IIt was billed as an “explosive report” on the “outside ties” of the electoral technology company Dominion Voting Systems that Donald Trump’s legal team was sending to state legislators to give them “a summary” of the alleged electoral fraud in the elections of 2020. But despite the apparent enthusiasm of the Trump team to promote the report and its claims in December 2020, three months later no one seems to want to be the author of it.
Katherine Friess, the Trump legal team volunteer whose name appears on the cover of the report, titled “Dominion 12/2/20 Voting Systems Overview,” and in the metadata embedded in the document, says she had no nothing to do with it. Friess and Bernie Kerik, a former New York City police chief under former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a volunteer on Trump’s legal team, say the report was sent to the legal team by a then-White House aide. of Trump’s former trade adviser. Peter Navarro. The former top Trump official declined multiple opportunities to comment on the record of this story.
The difficulty in identifying an author for a report the Trump team once seemed happy to boast about underscores the extent to which the looming threat of lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems has tarnished veterans of the effort to reverse the US presidential election. 2020. Dominion’s attorneys have filed $ 1.3 billion lawsuits against Trump Giuliani’s personal attorney, pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell, and pillow mogul Mike Lindell for their alleged defamation of the company’s voting software, and More lawsuits are reportedly on the way.
Senior Trump campaign officials, including former president and head of the legal team Giuliani, have come out publicly since debunking conspiracy theories about Dominion non-existent ties with Venezuela to falsify “deleted” votes. But Friess and Kerik’s claims that a Trump administration aide shared the report with the campaign’s legal team suggests that the White House was even more involved in the effort to raise questions about Dominion products.
The Dominion report first appeared publicly in early December in an article about Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump conspiracy site. The story claimed that the Trump campaign was using the document to inform state lawmakers about their allegations of voter fraud. The report describes itself as “an overview” of Dominion Voting Systems’ “history, executives, vote manipulation capabilities and design” and “foreign ties”, repeating a number of claims that from so they have been discredited, including that Dominion has ties to Venezuelan state-owned software and telecommunications companies ”and that the company’s products use software from another electoral technology company, Smartmatic.
Friess’s name appears on the cover and embedded metadata in a PDF uploaded to Archive.org linked by The Gateway Pundit. In an email to The Daily Beast, Friess insisted that he had nothing to do with the report and did not know how his name came to appear in the document.
“I had nothing to do with the research, writing or production of the Dominion report. I have no idea how my name got on the cover, who did that or why, “Friess told The Daily Beast, stating that the report was” released “by a member of Navarro’s team.
Kerik, who was pardoned by Trump on a series of felony charges and later assisted Trump’s legal team in their quest to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory, said Friess was not involved in producing the Dominion report. “Actually, he was sent to the mayor’s legal team for [a person with] Peter Navarro Office [on] 11/29, however, I’m not sure [Peter] I saw it before we got it. “
Kerik continued: “I think Navarro didn’t see it, and I don’t think he’s the author. However, it was sent to me and the legal team through a White House aide who worked for Peter. “
In a phone call Monday, Kerik read to 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 sender was in fact an official working in the Trump White House.
Kerik worked alongside Giuliani on Trump’s legal team collecting affidavits alleging wrongdoing in the 2020 election and “connecting 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. I was the one who presented it to the mayor. He was in the White House with her the first time he met her [Trump], and that was a meeting with Giuliani and [others]. “
Navarro, a staunch Trump supporter, also authored three documents, collectively called “The Navarro Report” (“The Immaculate Deception,” “The Art of Stealing,” and “Yes, President Trump Won”), which erroneously alleged a widespread electoral fraud. and irregularities that tipped Trump’s election to Biden.
Friess made headlines recently when his name appeared as part of a visit by a forensic team linked to Giuliani that traveled to Antrim County, Michigan, in November to copy voter data in connection with a local lawsuit against county officials. the Record Eagle reported that Friess “bragged” about having dinner with Trump and Rudy Giuliani recently to local officials, but Friess says he never dined with Trump and “certainly” “never claimed to have.”
Friess says she joined Trump’s legal team as a “volunteer attorney, to ensure the integrity of the election, like hundreds of other volunteer attorneys across the country.”
According to Kerik, she “assisted in the preparation of legal documents, interviews and reviewed affidavits; and coordinated trips, legislative hearings and meetings, as directed by the mayor or myself. “