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      U.S. Imposes Sanctions on Ukrainians Linked to Giuliani for Election Disinformation

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyU.S. Imposes Sanctions on Ukrainians Linked to Giuliani for Election DisinformationThe Treasury Department accused seven Ukrainians of working with a Russian agent “to spread misleading and unsubstantiated allegations” about President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.During the 2020 campaign, Rudolph W. Giuliani arranged meetings with Ukrainians claiming to have damaging information about the Bidens.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesKenneth P. Vogel and Jan. 11, 2021Updated 5:31 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Monday against seven Ukrainians — including two who assisted President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani — for being part of what it called “a Russia-linked foreign influence network” that spread “fraudulent and unsubstantiated allegations” about President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. during the 2020 campaign.Mr. Giuliani relied on two of the Ukrainians who were penalized — Andrii Telizhenko and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk — as he sought to gather damaging information and force government investigations into Mr. Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, related to Ukraine. That effort, which had the president’s backing, led to Mr. Trump’s impeachment in 2019 by the House of Representatives.The sanctions announced on Monday stemmed from the Ukrainians’ work with Andriy Derkach, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, who was the target of sanctions by the Treasury Department last year and was accused of being a Russian agent and spreading disinformation about Mr. Biden. Mr. Derkach had met with Mr. Giuliani in 2019.The Ukrainians penalized on Monday were accused in a statement released by the Treasury Department of helping Mr. Derkach “spread misleading and unsubstantiated allegations that current and former U.S. officials engaged in corruption, money laundering and unlawful political influence in Ukraine.”The targets of the sanctions also included four media companies that the Treasury Department said were affiliated with Mr. Derkach and were involved in his efforts to spread disinformation.The sanctions are the latest in a series of steps taken by the Treasury Department over the past few years to punish people and groups that it accused of involvement in Russia-linked election interference, even as Mr. Trump, an intended beneficiary of the interference, has continued to downplay Russia’s role.“Russian disinformation campaigns targeting American citizens are a threat to our democracy,” Steven T. Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said in the statement. “The United States will continue to aggressively defend the integrity of our election systems and processes.”Kostiantyn H. Kulyk was sanctioned by the Treasury Department on Monday.Credit…Viacheslav Ratynskyi/ReutersMr. Kulyk had worked in the office of Ukraine’s national prosecutor, where he helped lead an investigation into a Ukrainian oligarch who owned a gas company that had paid Hunter Biden as a board member when his father was serving as vice president and overseeing American relations with Ukraine. Mr. Kulyk discussed the subject with Mr. Giuliani, who was pushing the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation into the Bidens to damage the former vice president’s presidential campaign.Mr. Kulyk, who has since been fired from the prosecutors’ office, was accused by the Treasury Department on Monday of forming “an alliance with Derkach to spread false accusations of international corruption.”Mr. Telizhenko, a political consultant and former official in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, provided information to Senate Republicans for a report on the Bidens’ work in Ukraine, which was released weeks before Election Day in an apparent effort to damage the Biden campaign. The report found no evidence of improper influence or wrongdoing by the former vice president.Mr. Telizhenko assisted Mr. Giuliani during the 2020 campaign, arranging meetings with Ukrainians claiming to have damaging information about the Bidens. Mr. Telizhenko helped plan a trip for Mr. Giuliani to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, in December 2019, during which Mr. Giuliani met with Mr. Derkach and recorded interviews with him and others that aired on Mr. Giuliani’s podcast and a special on the pro-Trump cable channel One America News Network.The Treasury Department seemed to allude to this trip in explaining its sanctions of Mr. Telizhenko, noting in its statement that he “orchestrated meetings between Derkach and U.S. persons to help propagate false claims concerning corruption in Ukraine.” The statement did not explicitly name Mr. Giuliani or the Bidens, but it asserted that the sanctioned Ukrainians “leveraged U.S. media, U.S.-based social media platforms and influential U.S. persons” in their efforts to spread damaging allegations.”I will continue to fight for the truth no matter what lies are spread against me, as God is where the truth is,” Mr. Telizhenko said in an emailed statement on Monday. “I stood and will stand with President Donald J. Trump.”Mr. Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.After the sanctions against Mr. Derkach were announced in September, Mr. Giuliani said in an interview that he “didn’t do much investigation” of Mr. Derkach but had “no reason to believe he is a Russian agent.”Andrii Telizhenko and Mr. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, posed for a photograph during a meeting in Ukraine in December 2019.Credit…Andrii Telizhenko/ReutersIn the interview, Mr. Giuliani said he knew Mr. Telizhenko “a lot better than I know Derkach,” adding he “looked into” Mr. Telizhenko “very carefully. I mean, look, I’m not a genius, but I would be shocked if he’s anything like a Russian agent.” He added: “I would vouch for very few Ukrainians. I’d come pretty close to vouching for him. I’m not sure I would completely vouch for him, but pretty close.”The sanctions against Mr. Derkach stemmed from his release of audio recordings of Mr. Biden talking to Petro O. Poroshenko, the former president of Ukraine. Mr. Trump promoted some of the material released by Mr. Derkach, who claimed the recordings revealed corruption, though the conversations were mostly unremarkable.Other Ukrainians targeted on Monday were accused of assisting in the efforts related to the recordings.Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a former Ukrainian lawmaker and ally of Mr. Poroshenko, was accused by the Treasury Department of providing the recordings to Mr. Derkach. Mr. Onyshchenko fled Ukraine in 2016 after being accused of fraud and money laundering.Oleksandr Dubinsky, a current member of the Ukrainian Parliament, was designated by the Treasury Department for joining Mr. Derkach in news conferences that highlighted the recordings. The Treasury Department said the news conferences were “designed to perpetuate” false narratives against “U.S. presidential candidates and their families.”Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement on Monday that the Ukrainian officials facing sanctions “have made repeated public statements advancing malicious narratives that U.S. government officials have engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine.” He added, “These efforts and narratives are consistent with or in support of Derkach’s objectives to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election.”Two of the media companies that were punished — including NabuLeaks, which posted the recordings of Mr. Biden and Mr. Poroshenko — are owned or controlled by Mr. Derkach. The other two, Only News and Skeptik TOV, are owned by Mr. Derkach’s media manager Petro Zhuravel, who was also penalized by the Treasury Department on Monday.A number of Mr. Derkach’s allies were also targeted. They include Dmytro Kovalchuk, a member of his media team, and Anton Simonenko, a close associate who helped Mr. Derkach hide financial assets, according to the Treasury Department.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Parler, a Chosen App of Trump Fans, Became a Test of Free Speech

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesHouse Moves to Remove TrumpHow Impeachment Might WorkBiden Focuses on CrisesCabinet PicksAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Parler, a Chosen App of Trump Fans, Became a Test of Free SpeechThe app has renewed a debate about who holds power over online speech after the tech giants yanked their support for it and left it fighting for survival. Parler was set to go dark on Monday.John Matze, chief executive of the alternative social networking app Parler, has said the app welcomes free speech. Credit…Fox News, via YouTubeJack Nicas and Jan. 10, 2021Updated 10:15 p.m. ETFrom the start, John Matze had positioned Parler as a “free speech” social network where people could mostly say whatever they wanted. It was a bet that had recently paid off big as millions of President Trump’s supporters, fed up with what they deemed censorship on Facebook and Twitter, flocked to Parler instead.On the app, which had become a top download on Apple’s App Store, discussions over politics had ramped up. But so had conspiracy theories that falsely said the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump, with users urging aggressive demonstrations last week when Congress met to certify the election of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.Those calls for violence soon came back to haunt Mr. Matze, 27, a software engineer from Las Vegas and Parler’s chief executive. By Saturday night, Apple and Google had removed Parler from their app stores and Amazon said it would no longer host the site on its computing services, saying it had not sufficiently policed posts that incited violence and crime. As a result, Parler was set to disappear from the web on Monday.That set off a furious effort to keep Parler online. Mr. Matze said on Sunday that he was racing to save the data of Parler’s roughly 15 million users from Amazon’s computers. He was also calling company after company to find one willing to support Parler with hundreds of computer servers.“I believe Amazon, Google, Apple worked together to try and ensure they don’t have competition,” Mr. Matze said on Parler late Saturday. “They will NOT win! We are the worlds last hope for free speech and free information.” He said the app would probably shut down “for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch.”Credit…ScreenshotParler’s plight immediately drew condemnation from those on the right, who compared the big tech companies to authoritarian overlords. Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican, told Fox News on Sunday that “Republicans have no way to communicate” and asked his followers to text him to stay in touch. Lou Dobbs, the right-wing commentator, wrote on Parler that the app had a strong antitrust case against the tech companies amid such “perilous times.”Parler has now become a test case in a renewed national debate over free speech on the internet and whether tech giants such as Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon have too much power. That debate has intensified since Mr. Trump was barred from posting on Twitter and Facebook last week after a violent mob, urged on by the president and his social media posts, stormed the Capitol.For years, Facebook and Twitter had defended people’s ability to speak freely on their sites, while Amazon, Apple, Google and others had stayed mostly hands-off with apps like Parler. That allowed misinformation and falsehoods to flow across online networks.A screenshot of Mr. Matze’s Parler profile.Users can choose whom to follow on Parler.Credit…ScreenshotThe tech companies’ actions last week to limit such toxic content with Mr. Trump and Parler have been applauded by liberals and others. But the moves also focused attention on the power of these private enterprises to decide who stays online and who doesn’t. And the timing struck some as politically convenient, with Mr. Biden set to take office on Jan. 20 and Democrats gaining control of Congress.The tech companies’ newly proactive approach also provides grist for Mr. Trump in the waning days of his administration. Even as he faces another potential impeachment, Mr. Trump is expected to try stoking anger at Twitter, Facebook and others this week, potentially as a launchpad for competing with Silicon Valley head on when he leaves the White House. After he was barred from Twitter, Mr. Trump said in a statement that he would “look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future.”Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said it was understandable that no company wanted to be associated with the “repellent speech” that encouraged the breaching of the Capitol. But he said Parler’s situation was troubling.That was because Apple’s and Google’s removal of Parler from their app stores and Amazon’s halting its web hosting went beyond what Twitter or Facebook do when they curtail a user’s account or their posts, he said. “I think we should recognize the importance of neutrality when we’re talking about the infrastructure of the internet,” he said.In earlier statements, Apple, Amazon and Google said that they had warned Parler about the violent posts on its site and that it had not done enough to consistently remove them. The companies said they required sites like Parler to systematically enforce their rules. They declined to comment further on Sunday.Tech companies pulling support for certain websites is not new. In 2018, Gab, another alternative to Facebook and Twitter that is popular among the far right, was forced offline after it lost support from other companies, including PayPal and GoDaddy, because it had hosted anti-Semitic posts by a man who shot and killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Gab later came back online with the help of a Seattle company, Epik, which hosts other far-right websites.Even if Parler goes dark, right-wing personalities like Mr. Nunes who have built followings on the app do not lack other communication channels. Many still have ample followings on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which welcome any user who doesn’t violate their rules, which prohibit threatening violence or posting hate speech.Parler was founded in 2018 by Mr. Matze and a fellow programmer, one of several social-media upstarts that aimed to capitalize on the growing anger of Mr. Trump’s supporters with Silicon Valley. But Parler had a significant advantage: money. Rebekah Mercer, one of Mr. Trump’s largest donors, helped bankroll the site. Other investors include Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and Fox News pundit. It plans to eventually make money by selling ads.The app is essentially a Twitter clone. It enables people to broadcast messages — known as “parleys,” not “tweets” — to followers. Users can also comment on and “echo” — not “retweet” — other users’ posts. When signing up for a new account, people are asked to select their favorite color and are urged to choose from a list of conservative voices to follow, including Mr. Nunes, the Fox News host Sean Hannity and the actress Kirstie Alley.These “influencers” dominate the experience on the site. On Sunday, the Parler newsfeed was a stream of their angry “parleys,” railing at Big Tech and pleading with their followers to follow them elsewhere.“Please sign up for my daily newsletter today, before the tech totalitarians ban everything,” wrote Mr. Bongino, who also controls one of Facebook’s most popular pages.Messages on Parler from Mr. Matze.Parler’s list of top personalities.Parler grew slowly until early 2020, when Twitter began labeling Mr. Trump’s tweets as inaccurate and some of his supporters joined Parler in protest. After November’s election, Parler grew even more quickly as Facebook and Twitter clamped down on false claims that the vote had been rigged. So many users signed up that, at times, they overloaded the company’s systems and forced it to pause new registrations.In total, people downloaded Parler’s app more than 10 million times last year, with 80 percent in the United States, according to Sensor Tower, the app data firm.Last Wednesday, Mr. Trump encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol