'Dominion' voting conspiracy, which Stefanik amplified, debunked in Jan. 6 hearings
One of the conspiracy theories that came up in the Jan. 6 hearings in Washington this week had to do with a company called Dominion Voting Systems.
Former President Donald Trump and his allies falsely claimed the voting software company changed votes and rigged the election.
North Country Congresswoman Elise Stefanik was one of the people amplifying that misinformation in 2020, even after it was debunked in an official letter.
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency wrote in November 2020. They also said the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history.”
And yet, weeks after that letter – on Dec. 1 – Stefanik amplified the false conspiracy theory anyway.
“I have concerns about the software, the fact that Dominion software – and it’s not just Republicans, it’s Democrats who have raised issues about that process and making sure we have the integrity in the counting process,” Stefanik said, in an interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax.
She didn’t explain her concerns or provide evidence, and the Congresswoman has declined our repeated requests for an interview.
Dominion came up again in the second televised Jan. 6 hearing on Monday.
Former Attorney General Bill Bar – then the top law enforcement official in the country and a longtime Trump loyalist – said he tried to convince Trump just how ridiculous and dangerous the claim was.
“I specifically raised the Dominion voting machines, which I found to be among the most disturbing allegations. Disturbing in the sense that I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations," said Barr.
"But they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people — members of the public that there was this systemic corruption in the system and that their votes didn't count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were actually determining it, which was complete nonsense,” Barr said in his video testimony.
Barr called the Dominion claims “idiotic” and said spreading that misinformation was a “grave disservice to the country.”
Stefanik has never publicly acknowledged that her doubts about Dominion were not based in any evidence. In fact, she hasn’t walked back any of her false and misleading claims about the 2020 presidential election. Instead she has doubled down, calling the Jan. 6 investigation a “witch-hunt” and encouraging her supporters to tune it out.
