratives related to vote-by-mail systems alone were mentioned across the media spectrum more than 40 million times since Election Day. False. Some just say AT&T had a contract to conduct a forensic audit on Dominion Voting Systems. for the blast that rattled downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, social media users have invented their own far-fetched theories. 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??" By Helen Coster and Jack Queen (Reuters) -A new filing from Dominion Voting Systems became public on Monday, as an April trial approaches in the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by the voting technology company against Fox News over the U.S. cable news giant's coverage of the 2020 presidential election. Skoglund said that they identified only one company among the systems they detected on line, ES&S. But companies that specialize in the subject said it is getting exponentially worse. Hart said that it has approximately 1,600 such tabulators in use in 11 counties in Michigan. Jim Greer, a spokesperson for AT&T, told USA TODAY the claims are "not true. His top goal right now is pretty simple hoping one day it'll be safe to return home. Representatives for companies involved say there is no truth to the claims. . The post also mentions the Kraken or supercomputer and says that the cooling system for this computer was located in the AT&T building. 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. Powell was one of the faces of the Trump. Posts include debunked conspiracy claims attempting to tie the Nashville explosion Dominion voting systems. 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. John Bazemore/AP 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 Police spokesperson Don Aaron told The Tennessean that day. Tim Walz signed into law one of the largest voter . 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. The full text on this page is automatically extracted from the file linked above and may contain errors and inconsistencies. Dominion Voting Systems which commands more than a third of the voting-machine market without having Washington lobbyists has hired its first, a high-powered firm that includes a. It also claims the AT&T building that was affected by the bomb is where those machines were being stored. Rumors about an investigation into the company do not even appear in web searches until after the fire. Then, a plume of smoke rises behind three light poles. New warnings of hacking risks for voting systems connected to the internet, New questions about voting machines as 2020 election approaches, Oregon officials say vote-by-mail system improves security and turnout, Manufacturers who make voting machines testify before Congress. (Read more about ourpartnership with Facebook.). 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.". 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. Social media users have been sharing content online that claims AT&T had a contract to do a forensic audit on Dominion Voting Systems machines and that the Dec. 25 explosion in Nashville,. Before starting Staple Street Capital, Yaghoobzadeh worked as a senior vice president for private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. 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. 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 false. Whether it's the standard online trolls, voicemails that are left almost on a daily basis, being called a traitor to this country, I can't even begin to describe what effect this has had on my life," he said. Coomer said the first barb aimed at him came five days after the election. 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 ). 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. Cerberus Capital did briefly own an AT&T building, but the post is wrong about which one. View list by county(.pdf) and learn more about each system using the links below. Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. He believes there is time to make real change before the 2020 election. But he has no idea if that will ever be possible. 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. Yet internet sleuths are searching for their own answers, some looking atthin ties toconspiracy theories about the 2020 election as evidence of a broader plot. "The minute I saw it, it left a big pit in my stomach," he said. 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. The company put the building back on the market shortly thereafter; MetLife Inc., throughsubsidiary Prefco Fourteen, now owns the building, public records show. The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has dismissed the claim of an election hacking and vote manipulation operation known as Hammer and Scorecard. (here). Speaker 13 . Claims that two buildings that were destroyed on Christmas Day were both holding evidence related to the 2020 U.S. presidential election are untrue. 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. The post, which has been shared almost 900 times, makes two claims: A building damaged in the Nashville explosion was holding Dominion Voting Systems machines set to be audited, and in New. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. 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 . That agreement is long over, and they no longer have the . "That's all still speculation at this point as we continue in our investigation with all of our partners. 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.. So we will clear it up: Its fake. Kevin Skoglund, senior technical advisor at the National Election Defense Coalition. "Very, very interesting.". Skoglund and his team developed a tool that scoured the internet to see if the central computers that program voting machines and run the entire election process at the precinct level were online. "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. On Tuesday, Coomer sued the Trump campaign and a number of allies, alleging defamation. With the 2020 presidential election only ten months away, Appel and Skoglund believe all modems can and should be removed from election systems. On Nov. 21, a group protested in front of Dominion's Denver headquarters, waving American flags and signs saying "fraud equals arrests." 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. 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. 