to pressure lawmakers to overturn his election loss, leading to a rampage that left five people dead. The rally was planned on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. On Parler, people posted advice on which streets to take to avoid the police; some posted about carrying guns inside the Capitol.In an interview with The New York Times hours after the mob stormed the Capitol, Mr. Matze said, “I don’t feel responsible for any of this and neither should the platform, considering we’re a neutral town square that just adheres to the law.”But on Friday, Apple and Google told Parler that it needed to more consistently remove posts that encouraged violence. By Saturday, Apple and Google had removed Parler from their app stores, limiting its ability to reach new users on virtually all of the world’s smartphones.“There is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity,” Apple said in a statement. Google said, “We do require that apps implement robust moderation for egregious content.”Late Saturday, Amazon told Parler that it would need to find a new place to host its site. Amazon said it had sent Parler 98 examples of posts on its site that encouraged violence, but many remained online.“We cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others,” Amazon said.Amazon was scheduled to pull its support for Parler just before midnight Sunday on the West Coast. Amazon said it would preserve Parler’s data so it could move it to other computer servers.“It’s devastating,” Mr. Matze told Fox News on Sunday. “And it’s not just these three companies. Every vendor, from text message services to email providers to our lawyers, all ditched us, too, on the same day.” He said he was struggling to find another company to host Parler’s website.But Jeffrey Wernick, Parler’s chief operating officer, said in an interview that the app had heard from several companies that wanted to help. He declined to name them.“What Parler will look like a month from now, I can’t tell you,” he said. “But Parler will not be gone.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Watch out for this misinformation when Congress meets to certify the election.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyTracking Viral MisinformationWatch out for this misinformation when Congress meets to certify the election.Jan. 6, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ETJan. 6, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ETDavey Alba and An audit of election ballots in Atlanta in mid-November.Credit…Brynn Anderson/Associated PressAs Congress meets on Wednesday to certify Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the November election, President Trump and his supporters continue to spread rumors, conspiracy theories and misinformation about the vote.Here are six false voter fraud claims that may be repeated during the proceedings on Wednesday.No, ‘glitches’ in Dominion Voting Machines did not change vote tallies.Claim: Dominion Voting Systems, which makes software that local governments around the nation use to help run their elections, deleted votes for President Trump.Fact: There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, including the machines with Dominion software, according to the federal agency that oversees election security.Background: In the weeks after the election, President Trump and his supporters spread baseless claims about Dominion. The claims included theories that “software glitches” changed vote tallies in several states, including Michigan and Georgia. No such changes were ever found.Mr. Trump and his supporters subsequently claimed that Dominion had hidden evidence of voter fraud, both by destroying machines or removing parts within the machines. Mr. Trump repeated those claims during a call with Georgia’s secretary of state last weekend. Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia, said Monday of the claims of election fraud in the state, “This is all easily, provably false.”No, politicians in Georgia did not prevent an analysis of absentee ballots.Claim: President Trump and his supporters have claimed that absentee ballots in Georgia were rife with fraud and that state officials have not fully investigated.Fact: Election officials have audited absentee ballots and found “no fraudulent absentee ballots.”Background: The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, ordered law enforcement and election investigators to conduct an audit of more than 15,000 absentee ballot envelopes in Cobb County, based on a complaint that signatures were not adequately checked there. The audit found no fraud. Mr. Raffensperger has said that he also plans a statewide audit of each county’s signature-match policies and procedures.Georgia has already conducted two recounts, both by hand and machine, of all five million ballots cast in the state. No voting fraud was found.No, thousands of votes in Arizona were not changed to favor Biden.Claim: In an interview on the conservative cable channel Newsmax in December, the Arizona Republican chairwoman, Kelli Ward, said 200,000 ballots were digitally changed to give the victory to Mr. Biden, and Representative Paul Gosar amplified the falsehood on Twitter.Fact: Audits in Arizona have found no evidence of voter fraud, or changed vote tallies.Background: While early results in Arizona showed a close race, the final count revealed that Mr. Biden had won the state by more than 10,000 votes.Audits in Arizona’s four largest counties, which make up 86 