Fact check of Giuliani and the Trump legal team’s wild, factless press conference

Fact check of Giuliani and the Trump legal team’s wild, factless press conference

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Many of their specific claims have been refuted by federal election security experts and a wide, dual range of election administrators across the country.

Here’s a look at some of the key claims made during the briefing, and the facts surrounding them.

Giuliani said the Trump campaign withdrew one case in Michigan because it was intended to get the Wayne County council confirmed, and they did.

Facts first: This is false. The province’s results were certified Tuesday night.

Two Republican members of the council initially put the vote to a standstill, but reversed their decision and voted Tuesday night. They have since submitted affidavits to revoke their vote, but have not yet filed lawsuits to try to force the country to convene a new assembly. Since the deadline expired, the certification remains.

Democratic Vice President Jonathan Kinloch said Thursday that councilors’ votes cannot change after the fact.

– Tara Subramaniam and Annie Grayer

‘Vote’ in Michigan

“One of the reasons the Republicans did not certify in Wayne County, Michigan, was because the turnout was so high,” Giuliani claims. He added, “what I am describing to you is a great deception.”

Facts first: This is false.

What Giuliani calls a ballot is often called an imbalance, where the number of ballots tabled does not equal the number of people registered at a particular polling station to vote.

Previous elections in Michigan with greater imbalances have been certified without issue, including in 2016 when Trump won the state, according to the Secretary of State in Michigan.

“They certified the vote in 2016 with 80% of Detroit areas out of balance. And today, 42% were out of balance and yet it is not certified, so there is clearly no valid point here,” the Secretary of State said. said in Michigan here. Jocelyn Benson said.

Benson told CNN that “it’s very common ‘that areas are not in balance, but’ it does not mean there is a misunderstanding ‘, adding:’ it’s more of an accounting, mental matter. ‘

According to Chris Thomas, who served as senior adviser to the Detroit City Clerk, there are many reasons why a district may be out of balance and have a difference between the number of ballots and the number of people registered in the ballot box. Thomas, who has built a decade-long career serving both Republican and Democratic Secretary of State, told CNN that an imbalance should generally be viewed as clerical errors and not as fraud, through his years of experience.

– Tara Subramaniam and Annie Grayer

Voice Viewers

Giuliani claims that more than 600,000 ballot papers in Pennsylvania “have not been inspected, declaring them null and void.

Facts first: This is false. Nothing is illegal on the ballots.

A Pennsylvania Supreme Court judge has ruled that the Philadelphia County Electoral Board complies with the law on how it grants observers access to the recruitment process.

The judge allows the observers to be present, the judge wrote, but they do not have the right to examine the workers counting the ballots or look over their shoulders. The judge ruled that cloth guards in Philadelphia could not dispute the ballots and did not have to inspect every signature.

– Tara Subramaniam

Ballot papers by post

Giuliani falsely claimed that ballot papers were ‘prone to fraud’.

Facts first: Electoral experts have tell CNN has repeatedly said that the ballot papers are a safe form of voting and are not subject to widespread fraud.

– Holmes Lybrand

Judge Alito and Pennsylvania

At one point, Giuliani suggested that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito intervene in Pennsylvania and tell the state that “every vote that comes in at 8 a.m. on November 3, 2020, should be set aside and not opened.”

Facts first: It is false for Giuliani to claim that Alito ordered provinces not to open the ballot papers received after 20:00 on election day. Instead, Alito aimed the provincial election councils to follow the lead issued by the Secretary of State in Pennsylvania, who called for the separation of ballot papers arriving on November 4-6, and to keep them separate, even if they are counted.

On November 6, the Republican Party of Pennsylvania asked the U.S. Supreme Court to order Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar to “report, divorce, and otherwise take no action on any ballot paper after election day.”

Alito said he would refer the application to court. The judges have yet to rule on the Republicans’ petition that “no action should be taken” on the ballots.

Alito, which has jurisdiction over the Pennsylvania region, issued an order on November 6 ordering that “all provincial electoral councils” be ordered to “comply” with the guidelines put forward by the Secretary of State, which states the status quo essentially maintain.

– Ariane deVogue and Tara Subramaniam

71% inconsistent data

Ellis, a senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign, claimed that Wayne County, Michigan, was not going to confirm his results “because 71% of the counties have conflicting data.”

