Trump's Election-Fraud Claims Can Be Traced Back To A Texas Businessman Who Spent Years Falsely Asserting That Electronic Voting Machines Manipulated Votes

[Shabibilicious]

Trump's election-fraud claims can be traced back to a Texas businessman who spent years falsely asserting that electronic voting machines manipulated votes

 

 

Sarah Al-Arshani

Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:39 AM

 

 

 

President Donald Trump. Evan Vucci/AP

• Parts of Trump's baseless election-fraud claims started in 2018, The Washington Post reported.

• Some of the claims originated with the Texas businessman Russell Ramsland Jr. and his associates.

• Trump allies such as Sidney Powell met with associates of Ramsland in 2019.

 

When former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he said it was because of voter fraud, citing claims that were initially started years ago by a Texas businessman, The Washington Post reported.

The Post reported that Russell Ramsland Jr. and his associates at Allied Security Operations Group began giving presentations to conservative lawmakers, activists, and donors that said audit logs in voting machines, the mechanisms that document the machine's activity, had indications of manipulation beginning in late 2018.

The allegations about voting systems and fraud made by Ramsland and ASOG were unsubstantiated and widely debunked by data-security experts.

Ramsland, a failed congressional candidate, attempted to find political candidates who had lost elections they believed they'd won to sell them on this idea. But he didn't have much success until associates of Trump latched on to the claims, passing it along to Trump, who accepted and further spread claims that the machines were faulty.

 

In 2019, Ramsland began briefing GOP lawmakers and officials from the Department of Homeland Security on the idea that US election software was coming from Venezuela, and that there would be efforts to manipulate votes in the 2020 election on a large scale, The Post reported.

While Trump and his associates, including lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, continued to sow doubt about the security of the election, the DHS said there was no evidence of fraud and called it "the most secure in American history."

Powell has used Ramsland's assertions in lawsuits that she filed on behalf of Trump and Giuliani, and has publicly made some of the assertions that started with Ramsland. Powell, The Post reported, was also briefed by ASOG two years before the election.

Powell is now being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.3 billion after she said she had evidence the company "was created to produce altered voting results in Venezuela for Hugo Chavez."

Ultimately, Trump and his associates lost all of the more than 40 lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results.

Ramsland told The Post that ASOG did give Powell and Giuliani research, but said they never spoke with Trump directly.

He added that his company's perspective was "one of many voices" that expressed concerns about election-system vulnerabilities.

Powell, through an attorney, told The Post that she did meet with a Ramsland ally, but did not say whether she spoke with him directly. Giuliani and his attorney did not respond to The Post's request for comment.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-election-fraud-claims-traced-063920631.html

 

GO RV, then BV

[Markinsa]

Klobuchar to voting vendors: Don’t turn your back on good hackers when setting up a CVD program

 

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Lorie Shaull / Flickr).

 

Written by Sean Lyngaas

NOV 15, 2019 | CYBERSCOOP

After years of getting pummeled by critics for not embracing ethical hacking, the country’s biggest voting equipment vendors took a big step in that direction in September. They asked the cybersecurity community for ideas on how to set up a process through which researchers could flag software flaws for vendors to fix.

 

Companies that specialize in coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) programs like Bugcrowd and Synack responded to the request for information. But the usual suspects weren’t the only entities to submit ideas.

 

A Democratic presidential candidate and one of the most outspoken voices in the Senate on election security also chimed in.

 

In a four-page letter to the industry association establishing the CVD program, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., advised the voting-gear vendors to ditch their reservations about working with unvetted researchers, pay close attention to their supply chains, and set a timeline for getting software bugs fixed.

 

“[V]oting system manufacturers must work out reasonable, time-limited, and researcher-friendly terms for disclosure,” Klobuchar wrote to an election industry working group at the IT-Information Sharing and Analysis Center (IT-ISAC).

 

Klobuchar’s detailed letter is a push to ensure that the country’s three biggest voting equipment makers — Election Systems & Software, Dominion Voting Systems, and Hart InterCivic,  — don’t build a CVD program that deters white-hat hackers from participating. She advised the vendors not to exclude any hacker from their CVD program who could help secure voting systems. Limiting participation to “vetted researchers would be detrimental the effectiveness” of the program, she warned.

 

The prospective CVD program is one of multiple initiatives to strengthen U.S. election security initiated since 2016, when Russian operatives probed IT systems that supported voting in states across the country.

