", Both Snopes and AFP reached the same conclusion. Their evidence: a grainy black-and-white video. Kevin Skoglund, senior technical advisor at the National Election Defense Coalition. Hismotive is unknown. 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? Did City Blue Imaging Print Voting Ballots, Then Burn Down? "The loud speaker was to warn people that the bomb was going to go off.. 5:30a on Christmas morning was picked to ensure that nobody was around.. 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. "The minute I saw it, it left a big pit in my stomach," he said. Behind it is the notion that if voting systems are not online, hackers will have a harder time compromising them. 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. These are conspiracies manufactured out of whole cloth.. 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. A Dominion voting machine in Georgia. 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. 2023 Tennessee Secretaryof State |Web and Social Media Policies. We should be unplugging all of these machines from the internet, Skoglund said. One theory shared thousands of times on Facebook over the weekend tries to connect the explosion to voting machines used in the Nov. 3 election. We kept hearing from election officials that voting machines were never on the internet, he said. Here are the facts: CLAIM: President-elect Joe Biden's sister is married to Stephen Owens, the co-founder of the private equity firm Staple Street Capital, which owns Dominion Voting Systems . ES&S confirmed they had sold scanners with wireless modems to at least 11 states. Dominion Voting Systems previously sent OAN letters threatening to sue, accusing the network of spreading the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that the election-technology company manipulated. Dominion did not respond to numerous requests from NBC News for their sales numbers. 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 ). But none of this is true. "Fuck a drag bill," they wrote in an Instagram post. This screengrab is being shared on social media without that context. He claimed on his podcast that he'd infiltrated a call with Denver-area antifa members that included a man identified as "Eric from Dominion.". But he has no idea if that will ever be possible. 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. Dominion told AFP the claim is "another bizarre lie being spread by known conspiracy theorists.". The explosion disrupted AT&T wireless and internet services, leading to widespread 911 issues in the Nashville area, The Tennessean reported. Please note t he instructions and videos shown here have been prepared by the manufacturers and are general in nature. Much of the voting equipment was by Dominion. Thats an interesting coincidence.. 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. 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. That's false. "The specific steps taken would depend on the recommendation and the timeline required to make changes effectively.. But to draw that connection, a number of other groups are brought into the fold and it doesn't add up. With the 2020 presidential election only ten months away, Appel and Skoglund believe all modems can and should be removed from election systems. A Michigan judge ordered the release Monday of an independent forensic audit report of the Dominion Voting Systems machines used in Antrim County, which flipped from a win for Democrat Joe Biden to President Donald Trump after a glitch was discovered and corrected. Even though it has a blue Nashville and a blue Memphis. The state of Michigan is currently grappling with this issue. In a Dominion-themed segment, an Infowars host speaking during a November Washington, D.C., rally presaged the January 6 violence by hyping the . "Dominion and AT&T have both called 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 spokesperson for Dominion told USA TODAY. Previous claims had said the bomb had targeted the AT&T building and that Dominion Voting Systems machines were being audited there(here). On Thursday night, the group performed their set at the Shed in Maryville, Tennessee, with all six of its members wearing dresses in protest of the state's newly enacted law on public drag performance. The location of the heavily damaged buildings seen in the photograph accompanying the post appear to show 170 to 176 2nd Avenue North in Nashville after the explosion. The voting rights of more than 55,000 formerly incarcerated Minnesotans were restored on Friday, as Gov. 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). . 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. That flood reached Dominion the week after the election, according to Zignal, and misinformation related to the company's machines has been mentioned more than 10 million times since then. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. The full text on this page is automatically extracted from the file linked above and may contain errors and inconsistencies. 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. Tim Walz signed into law one of the largest voter . Read more about our fact-checking work here . 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. But that is an overstatement, according to a team of 10 independent cybersecurity experts who specialize in voting systems and elections. The complicated theory began circulating soon after an RV exploded in downtown Nashville. 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. All those. The coalition says it is no longer certain that the number of states is correct, so the figure has been removed from the article. Those modems connect to cell phone networks, which, in turn, are connected to the internet. Skoglund says those include the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida. It wasn't meant to kill people, but to destroy a building. 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.". We can not make our computers perfectly secure," he said. Social media is home to several conspiracy theories about the explosion in Nashville on Christmas Day. 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. There can still be security holes that allow hackers to get into the phone network.. "You can see as theres a line flying in, theres a little bit of a glow and then theres the explosion," a narrator says in the video. 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. NewsGuard, which vets news sources based on transparency and reliability standards, found recently that among the top 100 sources of news in the U.S., sources it deemed unreliable had four times as many interactions this year compared with 2019. We rate thisclaim as FALSE, because it wasn't supported by our research. 