percent of all votes in the state, turned up no evidence of systematic voter fraud.No, election workers didn’t stuff fraudulent ballots into suitcases.Claim: President Trump’s supporters have pointed to a video as proof that ballots were pulled from a “suitcase” at a vote-counting center in Atlanta.Fact: Election officials have said the surveillance video shows normal ballot processing. It is not unusual practice for poll workers to store ballots that still need to be counted on-site at the polling center.Background: As reported by The New York Times, late on Nov. 3, election workers in Fulton County, Ga., heard that they would be allowed to stop the vote-counting and retire for the evening. So they packed uncounted ballots into suitcases and prepared to lock up. When word came that they couldn’t leave yet, they dragged the suitcases back out and began counting the ballots again.But that scene of election workers taking out suitcases of ballots was selectively edited and pushed by allies of President Trump as one of the many false theories purportedly proving widespread election fraud. The conspiracists also named the election worker Ruby Freeman as a specific player in this false conspiracy event.No, there isn’t evidence that Pennsylvania election officials violated state law.Claim: President Trump’s campaign has claimed that Pennsylvania election officials improperly handled tens of thousands of mail-in ballots in violation of state election law.Fact: The Trump campaign’s legal efforts to disqualify votes in Pennsylvania have been unsupported by evidence.Background: The Trump campaign filed several claims in court seeking to invalidate Pennsylvania’s election results, and one ally of Mr. Trump, Senator Josh Hawley, has said he would challenge the results because he believed “some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws.”But the Trump campaign has included no evidence that any vote had been cast illegally.In a hearing on Nov. 17, President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, acknowledged he had no proof to back up his claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania. “This is not a fraud case,” Mr. Giuliani said.Four days later, the judge overseeing the case dismissed the lawsuit. It was also shot down last month by Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, who said in a ruling, “Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”No, Pence does not have the power to change the election result.Claim: Vice President Mike Pence can reject state electors in the Electoral College.Fact: Federal law stipulates that the vice president’s role is to count Electoral College votes, not decide whether they are valid.Background: President Trump on Tuesday falsely claimed on Twitter that Mr. Pence has the power to reject electors when the Electoral College vote is certified.As president of the Senate, Mr. Pence is expected to preside over the pro forma certification of the Electoral College vote count in front of a joint session of Congress. The only electoral certifications available for Vice President Pence to preside over are the ones approved by each state.Ben Decker and Jacob Silver contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump's Georgia Call Was Brought to You by Q

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyWith One Presidential Phone Call, QAnon Shows Its PowerThe sprawling online conspiracy network is at the center of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.Opinion ColumnistJan. 6, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Illustration by Mike McQuade; photograph by Doug Mills/The New York TimesForgive me for failing, at first, to find much news in the news that President Trump had pressured officials in Georgia to overturn the election results. That he had been caught doing so on tape was even more dog-bites-man.Not many people remember this, but we once had a lengthy impeachment hearing centered on a corrupt Trump phone call. It’s only natural that he’d reprise his biggest hit — “Perfect Call Feat. Senate Toadies” — in his grand finale as president.Then I spent an hour listening to the full recording of Trump’s call, and my stomach sank. What got me was how thoroughly Trump’s arguments involved conspiracy theories hatched or spread by QAnon, the online cultlike thing that seems to be gaining a death grip on the American right.In that phone call, I heard a president who is somehow both rabbit and rabbit hole — as much a rabid consumer of online conspiracy propaganda as he is a producer of it. The plot to undo the 2020 election isn’t Trump’s alone — it is also the product of a sprawling online phenomenon whose goals, logic and methods are as unpredictable as the internet itself.Trump will soon step out of office, but that won’t diminish his standing with a conspiracy-media apparatus that has become so adept at transforming rumor into political reality. Through QAnon, the mendacity that has defined the Trump era will remain an enduring feature of right-wing politics, long after Trump slinks away.QAnon originated in 2017 as an exceptionally bizarre conspiracy theory, centered around the premise that the country is run by a cabal of pedophiles whom Trump is bringing down. It has since morphed into something even stranger. More than a single conspiracy theory, QAnon is best regarded as a general-purpose conspiracy infrastructure, spreading lies across a range of subjects, from coronavirus denial to mask and vaccine skepticism and, now, to a grab bag of theories about election fraud.The conspiracy theories seem ridiculous, but the consequences are real.The movement’s acolytes take inspiration and guidance from the eponymous Q, an anonymous figure who has posted cryptic notes on the troll-infested internet forums 4Chan and 8Kun. But QAnon’s theories don’t come down fully formed from Q, nor from Trump; in a manner that resembles an online game, they are created collectively, giving the movement a flexible, almost religious quality.QAnon’s participatory thrill has alarmed misinformation researchers. Because every pronouncement from Q can spark endless “research” and commentary, new adherents are made to feel like they have a role in uncovering the deepest secrets about the world. “It is insufficient to be persuaded by the anti-vax or QAnon movements — those who’ve joined the movement feel an obligation to share the ‘truth’ with those who’ve yet to be enlightened,” the media scholar Ethan Zuckerman wrote in 2019. “Those who are most successful in converting others are rewarded with attention, a commodity that is easily convertible into other currencies.”In the Church of Q, Donald Trump is the one and only messiah. But the Georgia call shows how fully he participates in it, too.Travis View, a co-host of the excellent Q-tracking podcast “QAnon Anonymous,” told me that when Trump was rattling off his litany of false claims on the call, “he was sounding a lot like a thread on the Q research board, on which people spit out ideas, conspiracy theories and snippets, and people sort of build upon them.”View described a symbiotic relationship between Trump, QAnon message boards and pro-Trump news outlets like One America News and Newsmax. It’s a bit like jazz musicians improvising, each one punching up the other’s riff.“We’ve seen OAN and Newsmax basically regurgitate baseless conspiracy theories from QAnon world,” View said. The stories from pro-Trump outlets “get into Trump’s brain, and then he regurgitates them back, and of course because he’s regurgitating the conspiracy theories he heard on the internet, all the internet conspiracy theorists believe that their conspiracy theory is validated, because Trump repeated it.”On the call, Trump claimed that voting machines made by a company called Dominion Voting Systems were rigged to help Biden win. The theory has been debunked; it is also moot, because officials in Georgia confirmed Biden’s victory through a hand recount of paper ballots.The Dominion idea was one of several stolen-election theories that started on QAnon-friendly forums. Pro-Trump outlets then echoed the theory — as NBC News recently pointed out, Ron Watkins, the administrator of 8Kun, has been featured on One America News as a voting-systems expert, which he is not. When Trump inevitably tweeted out the OAN segment, the circle was complete: OAN had given its aggrieved audience “news” that confirmed its belief in the conspiracy. Trump promoted self-serving misinformation, and QAnon grew just a little bit more powerful.The atmosphere of fear and mistrust that has pervaded America’s response to the pandemic has been very good for QAnon, and now this dangerous movement holds real political power.In November, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon supporter, won a seat representing Georgia’s 14th District in the House of Representatives. Some Republican officials have attempted to downplay Greene’s political success and distance themselves from her ideas, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Greene becomes a G.O.P. star. On Monday, at Trump’s rally to support the two Republicans running in Georgia’s Senate runoffs, the crowd’s wildest cheers came when Greene took the stage. The audience sounded much more enthusiastic about Greene than about Kelly Loeffler, one of the actual Republican candidates.If the Republican Party has given up entirely on fighting QAnon’s influence, it might be because Q has grown too big to tame. Late last month, NPR and Ipsos published the disturbing results of a poll assessing QAnon’s hold on the nation. People who responded to the survey were asked whether it was true or false that “a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media,” QAnon’s central lie. Seventeen percent said “true,” and 37 percent more said they didn’t know. In other words, a majority of Americans think it is at least possible that QAnon’s nuttiest theory might be fact. A third of respondents also said that voter fraud had helped Biden win.This level of influence isn’t going to disappear at noon on Jan. 20. QAnon’s vast reach, and Trump’s deep hold on it, are here to stay.Office Hours With Farhad ManjooFarhad wants to chat with readers on the phone. If you’re interested in talking to a New York Times columnist about anything that’s on your mind, please fill out this form. Farhad will select a few readers to call.[embedded content]The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Trump Could Affect Loeffler and Perdue in Georgia Race

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      Fact-Checking Trump's Debunked Election Claims in Georgia Call

