US Elections were November 3, 2020. APS ASSESSMENT: False. The bomb is in this vehicle and will explode." On Christmas Day, an RV in Nashville, Tennessee, exploded, severelydamaging many of the buildings around it in the explosion. The question is.. "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." You cansubscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. 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 ). Next theory: The bombing was an attempt to stop an AT&T audit into Dominion software and cover up election corruption. The bomb was located in a recreational vehicle that Warner owned. . 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. It's the first . Coomer said the first barb aimed at him came five days after the election. 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. ", 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.". "What we should do is remove all of the unnecessary, hackable pathways, such as modems. Cynthia McFadden is the senior legal and investigative correspondent for NBC News. All of these businesses were reported to be damaged in the blast (here). The Nashville outlet found . The bulletin circulated among state election officials earlier this week and publicly shared online, Friday marks the first time CISA has used its vulnerability disclosure program to probe . 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. In counties that didn't use Dominion systems, Biden got 1.54 million votes to Trump's 1.52 million. 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 . This is bogus. Modems in voting machines are a bad idea, said Appel. The posts on social mediaallege the bombing is tied to Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology supplier that's been central to many right-wing, QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. 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. Once they had identified such systems, they contacted the relevant election officials and also provided the information to reporter Kim Zetter, who published the findings in Vices Motherboard in August. Both Dominion Voting Systems andAT&T confirmed the communications company was not contracted to audit Dominion's machines. While William Kennard serves on Staple Street Capitals board, he is not one of the companys co-founders as these posts claim (here). Rumors about an investigation into the company do not even appear in web searches until after the fire. why?" Recently, however, there are signs that elections companies, like some election officials, are pushing back against the false accusations. The post implies that the bombing was an attempt to stop the audit and cover up voter fraud. 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. There's a third company, Clear Ballot Group which is currently under testing by the state of Florida, the official audit review of their software began May 17th, but that is not . ", More:Three firefighters hurt battling three-alarm blaze in Rochester. 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. 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. There is a bomb. Both sit on Dominion's board. February 28, 2023, 1:26 PM. 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. Those networks are among the defendants Coomer is suing. The printing business took to social media to debunk the claim itself. "That's all still speculation at this point as we continue in our investigation with all of our partners. "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. 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. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. 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. Before starting Staple Street Capital, Yaghoobzadeh worked as a senior vice president for private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. New York State Police Director of Public Information Beau Duffy told Reuters via email they were unaware of any state police investigations relating to the claims linking the paper company to ballots. As of Friday, a motive in the bombing remained under investigation by the FBI, the ATF and Metro Nashville police. Oltmann claimed that Coomer said with a laugh on the call that he would make sure Trump didn't win the election. "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. Even in an election where almost all the voting was recorded on paper ballots and rigorous audits were done more than ever before, none of that helps if millions of people are working with an alternative set of facts, said Joe Kiniry, chief scientist of the open-source election technology company Free & Fair. Investigators say the explosion in Nashville was perpetrated by a 63-year-old Tennessean named Anthony Warner, who blared a warning to nearby people from his RV requesting they evacuate before the bomb detonated. "You may want to read a book some day to learn about my reference to rising like a #phoenix. There are currently two voting systems which are certified by the State of Florida's Division of Elections. THE FACTS: As federal officials work to piece together a motive for the blast that rattled downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, social media users have invented their own far-fetched theories. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. 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. 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. Even for elections nights., Appel agreed. Federal officials have identified the man believed to be behind the bombing, and they are working to discern a motive. 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. These claims are groundless. The investigation of the Nashville bombing is ongoing, but the Facebook post is inaccurate and ridiculous. 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. The Christmas morning bomb went off on Second Avenue, outside an AT&T transmission building. Posts include debunked conspiracy claims attempting to tie the Nashville explosion Dominion voting systems. Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com. Heres more information on Facebooks fact-checking program: https://www.facebook.com/help/1952307158131536. Donate State Editions California Florida A sample ballot is shown via the Dominion Voting Systems that Georgians use to vote. Dominion Voting Systems lost a sale of more than 1,400 new machines on Wednesday after commissioners for Stark County, Ohio, voted down the purchase against a recommendation from the. The Company offers voting systems and scanning devices, as well as resource planning, training management, quality control . While a building was destroyed in a blast in Nashville on Christmas Day, and a printing company in New York state caught fire on Christmas Eve and later burned down, neither building held evidence related to the U.S. elections. 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. Critics also argue ES&S has mislead jurisdictions into thinking their DS200 tabulators with modems are certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a claim they say is grounds for an investigation. 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. It wasn't meant to kill people, but to destroy a building. 