 

Done right, advocates of the CVD program say, it can put voting equipment makers on a more proactive security footing and build bridges with ethical hackers.

A potentially ‘significant step forward for election security’

Election security has scarcely come up in Democratic presidential debates despite the fact that U.S. intelligence officials warn that the 2020 election will draw concerted attempts by foreign powers to interfere in the electoral process. But in the Senate, Klobuchar has pressed the issue by calling on voting equipment vendors to be more transparent about their plans to make their products more secure. She also sponsored a bill, which stalled in the Senate, aimed at boosting information sharing between state election officials and the federal government.

 

In her recent letter to voting equipment vendors, Klobuchar contested a few of the assumptions the vendors put forth in the RFI. The RFI expresses interest in a CVD program for systems that are isolated and disconnected from the internet. But Klobuchar pointed out that vulnerabilities in public-facing systems can have security implications for voting infrastructure that isn’t sitting on the internet.

“If a member of the public finds a vulnerability on a public website run by a voting system manufacturer, this could have unexpected ramifications, particularly if that website is hosted on a server inside a trusted environment,” Klobuchar wrote.

“Voting system manufacturers should acknowledge this by welcoming vulnerability reports that apply to all of their internet-accessible IT systems, including systems not intentionally made internet-accessible,” she added.

 

CVD programs are common practice in other industries, and Klobuchar cited a few that the voting equipment makers might learn from, including programs at the U.S. General Services Administration, and Dräger, a medical device manufacturer.

 

It is unclear when the voting equipment vendors might establish the CVD program.

 

“We are in the process of reviewing the responses we received [to the RFI] and plan to meet in person before the end of the year to discuss next steps and a path forward,” Scott Algeier, executive director of the IT-ISAC, told CyberScoop in an email.

 

“We are committed to moving as fast as we can,” Algeier said.

 

If and when the program gets off the ground, Klobuchar said, it “could be a significant step forward for election security.”

 

You can read the full letter from Klobuchar to the IT-ISAC’s Elections Industry Special Interest Group below.

-In this Story-

[Markinsa]

Sen. Amy Klobuchar said former White House counsel Don McGahn "called Republicans about the bill, didn’t want them to do it. And McConnell also didn’t want the bill to move forward. So it was a double-edged thing.” | Alex Wong/Getty Images

 

Election security push stumbles amid White House resistance

Sen. Amy Klobuchar blames former White House counsel Don McGahn for undercutting her bipartisan legislation.

 

By MARIANNE LEVINE and TIM STARKS

 

05/01/2019 08:42 PM EDT

 

 

Senate Democrats and Republicans can agree on perhaps just one thing about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation — that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

 

But bipartisan legislation to address foreign intrusions is all but dead amid a distinct lack of enthusiasm from Senate GOP leadership and the Trump White House.

 

At a heated hearing with Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) blasted the White House for blocking the election security bill she co-sponsored with Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) in the previous Congress.

 

And in an interview, Klobuchar put the blame for the impasse squarely on President Donald Trump’s former White House counsel Don McGahn as well as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

 

“It was Don McGahn,” Klobuchar said Wednesday. “He called Republicans about the bill, didn’t want them to do it. And McConnell also didn’t want the bill to move forward. So it was a double-edged thing.”

 

Klobuchar added that McGahn, who was previously chair of the Federal Election Commission, “had a personal interest in it” and that, with him no longer at the White House, “maybe they can look at it fresh.”

 

McGahn did not respond to a request for comment.

 

Klobuchar and Lankford’s bill would establish an Election Assistance Commission grant program and codify existing Department of Homeland Security election security roles. It would also emphasize sharing threat information with election officials and require back up paper ballots and audits.

 

When asked about Klobuchar’s charges, Senate Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt replied, “I think that’s true” and added that neither her bill with Lankford nor other election security legislation is likely to pass in the sharply divided Congress.

 

The Missouri Republican said the federal government was of greater assistance in protecting elections during the 2018 midterms. He also blamed the House Democrats’ election reform bill, HR 1, for contributing to the conflict.

 

“I think Sen. McConnell thinks this is a bad direction for us to head in ... that won’t lead to any positive conclusions, so he is not going to put that bill on the floor,” Blunt said. “I think that’s even been further complicated by the excessive direction that the House has taken with their election legislation.”

 

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

 

The Rules Committee planned to advance the legislation last August but postponed it after criticism from the White House and some state officials.

 

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said at the time that if Congress wished to continue pursuing the Secure Elections Act, it should not “violate the principles of federalism.”

