It was classified as an “explosive report” on the “foreign ties” of electoral technology company Dominion Voting Systems that Donald Trump’s legal team was sending to state lawmakers to give them a “summary” of alleged electoral fraud in the 2020 elections But despite the Trump team’s apparent anxiety to release the report and its claims in December 2020, three months later no one seems to want to copy it.
Katherine Friess, the volunteer for the Trump legal team whose name is on the cover of the report, entitled “Dominion Voting Systems Overview 12/2/20”, and in metadata embedded in the document, says she had nothing to do with it. Friess and Bernie Kerik, a former New York police chief under former mayor Rudy Giuliani and a volunteer on the Trump legal team, say the report was sent to the legal team by a then White House adviser to the former adviser Trump commercial Peter Navarro. The former senior Trump official declined several opportunities to comment on the record of this story.
The difficulty in identifying an author for a report that the Trump team seemed happy to brag about underscores the extent to which the threat of lawsuits by Dominion Voting Systems has shrouded the veterans of the effort to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. Dominion’s lawyers filed $ 1.3 billion lawsuits against Trump’s personal lawyer Giuliani, pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and pillow mogul Mike Lindell for his alleged defamation of the company’s voting software, with more processes on the way.
Trump campaign officials, including former president and head of the legal team Giuliani, have publicly broadcast since they unmasked the Domain conspiracy theories non-existent ties with Venezuela for “excluded” false votes. But Friess and Kerik’s claims that a Trump administration aide shared the report with the campaign’s legal team suggest that the White House was even more involved in the effort to raise questions about Dominion’s products.
The Dominion report first appeared publicly in early December in an article on Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump conspiracy website. The story claimed that the Trump campaign was using the document to inform state lawmakers about its allegations of electoral fraud. The report describes itself as “an overview” of Dominion Voting Systems’ “history, executives, vote manipulation and design” and “foreign ties”, and repeats a series of claims that have already been discredited, including that Dominion has ties with “several Venezuelan state-owned software and telecommunications companies” and that the company’s products use software from another electoral technology company, Smartmatic.
Friess’s name appears on the cover page and the metadata embedded in a PDF uploaded to Archive.org linked to The Gateway Pundit. In an email to The Daily Beast, Friess insisted that he had nothing to do with the report and did not know how his name appeared on the document.
“I had nothing to do with researching, writing or producing the Dominion report. I have no idea how my name appeared on his cover, who did it, or why, “Friess told The Daily Beast, claiming that the report was” disseminated “by a member of Navarro’s team.
Kerik, who was pardoned by Trump on a series of criminal charges and later helped Trump’s legal team in their crusade to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory, said that Friess was not involved in the production of the Dominion report. “In fact, it was sent to the mayor’s legal team by [a person with] Peter Navarro’s office [on] 11/29, however, I’m not sure [Peter] saw before receiving it. “
Kerik continued: “I believe that Navarro did not see him and I do not believe that he was the author. However, it was sent to me and the legal team through a then White House adviser who worked for Peter. “
In a phone call on Monday, Kerik read The Daily Beast the email that the “then White House adviser” sent on November 29, but did not say who sent it. The Daily Beast has since confirmed that the sender was in fact an officer working at Trump’s White House.
Kerik worked alongside Giuliani on Trump’s legal team, collecting testimony alleging irregularities in the 2020 election and “making contact with people who wanted to discuss the matter with the president or mayor,” he said. Kerik added that Friess “never met Giuliani or the president before arriving and volunteering to help with the legal effort. I was the one who introduced her to the mayor. I was at the White House with her the first time she met [Trump], and that was a meeting with Giuliani and [others]. “
Navarro, a faithful loyal to Trump, is also the author of three documents, collectively called “The Navarro Report” (“The Immaculate Deception”, “The Art of Stealing” and “Yes, President Trump Won ‘), which mistakenly claim fraud widespread electoral and irregularities that diverted Trump’s election to Biden.
Friess was in the news recently when his name appeared as part of a visit by a forensic team linked to Giuliani who traveled to Antrim County, Michigan, in November to copy voter data in connection with a local lawsuit against county officials. THE Logging Eagle reported that Friess “bragged” about having recently dined with Trump and Rudy Giuliani for local authorities, but Friess says he never had dinner with Trump and “certainly” “never claimed to have done so”.
Friess says he joined Trump’s legal team as “a volunteer lawyer, to ensure electoral integrity, like hundreds of other volunteer lawyers across the country.”
According to Kerik, she “helped with the preparation of legal documents, interviews and reviewed depositions; and coordinated trips, legislative hearings and meetings, as directed by the mayor or me. “