Gabbard testimony raises questions about Venezuela conspiracy

When the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said her office seized voting machines from Puerto Rico, she said it was at the request of the office of the US attorney in Puerto Rico. Left unsaid was that the prosecutor has been the center of a push by Donald Trump supporters to revive a long-discredited conspiracy theory linking Venezuela to Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat.

The theory holds that Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro controlled electronic voting machines worldwide and remotely manipulated results in 2020 to deprive Trump of a victory. It was one of several theories pushed by Trump and his supporters, alongside complaints about dead voters, stolen ballots, mail-in ballot fraud and mass voting by noncitizens.

A judge in 2023 ruled the voting machine conspiracy involving Dominion Voting and Venezuela was false, and some news organisations retracted the allegations and paid what amounted to hundreds of millions in defamation claims.

Puerto Rico

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