 

“We cannot support legislation with inappropriate mandates or that moves power or funding from the states to Washington for the planning and operation of elections,” she said.

Lankford said Wednesday that he and Klobuchar are working to update their proposal in an attempt to move forward.

 

When asked whether the White House had lobbied against the bill, Lankford said the White House legislative shop was “very clear” with him that they were not opposing the bill. He said the White House wanted “to make sure the final product does not have any issues where it’s trying to federalize elections in the states.”

 

The latest push comes as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other lawmakers call for action on election security measures after Mueller laid bare the Russian meddling in 2016.

 

Both Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) support the Klobuchar-Lankford legislation, though Burr said the bill should have nothing to do with the Mueller report and is just “the right thing to do for election security.”

 

“I think we’re still vulnerable,” Warner said. “You had the FBI director as recently as last Friday say that this is an ongoing threat. I hope that the bipartisan supporters who supported it last Congress will support it again this Congress.”

 

Among those previous supporters is Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Graham said earlier this week that he wasn’t sure he’d back Lankford and Klobuchar’s bill this Congress but that something is needed to be done to address Russian interference.

 

At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday with Barr, Graham reiterated that he wanted to work across the aisle on election security legislation.

 

“I would like to do more to harden our infrastructure because the Russians did it,” Graham said. “It wasn't some 400-pound guy sitting on a bed somewhere. It was the Russians. And they're still doing [it] ... My takeaway from this report is that we’ve got a lot of work to do to defend democracy against the Russians and other bad actors, and I promise the committee we will get on with that work.”

 

When Graham asked Barr whether he’d support such an effort, Barr replied: “Absolutely.”

Burgess Everett and Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.

 

[Shabibilicious]

That's funny stuff right there....Rightwingers refused efforts to fix any election security that may be thwarted by hackers, then cry about an election they lost, by saying it was ripe with fraud.    DJT has played every one of his enablers/supporters magnificently.  As always, just my opinion.

 

GO RV, then BV

[Markinsa]

42 minutes ago, Shabibilicious said:

That's funny stuff right there....Rightwingers refused efforts to fix any election security that may be thwarted by hackers, then cry about an election they lost, by saying it was ripe with fraud.    DJT has played every one of his enablers/supporters magnificently.  As always, just my opinion.

 

GO RV, then BV

 

You're forgetting the Democrats had Majority in the House since 2018...

 

.

[Shabibilicious]

13 minutes ago, Markinsa said:

 

You're forgetting the Democrats had Majority in the House since 2018...

 

 

You're forgetting Republicans had the Majority in the Senate until 5 months ago....

 

GO RV, then BV

[Markinsa]

3 minutes ago, Shabibilicious said:

 

You're forgetting Republicans had the Majority in the Senate until 5 months ago....

 

GO RV, then BV

 

Nope, I knew that, but evidently you are overlooking the fact that you have to have both houses in order to pass a law and 2/3? of the house and senate to override a veto.

 

.

[Shabibilicious]

4 minutes ago, Markinsa said:

 

Nope, I knew that, but evidently you are overlooking the fact that you have to have both houses in order to pass a law and 2/3? of the house and senate to override a veto.

 

 

Not overlooking that at all....Mitch McConnell has publicly admitted he will stop Democrats at every turn.  They did everything to stop this last round of Covid relief and are now taking credit for the bill they voted against because their constituents are benefitting from it.  

 

GO RV, then BV

[Shabibilicious]

I wish I could tell who gives rubies.....cause somebody's obviously perturbed with me.  

 

GO RV, then BV

[Markinsa]

13 minutes ago, Shabibilicious said:

 

Not overlooking that at all....Mitch McConnell has publicly admitted he will stop Democrats at every turn.  They did everything to stop this last round of Covid relief and are now taking credit for the bill they voted against because their constituents are benefitting from it.  

 

GO RV, then BV

 

The Wuhan Virus has nothing to do with election reform.  The Democrats had the house from 2018-until now.  No election reform, except what they want to institute now, which is more of the same mail out as many ballots as we can and don't worry about who mailed them back crap.

 

.

[Shabibilicious]

1 minute ago, Markinsa said:

 

The Wuhan Virus has nothing to do with election reform.  The Democrats had the house from 2018-until now.  No election reform, except what they want to institute now, which is more of the same mail out as many ballots as we can and don't worry about who mailed them back crap.

 

.

 

Correction....Covid-19 Virus.  