Facts first: This is misleading.

Although Ellis did not specify what she meant by inconsistent data, she probably referred to areas that are out of balance, where the number of voters recorded in the poll does not match the number of votes.

According to the State Attorney’s Office in Michigan, 71% of absentee ballots in Detroit, which are part of Wayne County, have not balanced. However, the total number of areas that were not in equilibrium in the city was much lower. 42% of the total areas in Detroit are unbalanced.

Inside Rudy Giuliani's attempt to wreak havoc on Trump's behalf and steal the election
Imbalances were part of the reason why two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers temporarily blocked the certification of the county’s results. The results were eventually certified following an agreement that partially stipulated that the Secretary of State in Michigan would be asked to conduct a comprehensive audit of the specific areas in Detroit that were out of balance.

Contact errors that led to these imbalances have not stopped in the country’s certifications lately. In the August primary, Wayne County confirmed its results when 72% of the absentee counties in Detroit and 46% of the total districts in the country did not reconcile.

For this election, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers has not officially released its final report which will include which areas in the country are not balanced.

– Tara Subramaniam and Annie Grayer

Dominion Voting Systems in Venezuela

Powell claims that widely used voting machines from election technology company Dominion Voting Systems contain software created “under the leadership” of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to twist his own election results, and that the company has ties to the Clinton Foundation and Soros.

Facts first: None of this is true. Dominion has no corporate ties with Venezuela, the Clinton Foundation or Soros.

Powell and other Trump allies tried to link Dominion, which sells election technology 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 company spokesman told CNN.

Smartmatic was founded in Florida by two Venezuelans and provided election technology to the Venezuelan government. Powell posted an alleged statement from an unnamed Venezuelan official on social media claiming that Smartmatic software was used to change voices in the country. But the allegations have no evidence, and there is 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 in 2017 of voter fraud.

The biggest problem with this claim is that there is no evidence that Dominion machines used Smartmatic software, as Powell suggested – and therefore no connection between Venezuela and the company whose voting machines were actually used in the swing, on which Trump focuses . Both Dominion and Smartmatic said they are competitors without corporate links.

The origin of the claim that binds the companies appears to be a complicated corporate transfer: In 2005, Smartmatic acquired a company called Sequoia Voting Systems, but sold it in 2007 after questions from members of Congress about the acquisition by a company affiliated with 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 in the Philippines in 2009, but the contract ended in a lawsuit, Dominion said in its statement.
Neither Dominion nor Smartmatic has corporate ties with the Clintons or Soros, a major Democratic donor. While Dominion did agree to donate its technology to ’emerging democracies’ as part of a program presented by the Clinton Foundation in 2014, Dominion said according to the foundation’s website that it has ‘no company-ownership relationship’ with the foundation has not. And although 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 of the two companies.

-Casey Tolan

Rule and algorithms

In one of the most bizarre allegations of the press conference, Powell also said that the software used by Dominion could “set up and manage an algorithm that is likely to run across the country to take a certain percentage of President Trump’s votes and to let it go to president. Biden. ‘

Facts first: There is absolutely no evidence that this happened. Federal officials said there were no widespread fraud or irregularities during the election, and most states use paper ballots that can be audited to check the vote totals.

Experts said these ideas are without factual support. In particular, the state is able to review and pick up the ballots, which can confirm the total votes. And a joint group of federal, state, local and private election officials called the 2020 election the safest in U.S. history last week.

Although some isolated problems with Dominion technology were reported on election day and election night, there were no credible reports that problems with the company’s machines affected the number of votes.
To alleviate the possibility of hacking, Powell apparently cited research by Professor Andrew Appel of Princeton University, who warned of possible vulnerabilities in voice machines from Dominion and other companies and the potential that exists to hack these machines. . But Appel argued this month that the election results could be trusted because of the paper route that the number of votes supports.
“Vulnerabilities are not the same as difficult elections, especially not when we vote in almost all countries paper,” Apple wrote on its blog last week. “The US now mostly uses ballot papers on paper, and that’s how we can trust the election results, even though there is computer vulnerability.”

– Casey Tolan

This story has been updated.

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