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. The full text on this page is automatically extracted from the file linked above and may contain errors and inconsistencies. The wishes are that I forever have to look over my shoulder," Coomer said. 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. 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.. Both companies have denied the posts claims, saying that there was no such audit and that Dominions machines were not recently transported to Nashville. The social media post states "AT&T got contract [sic] to do forensic audit on Dominion voting machines and those machines were being moved to Nashville this past week" before the bombing. The bomb was located in a recreational vehicle owned by Warner. The posts all tie AT&T with Dominion, holding the explosion to be alleged proof of conspiracy. David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994 as a creative outgrowth of his wide-ranging interests in a variety of subjects (particularly folklo read more. 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. No one is currently working out of the building. Some of Trump's supporters have focused on Coomer as the supposed evil mastermind. The company put the building back on the market shortly thereafter; MetLife Inc., throughsubsidiary Prefco Fourteen, now owns the building, public records show. Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. Statement:The Nashville bombing was an attempt to stop an AT&T audit into Dominion software and cover up election corruption. In preparing for this November's election, the company gamed out all sorts of worst-case scenarios, but it wasn't on anyone's radar that Dominion and its employees could become the targets of threats. One of the largest voting machine suppliers in the U.S. Dominion Voting Systems sued Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who represented former President Donald Trump, after they . 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. The machines America votes on seem to be capturing the interest of some in Congress. 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. Jim Greer, a spokesperson for AT&T, told USA TODAY the claims are "not true. The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has dismissed the claim of an election hacking and vote manipulation operation known as Hammer and Scorecard. (here). Representatives for companies involved say there is no truth to the claims. 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. 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 . Theres a small percentage of jurisdictions in the country -- a lot of them are in Florida -- who have decided they want to modem unofficial results to the election office, he said. It really is. More:Fact check: No, Joe Biden's brother-in-law does not own Dominion Voting Systems. 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. There is no evidence that suggests that the explosion was election-related. The user who created the post did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment. Breitbart, by Hannah Bleau Original Article. 2023 www.statesman.com. Skoglund says those include the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida. The same Facebook post also said Dominion voting machines were being audited in the AT&T building that was destroyed by a bomb in Nashville. The services and oversight found in the Secretary of State's office reach every department and agency in state government. But companies that specialize in the subject said it is getting exponentially worse. On Monday, The Associated Press debunked claims that Dominion has any connection with AT&T. 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. "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.. 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. Hart said that it has approximately 1,600 such tabulators in use in 11 counties in Michigan. These are conspiracies manufactured out of whole cloth.. For election systems to be online, even momentarily, presents a serious problem, according to Appel. Similar claims have already been debunked by Reuters (here). Please note t he instructions and videos shown here have been prepared by the manufacturers and are general in nature. Immediately, Coomer knew things would blow up. "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. 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. Since the 2016 election, Michigan authorized $82 million dollars to upgrade its election systems. "The minute I saw it, it left a big pit in my stomach," he said. Three days later, on November 6th, AT&T named William "Bill" E. Kennard Chairman of its Board of Directors. There may not be answers to the Christmas Day bombing in Nashville anytime soon. Note that aspects of Tennessee law may differ with what is seen on the videos. That team of election security experts say that last summer, they discovered some systems are, in fact, online. 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. Thank you for supporting our journalism. False. Posted By: Dreadnought, 2/28/2023 9:52:47 PM Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News highlights former House Speaker Paul Ryan's alleged influence over Fox News Channel's (FNC) editorial control, reportedly urging . The reason? He was present when the bomb went off, and he perished in the bombing," Cochran said. "Bombing investigations can take years," Darrell DeBusk, an FBI spokesman based inTennessee, told The Tennessean. Thats an interesting coincidence.. Then, a plume of smoke rises behind three light poles. 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. NBC News asked the two other major manufacturers how many of their tabulators with modems were currently in use. Conspiracy theorists say the suicide bombing that rocked downtown Nashville was actually the result of a missile strike. Earlier this week, Skoglund showed NBC three election systems were still online even after officials had been told they were vulnerable. The following three posts were flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. Speaker 13 . "Fuck a drag bill," they wrote in an Instagram post. Owens, the other co-founder of Staple Street Capital,did not work for Cerberus, despite the post's claim. Some of the posts (here) say: Dominion voting is owned by Cerberus Capital Management. Cerberus is run by Staple Street Execs. Note that aspects of Tennessee law may differ with what is seen on the videos. Reuters debunked this claim here . 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. That user did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment, either. Dominion representatives havealsodenouncedthe conspiracy theory, calling it another "bizarre lie" with "zero credibility.". Singer reportedly funded the original investigation Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. Its true that an AT&T-owned building in Nashville was one of many buildings damaged in Fridays. Similar claims have been shared in hundreds of public posts, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool.