Former President Trump’s campaign reportedly knew soon after the November election that claims it made about voting machine irregularities leading his defeat were inaccurate.
Court documents released Monday show that by the time a campaign news conference on the issue took place, an internal memo had already been circulated confirming that the claims about Dominion Voting Systems and software company Smartmatic were false, according to The New York Times.
At the Nov. 19 news conference, the team of the former president’s attorneys claimed Dominion was in cahoots with financier George Soros and Venezuela in an effort to steal the election from Trump.
But emails included in the court documents show that campaign staffers were asked by then-deputy director of communications Zach Parkinson on Nov. 13 to “substantiate or debunk” several claims surrounding the voting machine company. The next day, Parkinson’s staff provided a memo of news articles that appeared to show the allegations were not true, the Times said, adding that it was unclear if Trump had seen the memo.
Specifically, The New York Times reported that the memo said Dominion had no ties to Soros or Venezuela and did not use technology from Smartmatic and that its leadership was not connected to antifa activists, as Trump’s lawyers had alleged.
However, the Times could not confirm if Trump had seen the memo or how widely circulated it was.
The documents were filed last week in a defamation lawsuit for former Dominion employee Eric Coomer that claimed the criticism of the companies was “baseless,” the Times reported.
Coomer’s lawyers said, “The memo produced by the Trump campaign shows that, at least internally, the Trump campaign found there was no evidence to support the conspiracy theories regarding Dominion,” according to The Times.
Trump has continued to cling to his false accusations of a rigged election since leaving office, while Dominion has filed $1.3 billion lawsuits against three of the former president’s allies — including attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell — over their claims about the company.
Updated at 3:05 p.m.