CNN gives the hapless citizens of this country an object lesson in an essential skill of all aspiring Presstitutes: the ability to deny something while admitting it in the same breath:
Attorney Sidney Powell claimed that widely used voting machines from the election technology company Dominion Voting Systems featured software created “at the direction” of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to swing his own election results, and that the company has ties to the Clinton Foundation and Soros.
None of this is true. Dominion has no corporate ties with Venezuela, the Clinton Foundation or Soros.
Powell and other Trump allies have tried to tie Dominion, which sells election technology that was used in more than two dozen states, to another voting company called Smartmatic. During the 2020 election, Smartmatic’s technology was used only in Los Angeles County, and not in any swing states, a spokesperson for the company told CNN.
Smartmatic was founded in Florida by two Venezuelans, and did provide election technology to the Venezuelan government. Powell has posted on social media a purported affidavit from an unnamed Venezuelan official claiming Smartmatic software was used to change votes in the country. But those claims have no evidence, and there’s no reason to believe the company’s software was created to make sure Chavez “never lost an election,” as Powell claimed. The company actually spoke out to accuse the Venezuelan government of voter fraud in 2017.
The bigger issue with this claim is that there is no evidence that Dominion machines used Smartmatic software, as Powell suggested — and thus zero connection between Venezuela and the company whose voting machines were actually used in the swing states Trump is focusing on. Both Dominion and Smartmatic have said that they are competitors with no corporate links.
The origin of the claim linking the companies seems to be a convoluted corporate transfer: In 2005, Smartmatic acquired a company called Sequoia Voting Systems, but sold it in 2007 after questions from members of Congress over the acquisition by a company linked to Venezuela. Three years later, Dominion, which was founded as a Canadian company but is now majority owned by Americans, acquired Sequoia. In addition, Smartmatic licensed Dominion machines for use in the Philippines in 2009, but the contract ended in a lawsuit, Dominion said in its statement.
Neither Dominion nor Smartmatic have corporate ties to the Clintons or Soros, a major Democratic donor. While Dominion did agree to donate its technology to “emerging democracies” as part of a program run by the Clinton Foundation in 2014, according to the foundation’s website, Dominion said in its statement that it has “no company ownership relationships” with the foundation. And while the chairman of the board of Smartmatic’s parent company is also on the board of a foundation run by Soros, Open Society Foundations, Soros himself is not involved in either company.