2023 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC. The following three posts were flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. "And I probably will. For election systems to be online, even momentarily, presents a serious problem, according to Appel. Coomer oversees product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems, the Denver-based company that has suddenly found itself at the center of many of President Trump's false claims about. Nashville's date on June 7 at GEODIS Park will feature Kelsea Ballerini and BRELAND -- and now, The Boykinz. Kevin Monahan is a producer for the NBC News Investigative Unit. You cansubscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. 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 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 . 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. But to draw that connection, a number of other groups are brought into the fold and it doesn't add up. Warner died in the blast, according to authorities. The bomber was lateridentified by U.S. Attorney Don Cochranas Anthony Warner, 63, according to The Tennessean. Smartmatic, a competitor of Dominion's that has also been the subject of wild rumors, has demanded that numerous news networks take back their allegations against it. The post's creator did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment. CNN didnt report that Anthony Warner, the person authorities have identified as the bomber, died from COVID-19. Similar claims have been shared in hundreds of public posts, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool. CLAIM: AT&T got a contract to do a forensic audit of Dominion Voting Systems machines and those machines were recently moved . 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 reason? A newly-released court filing in the Dominion voting machines defamation lawsuit . The Company offers voting systems and scanning devices, as well as resource planning, training management, quality control . ", 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.". He has independently become part of the broader Dominion conspiracy theories, though, with some claiming he's Joe Biden's brother-in-law. Dominion did not respond to numerous requests from NBC News for their sales numbers. In a Dominion-themed segment, an Infowars host speaking during a November Washington, D.C., rally presaged the January 6 violence by hyping the . Last fall, when ES&S gave NBC News an exclusive tour at its headquarters in Omaha, Neb., Chief Executive Officer Tom Burt defended using modems when asked about the Sprint and Verizon modems seen in ES&S's testing area. The bomb was located in a recreational vehicle owned by Warner. ", Below the headline is an image that looks like its a picture from a CNN broadcast, with chyron that announces the Nashville bomber "died from COVID.". Thank you for supporting our journalism. In counties that used Dominion systems, Biden got 888,259 votes to Trump's 851,069. February 28, 2023, 1:26 PM. 4 min read. "Some of the threats that I've gotten have made very clear that these actors are in it for the long haul. It is no longer federally certified. 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. 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. 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. "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. But none of this is true. AP'S ASSESSMENT: False. Coomer oversees product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems, the Denver-based company that has suddenly found itself at the center of many of President Trump's false claims about November's election, spread by allies and pro-Trump media. 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. Staple Street Capital has a managing director and co-founder named Stephen Owens. 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 it helps spread COVID-19 and is used as a spying tool by the government. The largest manufacturer of voting machines, ES&S, told NBC News their systems are protected by firewalls and are not on the public internet. But both Skoglund and Andrew Appel, a Princeton computer science professor and expert on elections, said such firewalls can and have been breached. 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. There is a bomb. Dominion Lawsuit Showcases Paul Ryan's Influence over Fox News Channel's Editorial Control. 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. Thats an interesting coincidence., Some posts read: 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. The Trump followers believe that the explosion was actually a missile strike aimed at destroying. There may not be answers to the Christmas Day bombing in Nashville anytime soon. 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. Dominionwas acquired by private equity firm Staple Street Capital, co-founded by financiers Hootan Yaghoobzadeh and StephenOwens, in 2018. A sample ballot is shown via the Dominion Voting Systems that Georgians use to vote. The claim implies the explosion was an elaborate plot to destroy voting machines that might have yielded evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. The company recently threatened a number of groups repeating the claims with lawsuits, including One America News Network, Newsmax and Fox News. Some of the posts (here) say: Dominion voting is owned by Cerberus Capital Management. Cerberus is run by Staple Street Execs. Both Dominion Voting Systems andAT&T confirmed the communications company was not contracted to audit Dominion's machines. "Anthony Warner is the bomber. He also serves on 16 boards and commissions, on two of which he is the presiding member. "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. 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 bomb was located in a recreational vehicle owned by Warner. Fact-checkers have debunked claims that the explosion was the result of a missile strike. We should be unplugging all of these machines from the internet, Skoglund said. 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. The cities of West Bend and Mequon's Dominion machine audit found one vote changed each after their hand counts. A Dominion spokeswoman said other company employees have also gone to more secure locations, been threatened and been digitally stalked. 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.. A post on Facebook theorized that the two disasters were connected by a plot to steal the election. Dominion Voting Systems, a company beset by dubious election fraud claims in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, said "human error" was to blame after machines in a Pennsylvania. Next theory: The bombing was an attempt to stop an AT&T audit into Dominion software and cover up election corruption. 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. First, QAnon. Dominion was the first to snap.