No one is currently working out of the building. 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. (Read more about ourpartnership with Facebook.). The following three posts were flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. Some posts have said the Nashville explosion was caused by a missile. 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. Now the process of counting these votes . Kevin Skoglund, senior technical advisor at the National Election Defense Coalition. 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. The printing business took to social media to debunk the claim itself. The coalition says it is no longer certain that the number of states is correct, so the figure has been removed from the article. Jim Greer, a spokesperson for AT&T,also told USA TODAY the claims are "not true.". Some users seemed to recognize the story as fake, but others didnt. 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. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Dominion Voting Systems and Election Systems & Software. The full text on this page is automatically extracted from the file linked above and may contain errors and inconsistencies. Both companies have denied the posts claims, saying that there was no such audit and that Dominions machines were not recently transported to Nashville. 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. Donald Trump went after media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his network Fox News in rants on Truth Social where he once again pushed the baseless and debunked claim that the . 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. CNN didnt report that Anthony Warner, the person authorities have identified as the bomber, died from COVID-19. These claims are groundless. Reuters found no evidence that Cerberus Capital Management (www.cerberus.com/) owns Dominion. 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. There is no evidence to support the claim that the Nashville bombing or City Blue Imaging's fire were connected to election malfeasance, so we rate this claim FALSE. 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. However, the firm cited in that version of the claim Cerberus Capital Management doesnt own Dominion nor is it connected to Staple Street Capital, whichacquired Dominion in 2018. "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.. As of Friday, a motive in the bombing remained under investigation by the FBI, the ATF and Metro Nashville police. However, there are no news reports available online that mention that the business was involved with an investigation related to the election, and Google searches for any mention of the company and an investigation into ballot fraud from the start of September to the date of the fire do not reveal even online rumors to that effect circulating before the fire broke out (here), The companys Facebook page has addressed rumors that have spread since the fire, saying: To the misinformed people on @Twitter and @instagram #cityblueimaging does not print #ballots (here). It wasn't meant to kill people, but to destroy a building. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. The bomb was located in a recreational vehicle owned by Warner. That team of election security experts say that last summer, they discovered some systems are, in fact, 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 . The bomb is in this vehicle and will explode." 2023 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC. Owens, the other co-founder of Staple Street Capital,did not work for Cerberus, despite the post's claim. "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. City Blue Imaging Services' Facebook, Dec. 27. Reuters Fact Check previously debunked this claim here . No available external evidence suggests AT&T was involved in any such audit, either. In August 2021, Dominion Voting Systems programmed machines for the county's upcoming elections. 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. 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. 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. 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. Some of that money was spent on tabulators with wireless modems. CLAIM: AT&T got a contract to do a forensic audit of Dominion Voting Systems machines and those machines were recently moved . 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. Even for elections nights., Appel agreed. A post on Facebook theorized that the two disasters were connected by a plot to steal the election. All those. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Reuters debunked this claim here . 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. IE 11 is not supported. There is no reason to suppose that it would be likely, or even possible, that these buildings, would be used to audit voting machines. 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,. Did AT&T Have a Contract to Audit Dominion Voting 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. "I actually am in fear for my safety," Coomer said recently, speaking by video call from an undisclosed location to Colorado Public Radio. 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. This is bogus. Cerberus Capital previously owned the AT&T Building, onceknownas the BellSouth Building,where the company has operated its Tennessee headquarters since the building's erection in 1994. Jim Greer, a spokesperson for AT&T, told USA TODAY the claims are "not true. Now, the alleged Dominion Voting Systems tie. Their evidence: a grainy black-and-white video. We kept hearing from election officials that voting machines were never on the internet, he said. More:Neighbor recalls warning, countdown before Nashville explosion. Dominion told AFP the claim is "another bizarre lie being spread by known conspiracy theorists.". The wishes are that I forever have to look over my shoulder," Coomer said. On Tuesday, Coomer sued the Trump campaign and a number of allies, alleging defamation. 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. But none of this is true. 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. The extent of our relationship is this: In 2009, Smartmatic licensed the use of a Dominion voting machine for use in the Philippines. . (Read more about, Breaking news meme generators are frequently used online to create fabricated headlines and chyrons such as this one. Read more about our fact-checking work here . the post reads. The City of Rochester government and police did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment. 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. 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. "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. "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. While federal investigators are still looking into the bombing, law enforcement officials have said Warner was responsible and died in the blast. The bomb squad was en route. Joe Bidens Brother in Law, Steven Owens, is the cofounder of Staple Street Execs along with William Kennard (mentioned above).. Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. provides voting machines and tabulators. Fact-checkers have debunked claims that the explosion was the result of a missile strike. For election systems to be online, even momentarily, presents a serious problem, according to Appel. for the blast that rattled downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, social media users have invented their own far-fetched theories. Texas country-punk band Vandoliers are standing in solidarity with drag performers and the LGBTQ+ community. It also claims the AT&T building that was affected by the bomb is where those machines were being stored. There can still be security holes that allow hackers to get into the phone network.. (Photo by James Leynse/Corbis via Getty Images). Staple Street Capital took part in a deal with management to acquire Dominion in 2018 (here and here). 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. "The specific steps taken would depend on the recommendation and the timeline required to make changes effectively.. Newsmax TV aired a stunning fact-check on Monday of claims made on the network about voting companies used in the 2020 presidential election. Thats an interesting coincidence.. 