Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
2:30 am ET on Saturday, President Donald Trump posted a video on his Truth Social account in which he announced that the United States had joined forces with Israel Launching attacks It is Iran.
His next post, just two hours later, seemed to indicate that the attacks were, at least in part, motivated by a wild claim that Iran helped rig the 2020 US election. “Iran tried to interfere in the 2020 and 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with the United States,” the president added. Books on social truth.
The post is linked to an article about News onlya pro-Trump, conspiracy-laden media outlet that offered no explanation for its claim other than a vague assertion that Iran conducted a “sophisticated effort to influence the election” in 2020.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether the alleged interference factored into the decision to attack Iran or what exactly the extent of the alleged interference was.
Trump has spent the years since 2020 promoting many baseless plot Theories On fraud in the 2020 election. Since returning to the White House last year, he has empowered his administration to use these debunked conspiracy theories to guide decision-making, starting with Fulton County election offices raidedGeorgia, to lawsuits Unredacted voter lists.
It’s not entirely clear what supposed Iranian interference Trump was alluding to in his Social Truth post, but Patrick Byrne, a prominent conspiracy theorist who… He urged Trump to seize voting machines In the wake of the 2020 election, WIRED claims it is connected to a broader conspiracy theory that also includes Venezuela and China.
Like most election-related conspiracy theories, this one is complex and not based on any concrete evidence. In general terms, a conspiracy theory, which Appeared for the first time In the weeks and months following the 2020 election, and becoming more complex in the years since, allegations allege that the Venezuelan government has been rigging elections around the world for decades by creating the voting software company Smartmatic as a way to remotely rig elections. (Smartmatic has He repeatedly denied all accusations and successfully filed a lawsuit against the right-wing outlet Newsmax for promoting conspiracy theories and defaming the company.)
Byrne laid out the entire conspiracy theory in a 45-minute presentation posted on X in 2024. His claims have been widely shared within the election denial community since they were published.
Byrne claims that Iran’s role in all this was to hide the money trail. “They’re acting as exchangers. They’re holding certain payments that would expose this (process) outside the banking system, outside the SWIFT system so you can’t see it,” Byrne claimed during that presentation. “This is done through a transfer pricing mechanism that runs through Iran in oil.”
When asked about evidence of Iran’s role in this conspiracy theory, Byrne did not respond. In fact, none of Byrne’s claims have ever been verified, and most have been repeatedly debunked. Smartmatic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
However, there have been two actual documented cases of Iranian interference in elections: in 2021, The Ministry of Justice was accused Two Iranians for conducting an influence operation aimed at targeting and threatening American voters. In 2024, the three Iranian hackers working for the government are… Charged With the Trump campaign being put in jeopardy as part of an attempt to disrupt the 2024 election.
But Byrne’s claims were completely different. While Byrne’s claims have been circulated by conspiracy groups online for years, they were emailed directly to Trump in recent months by Peter Ticktin, an attorney who has known Trump since they attended the New York Military Academy together. Ticktin also represents a former Colorado elections official turned election denial star Tina Peters.