Lawyers for President Trump’s campaign alleged an elaborate plot by his opponents to “rig” voting machines in the presidential election, delivering the race for Joe Biden.
In a Thursday news conference at the Republican National Convention headquarters in Washington, D.C., that was at times heated and confrontational, three Trump attorneys, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, alleged a “massive, well-funded, coordinated effort to deny” voters their constitutional rights.
Over remarks that stretched more than an hour, the team, which senior legal adviser Ellis billed as an “elite strike force,” linked claims of voting irregularities across the country to a “centralized” conspiracy helmed by the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, the Clinton Foundation, Joe Biden, and the deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
The Trump attorneys leveled their most inflammatory charges at the technology states use to count votes.
“We’re frustrated with what we keep reading and hearing in the censored press,” Ellis said.
Powell claimed there was evidence of the “massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China, and interference with our elections.”
She added: “The Dominion Voting Systems, the Smartmatic technology software … were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out.”
“We have one very strong witness who has explained how it all works,” she continued. “His affidavit is attached to the pleadings of Lin Wood and the lawsuit he filed in Georgia. … As soon as he saw multiple states shut down the voting on the night of the election, he knew the same thing was happening here.”
Citing various “spikes” in the vote counts at different times, Powell then alleged the software then yanked votes from Trump.
“In terms of the level of corruption we are looking at here, we have no idea how many Republican or Democratic candidates … paid to have the system rigged to work for them,” she added.
Dominion has “categorically” denied charges of fraud, such as vote-switching, and software errors.
A panel of voting technology companies, including Dominion, issued a joint response with the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency on Nov. 11, rebuking the allegations.
”There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” the statement reads.
“Trump won by a landslide, and we are going to prove it, and we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who vote for freedom,” Powell said. She encouraged the public to download and “read” the voting software.
Trump, during the conference, tweeted that the allegations were “an open and shut case of voter fraud. Massive numbers!”
if Trump doesn’t win the election, “no election will be secure from here on out,” said Ellis.
“This is not a Law and Order episode that can be wrapped up in 60 minutes,” she said, in effect pleading for more time. Ellis called the charges laid out “an opening statement.”
Citing sworn affidavits and allegations of election fraud in several states, including Pennsylvania, Trump’s personal attorney, Giuliani, said the team had “enough to overturn any election.”
Giuliani, who throughout the press conference appeared to be troubled by hair dye dripping down his face, said that about 100,000 absentee ballots in Wisconsin were tallied that should not have been.
“If you count the lawful votes, Trump won Wisconsin,” Giuliani said.
Fraud was carried out by “Democratic bosses,” he added. “They made significant mistakes, like all crooks do, and we caught ’em.”
He said the campaign was “about to file a major lawsuit in Georgia,” with more litigation ahead, possibly in New Mexico and Arizona.
The Trump campaign has charged voting irregularities in dozens of lawsuits since Election Day in a bid to slow the certification of state vote counts.
Earlier in the day, the campaign said it was withdrawing a federal lawsuit in Michigan after securing its intended “relief”: to halt certification of Wayne County’s election results.
On Tuesday, Giuliani made his first federal court appearance since 1992, representing the Trump campaign in a lawsuit to stop the vote certification process in Pennsylvania.