 

GO RV, then BV

[Markinsa]

2 minutes ago, Shabibilicious said:

 

Correction....Covid-19 Virus.  

 

GO RV, then BV

 

No correction needed. Wuhan, that's where it came from or do you have evidence to the contrary?

 

.

[Shabibilicious]

5 minutes ago, Markinsa said:

 

No correction needed. Wuhan, that's where it came from or do you have evidence to the contrary?

 

 

I have no idea which city the bats came from....and I just don't see the point in possibly offending any Chinese-American citizens with the rhetoric.  Just a personal choice.

 

GO RV, then BV

[Markinsa]

4 minutes ago, Shabibilicious said:

 

I have no idea which city the bats came from....and I just don't see the point in possibly offending any Chinese-American citizens with the rhetoric.  Just a personal choice.

 

GO RV, then BV

 

It is a personal choice to be uninformed?  Hey, I guess if that's the way you roll, it explains a lot.

 

.

[luvalife]

Someone that is doing a great deal of posting needs to turn off the vomit spewing MSM and do some digging of their own.  It is exhausting to see this ridiculous arguing... When you are de-"programmed" from the TV Programs you will see it too! (hopefully). Turn off your Tell A vision and WAKE UP!!!! .. or continue to bury your head in the sand and believe the lies that are being spoon fed to you.  YUM!!!

 

[Shabibilicious]

Just now, Markinsa said:

 

It is a personal choice to be uninformed?  Hey, I guess if that's the way you roll, it explains a lot.

 

 

Okay, so you think I'm uninformed....and I think you're misinformed.  Guess that makes us even.  You didn't really think we were going to sway each other's point of view, did you?

 

GO RV, then BV

[Markinsa]

1 minute ago, Shabibilicious said:

 

Okay, so you think I'm uninformed....and I think you're misinformed.  Guess that makes us even.  You didn't really think we were going to sway each other's point of view, did you?

 

GO RV, then BV

 

I get my news from all over the internet, you get your news from Yahoo.

 

.

[caddieman]

32 minutes ago, Shabibilicious said:

I wish I could tell who gives rubies.....cause somebody's obviously perturbed with me.  

 

GO RV, then BV

Lol me too. I’d love to see who gives out rubies for just posting an article. You must have to be VIP. It’s the only thing I can think of. 

[Shabibilicious]

3 minutes ago, Markinsa said:

 

I get my news from all over the internet, you get your news from Yahoo.

 

.

 

Nah.....Yahoo is the article warehouse.  I'm smart enough to go there where ALL the articles are stored....as opposed to the individual sites for an article already at my fingertips....work smarter, not harder.  

 

GO RV, then BV

[Shabibilicious]

1 minute ago, caddieman said:

Lol me too. I’d love to see who gives out rubies for just posting an article. You must have to be VIP!" rel="">VIP. It’s the only thing I can think of. 

 

Or it could be a conspiracy against us of election fraud proportions.    Just kidding.....but really, it could be.  

 

GO RV, then BV

[Markinsa]

1 minute ago, Shabibilicious said:

 

Nah.....Yahoo is the article warehouse.  I'm smart enough to go there where ALL the articles are stored....as opposed to the individual sites for an article already at my fingertips....work smarter, not harder.  

 

GO RV, then BV

 

Yet all of those articles end up at yahoo. Evidently, you aren't getting a well rounded view of the world.  But hey, that's how you roll.  

 

.

[Shabibilicious]

16 hours ago, Markinsa said:

 

Yet all of those articles end up at yahoo. Evidently, you aren't getting a well rounded view of the world.  But hey, that's how you roll.  

 

 

My world view is extremely "well rounded"....it's the flat Earth folk who's view is lacking.  

 

GO RV, then BV

[Markinsa]

17 minutes ago, Shabibilicious said:

 

My world view is extremely "well rounded"....it's the flat Earth folk who's view is lacking.  

 

GO RV, then BV

 

And yet you keep promoting and defending the liberal agenda.

 

.

[Shabibilicious]

6 minutes ago, Markinsa said:

 

And yet you keep promoting and defending the liberal agenda.

 

 

And you keep promoting DJT, the man who brought us the vaccines at warp speed, while simultaneously warning that the vaccines are killers.  Seems we both have our issues.

 

GO RV, then BV

[yota691]

16 hours ago, luvalife said:

Turn off your Tell A vision and WAKE UP!!!!

That a good one...Tell A Vision..and the gullible believe it.... The Hate Everything America Party....