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. A sample ballot is shown via the Dominion Voting Systems that Georgians use to vote. 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. There is no evidence that the New York printing company whose building burnt down on Christmas Day was under investigation for printing false ballots. The Christmas morning bomb went off on Second Avenue, outside an AT&T transmission building. The broadcast then began a 15-minute countdown,before the RV exploded, according to The Tennessean. 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. 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 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 . The post, which has been shared almost 900 times,makes two claims:A buildingdamaged in the Nashville explosion was holding Dominion Voting Systems machines set to be audited, and in New York, the company that burned was under investigation for printing and shipping fake ballots to Pennsylvania. So many government officials like Manfra have said the same thing over the last few years that it is commonly accepted as gospel by most Americans. 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.. Dominion Lawsuit Showcases Paul Ryan's Influence over Fox News Channel's Editorial Control. AT&T does not hold a contract to audit Dominions software or machines and did not have any of the companys equipment in its Nashville building. 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. 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. 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. Dominionwas acquired by private equity firm Staple Street Capital, co-founded by financiers Hootan Yaghoobzadeh and StephenOwens, in 2018. Examples can be seen here , here and here . "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.. 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. 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. The complicated theory began circulating soon after an RV exploded in downtown Nashville. "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. . Note that aspects of Tennessee law may differ with what is seen on the videos. But companies that specialize in the subject said it is getting exponentially worse. 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. Secretary Hargett is the chief executive officer of the Department of State with oversight of more than 300 employees. Nashville's date on June 7 at GEODIS Park will feature Kelsea Ballerini and BRELAND -- and now, The Boykinz. We therefore again respectfully request that EAC investigate and take action to correct this serious issue., Once you add that modem, you are de-certifying it, Skoglund said. The row housed Simply the Best $10 Boutique at 176 (here), Ensemble boutique at 174 (www.ensemblenashville.com/) and the Pride & Glory Tattoo Parlor at 172 (www.prideandglorytattoo.com/), as well as apartments on the upper floors (here). Jim Greer, Assistant Vice President of Corporate Communications at AT&T, told Reuters via email: None of the things in the post are true.. So did the type of explosives used to detonate the blast. 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. Representatives for companies involved say there is no truth to the claims. Didi Martinez is an associate producer with the NBC News Investigative Unit. 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. There are currently two voting systems which are certified by the State of Florida's Division of Elections. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. DNA found at the scene matched Warner's, according to an FBI press release. Those modems connect to cell phone networks, which, in turn, are connected to the internet. 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. 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. Both companies have denied the posts claims, saying that there was no such audit and that Dominions machines were not recently transported to Nashville. Much of the voting equipment was by Dominion. 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. 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. As people experience their own individual Internet bubbles, it can be hard to recognize just how much misinformation exists and how the current information ecosystem compares with previous years. 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 its core is the prediction thatan alleged mass arrest ofhigh-profile Democrats and celebritieswould be carried out while now-former President Donald Trump secretly savedthe world from a satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals. 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 Voting Systems on Tuesday morning filed three $1.6 billion defamation lawsuits against two pro-Trump media networks and an outspoken Trump ally, the latest in a string of suits from the . Staple Street Capital has a managing director and co-founder named Stephen Owens. On Monday, The Associated Press debunked claims that Dominion has any connection with AT&T. We should be unplugging all of these machines from the internet, Skoglund said. Modems in voting machines are a bad idea, said Appel. Similar claims have already been debunked by Reuters (here). Coomer said in addition to his own information, the personal addresses of everyone from his parents and siblings to his ex-girlfriends have been posted online. With the 2020 presidential election only ten months away, Appel and Skoglund believe all modems can and should be removed from election systems. The conspiracy theory appears to have originated in a tweet by Lin Wood, an attorney and Trump supporter, who has pushed a number of false election claims. John Bazemore/AP 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. 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. 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. While the companys website states that zero of its voting tabulators are connected to the internet, ES&S told NBC News 14,000 of their DS200 tabulators with online modems are currently in use around the country. According to the post, that firm ownedthe AT&T building outside of which the Christmas bombing occurred. The West Bend clerk wrote, "The wrong marking device was used to mark the . Statement:The Nashville bombing was an attempt to stop an AT&T audit into Dominion software and cover up election corruption. If you have super majorities, Tennessee is like an R plus twenty state. That user did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment, either. The post was flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. Behind it is the notion that if voting systems are not online, hackers will have a harder time compromising them. The voting conspiracy theories that have led millions of Republicans to feel as though the election was stolen from them, which are still spreading, have also led to calls for Coomer's head. Coomer said the first barb aimed at him came five days after the election. 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. 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.. Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. Donate State Editions California Florida More:Fact check: No, Joe Biden's brother-in-law does not own Dominion Voting Systems. And I don't know that all these jurisdictions are aware of that because ES&S is advertising otherwise.. Full Story. Tre Hargett was elected by the Tennessee General Assembly to serve as Tennessees 37th secretary of state in 2009 and re-elected in 2013, 2017, and 2021. There was no evidence of a shooting, but both officers and witnesses heard a warning blare from the RV: "Evacuate now. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. 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.". 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. "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. A sample ballot is shown via the Dominion Voting Systems that Georgians use to vote. Please note t he instructions and videos shown here have been prepared by the manufacturers and are general in nature. "Coincidence? First, QAnon. Dominion is a company that supplies voting machines in more than two-dozen states, including Ohio. These are conspiracies manufactured out of whole cloth.. 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. These are conspiracies manufactured out of whole cloth. 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.