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. "And I probably will. The broadcast then began a 15-minute countdown,before the RV exploded, according to The Tennessean. 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. But the company did not account for the new voting centers, so the Williamson County. Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos is not ruling out legal action against President Trump, whose surrogates have spent nearly two months alleging the Nov. 3 election, which Trump lost, may . The company, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, contends that some Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims by Trump supporters that Dominion machines had changed . 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. Conspiracy theorists say the suicide bombing that rocked downtown Nashville was actually the result of a missile strike. "You may want to read a book some day to learn about my reference to rising like a #phoenix. 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. Sumit Ganguli is the CEO and Member of the Board at GAVS Technologies. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. On Dec. 27, U.S. Attorney Don Cochran said the explosion appeared to be a suicide bombing carried out by a Warner. 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. Did AT&T Have a Contract to Audit Dominion Voting Systems? 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. 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. hide caption. 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. Owners of Dominion Voting Systems,(the company many people are accusing of voter fraud) are former executives from Cerebus," another post reads. So that unofficial election results can more quickly be relayed to the public. Those modems that ES&S [and other manufacturers] are putting in their voting machines are network connections, and that leaves them vulnerable to hacking by anybody who can connect to that network.. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. Some just say AT&T had a contract to conduct a forensic audit on Dominion Voting Systems. Texas country-punk band Vandoliers are standing in solidarity with drag performers and the LGBTQ+ community. Dominion has played a central role in a number of unfounded conspiracy theories alleging election fraud, from foreign ownership to switching votes from one candidate to another. The user who created the post did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment. Cynthia McFadden is the senior legal and investigative correspondent for NBC News. This weekend, both Fox Business Network and Newsmax appeared to answer those demands with segments debunking some claims. 2023 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC. "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. Dominion has been the target of a wide range of false posts since American voters chose Joe Biden as their next president, despite no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities in the 2020 election. 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. He has independently become part of the broader Dominion conspiracy theories, though, with some claiming he's Joe Biden's brother-in-law. 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. Bogus conspiracy theory spreading online claims the Nashville bombing was an attempt to cover up voter fraud. 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. Shortly afterwards, social media users began circulating variants of a conspiracy theory holding that AT&T had been engaged to undertake a "forensic audit of Dominion voting machines," the latter of which were frequent targets of false election fraud claims made by President Donald Trump and his supports after Trump lost his re-election bid in November 2020: The implication of the conspiracy theory was that the explosion had been intended to destroy the machines before they were audited in order to cover up evidence of massive voting fraud. APS ASSESSMENT: False. 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). The FBI confirmed that a man named Anthony Warner was responsible for the bombing and was killed in the blast. 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.. But none of this is true. City Blue Imaging Services' Facebook, Dec. 27. While federal investigators are still looking into the bombing, law enforcement officials have said Warner was responsible and died in the blast. The West Bend clerk wrote, "The wrong marking device was used to mark the . Note that aspects of Tennessee law may differ with what is seen on the videos. The post's creator did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment. 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. Since the 2016 election, Michigan authorized $82 million dollars to upgrade its election systems. 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. Staple Street Capital has a managing director and co-founder named Stephen Owens. President Donald Trump's attorney Lin Wood reportedly experienced a series of ups and downs Sunday in a court battle to ensure Georgia elections officials do not wipe Dominion voting machines, and won a temporary restraining order following a night-time Zoom hearing. Heres more information on Facebooks fact-checking program: https://www.facebook.com/help/1952307158131536, Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. 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. Others add that the explosion took place as the voting machines were being moved to Nashville and provide political links as proof of a conspiracy. why?" Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. These claims are groundless. He was present when the bomb went off, and he perished in the bombing," Cochran said. A spokesperson for the FBI's Denver Field Office confirmed that the FBI executed the . You cansubscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. The bomb squad was en route. Both sit on Dominion's board. Before starting Staple Street Capital, Yaghoobzadeh worked as a senior vice president for private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. Dominion was the first to snap. The services and oversight found in the Secretary of State's office reach every department and agency in state government. 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. In the wake of the Christmas morning explosion in Nashville, Tenn., a baseless conspiracy theory started circulating online that 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. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team.
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