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyTracking Viral MisinformationTrump Repeats Debunked Election Claims in Call With Georgia OfficialJan. 3, 2021, 8:34 p.m. ETJan. 3, 2021, 8:34 p.m. ETPresident Trump has made a litany of false claims about election results in Georgia.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Trump, in an hourlong telephone call with Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, repeated a number of false and misleading claims about election results in the state that have been circulating on social media. Here’s a fact check.What Mr. Trump Said“Then it was stuffed with votes. They weren’t in an official voter box, they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases but they weren’t in voter boxes. The minimum number it could be because we watched it and they watched it certified in slow motion instant replay if you can believe it, but it had slow motion and it was magnified many times over, and the minimum it was 18,000 ballots, all for Biden.”False. Mr. Trump was most likely referring to debunked claims that a water leak at a vote counting location in Fulton County forced an evacuation and made it possible for trunks full of ballots to be rolled in. Election officials have said and surveillance videos show that this did not happen.A water leak caused a delay for about two hours in vote counting at the State Farm Arena, but no ballots or equipment were damaged. Georgia’s chief election investigator, Frances Watson, testified that a “review of the entire security footage revealed that there were no mystery ballots that were brought in from an unknown location and hidden under tables.”Throughout the phone call, Mr. Trump also repeatedly suggested that an election worker seen in the surveillance videos “stuffed the boxes” and “they thought she’d be in jail” — referring to a baseless conspiracy theory promoted on social media.What Mr. Trump Said“There were no poll watchers there. There were no Democrats or Republicans. There was no security there.”This is misleading. Election observers and journalists were present at State Farm Arena when the water leak occurred. They were not asked to leave, Ms. Watson said, but simply “left on their own” when they saw one group of workers, who had completed their task, leave.What Mr. Trump Said“So dead people voted. And I think the number is close to 5,000 people.”False. The actual number was two, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, told the president in the call.What Mr. Trump Said“You had out-of-state voters — they voted in Georgia but they were from out of state — of 4,925.”This is misleading. Ryan Germany, the chief counsel for Mr. Raffensperger’s office, refuted this description in the call.“Everyone we’ve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately,” he said. “They moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So there’s something about that data that, it’s just not accurate.”What Mr. Trump Said“In Fulton County and other areas — and this may or may not be true, because this just came up this morning — that they are burning their ballots, that they are shredding ballots, shredding ballots and removing equipment. They are changing the equipment on the Dominion machines, and you know that’s not legal.”False. Mr. Trump was likely referring to images of Fulton County ballots that circulated on social media and posted by a supporter, Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.The photos showed piles of ballots that were visibly not filled out and wrapped in plastic. Mr. Byrne characterized the ballots as “counterfeit” and said they were later shredded.But those images were simply of emergency backup ballots, said Gabriel Sterling, a Republican official who is the voting system implementation manager in Georgia. State law requires counties to prepare additional paper ballots in case voting machines cannot be used.Dominion Voting Systems, which has been the subject of countless conspiracy theories and false rumors, did not remove any machinery from Fulton County, Mr. Germany told the president.What Mr. Trump Said“In Detroit, we had 139 percent of the people voted. That’s not too good. In Pennsylvania, they had well over 200,000 more votes than they had people voting.”False. About 51 percent of registered voters and 38 percent of the entire population cast a ballot in Detroit.The figure for Pennsylvania was a reference to faulty analysis conducted by state Republican lawmakers. The analysis relied on a voter registration database that Pennsylvania’s Department of State said was incomplete as a few counties — including Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, the two largest in the state — had yet to fully upload their data. The department called the analysis “obvious misinformation.”What Mr. Trump Said“She got you to sign a totally unconstitutional agreement, which is a disastrous agreement. You can’t check signatures. I can’t imagine you’re allowed to do harvesting, I guess, in that agreement.”False. This was an inaccurate reference to a settlement between Georgia and the Democratic Party. Under the March settlement, officials must notify voters whose signatures were rejected within three business days and give them the chance to correct issues. It does not bar officials from verifying signatures and does not allow “harvesting,” or collecting and dropping off ballots in bulk.“Harvesting is still illegal in the state of Georgia. And that settlement agreement did not change that one iota,” Mr. Raffensperger said in the call.Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump Repeats Debunked Election Claims in Call With Georgia Official

