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. With unfounded fraud claims swirling, red California county dumps Dominion voting machines. The bomb was located in a recreational vehicle owned by Warner. Cerberus Capital Management, the firm named in the posts, does not own Dominion, nor does it own the company that does own Dominion, Staple Street Capital. 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. 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. Hart said that it has approximately 1,600 such tabulators in use in 11 counties in Michigan. 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. 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 . More:Fact check: No, Joe Biden's brother-in-law does not own Dominion Voting Systems. False. Secretary Hargett is the chief executive officer of the Department of State with oversight of more than 300 employees. But that is an overstatement, according to a team of 10 independent cybersecurity experts who specialize in voting systems and elections. But none of this is true. Rating: False About this rating On Christmas. Reuters Fact Check previously debunked this claim here . Dominion Voting Systems and Election Systems & Software. While the voting machines themselves are not designed to be online, the larger voting systems in many states end up there, putting the voting process at risk. 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. . 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. 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. Skoglund said that they identified only one company among the systems they detected on line, ES&S. 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 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.. 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 . 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. Note that aspects of Tennessee law may differ with what is seen on the videos. He believes there is time to make real change before the 2020 election. The AT&T building in downtown Nashville. "Some of the threats that I've gotten have made very clear that these actors are in it for the long haul. DNA found at the scene matched Warner's, according to an FBI press release. A spokesperson for Dominion Voting Systems confirmed to Reuters via email that the Stephen Owens at Staple Street has no family ties or business affiliations with Bidens sister, Valerie Biden Owens. A widely sharedpost on Facebook alleges that four days before the bombing, a rumor circulated that AT&T was awarded a contract to audit Dominion's voting machines, which were supposedly being sent to Nashville. 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, which damaged an AT&T building, was tied to this audit. NBC News reached out to the Department of Homeland Security, which declined to comment on the topic of modem security in voting machine tabulators and scanners. subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. ", More:Three firefighters hurt battling three-alarm blaze in Rochester. The City of Rochester government and police did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment. Thank you for supporting our journalism. Last week, Dominion filed its fourth defamation lawsuit, this one a $1.6 billion whopper charging that Fox News spread the bogus conspiracy claim in order to boost ratings that plummeted after. 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. But to draw that connection, a number of other groups are brought into the fold and it doesn't add up. 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. Others are not so sure, and the state has set up an advisory committee. The AT&T buildingon Second Avenueis owned by BellSouth Telecommunications, an operating company of AT&T, according to local records. These two tech experts also agree on the path forward, saying they are comforted by the fact that most Americans will vote this year on hand-marked paper ballots which are counted by machine and can be recounted by hand if the situation warrants. This is bogus. 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. Both sit on Dominion's board. It's the first . "God is at the wheel, but we are the warriors that must do the work of men to repel evil," said one of numerous posts on the conservative social media site Parler. "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. 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. 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. False. Dominion 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, said Tony Fratto, a partner at the PR firm Hamilton Place Strategies who emailed the AP on behalf of Dominion. Examples can be seen here , here and here . James Murphy, a spokesperson for MetLife, confirmed the company owns the building. A spokesperson for the FBI's Denver Field Office confirmed that the FBI executed the . ", 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.". These claims present no convincing evidence and include conspiracy links that have been debunked. Spokespeople for both AT&T and Dominion told USA TODAY that AT&T was not contracted to audit Dominion voting machines, and no Dominion voting machines were being held in the AT&T building outside of which the RV exploded. "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. And we knew that wasn't true. All rights reserved. As of now, the person of interest identified by the FBI in connection with the explosion, Anthony Quinn Warner, is believed to have been "paranoid about 5G technology" (another frequent subject of conspiracy theories) rather than possessing any election-related motive. "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. 4 min read. The post provides no links to evidence for their allegations. 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. You cansubscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. There was no evidence of a shooting, but both officers and witnesses heard a warning blare from the RV: "Evacuate now. Their evidence: a grainy black-and-white video. 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. This material may not be reproduced without permission. These claims are groundless. 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. 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. Sumit Ganguli is the CEO and Member of the Board at GAVS Technologies. The Poynter Institute Menu. 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. The conspiracy theory has grown into a movement that is promoted by right-wing extremists. Bogus conspiracy theory spreading online claims the Nashville bombing was an attempt to cover up voter fraud. . 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. 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. This screengrab is being shared on social media without that context. The extent of our relationship is this: In 2009, Smartmatic licensed the use of a Dominion voting machine for use in the Philippines. 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. 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? 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. City Blue Imaging Services' Facebook, Dec. 27. Full Story. "What we should do is remove all of the unnecessary, hackable pathways, such as modems. More than a month ago, Eric Coomer went into hiding. Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com. He has independently become part of the broader Dominion conspiracy theories, though, with some claiming he's Joe Biden's brother-in-law. The report claims the results of the election in . The House Committee on Administration held a congressional hearing yesterday which was the first time the heads of the three major vendors, representing at least 80 percent of U.S. voting machines, appeared together for questioning. A team of election security experts used a Google for servers to challenge claims that voting machines do not connect to the internet and found some did. 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. More:Neighbor recalls warning, countdown before Nashville explosion. "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. AT&T had a contract to conduct a forensic audit of Dominion Voting Systems in Nashville just prior to a December 2020 explosion in that city. "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?," one from Dec. 26 reads. There is no evidence that suggests that the explosion was election-related. The services and oversight found in the Secretary of State's office reach every department and agency in state government. Cerberus Capital did briefly own an AT&T building, but the post is wrong about which one. 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. We should not connect our voting machines directly to the computer networks. Breitbart, by Hannah Bleau Original Article. A sample ballot is shown via the Dominion Voting Systems that Georgians use to vote. 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 . ES&S confirmed they had sold scanners with wireless modems to at least 11 states. His top goal right now is pretty simple hoping one day it'll be safe to return home. The coalition says it is no longer certain that the number of states is correct, so the figure has been removed from the article. Since the 2016 election, Michigan authorized $82 million dollars to upgrade its election systems. Jim Greer, a spokesperson for AT&T, told USA TODAY the claims are "not true. The explosion injured three other people and damaged businesses in downtown Nashville, including an AT&T switching center, which resulted in widespread communications outages. "So, the explosion 'just happened . Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing both Fox News Network and parent company Fox Corp. for defamation. He also serves on the boards of Ford Motor Company, MetLife and Duke Energy Corporation (here). 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.