JoIt was presented as an “explosive report” on the “foreign ties” of election technology company Dominion Voting Systems that Donald Trump’s legal team sent state lawmakers to give them “a summary” of alleged electoral fraud in the 2020 elections. But despite the Trump team’s apparent eagerness to promote the report and its claims in December 2020, three months later no one seems to want to take over.
Katherine Friess, a volunteer for Trump’s legal team whose name is on the cover of the report, entitled “Dominion Voting Systems Overview 12/2/20” and in metadata included in the document, says she is not there. it has nothing to do. Friess and Bernie Kerik, a former New York City police chief led by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a Trump legal team volunteer, say the report was sent to the legal team for the then White House aide to Trump’s former commercial adviser. Peter Navarro. The former senior Trump official turned down multiple opportunities to comment on the record of this story.
The difficulty in identifying an author for a report that the Trump team once seemed happy to brag about underscores the extent to which the threat of Dominion Voting Systems demands has affected veterans in the effort to overthrow the presidential election. 2020. Dominion lawyers have filed $ 1.3 billion lawsuits against Trump’s personal lawyer, Giuliani, pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, and pillow mogul Mike Lindell for his alleged defamation of the software of the company’s voting, with more processes being reported.
Senior Trump campaign officials, including former president and head of the Giuliani legal team, have been publicly broadcast since they denied conspiracy theories about Dominion, of non-existent links with Venezuela to falsify “deleted” votes. But Friess and Kerik’s claims that an aide to the Trump administration shared the report with the campaign’s legal team suggest the White House was even more involved in the effort to raise questions about the products. of Dominion.
The Dominion report first appeared publicly in early December in an article on Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump conspiracy site. History claimed that the Trump campaign used the document to inform state lawmakers of its allegations of election fraud. The report describes itself as “an overview” of Dominion Voting Systems ’“ history, executives, capacity and design of vote manipulation ”and“ foreign ties ”and repeats a number of claims since then discredited, including the fact that Dominion has links with “several Venezuelan software and telecommunications companies in the state” and that the company’s products use software from another electoral technology company, Smartmatic.
Friess’ name appears on the cover and the metadata embedded in a PDF uploaded to Archive.org linked by The Gateway Pundit. In an email to The Daily Beast, Friess insisted she had nothing to do with the report and did not know how her name got into the document.
“It had nothing to do with the research, writing or production of the Dominion report. I have no idea how my name appeared on a cover, who did it or why, “Friess told The Daily Beast, claiming the report was” spread “by a member of the Daily Beast team. Navarro.
Kerik, who was pardoned by Trump for a bunch of criminal charges and then helped Trump’s legal team on its crusade to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory, said Friess was not involved in the production. of the Dominion report. “He was sent to the mayor’s legal team by [a person with] Office of Peter Navarro [on] 11/29, however, I’m not sure [Peter] I saw it before we received it ”.
Kerik continued: “I don’t think Navarro saw it and I don’t think he created it. However, he was sent to me and the legal team through a White House aide who worked for Peter. ”
In a phone call Monday, Kerik read The Daily Beast the email the “then White House aide” sent on Nov. 29, but declined to name who sent it. The Daily Beast has since confirmed that the broadcaster was an official working in Trump’s White House.
Kerik worked alongside Giuliani on Trump’s legal team collecting sworn statements alleging irregularities in the 2020 elections and “making contact with people who wanted to discuss the issue with the president or mayor,” he said. Kerik added that Friess “had never met Giuliani or the president before coming in and volunteering to help with the legal effort. It was I who introduced her to the mayor. I was in the White House with she first met [Trump], and was a meeting with Giuliani and [others]”.
Navarro, a loyal Trump loyalist, was also the author of three documents, collectively called “The Navarro Report,” “The Immaculate Conception,” “The Art of Stealing,” and “Yes, President Trump Won “), which erroneously led to widespread voter fraud and irregularities that tipped Trump’s election to Biden.
Friess made headlines recently when her name appeared as part of a visit by a Giuliani-linked forensic team that traveled to Antrim County, Michigan, in November to copy voter data in connection with a local lawsuit. against county officials. He Record Eagle reported that Friess “boasted” of having recently dined with Trump and Rudy Giuliani in front of local officials, but Friess says he has never dined with Trump and “certainly” “never claimed to have.”
Friess says she joined Trump’s legal team as a “volunteer lawyer, to ensure electoral integrity, like hundreds of other volunteer lawyers across the country.”
According to Kerik, “he assisted in the preparation of legal documents, interviews and review of affidavits; and coordinated travel, legislative hearings, and meetings, as directed by the mayor or myself.”