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFact CheckTrump Repeats Debunked Election Claims in Call With Georgia OfficialThe president recited a number of viral online falsehoods involving dead voters, Dominion voting machines, shredded ballots and a water leak, among other baseless claims of fraud.President Trump has made a litany of false claims about election results in Georgia.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesJan. 3, 2021Updated 10:14 p.m. ETPresident Trump, in an hourlong telephone call with Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, repeated a number of false and misleading claims about election results in the state that have been circulating on social media. Here’s a fact check.What Mr. Trump Said“Then it was stuffed with votes. They weren’t in an official voter box, they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases but they weren’t in voter boxes. The minimum number it could be because we watched it and they watched it certified in slow motion instant replay if you can believe it, but it had slow motion and it was magnified many times over, and the minimum it was 18,000 ballots, all for Biden.”False. Mr. Trump was most likely referring to debunked claims that a water leak at a vote counting location in Fulton County forced an evacuation and made it possible for trunks full of ballots to be rolled in. Election officials have said and surveillance videos show that this did not happen.A water leak caused a delay for about two hours in vote counting at the State Farm Arena, but no ballots or equipment were damaged. Georgia’s chief election investigator, Frances Watson, testified that a “review of the entire security footage revealed that there were no mystery ballots that were brought in from an unknown location and hidden under tables.”Throughout the phone call, Mr. Trump also repeatedly suggested that an election worker seen in the surveillance videos “stuffed the boxes” and “they thought she’d be in jail” — referring to a baseless conspiracy theory promoted on social media.What Mr. Trump Said“There were no poll watchers there. There were no Democrats or Republicans. There was no security there.”This is misleading. Election observers and journalists were present at State Farm Arena when the water leak occurred. They were not asked to leave, Ms. Watson said, but simply “left on their own” when they saw one group of workers, who had completed their task, leave.What Mr. Trump Said“So dead people voted. And I think the number is close to 5,000 people.”False. The actual number was two, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, told the president in the call.What Mr. Trump Said“You had out-of-state voters — they voted in Georgia but they were from out of state — of 4,925.”This is misleading. Ryan Germany, the chief counsel for Mr. Raffensperger’s office, refuted this description in the call.“Everyone we’ve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately,” he said. “They moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So there’s something about that data that, it’s just not accurate.”What Mr. Trump Said“In Fulton County and other areas — and this may or may not be true, because this just came up this morning — that they are burning their ballots, that they are shredding ballots, shredding ballots and removing equipment. They are changing the equipment on the Dominion machines, and you know that’s not legal.”False. Mr. Trump was likely referring to images of Fulton County ballots that circulated on social media and posted by a supporter, Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.The photos showed piles of ballots that were visibly not filled out and wrapped in plastic. Mr. Byrne characterized the ballots as “counterfeit” and said they were later shredded.But those images were simply of emergency backup ballots, said Gabriel Sterling, a Republican official who is the voting system implementation manager in Georgia. State law requires counties to prepare additional paper ballots in case voting machines cannot be used.Dominion Voting Systems, which has been the subject of countless conspiracy theories and false rumors, did not remove any machinery from Fulton County, Mr. Germany told the president.What Mr. Trump Said“In Detroit, we had 139 percent of the people voted. That’s not too good. In Pennsylvania, they had well over 200,000 more votes than they had people voting.”False. About 51 percent of registered voters and 38 percent of the entire population cast a ballot in Detroit.The figure for Pennsylvania was a reference to faulty analysis conducted by state Republican lawmakers. The analysis relied on a voter registration database that Pennsylvania’s Department of State said was incomplete as a few counties — including Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, the two largest in the state — had yet to fully upload their data. The department called the analysis “obvious misinformation.”What Mr. Trump Said“She got you to sign a totally unconstitutional agreement, which is a disastrous agreement. You can’t check signatures. I can’t imagine you’re allowed to do harvesting, I guess, in that agreement.”False. This was an inaccurate reference to a settlement between Georgia and the Democratic Party. Under the March settlement, officials must notify voters whose signatures were rejected within three business days and give them the chance to correct issues. It does not bar officials from verifying signatures and does not allow “harvesting,” or collecting and dropping off ballots in bulk.“Harvesting is still illegal in the state of Georgia. And that settlement agreement did not change that one iota,” Mr. Raffensperger said in the call.Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More