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. 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. 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. Similar claims have been shared in hundreds of public posts, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool. 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. "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. Their evidence: a grainy black-and-white video. He is focused on New Technologies around AI led Predictive Analytics, Smart Machines, IT Process Automation etc.. through . It's the first . 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. Did AT&T Have a Contract to Audit Dominion Voting Systems? why?" Jim Greer, a spokesperson for AT&T,also told USA TODAY the claims are "not true.". The bomb is in this vehicle and will explode." Dominion was founded in the wake of a different controversy: the failure of punch-card voting machines and their infamous hanging chads in the 2000 election. 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 "Vulture", Dominion Voting Systems, AT&T, CNN, and Twitter Last month Dominion filed a $1.6bn defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, accusing it of trying to boost ratings by amplifying the bogus claims. Some posts have said the Nashville explosion was caused by a missile. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. (Read more about ourpartnership with Facebook.). Warner died in the blast, according to authorities. 2023 www.statesman.com. Dominion Voting Systems hits conservative networks, Trump ally with $1. Let's start here: The man behind the Dec. 25 bombing in downtown Nashville, Tenn., died of COVID-19, according to a popular and wrong Facebook post. The question is.. On Christmas Day, an RV in Nashville, Tennessee, exploded, severelydamaging many of the buildings around it in the explosion. "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. The conspiracy theory has grown into a movement that is promoted by right-wing extremists. 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. 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. 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. A sample ballot is shown via the Dominion Voting Systems that Georgians use to vote. 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. 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 . More:Fact check: No, Joe Biden's brother-in-law does not own Dominion Voting Systems. That agreement is long over, and they no longer have the . This is bogus. Dominion did not respond to numerous requests from NBC News for their sales numbers. 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? Owners of Dominion Voting Systems,(the company many people are accusing of voter fraud) are former executives from Cerebus," another post reads. The video, which was posted by a Facebook page called Red Pill Radio on Dec. 28, shows the outline of buildings and a highway in Nashville. False claims about the election, Nashville - mcall.com The AT&T building the posts likely refer to was not the one outside which the bomb exploded on Christmas morning. The following three posts were flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. causing widespread communications outages. Much of the voting equipment was by Dominion. Q&A of the Day - Voting Machines Used in Florida's 2022 Elections Fact-checkers have debunked claims that the explosion was the result of a missile strike. 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. 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. Dominion Going After Right-Wing Media Stars Over Voting Fraud The Company offers voting systems and scanning devices, as well as resource planning, training management, quality control . The complicated theory began circulating soon after an RV exploded in downtown Nashville. The explosion disrupted AT&T wireless and internet services, leading to widespread 911 issues in the Nashville area, The Tennessean reported. 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. In an interview with Rochester's ABC 13, City Blue Imagingsales manager John Mealy condemned misinformation about the tragedy and dismissed the claims again. 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. Please note the instructions and videos shown here have been prepared by the manufacturers and are general in nature. Coomer said the first barb aimed at him came five days after the election. The West Bend clerk wrote, "The wrong marking device was used to mark the . 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. 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. In . Kevin Skoglund, senior technical advisor at the National Election Defense Coalition. "The voting machine lobby, led by the biggest company, ES&S, believes they are above the law," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Intelligence Committee who co-signed the letter.. 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. And so we set out to try and find the voting machines to see if we could find them on the internet, and especially the back-end systems that voting machines in the precinct were connecting to to report their results.. The printing business took to social media to debunk the claim itself. Dominion: will one Canadian company bring down Trump's empire of The user who created the post did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment. Voting rights restored to more than 55,000 Minnesotans under new law 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. 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. Even for elections nights., Appel agreed. The Trump followers believe that the explosion was actually a missile strike aimed at destroying. Newsmax TV Airs Fact-Check on Smartmatic and Dominion - Mediaite However, both AT&T and Dominion have disclaimed the notion that the former company was engaged in audit of the latter, or that any Dominion-related systems were being moved to Nashville in preparation for a "forensic audit" (by anyone). "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." He has independently become part of the broader Dominion conspiracy theories, though, with some claiming he's Joe Biden's brother-in-law. 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. 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. Some of that money was spent on tabulators with wireless modems. 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. Both companies have denied the posts claims, saying that there was no such audit and that Dominions machines were not recently transported to Nashville. Skoglund said that they identified only one company among the systems they detected on line, ES&S. But none of this is true. That's false. . The AT&T building in downtown Nashville. This is part of The Associated Press ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform. Examples can be seen here , here and here . Three days later, on November 6th, AT&T named William "Bill" E. Kennard Chairman of its Board of Directors. These claims present no convincing evidence and include conspiracy links that have been debunked. "The minute I saw it, it left a big pit in my stomach," he said. Tim Walz signed into law one of the largest voter . But Skogland points to some good news. 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. Federal officials have identified the man believed to be behind the bombing, and they are working to discern a motive. Behind it is the notion that if voting systems are not online, hackers will have a harder time compromising them. In addition to Coomer's lawsuit, Dominion is threatening legal action against Sidney Powell, who has been among the loudest voices pushing conspiracy theories on behalf of the Trump campaign. Even if an election is run perfectly, it doesn't matter to a sizable portion of the public who believes it was unfair. The posts all tie AT&T with Dominion, holding the explosion to be alleged proof of conspiracy. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Vandoliers Play Tennessee Concert in Dresses to Protest State's New Some just say AT&T had a contract to conduct a forensic audit on Dominion Voting Systems. Since the 2016 election, Michigan authorized $82 million dollars to upgrade its election systems. First, QAnon. There is no evidence to support the claim that City Blue Imaging, a longtime Rochester, New York, printing business that went up in flames on Christmas Eve, was under investigation for printing fake ballots. The electronic voting system company accused the television network of spreading lies that Dominion machines were used to rig the 2020 election against Donald Trump. 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. Audit in Michigan County Refutes Dominion Conspiracy Theory The machines America votes on seem to be capturing the interest of some in Congress.