In the waning days of his administration, Donald Trump and his associates brandished a report riddled with conspiracy theories and falsehoods that they claimed proved widespread fraud in swing states that broke for Joe Biden. Among the document’s many outlandish assertions was the idea that election companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic worked with a state-run Venezuelan enterprise to rig U.S. voting machines.
A cover sheet for the document – often referred to as The Dominion Report – listed the author as Katherine Friess, a lobbyist and attorney who volunteered to help Trump’s effort to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election.
But a new investigation by The Guardian reveals that Friess was not the author. Instead, it was penned by Trump White House policy aide Joanna Miller. The outlet reports:
The original version of the Dominion report named Miller – who worked for the senior Trump adviser Peter Navarro – as the author on the cover page, until her name was abruptly replaced with that of Friess before the document was to be released publicly, the source said.
The involvement of a number of other Trump White House aides who worked in Navarro’s office was also scrubbed around that time, the source said. Friess has told the Daily Beast that she had nothing to do with the report and did not know how her name came to be on the document.
It was not clear why Miller’s name was removed from the report, which was sent to Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani on 29 November 2020, or why the White House aide’s involvement was obfuscated in the final 2 December version.
Navarro used The Dominion Report to to pen a series of memos about (nonexistent) voter fraud in the 2020 election. Incredibly, Navarro’s staff began preparing that report before the election even took place, according to comments made by Garrett Ziegler, a Navarro staffer, on a podcast last July.
The Dominion report also influenced other Trump-aligned conspiracy theorists. More from The Guardian:
The research in the Dominion report also formed the backbone of foreign election interference claims by the former Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, who argued Trump could, as a result, assume emergency presidential powers and suspend normal law.
That included Trump’s executive order 13848, which authorized sweeping powers in the event of foreign election interference, as well as a draft executive order that would have authorized the seizure of voting machines, the Guardian has previously reported.
The Guardian adds:
Miller’s authorship of the Dominion report was not the last time the Trump White House, or individuals in the administration, prepared materials to advance the former president’s claims about a stolen election and efforts to return himself to office.
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack revealed last year it had found evidence the White House Communications Agency produced a letter for the Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark to use to pressure states to decertify Biden’s election win.
