Republican Claims Of US Election Fraud Originated With A Texas Businessman

US media is report­ing on how US Repub­li­can false claims about a stolen elec­tion orig­i­nat­ed with a Texas busi­ness­man and his asso­ciates. The Wash­ing­ton Post report begins:

May 9, 2021  Key ele­ments of the base­less claim that the 2020 elec­tion was stolen from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump took shape in an air­plane hangar here two years ear­li­er, pro­mot­ed by a Repub­li­can busi­ness­man who has sold every­thing from Tex-Mex food in Lon­don to a well­ness tech­nol­o­gy that beams light into the human blood­stream. At meet­ings begin­ning late in 2018, as Repub­li­cans were smart­ing from midterm loss­es in Texas and across the coun­try, Rus­sell J. Ram­s­land Jr. and his asso­ciates deliv­ered alarm­ing pre­sen­ta­tions on elec­tron­ic vot­ing to a pro­ces­sion of con­ser­v­a­tive law­mak­ers, activists and donors. Brief­in­gs in the hangar had a clan­des­tine air. Guests were asked to leave their cell­phones out­side before assem­bling in a win­dow­less room. A mem­ber of Ramsland’s team pur­port­ing to be a “white-hat hack­er” iden­ti­fied him­self only by a code name. Ram­s­land, a failed con­gres­sion­al can­di­date with a Har­vard MBA, pitched a claim that seemed root­ed in evi­dence: Vot­ing-machine audit logs — lines of codes and time stamps that doc­u­ment the machines’ activ­i­ties — con­tained indi­ca­tions of vote manip­u­la­tion. In the retro­fit­ted hangar that served as his company’s offices at the edge of a munic­i­pal airstrip out­side Dal­las, Ram­s­land attempt­ed to per­suade failed Repub­li­can can­di­dates to chal­lenge their elec­tion results and force the release of addi­tion­al data that might prove manipulation.“We had to find the right can­di­date,” said Lau­ra Press­ley, a for­mer Ram­s­land ally whose own claim that audit logs showed fraud had been reject­ed in court two years ear­li­er. “We had to find one who knew they won.”RamslandHuffines He made the pitch to Don Huffines, a state sen­a­tor in Texas. Huffines declined.

Read the rest here.

Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ing on US dis­in­for­ma­tion relat­ed to the elec­tions has included:

• A Decem­ber 2020 report on an elec­tion dis­in­for­ma­tion video post­ed by the head of the Ari­zona Repub­li­can Par­ty expound­ing a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry cen­tered on elec­tion machines man­u­fac­tured by Domin­ion Vot­ing Systems.

• A Decem­ber 2020 report on a speech by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump gen­er­al­ly described as con­tain­ing wild­ly inac­cu­rate claims about the US elections.

• Jan­u­ary 2021 report on how online dis­in­for­ma­tion about alleged US elec­tion fraud dropped mas­sive­ly fol­low­ing the deci­sion by Twit­ter to ban Pres­i­dent Trump and key allies.